A REAL HAPPY NASCAR WIFE!

Well, we are back from our weekend at Dover and I just couldn't wait to tell you about this adorable couple we met while we were touring the garages prior to Sunday's race!

As we were walking around, Hubby spotted these two wearing their "Just Married" t-shirts.  I asked if I could take their picture for my blog and they obliged.  We chatted with them for awhile and they were so darned cute!  Melvin and Sara - married on Saturday and the Dover race was their honeymoon!  They were headed back to work on Monday morning.  What a sweet couple!  Melvin is a big Jr. fan and was hoping to score a tire or some other piece of memorabilia from the 88 as a souvenir.  I didn't get to see them after the race, but I'd love to know about their experience at the race!

I wish them many, many happy years together!  "Nascar Wife, Happy Life!!"

PACKING FOR THE TRACK

I'm starting to think about what I want to pack to take to Dover next weekend, and I thought I'd share some pointers on what and how I pack my bag to take along to the race.

First of all, and most importantly, check the track's website to see their restrictions on what you can take in to your seat on race day.  Every track has different rules and there is always that guy who is completely unaware that you can't take certain items inside the track.  As he 'converses' with the security guy the line behind him grows longer and longer and fans become more and more aggravated!  Doing a little research before you go saves all of us a lot of headaches.

I highly recommend packing your personal items in a clear totebag.  If you don't already have one (I actually got one when I purchased a set of sheets!) you can purchase one at the NASCAR trailer in the Fan Zone.  They are relatively inexpensive and well worth the investment for the time it will save you going thru the gates.

Here is a list of items I always pack:

• 2 trash bags - Sounds silly, I know, but they come in really handy if your metal bleacher seat is wet or if it starts to rain during the race.  You can put them over your lap to keep your legs from getting wet or tear a whole in the top and use as a makeshift raincoat.
• Blanket - Makes those metal bleachers a little softer and a little warmer but also helps to define "your space" so that you don't lose valuable inches when your neighbor tries to put his cooler in your seat.  You're welcome! 
• Scanner and headsets - If you don't want to use these, be sure to take something for ear protection.  You can't imagine how loud it is trackside!  A quick trip to the hardware store and you can find inexpensive earplugs.  These are an absolute must.
• Extra batteries for your scanner
• Sunscreen, no matter what the weather is.  Just a little bit of sun bouncing off those shiny aluminum bleachers and you can get a sunburn more quickly than if you were at the beach!
• Snacks - I am not one of those people who can't go for more than an hour without eating.  I also don't really enjoy trying to eat a greasy burger or sloppy sub in my seat.  So I take a bunch of easy-to-eat snacks - things like peanut butter crackers, nuts, carrots, apples, etc.  I also like to bring a bag of hard candy/mints and gum and a bottle of water.
• Aspirin - I can pretty much always count on getting a headache some time during the day, so I always want to be able to catch it before it gets really awful and spoils my fun.
• Hat & Sunglasses - I am not a baseball hat kind of girl, but I always wear one at a race.  Count on the sun being in your eyes at some point during the day.
• TICKETS - Goes without saying, but be sure to double check that someone has them!
• Money - I always throw a couple of dollars in my bag just in case.

Just remember that whatever you take with you needs to fit at your feet!  Please be considerate of the others around you. I see people dragging these huge coolers on wheels and tons of junk for their kids and I feel sorry for the people who sit around them!  There is no way all that stuff fits in the space you are allotted, so that means you are cheating from your neighbors.  Not fair, not considerate, and not a fun way for anyone to spend the day. 

With just a little advance planning and thought you'll have everything you need to spend a great day cheering for your favorite driver!

LESSON LEARNED

No big newsflash here, but NASCAR events are extremely weather dependent.  Practice, qualifying, and races.  None can happen on schedule when Mother Nature decided to flex her muscles.  This weekend's events at Chicagoland Speedway are a prime example.

This happened to us this spring at Martinsville.  Hubby was SO excited about being able to go to an early-season race, God bless him....  He ordered our truck race tickets for Saturday and cup race tickets for Sunday months in advance.  We were going to Virginia in late March - weather there should be nice and springlike at that time of year, right?  Wrong! 

It rained all night Friday night, but ever the optimists we knew it would be okay for the truck race on Saturday.  Wrong again. We woke up Saturday morning and it was still raining.  Bucketfuls.  We tuned in the Sirius Nascar station to see what the report from the track was.  "Chance of clearing" they said so we decided to head out from the campground in the hopes that "chance" meant "100% chance."  Well, as it turned out 'chance' meant more like 'little to no chance'.  When we arrived at the track we got a great parking space!  No one else was crazy enough to think this was anything but a monsoon!  We pulled on our raincoats, popped up our umbrellas, and headed to the Fan Zone.  It was actually a great time to be there.  We had to dodge each others' umbrellas, but everyone was having fun, just like little kids playing in the rain!

We bought the things we went there to buy and as it started to rain even harder, decided to go back to our truck and wait for awhile.  Luckily I thought to throw a couple of snacks and some drinks in the truck before we left so we had a little picnic inside the truck and watch the antics of those who were trying to tailgate in the rain.  It was quite entertaining!  Meanwhile, they kept pushing back the time of the race - an hour, a half hour, and so on and so on.  Soon the discussion turned to "if" it stops raining and how much daylight would be left to get the race in. 

The rain never really stopped, although it got a lot lighter.  So we decided to head over to the track to see what was happening.  This was the first time NASCAR was using the new Air Titans and we thought it would be interesting to see them in action.  Hubby got to talk to one of the guys who drives an Air Titan so that was pretty fascinating (for him - haha!)

We found our seats, put our trashbag down first so that we weren't sitting in puddles, and settled in.  No more than 5 minutes later the announcement came - truck race has been postponed until AFTER tomorrow's cup race.  And here is the Lesson Learned part:  Anyone with a ticket for the truck race could get into the cup race an hour after it started, and anyone with a cup race ticket could stay for the truck race!  We had spent $70 (give or take) that we really did not need to spend.  OUCH!

The same thing just happened to ticket holders in Chicago.

So my advice is this:  If you are planning to spend the weekend at the races, buy your tickets for Sunday only.  If the weather is nice and everything goes off on schedule, buy your tickets for Friday or Saturday at the gate - there are always tons of tickets available and usually these races are general admission so you're not buying a 'seat' anyway - just admission.  If the weather is lousy and races get rescheduled, you will get two for the price of one - kind of like a BOGO in the grocery store!

RACE FOR THE CHASE .... a/k/a THE PLAYOFFS

The NASCAR conversation this week has been all about "the chase".  I'm sure you've heard it.  You probably thought, 'Chase?  What chase? I thought all races were chases!"  Well, yes.  Technically all races are chases, but in this case "chase" refers to the chase for a championship. 

If you think of the Chase in terms of a playoff-type of system it will help you to understand what is at stake.  College sports have their conferences; professional sports have their leagues; Nascar has its chase.  You get the idea.

Let me see if I can summarize it for you ...  You might want to get a little snack ;-)

After tomorrow night's race in Richmond, the top 16 drivers (the ones with the most points - and don't ask me to explain that one to you - that will be for another day) will advance to the Chase for the Championship.  Some drivers already know they are in the Chase because they have won a race in the regular season.  Winning automatically qualifies a driver for the Chase, as long as they are ranked in the top 30 by chase time.  But there are a bunch of drivers who haven't won a race and who want to be in the Chase so the racing should be pretty crazy at Richmond.  I can't wait!

After the Richmond race, the top 16 drivers will all have 2,000 points + 3 extra points for every race they have won this year.  There are five drivers who have each won 3 races (Keselowski, Logano, Gordon, Johnson, and Earnhardt) so they will be going into the Chase with a 9 point advantage over the others.

The next three races will be Chicago, New Hampshire and Dover (yay!!).  The top 16 will have their total points added up after those three races and the bottom 4 will be eliminated, leaving 12 drivers in the Chase.  They are going to be racing for their lives in Dover and it is going to be crrraaaazzzy!!

The same thing will happen after the next three races, taking the field down to top 8, and again after the next three taking it down to the top 4 drivers.

Thennnnn, for the final race of the year at Homestead Miami, those final top 4 drivers will race for the 2014 Championship.  The one of those four who finishes first will win it all! So a flat tire, a blown engine, a bad restart and they are DONE! (All the drivers will be driving in these races; it's just these top guys who have a chance to win the championship.) 

Make sense?  I hope so!  You might want to mark your calendars now for these dates, because you aren't going anywhere ... except maybe to the track if you are lucky!!