Some friends had some free tickets to Willowbank so I went to the drags. I don’t think I’ve been to a motorsports event for maybe a decade and a half. It sure bought back some old memories. I forgot how close these communities are… I had a boyfriend years ago who raced Modified Rods and then Sprintcars at Speedway so I spent a lot of time hanging out with ‘car people’. We went to Speedway events all over the eastern seaboard and raced ever other weekend pretty much. When we took holidays it was to go to th Gold Coast Indy, Bathurst or Eastern Creek. I even went to the Monaco Grand Prix when I was in Eurpoe in ’95 (now that was a buzz). Lots of time spent in the pits, helping out, driving everyone home in the middle of the night when the guys were all shattered after working on the cars all weekend.
The wifes, daughters and girlfriends of the drivers and their pit crews were generally known back then as Pit Lizzards and walking through the pits last night with the smell of methanol and the sound of idling engines all over the place took me right back to my Pit Lizzard days. I was expecting any minute for someone to hand me a helmet and tell me to put a dozen tear offs on it or throw me a scraper or ask me to run borrow something from someone…. 🙂
I was a bit ambivalent about going to the drags last night as I knew there would be crappy seats, and the weather threatened to be crap but it was actually a fun.night I love the roar of the top fuellers and the way the sound literally pounds your body – it’s really phenomenal and quite a shock for some people when it’s their first time seeing them. They had the Nitro Funny Cars runing last night and they really are something to see…. riduclous speeds.
I’d forgotten a lot of things about motor sports having not been to any events for such a long time… the scantily clad chicks promoting this motor oil or that tyre brand… the necessity for earplugs when they start sending anything bigger than Supersedans down the strip… the trashy dress code which consists mostly of race t-shirts with designs that look like biker tattoos… the morbid curiosity that brings the crowds to their feet at the first sign of a crash… the blowing your nose and wondering how much of that was airborn rubber particles or fuel and smoke you’ve inhaled (ewww)…. the greasy horrible food… and of course the internal drama of lights not working, line ups being botched etc.
And every pairing that were lined up on the strip… in my head I’d be thinking ‘Go Speed Racer Go!’… or worse a little ‘neeewwwwnnng’ sound going through my brain of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory giving everyone a clue about his Dopler Effect Halloween costume 🙂
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