Off to the races....

So I attended my first ever NASCAR race this weekend – an event which doubled as the first time I’ve ever watched more than one lap of any auto race… ever.

My buddy Murph, an in-the-flesh NASCAR fan, had four tickets to the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, and he asked me and two other friends – Joe and Canavan – to go to the race with him.

I figured that I might as well see what this whole NASCAR thing was all about, so I happily accepted.

Not knowing exactly what to expect, but prepared for anything, I set out from my house at 7 a.m. Sunday morning wearing a tank-top and my Jim Beam Racing hat (a freebie with a bottle of Beam about a year ago that I was hoping would prevent me from standing out like a sore thumb as a non-racing fan who knows nothing about the sport). What follows is a running retro-diary of my day, the accuracy of which ranges from exact to very loose interpretation, with the variable being the number of beers consumed.

Due to the massive size of this diary, I'm going to post it in two parts over the next two days. So without further adu, here's Bill's NASCAR Diary, Part I:

7:20 AM:
The tank-top/Beam racing hat are already doing the trick. I just stopped to gas up and grab some ice for the coolers on the way to Murph’s house, and the woman behind the counter at Shell took one look at me and asked, “You headed up to the race today?”

Score 1 for Bill.

7:45 AM:
“They’re gonna love you!!”

That’s Murph’s reaction upon seeing my get-up as I arrive at his house.

Murph seems to be in good spirits and ready to roll; good sign for the start of the morning. Joe, on the other hand, looks like hell and just informed me that “(He) had a green butt purge,” this morning. Given that we have 90 beers in the trunk for just four people, I have a feeling that Joe’s green morning “butt purge” won’t be his last.

8:10 AM:
Canavan finally arrives at Murph’s house, bringing with him the “grill” that we’ll be using to tailgate all day. It’s not quite what was promised when he told us he had a grill – the “grill” part is there, but we weren’t expecting the added bonuses of rust and cobwebs on our burgers.

After some mild complaining about Canavan’s “grill”, we load up my ’98 Nissan Altima and head out – Loudon, here we come.

8:22 AM:
We spot our first fellow race fans of the day as we’re waiting to take a left in traffic. A huge pickup truck with a giant American flag hanging out the back window – viciously flapping over the truck bed – rolls by as Murph and Joe simultaneously say, “That guy’s definitely going to NASCAR.”

What have I gotten myself into?

9:07 AM:
We’re getting closer to Loudon, and the number of both teeth and minorities in the cars surrounding us is dwindling. Fast.

Murph announces that he’s getting “hot flashes” from the morning coffee, as Joe counters with, “Hot flashes, what about me, I had a green butt purge this morning.” I have a feeling we’ll be hearing about this non-stop throughout the day.

9:11 AM:
Canavan seriously contemplates getting out and walking next to the car (crawling along in race traffic at this point) to have a cigarette.

9:37 AM:
First beer of the morning is officially cracked.

After sitting in a little more race traffic, parking, and unloading the car, the boys are ready to rock. (I do feel it’s worth noting that the first person we see in the parking lot has cut-off sleeves and a two-foot long rat tail.)

Joe tunes in the local classic rock station on the radio and the first round of beers are down within five minutes.

Four down, 86 to go.

10:08 AM:
Joe announces that Murph is the “Pace Car” after Murph finishes beer number four while the rest of us are only about a quarter of the way through. When I finish mine and tell Joe to drink up and crack another, he cites the “green butt purge” for the 27th time this morning as the reason for his “slow” (3 and ½ beers in 31 minutes) start.

Murph tells Canavan to fire the up the “grill”. It’s time for some breakfast.

10:09 AM:
We realize we did not bring a spatula. Murph sends Joe on a mission to seek out good-hearted tailgaters who will let us borrow theirs. The mission is successful.

We’ve been talking to a few of the surrounding groups since getting here, and I have to admit that “the NASCAR lifestyle,” as Murph calls it, is pretty damn fun. Picture tailgating before a football game, except instead of being in a parking lot, you’re on grass. And there are way more people, and miraculously enough port-o-potties to accommodate the crowd. And there are fewer d-bags. The NASCAR fans might be a little (or a lot) rough around the edges, but you’d be hard pressed to find a friendlier bunch.

10:36 AM:
Breakfast is served!! Burgers and potato chips washed down with a healthy amount of Miller Lite.

The weather’s not bad and the rain seems to be holding off, we’re all having a good time and drinking at an incredible pace.

Canavan is talking sports with Brian, who is parked next to us with his dad. They drove up from Connecticut for the race; leaving their house at 5 AM. Brian explains that he didn’t get in from “partying bra” the night before “until like 3 AM”. Murph says he wishes Brian had stayed partying, though Brian grew on us later.

11:23 AM:
Since we got here this morning we’ve been having a running commentary on the type of female who attends NASCAR. Joe has an ingenious system for rating these women.

Instead of the traditional 1-10 rating system, Joe describes the quality of women at NASCAR by how many beers deep he would have to be before sleeping with them. In this system then, a 0 is the highest possible rating, while the ceiling for low ratings stretches to infinity.

Based on our observations, the average rating at this particular race is roughly 235, though that number is skewed by the several women who we rated as “infinities”.

I bring this up here because we have just handed out our second single-digit rating of the day. However, it has been called into question as we wonder whether rating someone an 8 while being nine beers deep actually means that person is a 17.

This is an important question, and it needs answering.

11:34 AM:
There is a large gap in the row of parked cars across from us because the friendly female parking attendant keeps waving cars past when they try to park there. Murph starts talking to her, and she explains that she’s waving these cars past because we’d have to get up and move for a second to allow them to back in, and she doesn’t want us to have to move.

This would not happen anywhere else on earth. And though we’re thankful for her thoughtfulness, we have a problem: we want people to drink with!

So, every time we see a car driving past full of passengers we deem to be “fun people”, we’re screaming at them to park there and trying to back them in without the parking attendant, who keeps coming up and waving them out, seeing.


12:00 PM:
Thirty-plus beers down and Murph announces that it’s time to make picks for the $20 pool. Each of us will pick three drivers, and whoever has the highest finisher will win. I can see right off that bat that this will be a problem for me.

Joe gets the first pick and takes Kyle Busch. I take Jimmie Johnson with pick #2, who I just found out was a NASCAR driver about an hour ago. After Canavan picks Tony Stewart I’m down to two more drivers that I know. Joe takes one of them (Jeff Gordon) and I take the remaining one (Dale Jr.) with my second pick and end up with some scrub for my final pick.

(More to come… check back for Part II of the diary, including the actual Race and “Joe’s big day out” tomorrow)