May 16, 2009

Take me out to the......RACES!!!!

A few weeks ago, when we were planning our trip to Vegas, I overheard Brett talking to his Dad about going out to the races while we were here. I've always wanted to drive a race car at the track, but that's probably just because I like to drive really fast. I'd never watched the races, and honestly couldn't ever imagine that sitting there and watching the cars go round and round would be any kind of fun.

Well, I was very pleasantly surprised that I was wrong. The races were SO much fun!!! We were at the Bull Ring, which is the smaller track right next to the main speedway. There were all sorts of races. The ones that were what might be the most typical race cars, the modified ones (which included the awesome station wagon), the small mini ones, the Legends cars, and a few others.

Loralyn got to meet Pit Boss on the way in. At first she was a little scared of him, and hid behind Autumn's leg, but that didn't last long.


It gets a little loud out there, so Loralyn gets to don her earmuffs for the loud races.


As soon as the cars came onto the track, we would pick the car with our favorite number. My favs throughout the night were 007 (of course), 33 (for my girl, Emily), and 11 (duh!).


It was tough to keep an eye on all the cars at the same time. The main reasons that we were racing our heads back and forth was to see if anyone was trying to pass, or if there were any cars hitting each other. We would grab each other's arms and point..."Oooh, oooh, over there!!!". The picture on the right below is when the modified station wagon passed the lead car. He did it completely on the outside and was AWESOME. He was definitely a crowd favorite...everyone was cheering him on!!



There were a few crashes. Most of them were relatively minor, but there was one that got all of our hearts racing. This one car slid coming out of the corner, and ended up being perpendicular to the oncoming cars. There was nowhere for the other cars to go, and one of them ended up t-boning the one that was driving sideways. Another car crashed into them and immediately blew up in flames. I grabbed Autumn, Brett grabbed me, and we were all watching as the driver of the 3rd car frantically ejected himself from his car, and then rolled on the ground. It was absolute mayhem for about 45 seconds, and so scary. Thankfully everyone was OK, but ugh, the way that my gut felt upon that impact....well, I don't want to see that again.



I really had an absolutely fantastic time at the races....and hope that we get to go back again soon. I'm also not giving up my hope that I'll get to one day drive around one of those tracks at 3 digit speeds myself. :)

1 comment:

Emily S Crawford said...

33 smiles you just brought to my face :)

LOVE it!!! COME HOME ALREADY!!! Miss you!