Planes, Lennys and Automobiles (Part 1) - TKP

Most of you know that for the last 10 days Lenny (aka my brother Kurt) and I have been on an adventure.... we flew to Charlotte, North Carolina, rented a car, drove more than 700 miles all over the Charlotte area in basically 4 days, looked at and toured more than twenty-five race shops, took in a "World of Outlaws" Sprint car race with 14 000 people at the dirt track in Charlotte, watched NASCAR Nextel Cup practice and qualifying, went to the Busch series race, walked through miles and miles of vendors trailers and tents that sold anything and everything NASCAR, took in the longest night of racing on the NASCAR schedule - the "Coca-Cola 600" with 160 000 of our closest friends (though the 5 1/2 hour race seemed to be over in 10 minutes), and just generally had a great time. (How do you like that for an opening sentence?) :)

I have lots of stories to tell like how we spent most of our first full day lost because we were trying to navigate an area that has several million people using a map that had literally 5 roads marked on it (Lenny refused to spend the $7 to buy a map the night before - so after a day of looking for race shops and being lost - he relented and we bought a map!) :)

Or about how we could not understand 93% of the people 97% of the time (it was fun imitating their accent - for example - did you know that "Charlotte" is pronounced "SHA-lat" - well now you do!) The best was when we went to a sub place where the owner was an East Indian man - he spoke fairly good English but with an accent of course - it was entertaining to watch the "Good old Boy" in front of us trying to communicate with him - they were both speaking English but nothing was going through! :) (Interestingly enough, within 3.76 seconds of me saying "hi" to the lady next to me at the Busch race on Saturday, she asked "Where y'all from anyhow?" - so maybe they weren't the only ones with accents!)

Or how about Tony Stewart was "the show" for the whole race - even if he did not win (more on that another day)

Or just about how much fun I had with Lenny! It was great! I really enjoyed hanging out with my brother - doing something fun and memorable together. We laughed lots - talked lots - took tons of pictures and have tons of memories. So over the next few days, I will share some of them with you.

But for now - below are some pictures - mostly from the first day we were at the track (Thursday). In order they are: The front straightaway at Lowes Motor Speedway, Cup cars lined up to go out on the track for practice, Jeff Gordon's #24 Dupont Chevy and (of course) Tony Stewart's #20 Home Depot Chevy.

Below that is a short video I took just to give you an idea of the speed that these cars are traveling. This is taken from up by the catch fence as the cars go into corner 1. They are slowing down and some have turned off their engines because it was a practice session (When they were going flat out, they would hit close to 200 mph where I was standing - they averaged 185 or so around the entire track - the ones with their engines off they are coasting by at approx. 170 mph). Notice how quickly they go by.

The word that kept coming to mind as I first watched these cars was "violent" - they are so loud that you had to plug your ears when you were down at the catch fence - they rumble your chest - they look as though they have no hope of turning and are going to go right into the end wall - they are big, scary, loud - and more fun than I have had in a long time! :) So - over the next few days I will try to give you a taste of that.

One last thing - I have to say "thanks" to Sara and Tracy who not only let us go on this trip, but encouraged it all the way (I think that they have big insurance policies on us that they were hoping to cash in!) Not many wives would let their husbands - especially a couple of boneheads that have the track record of doing stupid things together that Lenny and I have - go off and have fun while they held down the fort - but ours did. They are why going was fun - but coming home was better!

Enjoy! :)