While performing this solid impression of a sloth I ate an entire Little Caesar's pizza along with an entire bag of crazy bread; this combination has to rank somewhere between bacon grease and uranium as far as health foods go.
I was also on my phone the entire time, tweeting away as is the custom of most writers, journalists, experts, and wannabe's—I'll let you decide which category I'm in—during live events.
Still, despite the amount of time I spent typing my thoughts 140 characters at a time, I managed to miss a call; how it slipped past me flabbergastsing to say the least.
It was a local number that I don't have saved in my phone, so it could have been anyone from a professor telling me how gifted I am to some beautiful lady of the plains professing her undying love for me to my landlady telling me to get the hell out of here (the last one is obviously the most likely). It could have been a once in a lifetime opportunity or something ridiculously important.
And I missed it. While ruining my body. While committing the ultimate modern-day sin of not tearing myself away from my phone for two seconds.
I'm sorry I'm not sorry.
Imagine where your so-called "happy place" is. It could be in a stadium watching a season opening kickoff or first pitch; it could be in the middle of a shallow river with a fishing rod in hand; maybe it's at a dancehall and there's an open seat at the bar; it might simply be on a couch with you buddies and an Xbox.
Silly as it might sound to feel this passionate and (faux) poetic about watching cars drive in circles, that's mine.
For me, there is nothing cooler than watching a pack of cars scream by at over 190 miles per hour. The drivers become one with these machines in order to analyze every measurable aspect of the cars performance. They then relay that information to their crew chiefs who have the job using driver feedback to essentially read the car's mind to determine what will make it faster. Then it's up to a pit crew to apply the crew chief's adjustments, acting as the most well-oiled machine of well-oiled machines and doing in 15 seconds what I can't do in 30 minutes.
Motorsport gets me fired up, and Thursday was the first opportunity to watch meaningful racing of the year.
And I wasn't going to miss it.
Annually held on the Thursday night before the Daytona 500—the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' first points race and the official kick-off to the season—are a pair of 60 lap dashes called the Budweiser Duels. The finishing order of these events, each containing half of the cars attempting to make the 500, are used to set the field for Sunday's race. Basically, the first race determines the inside of each row on the starting grid while the second race determines the outside.
While these races don't usually affect the bigger names in the sport, this night is always a fun, albeit intense showcase of some of the lower budget teams as they fight and claw their way into the biggest stock car race of the year.
It's a night where you get to watch guys like David Ragan, a guy who floundered at Roush Fenway Racing and has since moved to little Front Row Motorsports and become something of a plate-racing savant, wreck early in his race only to have his team repair his car enough that he could finish 14th, securing his spot in the Great American Race.
It's a night to watch guys like Casey Mears blow an engine early in the first race and then follow along as he and his team crunch numbers and wait out the remainder of the evening with the slightest of hope that they still might get to race on Sunday; they will, from 42nd position.
That's not to say big names are irrelevant. In the first Duel, Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. put on a drafting clinic during their turns at the front of the pack; Earnhardt, who started the event last, won the race. His Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jimmie Johnson, did the same thing during the second Duel, leading 40 of the 64 laps run.
Of course, the story of the evening was the roller coaster night of Danica Patrick. After being spun out by Denny Hamlin in Wednesday's practice session, she was forced to a backup car tonight. Still, she managed to run in or around the top 10 for most of the night; that is, until she was spun out in the closing laps by, you guessed it, Hamlin.
Despite receiving a decent amount of damage in the incident and restarting 18th with only two laps to work with she was, with a push from teammate Kurt Busch, able to surge ahead to a 10th place finish. Afterwards, Patrick and Hamlin had an argument that, while not exactly the Cale Yarborough/Donnie Allison fight of 1979, was pretty entertaining to watch and listen to.
And with that last little bit of vocal fireworks, the night was over. After three hours of watching cars going in circles and living as slovenly and detached from the humanity as possible, another number gets exed off the calendar.
But it never felt like a waste. We all have to take time to enjoy the things we love, regardless of how mundane they may be, even if they cause you to tune out the world for an hour or two.
There are things in all of our lives that make us (sometimes irrationally) happy. One of mine is racing.
And it's back.
No comments:
Post a Comment