The passionate screams still ring in my ears, days after the Nascar qualifying round at Infinion Raceway in Sonoma. That was the assignment for the day, and while I'm not a Nascar fan, I'll take adventure in all its forms (AKA anything besides the day-to-day grind). Oh, and I brought the ol' Idol crew along for the ride.
Now I gotta say, Nascar is an intresting entity. It's a whole culture that seems to be built around commercialization and beer consumption. There's really no other sport like it... Rather than have one team or the other, there are dozens of competitors, many of which have hard core fans. It's like going to a football game and having fans cheer for different players exclusively. But, at the same time, they can all come together and get drunk under the same Nascar flag.
So we were down there for Friday's events, which were primarily the qualifying time trials. Again, I'm new to all this, but apparently that chooses who lines up where on Sunday's race. Makes sense, I suppose. Cars would one at a time run through the windy raceway, with their times being announced to the rowdy crowd. It was windy as all hell (I just realized that windy, as in curves, and windy, as in blowing air, are spelled the same, and create all kinds of confusion in this situation... thanks a lot, Webster's Dictionary), and I don't know if the wind affected the racers, but it certainly made it difficult to shoot from a distance... so I recruited some assistance from "Satellite Truck Operator" Don Peso-
For being out of the game for some time, he did some fine work. So for hours, one car at a time would run around the course shooting for the best time. We shot a whole heck of a lot of 'em, but since neither myself nor Peso knew the slightest detail about Nascar, we had no idea who any of these people were or what their times meant. As a result, we decided to take a break during the guy that ended up coming in first place, since our sports guy was off doing his radio show at the time. All I can tell you is that it wasn't Dale Jr. or Jeff Gordon, and if it isn't either of them, then it's all a mystery to me. And even if it was them, I couldn't tell you anything about it.We did happen to catch up with Gordon after his time trial. He declined an interview as he hurried the rout from the press room to his trailer, or whatever it is that he hides out in. He signed a few autographs without looking anyone in the eye, treating himself as if he was some sort of grand deity. Now I'm sure he had plenty on his mind, what with the time trials and all, but from the brief walk-by that I witnessed, I gotta say he seems like he's pretty full of himself. But, given the hundreds of campers surrounding the race course filled with yokels willing to die for the man, I suppose I can't blame him.
What, you're too important to sign a mustached beta tape? Well I didn't really want you to anyway, so there.After the trials, we shot a separate package on the hundreds of campers that come and stay the weekend in the surrounding lands. It's basically like a redneck version of Burning Man, where rows upon rows of campers line the area around the race track, flying proud American flags along with those of their favorite racer.
"We spend four days partying for a three hour race", one gentlemen said as he took a swig from a 24 ounce can of Hamm's. I'm no racing fan, but I gotta say that it'd probably be a lot of fun spending an evening huddled around a campfire with these drunkards. Some old dude with a Vietnam/Korea Veteran hat cooked us dinner as the reporter logged our tapes from a picnic table outside a camper, while screams of "Ricky Bobby" and "Shake and Bake" echoed in the evening sky.
Nascar, I can't say I understand you... but if you can get me off of VO/SOT patrol, then I welcome you to our area any time. Perhaps the next time around I'll be the one pounding a 40 of cheap beer and screaming "Juunniiooorrr!!!" at some jerk with a camera. Hey, everybody has a dream...
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