|
Thursday, February 21, 2008 Racing and SpacingPosted by John Green at 12:13:53 AM
These are the annual voyages of the Green's (Wantlands) to Daytona. Our mission to enjoy great racing and to explore new vacation outings. To seek out new adventures and new ideas, to boldy go where our pocket book will take us.
These last two weeks have produced a mixture of racing and space.
We attended the following races - Bud Shootout, Volusia on Monday Night, the Duels, the truck race, the Nationwide race, and of course the 500. In between we visited the Kennedy Space Center on three different occasions (highly recommended), one to watch the Shuttle Atlantis land.
Let's start by saying this year was different, very different with the 50th running of the Great American Race. Great stories on the construction of the track. A real understanding that Bill France was nearly broke in building the track, he took his dream and made it a reality. We also learned the real reason for the tri-oval configuration. The track had to lie in the open area between the airport and the dog track that were already in place. A city councilman of Daytona Beach came up with the tri-oval idea.
50th Year logo items disappeared off shelves quickly, snapped up simply because of the logo. In fact K-Mart, Walmart, and Target that normally have items left over the day after the race and put these items on sale for 50% off sold everything. They had nothing left to have a 50% off sale. All the Daytona 500 programs were sold out before the race even started. Look on ebay if you want any of these items.
Scalpers were getting premium prices for tickets this year and some of those seats were not very good seats. There is a Kansas City expert on this very subject and no it is not us, we came with tickets. Call the radio show if you want to know the expert.
Volusia was a great place to visit and watch Late Models and Modifieds. Got the appetite ready for the local tracks to open and get our seasons started. I will say that we are blessed with some of the greatest racers in the Kansas City area. Watching those racers that came to Volusia to compete left me wondering how they would do competing with the Kansas City area drivers on a weekly basis.
Speaking of great racers, now there have been two drivers from the state of Kansas that have led laps at the Daytona 500. Clint Bowyer is on the verge of becoming a superstar in this sport! He is better with Mike Dillon as the spotter rather than Jimmy Kitchens yet Kitchens guided Todd Bodine home in the truck race. Besides the great run of getting the 07 to the front the other sign of a superstar is apparel sales. I will say there were numerous 07, Jack Daniel, Clint Bowyer shirts and hats. In fact the four people sitting to my left were from Great Bend Kansas and the eight people sitting in the row in front of us were from Kansas, one guess on who their favorite driver might be. Made for an exciting race until Montoya took out Clint. Made me wonder if some of this stuff would stop if NASCAR would send both cars to the rear during these kind of incidents?
Anyway the racing was great but not to leave out the drag racing group we visited the Don Garlits Museum in Ocala. In one word WOW! We even got to see Don Garlits! If you are ever down this way you have to drive over to Ocala and visit this great museum. It is a history of drag racing, a history of the automobile, and a history of America as seen through the automobile.
For example does anyone know how the description station wagon came to be? In the early days most vehicles were two seaters. The manufacturers started building four seat vehicles that would haul passengers from the Train depots to the hotels. Train depots became train stations and thus the term staion wagon. Learned this and much more at Garlits museum.
Speaking of America, it was great to revisit our space program. Some of us have had the pleasure to watch it grow. Some of us have lived in times where we had a favorite astronaut. We were witnesses to the challenge by President Kennedy to put a man on the moon. Now we are working on space station. Next our goal is the planet Mars. We will return to a more traditional space module for the next step. To see all we have conquered and yet realize how much more our children and grandchildren will experience in this new frontier is amazing.
It has been a great two weeks, hopefully we are bringing warmer weather home with us. This has been the best weather at Daytona since we have been coming to these races. Let spring begin so racing can start!
|
