Geoff's Big B-Day - Generator Village

Today's the day of Geoff's big birthday and we're camped in the Family Campground at Lowe's Motor Speedway. When we made the reservations, the campground was sponsered by and named after "Country Crock" but now the signs indicate that it's the "Klondike" Campground. Ah - the big business world of NASCAR.

As most of you know, Geoff is a huge NASCAR fan so this 2nd biggest race weekend of the year (2nd only to Daytona) is perfect timing for his birthday weekend. 10 years ago, for his 50th b-day, I gave him a NASCAR Driver experience right here at this same racetrack so he's driven it himself.

The weekend is chock full of races and race events. Last night, I joined Geoff for the timed qualifying. One car at a time doing one (with an optional 2nd) timed to determine which order they would start Sunday's race and also the slowest four cars/drivers wouldn't make the race. I liked the qualifying a lot - but even with ear plugs and sound deadening earmuffs, I could still hear the cars and (surprisingly) the announcer. I was surprised that many of the fans cheered for more than one driver and I didn't hear any boo (as they sometimes do) for the driver I kind of root for, Jeff Gordon. Also, I learned from the announcer that the new rookie Home Depot driver, Joey Lagano, is from CONNECTICUT!!

Tonight Geoff went to the dirt track racing, tomorrow night is the 300 mile 2nd tier (Nationwide Cup) NASCAR race and Sunday night is the main Sprint Cup event - the Coca-Cola 600. I'm not going to any of those races - too scary because of the likelihood of accidents and too noisey for me. However, today, Geoff and I took a bus tour to two of the NASCAR shops/museums/stores. Each of those facilities housed four Sprint Cup Drivers - including Jeff Gordon at the Hendrick's shop.

Now for the bad news - we are totally sardined into this campground which is adjacent to the track. And everybody is running generators - and the ones that are stand-alone generators (like those folks use when their power goes out) are NOISY. And the RV that just pulled next to us, put their generator right under our window. The good news is that all the generators need to be turned off between midnight and 7am. The trick is to time sleeping for exactly those hours. The generators are definitely a downside of this experience. This afternoon, Geoff took a snooze in our outdoor recliner with the hearing protection on.

Be sure to use the link to Geoff's photos on the left.