My photo blog of the Pepsi 500

Max and I started out driving to Fontana (fondly known as Fawntucky out here in So Cal) on Friday morning and arrived in time to take the hike to the tunnel turn and head down to pit row for Practice and get some shots of the boys. I won't post them ALL but we did get some good ones I thought....the story continues with the photos.

My boy here waiting his turn.

Yeah he was there too.

I really like this scheme on Tony's car.

Here's the eventual winner...wonder if he knows it already...hmmm.

This is why I don't have a picture of me as my avatar.

That was the fun times on Friday but then it came to Sunday and we rolled in about 2:00. We marched back down to pit row for some more fun and didn't have anything eventful happen which could be good or bad I guess depending on how you look at it.

This is as close as he got towards the front during the race so I had to enjoy this moment...do I look menacing? Another example of why I'm not my own avatar.

No...this is not Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus but I'll let you imagine that if you want to.

Mad Max signing the start/finish line. One of the two eventful things we saw happened right after this. Some fan (allegiance unknown) signed the side of the wall stating that he wanted to fornicate with Jeff Gordon (or I assume that was his wish) was seen by security and hauled away.

Here we are in our seats...not too bad.

Here's the lineup...once again Jeff started third and he didn't stay there long :(

I couldn't believe the best we could do was American Idol loser Bo Bice for the national anthem and then we had to endure Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag on stage as well. Some star power....wow :|

In the stands was the other interesting event. An already drunk Gordon fan..much to my dismay was amusing himself by pointing to every fan wearing a Tony Stewart "20" shirt and yelling "JOEY LOGANO...OMG IT'S JOEY LOGANO!". He found himself amusing. He then had his 3rd drink of the pre race dumped by a fan trying to get to his seat where he then berated the guy and finally got 20 bucks out so he could refill. I think an IV of straight alchohol would have been better for him.

The race itself seemed never in doubt (which accounts for a lot of the boring comments I've read) but the pack had a ton of passes and people moving around in different spots. Gordon usually moving backwards to my dismay, and his pit crew lost him spot after spot too. I've never heard Gordon use that much profanity on the radio but he did drop several "F" bombs during the race. My boy wasn't happy at all.

All in all though we had a great weekend and the weather never got over probably 85 degrees with a nice breeze. Much different than last summer's 116 degrees and February's rain all day race.

I hope you all enjoyed my second ever NASCAR race. I sure did and will be back out next year...hopefully to a second track if the wife will allow it!

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My first trip to a NASCAR race....

And it had to be Sunday's race at California Speedway!

Max and I rolled in about 8:30 and headed to the speed channel's set. We picked out a good spot to try and get some face time to the Rowdy.com sign and chilled out and met up with some other Rowdy people. We did a pretty good job of getting the sign on and decided that the sign needs some pole extenders!

After the Speed show we hit up some booths and I got some new #24 gear for myself and my two daughters. The two year old loved her pink #24 hat and knew it was for "boogity boogity" when I gave it to her. After that we stored the Rowdy sign in Max's truck and hoofed up and checked out our seats.

We were pretty happy with that so we rolled down to the pits and through the fence I got to see the #24 weighed and inspected but it wasn't THAT great of a view!

After that we rolled back to our seats to wait out the rainout and witnessed the emergency vehicle 200...or was it 400? They went around more than the drivers did I'm sure of that.

FINALLY we got to see the boys lined up and ready to go.

After what 21 laps I think RED FLAG and we got to see more of this:

Followed by this:

They got done again and we got to go for a bit so this was a great sight!

Then after 87 laps...RAIN. They stopped and lined up and put the covers on the cars and people were hitting the exits but as true hardcore fans that we were (both virgins to a NASCAR race), we stuck it out!

OK we stuck it out until 10:45 when we decided that we'd beat it. I was woken up at 5:30 the next morning by my wonderful wife saying that it wasn't run and it was rescheduled for 10:00 in the morning. I got showered up and dumped the kids off at the mother in law's house and headed back sans Max who had enough (especially since Jr. wiped about 21 laps in and that's his guy).

So I get there and it wasn't raining, it was cool but nice out and beautiful after about 10:30 with blue skies all over. My boy Gordon was fighting all day for the win but couldn't get past Edwards in his rocketship or his teammate Jimmy Johnson but I had a blast.

I'm sure the cow fields in Fontana smell particularly lovely today since the cow biscuits are drying out and giving off that wonderful odor!

Overall it was a good time but frustrating. The biggest bitches I had are that NASCAR made no announcements to the fans there updating anything and the place ran out of coffee cups, and most of the food joints closed down! yeesh!

Lubo

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