Saturday, December 5, 2009

Rick's Thrill Ride!






















Each year on the day after Thanksgiving there's a phenomena called Black Friday - where everyday normal people turn into crazed shoppers. Guess what? It's happens at Lowes Motor Speedway too! NASCAR teams bring their merchandise to the race track for some end of the race year deals. To encourage buying, Lowes Motor Speedway offers shoppers a chance to drive your own vehicle around the racetrack for 3 laps when you spend at least $50. I knew Rick wouldn't pass it up - in fact LMS probably could have told him, he needed to spend 3x that and he would have jumped on it. Of course you need to sign a waiver and they gave you a set of rules - but it didn't take long to realize that rules were meant to be 'bent'. On paper you weren't supposed to go over 70mph. The official on pit row told us that we would be driving at least 90mph. In reality, 90mph was the speed going into the high banked turns. And it was over 100mph on the straight-aways. I was in the back seat screaming my head off, the dogs were shaking and Colson was laughing his head off in the front seat watching Rick live out a fantasy. I was happy for Rick. I'm sure he'll be back.

A Trip to be Thankful for!



The week of Thanksgiving, Rick and I took a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit our daughter, Katie, and her fiance, Colson. We drove the 15 hours over 2 days to get there. We've done this before and it is a beautiful drive through Kentucky and Tennessee, and of course North Carolina. There were several memorable moments during the trip so I'm going to post the events of the trip over a few days.


Today I'll start with going to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Katie wanted to take her dad there for his birthday, Nov. 24. If you check out the website http://www.nascarhall.com/ it looks really cool! Race cars, memorabilia, interactive features and there's a restaurant too. You can purchase your tickets online to save yourself from waiting in line. When you pull into the parking garage there's a sign for early bird parking - park before 9:00am for only $7. There's only one problem....this place doesn't open until May 2010. So I took a picture of Katie and Rick standing under the sign 'Opening May 2010'. Katie is giving the 'thumbs up'.

It was pretty funny if you were there. We were all so excited temporarily.