BEST COOKER

[4:55pm]

2008 - Day 5

My father is officially a little insane.

Today we got up in the wee small hours of the morning (actually around 8), ate a wonderful breakfast of Honey Baked ham and a Bagle and then headed out the door towards Lowes Moter Speedway.

I slept most of the way, even though the Land Cruiser is one of the most uncomfortable cars that I've slept in. Except for the front seat of course but I was kicked out of that as soon as we started the trip. But I managed as best as I could to stay comfortable and we arrived at the race track about an hour later.

My Dad was going to partisipate in the Jeff Gordon Racing School where he would get to drive a NASCAR stock car. When we got there we found out that inside the track it was something like a wind tunnel, the wind was blowing 5-10 mph consistantly and it was absolutly freezing. Dad was really lucky though, as soon as he got there they gave him a jumpsuit that kept him really warm, the common folk though were stuck cowering in any protection from the wind that we could find.

Anyway, They loaded my dad and a the 26 others into 4 white vans and took them away to some teaching center on the far side of the track while we, meaning my sister, my mother and I, walked back to the car and had sandwitches, waiting for them to get back. It took about 20 minutes but finally they unloaded off of the buses, and got into line to drive the 4 cars that were lined up on pit road.

While the adults were driving though, they were taking others who just wanted to ride along with a professional driver in the Number 8 Dale Earnheart Jr. Car. That guy really knew what he was doing and quickly got up to speeds of over 180 miles an hour, About 40 miles an hour faster than those that drove themseleves.

It took about an hour for my dad's name to be called to drive, which for me didn't seem long at all because I was trying to fine tune the exposure for the pictures that I was planning on taking, but for others like my sister it was torture because she was cold, bored and dare I say it, incredibly whiney. He put on the neck brace and helmet, climbed slowly into the car, got strapped in and folowing the pace car, gunned the engine and was off.

His first two laps were just practice to try and get the hang of the car but after that they really started moving, on his first 8 laps his top speed was 141.6mph. After that he came into the pits, got a little bit of instruction from one of the pros and headed out for another 9 laps. He really started to get the hang of it all on this series of laps and reached a top speed of almost 150 miles an hour.

After that he was done. He pulled himself out of the car, took off the jumpsuit, got his pictures and threw himself into the car. He had fun though.

Whats really cool though is that he started talking about when I'm 18, we'd go out to Las Vegas and do the Mario Andretti Racing school where you actually get to drive an Indy Car.
That I think, would be incredibly cool, although before I go I would have to learn how to drive stick. I don't suppose it would be that hard though.

Anyway, after that we started home, hearing dad talk about it for the entire trip, then we got back to the Bartels, where he had to repeat everything that he'd told us. That took the better part of 3 hours. But then we went down to the bar, watched football and waited for some of Linda's famous ribs.

And I'll have to admit that they really were some of the best ribs I'd ever had. They pretty much fell right off of the bone. But that may have had something to do with the fact that she's had them in the slow cooker for something like 6 hours.

We ate dinner and watched football, talked some more and then after realizing that it was after 12, we all went to bed.

Once Upstairs I talked to Noah a bit on AIM, Did my best to work out which picture I wanted to be my picture of the day, which took a while because none of them were very good. Now I'm writing this and I'm going to go to bed soon. I've gotta get up really early tomorrow.

A closeup of a building in Kuwait City. Thought the cladding between the windows gave an organic "rib cage" look to an otherwise sterile structure

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