Days of Thunder

We came to life the next morning with blazing hangovers! We couldn’t care less - it was RACE DAY! NASCAR!!! We strapped into Spot and gunned towards the Texas Motor Speedway. Once we'd penetrated the tailbacks around the stadium we set about some quick reconnaissance to find the best camping spot, looking to avoid the steep $75 charge. At the entrance to one of the huge camp sites, we got chatting to a toothless Southerner named Kenny who was guarding his vast RV kingdom against people seeking out an unofficial camping patch. Appreciating the fact that we had travelled quite some distance to come and experience American culture in its purest form, or maybe eyeing two naive young victims, he gave us an 80% discount on our parking space and sent us off towards the stadium, beers in hand!

After absorbing the pre race-culture for an hour or two, which equated to staring at extremely colourful, overpriced merchandise we headed back to a restless Spot. He was psyched to hit the racetrack and break all the track records. We let him down lightly, explaining that although we loved him dearly, and personally thought he was great, his performance left quite a lot to be desired. He sulked while we took a quick nap, trying to remedy our hangovers before what was sure to be a loud and intense night of racing.

Within minutes of drifting off, we were woken by Spot throwing a tantrum. He was in a heated debate with something or someone just outside. We slid open the door, and we could see what was happening. Herbie, the squeaky little VW beetle made infamous by his extensive film career had parked up next to us. Him and his film crew had arrived to make the next instalment in the franchise: “Herbie goes to Texas to race in the NASCAR 500 Sprint cup and win” (working title)

In the old films, Herbie always struck us as a charming friendly little car, albeit a little camp. Seeing him on the set without the cameras rolling though, we could see he was a nasty little shit. Spot informed us that Herbie had come across and started mocking his paint job and “stupid little wheels”. His film crew had also been making derogatory comments about the Traverses film we released when we left NY. This was not on.

We relocated across the field, and kept our distance from the venom spewing out of the little German sod. Imagine our surprise to get out and find ourselves parked next to ‘Kitt’ from the classic TV series: Knightrider. Kitt was Spot’s biggest idle! Spot squealed with enthusiasm, and unleashed all the questions he could think of about Kitt’s experiences on the set of the 80’s show. No one understood because Spot can’t actually speak. Kitt kindly indulged Spots’ pure enthusiasm for a few minutes, until David Hasselhoff returned from the hot dog stand, hopped in the drivers seat and sped off.

With race time approaching we headed over to the enormous stadium. Our seats were track-side, 2 rows in and directly opposite the pit lane exit! After some all-American military parades in honour of veteran's day, there was a prayer session followed by the National Anthem climaxing with a brilliantly timed B-52 fly-over. These Yanks certainly know how to put on a show.

Then, the words we had been waiting for! "Gentlemen Start Your Engines"! (They actually say that!) As the cars set off on their practice lap, we scoffed at how much we had overestimated the noise we were expecting to hear. As the cars hit lap 2 however, our world was turned upside down. As the 40 cars hit the line on the rolling start, they open up their engines and blazed towards us at full speed. The noise and vibrations were terrifying.

"We're going to die" was our genuine first thought.

Our breath was taken away as the cars screamed past, followed shortly by a shock-wave of wind that sent empty beer cans rolling down the bench and fragments of scorched rubber floating down around us. Emotionally drained and frightened, we were wondering how we were going to survive another 334 laps of this, when the leaders suddenly emerged from the far curve and came at us again.

The shrill buzz of the cars zipping past had us cupping our ears with our hands every 30 seconds to save ourselves from hearing damage. We resigned ourselves to inevitable death caused by some catastrophic car crash happening right in front of us and waited for the worst to happen. After a few laps however, everybody seemed to have survived and we started getting into it. Afternoon turned to evening, our pile of empty cans steadily grew, and some cars occasionally overtook some other cars.

As the 335th lap came to an end under the floodlights, everyone went wild, sending a cloud of cowboy hats into the air in celebration - someone had won. We staggered back to Spot shouting in each other's ears about how amazing the race was. With no signs of the wild campsite parties we were expecting (despite being parked next to a bus with a pole dancing area in it!) we cut our losses, climbed into Spot made a sandwich and crashed out. It had been an exhausting day.

a sandwich