Part 2: World of Outlaws @ Eldora Speedway, Friday

This is Part 2 of 4.  Part 1 was posted last week, part 3 and 4 will follow.

Late afternoon on Thursday, my parents headed for Eldora Speedway, which is near New Weston, Ohio for a race on Friday night. 

At about 10 pm on Thursday night, my friend Dano and I got on the road, headed for the same destination.

Around noon on Friday, Wags and Pipes left UIUC, for the same destination.

This is not a math story problem, Mare.  I'm just trying to illustrate that we're not very efficient people.

Dano and I only went as far as Indianapolis, where we stayed with my dear friend Mindy and spent a long lazy morning catching up and trying to drag ourselves back on the road.  Wags and Pipes met Mindy, Dano and me at IHOP for lunch on their way through, and while it would have been logical to convoy from there, we didn't.  Wags loves his time trials and hot laps and Dano does not, so we weren't as hellaciously inspired to race up the road as my dear Wags and thus we hung around for an extra cup of coffee and took a few extra minutes to appreciate the several dozen Tom Raper RV billboards along I70.

Dano and I walked into the track right after qualifying, perfect timing.  We found Mom, Dad, Wags and Pipes in the top row of turn 1.  This was a rookie trip to Eldora for both Dano and Pipes. 

I wanted a picture of everyone pre-race, but Wags was missing during photo time.  He had to run back to the bus to make a turkey sandwich.  For those of you who know Wags personally, you know how important the turkey sandwich is to him.  So, you only get 5/6ths of us.

A beautiful group, no?

Right after I snapped these pictures, the first World of Outlaws heat race rolled out, took the green flag, and Dano's tongue flopped out of his mouth in the most wide-eyed, childlike expression of pure joy I've ever seen.  This is why I like taking people to Eldora.  If Eldora can elicit that kind of reaction from a sprint car driver, just imagine what it's like when somebody new gets introduced to sprint cars here.  This place is MAGIC, people.  It makes grown men giggle.  I'd prove it with a video, but the sound of all of those 410 engines drowns out the girly audio anyway.

After the heat races were over, the rain started with a slow drizzle that was somewhat expected.  It was a very typical rain delay for us:  the trucks were out on the track, Mom was telling stories from her youth that I didn't want to hear, Wags was singing the Rolling Stones song "Miss You" complete with dancing to entertain us, Pipes was keeping us well-stocked on the beer, and I was freaking out at the seventeen different people who tried to put the hood up on my jacket for me.  Don't touch my headgear, people.  Our conversations ranged from whether or not time slows down at high rates of speed, whether I was allowed to hit a certain person who said the phrase "It's Americana, baby" fourteen times every hour for the entire trip, and whether or not Pipes' little sister should come out of hiding and say hello if she's reading, because I totally love her too. 

For an hour or so, it seemed like they would get the track back and racing would continue, but just after the dash cars lined up in the staging area, the skies opened up with a deluge that prompted immediate cancelation. 

I'd like to repeat again, for anyone just skimming, that Wags does a really fierce a capella "Miss You" routine.  He's available for your next event.

The rainout was very sad for me (and for those of you who read Part 1 of this adventure and were looking forward to More Wags Stories) because Wags was unable to stay until Saturday's race due to a Snowsera commitment.  He and Pipes made the drive, watched the rain, and went home early Saturday morning.  While I always appreciate the time with them, I felt totally robbed that we didn't get to see a full race together.

Next on the Eldora Experience Agenda was standing on dry land in the main grandstands, watching the sprint car haulers attempting to exit the pits.  This is the gate through which the giant semi trucks must leave, getting a running start at a very high rate of speed to make the incline, in the rain and mud:

It may not look that treacherous in a photo.  It is.  It has consumed many very expensive trucks and trailers over the years.  But don't get me wrong, we don't watch because we're hoping to see carnage - we watch because it's ridiculously impressive.  The crowd roars with applause and cheers as each rig clears the crest of the backstretch banking.  When we don't get sprint car racing, we watch the uphill high speed semi mud drags.  It's Eldora, baby.

The night only got more messy from there.  My parents, Wags, and Pipes set out for the motorhome, giving us directions to where they were parked.  Dano and I went to the main parking lot to pick up his car, where he'd lovingly parked it on a safe bed of compacted gravel, lest it end up someplace mushy when the rains came.  He drove around to the other side of the track, where we had a bit of confusion about the directions to the bus.  After turning the wrong direction down the correct aisle, I think my famous last words were "You aren't going to get us stuck out here, are you?"

And that's how I found out what a BMW M5 looks like when sunk in the Eldora mud.

More concerned about the walk to the bus in the rain and the slop than getting good photos of the event, I rolled up my pants legs, finally put up my stupid hood, and we slogged a few "blocks" until we found the motorhome, where I dried off and drank beer while the boys went off in search of a tow truck that was free to pull the car out.  Once out, the car went all the way to Greenville in the rain, dropping mud clods the entire way, so my pictures from the hotel parking lot the next morning are not nearly representative of the true condition on Friday night.  But they're still fun.

Yes, that upper right photo is a dandelion sticking out of the trunk. 

Dano handled it really well.  Which is good.  Because I was having a really hard time not laughing while the tires were spinning.

On the next episode of Jane Travels, I will be sharing the story of discovering a ghost track, a place I thought was just an urban legend from childhood, a really great night of racing at Eldora Speedway, a wild tale about a beaver, and an unplanned stop at the mother church, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It's Americana, baby.