Nascar Experience

Tilt your head to get the full effect of this picture, Joni's face says it all as she is dressed up in two sweatshirts, a blanket and a pair of oversized gloves while trying to eat kettle corn. She was wearing sandals and ended up putting the gloves on her feet.

Last week my boss gave me two tickets to the O'reilly 300 (nascar race), I probably never would have purchased tickets but I always wanted to experience nascar, since we are in Texas I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get the "real deal". The stadium is ENORMOUS, holding a little over 200,000 people, about the size of 2 nfl football games and three nba basketball games together. As you can imagine parking was rediculous, I laughed because after the first mile that we were walking towards the stadium, there was a porta potty station for people to rest and go to the bathroom. You wouldn't believe the number of motor homes, barbeques, flags, colors, and beer there was as we walked in. The weather had been nice until the night before when we experienced some of the craziest rain and hail I have ever seen, along with tornado warnings and strong winds. It made for some freakishly cold weather at the race that we were not prepared for. The experience itself was very cool, but I would probably not do it again. Walking towards the stadium the cars sounded like a mixture of angry bees and jet fighters. Once inside the stadium, there was a constant drone noise with the occasional "zuff, zuff zuff" of cars passing by and the whole place seemed to shake continuously. We did bring ear plugs which helped a lot, but not as much as we would have hoped. The true Nascar fan has a headset with a microphone, and an extension cord hooked up to both of his buddies next to him so they could talk, forming a chain of headsets and people connected at the head. Good idea, seeing as how I had to jam my nose into Joni's head and scream in her ear to have a conversation, but they looked funnier than we did. As far as the race goes it was very hard to follow. On tv the camera follows the leader, but in the stadium cars are constantly going by and you only have about 2 seconds to recognize the numbers on the cars before they pass at 170 mph. The people weren't as crazy as I thought they would be, could have been the weather, or just that the cars passing along with all of the noise puts everyone in a trance like state of mind. In the end we can say we have been to a Nascar race. Since I got my new driver's license this week too, I guess you could say I am officially a Texan.

Joni is currently looking for a job. There are a lot of openings around the College Station area but none in College Station so far. For now we will just be happy that she can find one close enough to not have to commute an hour each way every day. We might not even be able to live in College Station but we'll see how that goes. She had an interview that went really well in Humble (just north of Houston) this week, but that is still pretty far away. There are a lot of cool little towns in between Houston and College Station that we may end up living in if that is the case. We'll let you know where we end up going, we are a little bit nervous but confident that Joni's internship will land her a good job. The interview in Humble was wierd because the guy told her about the hospital, and then acted as if he was done and Joni said, "Is there anything you would like to know about me?" and he responded, "sure, but I know you are experienced because you are a Baylor intern." I guess a good name goes a long ways here. Cut the small talk, let's get to the nitty gritty.