I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that rain is causing weekend plan problems right now.  It is after all April.  Rain just seems to be throwing kinks in the weekend plans constantly right now.  Yesterday was supposed to start with the Race for the Cure and then heading up to Missouri to Lindsey & Grayson’s to help with their flower beds.  Instead, we had pouring rain that lasted off and on all day.  We did end up going up to MO for supper so the day wasn’t a total loss but it is still disappointing, nonetheless.

Last weekend, the NASCAR Sprint Cup series was at Texas Motor Speedway.  The forecast was showing a small chance of rain all weekend.  Our hope was that 30-40% wasn’t going to hurt the race on Sunday.

We went down to DFW on Friday.  We stay in Frisco right next to IKEA and Dr Pepper Ballpark, which is home of the double-A Texas Rangers team the Frisco RoughRiders.  Our hotel room had a great view down into the ballpark.  It’s too bad they aren’t ever at home the weekend of the NASCAR race.

We spent Friday evening at my uncle’s house in Dallas.  It was a great visit with him & Rod and a great home cooked meal!  I took tons of pictures of their flowers & plants while I was there (of course).

On Saturday, we got up early and went to the Dallas Farmers Market.  We left there with several fresh vegetables & some berries.  We also left seeing all of the great flowers blooming and wishing we could go home and plant them all in our yards.  Saturday night, our group of 13 met at Babe’s Chicken House in Frisco for dinner.  For those unfamiliar with Babe’s, it is a restaurant where you pick your meat you want to eat (fried chicken, chicken strips, pot roast, chicken fried steak, etc) and then all of the vegetables are served family style.  (NWA Peeps:  Think Monte Ne Inn here in Rogers, except there are other meats to choose from besides fried chicken.)  This is our second year in a row to eat there.  It’s very good!

Sunday was race day (or at least it was supposed to be).  That 30-40% chance was pretty well 100% at the track.  We headed out there hoping the rain would stop and the track would get dry.  No such luck.  The race was postponed til Monday.  (Shelby, Mom, & I headed on home Monday so Shelby & I didn’t get to see the race.)

While we were at the track on Sunday, NASCAR 4-time champion Jimmie Johnson held a Q&A session at the Chevrolet stage.  The major topic of the questions was that he & his wife Chandra are expecting a baby girl in July.  His words…”I hope she comes during the off-weekend in mid-July.”

Jeff Gordon won on Sunday, April 5, 2009 not only for the first time at Texas Motor Speedway but also for the first time since October 2007 (47 races ago, if you are keeping count).

This was the first race I attended with my new camera.  I wasn’t really sure how it was going to work given the high speeds.  (I was spoiled to the sport/action setting on my old camera.)  I think my pictures turned out ok for my first try.  Here are some my favorites (picture-wise and subject-wise).

I probably say this after every race when I share pictures but I love seeing the crew members lined up on pit road during the invocation and the national anthem.

Dale Earnhardt Jr started 20th and finished 20th in the race after having a little connection with the wall.

Jimmie Johnson started 9th and finished 2nd.  Jimmie & Jeff battling for the win made the last few laps pretty interesting.  Given the wind at the track on raceday, I’m surprised the drivers could keep their hats on riding around the track.  Jimmie’s trying a different technique by wearing his backwards.

We’ve been lucky to have a direct view down pit road and of the exit of pit road when we go to TMS.  From this view, pit stops sometime look like mass chaos with cars and crew members everywhere.

This is Max Papis.  I love this photo.  He’s so enthusiastic.

Boogity! Boogity! Boogity! Let’s Go Racin’, Boys! When I’m seeing a race in person or even later in the season when DW isn’t an announcer, I so want someone to yell this.

You can see all of the pictures I took at the race by visiting my Flickr photo album.

I’m heading to a birthday party for a good friend this afternoon who turned 30 on Friday.  Happy Birthday, Megan!

For Christmas, I signed Shelby up to take a sewing class.  Because I haven’t sewn since junior high, I decided to sign up & go too.  Our first class was supposed to be last Thursday but snow put a wrinkle in those plans.  The class should start this Thursday and then be every Thursday evening for the next 6 weeks.  I’m pretty excited about it.  I’m not sure that I’m interested in learning how to sew clothing.  I’d love to know how to make curtains and quilts, though.

Next weekend, I’m heading to Tulsa for a little girls’ weekend.  My sister Lindsey, Hayley, Kelly, & I are heading to Tulsa to see Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, & Darius Rucker in concert.  I’ve seen Dierks twice before but have the opinion that one can never see Dierks too much.    I haven’t ever seen Brad or Darius and am really excited about both of them.  Although, I do need to listen to Darius’ country CD a few times this week because I’m afraid he won’t really be playing anything Hootie.  (Although, he might surprise me.)

Kelly & I are thinking of taking a road trip somewhere south in late February (assuming the weather cooperates with us).  Right now, we’re actually considering heading down to San Antonio for a few days.  We’re still in the early stages of figuring out where and when but it has me excited nonetheless.

April will find me in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, specifically Texas Motor Speedway, for NASCAR.  We’ll be taking our annual trip to the Sprint Cup series race on April 5th.  After the trip to TMS Penni & I had in November, it definitely won’t be as interesting.  I keep telling Shelby that I’m counting down to her 18th birthday when she will be old enough for pit passes.  I will get to see Brad Keselowski in the Cup race, though, which I’m excited about.

As of right now, I’m heading to Charlotte, NC for the Coca-Cola 600 in late May.  I don’t have plane tickets or race tickets but I’m pretty sure everything is headed in this direction.  Penni loves going to this race, and I decided this would be a good non-Texas NASCAR race to attend in 2009.  It looks like we are going to have several friends attending with us so that will be cool.  If anyone else wants to go, let us know.  The more, the merrier!  It’ll be cool to meet some new people and enjoy a lot of NASCAR at the same time.

Michigan International Speedway is location in Brooklyn, Michigan.  It seemed quite literally in the middle of nowhere.  There was a town closeby and the track had neighbors but nothing major and there was not really a major highway going in and out of the track.  (Oh yeah…Speaking of the road…A lot of people complain about traffic in & out of Texas Motor Speedway being some of the worst.  We don’t ever have problems at TMS.  MIS was much, much worse.)  Because the track is so close to Canada, there are a lot of Canadian NASCAR fans that come down for the race.  The track flies, not only an American flag, but also a Canadian flag.  Plus, we listened to both the Canadian and United States national anthems.

As I mentioned in my last post, we had weekend pit passes.  These allowed us to be on pit road during qualifying & practice plus there was also an area back behind pit road that drivers passes by when going to & from the garage and their motorcoaches.  Here is a shot from pit road during the Nationwide series qualifying on Saturday.  The 2nd photo is of Regan Smith signing autographs along the fence of fans behind pit road.

Speaking of the fence of fans…Some drivers stop along the fence and are nice enough to sign some autographs.  I got 5 autographs on Friday standing there.  I got the following autographs on Friday.

• Michael McDowell, Driver, Michael Waltrip Racing #00
• Sam Hornish Jr, Driver, Penske Racing #77
• AJ Allmendinger, Driver, Red Bull Racing #84
• Regan Smith, Driver, Dale Earnhardt Inc #01
• Mike Helton, President, NASCAR
• Jeff Hammond, Former Crew Chief & Current Co-Host of NASCAR Trackside

Another advantage of our pit pass was that we were able to be on pit road before the Sprint Cup race on Sunday.  We got to get on the track at the start/finish line.  We were also able to walk along pit road and see the pit boxes & signs for each Sprint Cup team.  Here are shots of Dale Earnhardt Jr’s pit box and pit sign.

On Saturday during Nationwide qualifying, I stood at the front of the line of cars with the JR Motorsports #88 Navy Chevy until it went out for its qualifying laps.  David Stremme (driver of the Rusty Wallace Inc #64 Dodge) decided to take a closer look at the Navy car while waiting his turn to qualify.  I’m almost surprised he didn’t hop in the car.  Maybe that would have made him too obvious, though.

There were a couple Nationwide series cars with paint schemes that I thought might interest a couple of my readers.  Tony Stewart was the driver in Michigan of the Joe Gibbs Racing #20 Old Spice Toyota, and Jason Leffler drove the Braun Racing #38 Great Clips Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Toyota.

I took this photo during the national anthem prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup 3M Performance 400.  I’ve always thought it was cool how the drivers, crews, and officials line up on pit road.

We sat across from the JR Motorsports #5 pit during the Nationwide series race.  Rick Hendrick (owner, Hendrick Motorsports) sat up there during the entire race.  Landon Cassill was also up there.  I think he was working for the team in some capacity.  Here is sequence of photos I took during the team’s first pit stop.  (Mark Martin was driving this car in Michigan.)

Carl Edwards won both of the races in Michigan.  His tradition, after winning a race, is to do a backflip off of the car.  Here are the two shots I got of him doing so.

There were no NASCAR races in the Charlotte area the week we were there.  That didn’t stop us from stopping by Lowe’s Motor Speedway.  They offer tours of the speedway several times a day/week.  The tour includes a drive around the track itself (in a 15 passenger van, not a race car).  It was neat to drive around the infield, see the garages (where they had Legends cars parked at that time), and (as the photo above shows) stop by Victory Lane for some photo ops.  Lindsey & Shelby have both been to Texas Motor Speedway with me to races but Mom has only seen TMS from the interstate as we driving through Fort Worth.  Getting to the see a track up close & personal for the first time, I think she was pretty impressed.  (Unfortunately, I don’t think that will convince her to go to a race with me though.  Haha!)

An interesting fact we learned while at LMS…The racing scenes in Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby that were supposed to be Texas Motor Speedway were actually filmed at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.  The production company came in and painted all of the signs so they said Texas.  I’m not sure I see that much of a resemblance between the two tracks (especially looking at the grandstands and such).  I’m going to have to re-watch the movie sometime soon and see if I can tell.

Our tour guide also said that the contract between the track and Lowe’s is up at the end of 2008.  She said that the current rumors are that Lowe’s will extend their sponsorship, the track could go back to its original name of Charlotte Motor Speedway, or supposedly Home Depot is interested in the sponsorship.  I’m really not sure if the last option was a joke or she was serious but it is going to be interesting to see how the contract pans out.  For me, it would be weird to call it anything other than Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Click here to see all of the photos I took while we were at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Here is a view of the track (or at least the part that would fit in the camera frame) from our seats.

Some people hate the traffic at TMS. I haven’t really had major problems but we’ve learned to leave the hotel early and take back roads…unlike these poor folks.

Here are Shelby & I waiting for the race to start.

After being introduced, the drivers are driven around the track in Chevy trucks. Here is Elliott Sadler riding around.

During the pre-race prayer and the national anthem the crews line up on pit road. It’s a neat sight.

It’s time for pit stops.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be a spotter. That’s really, really high up.

Carl Edwards won the race. Here is a photo just before he did his traditional backflip.