Daytona Baby!!!

Well kids in 1998 your grandfather Hagadorn and I went to the Daytona 500 to witness the greatest race ever, won by the greatest driver ever...Dale Earnhardt Sr. 

 

 

While your mother usually goes to all the races with us...someone had to stay home to take care of you kids and she drew the short straw...ok well maybe we went by the golden rule!

 

Ted Hatch, Shawn McBreairty and their families were also down there to go to the race and sight see.  We ended up going to the Busch race with the guys on Saturday and we had a heck of a ride home with the blind leading the blind.

 

As with so many of these events there are a bunch of stories to go with them...

• We participated in a fan activity that involved changing the tires and filling up the car with gas which we completed in 4 minutes 32 seconds...Nascar guys do it in 15 seconds!
• We were squeezed in our seats so tight that your grandfather always says when I stood and the guy next to him stood we lifted him off his seat!
• It was Dale Jr.'s first Busch season and he missed his pit coming in...Dale Sr. got on the scanner and said "Jr. I know you're a rookie and all but that was a STUPID thing to do"!  Jr. fixed him and flipped the car on the back stretch!
• While stuck in traffic a cop car tried to go down the shoulder of the road and ended up in the ditch.  What made it so bad was there were thousands of race fans going by and I think all of them made a comment to him...embarrassing!
• But the best one of all was...we thought we would be smart and drink a couple beers in the parking lot before we left so the traffic would thin out...didn't work and the way that we went out took us all around the world.  Well we had to go to the bathroom so bad that our eyes were turning yellow.  Finally we found a 7-11 and pulled in...yep you guessed it the bathrooms were out of order which we kind of figured out because there was about 2" of water throughout the store.  I joined about 15 other guys and used the outside location...which was the side of the building.  Your grandfather waited and used the flooded bathroom.  What a mess but we sure felt better afterwards.

Great weekend, great fun, great win and while it is hard to see the entire race in person, if you are a race fan Daytona should be on your bucket list!