We've been to the races often enough to know that we have to get there early to get a good parking space and avoid traffic. The only decent route from my house to the track is down a (mostly) two-lane farm road, which takes about an hour. We left my house at 4:00 AM and arrived at 5:00. It was already raining. We wound up parking in one of the Turn 4 lots at the edge of the newly gravel paved roads. No mud! After getting a really dry breakfast burrito at the Texas Rib Rangers Café (YUK!), we made our way back to the garage.
It was easily apparent that the teams didn't think we would get a race in. Everyone was working on their cars, but the pace was definitely slowed compared to the preceding days. At one point, I was standing just outside of Dale Jr.'s garage stall taking a picture. A crewmember had come up behind me, but I didn't see him. When I turned around I said, "You should have just asked me to move. I would have gladly gotten out of your way." He said, "Naw, looks like I've got ALL day!" and he laughed.
Mom was still hanging around Rusty Wallace's team while I wandered up and down the garage, occasionally stopping to look in on Dale Jr.'s car. She'd found a spot where she could wedge herself between the toolboxes of Rusty and Ryan Newman, and from there, she could see almost everything they did to the car. One of the NASCAR officials had been wandering up and down the garage (the officials were VERY friendly!). Once when he passed me, he looked over at Mom and said, "She's not moving, is she? I think she's found her spot!" When I laughed and said that she intended to stay there until someone told her to move, he said, "Now THAT'S a real fan."
One by one, the cars all lined up for inspection. I was amazed that they let the fans get right up to the inspection line to gawk and take pictures. Eventually, all of the cars had gone through inspection except for either the CAT car or the Dewalt car (not sure which). The crew still had the car in the garage stall, revving its engine really high and tinkering. At one point, they revved it so hard, I thought they were going to blow the engine. Several of another team's crew (Rusty's?) cocked their heads toward them and rolled their eyes. At the time, I thought maybe it was because they were the last team to go through inspection (which was about to close) and they were still tuning the car. After thinking about it, however, I think this might have been the #17 Dewalt team, who had changed engines.
After the cars went through inspection, the teams began to pack up their toolboxes and get them ready to move out to pit road. After the toolboxes were moved, they would sweep the floors and throw everything in the pile away. When the Bud team moved their box, mom spotted a piece of screen (maybe radiator grill?) and picked it up. We also found a lug nut for both the #40 and the #6 (this thrilled my 9 year old to no end!), and some assorted nuts from the #8.
We stopped by the fajita and quesadilla stand for lunch again. This time, I was the one that got fajitas. I was really disappointed when they gave me only two slices -- on Saturday, they had given Mom four. There wasn't a lot to do by then. All the cars were locked up in the Busch garage and the teams were just standing around twiddling their thumbs.
I had received an email from the #90 team's chaplain a few days before. He had encouraged me to say hi to the team. I still wasn't very comfortable just going up and talking to the teams, so I just stood around watching them stand around, while I tried to get up my nerves. Eventually, Rick Mast himself came out of the hauler to watch the rain. He was just standing there, and all kinds of people kept walking by, not one of them acknowledging his presence. So I ran over and asked for his autograph. You can't imagine the relief I saw on his face that someone recognized him and wanted his autograph. My tip for race-goers: skip the big name autographs, you likely won't get them. Go for the lesser teams. They're really nice, and it means more to them than it means to you!
Later, I got Ken Schrader's autograph. I had to walk really fast to keep up with him. Mom couldn't keep up and decided later that she'd over-worked her knee trying.
Late in the afternoon (it sure SEEMED like it was late), there wasn't much left to do. But we weren't about to leave until someone said it was "official". We stood under an awning that Rusty's team had erected over the opening of his garage stall. One of his crewmen came up and talked to us. Apparently, they'd lost their hotel room. The hotel had already booked the rooms to someone else for Sunday night. I offered to let them sleep at my house, and he just laughed. Hey, you never know! I've heard it's actually happened before.
I found it amazing that so much of what we see on the TV broadcast is "staged". Sometime during the rain delay, the #24 crew opened up their hauler and began to unload the back-up car. We wondered what they were up to. Of course, after we got home and had seen the tape we made of the rain delay, we realized that the whole thing had been staged to illustrate the cars being covered up in the rain. They couldn't use the real cars because they were locked up in the Busch garage.
When the #2 Crew came to take down the tent, we moved back inside the garage. Several of the teams had brought their tires in out of the rain, and we had seen the crews sitting on them. After a while, several of the fans decided it was safe to sit on them, so we followed suit. It sure was good to take a load off our feet. While we were sitting there, Mom noticed some of the lug nuts that had been lying on the floor of Rusty's stall the day before. We quickly scooped them into our pockets.
We'd been sitting on the tires for quite some time when a deafening noise shook everyone's reverie. It was a plane, and it was flying so low that we were all sure it was going to land right on top of the garage. You never saw a building evacuate so fast! There's an airport just south of the track, and we all decided that the plane must have been flying so low in order to see the airport through all the cloud cover. It wasn't funny at the time, in fact, we were all sure that it was a terrorist attack, but after it was over, we all had a good laugh. I guess it just goes to show the American mentality in the wake of 9-11.
I walked around the garage a lot as I have a lot of problems just sitting or standing in one place. Once, when I came back, I found Mom being interviewed by our local NBC station. They asked the usual questions like whether she would be back tomorrow if the race were postponed. Of course, she said yes. Unfortunately, the clip never made it to the evening news. Oh well.
Eventually, we decided to go up on pit road and have a look around. At one pit stall, we saw a tent with the sign "Club Petty". Several fans peeked inside to see the crew stretched out on chairs made of tires, watching the TV in the "war wagon". One of the crewmen said, "Five dollar cover to get in." We all agreed it would be worth the price.
Sometime after we got back to the garage, an official came in and announced that the garage was closing and everyone had to leave. I think they even kicked out all the crews. They were bringing the cars back over from the Busch garage so they could lock them up for the night. The race was "officially" delayed until Monday.
In the parking lot, traffic wasn't too bad. At one point, Mom stopped to let a car out of a lot. When the traffic stopped again, the woman jumped out of her car and handed a t-shirt to Mom. She just happened to be the mother of "Sparky", the track mascot. She gave Mom the Sparky t-shirt as a thank you.
That night, watching the news, we laughed at a local reporter's comment that "almost everyone" was going home and would not return for the race on Monday. She very obviously isn't a NASCAR fan, or else she would have known that NASCAR fans don't give up THAT easily. We're more reliable than the U.S. Mail (through rain, snow, sleet, or hail).