When Words Collide, Sentences Form

Like Fish Out of Water

Last night I took two of my good friends to Elko Speedway. You all know the place...the racing, the "smart" fans, the buses crashing! My friends are two great guys that I really didn't think would ever agree to go to Elko with me. I knew we would have fun, but I didn't think they would really want to go. I had kinda thrown it out there jokingly one weekend when we were hanging out - and they said they would go. Under one condition. I had to drive so that they could drink heavily. When I pointed out that my wee lil' truck couldn't hold all three of us, both instantly and in a chorus offered to let me drive their vehicles. So history was made, and off we went to Elko last night.

I will say up front that I kinda underestimated my friends' enthusiasm. One of them (F1 I shall call him - short for Friend 1) is a car guy, loves old muscle cars...etc. The other (F2 - get the pattern?) is semi-open-minded about doing new stuff (well, except for going to random shady bars...more on that later). Possibly in our case, he's open-minded to trying new things I suggest if only to hold it over my head later if he doesn't enjoy them - haha...we shall see. They really got into the racing. Especially once I explained all of the basics to F2. He was very confused by things like caution laps ("Do they do that at real NASCAR racing? Why did they stop racing? Do they start from the beginning again, now?")...but he caught on very quickly. I was quite proud - both of his willingness to ask questions and my racing tutorial skills!

One of the highlights of the evening came when choosing cars. The thing to do at these short track racing events is that everyone you are with has to pick a car when they come out. Everyone does it. And they all have their own systems. Now, to be fair to F1 and F2, I did try to tell them if a car they had chosen was horrible, based on my Elko Expertise. F2 decided to ignore my advice one time, and his car proceed to make the fastest movement through the field. To the BACK of the field. It was rather impressive, possibly a record for picking the car with the fastest fall-back.

At one point early on, both F1 and F2 picked cars that basically just had numbers painted on the side. Not a good choice under nearly all circumstances. I pointed out that they might be better off picking cars with lots of words (sponsors!) on them because they are usually better drivers with better cars...I think they proceeded to pick new wordless cars in different colors...but to each his or her own!

The highlight of the night was F2 picking #41 to win the second-to-last race of the night - and his car won! He made me take pictures of the winning car celebrating...no small feat in the dark of night with extensive fencing...

(Unfortunately right now Blogger is being less than cooperative in uploading pictures - so maybe later!)

By the end of the night, despite my Elko Expertise, I think we all wound up kinda even on the number of wins board.

And then F1 and I tricked F2 into going to a shady local bar with us against his wishes. First we "turned the wrong way" out of the parking lot...then we pulled into the bar's lot. Although F2 may not totally agree, I think that it was a fun side trip. It wasn't as shady as one would have thought for a bar nearly across the road from a race track...there was karaoke going on (F1 sang a Frank Sinatra song - and much to our surprise - wasn't bad!!)...and we played foosball. Can't beat that combo...karaoke, foosball and good friends..."Oh, What A Night."

In unrelated news, I am losing this weekend in one of my fantasy football leagues to a girl whose main focus this past week has been on her FASHION LEAGUE because Fashion Weeks have been kicked off. WHAT??

posted by Steph @ 7:00 PM