[My galleries are hosted on imagestation, so if you're not registered there, I'm sure Brian won't mind if you use the login he's set up for his gallery visitors: Username-tourist, Password-peer2all. Thanks Brian! (Maybe one day I'll do my own)]

After finding out the race started at 1pm we decided to sleep and leave an hour later than planned and I'm sure glad we did! We left Richmond at 6:15 with me driving the first shift. I did ok until we hit Roanoke and I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Jeff took over and I got to nap for a bit.

We reached Bristol around 11 and decided to grab some lunch first. Taco Bell and Sonic..mmm. By the time we parked and walked the 1.3 miles to the track it was 12:30. The gate nearest to our seats wasn't open so us (along with several hundred other people) had to find somewhere else to get in. We waited in line for 15 minutes until someone decided to try the other gate again. And hallelujah they opened up and let us in!!

Food City 500 Pics

We made it to out seats well before the National Anthem (which is unusual for us). I took some cool videos and pictures at the start of the race. And of course made use of my camera during the race. I think it's already paid for itself. Well, maybe not, but close. :)

I couldn't believe how small the track is; TV coverage just doesn't show it. And the seating is very high, much higher (and with a higher capacity) than Richmond. It truly was like sitting in a bowl. And that of course made the sound that much louder. I couldn't get my radio to pick up the channel, but I probably couldn't have heard it anyway. Except during cautions there was never a break in the sound like there is with a larger track.

And watching this race on TV doesn't show you how badly the cars are beat up. I bet there were only 3-4 cars that weren't missing major parts of the body by the end of the race. It's so funny to see a car with no nose going around the track. Overall it was a pretty good race; there were only 6 cars on the lead lap at the end. Kurt Busch won just like last year.

The race was over 4:30-5ish? We hoofed it back the 1.3 miles to the car and were able to slip right into traffic. We parked so far away that by the time the traffic from the closer parking lots reached us, it was slowly pretty quick. But then 81 was like a parking lot. But thanks to Jeff's excellent driving we still made it to Radford in 2 hours were we partook in the fine dining experience that is Macado's.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. We were both exhausted and trying really hard to keep each other awake. But we made it to Richmond by midnight and promptly fell into bed, asleep before 1. I figured I would be exhausted today, but I'm not. Yet. I am sore though, my legs got a good workout this weekend with the painting, moving and walking.