Signs of the Apocalypse?
It's 8:40 a.m. on race day at Bristol and light snow is gently falling on the still empty grandstands. I jab a pencil into my thigh and wipe the ensuing tears from my eyes.
Yep, I am actually awake. This is not one of those dreams I keep having where I wake up and say, "Dang, I wish I could remember that because it would have made a heck of a movie."
Look, I acknowledge that I'm from the South and that, as a rule, we really don't know how to act when snow is falling. We were in New York City one year for the Cup banquet and it was snowing about as hard as it was here Sunday morning. I was giving an award at the National Motorsports Press Association's breakfast there and before I started I made a quick apology.
"Sorry," I said. "I understand that with all of these folks here from the Carolinas that the switchboard was flooded this morning with people asking where they could run out to buy a loaf of bread and a quart of milk."
People who deal with snow all winter long probably laugh at how much of a fit everybody has made over the flakes that have fallen here this weekend. But for NASCAR fans, this has just plain been weird.
The video from Saturday's Busch race, with this whole place turned into a giant snowball fight, will be played for years. Friday night, as Speed Channel was taping "Trackside" outside and the snow started flying, fans gathered for that show started singing Christmas carols.
It's now 8:55 a.m. and I swear it looks like the snow is falling up. I know it's the wind and how it swirls inside this giant bowl, but it's still just strange to look at.
The weather has been a story pretty much all of this season. The Daytona 500 was run in a mist that made Florida look more like the Scottish moors. California was nice, but it was as cold as the devil's heart at Las Vegas, there was a rainout at Atlanta and now, this.
It's supposed to clear off in time for a race this afternoon. We'll see. All I know is that if it starts raining frogs or locusts, I am heading for the house.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Snow? You've got to wonder what's next
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1 comments:
As a NASCAR fan from New England, I felt right at home watching the snowstorm hit Bristol during the Busch race. It was quite amusing to watch people, most of whom probably don't see snow too often, enjoy the weather delay as much as they did. I felt like I was watching a bunch of elementary school kids out playing in the snow after having a day off from school because of a blizzard, but in fact it was just a bunch of grown men enjoying themselves and just having a good time. Although I would have loved to have seen what would have happened had Kurt Busch been in the race too. Would he have gotten his team to pelt Harvick with snowballs?
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