Read Online The Best American Travel Writing 2011 by Sloane Crosley - Free Book Online
Authors: Sloane Crosley
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actual racing on the track was better now than it had ever been. In the past, races were won by laps; now they are won by seconds, with each contest including dozens of lead changes and at least as many different possible winners. In the era everyone now romanticized, five, maybe at most ten drivers had a real chance of entering Victory Lane. Like Southern identity itself, NASCAR was overrun with nostalgia: its fans and participants pined for bygone days thatâat least in recollectionânow seemed so much more alive and fulfilling. So even while detailing the superiority of today's competitive races, the people I interviewed slipped into reveries for a truer time of Southern aggression and defining peril. After praising Jimmie Johnson, Darrell Waltrip couldn't help but compare the present crop of drivers with his cohort. "We were just tough guys," he said, suddenly solemn. "We could take it and dish it. There's no way we'd fit in today, with all the rules and restrictions. Back in the day, men were men."
I leaned in closer to Johnson's blue and white car and saw that a crew member was applying duct tape to the inside of the front bumper. As high-tech and pristine as Johnson's operation was, his team employed the sort of garden-variety solution I might use. I moved in for a better look. Suddenly the car burst to life, its 900-horsepower engine thundering so loud that the ground actually quaked.
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Fifteen minutes before the start of the race, I saw drivers accosted by autograph- and photograph-seekers who had paid a bit extra for the freedom to wander about Bristol's crowded infield. No other big-league sport makes its stars available to the public in this way. Fans positioned themselves just behind pit crews, within arm's reach of the stacks of Goodyears, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment. Some fans lingered beside the vehicles lined up for their final inspection, while others simply cut between the queuing cars on their way to different infield sites. As 4 Troops, an a cappella group of former military personnel, sang the national anthem, drivers stood stoically beside their vehicles, their wives or girlfriends accompanying many of them in these final moments before they would don helmets and slide behind the wheel. I was on pit road as well, just three feet in front of a solitary Mark Martin, who leaned against his No. 5 Chevy, squinting nobly into the distance, his fifty-one-year-old face creased and weathered. He looked like a wizened jockey from a Hemingway story, a grayed hero unwilling or unable to quit, and all the more so because he was outfitted in a fluorescent lime-green jumpsuit with the name of his sponsor, GoDaddy.com, splashed across his abdomen.
At Bristol, drivers made their dramatic entrances by stepping out from a cupola of sparkling pyrotechnics and onto the flatbed of a Ford F-150 pickup truck that then slowly circled the track. With all the access afforded fans, I didn't think it too bizarre when I was given a seat in the bed of one of these F-150s. My sole companion back there, a young Wisconsin woman named Karen, had paid $1,900 in a charity auction for the privilege of riding in the truck with her favorite driver, Kasey Kahne. I asked what she liked about Kahne, who hailed from Washington State, and Karen explained that she had been a fan of the legendary driver Rusty Wallace, but when Wallace retired in 2005 she started looking for someone new. "I'm a Dodge person. And Kasey drove a Dodge then. He's also young and brash. And he looks a lot like a neighbor of mine. After I saw that he shares my birthday, that was it." When Kahne finally joined us in the Ford, waving beauty pageantâstyle to the grandstands above, Karen turned to me with a look of shock and said, "I'm going to shit."
We rounded the track, the fans lined up on the lowest steps of the bleachers, waving back, yelling, banging on the fencing. Viewed from the bottom of the bowl, the stands seemed to rise
I leaned in closer to Johnson's blue and white car and saw that a crew member was applying duct tape to the inside of the front bumper. As high-tech and pristine as Johnson's operation was, his team employed the sort of garden-variety solution I might use. I moved in for a better look. Suddenly the car burst to life, its 900-horsepower engine thundering so loud that the ground actually quaked.
Â
Fifteen minutes before the start of the race, I saw drivers accosted by autograph- and photograph-seekers who had paid a bit extra for the freedom to wander about Bristol's crowded infield. No other big-league sport makes its stars available to the public in this way. Fans positioned themselves just behind pit crews, within arm's reach of the stacks of Goodyears, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment. Some fans lingered beside the vehicles lined up for their final inspection, while others simply cut between the queuing cars on their way to different infield sites. As 4 Troops, an a cappella group of former military personnel, sang the national anthem, drivers stood stoically beside their vehicles, their wives or girlfriends accompanying many of them in these final moments before they would don helmets and slide behind the wheel. I was on pit road as well, just three feet in front of a solitary Mark Martin, who leaned against his No. 5 Chevy, squinting nobly into the distance, his fifty-one-year-old face creased and weathered. He looked like a wizened jockey from a Hemingway story, a grayed hero unwilling or unable to quit, and all the more so because he was outfitted in a fluorescent lime-green jumpsuit with the name of his sponsor, GoDaddy.com, splashed across his abdomen.
At Bristol, drivers made their dramatic entrances by stepping out from a cupola of sparkling pyrotechnics and onto the flatbed of a Ford F-150 pickup truck that then slowly circled the track. With all the access afforded fans, I didn't think it too bizarre when I was given a seat in the bed of one of these F-150s. My sole companion back there, a young Wisconsin woman named Karen, had paid $1,900 in a charity auction for the privilege of riding in the truck with her favorite driver, Kasey Kahne. I asked what she liked about Kahne, who hailed from Washington State, and Karen explained that she had been a fan of the legendary driver Rusty Wallace, but when Wallace retired in 2005 she started looking for someone new. "I'm a Dodge person. And Kasey drove a Dodge then. He's also young and brash. And he looks a lot like a neighbor of mine. After I saw that he shares my birthday, that was it." When Kahne finally joined us in the Ford, waving beauty pageantâstyle to the grandstands above, Karen turned to me with a look of shock and said, "I'm going to shit."
We rounded the track, the fans lined up on the lowest steps of the bleachers, waving back, yelling, banging on the fencing. Viewed from the bottom of the bowl, the stands seemed to rise
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