Gentlemen, Start Your Engines (NH, RED SOX & NASCAR!) **Updated 2/11** COMPLETE About This Page:

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Day 5 – Sunday, July 1, 2007

Today I wore my red Daisuke “Dice K” Matsuzaka Japanese Red Sox shirt (It’s an excellent conversation piece, as no one seems to be able to read Japanese), so today was dedicated to Red Sox pitcher – Daisuke Matsuzaka #18. Matsuzaka joined the team this year from Japan for some crazy amount of money! The Red Sox won the bid with $50 million just to talk to him and then agreed on a contract for another $50 million (for I don’t remember how many years). So, I’ll just say he’s our $100 million dollar man.

Here he is with Theo Epstein, the Red Sox General Manager, when they announced Matsuzaka’s signing. He’s quite pleasant to look at….I only have one beef with him about a certain trade, but we’ve already been down that road before.




Okay, enough about Matsuzaka and on with Day 5! We woke early and began to get ready for our day. Many of our neighbors had already left for the track, but we gave up on early arrivals years ago. I headed up to the bathrooms, while the boys were rousing. I came back to them both giggling and me nearly being thrown out of the trailer by the odorous explosion that hit my nose when I opened the door. Ewww!! Of course, both of my ‘stinky butt boys’ were quite pleased with their accomplishment. I just

Other than the glorious smells, the day was perfect for a race. The temperatures were unseasonably cool and there were lots of clouds in the sky!! This would mean no stifling heat, while we sat at the track!!

We left for the race around 10:00am. We stopped at the Dunkin Donuts that was a few minutes down the road from the campground. Jeffrey ran in to grab us something, while Kyle & I were doing something in the truck. What we were doing, I can’t remember, but I know we were doing something.

From there we headed to the New Hampshire International Speedway. There was the usual traffic that we run into each race. It’s always fun, but not as much fun as it used to be. (Jeffrey’s truck is rigged like a fire apparatus, with all the bells & whistles. He disconnected the speaker that could be heard outside after a race many years ago. I guess he didn’t appreciate me playing “The Hamster Dance” over & over with the hand piece to the speaker so everyone around us could hear it. It was quite funny, as everyone we passed was That’s Jeffrey…..my fun killer!!!) So, back to the traffic….there were 3 lanes heading to the track. Pretty, isn’t it??





We pulled into a field that is used as a parking lot for the race. The cost is a $10 donation to a local high school group instead of the $0 to park at the track. A free shuttle is provided to and from the track. The police are wonderful about moving the buses right along through the traffic, which is a godsend in that traffic. The bus drops us off right at the entrance, which is much nicer than walking through the unpaved & uneven free lot at the track. (The drive back to the lot is also much easier due to the police & we are out of there lickety split. Being the farthest from the track also means less traffic to fight.)

As soon as we were through the gate, we attempted to find Twin Power Electronics so I could get my free scanner list. (I like listen to the drivers, especially when they get into a crash ) We couldn’t find them, but we had fun looking around the sea of trailers with all the race merchandise.

I just happened to find this


I saw a couple of these signs, which I thought was





I don’t know why, but I thought of Crystal when I saw this trailer


Penelope Pitstop was there, with her little pink umbrella. I did not take a picture of her, as she was much too scantily clad for my liking!!

We went to find a picnic table under the bleachers until it was closer to the race. Jeffrey took a walk over to pit row to get some pictures of the cars.
His favorites…Dale Jr & Kevin Harvick (Don’t know why that #24 is in there…sorry Terri! )


Then he went over to get a photo of Carl Edward’s Red Sox car


When Jeffrey came back, we decided to get something to eat. We opted for 2 orders of chicken tenders with fries and we split them amongst the 3 of us.

I took this photo of Kyle while we were sitting around. I don’t remember who he was talking to. Probably his cousin, Ryan.


As we sat and people watched, we were quite surprised to run into 2 of our friends from church, Fred & Laurie. I didn’t realize they were race fans. I’ve known Fred since I was like 7 & Laurie since they got married in the early 1980’s. His girls, Bethany & Cathrene, used to babysit for Kyle when I worked a couple of nights a week years ago. Fred & I teach Sunday School together. They are good people. We talked for a while and then they went in search of their seats on the other side of the track.

Not long after they left, we decided to head to our seats. There were lots of welcoming clouds and we actually needed to wear sweatshirts, which was nice compared to what we normally experience at this race. I don’t know if the weather had something to do with them moving the date up 2 weeks or what, but I liked it!! (I found out at the September race that they had record numbers of heat stroke at last July’s race )

The opening ceremonies commenced...


and the Star Spangled Banner was sung with the usual flyover. There was only 1 plane this year. I forgot it was coming, so I took it a little late. It's that tiny dot in the midst of those wonderful clouds!


Now, my favorite driver – Kenny Schrader - I know, I know - wasn’t racing this race. So, I needed to choose a new driver. Hmmmm…..I wonder You guessed it…..Carl Edwards #99 – Roush Fenway Racing & the Red Sox Car!!


I didn’t take as many photos as I usually do at a race. The ones I did try to take weren’t very good because they are traveling so fast! I had to scratch more photos than usual this year because of that. Here are a couple that I did manage to capture.




I how the flames shoot off of the tires like that, when the drivers hit their brakes


The race was pretty uneventful. There weren’t many crashes , but I was very intent on listening to my scanner. Carl Edwards’ pit crew was hysterical. He had moved up from the middle of the pack and even led a few laps. After a pit, his crew was hoping to move him back up and kept looking for a reason to call a caution. They decided to call the head honchos, with a claim of debris on the track. When the guy came back on, he was laughing saying that he was told they were lying!! I listening to the bantering back & forth. Eventually, a caution was called, but Carl Edwards was unable to regain the lead.

We decided to leave with quite a few laps to go, as we wanted to beat the crowds out of the stands. I don’t even remember who was in the lead. It was kind of a boring race in terms of ones that we’ve seen where several drivers seem to be going head-to-head, that probably played into our reasoning for leaving as well.

We got to our bus stop just as a bus was pulling up and we were on our way back to the lot within minutes. Once in the truck, we listened to the race as we drove back to the campground. As we were pulling in, the race ended. Denny Hamlin #11 for Fed Ex won – a second year NASCAR driver.


We listened to the tail end of the Red Sox game. Texas was still in town and Julian Tavarez was no match for them. The Sox lost 1-2. Once the game was over, we packed up the non-essentials as this was our last night.

We ordered pizza from a local place about 2 minutes away from the campground. Then we played rummy and I WIN!! I WIN!! I WIN!! (It was my lucky weekend) This was also about the time that other people started returning from the race. We were back about 2-3 hours before the majority of them started coming in!

Kyle started his first fire all by himself. This was in preparation for our camping trip scheduled 2 weeks later – Jeffrey was going to have to go home to work 2 nights, so who better to start the fire.




Kyle & I made some s’mores and I played around with the settings on the camera.




Kyle looks like he has a fro. A strange likeness to Ronald McDonald??


A negative of Jeffrey


Then I practiced walking on fire!


It was a long day, so we called it an early night.

The best thing today was watching Carl Edwards #99 race, while listening to his radio frequency
The worst thing today was the stench in the trailer from my stinky butt boys
The funniest thing today was listening to Carl Edwards crew try to find a caution. (Kyle would say it was his stench. He’s gross! )
The weather today was 60’s – we needed sweatshirts

Up next: A journey into a rainforest.