NASCAR--An interesting and fun experience.

This past Sunday was an exciting day for Andy and I; we got the opportunity to go to a NASCAR race at the Texas Motor Speedway.  I'm not sure if many of you know this, but NASCAR is a pretty big deal around these parts, so we left the jobsite at 9:30 in order to see everything and get there in time--mind you, the race didn't starte until 2:00 P.M.  In any case, traffic wasn't too terrible when we arrived, so we found a decent parking spot, found our official pit passes, and walked into the area. 

As much as I originally was not into this sort of thing, it really was a neat experience.  The pit, racetrack, cars and crew, the different people, sounds, and other entertainment were all just something to be experienced and taken in.  Here are a few pictures to help illustrate what we encountered during our time there.

Here we are with our "hot" pit passes.  We are standing on the actual race track! Very Cool!

With our "hot" passes we were able to go into the garages and watch the cars go through inspection.  This is Jeff Gordon's car...I think. :)

Again, near the garage, Dale Ernheart Jr.'s car.  Pretty sweet.

(Sorry about the sideways pic, I still cannot figure out why they do not upload the other way even after I've edited them.) Anyway, this is one of the "pit stop" stations right off of the track where the cars go during the race to get things fixed.

Andy and I inside the garage, watching the Target car get checked.

The view from our seats.  The stage on the bottom right was for the Trace Atkins concert before the race.

And the winner is.... Tony Stewart #14. (He was Andy's guy to watch apparently.)

They shoot off fireworks, and the car that won started ripping around in circles (you all know what those are called) to create smoke and stuff.

**One other random thing that they did before the race was had this guy use a jet pack to fly the flag another 200 feet or something to "finish its journey" after they had already taken the flag to the moon.  We actually got to witness this guy fly using a jet pack--COOLEST THING EVER!!!!

(Click on the link below.  It is hard to tell how cool it was because it is kind of blurry, but you get the idea.)

RocketMan- Texas