Scott and Emma: Zoooooom!

Last weekend, Scott and I headed out of town in search of a very large race track with cars going very very fast. Why? Because that's the kind of adventure-seeking thrill junkies we are! Plus we had free tickets. And we haven't left the 1 mile radius around our apartment for the last month. But also: thrilling!

We drove and drove, and the freeway dwindled to a highway, which dwindled to a two-lane road, and still there were no signs of the race track. We were just starting to feel a wee bit concerned that we'd taken a wrong turn, when we rounded a bend in the lane and saw our destination on the horizon.

Or rather, we heard it. Those cars are LOUD! As Scott said when I pointed this out to him (you know, in case he'd missed how REALLY LOUD these cars were), "Who needs a muffler if you're not driving on real roads?" Right.

Zoom!

Wheee!!! This was the only Ferrari racing that day. Since it was also the only car that I could identify with reasonable consistency, I decided to cheer for it the loudest.

If you've never been to a race like this, allow me to enlighten you. The cars go really really fast around a track. The car that does the most laps within a certain time period is the winner. This track is a road course, meaning that it has left- and right-hand turns, hills, straight aways, and curves (as opposed to the oval-shaped track you see in Nascar).

The cars that look more like regular cars are regular cars, but with various modifactions to make them speedy and awesome. The cars that look like slinky spiders are prototype cars, and they are not at all like regular cars. The regular-type cars are only racing against other regular-type cars, and the prototypes are only racing against the other prototypes. But they're both racing on the same track at the same time.

"But that's silly," says Emma, "It's like if people were playing a football game and a soccer game on the same field a the same time!"

"And how awesome would that be?!" says Scott.

Ah. Right!

This was a cool swoopy part of the track. The cars are accellerating like crazy on the straight-aways, and then have to hit the brakes to make the turns. Some of them don't quite make it.

Sweet, back in the game!

About this time, I spotted this woman's shoes:

Needless to say, I was impressed. I am definitely not woman enough to wear pointy-toed faux-snake skin stilletos to a hilly, un-paved, rock-strewn fairground.

Later on, we used our Super Sweet Honda Employee Passes to get into the gated area where the teams have their trailers. We were actually able to go right up to the pit area. Each team has a little section of the pit area, and it's set up with a million computers and monitors and extra parts and tires. It was almost as impressive as that lady's shoes.

We saw this SPEED TV gear abandoned nearby, and briefly contemplated some improv broadcasting.

These guys were leaving the area because their car off-roaded in that same swoopy area from above and it couldn't get back on the track. It's racing days were OVER! Or, at least, over for this particular racing day.