It was a surreal morning and afternoon. We arrived in Denton county around 7 am, trying to get to the Westin hotel, which is located right between Texas Motor Speedway and Alliance Airport. A short meeting/drug company schpiel and extravagant breakfast were waiting for us (though we'd already eaten). We took the correct exit--and were herded around to the track instead.

It appeared our chances of getting to Westin had dried up. So we found a place to park in amongst thousands upon thousands of cars. Remember, better than 250,000 people show up to this race. You just have no concept of how many hundreds of acres of people, cars, and structures surround the track until you're in the thick of it. It's several times lmore populated than the town I live in.

My brother Kody spent the week there, camping out.

Alas, there was rain. There had been rain on Saturday, and a delay, but they had actually gotten 120 of the 200 laps in for the Busch series race. Furthermore, the drying machines they have are incredible! They have 30 foot wide vehicles with huge jet engines, and three other race tracks had driven their machines over (all the way from the east coast!).

The problem was the rain didn't want to stop. We waited for hours in the car, which really wasn't too bad. I caught up on alot of reading, did some homework, worked on my speech, talked alot of things over with my father, ate a whole box of chocolate chip granola bars, watched all the people, watched portable TV, listened to the radio, and relaxed.

Finally we decided to leave, and as we were making our way to the highway, the skies opened up and the race was no longer in doubt. :o)