Off to the Races

My husband now owns a race car. As will not surprise anyone who knows him personally, it is cobbled together out of several other, lesser, cars into a single frankensteinian contraption sporting four cylinders and an internal combustion engine. I think.

It is a Mustang, 92? I hesitate to admit that I don't actually know the year but then again he has admitted he doesn't read my blog - or anything else I write - so I guess we're even.

Anyway. This is his latest hobby. His other hobbies are a Nissan Pathfinder, a Ford F-250 (more of a hobby-transport than an actual hobby, and a ridiculous Toyota pick up with 35" tires.
Our daughters are real dressy-up doll-toting princess-envy girly-girls, so of course they react in a rather predicatable fashion to his hobbies. They LOVE them. Specifically, they love the race car and all it embodies. They begged me to take them to a race. But the race is anywhere between 7 and 10 p.m. on Wednesday nights, and the track doesn't actually release (or, as near as I can tell, MAKE) the schedule in advance, so I never know what I will be committing to in terms of crabby sleep-deprived children if I take them.

But once the school year was out (late June, thank you very much snow days), I no longer had any excuses. So to celebrate the elder daughter's graduation from Kindergarten, we made a night out of going to the races. I called ahead and threw myself on the mercy of the woman working there:

"I have two little girls who would love to see their Daddy race but if he's in a later heat it would be WAY past their bedtimes so could you please tell me when he'll be racing?"

"Well," she paused. This is obviously a closely guarded secret. "It's still tentative, but his division is scheduled to race... first."

Oh, bless you lovely speedway woman.

We got to the speedbowl in time to park about a mile away and then haggle with younger daughter that Yellow Bear Bear had to stay in the car. Then we hauled ourselves up to the box office and bought our tickets and discovered, at Younger Daughter's prompting, that there were no ATM's in the area and Mommy was therefore devoid of Cash With Which To Buy Popcorn.

I also had no way of reaching my husband, because although he is constitutionally incapable of saying "no" to the latest automobile modification, he remains convinced that CELLULAR TELEPHONES are useless. I walked toward one of the two pits (on opposite ends of the field) carrying Younger Daughter on my head and holding Older Daughter's hand. I apporached a young man clad in Nomex.

"Excuse me, whta division do you race?"
"X-cars."
Daughter on my head: popcorn popcorn popcorn popcorn popcorn popcorn
"Thank you Jesus. Do you know where car 12 is? It's a blue and yellow mustang?"
"He's here, but I don't know in which pit."
"Great! Hey, by the way, what heat are you racing?"
"We're dead last."

Oh god. Oh curse you, demon speedway woman.

popcornpopcornpopcornpopcornpopcornpopcorn!

I apporached the entry to the pit.

"Can I go back and look for my husband?"
"Not without a pit pass."
"How much is a pit pass?"
"$15 for you and $8 for each kid."
"Even if she rides on my head?"

POPCORN! Mommy buy POPCORN! Momy buy POPCORN!

I approached a young man wearing a pit pass.

"Can you go back in the pit and look for my husband?"
"I can show you how to sneak in the pit."
"Ummm, that's OK. I was just wondering if you could look for my husband and let him know I'm out here?"
"Well, if you follow the fence along the back there, eventually it just ends. And you can sneak in."
I note that he is, himself, wearing a legitimate pit pass.
"That's really helpful, but I don't think I'm going to gate crash." I gestured to the child on my head.

POPCORN! POPCORN! POPCORN!

He rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed with my gumption.

"Well, even if the fence is closed up, they just wire tire it together and you can cut the tie and sneak in."

"Right. Look. He drives X-Car number twelve. Could you just see if he's back there?"

He sighs. He ambles off. He returns.

"Well, he's here, but he's in the other pit."

SIGH. No popcorn respite yet. We shuffle off to the other side of the track and ask an older, sympathetic-looking woman wearing a pit pass to find teh driver of X-car 12 and tell him his wife and kids are hear, and willing to stay to see him race in the LAST HEAT but not without popcorn and therefore cash.

She conveys the message. He appears, bearing a bucket of popcorn. The girls are thrilled. He watches a couple of heats with us and then leaves to prep for his own heat. The younger daughter, now stuffed full of popcorn and up way past curfew, is fading fast.

"I need go home," she says. "I all done."

Me, too. As an aside, I hate all things auto-racing.

But Older Daughter is steadfast:

"I'm not tired, Mama! Not one drop! Please, please, can we stay? I won't be grumpy at all!"

And she is so earnest and sweet and this is after all her Kindergarten graduation celebration and I have to hand it to her: She is being really good.

So we stay. After another heat, the only thing that will entertain the younger one is standign on the bleacher in front of me and then leaping onto my lap. Practicing, she notes, to jump into the pool.

Finally, it's our turn. X-car 12 is on teh track, warming up. The girls are screaming "Daddy Daddy Daddy!" The air, I tell you, is electric. Older Daughter looks at me.

"I feel a drop of rain."

"Oh no you don't."

"Oh yes, we do!" said the assembled crowd as they all left the stands, lemming-style.

Heh! I chuckle. Sissies! We are ready. We have rain jackets with hoods. The clouds open. it's a deluge, but only 5 seconds' worth. We are smug inside our rain gear and ready to watch a race.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer crackles to the few remaining in the stands, "We're sorry but with this rain we'll ahve to call the race. But be sure to come back next week, when X-cars will race first!"

I've heard that before. I'm not buying it. But the kids are, and they're clamoring, "Oh please can we come next week? Daddy's gets to race first!"

And we've been back, nearly every week since. Much to my chagrin, my daughter's squabbles now sound like this:

"When I grow up and I'm a race care driver, I get to race number 12!"
"No I do!"
"No I DO!"
"I said it first!"

So here I sit, praying for rain. And for a "no" vote on that recently proposed indoor race track...