Saturday, November 27, 2010

Racin down Charlotte way

So Drummroll headed down south to combine a little work with some family holiday action but unfortunately missed Powercross in the process.  After a stop in Johnson City, TN for a little work, he arrived at his brothers Mon eve just outside Charlotte.  To make up for missing Powercross, he found a cx training series race held under the lights at a town park on Tues eve.  As he got dressed he realized that the mtb (cx) shoes were still in the garage back home.  In a true show of southern hospitality, the race organizer loaned his shoes & SPD pedals to Drummroll.  Drummroll found the pedals a little tough to clip into and struggled on a wicked off camber that popped up right after some barriers -- it was a repeated struggle to get clipped in while riding the offcamber.  Anyway, the southern boys can hammer too as Drummroll was a bit humbled despite the shoe situation (4th of 5 in his group).

But that wasn't the end of the racing action; the next venue on Friday was the Charlotte (Lowes) Motor Speedway (CMS).  The waiver was signed and the shoe situation was not an issue as this only required a street car (read rental car in this case).  Drummroll's brother hooked him up with a free pass for three laps at the track. Apparently this is a quasi-Black Friday tradition down Charlotte way.   In groups of about 10 street cars (including Mr. and Ms. Drummroll in a rental, his brother and family in their brand new Tahoe, and parents in ma's Buick) were allowed to circle the track at a pretty good clip (as far as street cars go).  We were able to briefly hit the 85-90 mph range a couple times... and you could even pass (and get passed) if you were being "careful" about it.   The banking was pretty wild to wind through and it was really fun.  Ms. Drummroll even said she wished she could drive which was a surprise cause racing/NASCAR is not her thing by any means.  Hope everyone had a great T-giving.   A little pic of the weekend action below: 

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