A souvenir of The Last Great Colosseum
May 23, 2017 14:04:10 GMT -5
Post by Wes on May 23, 2017 14:04:10 GMT -5
My wife and I do not get away for vacations very often, for a number of reasons there's no point in getting into here. But once in a while we like to get away, and this weekend we did.
We have a racing friend who was going to be running in the Short Track National Championships at Bristol Motor Speedway in Eastern Tennessee. We've often wanted to see Bristol, since it's quite a place, and going down there would allow us to see it without a full-sized NASCAR crowd.
So, figuring that it might cost four or five hundred dollars, but also grateful for a weekend away from home, we hopped in the wife's car Friday and drove down there. It's about six hundred miles, and we were beat when we got to our motel -- we're getting too old for six hundred mile days, which proves that we're both getting older than we want to be.
Just for the sake of comparison, Michigan Stadium seats a little over a hundred thousand people. In football configuration, Bristol has seated a hundred and sixty thousand in a space not much larger than the Big House. They seat more race fans at the half-mile Bristol track than they do at the two-mile track at Michigan International Speedway. They call it "The Last Great Colosseum," and I think they got it right. I wouldn't want to guess how many race fans were there, but we hardly made a dent in the huge, echoing stadium. When the cars got going, they filled it with noise! When the big cars were running, the Super Late Models, they were lapping faster than the NASCAR types.
Our young friend had some problems in the feature race, but he had the second fastest time in his class, lapping the place in a Dodge Neon at a pace well over a hundred miles an hour. While he would have liked to win, he says he got enough of a thrill just to be able to race in such a storied place.
If my wife and I were beat after our drive down there, it was even worse after an evening full of racing, We had things we needed to do on Sunday evening, so we got up early and got on the road. All went well until we got onto the heavy traffic on the bridge over the Ohio River in Cincinnati, when the car started to buck, snort and act up. We barely managed to get to an exit and rolled to a stop in the first place we could find. Our tow truck driver commented, "Boy, that bridge is one place you do NOT want to break down!"
Now, again, it was Sunday afternoon and even in a city as big as Cincinnati we couldn't find a Dodge dealer with an open service department. Our tow truck driver took us to Northgate Chrysler (plug intended) where salesman Herman Suyemoto took us under his wing, trying to find a rental car so we could get home.
Unfortunately, it was still Sunday, and two rental car agencies within sight of the dealership were closed. In fact, the only rental car agencies open in the city were at the airport, which was on the far side of the river, and a very expensive taxi ride away. Then, we were quoted $485 for a rental for four days!
Now, my daily driver is a minivan that's seen better days, and I've been dithering about buying something newer and smaller than the van but had not been able to reach a decision. So, I got the bright idea of buying a car off the back lot to drive home, and sell the van at leisure.
That sounds good, but Northgate is a big outfit, not like our local dealership that has a "back row" of good cheapies. The best used car deal they had around was a 2015 Nissan Altima with low mileage and a clean CarFax report at what stuck me as a fair price for a newer car than I'd intended but certainly fit my needs and price range.
Two hours later, with half a dead tree's worth of paperwork processed, we were on the road again. Thanks much, Herman, and the rest of the Sunday crew at Northgate!
A while ago I groused about the fact that my new lawnmower cost me half again as much as my car. That's not the case any longer!
The Altima has a couple of gadgets I haven't made up my mind whether I like or not, but that happens every time you buy a newer car these days. The gas mileage is good; the only car I ever had that was better was a VW Rabbit thirty years ago.
We'll have to go back down to Northgate in a few days to pick up my wife's car, which is being repaired there, but we can do that on a day trip. It appears to be something called a "crank sensor" which I had no idea the car even had, nor why it would have such a thing.
I suspect that between the basic costs of the weekend, the repair and pickup of her car and the new car, we wound up spending over $15,000 for the weekend, so I'd have to say we went well over budget, but probably at least partly to good effect.
We got home well after dark. We were so incredibly exhausted it wasn't funny, and the bed looked very good to us. As I write this on Monday morning, I'm still not recovered.
I can do without another weekend like that.
We have a racing friend who was going to be running in the Short Track National Championships at Bristol Motor Speedway in Eastern Tennessee. We've often wanted to see Bristol, since it's quite a place, and going down there would allow us to see it without a full-sized NASCAR crowd.
So, figuring that it might cost four or five hundred dollars, but also grateful for a weekend away from home, we hopped in the wife's car Friday and drove down there. It's about six hundred miles, and we were beat when we got to our motel -- we're getting too old for six hundred mile days, which proves that we're both getting older than we want to be.
Just for the sake of comparison, Michigan Stadium seats a little over a hundred thousand people. In football configuration, Bristol has seated a hundred and sixty thousand in a space not much larger than the Big House. They seat more race fans at the half-mile Bristol track than they do at the two-mile track at Michigan International Speedway. They call it "The Last Great Colosseum," and I think they got it right. I wouldn't want to guess how many race fans were there, but we hardly made a dent in the huge, echoing stadium. When the cars got going, they filled it with noise! When the big cars were running, the Super Late Models, they were lapping faster than the NASCAR types.
It's Bristol, baby! They could only get about half the cars in the infield,
but there was plenty of seating available in the stands!
but there was plenty of seating available in the stands!
Our young friend had some problems in the feature race, but he had the second fastest time in his class, lapping the place in a Dodge Neon at a pace well over a hundred miles an hour. While he would have liked to win, he says he got enough of a thrill just to be able to race in such a storied place.
If my wife and I were beat after our drive down there, it was even worse after an evening full of racing, We had things we needed to do on Sunday evening, so we got up early and got on the road. All went well until we got onto the heavy traffic on the bridge over the Ohio River in Cincinnati, when the car started to buck, snort and act up. We barely managed to get to an exit and rolled to a stop in the first place we could find. Our tow truck driver commented, "Boy, that bridge is one place you do NOT want to break down!"
Now, again, it was Sunday afternoon and even in a city as big as Cincinnati we couldn't find a Dodge dealer with an open service department. Our tow truck driver took us to Northgate Chrysler (plug intended) where salesman Herman Suyemoto took us under his wing, trying to find a rental car so we could get home.
Unfortunately, it was still Sunday, and two rental car agencies within sight of the dealership were closed. In fact, the only rental car agencies open in the city were at the airport, which was on the far side of the river, and a very expensive taxi ride away. Then, we were quoted $485 for a rental for four days!
Now, my daily driver is a minivan that's seen better days, and I've been dithering about buying something newer and smaller than the van but had not been able to reach a decision. So, I got the bright idea of buying a car off the back lot to drive home, and sell the van at leisure.
That sounds good, but Northgate is a big outfit, not like our local dealership that has a "back row" of good cheapies. The best used car deal they had around was a 2015 Nissan Altima with low mileage and a clean CarFax report at what stuck me as a fair price for a newer car than I'd intended but certainly fit my needs and price range.
I did not expect this as a souvenir of our Bristol trip!
Two hours later, with half a dead tree's worth of paperwork processed, we were on the road again. Thanks much, Herman, and the rest of the Sunday crew at Northgate!
A while ago I groused about the fact that my new lawnmower cost me half again as much as my car. That's not the case any longer!
The Altima has a couple of gadgets I haven't made up my mind whether I like or not, but that happens every time you buy a newer car these days. The gas mileage is good; the only car I ever had that was better was a VW Rabbit thirty years ago.
We'll have to go back down to Northgate in a few days to pick up my wife's car, which is being repaired there, but we can do that on a day trip. It appears to be something called a "crank sensor" which I had no idea the car even had, nor why it would have such a thing.
I suspect that between the basic costs of the weekend, the repair and pickup of her car and the new car, we wound up spending over $15,000 for the weekend, so I'd have to say we went well over budget, but probably at least partly to good effect.
We got home well after dark. We were so incredibly exhausted it wasn't funny, and the bed looked very good to us. As I write this on Monday morning, I'm still not recovered.
I can do without another weekend like that.
