Danica Patrick deserves the attention?

I know that this is kinda late, yet it still holds true two days after the Indy 500. All anybody hears about from the race is that Danica finished fourth and some guy named Wheldon won the thing.

It sure seems that the media is making sure that we know that Danica was the first woman to lead laps at Indy, yet is that worth the attention? The media also makes sure that we know that she has now recorded the highest finish ever for a woman in the 500. Does it make it right that she deserves more attention and media status than the guy who took the checkers first? I think not.

Dan Wheldon must be happy that some of the media eye isn't square on him after the 500 win, but why do the headlines read Danica finishes 4th and Wheldon wins? Honestly, Considering the absence of a dominant woman driver in any top series in the US and abroad the media has to find the first one who does well. Unfortunately they are making Danica look worse than Dale Earnhardt Jr in media bias and coverage tilt last sunday.

NASCAR fans should take note and be happy that the Junior Bias is where it is, because it could be much much worse. Wait until Danica suceeds and wants another test of endurance or skill which could take her to either Monaco or Daytona.

Reflections on an evening

As I reflect on what made this day so special, the sacrifice of the men and women who helped keep this great nation, my eyes wander back to my post from last evening and see that that wasn't what those men and women were fighting over.

The bickering, infighting, and all out whining that myself and many others have done the past two days goes and shows myself that we all need reality checks on days like today. Today is the day we reflect upon the lost sons and daughters of families in the name of freedom. Yet we as Americans are too wrapped up in what has happened in our own little world to realise how much of our lives should be dedicated to the veterans of the wars of the past and the sacrifices that they have made.

I find it so interesting how much of the nations attentions can be diverted from current events when tragedy strikes. The nation comes together in times of crisis so well, yet divulges on its own separate ways so easily its frightening. I just hope that events of the past don't need to be repeated to unite a country for one common cause.

I ask that every one of us remember those who have lost their lives and reflect on what the real reason is that we can experience what we have on this Memorial Day 2005.

The Worst Race in NEXTEL Cup History

As the title says, The past race which was known as the Coca Cola 600 has been the worst race I have ever seen, ever. I've watched races since 1990 on a regular basis and this has to have been the worst one ever.

22 count em 22 yellow flags 1 red flag and over 5 hours to run a 600 mile race. There are so many cars that have wrecked, spun out, blown tires, debris cautions for what is supposed to be a show where the stars shine over a long race and these guys have driven like a sprint race.

The kicker to the race being that the 48 car winning a race he didn't deserve to win, his car wasn't even a car that could run in the top 5 but ended up being upfront when it counted.

The race ended with a great finish, but I will remember it always for the 22 yellows the red flag and a race that lasted 5 hours and 24 minutes.

Maybe I'm pissed cause Vickers took Elliott out and Kasey had tire troubles but the race was just one of the worst races I have ever witnessed. This race makes me ashamed to be a NASCAR member.

Boredom sets in

I didn't feel like updating, but for some reason I am anyway. Only 1 more week until I'm off academic probabtion, a whole day off on Monday, The Busch race tonight and speed street down in Charlotte and I'm still bored. hmm I must need to get out more. Nothing has interested me lately and I don't know why. Hopefully next week will bring some excitement back into my life. I sure hope it does.

hopefully the Busch race won't turn out like I think it might, with caution after caution after caution. I don't see a regular Busch driver winning the race and there will only be 1 or two regular Busch drivers up into the top 10.

Oh I guess I do have something really cool to look forward too. My parents visit next week, yet I have no clue what to show them or what to do while they are down here! I guess I'll just be like you go off and do your own thing and I'll tell ya the places to go.

The Hall of Fame belongs here!

With all the bantering about, and cities pushing about trying to get funds to build a Hall of Fame that would be a financial boost to the city. Charlotte has been an obvious choice considering how much of the sport has grown up here. Being here for my First Coke 600 and seeing the All*Star race last weekend all I can say is that this place deserves the Hall of Fame. What other town shuts down its main drag through Downtown to have one big block party for the race. Maybe I'm starting to get the hometown bias, but seeing all the tourists and people on tours through the School the past two weeks has made me aware of how big the sport has become and how big of an impact it has on the community.

On a side note, Its the weekend! Whoofreakinhoo!

Ouch

Today, I got to remember how it felt on Sunday's for the past 4 years again, and its pissing me off. Stupid knee's and their pain factor. I probably should go see somebody about that. I dunno its only after days of really strenuous up and down actions and being on my knee's a lot. grrr.

Yay for Cup qualifying tonight for the Coke 600, and only tomorrow to go until the weekend! I'm so psyched for the racing action this weekend. This is a racefan's dream weekend, I'm sure looking forward to it. Another day closer to being out of this phase and another day closer to graduation.

Blah!

Today was the most boring day I have had at School ever. I spent a good three and a half hours doing absolutly nothing! I'm happy cause I got maximum points on the lab that we did today, but damn I really wish that it wouldn't have been as easy as it was. Stupid Electronics classes, I'm tired of looking a schematics and telling people what is wrong with em. I wanna work on racecars! Only 9 more weeks Bill, 9 more weeks.

Ever have one of those days?

One of those days where you just wanted everybody to go away and you could have the day all to yourself? I wish that today was like that. It would have been so nice to have crawled back into bed this morning and slept all day. Thankfully I didn't have work today, it wouldn't have been fun at all.

I have spent most of the day evaluating why I do what I do, much fun if you ask me. And as I listen to Jim Morrison and The Doors, it makes me think about what I have done with myself, and where I take myself, I'm pretty happy about where I'm going with my life.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something else to rant about. I reall do hope so, cause I liked doing what I did yesterday, that felt really good.

All*Star races are for All Stars!

Most of you have seen or heard or read my opinions on what, happened with the fan vote of getting into the All*Star race meant on Saturday. I didn't talk about this yesterday well because I was psyched about what I had seen and experienced on Saturday night. But I feel like ranting here and giving you guys an opinion about something.

Martin Truex, for what his car and team were on Saturday night weren't much more than glorified field fillers, picking up information, and more importantly cash for DEI on Saturday night. Before you guys go flying off look at some facts. The All*Star race paid about as much to start as any normal Cup event does, somewhere in the 70,000 dollar range. That sure isn't a raw deal for only running 90 laps of competition. Why else would teams enter cars, like the one entered for Boris Said, if 1. they weren't there to try to gain experience in the series, 2. earn some cash that doesn't involve all the hustle and length of a normal Cup show, and 3. why wouldn't a team enter a car so they can gain valuable notes for the Coca Cola 600. All three of those things aren't the right reasons to have a car entered into an event that is supposed to be about stars now is it? So why was he allowed to race? Well because Jr Nation and Truex Nation felt the need that Martin had some unforseen talent and deserved a chance at the All*Star event before he entered his first full season in the Cup series. Why? Because they Front loaded his schedule with races to make sure that he could be in the top 50 in points and almost be a lock to win the Fan vote.

Unfortunately, most NASCAR fans aren't that upset with the deal, because well the majority voted for Martin to be in the show in the first place, so why be upset about it? Well to have a guy who is in the AAA series come and be apart of the Major League All*Star event it just doesn't make sense now does it. So what did NASCAR do wrong? First off by allowing the top 50 to be eligible they open themselves up to too many part time teams with nothing more than the intent to gain information for their respective teams. These cars become glorified field fillers, since well they may run well but they aren't running for points so if something breaks or something happens these teams load up and go home. Not the kinda thing anybody is used to in NASCAR.

But what can NASCAR do about preventing this from happening in a future All*Star event? Fortunately this type of deal I don't see happening again in the near future, Truex seems to have a legion of fans that closely resemble those that love his DEI counterpart Dale Earnhardt Jr. He has two things going to get him in already, the DEI connection and the fact that he is the Busch Series champ didn't hurt some people with their votes either, its just too bad that he ended up taking a spot from a deserving guy who coulda done a lil better than the 22nd place effort that Martin ended up turning in.

Awesome!

What a night last night. The All*Star race was awesome, just awesome. I mean from what you guys saw on TV was just as cool in person, just without instant replay. Damn you Nextel Vision for pointing your Tv towards turn 4 and not the front stretch. It was Chris' first Cup race so it was a whole lot of fun showing him around all the souvineer trailers and all that. I was suprised that Traffic wasn't fun, but it wasn't a complete pain in the ass either. It only took an hour to get out of the racetrack, which I had heard stories of two or three hours to get outta there. Bought me a All*Star event T Shirt, which is really cool, and I get to wear it to school tomorrow!

Just got done watching the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco, which is just an awesome race, I so wanna go there. I hope I can get some money together soon and maybe get the opportunity to go to the F1 race at Indy soon!

All*Star race here I come

Whoohoo, I gots me seats to the All*Star race tomorrow night, and taking my buddy Chris with me to the show. Can't wait for tomorrow. Can't wait for the race on saturday night and the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco on Sunday morning, what a great weekend of racing coming up! School was good, Monday we celebrate NASCAR Day, which really was today, but the weather was kinda nasty and the forecast yesterday wasn't great so they make us wait until monday for the whole deal. Tuesday the school hosts the Clevite Engine Builders Challenge, which'll be a cool event that I'm gonna have to go see. This whole week is gonna be action packed with all the tourists and racefans in for all the racing action.

200 page views!

Whoohoo up and over 200 page views for this handy dandy little website. Pretty cool considering you peeps seem to wanna read about what I did during the day. Hopefully tonight I'll be buying tickets to the All*Star race on saturday (if there are any frontstretch tickets left). and getting ready for a great weekend. I can already tell tomorrow is gonna be a pain at work, just from the stuff we did today, and the fact that all the former help I believe isn't going to be there. Just means more work and more pay for me, which at the moment is all I'm thinking about. Almost the weekend and I am psyched! Whoohooo!

So this pimping thing works

Wow I actually made some money from pimping my site out yesterday, which is pretty cool. So I wonder if I could get everybody who visits to click on one ad every day they visit, and see what would happen if that were to happen. Its a dream but it would be pretty cool to see how much money you could make from doing this.

Okay, onto what everybody reads about, my day! Today kicked some major ass, I kinda got my job back, which it turns out I never really lost it, they just decided to scale some hours back, so right now I get to work Monday's Wednesdays and Fridays at the Matteress place, and I can still go out and put rods in the fire as far as raceteam work is concerned. So I still get to work where I like working, and they may get me back to monday through friday work soon, which would be really nice. I'm just happy that I still have a job. I might also be lucky enough to get to go to the Allstar race this weekend, which would be really cool!

Pimping was easy!

So atleast for now, or until I get tired of looking over at the google ads from here, I put up some ads to see if I can make a lil money off this little thing. I doubt it will be more than pennies, but anything is better than nothing. I'm hoping that I can get some other really cool things done in the next couple of days, and have been learning about some really really out there topics at school the past two days. The job search has been okay, today has been better than yesterday, hopefully I can get some good leads and get some part time work again soon. As Doug Ladd says 'Pimping is easy'

Job Search

Well the job hunt hasn't gone off so well as I had hoped for today, with a bunch of phone calls and applications that haven't shown a whole lot of promise. I'm still kinda hoping that I can get my old job back, but I have to say that they aren't going to get busy anytime soon. This sucks, Im tired and don't have the money to put any extra miles on my car right now, so I'm kinda stuck here until I can go get my last check this week, which pisses me off. Oh well I'll survive and be better because of it, so I can't get too down. Wish me luck folks!

Sunday's

Well I spent most of today talking to Amanda, a really cool friend from Canada, and watching Indy 500 Pole qualifying. I've been going to random Job search websites in attempts to see what work is out here in charlotte, much to my dismay there isn't a whole lot of work out here at the moment.
Hopefully things will turn around and get better soon in the job market, I need to get me a job really soon, tomorrow will be a long day between school and running around turning in job applications.

A question for ya'll

Well most people know my experience, or well some of you know, But for the past 4 years I have worked for a NASCAR Weekly/NASCAR Autozone Elite Division raceteam, being a licenced NASCAR member since 2001. Our races have always been on saturday nights and with this month carrying Night NASCAR Nextel Cup races it brings up the question of how many people actually don't go to their short tracks and stay home and watch the Cup stars.

Its a big problem for the short track promoters, who need all the fans they can get, just so they can make their drivers and crews happy with payouts and the way the shows run. But fans seem to be dwindling and car counts keep falling across the country it seems, and local asphalt and even dirt track racing seems to be in danger of falling off the map. Many place the blame on the fact that the Cup guys divert attention from the short track drivers.

Personally, this couldn't be farther from the truth. Short track operators are the only ones to blame, from letting facilities degrade to high prices to having shows that last upwards of 5 or 6 hours. It seems that everything that would be needed to get people into the seats, popularity of racing and the ease of exposure that short track racing would be thriving, yet it seems to be in its sorriest state yet. Its unfortunate too how Racetracks seem to be failing and losing the ability to draw people into the grandstands everyday. So do you think that the Short tracks of America have a problem? or does NASCAR racing on saturday nights really have that much of an effect on the crowds at racetracks? feel free to comment and post your opinions on the subject or send me an Email with your opinions.

Crap

Oh man today had the best of the best in it and today was the worst of the worst now. We'll start with the good stuff because I'm still happy about that and its helping me get through today.

Well Today was End of Phase for my Automatic Transmissions class, the Day where we all decide whether we move onto a different class or not. Well I figured that this would be my hardest class to get through before starting on the NASCAR stuff, and well I kicked the End Phase test's butt. a 27 out of 30 on the Lab test and 20 out of 20 on the Written test portion. I ended up with a 96 % average and should have raised my GPA up to 3.89 or 3.90 now. And I made it through the class without missing any time so I must say that I am really really happy about that.

Now onto the Bad News, Today at work I should have known something was gonna be up when my friend there told me that they might be talking to me about something, but I sure wasn't expecting what I got. Oh Bill, by the way we don't need you on Monday or at all this week. I knew that they were gonna cut back on some people's hours but they went and cleaned house, Every single part time person that worked there got fired this afternoon.

I have gone from jubilation to the frustrated stress of wondering how I'm going to pay my bills in about 3 hours. and not having tomorrow to litter the landscape with resume's isn't gonna help me, but maybe I should go and try to see what Busch Series/Nextel Cup teams would be interested in my services now.

Happy Days

So its Wednesday, Hump day, and I'm so glad that the weekend is coming up soon. So ready for this phase to be overwith in school, even though I like it so much, and be 3 weeks closer to graduation! Only 12 weeks until I get to start working on NASCAR Nextel Cup Cars! Whoohoo!

Hopefully I can survive and keep my 3.88 GPA at school after this phase, I'd really love to keep that good of one. plus get my attendance back up over 99% that's what I need to do now. Hopefully the end of the week will be as good as the beginning.

Freaking Sweet!

So as I told you my grandparents came into town today, and they left giving me a whole lot more than I expected, First off they paid for everything, even filled my car up with gas at my refusal. Second they bought me the Book NASCAR Chronicle, which has pictures and comentary on every single year of NASCAR Cup racing. Well I started joking around that if they were going to buy me a book that I could use a Desk for my computer, as well as a chair to get my laptop up off me while I'm using it. Lo and behold I get a desk and a chair from them. We go out to dinner, which they buy, while I asked them that I should pay they refused, and you don't mess with your grandparents. I have a lot of thanking to do today. This has been by far the best day of my year. Getting a desk and chair was something I had wanted for a long time its so nice to finally have it. Whoohoo!

Family

Well I'm so happy that I finally get to see some of my family, even if its only for a couple of hours tomorrow, but dang it, now I have to make my apartment all pretty. Oh well, I'm just glad that I get to see em again. It took me 8 months but now I'm finally homesick, and it really sucks!