This never gets old

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZa7hU6tP_s

Indy car racing rocks

I took the boys Saturday to the Indy car race at Texas Motor Freeway. There were 73,000 people there, although it's hard to know that because the seating area stretches for like a half mile.
It was a relatively upscale crowd compared to what I’ve heard about NASCAR fans, with the females often flashing people all over the place and lots of overall redneck behavior. I don’t think I’d want to subject the kids to that. (Even though I saw a lot of that as a kid at 1970s-era Texas chili cookoffs!)
Those NASCAR events draw like 250,000 people, and it practically takes days to get in and out of the parking lot. Plus, you wind up parking literally miles away from the track. So I think I’ll pass on that and maybe hit the Indy race again next year. What was great is that they divided it into two races, with the same drivers. They just switched up poll positions. It all counted toward points and standings on the Indy circuit, kind of like NASCAR does. Danica Patrick and all that were there.
The first race was over in an hour. That was plenty, and we were out of there and swimming in the hotel pool by the time the second race started. I imagine it took awhile for people to get out of there. Their cars go WAY FASTER than NASCAR vehicles.
NASCAR cars are capable of going about 215 but usually travel below 200 in a race. The Indy cars AVERAGED around 212 during this particular race, and they go so fast that you can hardly pick out the number on the car as it zooms by. The sound is indescribable and just gets into your bones.
Most people wear earplugs for protection, but unlike a lot of other really loud, eardrum-damaging things for which you use earplugs, you kind of want to listen to the race at full volume because it’s such an adrenaline rush to do so.

Pat and the Assault on Pinewood

Only the post-Hurricane Ike effort generated a greater physical, mental and emotional challenge for me.
I arrived at our former Pinewood home to find the place filthy and in disrepair. We love that house, which has a charming set of bones and soul. There is just something great about waking up to the sound of hooting owls, seeing deer standing in the front yard and experiencing Pinewood in general.
Taking a first look at the empty house (or mostly empty due to a bunch of debris the tenant left behind), it was rather heartbreaking and demoralizing to see all that needed to be done to get it ready for the market. This is MY house, and it had been victimized.
There was little in the way of structural damage, but it was just messy, as underscored by a full load of unwashed stuff in the dishwasher.
But the crowning example of the home's brief lowpoint was discovered in one of the boy's former bedrooms.
There, sitting on a closet shelf, was a evil baby doll, crawling with clawed hands and bearing a mouth full of fangs. It was a shocking moment.
I wanted nothing to do with this thing and left it for the cleaning crew to remove. A photo of it was posted on Facebook, which drew a demand from the copy desk to bring it to work. I obliged.
Yesterday, hijinks ensued when we stuck it in front of the CBS19 cam in the newsroom. They quickly posted the image on Facebook, and it became a mini-viral splash.
The copy editor who has adopted the baby has named it "Pat" due to gender uncertainty. (Remember Pat from Saturday Night Live?)
Our Pinewood home has been made whole again thanks to contractors, a cleaning crew and lots of my own hard work. And the abandoned Pat now lives under the copy desk.
Long live Pat!