THE RACE AT VADA'S HOUSE

vada

What kind of day is this? I woke up early to fog and rain, a good feeling. It seems like I hit the ground running this morning. I'd hoped to be home all day Monday, not drive to town for any reason. This morning I put the last catfood down for Caterpillar and the donkeys are close to out of carrots. On the phone to make appointments I don't want to deal with. Write checks to pay bills and drop four of them off in town, get gas, probably stop at Subway for a sub and drive home completely exhausted, flop down on the bed and sleep for four hours, wake up just as it's getting dark and think it's morning in early light, then lie in bed waiting to see if the sky goes lighter or darker. This is what I'm facing the morning of a day I wanted to stay home, write to you, sleep, read, make a little progress on an art project. A day of watching the clock when I want to forget the clock. Now I want to get this written before going to town, which will put me in town just as everybody is getting off work. Because I can't stand to go any earlier, because I'll lose the day if I go too early. I'll get this written, go to town, do what needs to be done and return in the rain and fog, carry bags of packaging and food, drop them on the kitchen table for later and take a nap, Caterpillar under foot, saying, Welcome home. But now I'm feeling pushed, rushed, scheduled, the world of money out there calling for mine. They don't just ask you for the money anymore. You get a threat with the bill warning they'll wreck your life and have a good time doing it if you don't pay NOW. I went out with carrots to see the donkeys. They were in shed out of the rain and wet. Their coats were wet, their manes wet. I took camera to get some pictures of donkeys in fog, to distract self from mind that was driving me nuts reviewing the growing list of things to do today, none of which I want to do. This is why I come home from town exhausted, a couple hours of involvement in activity that bores me out of my mind. It's a boredom similar to sitting in the laundromat for two hours looking at a People magazine that's three years old, reading every word on every page in horror that this is the world I live in where tv celebs are the focus of attention, people who, without a script, are just like the rest of us. 

vada's tattoo

Yesterday was race day, Watkins Glen, a track I'd rather hear on the radio than watch. I like all-out race on an oval track the best. The track there is a formula-one track, the reason I don't have much interest in that kind of racing. Instead of cultivated European taste, I have American redneck taste when it comes to car racing. I like to see them going 200mph where they are the same as driving on the slickest ice there is. I see the ice when one loses traction and hits the brakes. The car slides so far it is almost inevitable it will hit a wall or another car before it stops. When they go off into the grass, it seems like the grass makes them go faster. I don't glory in wrecks. The race itself is what I watch. I like to see a good race. We listened to most of it on the radio in the basement while it played on the tv upstairs. None of us cares much for the W-G track. Yet, after a big wreck that stopped the race for an hour and a half repairing destroyed guardrails, the race was on when the race began again with not many laps to go. A caution at five laps. The guys out front were itching to go. Four of them at least were determined to be number one. They were a joy to watch. The four of them actually battled it out, using every strategy and trick they knew to get around somebody and to block somebody from passing. Consider that all these drivers are really good at getting around a driver who is good at blocking, and good at blocking somebody good at passing. They were banging sides like at Martinsville. Allmandinger held onto the front, holding off the two behind him wanting to get by. He worked for his win. They all do, every time. This time, I saw him in my mind's eye attempting to push the gas pedal through the floor, standing on it, driving on ice with two wanting to pass. For somebody like me, who really likes a good race, the last laps of the race satisfied my fascination for a good race in abundance. In victory lane when Allmandinger was being interviewed, his mind was going faster than he could talk. He was revved. He spoke in phrases leaving out everything in between. It seemed like what the Chinese language must be like without verbs. 

by vada

A wreck happened so spectacular they showed it at least twenty times. It is tattooed to the inside of my skull. Neither driver, nor any others, was hurt. They crawled out of the wrecks like emerging from a barrel they'd just survived a dive over Niagara Falls in. The part that held my attention was the first car to hit the guardrail after losing traction from contact with another car. The guardrail pitched it back onto the track spinning around. Cars were getting banged up slipping around the spinning car out of control. By way of a tiny window of chance, a thousandth of a second window, the left rear wheel of the spinning car hit the right rear wheel of a passing car. The entire axle housing acted like a hammer hitting a nail. It knocked the axle housing out from under the other car the same as driving a nail. The impact threw the second car backwards into the opposite guardrail taking away the entire back half of the car, everything behind the driver gone. He crawled out his window ok. And the day before, Tony Stewart had his grave misfortune. Stewart is being judged every which way, esp the most dramatic and exciting, murder. I saw video. The guy hit the wall, was out of the race. He blamed Tony Stewart. The driver crawled out of his car on the race track, the number one no-no for drivers. Unless it's burning, they are instructed to stay in the car. It is, after all, a race track, not a good place for pedestrians. He was shaking his fist at Tony's next time around, and it looked to me like he stepped in front of Stewart, raising all kinds of hell, cussing him, the kind of behavior that gets a man killed. Whoops. This will be on Tony Stewart's name from now on in the Nascar record book. It will torment his heart the rest of his life. Kevin Ward, Jr, dead, his soul is off to the next whatever it is. He's feeling no pain. He's in bliss. Tony has a lifetime of suffering ahead of him. This is one of the reasons I pray never, by freak of chance, to kill somebody. It's hard enough for me when I run over a coon or possum or cat that ran under a tire too fast for me to respond. When I see kids playing near a road, I pay close attention, knowing how heedless kids can be from inexperience in this world.

grumpy old bastard with lollipop

by vada

Baby friend Vada charms me. I walk in the door, looking like Charles Bukowski drunk with white hair, and she ran to me, wanted me to pick her up, and we hugged and hugged. She said, Daddy said it was Melvin. I said, You were surprised, weren't you. She nodded her head. We talked about the panda on her tshirt. She wanted me to see her Scooby-doo candy dispenser. It had this little cartoon head on it. I didn't know who or what it was. It looked like a character based in a Chihuahua. I said, Is that Speedy Gonzales, knowing she had never heard of him and this toy was not him. She shook her head. Scooby-doo. I said, Hi Scooby-doo. I gave her a lollipop I'd found at a convenience store where I stopped for gas. Melvin arrived a little later, and she ran to him and wallered Melvin like she did me. Melvin with a child becomes a child. I enjoy seeing Melvin and Vada interact. Makes me want to be more spontaneous and free with a child. But if I were the same as Melvin, then I wouldn't be me. Vada wanted to use my camera I'd brought to get pictures of her with. She took several of me. I don't often look in a mirror, so when I do, it's a shock. I haven't shaved or cut my hair in weeks. I'm comfortable at home and never think of what I look like someplace else. Vada's pictures woke me up. Worse than a mirror. We look at mirrors subjectively, photos of ourselves objectively. I think of Snow White. She asks the mirror who is fairest of them all. "It's you, Snow White." In front of a mirror, we're Snow White. It's the opposite when we see photos of ourselves. I got one picture of Crystal I thought the best picture I've ever made of her. I showed it to her in the camera, saying this is the best one. She shrieked in horror. "It's AWFUL!!! I better not see this on facebook," and shook her fist in my face. I said, "Is that the best threat you've got?" It's not necessarily a "good" picture, but I like the spirit in it. She said, "What was I doing?" I said, "Saying cheese." It's what she was doing. It was kind of a mock pose like Vada will do when she's done having her picture taken and sticks out her tongue. I still like the image. Thought I'd put it here. This isn't facebook. 

crystal

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TONY STEWART WINS HOMESTEAD 2011

 pedal to the metal

changing tires 

carl edwards laying rubber

tony stewart leader of the pack

tony stewart a'layin it to it

tony stewart as seen by carl edwards

The race at Homestead, Florida, today I had to say was the best race I've ever watched. If it isn't, I don't remember being this satisfied by a race, ever. Tony Stewart's was a win by the best driver and the best car in the race. I like it when it works out like that. One car touched the wall at the end of a turn and lost it, smoked his tires, all the cars were able to avoid him smoking his way down the bank of the track. Another time somebody lost it pretty bad, but was the only car hurt in the incident. So much smoke from the braking tires at 150 mph the car is enveloped and out of sight in the cloud of white smoke. Somebody lost a transmission. That was it for the mistakes. The rest of it was a clean run that was all the drivers going all out. It was a good track with fairly predictable handling for the drivers. It wasn't like a desert track that is hot while the sun is on it and cold when the sun sets, changing driving conditions considerably. The Homestead track didn't seem to have any eccentricities. Yes it did. It had the outside of the track banked good on turns while the inside of the track wasn't banked well. They could go faster riding the wall around a turn. 

It was a thrill to watch Tony Stewart take charge of that race. He started off good, then something from possibly the blown transmission hit his grille, but fortunately didn't get the radiator. That set him back from about 5th place to 40th. He worked his way up to 2nd place. A yellow flag put him back to 5th place. He came out of pit stops a few places back from going in, but he came out aggressive and took charge passing cars like a drunk on an interstate. First time, I think he came out 7th and in one lap was up to third. Last time, I think he came out of the pit 5th and ran right up to first and showed Carl Stewart his ass end for the rest of the race. It was true sport watching Stewart and Edwards giving it all they had. It was their race from the start. Predictions were that it would be their race. But chance has a way of changing things, so the predictions were cautious. Right away in the race it became clear that it was their race. A few other cars would join them after a yellow flag, but when the race was on, Tony Stewart was passing cars. If I remember correctly, and I don't, I think the announcer said at the end that he'd passed 76 cars in the course of the race. 

Toward the end, the last 50 or so laps, it was an all out run between Edwards and Stewart giving it everything, trying to push the gas pedal through the floorboard. It even felt frustrating watching Edwards behind Stewart, unable to gain more than half a second on Stewart's second and a half lead. They paced the pack and had to pass the cars that wouldn't give them the upper lane of the track. They went through the back of the pack so it started looking like they might take the lead a second time. Edwards was back there going with everything he had and Stewart simply outran him. Both of them outran everybody else such that the cameras were on them the whole second half of the race. They didn't run any in-car cameras today. The cameras around the track at Homestead weren't inventive like some of them where you have odd and interesting angles. The photography at Homestead was standard race photography. It was good. I've no complaints. Odd to see palm trees with winter coming on.

I loved watching Tony Stewart. There was a time it looked like Carl Edwards would be unbeatable. He stayed in the front and led the pack a large number of times, making points like crazy. Stewart could have outpointed him if they'd given points for cars passed. I've never paid much attention to any particular drivers. About half the drivers' names are familiar, and half not. I don't pay attention to them so much as I just like to watch the cars run. I don't care who wins. I want the best driver in the race to win. I like a good run like today with no wrecks, no pileups of 15 and 20 cars, no end over end rolling down the track and sliding for half a mile on its top in the grass. None of that. Just a good, solid race. I love a good race. I started pulling for Stewart in the last half of the race when he had already shown he aimed to win this race. Edwards stayed out in front while Stewart was set back several times, and every time came right back to the challenging position. I saw him make one pass that would take your breath if you were in the car with him. He had perfect command of his steering wheel throughout the race. He never made a mistake. His car was in perfect running order. 

I had the impression that Stewart's car and Edwards' car were equals. At the end, Carl Edwards had a mic pushed into his face as soon as he emerged from the car's side window. He told it straight. He was simply outrun. He mentioned Stewart's strategies, which I didn't know what they were, but he did. He noted the strategies Stewart used with more emphasis than the car being faster. Stewart out maneuvered him. Once Stewart got himself in front of Edwards, he just never let Edwards catch up. If Edwards could have gone any faster, I don't believe Stewart could have. It looked like they were both running as fast as they were able to make their cars go. All Edwards could hope for was a mistake from the driver in front of him, who hadn't made any mistakes and wasn't likely to. He didn't. He won the race fair and square as a race can be won. Carl Edwards couldn't do anything but concede, he got beat. It was a tough one for him to gulp down, the big race for hot dog of the year, and he almost had it. Stewart pulled over to the Victory stand and Edwards stuck his head in the window and they had some good words, you could see on their faces. 

Tony Stewart made $10,000 by taking a drink from a Coke bottle handed to him after he squeezed out the window. People above showering orange Gatorade on him, a steady flow of it while Stewart and announcer with mic are talking. Then it started raining and the shower changed from orange to silver. They were already soaked, so they continued to talk in the rain. Stewart was wildly jacked up after all those hours of intense concentration. He said, "I'll be up all night!" He'd won the race, won the championship. He'd performed several hours of flawless driving, making moves easily that were dare-devil moves. He said while they were on a break during rain that he had nothing to lose. If he loses the race he still comes out second in the championship. So he went all the way, took chances he might not otherwise take. The announcer said several times, "he's on a mission." When it was over, the announcer continued to repeat this was the best race he'd ever seen, speaking my exact words. I loved this race like no other I've ever seen. I might call it the perfect race because it was nothing but a race, an all-out race from the first green flag to the checkered. 

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