How to Become a Redneck

Step One: Move to Colorado.

Check

Step Two: Get tickets to a car race.

Check (thanks, Ryan!)

Step Three: Inhale massive amount of jet-fuel exhaust.

Check

Repeat as Needed.

This is actually the story of our 4th of July this year. We were calling around to our friends in the area to see if any of them wanted to celebrate the 4th together when Ryan Mair, a buddy of Dan's from high school, told us that he had tickets for a drag-race that he could not use, and we could have. Sweet action. Free activity, plus fireworks.

So we loaded up in the Jeep and headed off to the race track. First, let me show you something. This is a little map of the Denver area with three points of interest highlighted. Our house, the Speedway and a little town called Fort Lupton. Take a look. 

So here is the story - We got these tickets and had no idea where the Speedway was. So, being the resourceful folks we are, we looked at the back of the tickets to see if there was any info there. What we saw was an advertisement from a car dealership that was giving away free baseball caps to people with tickets to the event. Sweet, we thought. There was also an address listed. In Fort Lupton. Sweet, we thought. We programed Fort Lupton into our handy-dandy GPS and off we went. 

It was a nice drive. We had a good conversation, laughed a lot, and were completely non-stressed because we left 3 hours before the show was really supposed to get started. We got to Fort Lupton, and started looking for signs to the Bandimere Speedway. No dice. The address on the ticket took us to a car dealership alright, but they were closed for the 4th. Hmm.

So we stop at a gas station and ask for directions. "Could you tell me how to get to the Bandimere Speedway from here?" Dan asks the lovely lady behind the counter. "Umm, to where?" the lovely lady replies. Bad sign. "You know, the Speedway, for drag racing." "Oh. Um, lets ask Jr. over here. Junior! You know how to get to Bandimere Speedway?" Junior screws up his greasy face as he thinks. "Yeah, but I couldn't tell you." Also a bad sign. Junior calls his buddy, who proceeds to give us instructions that include 3 different freeways. Last very bad sign.

Turns out, if you would refer to the map above, Bandimere Speedway is NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE to Fort Lupton. 70 miles not close, to be exact. What on earth a little po-dunk car dealership is doing advertising a hat give-away on the back of tickets for an event in Metro-Denver is beyond me. What is even harder to understand is how Dana and Dan, both being educated persons, could take of to parts unknown without even getting the address in the first place.

So yeah, we laughed at ourselves a lot. We got the address from Junior's buddy, plugged the CORRECT address into the GPS, and drove BACK down the freeway towards Bandimere. Good thing we left so early, eh?

Alright, so that was the pre-adventure. The races themselves were pretty cool. They had all sorts of classifications of cars racing, from street legal dragsters to jet cars. That's right. Jet cars.

Here are some photos.

Easily the fastest Corvette on the planet. Dan was green with envy. Or maybe that was the jet exhaust. . .

When these things fire up, your heart literally stopped. It was cool though, because they had jet-ambulances to take us all to the hospital. OK, so what really happened is that the pulse from the engines hit you in the chest like a fist. Pretty cool.

 This is Dana being responsible and protecting her hearing. 

For this picture she was much less responsible. She sacrificed the hearing in her right ear to get this picture. Totally worth it, wouldn't you say? Huh? What did you say? WHAT?

The fastest of them reached 282 miles per hour in a quarter mile. Awesome. That would make Dana's commute last like 3 minutes. 

After the cars came the fireworks,which were a little different but very good, and were accompanied by an inter-faith choir. They were not exactly bad, but they weren't Mo Tab either. Mormons are spoiled when it comes to choirs. It didn't help that they sang a lot of unknown songs. Oh well. Thanks to Ryan, we had a great time at the races, saw some awesome cars, became candidates for lung disease and hearing loss. Oh yeah, and got an unintended tour of Fort Lupton. Thats what I call a great 4th of July.