What’s a widow to do after her husband of 30 years dies of cancer? Volunteer, play golf, quilt? Not me.
I motor home, and this time of the year usually finds me with a dear friend, Marti Hands, at Daytona International Speedway for the 24 Hours of Rolex.
No NASCAR presence on this weekend. The 500 is weeks away. No beer bellies or rednecks. Rather, it has been the cream of “open wheel” racing mixed with an emerging new world breed of owners and drivers.
The cars for this endurance race have varied from Audi, Porsches, Ferraris and Corvettes to the prototypes. These machines, as well as their drivers, have endured 24 hours of whatever Mother Nature and the other drivers have thrown in their paths. (This year it was an opossum, scooped up into an engine of a car, which survived to finish the race. Needless to say the opossum didn’t.)
And where have we fitted in? As fans we have arrived days early, parking the motorhome on the shores of Lake Lloyd smack in the infield of this famous raceway. All the comforts of home have supported our daily habits of watching races, visiting the garages, chatting up crews or owners and even walking the 31-degree banked track where the likes of Richard Petty, Mario Andretti and Paul Newman ran at speeds up to 200 mph.
We have mourned, with an owner, over the loss of his chances at winning due to a simple piece of fiberglass shredded from another car but acquired, unfortunately, by his. Some cute gal, by the name of Reba McEntire, has literally run into us. Jack Roush has given us the thumbs up, and Juan Pablo Montoya lived up to his reputation of being a horse’s patoot when it came to giving an autograph. Speaking of patoots, Scott Pruett certainly has a cute one. So does Dario Franchitti.
At the wine and cheese party, we have toasted to our favorite team, while Marti identified the make of a car, passing by, just by its sound. We have continued toasting during the evening hours, as we grilled at the campsite and watched the cars roar through the “bus stop.” Especially fun was watching Fox Sports channel at the rig, catching a car coming into the garage and running over there to view the crew swarming over car and driver. The next morning as we tried to down enough coffee to see the checkered flag, we have looked just as exhausted as the crews.
The winning team members get their Rolexes. We get our priceless memories of roaring through the “turn one tunnel” in a motorhome just to “endure” this special kind of racing.
Roberta ”Bert” Smoker has been a Tellico Village resident since 1995.
