Long nite at Daytona - Too long for me...

It was a long, long evening for the 400 mile NASCAR CUP race at Daytona last night. As you probably know from reading my posts on here, I TiVo (DVR recorder) all TV shows that I watch and watch nothing live.

I was all set for last evening, even planning for TNT doing its version of inline commercials vice taking commercial breaks during the race. I checked the weather down in Daytona about an hour before the race and the radar didn't look too promising. When it was time for the race to begin, I actually turned it on live and saw the rain, wet track and pits.

It always takes about an hour minimum to dry a track, even when the sun pops back out. Since this was around sunset, it was obvious that ol' Sol wasn't going to provide any assistance in track drying.

After pondering my situation, I decided to watch the NetFlix movie that I needed to mail back. So I fired up the flick, a comedy called 'Saving Grace' as I recall. About folks raising marijuana to get outta debt. Decent flick with some laughs and a happy ending, the kind I like. Not much thinking nor grinding of teeth required, just lay back and watch what's happenin'.

When the flick ended, I was 35 minutes behind real time for the race (I was watching the start, the race had already been running for 35 minutes). I must say that it was an eventful race, especially for a restrictor plate race at Daytona. The implementation of the rear spoiler vice the rear wing and a restrictor plate with larger openings, allowed much more 'git up and go' than any since the advent of restrictor plates at Daytona. And drivers were getting into trouble on the track faster than the camera could keep up with 'em.

I was doing pretty good at staying awake, but pretty soon it was after 11PM and about my bedtime. There was still quite a bit of racing to go and I knew I wouldn't stay awake for the whole thing. So, I changed the recording duration to add a few extra hours to carry it about 120 minutes beyond the projected end of the race; and hit the sack.

After my normal wake up stuff this morning, I made sure I didn't find out who won the race and made my way to the TV/TiVo and fired 'er up. To make a long, long story short, it took me about an hour to get thru to the end of the race. That included fast forwarding thru several caution periods and an extended red flag period to clean up a crash. Crashes can be fun for the viewer as you can see in the top foto, but I quickly become bored with the stand-still atmosphere and the incessant interviews TV broadcasters use to fill the down time and zoomed thru them.

My NASCAR fantasy picks didn't do too well at this race, but I was glad to see Kevin Harvick come out the winner, even tho about 60 percent of the cars were boogered up from accidents. So yes it was a long, drawn out race telecast, but I made it through with no injuries, even if it was 8:30 the next morning. :-)

JD

PS - Daytona Speedway owners plan to completely redo (graphics here) the 2.5 mile track surface between now and February's Daytona 500. Tremendous amount of work and lord only knows what the racing will be like with a silky smooth track, probably even crazier than this one. :-)

PPS - Give thanks that we can celebrate Independence Day today. It's important we don't forget the freedoms we have and let someone take them from us.