I mentioned once before that I’m going to Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600 race weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway (May 23-25). I fly in on a Friday and then come back home to California the following Monday. This is my first time to NASCARolina and I want to make the most of it.

This is a great opportunity to soak up a lot of NASCAR history in one 3-day weekend. So I’ve made a short list of things I’d like to check out, how much of it that I’ll actually get to do remains to be seen.

1.) JR Motorsports - I think this goes without saying, there is no way I’m going to North Carolina without checking out Dale Earnhardt Jr’s race shop. Oh! And the JR Nation store! It’s a total and complete mecca for any Dale Jr. fan and I’ve gotta pick up a couple souvenirs.

2.) Dale Earnhardt Inc. - This is another no-brainer, I have to see the place people call the “garage mahal.” That and they’re open on Saturdays so I have time to spread out my stops.

3.) Whisky River - Dale Jr.’s new bar/club/music venue is now open and I really, really want to check it out for myself. Is anyone noticing a pattern here? I get in on Friday and so I’m thinking this would be a great place to go Friday night. If there are any girls like me (and Penni!) that are going to be in town for the race that weekend (or that live in the Charlotte area) we should all meet up and go out to Whisky River. I’m putting it out there ’cause going as a group is just 1.) smart and 2.) fun! It could be a total Fast and the Fabulous party. Hmm… If you’re interested just shoot me an email.

Oh and as a small side note that barely has anything to do with this, Natasha Bedingfield is going to be performing at Whisky River two days after I leave, so I’m sad I’m missing that. Her new CD “Pocketful of Sunshine” is great by the way, you should get it.

4.) Hendrick Motorsports Museum - They’re re-opening the museum to the public (for free!) after keeping it closed off for renovations. I just found out about this and it could be a cool thing to check out.

Check out Rick Hendrick’s first Chevrolet. Watch a dissected Impala SS “Car of Tomorrow” being pieced together. See the cars and memorabilia of Casey Mears, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

These are just a few things visitors can do now that Hendrick Motorsports has reopened its museum. The 15,000-square-foot facility, which was closed the last four months for renovations, pays tribute to nearly 25 seasons of Hendrick Motorsports history and offers fans the latest in team-related apparel and merchandise. Admission to the museum is free of charge.

“We are extremely proud of this museum, and we hope our fans will enjoy it,” team owner Rick Hendrick said. “We’ve had a lot of success and a lot of special moments over the years, and it’s humbling to reflect on that. But the one thing we always keep in mind is that it wouldn’t be possible without our fans’ support.”

And that’s all I’ve got so far. I know there are other race shops in the area of course but not all of them have stuff you can actually check out, but I’m definitely going to try to get in as much as possible.

If you have suggestions, feel free to post them!

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I take great exception with Shawn Courchesne at the Hartford Courant and his latest headline.

“Intimidator Spirit Lives in Kyle Busch, Not Dale Earnhardt Jr.”

That’s a load of bull.

Courchesne says this:

A cursory search of Youtube on Sunday evening would turn up a plethora of replays showing the two drivers making contact in the corner while fighting for the lead, Clint Bowyer going below both to take over the lead and Earnhardt spinning off toward the wall while Busch kept on going in second place.

Some of the titles on those videos?

“Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets screwed out of a win”

“Kyle Busch spins out Dale Jr. ON PURPPOSE”

It begs the question, when did Earnhardt Jr. become the biggest sympathy case of the Sprint Cup Series?

The answer is that he never did. People would say the same thing if Kyle had been the one to be spun out. I am a huge Dale Jr. fan and if it had been Denny Hamlin that was spun out I would say he got screwed too (and he actually was because of his blown tire).

There are always people out there that are going to take things to the extreme and always believe that everyone is out to get their driver. But I would like to believe that most people know that in this instance that wasn’t the case. He was screwed, but that’s a part of racing.

To say that Dale Jr. is becoming a charity case is absolutely ridiculous. To say that about any driver is insanity. We all know that no one is going to hand over a race to anyone and we wouldn’t expect them to do so. Dale, just like all of the drivers out there every weekend, is doing whatever he can to win.

Oh and Courchesne has this little nugget to add:

Earnhardt Jr. fits much more the mold of the average modern day Sprint Cup Series driver than his father ever did. Like so many of his contemporaries in the Sprint Cup Series today Junior seems much more marketing monster than hard nosed racer.

Using Dale’s popularity and marketing power against him is a weak way to go. If he’d never won a race he would of never had the ability to make those deals, and to say that he’s only about that (or imply it) is lame.

Ya know, maybe Kyle Busch does have a little bit of the Intimidator’s spirit in him, but Dale Jr. wouldn’t have been in the position to get spun out if he wasn’t a hard nosed racer in the first place.

So I was watching the final laps of the Dan Lowry 400 on Saturday pacing around the living room saying “come on Dale, come on Dale, come on Dale” over and over. If you saw me in those moments you would have thought I had obsessive compulsive disorder or something. I was trying to do all of those good visualization exercises they tell you do to, so I kept imagining Dale Earnhardt Jr. in victory lane.

And then he was wrecked.

It was so disgusting and I couldn’t believe it, like I seriously couldn’t believe it was happening. Two years, seventy-one races and it was so close and then gone just like that.

I think I used every curse word in the book, including that one particular word involving someones mother. I said it over and over and over and over again.

I am a rational person and I understand that that’s the way it goes in racing sometimes, but it doesn’t lessen the hurt. That was absolutely heartbreaking and if you saw Dale’s post-race interview you could hear it in his words and see it in his face. It’s one thing to come close and then maybe finish 2nd or 3rd, but he had to finish 15th with a car that should have won.

I don’t want to talk about Kyle Busch. I am so done with him, so done, it’s so over.

And then Denny Hamlin leads the most laps and ends up 24th, that sucks, but uh, what was up with staying out on the track and causing the caution??? He knew he had a tire down and he waited out there until the caution came out to go down pit road. That doesn’t sit well with me; I didn’t like that at all.

On the other hand I wasn’t sad to see Clint Bowyer win the second race of his career. He’s a good guy and I like him. It’s a great win for him and Childress Racing. If only Mark Martin could have passed Kyle for second place, that would have been awesome, at that point I was all about Kyle finishing as low as possible.

Ugh… This racing stuff is going is wear me out.

Clint Bowyer and his team celebrate winning the Crown Royal Presents The Dan Lowry 400 at Richmond International Raceway. (Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Oh. My. God.

You have to watch this video clip of Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights,” having a serious meltdown over Will Leitch and his super popular sports blog Deadspin.com. It’s a segment from the Bob Costas show Costas Now. (I love Bob Costas by the way, but that’s neither here nor there)

This isn’t about NASCAR or racing specifically, but it affects me as a sports blogger. I’m so annoyed (and kinda offended) that Bissinger chooses to completely overgeneralize blogging and the people who do it. He’s way off base and he needs to get over himself.

I must be cursed or something, first Danica and now Ashley. I missed out on watching Ashley Force win her first Funny Car race last weekend. She became the first woman to ever win a Funny Car title and she also beat her father, the legendary and always funny (whether he means to be or not) John Force in the process.

I actually tuned to the channel that had the NHRA racing on but they were in the middle of a rain delay and I started to channel surf, which is always deadly because I inevitably forget what I had told myself I would come back to later.

At any rate, I am so happy that she won, she totally deserved it and I’m sure there will be more titles to come and probably a championship. It was fun to watch the replay of John’s reaction to seeing his daughter win. That man never fails to disappoint in the emotions department.

And since I’m talking about drag racing stuff I should mention a tidbit of info I got this weekend. Next year NHRA’s top series will be known as the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series instead of its current sponsor, POWERade.

From the press release:

“It’s one of the great synergies of brand and sport,” said NHRA President Tom Compton, who orchestrated the original deal with Coca-Cola North America in 2001. “To have a title sponsor for what will be, at minimum, 12 years by the end of this current deal is a tribute to a great relationship between NHRA and Coca-Cola North America, Coca-Cola Enterprises, the POWERade brand and beginning in 2009, the Full Throttle brand.”

NHRA’s top professional series, the second most popular form of auto racing in America behind only NASCAR (source: ESPN Sports Poll), holds 24 races from February through November, all of which are broadcast by ESPN2 in HD.

Being a single woman is tough. There are a million guys out there and all you need is just one good one, but no matter what you do it feels like the hardest thing to do.

In the past I’ve explained how living in the San Francisco Bay Area makes it hard to be a NASCAR fan because NASCAR didn’t start here and so people are more than likely to look at me crazy when I tell them that I’m into it. But then add in dating to the mix and it’s whole other story.

The thing is I don’t feel like I need to explain myself. It’s one thing if I’m asked about how I became a fan and all that, but having to explain why I am one is kinda annoying. It feels like I’m being asked to explain why I was in prison that one time (I was never in prison, this is just an example people), like I’ve done something so odd and strange and out of character that there must be some crazy story behind it. Frankly, anyone that’s a fan of sports can be a fan of NASCAR but that’s another blog post for another day.

The bottom line is I can’t be with someone who’s going to tease me (or attempt to tease me) about being a racing fan. It’s just not going to work. I’ll get annoyed and even though they’ll apologize or say something to make up for it, it’s already out there and it’s going to bother me. If you can’t respect my interests then I can’t deal with you.

I met a guy recently who races motorcycles, so you’d think he’d get it. Oh, no. He was a total racing snob. He didn’t think that racing on a super speedway took skill — this from a man who’s never driven a race car before.

I don’t know. It seems like guys always have to act like they know everything. I wish they’d learn that it’s ok if they don’t know everything, that we’ll still like them even if they don’t. You don’t have to prove yourself at every moment and you just look stupid when you try to tell me everything about a sport that I watch every weekend and read about almost everyday.

So anyway, in conclusion, all I have to say is that I hope someday (soon please!) that I can meet a guy who digs NASCAR (or at least doesn’t feel the need to belittle it) and we’ll live happily ever after.