On Wednesday my only goal for the day was to visit race shops. My first stop was JR Motorsports in Mooresville, NC. On my half-hour drive up to Mooresville I got to see the famous Lake Norman that numerous NASCAR drivers call home. It is absolutely gorgeous and now I totally understand why you’d want to find a house that sits next to it. I can extend the whole ‘gorgeous’ statement to the whole Charlotte area. It’s really flat, especially to someone like me who has grown up around mount this and mount that, but it’s also really, really green. I thought we had a lot of trees in Northern California but North Carolina has got a lock on ‘em too.

When I arrived at JR Motorsports, passing by Braun Racing in the process, I had another one of those “this is so coooooool” moments. I’m such a geek, but it was really fun to get to be there even though I knew I was only going into the JR Nation store to buy stuff and take a peek inside the actual race shop. I think, as a fan, it’s just as much fun to express your affinity for your favorite driver by buying a mug. I really did buy a JR Motorsports mug, and this cute Dale Jr. magnet notepad. There were a billion more things I could have purchased but I held back because I figured I might need some money to get back home and, ya know, to live. (more…)

Shower thoughts are those great ideas, concepts or, ya know, thoughts that you have when you’re taking a shower. Usually I’m thinking about things going on in my world, things I need to do or what I’m going to wear that day, etc. But sometimes I think about completely RANDOM things like this:

Isn’t it awkward for NASCAR driver Chad McCumbee (left) to be around Dale Earnhardt Jr.? I don’t know if, or how often, they see each other seeing as how Chad has been running in the Camping World Truck Series lately. I ask because Chad portrayed Dale Jr. in ESPN’s movie “3: The Dale Earnhardt Story” about the life of the late Dale Earnhardt. Dale’s family didn’t really like the movie, but besides the supposed inaccuracies in the movie it’s just weird to play someone who’s in your world, who does what you do for a living. At least I think it might be, right?

Chad, feel free to email me and let me know if it’s ever been weird for you.

It’s supercool news sharing time! I’ll be on a panel at Blogs with Balls 3 this year. Yay! This is awesome because I really love what Blogs with Balls is all about, the future of sports media. Plus I had a great time at BwB 2 in Las Vegas last year. It’s a big deal to me to be invited to be a speaker along with some great people, including Jay Busbee of the NASCAR blog “From The Marbles” over at Yahoo! Sports.

It’s going to be a good time and you should definitely come out. Blogs with Balls 3 is June 5th at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Ill. Tickets are limited so get yours NOW.

In other news…

– I wanted to put in my two cents about the new bookazine ESPN The Magazine published about Dale Earnhardt. In “Dale Earnhardt: The Legend Lives” I learned something new (well, new to me that is). Teresa Earnhardt started dating Dale when she was 19 and he was 27. That surprised me and it was just one piece of cool little details that could be found in the special collectible-worthy issue. It’ll be on sale through June, so be sure to pick up a copy.

– The book, “The Weekend Starts on Wednesday”, has a commercial featuring its author, Andrew Giangola. It’s hilarious (this is Andrew on helium) but all of the content is totally right on. There’s a ‘Fabulous’ mention in it, too.

So I’m finally wrapping up my posts about the Pepsi 500. It’s only a week overdue, but whatever.

Sunday was of course the Pepsi 500 and the morning was left open to do whatever made my little heart happy.

That weekend had been a celebration of Dale Earnhardt Jr’s birthday, which was October 10th, and Hendrick Motorsports 25th Anniversary. So it was only fitting that there was a Hendrick Motorsports hospitality tent, dubbed the “Party Zone,” where fans who bought tickets could eat, drink, be merry and ask Hendrick drivers, Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon, questions before the start of the day’s race.

Auto Club Speedway picked one fan that purchased one of the special Dale Jr. Birthday ticket packages to meet Dale himself on Sunday morning. The Speedway let me go along for the ride. Well, sorta. I met Stan (photographed at right), the lucky fan who was going to meet Dale and present him with special No. 88 cupcakes from Sprinkles. Stan was a very nice guy, who had been a fan of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and transferred his loyalty over to Dale Jr.

I rode with Stan over to the hospitality tent where we parted ways and I went inside to wait for the Q&A session to begin, and Stan went on to meet Dale just before he took the stage.

I don’t know how their meeting went down, but I’m sure it was cool.

It was while I was standing around watching some country music cover band perform that Erin, a very cool woman who reads this very blog, came up and introduced herself. It was soo nice of her to say hello. Even though I have traffic numbers from Google that tell me people come to my site everyday it still amazes me when I meet a real person who reads my blog and likes it.

I stuck around long enough to watch Dale take to the stage and watch people lose their minds over his very presence. He seemed kinda groggy. It was like 9am PST but back east that’s 6am, so I could understand why he might not be all bright and shiny.

After all that I went back over to the infield to go to the Drivers Meeting. I decided I was going to take pictures of drivers but that devolved into just standing outside of the meeting room and not taking pictures. At that point it just seemed like I’d taken pictures before and what was the point?

It was there that I met Shari and Steve (photographed at left), a couple from Phelan, California who were on the lookout for Tony Stewart. I let them know that Tony was in the driver’s meeting room already and that he had to come out on our side of the building (there are two exits) because his PR guy was standing nearby. They had a Home Depot jacket that they wanted to get Tony to sign, they’d gotten Greg Zipadelli to sign it the day before. As the drivers meeting let out they were able to get Tony’s autograph.

Shari & Steve were super nice people and I was totally glad I could help them out in a little way. It’s actually my favorite thing to do at a track, help people stalk their fave drivers. Ok, not “stalk” but get their autograph or a photo, especially kids. At Infineon this year there was a group of little boys who were waiting near the garage with their mother to get autographs. Security had moved them behind a fence but next to the bathrooms. I saw Kyle Busch sprint to the men’s room just behind them but the kids hadn’t noticed. So of course I took it upon myself to tell them Kyle was nearby and to be on the lookout when he left the bathroom. It’s fun to help people check something off their list, or finish a really cool story they’ll tell their friends later.

So if you see me at a track and you wanna know where so and so driver is I might be able to help you out!

If you guessed England you’re correct! I know, how random right? Well it was all a part of a yearly event called Festival of Speed held this weekend at Goodwood Estate in West Sussex, England.

The three day event, hosted by none other than an actual Earl, the Earl of March to be exact, celebrates all forms of racing. This year the festival featured a 1.16-mile hill-climbing competition for all classes and types of race cars and motorcycles, plus a 2.5-kilometer course for historic rally cars. (more…)

Yesterday I finally finished watching ESPN Ultimate NASCAR (Vol. 1): The Explosion – NASCAR’s Rise. This documentary takes you through the basic history of NASCAR and evolution over the years. I loved it for it’s cinematography, the imagery was absolutely beautiful, and ability to seamlessly merge the past with present.

The Explosion gives you the story up ’til now and covers the bigger stories like Jeff Gordon’s entrance into the sport and Dale Earnhardt’s death. I dare you to not choke up or get emotional when Darrell Waltrip talks about the days after that horrible accident. I couldn’t get through it without crying.

The interviews are all first rate, not to mention the variety of interview subjects. Amongst the usual lineup of drivers like Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin there were interesting conversations with Virginia Senator Jim Webb and bestselling author Tom Wolfe.

I highly recommend this DVD, and in the coming days I’ll be posting more reviews of the 4 other volumes in the ESPN Ultimate NASCAR series.

In other news…

– Did you know that Casey Mears has a second home in Scottsdale, Arizona? He bought it during the last off-season. Apparently the guy enjoys the dessert, Casey had this to say: “I’m a West Coast guy for sure. I was raised in Bakersfield, Calif., and spent a lot of down time with my family out on sand dunes. So, I naturally spend a lot of time in the Phoenix area taking my new sand car out on the dunes and just relaxing. The climate is perfect. I’m a flip-flops kind of guy, and this atmosphere just fits with me. I look forward to coming out here throughout the year. We’ve been out here all week since the Texas race. It’s like a second or third home for all of us.”

– Jamie McMurray became engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Christy Futrell, this week.

– Scott Speed is using his passion for fashion to help raise awareness and money for a good cause that is close to his heart. Speed was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2003:

“This is a really cool opportunity for me to work on a project that ties one of my biggest passions — fashion — into motorsports, while also raising money for a great cause,” Speed said. “We’re hoping that through this project we can help create awareness and raise money for conditions such as ulcerative colitis, a disease that affects me personally.”

Muffin Man T-shirts went on sale Monday at muzeclothing.com. Half of the $40 will go to the Chron’s and Colitis Foundation of America. They’ll also be on sale this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway, where the Muffin Man’s creator will autograph shirts at an TBD location Sunday from 12:15-12:30 p.m. MT.

Why the Muffin Man?

“Just random, mate,” Speed said.