Another majority snoozer race. I'm distinctly bored with Nextel's corporate presence, and every time I see one of the "legacy" commercials, I'm reminded of how the sport has changed heavily since I started going to Bristol in the mid-1980s.¹ This is a bad thing, in my opinion. I'd prefer the good old days when names like Waltrip, Allison, and Earnhardt ruled the track.

Enh. On top of that, probably a third of the bloody seats had someone wearing red and black in them. Inasmuch as I loathe Dale Earnhardt, Jr., it's annoying to see the latest bandwagon driver with as much market penetration as he has. I thought it was bad with Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin fans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jeff Gordon fans in the mid-1990s, and then Tony Stewart fans in the late 1990s, but this takes the cake. None of the guys I like will ever be at risk for 'bandwagon' status, but that's just fine with me.

At any rate, I finally didn't have to have a seat cushion at the Winston Cup² race, which is either a sign of my increased ability to tolerate aluminum seats or the fact that law school has padded my previously-lean posterior.

I was disappointed by the red flagging of the race at the end. I distinctly despise Kurt Busch, and I'm not in favor of him getting to win. I've hated Rusty Wallace since the Reagan Administration---spin Darrell Waltrip and die, punk---but I'd rather him win than that jug-eared Roush brat. Busch was managing to get great restarts, and it kept taking a while for Wallace to run him down. Naturally, if there's only two laps left in the race when the green flag comes back out, Busch can jump to a lead and be essentially safe from harm. Wallace needed a long green flag run where he could have gotten up to the brat and put the Sharpie Ford into the nearest retaining wall.

Alas, that's not the way it was meant to be by Mike Helton and the NASCAR bureaucracy.

On the bright side, I saw Bobby Allison, Ward Burton, Jeremy Mayfield, Sterling Marlin, and some other drivers who I can't recall at the moment. I got to listen to a brief conversation with Representative Richard C. Boucher (D-9th) of Virginia, and I saw Senator William Frist (R-TN), Senate Majority Leader, as he was speaking to Mike Helton, the head of NASCAR.

¹ Yes, and I've got the hearing damage to prove it, I'd bet. Lawsuit for Larry Carrier, Bruton Smith, and the France family for not warning me!

² I know it's not Winston Cup any more, but I learned "Winston Cup" back when they started calling it that, and I see no real need to change now.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 472 words, total size 3 kb.

Good God, this race was boring. I literally went to sleep at the track, but the flyovers by the F-16s and F/A-18s were nice. I would have rather seen F-15Cs and F-14Ds, but one can't be picky, I suppose.

I managed to get my hands on a couple of 1/24 Action Performance cars of my favorite "available" driver for real cheap, so I was happy. Yeah, so this isn't exactly the mental heavy lifting post, but bah. I'm half fried by the sun.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

A source reports that the Virginia Museum of Transportation (www.vmt.org) is working on its exhibits again.

Their Norfolk & Western RPO (Railway Post Office) car is being restored. This is, of course, a good thing. The source tells me that new windows are being fitted and a new exterior painting will be applied. Long-range plans reportedly involve the interior restoration of the car so that it can be walked through. The interior of the car is considered "largely intact", and my source confirms this.

Railroads at one time were the means of long-range mail transport. These specialized RPO cars were placed at the head of the train, right behind the locomotives, as they were not open to anyone but their workers and perhaps the train crew. The workers would pick up, sort, and set out mail that was bound for anywhere all over the country, all while the train was moving. Large bags of sorted mail would be chucked from the speeding locomotives onto platforms at various stations in order to make the connection.

The U.S. Mail provided much revenue for the railroads in the waning days of passenger service, until the government decided to cancel the rail mail contracts, choosing trucks and airplanes as the mail delivery system instead.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 218 words, total size 1 kb.