Missing Talladega, Missing A Lot

May 1, 2008

By Brian Watkins

Brian Watkins

My job, working in video, often takes me away from home. Useually those trips are fairly short and happen generally during the week. In fact I can’t recall the last time I was away from home over the weekend, that is until this past Sunday when I had to fly to California for a project.

I grew up in Michigan and while in the Army lived here there and everywhere, but I’ve since settled down splitting my time between Northern Kentucky and North West Ohio. It’s quiet and traffic free and for the most part uneventful (in a good way). The weekends are spent working around the house, having fun with the kids and of course watching races.

If my wife and I are busy during race time, we’ll catch it a little later in the day on the DVR, happily skipping commercials and cheering on (or complaining aloud about) our drivers. During the week I enjoy the news and opinions offered on the NASCAR channel of my satellite radio. Listening to the callers and the commentators fills some gaps in my NASCAR knowledge bank and offers some great idea’s for columns as well as some good old fashioned entertainment.

This weekend’s trip however, turned my normally stable NASCAR weekend on end.

I tried very hard when planning my flight from Detroit to San Francisco to avoid having to be on the road during the race. While commercials and cut-a-way cars often frustrate me, I do prefer to watch the race as opposed to listening to it. But try as I might, I couldn’t find a flight that would get me where I needed to be when I needed to be there and still allow me to catch the race. I tried every airline connecting at every airport in between and had no luck.

I didn’t have to leave until about 30 laps into the race, so I watched as much as I could while I finished packing and loading the car and saying goodbye to the family. I dilly dallied a bit too much and left a bit behind schedule.

As I finished loading the car and getting ready to leave, I remembered that I’d moved the satellite radio out of the car for a different trip. While it’s not a complicated matter to hook it back up, it was going to take time I didn’t have. As I pulled out of the drive, frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to hear the race, I started searching the local FM stations to see I if I could find a broadcast there. After a few frustrating minutes of pushing the scan button, I resorted to advancing station by station using the knob. In what seemed like an eternity later, I finally found a static filled but intelligible signal. As I headed west the signal improved for a while and then as the race got more intense, the signal grew weaker, eventually giving out all together.

For the next 40 minutes I was in race black-out. No Dave Moody making calls on my speakers, no translating of the announcers descriptions into pictures in my head. Just music or news/talk programming. Making it all the more frustrating was the fact that it wasn’t a boring race. Why couldn’t I have had this problem a few weeks ago during the race in Texas? If I had even had this problem with last years Talladega race I’d have been a bit happier- but this race, from what little I’d seen and heard was one of the best ones of the season so far, and I’m driving down the road with nary a clue as to what’s going on.

So I called my wife to chat for a bit and she started telling me what she was seeing on screen. I was relieved for a moment because I was at least getting to know what was going on. But then I realized that she was watching the recorded portion of the race. While the live event was still going on, she was seeing about 50 minutes into the past, which was ironically the same bit of racing I’d listened to on the radio miles before.

About 20 miles from the airport I lost my cell signal and in a last ditch effort, I scanned through the radio one more time. This time I hit pay dirt as MRN came cleanly through my speakers. When I finally got to hear the race there were only 5 laps left. My “new’ driver Kyle Busch had managed to find his way up front and the battle was on. Between the description of the action, especially the wrecks on the final lap, and the fact that my driver had come from a lap down to taking the checkers, I was cheering as I pulled into the parking lot.

As I got on the plane I couldn’t wait to get into my rental car in California so that I could listen to the satellite radio and catch up on what I’d missed. 5 hours later as I was slipping in behind the wheel of my rental another bout of bad luck- for the first time in 3 years of traveling in rental cars, the one I was in had no satellite radio. I’d been so sure that there would be one in the car that I left mine in the glove box of my own car back in Detroit.

While I at least got to hear the ending of the race and be happy in the fact that my driver won, it still feels like a whole unfinished affair. Too many important details are lacking. I’ve tried reading the recaps, and while they’ve helped there is still a bit of a void.

Once I get home and kiss the wife and kids, I think it will be time to fire up the DVR.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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