I've never been to a car race, but after being invited by the very fun Punke (pronounced Punk-ee) family, I could hardly resist. The Punke's sit next to me at the Bears game so they are used to my rowdiness and I theirs. Not only did they have an RV, they had 5 spots, a bus and a tent! If you do happen to watch a race down there, you'll see a red and white tent in the camera shots of the cars as they come out of turn two. That's their tent!!
Now for the pics!
The tent set up.
Inside the tent (Hi Dougie Jr!) and the bus.
This is how close we were to the cars. Yes, it was loud. Yes, I wore earplugs. Yes I had a great time!
Saturday was a softball tournament up in Crystal Lake AND the happy six month dating anniversary of LL and me. The tournament was on what I think are the best fields in the state. They are artificially surfaced on the infield with little rubber pellets that acts as dirt. Sliding and diving are painfree and the ball takes very true hops. It's a real pleasure to play there.
The tournament combined teams from a level above us, our level and a level below us. If you played teams on a different level, you either received or gave runs, depending on if you were a higher level team or not. Our first game was at 3 on Saturday, so we were able to sleep in. We won against a team a level below us, 12-2. I was 4-4 including knocking in the game ending run in the 6th when we went up by 10 (a slaughter rule). That earned us a break until 7 against a team one level above us. Though I was only 1-4, we beat them 7-3 (they had to give us 3 runs so we really beat them 4-3). The team played pretty solid defense all weekend and our pitcher did a great job as well.
The victory earned us a late start on Sunday, noon, against another team one level below us who had beaten us last year, but didn't have to move up at the end of the year like we did. We took the game into extra innings (having had to give them 3 runs) after we made our third out in the bottom of the last inning with the bases loaded. We held them scoreless in the top of the 8th and with the scored still tied at 8-8 in the bottom of the 8th, our stud shortstop jacked one to make the final score 11-8. Again I went 4-4 and again, all singles.
The next game was against a team a level above us and the team which I think won it all. They gave us 3 runs and we lost 7-6. It was a tough game for us hitting and I didn't help by only going 1-3, but at least I hit the ball hard.
Our last game was against a team at our level and though we lost 14-6, I was 3 for 3 to finish the tournament at 13-18, a .722 clip. Pretty good. On Sunday I was 8 for 10, which is what you want to do on Sunday.
So we finished 5th overall out of 38 teams and one of our losses was to the eventual winner who plays a level above us. Can't really feel bad about that. We only had one sub on each day, something that will be different for the more important tournaments in August and September.
Saturday night, LL and I stayed at the O'Hare Hilton and went to dinner near there, so we were able to enjoy each other's company despite the tournament. LL was a trouper though, coming out to watch the second game on Saturday and all the games on Sunday. Yay!!!
4 comments:
wow, LL is a trooper! Get her flowers!
What an amazing way to experience NASCAR! Looks like an absolute blast.
Sounds like a really fun weekend! I don't know how you do it all. I get exhausted sometimes, just reading about your adventures.
My best friend was down there this weekend, and at that race.
Can't say the thought of incredibly loud autos going in circles sounds all that attractive.
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