Daytona 500 the 50th Anniversary an Alaskan perspective

Alaskan perspective

It seems somewhat strange that this good ole born Southern Boy is sitting here in the arctic reaches of Alaska watching the snowfall as the start of the historic 50th Anniversary running of the Daytona 500 gets underway.

There was the familiar pre-race activities going on with the interviews . . . the glimpses of the different drivers or crewmembers waiting for the prayer and the Star Spangled Banner to be sung by Trisha Yearwood (it was beautiful) as the USAF Thunderbirds over flew the grandstands. There was the countdown by Darrell Walltrip to ‘Gentleman . . . Start your engines!’

Daytona . . . Five hundred miles of left turns. The mind and body wanting to be in a position to win but the boredom in the beginning that comes from everyone getting into a groove of a long race wanting to stay out of any trouble or catastrophes by not hitting anyone or anything. But as time wore on the excitement of those trying to stay in the front with those wanting to get up there brought about the door banging car crashing excitement we have come to expect.

The car cams were showing a sunny ‘spring’ day in Florida as I continue to watch the snow falling . . . where is my warmth and sunshine from years so long ago with a day at Daytona Beach before the race on Sunday. I remember driving from Atlanta with buddies to see (experience, hear, smell, and breathe) the race up close and not on the isolated views from a television. NASCAR and IndyCar have to be seen to truly understand the spectacle that is car racing. It has come a long way from the old days when the moonshiner’s of North Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina made their runs and were forced to get ‘legit’ so the dirt tracks were started all over the South. Thunder Road has changed to 250,000 in the stands while millions more watch like I am on television all over the world.

Once the race was down to its last one hundred miles things turned up a notch as everyone was making moves to get to the front. The caution flags were out frequently as there was almost no time between one accident and the next. In one 10 minute period there were 4 cautions out and as the laps ticked down it was still anyone’s race to win. The last ten laps were like a great chess match being played out by those top five drivers.

At the end of the race it could have been Dale Earnhardt, Jr. or Tony Stewart as both were up front but after a last half lap of maneuvering it was Penske Racing teammates of Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch finishing first and second. It was NASCAR at its best . . . drama, excitement, and another running of the Great American Race.

I wanted to say at the start of this post that leaving the South I might have lost some of the ‘good ole boy’ mentality as I have grown into an Arctic kind of guy but while watching I was renewed with the childhood spirit and times of the past. We age and over the years we change many things about ourselves and how we react or look at things but I am proud to say that those genteel qualities of a Southern upbringing are still within me. The tag line of my Blog is “Southern by Birth, Alaskan by the Grace of God” and it still rings true for me today. I may have left the South for other adventures and do not see myself going back to live there as I do not think I could take the traffic or crowds of people anymore much less the ‘sweating’ one does in the summertime.

The “South” in my dreams now has changed much in the reality of what the South now has become. It is a mixture of many places now with the constant influx of people from other areas relocating there. Gone are the days of sipping a mint julep on the front porch while talking with your neighbor who was walking down the block . . . and I’m not saying that I was one to sit still long enough to do that.

Another Southern Tradition will be here soon . . . The Masters in April . . . I can almost smell the azaleas in bloom and the beauty of Amen Corner . . . as I sit here finishing this as Daytona has long since turned to darkness and I am left watching the snowfall slowly cease with another forty five minutes of daylight.

Ice

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