365 Project - Day NINETY FOUR

My dad loves to tell the story about when he was young and got to drive a stock car in a race for his uncles, Sonny and Corky. He talks about how exciting it was to drive a big thunderous car and always says he felt like he was going 100 miles an hour, but was probably only hitting about 42 in the straightaways.

So, just my dad having that experience has led to many trips to the stock car races as we were growing up. We used to go to Spanaway Speedway in (where else) Spanaway, but they sold the land for the track and built a bunch of houses there that are probably now all in foreclosure. What a disservice to this area.

A few years back, we discovered South Sound Speedway in Rochester, WA. It's about a 50-60 minute drive to get there, but it's worth it on occasion, like tonight. Tonight the semi trucks from Canada were guest racers at the track and that's what drew us there. We have watched them there before and knew we had to go back. The semi truck races are smokey and loud. The trucks are flashy and it's a head-scratcher as to how they could make something with a diesel engine perform like they do.



Tonight, they gave everyone there the opportunity to go down on the track, meet the drivers and wander around the monstrous trucks and late model stock cars (which look like NASCAR cars). They handed out treat sacks for the kids and autographed pictures for all of them. What a cool thing to do. Jack asked the driver of the pink truck, why his right front wheel was purposely bent-in at an angle. The driver meticulously explained that it assisted with traction around the turns and kept the tire flat on the track. Good stuff in Jack's book...



We all agreed that we like the pink truck the best. It was the fastest on the track and it was the only truck that had a train horn hooked-up to the pneumatic system that ran the compression brakes and the other air horn. One of the main attractions of the semi trucks is, besides racing, they like to do burn-outs.

Here's a video of Pink Foot doing his signature burnout:



We had a blast, got smoked-out with exhaust from all the cars and ate too much candy. What a great way to spend a Saturday.