Just Jacque

It NEVER gets old.  It doesn’t matter if the drive was excruciating, the hotel appalling and the weather disgusting.  When you win, nothing else matters.  Being in the winner’s circle after a race is an experience that cannot be adequately described.  It’s nothing that can ever be taken for granted.

This was an outstanding weekend for Target Chip Ganassi Racing – the team took home wins at Watkin’s Glen in both Grand Am and Nascar and at Mid Ohio in  IRL.  Chip won every race he competed in this weekend.  I’m not sure any other team owner has ever won 3 major motorsports events in one weekend.  I doubt it.

Wow.

We’ve got a long drive tomorrow and then just 8 days at home before we head to Sonoma.

Race results – Dario 1st, Scott 5th.

Much earlier day today.  We stopped at Bob Evans for breakfast again, even though we could have made the free one at the hotel.  I’m getting to be rather fond of Bob.  We got to the track right around 10 am, just as the early practice was ending.   In the interest of fairness, I’m including one of the photos I took of Dario yesterday.  I could have included it with yesterday’s post, but it seems like cheating to have more than one photo per post.  As you can see, one of the tricky aspect of photographing drivers is that they are almost always wearing massive sunglasses.  I think your status as a driver is largely determined by the size of your watch and your sunglasses.  Keep in mind that most drivers are not very big guys, so the sunglasses and watches look even more enormous by comparison.

We were able to watch qualifying from the booth of one of the support races’ teams.  It was shaded and had 5 screens showing views of the track.  Which is nice, since Mid Ohio doesn’t think it’s necessary to have a jumbotron anywhere near the pits.  We also had a chance to talk to Scott’s wife Emma, who is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet.  Both cars were fast, Dario qualified 2nd and Scott qualified 5th.  Overall, a great day.

Guess where we ate dinner?  No, not the fabulous martini bar.  We went back to Bob’s.  I am swearing off Bob’s tomorrow.  Of course that means breakfast will be at the Golden Arches.

At least we were able to sleep in on Friday morning.  We missed the hotel breakfast, okay we didn’t really “miss” it but we didn’t get out of the room until well after they stopped serving.  The only place to eat near the hotel that isn’t fast food is a Bob Evans.  I was only vaguely aware that there is such a thing as a Bob Evans restaurant and my perception put it in the category of a Carl’s Jr or a Culver’s.  My husband assured me it was more like a Southern version of IHOP.  He was pretty much spot on in his assessment.  I would even give Bob an extra point for having more variety than IHOP.  I had a turkey and spinach omelet that appeared to have about half a turkey stuffed into it.

We arrived at the track a little before noon.  This would normally be hideously late for us, but our only practice for the day started at 4 pm.  The weather was gorgeous and the track is amazing.  It’s like a compact version of Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

I shot quite a few photos of Scott and Dario as they were getting ready for the practice.  Dario is really easy to photograph.  He almost always seems relaxed and is often smiling.  Scott is much more introspective and sticks closer to the control booth in the pit, which throws him into shadow.  After 8 years of opportunity, I still don’t feel like I have a really great photo of Scott.  I did get some good ones today and I’ve included one of my favorites here.

After practice wrapped up at 5, we headed for Mansfield looking for someplace to eat.  Just when we were thinking we would have to settle for a dive bar or a diner, we found a great martini bar that also served individual pizzas.  Best lemon drop martini and best margherita pizza.  Ever.  Sometimes the serendipity works.

It’s called Mid Ohio because it’s in the middle of nowhere, Ohio.  The closest “city” to the track is Mansfield, population 50,000.  Which creates two problems, no easy way to get there and no place to stay when you arrive.  The obvious route takes you through Chicago, right around rush hour assuming you leave Minneapolis around 8:30 am.  Since we tried this on the way to Watkin’s Glen and ended up spending two hours crawling into the city, it didn’t seem like a good strategy.  So we went south through Iowa, crossed Illinois and left the interstate just east of Joliet to take Highway 30 which heads due east to mid Ohio.  But it was rush hour and we discovered that Highway 30 has a 45 mph speed limit and stop lights through Illinois into Indiana.

It was ugly.

Since we had no way of knowing when the highway would (presumably) enter a more rural area with a higher speed limit and no more traffic lights, we went north after passing Gary and picked up the interstate.  By the time we reached our stopping point, Upper Sandusky, it had taken us nearly 14 hours to drive a little over 800 miles.

Just to be clear, Upper Sandusky is nowhere near Sandusky.  The website for the Comfort Inn I had booked contains this disclaimer: This hotel is NOT near Sandusky, OH or Cedar Point Amusement Park. It is 80 miles south of Cedar Point. Apparently this is quite a point of confusion for many people.  I didn’t really want to stay in Upper Sandusky either, but every single hotel in Mansfield was booked.  I checked every day for two weeks before we left, praying some team would release a room at a decent hotel in Mansfield.  But alas, no.

So here we are, at the Comfort Inn in Upper Sandusky Ohio.  In the largest hotel room I have ever stayed in.  With a separate living area complete with sofa, desk and kitchenette.  An enormous bathroom with two sinks and a giant whirlpool tub.  Sure it’s a little dated and our non-smoking room was probably converted sometime in the past decade, but hey it’s huge and the A/C works so great, right?

That’s what I thought until I walked into the bathroom and found that the toilet had been used after the room had been cleaned.  And not everything had been successfully flushed.  At first we assumed the toilet was clogged but Tim flushed it and it cleared.  I’m not sure if that made it better or worse.

We decided to power straight through on the drive home from Toronto in order to get an extra day at home before heading out to Edmonton.  My tolerance for riding shotgun is now up to 15 hours in a day.  After less than 48 hours at home we were off again, but this time we flew.  Our rental car was a lipstick red Toyota Yaris that had the crap beaten out of it.  Cracked windshield, multiple scrapes and dings.  The cost was $16/day, so I think it was a fair deal.

Edmonton is famous for the West Edmonton Mall, which was built by the same developers who did the Mall of America.  The Edmonton mall is bigger.  A lot bigger.  The only reason we went there was to find a movie theater, as we had a few hours to fill one afternoon.  We ended up watching Inception in IMAX.  Pretty mind-blowing.  We also went to two museums at opposite ends of the spectrum.  One was a brand new art gallery with all modern art.  It was worth it for 2 exhibits – one on MC Escher and one on Warner Brothers cartoons.  The other was a throwback to the 50’s – complete with dioramas and butterflies stuck to boards with pincushions.  There was a beautiful temporary exhibit featuring wildlife photography, otherwise it was pure kitsch.  We passed up the opportunity to make paper sack puppets, the featured activity for the day.

Plenty of good restaurants in Edmonton and we stayed in a real hotel.  Sadly, the A/C was inadequate for the passive solar heating our room experienced during the day.   We came close to camping out in the hallway, which was at least 10 degrees cooler than our room.

The race itself had one of the craziest outcomes we’ve ever seen.  Both Scott and Dario ran well all day and Scott was able to complete a pass to move into second place with just a few laps remaining.  We were celebrating our second and fourth place finish when Tim pointed out that all of the photographers were converging on Scott.  Not the supposed winner.  Turns out that Helio was penalized for blocking Will Power (his teammate), thereby allowing Scott to make it past Will into second place.  Helio did not serve the penalty (a pit lane drive through) so he was charged with 20 seconds, moving him into 10th place.  Result:  double podium for Ganassi!!

Race results – Scott 1st, Dario 3rd.  Yeah, baby!

In theory it wasn’t a bad plan.  After flying back to Buffalo from Phoenix (via Minneapolis, ironically) we would pick up our car at the airport, drive across the border and spend the night in Canada.  This would keep us from having to make the border crossing first thing in the morning, when I assumed it would be the busiest.  The flight was scheduled to land at 10:30 PM and the hotel was less than an hour’s drive.  We would be in bed by midnight, easy.  Or so I thought.

The plane scheduled to take us from Minneapolis to Buffalo was held up by severe weather in Green Bay.  So we waited and we waited.  By the time we actually took off it was after 10 PM.  When we reached the hotel it was after 2 AM.  The man at the desk who shuffled out when I rang the bell was less than excited to see me.  I was right about the border crossing though.  We were the only car behind 3 semis.

Continuing our hot streak, Toronto was in the high 80’s with oppressive humidity.  We made a lame effort at some sightseeing and then holed up in a bar for a few hours before checking in.   Once again I had tempted fate by booking us into a B&B.  A very non-traditional B&B.  It was one of 5 rooms over an art gallery, run by a family that owned the gallery and lived on the 3rd floor of the building.  But still, a B&B.  It did have central air but no thermostat for the room.  It was very nice, reasonably priced and relatively close to the race course.  I would recommend it to anyone traveling to Toronto.  But we won’t stay there again.

At least we had a shady spot to watch the race.  Both cars were running in the top 5 most of the day, until Scott was forced into the wall late in the race.

Race results – Dario 2nd, Scott 20th.  I hate Ryan Hunter-Reay.