American Commercial Lines 200

George's job provides him the opportunity of enteraining some of his accounts with access to the Alanta Motor Speedway and hospitality at the UPS suite. Yesterday I had a change to experience this "hard to stomach" job duty for myself and I had a blast!

We traveled down to the track and took the back way into in in hopes of identifying a better route out of track after the fall race. I'm glad George knew what he was doing because we would still be finding our way to the track if I was driving. Eventually we made it to the track and I performed my obligatory shopping duties. Three t-shirts, a hat, and a coozie later we were ready to head up to the suite.

We ended up being the first arrivals at the suite and I took the opportunity to take a couple of shots.

Snack food including chips, chex mix, popcorn and pretzels were laid out and they were serving a beverage known as "beer."

When we arrived, practice was underway for the Nationwide Series. The day began with rain and some were predicting a complete wash out. The scheduled was packed and they had already completed truck practice with Sprint Cup practice, Truck Practice, Sprint Cup Qualifying and the American Commercial Lines 200 yet to come! Rain was going to throw a monkey wrench into that if it happened.

After a beer or two the Sprint Cup cars began to line up for their practice.

George works with a very nice group and one of his co-workers suggested that we attempt to get down to the infield as he had a former customer that always came to the race and parked their bus in the first turn. We did not have pit passes and were initially denied entrance to the tunnel under the track but we explained to security that we were very nice, responsible young men and that we had no intention of going to the pits...so didn't need passes. They agreed (figure that one out) and we were able to get into the infield! We passed an autograph line and I almost got to speak with Paul Menard but he left before I could show him my ID and convince him we were cousins. We say Carpantier and then the highlight was getting within reach of my sister's favorite driver: Carl Edwards.

After picking up another beer from the UPS hospitality RV (again, not sure how that happened) we walked to the first turn and eventually found "Hog Wild" the bus we had been looking for. George and I immediately began taking notes and figured that we absolutly had to convert an old bus for the express purpose of hauling the families to every race we could. Heres a shot of George enjoying the deck on top; try to figure out why he'll never live it down.

At that point in the day the weather had held off beautifully, but a dark line of clouds was moving through. I took a final shot from the unique infield vantage point and we headed back to the suite.Dinner was being served and George's customer had arrived so he begain "schmoozing." The suite had filled up some and it was obvious that one or two of the invitees had not previously experienced that 'beer' beverage that I spoke about earlier. We watched the completion of the cup qualifying and everyone breathed a sigh of release when Dale Jarrett made the race in the 44 UPS Toyota.



The main event of the evening was the Truck race. Neither George nor I had seen a truck race, but several of the atendees felt that it was some of the best racing to see. A preview of the race stated that the largest margin of victory to date was .93 seconds and that the end of the race was always something to see. George and I watched 123 of the 130 laps, but after the race was red flagged with what ended up being the only rain of the evening we decided to take off. It had a been a good race as Ron Hornaday and Kyle Busch had the two strongest trucks and had swapped leads throughout the evening.



They say Kyle Busch ended up being the winner that day, but I'd beg to differ. I think I came out better all around.

Maggie "Sketchers" Menard

We've been through a lot, there's probably more posts to the story but it's been a pretty sad one and those are always the hardest to post.

So with this post, we are going back to "happy". Goldilocks was with us only one week and it was a hard one but she left us too soon and that hole needed to be filled.

When we picked Goldilocks up we had an "issue." We had gone to see Goldilocks only, but Grace took an immediate liking to a dog named "Sketchers". This dog was interesting to say the least and while Hannah and Dina were holding Goldilocks, Grace and I were "checking out" Sketchers. A real lover, she was kissing and interested in Grace, who soon decided that "this" was the dog for her. As many parents dread, we were in a decision as to which dog we should take home. I could have gone either way, but decided that since we came to see Goldilocks we should stick with her.

As chance would have it, both Goldilocks and Sketchers came down with the Parvo virus. While Goldilocks struggled, Sketchers was able to overcome the virus and end up thriving. After Goldy's death we fought with the decision of bringing another dog home. The pros -- a dog that had survived Parvo was very unlikely to acquire the disease again. The cons -- how could we put our Angels through another roll of the "life" dice.

After a lot of contemplation, we left it up to a family decision. Everybody was in for whatever life was to bring us, and that hole in our hearts was going to be filled by another dog.

We were going to give Sketchers a second chance. She was available and ready to come to our home. We are still deciding on whether to keep Sketchers as a name...again we face one of those "tough" family decisions.