Tribal Ritual 3
Yesterday, I bugged out of the cooling tower place early. When I went down there, I had not realized that the Circular Soiree had been postponed because of rain and I wanted to be on the road and past Dover before the traffic hit.
I missed most of it. A lot of people left Sunday because they weren’t able to stay an extra day. I’m told the stands were only half full (that’s 70,000 or so people, I think).
The presence of the Monster Mile draws a lot of money to Delaware.
People stay as far as 50 miles away, and big box stores, such as Walmart, allow the fans to park their RVs on portions of their lots.
It’s an odd phenomenon. A lot of the fans set up their RVs, set out their portable TV satelite dishes, and watch the race from their lounge chairs under their RV awnings. That way, they can drink unbroken from morning till night.
Sadly, a certain percentage of them are not very good advertisements for civility. This can happen when you cross large numbers of persons with large quantities of alcohol.
Dover residents pretty much stay in their homes except when the time trials or the race is actually going on and the fans are either already passed out or otherwise occupied.
In other news, NASCAR is concerned that its popularity has sort of plateaued. In particular, they are trying to attract more minority fans.
In the words of one citizen of Dover, (I am not making this up), “Fat chance, as long as they have a bunch of drunken, obnoxious rednecks waving the Confederate flag surrounding the track.”
Oh, back to my commute. I got caught in the first wave of RVs fleeing Dover. From the way they were driving, they were trying to get back home Sunday night. I saw one RV so big the driver was towing it with a semi-tractor.
That’s another side effect of the Monster Mile. It give out-of-state drivers an excuse to come to Delaware and drive badly.
June 6, 2007 at 10:11 pm
My favorite sign around Dover on a race weekend:
“You’ve seen our racetrack – now go home!”
June 9, 2007 at 8:10 pm
They could have just looked at the pictures. Almost like being there, without the 8 miles per gallon.
June 11, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I was at one of the local “box” stores the week of the race. They allow RVs to use their parking lot for a couple of days throughout the year and they allow it during “race week.” I was talking to one of the employees who was discussing the mess that would be their parking lot during the actual race weekend.
He said the RVs show up, setup their awnings, pull out the coolers of beer, DirectTV dishes, TVs, and generators. Then he said something interesting, “They never leave the parking lot. They watch the race on TV and never go to the racetrack. I don’t understand it. They could do that in their driveway at home.”
I guess everyone needs a hobby…