There's No Place Like Home

For those of you who may be NASCAR fans, let me just tell you – it was so fun being in the stands at the Daytona 500 this past weekend! Jody and I have never been racing fans, but this trip was a lot of fun for both of us. Jody won the trip through his employer and it felt good to get away for a couple of days. It was also GREAT to get back home - and be able to get some rest!

We left OKC at 6:00 am on Saturday and flew in to Chicago O’Hare where it was snowing! We had about a three-hour layover there before we were able to leave for Orlando. We arrived in Orlando and took a shuttle to our hotel and checked in at about 4:30 pm. We had invitations to a pre-race day party Saturday night where we were to pick up our tickets for the race on Sunday. When we checked in at the party we found out our tickets had been given to Eric, the representative from the company that actually awarded the trip. We then found Eric and he invited us to go to dinner with the group – 22 in all – where the company was paying the bill for the entire group! We had a good time meeting other recipients of the same awarded trip, learning about the states they were from, and of course a delicious meal. We got back to the hotel about 11:30 pm.

We stayed at the Sheraton Studio City Hotel in Orlando – very nice! We were treated to dinner on Saturday evening at Charley’s Steak House. We were picked up at and driven back to the hotel on shuttle vans – right to the front door! It was great not having to worry about transportation.

Sunday morning we boarded buses, leaving the hotel about 8:15 am and were taken to Daytona Beach where we were able to walk around, do some shopping for racing souvenirs and also got several “freebies” from vendors there for the race. The only problem we encountered the whole time we were in Florida was the weather! It was so cold every day we were there! Jody had taken a light jacket and I took a knee-length cardigan because we had checked weather conditions and thought it was supposed to be between 60 and 70 degrees there. Boy, did we miss it! Thank goodness there was one booth where we were able to get a blanket – free – and I wrapped up in that over my two shirts and my sweater and was finally able to be a bit warmer. The sun came out for about an hour during the race and I was able to lose the blanket and the sweater. It didn’t last long though.

Other than the cold, it was exciting being right there at the race! I had never been to a track – except for the OKC fair grounds – and was surprised at how big the track was around. It was 2.5 miles around one lap and the race consisted of 200 laps. They had lots of things happening before the race started at 3:30 pm, so we were not without something to do the entire day. I thought watching the cars make the 200 laps would be boring, but it wasn't. It was actually exciting after the cars had competed the first half of the race, started going into the pits and then the wrecks started! We saw several wrecks, which took out most of the big names on the roster!

We were so cold, that after all the big names were out of the race due to the condition of their cars after wrecking, that we decided to go on out to the bus on lap 191. Wouldn’t you know as soon as we got on the bus – where several other cold people shared our same idea – we heard on the radio about the biggest wreck of the entire race. It actually happened right in front of the seats we had just vacated! Oh well, I was so glad to be warm again that it didn’t make much difference to me. I guess that’s because I’m not a die-hard NASCAR fan!

Our trip back to the hotel seemed to take forever! It took us an hour and a half to move about three miles in all the traffic from the race. We finally got back to the hotel and in our room about 11:45. I went right to bed and was out – I think even before my head hit the pillow! Jody said he sat up and watched TV until about 1:00 am. We got up about 6:15am Monday morning and walked next door to I-HOP for breakfast then went back to our room to wait for the shuttle to pick us up to go to the airport. Our plane left Orlando at 10:00 am with a 2-hour layover in Dallas and then, in only 32 minutes, we were back in OKC!

I had really been nervous about flying and had even asked my doctor to prescribe some medicine to calm me for the flights. The time in the air was actually not too bad and I think if I ever fly again, I won’t be so nervous. We did fly through some turbulence on three of the flights, but nothing extreme. I am so glad to be back home! It's true - "There's no place like home!"