I just returned from my trip that my friend Jeff won. He basically won a trip that was sponsored by Alltel that included an all expenses paid trip to Charlotte for ten of his friends to compete in a pit-stop challenge that centered around the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race. The winners of the pit challenge won $200,000 and as you guessed it, we didn't even come close to winning. We had a blast. I flew out of Columbus on Thursday and arrived in Charlotte mid afternoon. Alltel booked us rooms at the Westin and we had dinner at the hotel in one of the ballrooms. After dinner my group, which consisted of several friends of mine from High School, Jeff's (the winner) girlfriend and a couple of other people he has met since moving to Columbus, we went to a giant street fair called Speed Street. The street fair was a great place to people watch and I'm sure that we were definitely watched once we had several beers. We then went to a couple of bars to end the evening.

On Friday morning, we had breakfast again in the ball room and were then taken to Pit Instruction and Training, LLC where they taught us all about NASCAR pit changes and we were able to practice. I'm not a huge race fan (not a fan at all) but the pit instruction was a blast. I ended up having the job of jack man which entailed jacking up the right side of the car, removing the rear right tire and removing it from the pit area. I then lowered the car on the right side after the tires were changed and then ran to the left side of the car with the 35 pound one pump jack and lifted the left side. Once all the tire were changed, I lowered the car and got the jack out of the way so the car could take off. Professional crews can change 4 tires and completely fuel the car in 13 seconds! You get a much better appreciation of what happens in the 13 seconds after you attend pit training. All I can say is 13 seconds is amazing. The fasted time that we could muster in practice was about 43 seconds. Once we were done with practice and lunch, we were taken on a tour of The Penske Racing Facility. The facility was impressive. The building is 400,000 square feet of nothing but racing. The facility houses office, fab shops, engine building machinery, engineering, visitor's center and basically everything you need to operate 2 NASCAR teams, two Indy teams and and an American Le Mans team. This place is really cool! We then headed back to the hotel and went out for the evening.

We headed back out to Speed Street Friday night and saw Loverboy. Loverboy is not as good as they used to be or as good as we thought they used to be! After the concert, we had a few more beers and headed back to the hotel.

On Saturday we were taken back to The Penske Facility and the contest winners participated in a Go-Kart race. The winners raced against Ryan Newman's time (he is the driver of the Alltel car) and if you beat his time you were rewarded a second off the pit stop time. Needless to say, no one beat his time. Jeff ended up at 20.8 seconds and Ryan's time was in the 18 second range.

After the go-kart race it was time for the pit-stop challenge. We first got to see a professional pit crew do a live change and it was smokin fast! We ended up doing out stop in something like 45 seconds which was no where near the 29 second time that won the contest. A family from Cedar Rapids Iowa won $200,000. We were then given about 10 minutes as a team to visit with Ryan Newman and to get autographs. NASCAR drivers are very approachable and personable to say the least. I don't think that you would get the attention that we received from a professional baseball player. Maybe it's the lack of gray matter that resides in their heads from all the wrecks that make them so approachable. Nonetheless, Ryan was very personable.

On Saturday night we went out and partied like rock stars. Had a number of Patron shots and beers and ended up at a few bars. We also saw Cheap Trick at Speed Street on Saturday night and then had more beers.....you get the idea of how Saturday night went.

Sunday we left the hotel at 11am for a 6pm race. When we got to the track, we immediately went on a garage tour. You have to be invited by a car sponsor to take a garage tour on race day so there were relatively few people in the area. In the garages, all the teams were busy making final race preparations to the cars and at times were idling the engines or stepping on the gas with the car up on blocks. The noise was incredible. You could just feel the 800 horsepower shaking your bones. We then took a walk down pit road and then returned to our seats. Speaking of our seats, they were in a private suite fully stocked with icy cold beer and food. Right before race time, Ryan Newman stopped by for a quick Q&A session. The race was interesting. There were quite a few cautions one or two pretty good wreaks and was a neat experience. The Alltel car was knocked out of the race fairly early with a blown engine and the other Penske owned car (Miller Lite Car) also was knocked out of the race about 2/3 of the way.
We ended up back at the hotel at 2am and had to catch a flight back to Columbus at 9:50am on Monday.

The experience was more than I expected. Everything was first class and best of all completely free!! Here are a bunch of pictures that I took. Some of the pictures are stupid and meaningless unless you were there but here they are anyway. Here are a few of the fine establishements that we visited at night in Charlotte if you are interested: Ri Ra (Irish Pub), Bar Charlotte, Fuel Pizza.


This week is a short but busy on for me. I have picked up a few additional responsibilities at work and have meetings relating to those new tasks. Katelyn's baptism is on Sunday and Lisa and I both have family for out of town in this weekend; we will be busy cleaning and preparing for the weekend.