Almost at the end of our trip and its time for the big event. The Nascar race weekend at Dover Delaware. Our friends Tammy and Casie, Judith and me headed down from Maine for the race weekend. We were looking forward very much to  it and whatever else would happen to us with regard to Richard Childress Racing whilst we were there.

 We arrived at the track on  Saturday morning. I had instructions to go to the Nascar credentials truck to get the pit passes for all of us but they never had them so they directed us halfway round the speedway to a gate where we would have to give our names so that we could go in past the grandstands, cross the bridge over the track and get into the infield. This we did and we managed to talk our way past 2 security gates to get right down by pit lane. We were looking for a red single story building that was where we would have to show ID and they would get the PR guy from the 07 team to come out with our passes. 30mins later and whooohoooo we have the passes!!

So much happened to us over the next 2 days as we utilised our “hot” pit passes to the full. In Nascar terms “Hot” means “access all areas” and thats just what we did. It would take a long time to write half of it down here, so with words and pictures i’ll give you a feel for it for now.

Saturday was spent in the pits all morning until the Busch series race in the afternoon. We took plenty of photos of cars and people coming and  going all round us whilst practise and qualifying for the races was in progress

Kevin Harvick

Jimmy Johnson

 Ryan Newman

Mark Martin 

Kurt Busch

Tony Stewart

Dale Earnhardt Jnr

Judith met this guy…

Yeah, its Richard Petty and during our time at the track Judith wandered off. 5 minutes later she reappears and said “I got an autograph” to which i replied “Great! who of?”
“I don’t know” she said. “There was this other guy having his pit pass signed so i thought i’d get mine done too”
“Ok” i replied “where is he?” And Judith pointed to the man in the hat. None other than Richard Petty! LOL

A bit later on  we’re still watching what was happening in pit lane and there was a bit of a crowd gathering. On closer investigation we see Jeff Gordon surrounded by “his people” and about 10 yards away we see a tall guy surrounded by “people” too. Both groups get closer and then the 2 men go to each other,  shake hands and start walking slowly along pit lane talking like they’ve known each other all their lives. Turns out the other guy was the quarterback for the Philidelphia Eagles NFL team and this was a staged photocall.

 

Heres some more photos of the pit lane area this time from Sunday

The gas tanks they use are so much bigger than they seem on tv

 

And then during the pre race stuff, it was time for Nascar to interview me by Kevin Harvicks car for part of the “Nascar Nation” tv programme.The lady that interviewed me was tall at about 6′ and she had a cold that day too. This was all in preperation for the interview a few minutes later that was going to be done for tv with me and RCR owner Richard Childress. Heres some pictures from the interview session

Tammy, Judith, Jeff Burton (31 car) and me

Judith and me with Richard Childress. He was a really nice down to earth man as well.

Tammy, Richard and me

After the pit stops during a race the team members that work on filling the car with fuel each time then use a trolley to take 2 of the empty gas tanks down to a main filling area operated by Sunoco who supply the fuel for Nascar where they have to leave the empty tanks on the trolley and whilst they walk to the other end of the walkway, the Sunoco employees then fill the tanks before handing them back to the race team members who take them back to their own particular pit box

As the race started in 100+ degree heat we were up in victory lane watching what was happening. Victory lane might be where the winning car goes at the end of the race, but at the start its where all the unused race tyres are stored

Watching the 31 team during pit stops

It gets a bit crowded in pit lane during the race

And people can get injured

The race was won by Greg Biffle with the 16 “National Guard” car. The crewman above is one of his. Whilst i was up in victory lane during the race, the guy from the National Guard that was in charge of sponsorship for the 16 team came up  to stand by me and tripped as he reached the last couple of steps. We got talking and he asked about our trip. At the end of the chat he gave me his card and told me to get in touch when we got home which we did. About 5 weeks after we got home we had a package arrive from the National Guard with a t-shirt and signed diecast of the race winning car!

That was pretty much the end of the trip and at this time we realised we enjoyed being in America and it was while we were driving back to Dulles airport in Washington that we made the decison to try and make it to America to live and work and so the next stage of the story starts…

After leaving Perth we had a days drive to go around the south side of Montreal to Sherbrooke and then crossed the border back in to Maine at what seemed like a very quiet point. We hadn’t seen a car in ages as we approached the border crossing and as we drove right up to it a US border control guy (that looked around 70 years old) appeared and gestured for us to stop.

Here was complete car check number 2. Just like when we went into Canada this guy wanted everything out of the car as well, keeping us out of his view as he checked everything we had in the car. He couldn’t quite figure out why we had just spent 3 days in Canada no matter how many times we explained to him that we just thought the drive would be more pleasant going via Toronto than Cleveland but we don’t think he believed us. After an hour of checking us all out he decided that we were ok to travel on, gave us a guidebook on Maine and let us carry on our way to Belgrade Lakes.

Our destination here was Yeaton Farm Inn. Its a very historic property built in 1826 and run by a lady thats become a good friend of ours over time called Connie Parker. Shes a former art director thats worked in New York and Hollywood and after so many years of that life decided one day that she wanted to escape out to the country. Connies  helped us a lot to not only make it to Maine but also to offer advice and help now that we’re here too. If you want peace and quiet with no TV then this is another good place to be.

From here we headed to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park for a couple of days. This area is very pretty. Interesting places and things to see and do and the National Park is wonderful for sight seeing and walking. Then we took a  scenic drive down to Portland following  Route 1 most of the way. We stayed there over night before carrying on our journey to the town of Waterboro to stay with friends of ours for a week before we all set off to Dover Delaware for a weekend of Nascar racing prior to starting our journey back home to England

 We were staying with our friend Tammy, her husband Nelson and their teenage daughters Casie and Alicia. In this photo are the 3 ladies having lunch with us at Sarges Nascar themed bar and grill in Saco ME

Heres just a few photos that we took from around the Portland area.

 ”Lenny” the chocolate moose. 1700lb of the finest chocolate too!

Whilst we stayed with Tammy, we spent the weekend with them at their lakeside camp. We had a great time and i even got taught by Casie and Alicia how to fish!
Heres the proof. I know its just a “tiddler” but its a fish!

We had a bit of a “moment” with a box of Oreo cookies. Theres me, Judith, Tammy, Casie and Alicia sat around the dinner table. Tammy and her girls are dunking the Oreos into a glass of milk and suggest that i should do the same. I decline their most generous offer to dunk in their milk as i’m a firm believer that cookies (or biscuits as we say) should be eaten dry and not soaking in cold milk! Then they suggested to me a 2nd time i really should give it a try to which i again politely declined the offer.
Tammy however wasn’t taking “no” for an answer and she grabbed my hand which was holding a dry Oreo, pulled me towards the glass of milk and thrust my hand with Oreo still attached into the milk as she shouted “Just dunk the damn cookie!!!”

She drowned my hand and then demanded that i eat the now soaking wet milky cookie.
I had a little nibble and it tasted awful! And to roars of laughter i chucked the half eaten soaking wet cookie back on the plate on the table.

Next stop Nascar at Dover

On leaving Chicago we were heading for a 3 day trip through Canada to get to our last major stop off point of Maine. We decided that heading to Maine via Toronto was a nicer and more scenic option that going via Cleeveland Ohio. (No ones told us we made a mistake yet) First thing though is when you’ve set your watch to Central Time and your heading to a lunch date at a certain time back in Eastern Time, be sure to remember the time difference! Luckily we got hold of the people we were meeting in plenty of time  but that was our first experience of the different time zones in the US.

 The next morning we arrived in  Port Huron where the border crossing was situated. It was wet and dull when we arrived at the control point at the other end of the bridge that spans the water seperating USA from Canada.

We were the only car at the crossing and were parked outside a kiosk with a tinted glass screen. There was  someone behind it as we could see them moving although they seemed in no hurry to want to open the window. After about 5mins a young guy looking very official opened the window and wanted to know why we were  crossing into Canada. We told him and he proceeded to ask for our passports. He questioned us on how long we’d been in the US and why we’d traveled as far as we had whilst we’d been there. He never smiled and his questioning was blunt and to the point. All of a sudden with me in mid sentance replying to a particular question that he asked, he just shut the window. Then a couple of minutes later he opened it again and told us to park the car in a bay a little further down the road as we had apparantly been randomly selected for a car search. Well theres a surprise we were the only car there. We drove to the parking bay as asked where we then had 2 more officials with guns come to the car, asked us to get out and stand about 20 yards from the car. The one official came over to us and said that our car was going to be searched and did we have anything that we wanted to tell them. We told them which bag had all our laundry in that needed washing and we told them where we were headed to and then they started searching…and searching and searching right through the car. Everything came out including the laundry where they opened the bag and tipped it up dumping it all on the floor before they used a stick to poke through it. They went through all our cases and bags, through all our printed pages of itinery notes and then  proceeded to check all around the car with our stuff lying there. Each time we tried to explain anything to them about a certain item they were looking at or when we wanted to ask them a question they would just tell us to stand back and if they wanted to know anything then they would ask. The whole inspection lasted around 35mins and at the end they came across to us saying that we would be allowed into Canada and that we would have to put everything back into the car ourselves before they walked off. What a great welcome! We reloaded our car including the laundry bag and carried on with our journey toward Toronto having to get used to watching the kph section on the speedo rather than mph.

We were heading to Toronto during a public holiday and luckily for us all the people had left the city for the weekend and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We had a great time going for a guided tour around the Toronto Skydome which amongst other things is the home stadium for baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays and where the guide kept walking backwards whilst talking so as to keep an eye on everyone making sure they were all keeping together. Its a great tour too, goes on for an hour or so and you get to see all the sections of importance like the hospitality boxes, changing rooms and media section etc. There is a hotel built into part of  the Skydome with rooms that overlook the pitch and if you want these rooms whilst theres a game on you have to pay extra or for some events such as concerts there is a large screen put up in front of the rooms so you can’t actually see whats going on. The Skydome is now known as the Rogers Centre after a major communications provider in Canada.

After the Skydome we went across the road to the CN Tower. Heres a picture of the skyline that includes both buildings

The CN Tower is the tallest building in Canada at a height of 1,815ft. Heres the view looking down from the glass floor which is at a height of 1,122 ft and also looking from ground level back up towards the glass floor from the outside

To finish the day we took a boat trip out into Toronto Inner Harbour which included a trip round the Toronto Islands that allowed more great views of the Toronto skyline such as the picture below

The next day before our journey on towards Maine we went for a visit to the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame. Its a great museum with plenty of racing cars as exhibits and very informative. Certainly worth a visit if your ever up near Toronto

After a great couple of hours spent at the museum we started on towards a town called Perth which was going to be our overnight stop for the night. We picked Perth because it was not too far from Montreal. The next day though we would need an early start as we’d be driving all the way from Perth onto Belgrade in Maine. This part of the journey was also unique for one other thing. It was the first time that whilst driving on the “other side of the road” that i’d actually crossed a junction onto the wrong side. Luckily for us it was a section of road that was leading to a new retail development  and there were hardly any cars around so i was able to reverse back the 10yards or so back into the correct lane very easily. One of the things we always need to do when driving here is when we get to a junction in the road is to always check to see where our entry point is at the junction for the section of road that we’re headed towards. You always have to be aware of where you are and what your doing at all times on the road.

Perth was a very pleasant town, small with a very “country” style. Unknown to us till we saw the sculpture it was also home to a very famous “showjumping” horse called “Big Ben” that had been one of the most successful ever in world showjumping competitions and ridden for years by Perth resident Ian Millar. Heres what Wikipedia says about Big Ben

And then it was time to cross back into the USA at one of those little dirt track road crossing points in the forests. You know the ones where you don’t see another car for ages and then you get to the crossing point only to find a Homeland Security man there with a gun thats old enough to be your grandfather…

To be continued

Chicago has to be the biggest city we’ve ever driven past. It just kept going for ages as we traveled up I294 heading towards Libertyville about 40miles north of Chicago where we were staying with friends for a couple of days before carrying on our journey into Canada.

We were staying up close to the METRA train network that covers Chicago and surrounding areas and for an hour ride into the centre of Chicago it was the pricey sum of about $6 each way! OMG you can’t even get on a train for that cost in UK let alone go anywhere.

Double decker trains! The last time i was any of these was in Amsterdam Holland. People have complained for years about overcrowding on the trains in the UK and why can’t they go with double deckers there.. the bridges are too low thats why

We walked the short distance to the station and whilst looking for a ticket machine were surprised that there wasn’t one. We got onto the platform where the train in the photos was sat. We had no idea which way it was  headed as there was  no info anywhere. We started to walk down the platform expecting to find a door open so we could climb aboard but as we kept walking trying various doors there were none that would open for us. Trains in the US are a lot longer than the ones in UK and as we got to the end of the train we still had found no way of getting on. Come to think of it, we didn’t even know which was the front end as there were the exact same engines at both ends.
So we walked all the way back up the platform to the other end again and as we reached the engine a door opened and this fella steped out eating his breakfast. Turns out he was the conductor and it was breakfast time before they took the train back into Chicago and whilst still eating he proceeded to open the next carriage for us so we could get onboard.

We got into Grand Central Station and it was time to explore. Now Brits are a little bit unique in that we don’t like to drive everywhere, we like to walk! (Fast forwarding to present day 2007… thats something that people here in Dexter have noticed, we walk everywhere and that includes the rather steep hill that leads up the road to where our house is)

We had a very interesting time walking to all parts of central Chicago where we had a good look round the Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry and Navy Pier. We wanted to go up Sears Tower and see Chicago from the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere but the queues were rather long and so we decided to take the easier and quicker alternative and go up the John Hancock Tower as when your up to the 94th floor there who cares what the views like from the observation deck in Sears Tower that might be an additional 12 floors up but i bet the Chicago skyline looks no different at all.

 Heres some pictures

Sears Tower from the John Hancock Center Observatory Deck

The view is amazing! You can see 40 – 50 miles and the States of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin on a clear day

Its only fair that i show some pics of our 1st day there too and you’ll see why we never ventured skyward that day..it still looks pretty in a funny kind of way

Whilst in Chicago we had a very pleasant trip on a riverboat operated by Shoreline Sightseeing that followed the river from Navy Pier right into the centre of Chicago heading in between the skyscrapers.

Chicago was fun and our 2 days there were now up. Time to head on and aim for Canada

The day after our brush with the law we make it to Indianapolis Motor Speedway! A fine looking place indeed and very big!. It was the week of qualifying for the Indy 500 but we’d picked the only day on our schedule to visit when there was no track action. That wasn’t a problem though as we have a friend called Cathy in the ticket office and still managed to get free passes for the speedway and museum for a fun day out.

 Heres some photos of the day

Us and Cathy of IMS

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum

Before leaving Indy we met up with some friends, David, Ed and Susan for a very pleasant evening out culminating in me receiving a very nice IRL (Indy Racing League) jacket. Ed had it with him over the back of his chair and as the evening went on he came round and told me to try it on. It fitted pretty well too and i told him so to which he replied “Thats good cos its yours”!! Like he said, you can’t go back 6 time zones to Indy and just have a couple of beers

Show me a State that is as boring to drive through as Indiana. If it wasn’t for Indianapolis Motor Speedway would there be anything there worth seeing? As we were heading along all we saw was cornfields, farms and flat land, miles and miles of cornfields, farms and flat land. Apart from our 2 “meet n greets”, the Speedway and a guy losing a front wheel on his car on I65 right in front of us at 70mph that was it…

After Indy and on route to Chicago we met up with our good friend Allen (otherwise known as Split) and had dinner with him.. check out his car right here

1934 Ford 3 window coupe with Corvette power

But now, the unthinkable has happened (must be the hot weather as he’s moved to South Carolina) as he now has a 2007 Z06 Corvette, 427 cu in 505 hp

And then it was on to Chicago

Its Saturday morning, the day after RCR and we’re headed back to Richmond VA for the Nextel Cup night race! Richmond International Raceway is a great place to watch racing. A short .75 mile track with capacity at around 110000. If you ever get the chance to get to one race anywhere on the Nascar schedule make it a night race. Theres something about it, whether its the lights round the track, the colour of the cars, the flames that fire out the exhausts or the red glow of the brakes, its a sight that you really should experience just once in your life.

The race was a great one too with Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart battling all night long with Kahne always just having the upper hand to take the win. Heres a couple of pics from the evening

Sunday we carried on with our journey aiming for Indy heading thru the lush green countryside of West Virginia and by Monday lunchtime were moving at a fair old pace through Kentucky with “moving at a fair old pace” being the correct wording here as we got pulled over doing 75 in a 50 by a State trooper

Ok, so this is how the story went. We’d been stuck behind a line of trucks for a good while and at last found a passing place to get past them but as they were all motoring along at a fair rate, we had to motor on a little bit faster…. Oh btw, heres an “Englishism”… “Semi” in America = “Articulated Lorry” in UK or “Artic” for short

So there we are “pedal to the metal” going along quite nicely and we reach the front of the queue, start dropping down a hill when round the corner coming up is a trooper! We never knew what a State troopers car looked like hence we never slowed down and we didn’t realise that they have those speed cameras in the front of their cars either and so guess what… he turned round and put his lights and sirens on. Whoops!

Mistake number 1 was speeding and so mistake number 2 was getting out of the car to enquire of the officer as to why he’d pulled me over. Hey i never knew he had a gun.. I’m British!

So i walk towards his car a couple of yards and he’s shouting and screaming at me and pointing too! I can’t understand a word he’s saying so i move a little closer to him. Bear in mind here that you can do this in the UK so as far as i was concerned i wasn’t doing anything wrong. I just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t getting out of his car. Then as i edged a little closer i could start to hear him and could make out words like “Stop” and “Gun”.

Now i was never brilliant at word games but those words make out a sentence that even i can understand and so rather quickly i turned and jumped back in the car..

And with the cop approaching the car he said in a Kentucky accent
“What the hell are you doing getting out the car?”

Me – “Hi!! I’m from England”

Cop – “I don’t care where your from. You don’t get out the car when you get stopped. We have guns here”

Me – “Well i didn’t know. I’m not from round here”

Cop – “Your not from round here are you”

Me – “No i’m from England”

Cop – “England? What the hell are you doing out here?”

Me – “Heading to Indy”

Cop – “Do you know why i stopped you”?

Me – “I think i might of been just over the speed limit”

Cop – “Just? It was 75″

Me – “Oh”

Cop – “Let me see your drivers licence and insurance”

Me – *Passing my drivers licence to him*

Cop – “Whats this?”

Me – “My drivers licence”

Cop – “Not here it isn’t”

Me – “Well thats cos i’m from England”

Adding here that in 2005 i was still using a paper drivers licence that looks nothing at all like what Americans have. Heres a sample of one

The size of this licence is about the same as A4 paper in UK or the standard copying paper size in US (8.5″ * 11″ or whatever it is). It has no ID on it at all except for a name, address and driving licence number. The rest of the licence is filled with words and theres a big space for penalty points when you get caught for speeding or some other traffic offence. In reality it could be anyones licence and so i produced my passport to show it was me as well as the rental cars insurance documents

To show how the current UK licence looks, heres a sample of one i pulled off the internet. It has photo ID now but still nothing like all the other ID features that can be found on a US licence

So the troopers looking at the drivers licence and you can tell he’s thinking. He flips the paper over one way and then the other and starts to read various notes printed on it. Then without warning he says “Its your lucky day, i’m going to let you go”

Me – “Oh ok thank you!”

Cop – “Drive slower for the rest of your trip”

And with that he handed me back the papers and whilst turning towards his car wished us a safe trip and a nice day.

The only reason i think he let me off that day was because it was probably going to be way too much paperwork for him considering i wasn’t just ”out of State”.. i was “out of Continent”!

 And with that we were back on the road heading for Indy

Just a little note for those of you that read my previous entry. You best go back and have another look as i added a few more pictures… 

After we had been through the entire museum we were then met by David Hart (Director of Communications) and he proceeded to take us through the rest of the RCR facility. We went across to the main corporate offices which have their 3 Nextel Cup cars on display as seen below. Great looking cars especially the 07!!

From there we went to the viewing area where the “Cup Teams raceshops” are… well heres a little secret, they’re not the real raceshops at all. They’re just put there for the fans to get an idea whats happening. David proceeded to take us through a “No Entry” door at the end of the corridor and we went down 2 flights of stairs to the real raceshops that were behind the “fans area”. We were able to walk all the way through and take lots of pictures. Heres a selection…

From here it was across to the engine, paint and transmission shops

Then from there it was across to the Busch Series raceshops

Last but not least, we ended up in the area where the new car chassis would come in before being built up for a particular race. These photos are of the 29 Harvick car that would race a couple of weeks later at Dover…

It was a magical day and it just goes to show that “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” as when we were about to leave the facility after 5 great hours, David told us the extra news we’d been waiting on that we had the 5 “hot” pit passes for the Dover race weekend courtesy of the 07 team!

Have you ever had a time when you were going somewhere interesting and you had no idea “what” or “if” anything was going to happen when you get there.

 The first Friday of our trip was one such day.

Let me go back a little to Winter 2004 where we were in the early stages of planning our trip and as we were heading with friends to the Dover NASCAR race in June 05  we thought it might be fun to spend the race weekend in the pits courtesy of a race team!

If only life was as simple as that.

Pit passes are like “rocking horse s—” and so i decided to write to my favourite NASCAR team “RCR” and enquire as to if it would be possible to have “hot” pit passes for that race weekend. “Hot” passes are the best you can get as they guarantee you pit access for the entire time your at the track, getting you right in amongst the “real” action and as a rule you can only get these passes via the teams, NASCAR or the track owner.

To be honest i never even knew if i’d get an answer to my email but it was worth a try and so i wrote to the Director of Marketing to ask along the lines of “Hey, you don’t know me at all but how about you giving me not one, not two… but 5 (yes 5) of those very limited hot pit passes that you get allocated for each race.”

 Within about 24 hours an email came back from RCR Director of Marketing who i seem to remember was called Gary Hart saying along the lines of “We always get requests for pit passes from fans blah blah, we always turn  them down blah blah, we’re really too busy as we’re a very important NASCAR team blah blah…… but”

 And he continued…..

 ”Your situation is unique as your from England and are following the NASCAR tour for a month taking in races and coming to the RCR raceshops. Let me get back to you”

And so i waited for a month or so and as i hadn’t heard anything i thought i’d get back in touch with Gary again to see what the latest was and he replied “Would you be ok if NASCAR wanted to interview you on TV? I’ll be in touch”

And that was pretty much it. I emailed him a couple more times over the next two months as we got closer to May 2005 and the start of the holiday where i’d usually just get a quick email back saying along the lines of “Everythings fine”. But with a couple of days to go before the trip started, i emailed Gary one last time to see if there was an update… and there was no reply…  So theres Judith and me meeting two friends Rich and Kat who had also traveled about 3 hours to be at RCR on a dull Friday morning in Welcome NC not having a clue “what” or “if” anything was going to happen that day.

We walked into the RCR museum, went up to the cash desk where i happened to mention to the lady sat there that “We’re from England” whilst wondering if those 3 little words might trigger some activity in our direction, but it didn’t seem to register with her so we handed over our $10 each to have a look round the car exhibits. Just as we turned to head into the museum thinking “that was it” a lady ran over and said “Are you Mark?”

To which i replied “Why yes!”

“Stay there.. we’ve been expecting you” she replied and turning round to the lady cashier she shouted “Give them their money back”

 Looks of excitement appeared quickly on our faces as we turned round to see whose footsteps were heading towards us. It was none other than Danny “Chocolate” Myers one of the most well known and respected RCR team members of all time.

Heres a couple of  interesting articles on Danny “Here” and “Here”

From being the gasman for Dale Earnhardt Senior for many years and an integral part of the RCR organisation, for the last few years Danny has been the curator of the RCR Museum and the only people he does a personal tour for are sponsors and VIP’s. So guess what?? He was there to give us a personal tour!
As he handed us VIP passes and shook all our hands welcoming us to the facility, he promised us a  great day and that he was honoured to be able to show us round the museum.

 It was pretty cool to have people that were looking round the various car exhibits coming up to Chocolate and us asking for his autograph whilst we were being shown round. They didn’t need to know who we were but must just of thought that we were “somebody” for us to be with Chocolate and to have the VIP passes with us.

Heres some photos from inside the museum

Its Thursday morning, dark outside and its 5am! I should really be fast asleep still after the 21 hour day yesterday but my body has other ideas. Welcome to the world of “jetlag”. If you’ve never been on a long flight crossing timezones you’ll never of experienced it. Some people “suffer” the effects of jetlag in different ways. Me? I’m fully awake even though at the same time i feel really tired but just can’t sleep. Its as though your bodies telling you “What the heck are you still doing in bed? Its 10am get up, get up!!!” Then theres the headache too. A headache that just aches and throbs till you can locate the tablets that you know are in one of the 5 pieces of luggage that you bought with you and as always are in the deepest corner of the very last case you look in. Sometimes the sciatica i get in my lower back and legs likes to make a re-appearance too making for a pretty uncomfortable time till the tablets are found and taken and i’ve gone off on walkabout looking for coffee.

Today we are heading to Archdale, North Carolina for our stopover as tomorrow we have one of the very best days of the entire trip.
Leaving the hotel we see a Walmart across the Interstate and decide to head in to get some bits for the drive down. This would be our first ever Walmart “experience” and one that i still remember as if it was yesterday.

The first thing about Walmart is how bland it looks from outside the store when compared to supermarkets we have in England. We actually do have Walmart over there as they’ve bought into one of the big supermarket chains called ASDA.

Heres a picture of one of their stores

Quite nice when compared to a Walmart frontage. Inside side they’re pretty much the same as to what they sell. ASDA tend to leave the products in the same place on the same shelf for more than 24hours unlike my local Walmart here that seems to want to confuse me by moving everything round before i visit each time.

Oh and then theres the Walmart “meeter and greeter”. Show me just one that smiles and actually looks like they’re enjoying their job. They could learn so much from the ASDA version that looks happier than if they just $1m on the lottery. Theres a lot more differences in how Walmart could learn to be more customer friendly when compared to ASDA but for now i’ll leave it at that except to say that in the near future starting in Southern California Walmart is going to have real and proper competition for your shopping $$ when the largest UK supermarket chain  Tesco starts to open there in 2007. By the time you read this some stores may be open as the first one was planned for opening in  a former Albertson’s store in Glassell Park, Los Angeles.

 Heres extracts of an article in one of the big UK daily newspapers “The Daily Telegraph” from a few days ago.

Tesco’s format will be a convenience store called Fresh & Easy Neighbourhood Market. It will be focused on America’s affluent west coast. The outlets will be roughly 10,000 sq ft in size – far smaller than its average UK stores – and will stock healthy, chilled food. The first stores will launch in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego around late October or early November, with 50 open by next February. There are a further 50 stores in the immediate pipeline. Of those, 30 will be in Phoenix and 14 will be in Las Vegas. Initially, the chain will be limited to California, Arizona and Nevada, although it could well go national. Around 500 stores could open in the medium term. Sales targets are not known, but the division is expected to break even by the end of the second full-year of operation.

Heres the link to the full article Tesco USA and it makes for quite an interesting read especially as in UK and Europe Tesco have stores that are the same size as Super Walmarts  but for the American venture seem to want to try something different after it would seem a great deal of research. Make no mistake though Tesco will take Walmart on and have the financial power and business stratedgy to do it over the coming years. It should prove interesting to watch.

So back to the story…

We start heading down the Interstate towards our lunch date in Henderson NC. As we head past Richmond we see signs for Richmond International Raceway and decide to stop off and see if we can talk our way into the speedway for a photo taking opportunity.

As we reach the speedway we’re able to talk our way through the first 3 security areas and are directed to the front office. Now bear in mind that this is Thursday the day before the racing starts with 100,000 plus race fans arriving Friday. We use the same opening explanation that we’d used to get past the previous security gates that we were from England and we were on a NASCAR themed tour taking in a couple of races. The guy at the front desk says to hang on and goes to speak to someone else. The Richmond Chief of Police suddenly appears and with a look like started the conversation which went like this…

Chief –  ”You want to do what?”

Me, “Ummm just go into the speedway to trackside and take a few pictures. We’re from England!!”

This generated another and the Chief replied ”Do you know what i just did 20mins ago?”

 ”Ummm no” I replied.

Chief –  ”I just did a full scale bomb sweep of the entire facility thats what i did. Do you know how long it takes to do that and you want me just to let you wander in and take pictures?”

Me –  ”Well now you put it that way, perhaps its better we just leave now?”

Chief – “Why do you want to take pictures when its empty? Take them Saturday night when its full and your here”

Me –  ”But it’ll be full then”

Chief –  ”Isn’t that better”?

Me –  ”No cos we wanted the pictures with it empty as you’ll be able to see the size of this place better that way. Its ok, we’ll leave it as we can see your busy”

Chief – “Damn right i am son. I’m real busy right now”.

Me - “Its ok, we’ll let you get on. Thanks for taking the time to see us though, its appreciated” and with that we turn to leave

“Wait a minute” the Chief said

We turn back round and the Chief says “How long do you need?”

 ”20 minutes at most” I reply

Chief – “I must be mad and its gonnna mean i have to do another full scale bomb sweep when you’ve left and did i tell you how long that takes?”

Me – “Uh-huh”

Chief – “Well you’ve come a long way and you asked nice, so follow me and i’ll take you to turn 4 but i need you to stay in that area so we can limit the extent of the next bomb sweep”.

Me – “Great thanks!!”

And with that we followed the Chief out where he climbed onto his golf cart and indicated for us to follow him in our car where he took us right up to the turn 4 entrance and inside the speedway where he reminded us that we only had 20 minutes and to wait by the exit to turn 4 when we were finished so that he could escort us back out safely.

We took pictures of the empty speedway from different positions in the stands, sat a while just watching the activity around the track and then when we saw the Chief heading back over walked down from the stands to meet him. Now i have a motto “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” and i thought it would be fun to have our picture taken right by the safety fence and turn 4 and as the Chief was the only available person, i asked him

This got us another and the comment “I’m the Chief of Police” to which i replied “Yes and your the only one here” followed by a cheeky smile.

“Go on then” the Chief said and with that he took the camera and went up a few rows of the stand to take our picture before coming back down and escorting us back to our car. With that we shook hands, thanked him for his time and help and headed out of the speedway to carry on our journey down the Interstate heading for lunch in Henderson for our first ever experience of a Cracker Barrel a real “must do” if you never have and after we were all finished we carried on with our journey to Archdale NC

Heres some photos of Richmond International Raceway

Back in 2004, Judith and I had discussed in depth about trying to move to America, buying an Inn and becoming Innkeepers. We’d stayed in Inns before and thought “we can do that”. We’d looked at what was required to attempt to get visas, but on reading the list of “rules and regulations” it seemed an impossible task so we gave up on the idea. Afterall we’re not famous rock stars, soccer players, brain surgeons or anything in particular really, we’re just Mark and Judith, 2 very normal people doing normal jobs, living in a normal 4 bed house earning normal money. (Equal to around $35k each per year). What we did do was start the planning of a major holiday to the US that would last for 4 weeks. In that time we were going to travel through something like 15 States and part of Canada meeting up with friends that we’d met via Nascar forums, taking in a couple of races at Richmond and Dover and having a pretty good time.

What we never told anyone was we were also trying to get a feel for what living in the US would be like hence we were there for a month, and by traveling through so many States we were hoping to find the one State that we wanted to try and settle in if we were going to make a real attempt to get visas this year and so on May 9th 2005 we flew out of Manchester England and into Washington Dulles.

We arrived in Washington and headed straight for the Alamo car hire. Its time to start driving on the other side of the road again. For those of you that read this and have never driven on the “other” side, you should really give it a go sometime and for that woman in the Blue Ford Explorer that came right up behind me blasting her horn on this quiet little road near a mall where we were heading for dinner in Gaithersburg MD as i was sat there trying to figure out the correct way to take on my 1st ever roundabout  sorry i mean “rotary”… Yeah thanks a bunch love, you should really try flying to another country, getting in a car on unfamiliar roads, driving on the opposite side of the road where everythings back to front and the opposite way round, finding your first roundabout within about 30minutes of getting in the  car and whilst you know that you need to go round the roundabout the “other” way while all this is going on your brains telling you “this really isn’t a good idea you know”. Then you might see and appreciate what its like for us after driving in the UK for the last 22 years.

 Talking of rotarys heres one near where we lived in a town called Swindon. Its official name is “The Magic Roundabout”. Its rather good!

You see, its really quite simple. You just arrive at the roundabout, point in the direction you want to go, put your foot down and keep going till you reach the required exit. Don’t worry about everyone else, they’ll be doing the same as you.

So anyway, we’re heading out of Dulles onto the Interstate heading in the general direction of Gaithersburg in “rush hour”when we come across our first road accident and the traffics backing up for a couple of miles. I’m starting to slow our red rather fancy Monte Carlo down and some bloke in the lane to my right decides he’s not going to wait in the queue like everyone else. Nope, he blasts his horn, swerves across in front of us straight down onto the median (that had quite a big dip in the middle) keeping the speed up bounced his car over the median before swerving back into the lanes heading in the other direction and carrying on as if nothing had happened

Yes we did make it to our destination, had a lovely meal at our first “meet and greet” with our friend John before heading south into the night to our overnight stop in Fredericksburg VA.

Just as a side note, John asked us if we’d heard about all the problems in Washington that day. It turns out that thousands of people were evacuated out of the city centre around lunchtime as a couple of “clowns” in a very small 2 seater aircraft were flying straight for the capital and not letting on who they were each time traffic control enquired culminating in a couple of fighters being sent up to escort them down. The rumour amongst our friends was that the 2 people in the plane were none other than me and Judith “heading to America”