The Demise of Champ Car & Vegas Trip

I finally ordered my external hard drive (or whatever the bloody hell I just bought actually is) which means I can finally get my music off my computer and download all of my pictures starting with last August's Road America trip through the Maine Vacation and ending with the Vegas trip.

I am utterly and completely depressed. And the thing is I know that nobody (except for Rick in CT) will understand when I tell you why. Martha asked yesterday what was wrong and I just couldn't tell her, because I know she wouldn't get it. I told her that I probably wouldn't be going to any races this year because there probably weren't going to be any races and she had this look on her face like "Okay, so what." I just couldn't go into it as I was going to cry.

It looks like the long-simmering American open wheel racing feud is close to an end. There's talk of a "merger," but it's no merger, it's my guys losing to hated and despised TFG (Tony F***ing George) totally and completely. Champ Car is the inanimate entity I love most in this world. The "merger" news broke last Friday when I was in Vegas. I got a text message from Jim B saying "Told ya Cleveland wouldn't happen. Just sux. Oh well." I immediately text him back saying "WHAT??? I'm in Vegas, no news." Response: "Merger is official. Only lb, surfers and edm added 2 irl schedule. All teams will use irl cars. No panoz." My heart sunk as I told HRH. She got impatient and said, "Call him, quit that damn text messaging." Turns out the merger wasn't official, but was "very close." Then there were subsequent articles quoting one of the owners of CCWS as being upset with the leaks and how it was going to hurt the merger, blah blah blah. It was all I could do that morning not to cry.

We left a little later than we had planned for Zion because this was just too important not to get as many details as possible. We stopped to get gas just outside Zion and HRH wandered through the convenience store and nothing was appealing to her. You have to understand that whenever we go to a race, HRH damn near buys out the store of snacks as she searches for things she can't get in Canada. First she looked at sunflower seeds, but said, "No, I want chocolate." But when we went to the chocolate aisle, she didn't want anything there either. I said, "You're too depressed." She looked at me with mild surprise, and said, "You're right. I don't want anything."

Going to races has been such a part of my life for the past damn near 20 years that I can't even begin to imagine what I'm going to do with my vacation time. I already submitted time off for the Cleveland and Road America races, but I won't be taking those days off if there are no races. How am I going to see my friends?

Trust me, I won't be going to any IRL/IndyCar races, and neither will my friends. No way in freaking hell. There's nothing about that series that appeals to me from their freaking traitor owners to the asshole who started it to their bitch of a female driver to their stupid "fly-into-the-air-for-no-apparent-reason" cars which have killed at least two drivers, seriously injured at least one, given a myriad of drivers lower back fractures and damn near killed Mario Andretti (stupid Michael).

There's nothing absolute yet as CCWS owners keep saying they will have races this year, but one car owner has already defected to the IRL and that's definitely not good as we only had 17 cars in the field with his two cars. 15 is definitely not acceptable. I got an e-mail from a friend who is also a CCWS pit official and he said that it's just a matter of time and that he's 90% certain there will be no CCWS this year. He's supposed to call me the second he hears anything definitive, but I'm preparing for the worst and trust me there is nothing worse than TFG winning. I hate him even more than I hate Dumbya.

Other than the crappy open wheel racing news, Vegas was fabulous. Actually, Vegas was Vegas, it was all our trips to nature that were fabulous. Friday was Zion (pictures next week) with HRH, LB and his GF. Saturday was hiking at Red Rock Canyon with LB & his GF. HRH doesn’t hike. At one point when we were hiking this narrow little trail over a stream and through picker bushes and brambles, I said to the lB, "HRH would have hated this." LB sarcastically said, "Oh really? I was going to name the trail after her." I saw a coyote less than five feet away from me. We both stopped dead and regarded each other warily. Sadly, neither the LB or GF were anywhere near me, so they didn't get to see it. And I didn't move quickly enough to get a picture. I tried to call the LB over, but I didn't want to yell and he didn't hear me stage-whispering his name. After I told him about it, he went to where I saw it and went searching, but it had probably been a good 3-4 minutes, so the coyote was long gone. On our way out of the area, we finally saw a couple of the wild burros. LB had seen a whole herd of them once before (in his six visits to RRC), but he had stated at the beginning of the day that he wanted to see wildlife, so he was happy to see the burros. They were very cute.

Sunday was the best day. All four of us took off for the Valley of Fire which is so incredibly beautiful that it's hard to describe and I'm positive that my pictures are not going to do it justice once I get them uploaded. LB, GF and I rock scrambled all over the place while HRH watched and got worried that we were going to fall. It was so unbelievably fabulous! The most amazing thing was that we actually had HRH walking through nature (she was under the mistaken belief that snakes would still be hibernating, but it was a warm, sunny day) until LB told her that no, the snakes could be out and about. Then she was done. She's so funny. Everybody declared that we had to go back again as there were lots of places we didn't have time to visit. I ran out of room on my camera which is just another reason we have to go back.

I got home super late on Monday night and spent Tuesday in a fog. I went to bed at 8:00 p.m. Tuesday night and was awake three hours later, which actually had been the theme of the weekend, because HRH just could not sleep more than 3 hours at a time. I didn't sleep particularly well in Vegas either, so I'm hoping to catch up on my sleep this weekend. Nobody, but nobody, better call me Saturday before noon!

Ah, Saturday. One of my friends asked me to go with her to see Linkin Park on Saturday night. She's being an ultra-sweet Mom and is taking her two daughters to see them and asked me to go with her, so she's not sitting alone. She got them tickets in Row 11 and we're in Row 13 right behind them. I borrowed a CD from a work friend so that I have a clue what I'm going to hear on Saturday. It's okay stuff, although I'm not sure I'd buy a CD of theirs. I just hope it's not so loud that the music is distorted and stupid. I have no problem with loud (it is a concert, after all), but there's no reason to be stupid about it. I'll let you know how it goes.