gentlemen, start your engines

Being assigned to my family means that at some point you will be diagnosed with a bowel disease, sorry, but that is the headline. The conditions are more irritating than dangerous and after the colonoscopy we are told to go home, take the Imodium and  try to relax.  But it does make long term travel plans treacherous.  I would not have time to worry about my unreliable intestines on our three-hour drive to Newton, Iowa, home of a Nascar racetrack.  Adam overheated in the back seat and threw up his McDonald's breakfast in a thin paper bag that was not up to holding the noxious contents.  Cars whizzed by on the interstate dangerously close to my bent-over butt, scooping up chunks of egg mcmuffin with my bare hand and trying not to eject my own meal into the mess.

Adam's shorts were contaminated and for the next hour I hung those shorts out the window clutching fiercely at the waistband.  What will I do if it flies away, Adam is  terrified.  Well, everyone will marvel at your lovely plaid boxers. A child who has just vomited has no sense of humor.

We are taking the boys to see the race and I would much rather be on the old homes' tour with my father back in the city but this is what I am doing.  The cowboy is an overly stern disciplinarian and I may need to remind him how much fun boys can be so I travel in this smelly car to ensure a peaceful afternoon.

We are sitting high enough in the bleachers to witness some really incredible cloud formations but this is not our intent.  The cars race and roar below us and after awhile they all blend together like a whirling ring of color and smoke.  The boys and I are intellectuals and we are good for about 34 laps and then we need to explore something less numbing.  This is entertainment for mindless boobs, I am thinking, a step above professional wrestling and this sport has some of the same fan club, people with missing teeth, alcoholic abdomens and tobacco issues. We check out life below the bleachers and like all races there are some pretty interesting people wandering around the picnic tables.
A couple of expensive cheeseburgers and ice cream desserts later and we are back in the bleachers secretly wishing for a "safe" wreck, a monument to the laziness of this sport.