the day i stalked ryan newman

I like NASCAR. I like going to the race. I like the crazy huge community that forms around Texas Motor Speedway on race weekends. Chevy sent me tickets to the AAA Texas 500 and for the fun at the Chevy Village of Champions before the race.   Thanks soooo much, Chevy! And then they had the CRAZY COOL power to put me behind the wheel of a Chevy Silverado during the Driver Intro. Yes, they let me drive a driver around the track minutes before the start of the AAA Texas 500. *what were they thinking?* I was excited to find out that the driver that would be in the back of my pick-up truck was Ryan Newman.   I am particularly fond of him because he recently appeared on one of my favorite shows, American Pickers. Obviously, I would need to learn MORE about Ryan to do the best job possible. I tried out Ryan Newman’s chair. I tried on Ryan Newman’s clothes. I found where Ryan Newman was appearing. And showed up early. After his appearance, my husband and I had enough time to grab a quick lunch at the Chevy tent. We ran into some other bloggers and recruited Andie to join us in the Silverado.

Branden, me, Andie and her friend Stef.

We all went to Driver Intro Training (I love how super official that sounds). Since one of the main rules is that the drivers can’t take pictures…duh.   I was lucky to have my husband and Andie along to photograph the entire experience. They reviewed the route we would take.   We were to pick up the driver when he was announced, carefully drive no faster than 25 mph around the Texas Motor Speedway track and then drop off the driver at his race car on pit row. Lord, have mercy on me. We headed over as a group to the center of Texas Motor Speedway which requires going under the track through the pedestrian tunnel. And found a line of super shiny Silverado trucks waiting for us. Ours was bright red and we thought we better try out the truck bed to make sure it would be safe for Ryan Newman. Before I had time to think about it, we were in the truck ON THE RACE TRACK lined up to pick up our drivers. When we picked up Ryan Newman, I was to PAUSE for pictures and not make an abrupt start as to vault him out of the truck. The whole area was FULL of people and I was supposed to be turning tightly, remembering not to make an sudden movements, and not run over anyone in front of me. This is what it felt like: Oh, and the truck in front of me had Jeff Gordon…you can see his blurry wave. We made it past the crowds near the starting line and drive low on the track all the way around. As we passed the crowds, shouts of “Newman!” would echo.   Andie might have set her camera on top the truck for this picture: I made the last turn onto pit row.   Please note that the whiteness of my knuckles is NOT completely due to lighting: There were people, people, and more people to worry about. And I didn’t want to crash into a race car, either. I drove down to the 14th pit position and dropped of Ryan Newman.   Jeff Gordon jumped off his truck right in front of us. Whoo hoo! Mission accomplished.