Shake and bake

I just got home from a trip to what surely must be the capital of American manliness - the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
That’s right, I went to Bristol, baby! And I was INTO it!
My husband and I are not diehard NASCAR fans, but we both wanted to go to Bristol once just to experience it.
The bad news for him is that I may want to go back.
I’ll admit it, y’all …I had fun from beginning until … well, until Kyle Busch won and we had to walk back to our truck in the dark with 150,000 drunk people.
Other than that, what’s not to love?
We parked about two miles from the track and rode a shuttle while admiring the view of the beautiful hillsides of Sullivan County and the acres of race-fan RVs populating the nearby campgrounds.
The shuttle dropped us off next to the fan midway in the rear parking lot, where we were free to peruse booths and trailers offering the manliest swag I’ve ever seen.
It was like a testosterone convention. The Jack Daniel’s tent had barrel tables and a live band. Toyota displayed every version of its Tundra pickup imaginable. Ford showed off an F-350 pickup specially painted with Navy SEALS landing on a beach and Desert Storm soldiers in full battle gear.
On one side of the midway, the Coors Light girls looked like they had entered an unofficial tank top battle with the ladies representing Red Bull.
The U.S. Marines booth had an actual pull-up contest. For those less physically inclined, Aaron’s Furniture offered a tent full of recliners.
About the only manly pursuit not represented was some kind of creative facial hair contest.
And the giveaways! We loaded my see-through backpack (bought specially to avoid a longer security line) with free Goody’s powders, Tums and even free full-size bottles of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce.
That right there is a good day. I don’t care who you are.
In fact, later when we shared a picnic table outside the fried Oreo booth with race fans from Pennsylvania, one lady told us she was going back to the Sweet Baby Ray’s tent because she’s gotten three bottles the night before and hoped to get at least two more.
Inside the track, the pre-race show was both manly and patriotic, with the drivers’ kids singing the national anthem and the winner of the Irwin Tools Ultimate Tradesman Challenge saying, “Drivers, start your engines.”
Guys flew parachutes into the stadium to the strains of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” (goose bumps!), and a military jet flew over twice.
Why? Because it’s always awesome. And because they can.
I’d always heard about how loud the cars are at Bristol, and several folks warned us to rent headsets beforehand so we could protect our ears and talk to each other.
Still, I had no clue that it would be louder than any concert I’d ever seen. The roar and rattle from the cars below us was seriously louder than the time I sat in the seventh row at Aerosmith.
Unlike most Titans games, I watched every second of the action on the track in front of me. Bad blood from a race the night before set up a classic villain in the #18 driver, Kyle Bush, and when #12 Brad Keselowski called him out during the intros, I, along with the entire crowd whooped and hooted in a kind of redneck, “Oh no he di’int.”
Luckily my husband sprang for the good seats, since it was an anniversary gift (Oh yes he did!). We sat among some serious race fans instead of the drunk, cussin’ deadbeats who rode the shuttle bus with us.
Another lucky thing for me: I wasn’t trying to be anybody’s mom. I was thankful we didn’t bring the kids because we did pass quite a few shirtless guys whose eyeballs were practically swimming in beer and because the hill we had to climb on our way out through the All-American Campground nearly killed me.
As they say, it ain’t for everybody. But this first time, Bristol was for me.