The countdown to the Advocare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway continues... 12 days until Cup Series race day! Here's my 12th favorite memory from 26 years of attending races at AMS.
#12: Technological Advances in Camping at the Track in the 1990s, a.k.a. a Bunch of Engineers Who Think They Are MacGyver
First, you have to get to know some of the regulars in our campsite. There’s my dad, who has a master’s in engineering and works for a major international commercial construction company. Then we’ve got no less than three other guys who have similar jobs and backgrounds in engineering and construction, two of which went to Georgia Tech. You would think there would be some pretty innovative stuff coming out of these guys. Well, to be fair, I think Scott is pretty smart. He comes in on Saturday mornings and brings us donuts. Then again, when he first started coming to the races with us, he was a Jeff Gordon fan. We all get better with age, Scott. But I digress… We’ve used welding gloves and a coat hanger to pull a turkey out of a turkey fryer because someone forgot to bring the hook (dad). Yes, one of the guys just happened to have welding gloves in the back of his truck, I guess just in case he had to pull a turkey out of a fryer someday. Stan once carved out of cardboard some shades to put over the windows of his van, so the lights from the grandstands wouldn’t keep him awake when he slept inside. The next morning he was playing around with them and flapping them like wings, and my brother, Jeff, said in perfect comedic timing, “Stan you’re going to need some bigger wings.” Okay, had to be there. A lot of us sleep with ear plugs in our ears to drown out the noise of screaming drunk fans and annoying people who like to rev up their trucks or honk their horn at 3am. Funny thing about that is a lot of time during the race we DON'T use any ear protection. Go figure.
Now we aren’t exactly roughing it camping out at the track. We have a couple generators, bring a TV, and we’ve even used electric blankets before because Atlanta races used to mean record cold or snow. But, we are in tents, not RV’s like most of the campers in the infield, and other than a kerosene heater that had been dropped off the back of our truck in the streets of downtown Atlanta, we are exposed to the elements. The 1990s were brutal at times weather-wise, and led us to attempt to weatherproof our campsite. We always brought with us a canopy that we set up right next to our tent to make a little living area. One guy who used to come with us would take the back seat out of his van, and we used it as a couch. Genius. The problem we had was that a canopy does not help keep you warm on a cold night if it has no walls. Back in the ‘90s, we didn’t have the fancy pop up canopies with the zip-up walls like they have now, so we improvised. For some reason, a guy named Neil who came with us one year had a bunch of large memo clips with him. He came up with the idea to clip tarps to the canopy so that they hung on the sides and formed walls. Believe it or not, this was quite effective when combined with a kerosene heater inside the canopy. On those cold nights, we’d close up every gap we could find with a memo clip and all huddle up inside to stay warm.
Unfortunately, as we found years later, memo clips are surprisingly ineffective when any kind of wind blows up against the tarps they are holding together (who’da thunk?) Yet, here we are 15 years later, and Stan still brings his plastic Kodak bags full of memo clips, rusted and broken from years of use, and we still use them. You would think at some point we’d just all pitch in and get one of those nice zip up canopies.
Nahhhh...
#12: Technological Advances in Camping at the Track in the 1990s, a.k.a. a Bunch of Engineers Who Think They Are MacGyver
First, you have to get to know some of the regulars in our campsite. There’s my dad, who has a master’s in engineering and works for a major international commercial construction company. Then we’ve got no less than three other guys who have similar jobs and backgrounds in engineering and construction, two of which went to Georgia Tech. You would think there would be some pretty innovative stuff coming out of these guys. Well, to be fair, I think Scott is pretty smart. He comes in on Saturday mornings and brings us donuts. Then again, when he first started coming to the races with us, he was a Jeff Gordon fan. We all get better with age, Scott. But I digress… We’ve used welding gloves and a coat hanger to pull a turkey out of a turkey fryer because someone forgot to bring the hook (dad). Yes, one of the guys just happened to have welding gloves in the back of his truck, I guess just in case he had to pull a turkey out of a fryer someday. Stan once carved out of cardboard some shades to put over the windows of his van, so the lights from the grandstands wouldn’t keep him awake when he slept inside. The next morning he was playing around with them and flapping them like wings, and my brother, Jeff, said in perfect comedic timing, “Stan you’re going to need some bigger wings.” Okay, had to be there. A lot of us sleep with ear plugs in our ears to drown out the noise of screaming drunk fans and annoying people who like to rev up their trucks or honk their horn at 3am. Funny thing about that is a lot of time during the race we DON'T use any ear protection. Go figure.
Now we aren’t exactly roughing it camping out at the track. We have a couple generators, bring a TV, and we’ve even used electric blankets before because Atlanta races used to mean record cold or snow. But, we are in tents, not RV’s like most of the campers in the infield, and other than a kerosene heater that had been dropped off the back of our truck in the streets of downtown Atlanta, we are exposed to the elements. The 1990s were brutal at times weather-wise, and led us to attempt to weatherproof our campsite. We always brought with us a canopy that we set up right next to our tent to make a little living area. One guy who used to come with us would take the back seat out of his van, and we used it as a couch. Genius. The problem we had was that a canopy does not help keep you warm on a cold night if it has no walls. Back in the ‘90s, we didn’t have the fancy pop up canopies with the zip-up walls like they have now, so we improvised. For some reason, a guy named Neil who came with us one year had a bunch of large memo clips with him. He came up with the idea to clip tarps to the canopy so that they hung on the sides and formed walls. Believe it or not, this was quite effective when combined with a kerosene heater inside the canopy. On those cold nights, we’d close up every gap we could find with a memo clip and all huddle up inside to stay warm.
Unfortunately, as we found years later, memo clips are surprisingly ineffective when any kind of wind blows up against the tarps they are holding together (who’da thunk?) Yet, here we are 15 years later, and Stan still brings his plastic Kodak bags full of memo clips, rusted and broken from years of use, and we still use them. You would think at some point we’d just all pitch in and get one of those nice zip up canopies.
Nahhhh...
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