Daytona & Daytona Beach
After spending the past week with friends and family in New Orleans and Florida it was difficult for me to want to break away and start my solo trip again. The biggest force that was telling me to move was my desire to see new places, but most importantly, I had to be back before August 1 to see Suz. For some reason I was comforted now that I was back on the East Coast, but Florida still wasn’t all that close to New York, so I thought that I should play it safe, make my way back north at a quicker pace and slow down my trip once I got to a city that was a few hours away from home, just in case I needed to be back early for some reason.
I really wanted to head down to Miami for a couple days but that wouldve taken me the opposite way of where I wanted to go, and since I had already been to Miami before, actually a few times, but we would stay at nice hotels, my mom told me it wasn’t necessary, and even though I thought it was, I thought that driving an additional 400 miles (round trip) probably wasn’t worth the effort because then I’d really be feeling the pressure on my way back up the East Coast. I also knew that I’d be back in Florida at some point and I could always take a trip around the state.
So I decided to heard northward towards Daytona Beach which was a city that was a measly 90 miles away from my grandparents house. 90 miles was a VERY SHORT drive in my mind, which is a weird thought, but only after an hour and a half, or maybe less I found myself pulling into the Daytona International Speedway. I’ve never watched a NASCAR race in my life, neither on television nor in person, so there was something in my mind that was questioning why I was considering dropping around $20 or more to see this “sight.” It was ridiculously hot, the temperature never seemed to drop below 95 while I was in Melbourne either, and I wanted some air conditioned place and thought that it may actually be fun to see the famed race track and walk around the place for a couple hours.
I walked around the ticket booth and made my way near to the actual track by going through the gift shop. I saw that a tour was going off in the next couple minutes and that the next group wouldn’t leave for another hour or so, so I asked the tour leader to wait a couple minutes for me to go buy a ticket. I sprinted to the ticket booth, asked for a ticket for the tour of the racetrack and that’s all, but learned that I had to buy a $30 ticket, and that was my only option. I’d be able to do whatever I wanted to do at the speedtrack, but this wasn’t what I wanted. All I wanted to do was see the track and get the hell out of there. I tried to get a cheaper ticket by being a student, an elderly and anything else that would save me some money, but I got the ticket and entered the building wondering how I would kill the next few hours, as well as how I’d kill the next hour before the next tour which I had assumed had left by that point.
There was a huge “exhibit” of race cars that included around 40 arcade games that were all playing NASCAR Racing 2007. I tried to find any other video game because I didn’t really care much for driving a car around a track even on a video game, but after realizing that I wouldn’t be able to find any other game, I grabbed a remote, selected Jeff Gordon because I like the color of his car, the DuPont car which has reds, yellows and oranges and some other stuff which I’ve always thought looked cool, and started a race. I was actually terrible at the game which was surprising because when I was younger I played so many video games that regardless if I was playing a sports game, or an RPG (role playing game), or something like The Sims, I usually quickly figured out what I had to do to win or at least do well, but I was terrible at the racing game. After a few seconds of crashing into walls and seeing what a pit stop looked like during the game I gave up, and walked around the room.
There was actually a “pit stop show” in the exhibit so I waited a few minutes until the next showing wondering how sports car racing could be the most popular sport in America. I assumed that people loved seeing crashes and explosions and perhaps it was fun watching cars drive at extremely high speeds in circles, but I walked around the arcade amazed how popular this sport had become. The pit stop show began when a middle aged guy started talking about the “history” of pit stops with an aid of a video which I found rather amusing, but oddly interesting, and then told us that we were about to watch an actual pit stop. Four younger men close to me in age (early to mid 20s) then surrounded a race car, and for the next 20 seconds or so were able to change the tires, clean the car, and do around 40 other things to this stationary car that would take a normal human a few hours plus a lot of frustration. I thought it was impressive and was wondering if it’d be a good idea to have someone like that around on a road trip in case I blew a tire out during a high speed chase with the police and only had 20 seconds to change my tire.
The most interesting part of the show was after the regular pit crew showed us what to do, they took volunteers from the crowd. There wasn’t much desire for me to jump into the action, but I’ll admit I was considering it just for the helluva it, but immediately after the offer was made a middle aged woman eagerly offered herself for the demonstration. She grabbed her daughter and maybe another child and were then instructed on how to change a tire. Then off they went to changing the tire and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so engrossed in changing a tire as much as this mother was. She had an intensity and fierceness in her eyes that told everyone to back off, she couldn’t be bothered until this tire was changed and anyone that got in the way may be eaten alive. I was taken aback by how involved she became, not just physically, but she seemed to be going through a spiritual experience during her changing of the tire. I couldn’t remove my eyes from this and around 20 seconds later the tire had been changed and she wore one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen. I learned then and there that there are some people who actually live and breathe cars and racing in the States and was actually eyewitness to one of the millions of Americans who feel this way about car racing and cars.
I backtracked to where the tour was taking off and saw a much larger line than I had expected. I got into the line and walked to the end where I saw a sign that said, “ANYONE BEYOND THIS POINT WILL NOT BE ON THE TOUR.” I refused to believe this, but just in case I snugged my way a few inches forward and found myself on the correct side of the line. It wasn’t that easy to do this since I was competing with a family of five and both the family and I knew that only one of us would be able to get on the tour. The mom seemed to be dragging her children from all directions and placing them in front of me, but I assumed that I’d be able to fit in because I was just one person. The “tour bus” which was actually a trolley with around 6 compartments of seating pulled up, and everyone rushed onto it in some type of ordered chaos. I wasn’t sure if I’d be allowed to get on but because I was a single, they found a place for me and off we went.
For the next 45 minutes or so I was driven around the racetrack where I took pictures of asphalt and the grandstands from lots of different angles. I actually felt at ease with the entire experience and after the tour felt that it was finally time to leave the racetrack. I headed back to my car, checked out the LP and decided that I had time to stop by a few more attractions at Daytona and made my way to the beach. I parked my car in some random lot, crossed the road and “Voila!,” found myself walking along sand and heading towards the water. I hadn’t been on a beach in a very long time, at least not since Israel, and I took a few pictures but decided that I couldn’t stay all that long because I didn’t have my bathing suit on, nor a towel, and I wanted to see some other things before taking off.
I got back in the car, and started driving towards a lighthouse. The only reason other than LP telling me that there was a lighthouse worth visiting, was that it was apparently the tallest lighthouse in Florida, which I still didn’t feel was a captivating reason to make the drive, but I drove around 15 miles to get to this lighthouse where I parked my car, walked through some type of bird sanctuary, and after exiting the bird sanctuary found myself staring at a decent sized lighthouse. After seeing the Sears Tower and growing up in New York, it wasn’t all that impressive seeing a tall lighthouse, but I thought it was a fun diversion and I got to see a new part of Daytona and the world and off I went on my way to St. Augustine, where I was hoping I’d be able to do some serious walking.
Tags: Summer 2007 Road Trip, Travel
