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Orlando Bingles’ 2011 Summer Road Trip – Day 25

by Bingle on Sep.06, 2011, under Richard Bingle Family

AdvoCare 500, take 2!

Still kinda damp and overcast outside, but that wasn’t about to dampen our enthusiasm. After a day and a half delay, we were ready for racing!

We loaded up the van and headed back to AMS first thing in the morning. Not surprisingly, we were able to park much closer to the track this time. The midway and the vast majority of the souvenir rigs were gone as we made our way into the track. While they were checking that people had tickets, they weren’t actually checking what seats those tickets were for. Since we had arrived early, I decided to stop and take a couple of pictures of the start-finish line before we headed over to our seats in turn 3. While there wasn’t an usher stationed where we headed out from under the stands, one did appear just as I was about to take my pictures. “You can’t stand there. You can’t stand in the aisle.” I told him “ok” and walked over a section, down a couple of rows, and then in about 5 seats to take my pictures well clear of the aisle. Once done, I looked around at the almost empty stands and made a decision. We were staying right there for the race!

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While the stands eventually became “non-empty”, the attendance was understandably very light so nobody ever kicked us out of those seats. And boy, am I glad we had decided to stay until Tuesday to see the race. Despite a couple of short rain delays each time the low ceiling would descend and basically put us within the clouds, the race ran to its fully scheduled distance, complete with a duel at the end between Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. Jeff ended up winning (woohoo!) and we stayed for the victory celebration right there at the start-finish line.

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I’d already taken an extra day off to stay for the race, so we had no choice but to hit the road and drive the whole way home to Orlando that afternoon and evening, arriving home shortly after dark. Our 2011 Summer Road Trip was over!


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