Sunday - the Rains Came, the Tornado Didn't, but the Bed Spins Did! :-0

With the dismal weather reports we'd been having, we didn't wake up too optimistic about them getting the race in.  Still Lou, David, Andrew and I bundled up in three layers of clothes and carried the banner up to the track for the scheduled RASN reunion at 10:00.  We duly hung the banner, signed it, and in the fine Martinsville tradition stood around and waited for people to show up.  None did!  That's the fine Martinsville tradition part! :-( Guess Hruska didn't even come to town that day.  A few times, we saw people walking towards us determinedly and got excited thinking they were yet unknown rasners.  Nope!  They usually were walking to the curb to throw out their cigarettes. :-( After about an hour, it was starting to really drizzle, although many people were already in the stands, in the fine race fans' tradition, of hoping if you get to your seat, the race will start. ;-) Unfortunately, it didn't.

It started raining in earnest as we walked back to the campground. People were already hearing rumors of an 11:00 a.m. Monday start before we heard it on RPM Today. :-( Great!  I was pretty soaked and stripped down to my longjohns (yeah, my famous Cuddle Duds, Craig!).  I ended up staying in the trailer with the heat blasting and huddled under a blanket, watching last year's race, most of the afternoon.  I invited Shari and Emile over for a while cause they were getting as stir crazy as the men.  David,Andrew, and Lou were touring the campground, checking out everyone who was trying to leave and was already mired in mud.  The things that entertain men! ;-)

About 3:30,  I decided I was being anti-social, so I put on (literally) 5 layers on top and 4 on the bottom and headed back out to hang out with Kathy and the rest of the crew.  I had quite a bit of drinking to catch up on since they'd been at it all day and I was behind.  ;-)

Gurney and Linda and Jeff and Becky had taken off to go home after the race was canceled because they couldn't stay until Monday.  The rest of us hung tight!  Or were we just plain tight???  ;-)

We were huddled under Bruce's awning around 4:30 when THE big thunderstorm kicked up.  The "wimmin" went inside with Darnelle and the "brave" men stayed outside amongst the thunder and lots of lightening. Right after that, the women heard on the radio that a tornado warning was 20 miles south of Martinsville and heading our way at a rate of 45 mph.  :-0  We yanked our menfolk inside and drank more beer while contemplating the end of the world and being sucked up into the vortex of a tornado.  We figured there wasn't much we could do about it, so we just drank more beer and tried to figure out if it was 20 miles south and heading at us at 45 miles an hour, had it already passed us or what (you know one of those stupid word math problems that you can never figure out). ;-) The other topic was why do tornados always zero in on trailer parks??? :-0

I made one "necessity" run back to our camper and grabbed my most important possessions in case we had to run for cover.  I grabbed my Kodak cooler (how prophetic since they won the race (with sufficient amounts of beer, of course), my scanner, and my buttpack (with my money, drivers' license, race tickets, etc.), plenty of Sudafed and kleenex (for allergies).  I figured everything else was expendable.  :-)  We stayed in the motorhome about an hour, watching the campground being flooded around us.

Finally, the danger had passed (or else we were just sick of 6 of us stuck inside together), so we sent the men to the Winn-Dixie to get some shrimp (which we'd all decided sounded like a great post-apocalyptic dinner).  After that we steamed the shrimp outside and chowed down on them.

We had met the "neighbor kids" on Saturday, Pat and Jerry (we kept calling them Ben & Jerrys for some reason), a young couple camping in their van next door to Lou and I.  Through all the excitement on Sunday, they'd been shut up in their van almost all day and I went over and told them to "stop scromping in there!" They came out and denied any such activity!  Kids! :-) So they joined us on Bruce's fief.

We also found out that David and Shari had been on yet another camping shopping trip at Walmart while all the tornado warnings had been going on. ;-) It's their first camper and was their first camping trip, so they were running to the store to get things they just couldn't live without all weekend! ;-)  So we relaxed since everyone was present and accounted for.

Sometime after that, ALL that beer I'd consumed seems to have kicked in and Lou practically had to carry me to bed at 9:30.  :-0  Guess I tried too hard to catch up with everyone else's beer consumption that day. Okay, I didn't really have the bed spins that night; I was unconscious the minute my head hit the bed.  But I woke up with a raging headache about 2:30 a.m., which I quickly quelled with a good dose of Goodys. :-) Can't have a hangover on race day, you know!

All in all we did have a good time on Sunday, worrying about the tornado hitting and partying, in spite of no race!  :-)

Cheryl
 

Part 4

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