Music Monday-Miranda Lambert "Fastest Girl In Town"

I guess if you need a female getaway driver, Danica Patrick is as good a choice as any.

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Baltimore Grand Prix

Today was a new experience for our family.  We had tickets to the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix that is taking place over this Labor Day weekend. They set up a temporary track on the streets of Baltimore for the event.  Our seats were right in front of the Baltimore Convention Center as you can see from the photo below. One of the companies that my company does business with, Muscle Milk sponsors a car in the American LeMans Series.

There were five different racing series running different events over the course of the weekend.  Since Muscle Milk had their car running the Le Mans race this afternoon, they provided us with tickets for the day.  The racing concludes with the Izod Indy Car race on Sunday, featuring my son's favorite driver Danica Patrick.

Even though the Indy car race was tomorrow, there were a couple of opportunities to see Danica driving.  One of the first events of the day, at 9am, was practice for the Indy Car race.  Shortly after noon, they also have the qualifying laps for the race.  My son's eyes lit up and a smile came to his face as soon as she drove by.  I was able to get a few nice shots of Danica racing around the track during those times.

Our day started fairly early.  As I said, we wanted to see Danica during practice at 9am so we had to leave the house a little bit before 8am to head to the light rail system to go to the event.  After the early practice, I met my contact with Muscle Milk who took us to the garage area where they were working on the car.  They had some mechanical issues earlier in the week and were frantically trying to get the car ready for the race.

I did not take any pictures because I did not want to get in the way of their work, though they did show us the chassis of the car and showed us the rest of the parts that would need to be reassembled once the car was repaired.  We also were able to meet a couple of their drivers, get some hats and t-shirts, and get a few autographs.  The good news is they were able to get the car repaired in time to start the race.

Because we had such an early start to the day, and my son was getting pretty tired, we did not stay very long for the Le Mans series race.  It started some time after 4pm.  We did get to see one short race of one of the minor car series.  The cars roared past us in front of the Convention Center and one of them had an accident in the first turn.  I did get this shot of one car making a pass on another during that race.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day, but tiring and very loud.  We had to buy some ear plugs from one of the concessionaires.  We were also able to find one concession stand dedicated strictly to Danica Patrick.  My son walked away with a Hot Wheels car of her #7 Go Daddy Indy racing car.  We are all looking forward to attending another race in the future.

Related articles

• Baltimore gears up for Grand Prix (cnn.com)
• Baltimore Grand Prix: Do a Virtual Lap, Get the iPhone App (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Racing in the streets (weblogs.baltimoresun.com)

Labor Day Weekend

Image via WikipediaIt is the start of the Labor Day weekend here in the States.  For a lot of us, it means a nice three day weekend and the end of summer.  There will be a lot of cookouts and one more trip out to the beach.  We have a very full weekend planned for our family.

First off, tonight we have tickets to one of our favorite activities, the Bowie Baysox.  Tonight is their annual Autism Awareness night at the ballpark.  As the father of an autistic child, it makes me happy that they recognize those with autism.

Saturday, we have tickets to a new event in our annual, the Baltimore Grand Prix.  I attended a few local stock car and drag races when I was a kid, but this is going to be something new for our family.  We hope to see Danica Patrick practice and qualify for Sunday's Indy car race during the morning, and then a LeMans series race in the afternoon.  My son is excited to possibly see Danica drive.

Sunday, we will be headed back to the Baysox for Meet the Team Day.  We are also members of the Baysox Boosters.  After the game, the Baysox will be providing a crab feast for the team, staff members, and the boosters.  It should be a good time.

Finally, on Monday, there is one more Baysox game, weather permitting.  They are calling for a pretty good chance of storms.  Then it will be the end of my son's two week break before heading back to school.  One last hurrah as it was.  I hope everyone has a safe holiday weekend.

A Nice Visit & Some Random Thoughts

Image by Vitodens via FlickrIt has been a few weeks since I posted anything specifically about my son and his adjustment to the school.  I guess the old adage is true, "no news is good news."  That would be the case here.  He has been doing very well the past three or four weeks.

One of the more difficult aspects of his going away to school has been not being able to see him.  During the transition period we were told that we would not be able to visit him for five weeks.  Due to the some of the early struggles and the holidays, he never spent more than a couple weeks at the school until recently.

With the progress he has made the last few weeks, we were finally able to drive out to have a visit with him.  When we got to his dorm, he was taking a nap on one of the couches in the recreation room.  We woke him up gently by talking to him.  It took him awhile to fully wake from his slumber, but once he did we had a great visit.

Speaking of driving out to his school, that brings me to random thought #1.  When you are driving and see a speed limit sign, does the speed limit start at the point of the sign or when you are able to see it?  The reason I ask is that there is a road we drive on that is 50 mph.  It drops from 50 mph to 40 mph and then drops to 30 mph within a quarter mile of the 40 mph sign. 

My son really enjoys watching NASCAR races, so one of the things we took out to him was a DVD of the Nationwide Series race at Daytona.  He was extremely excited to get it, and he ran to his room to get his DVD player so he could watch parts of the race.  He likes when Danica Patrick races so that they say "drivers start your engines," instead of "gentlemen."

After we had been there for a while, it was time to go to lunch.  He put his coat on and we headed down to the cafeteria for lunch.  He ate a lot of food while we were there.  That had been one of our major concerns when he started because he wouldn't eat much at all.  Lately, though, he has been eating three times a day.  He still isn't eating a lot of variety, but we will take eating regularly.  Hopefully the variety will come too.

After lunch, he and his dorm mates went to the gym for a little exercise.  We walked around the gym for a couple laps until somebody broke out the basketballs.  My son and I grabbed one of the basketballs and shot a few baskets.  His one handed dribbling looks a lot better than it had been.  We were able to work up a little bit of a sweat (which reminds me that I need to do a post soon about how my new eating habits are doing.)

Now a brief aside for my second random thought.  When we drive out to his school, we always pass some signs for Tuckahoe State Park.  I guess it says something about me when every time I pass by a sign that says "Tuckahoe" I have the same thought.  If you change one letter it could be the lyric of a rap song.  Think about it.

After about a three hour visit, we decided to head home for the day.  Saying goodbye was not traumatic at all.  At first, especially when he saw me, he thought he was going home, but we explained that he had to stay and we would pick him up in 10 days for his next long weekend home.  He seemed fine with it.  All in all, a very pleasant day.

Related articles

• Mark Martin, Danica Patrick share NASCAR spotlight | Auto racing (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Danica Patrick starting to get it done in NASCAR (espn.go.com)