On Memorial Day weekend, May 22^nd and 23^rd, Les and Kelly Rhoades organized an overnight road trip for our club members driving down to the Talladega Superspeedway to get on the track for some fun laps. It was a successful trip and Kelly and I were able to check off three more things from our bucket list. The event centers around raising money for our Veterans. Hendrick Driven for Veterans is an Alabama-based non-profit initiative dedicated to supporting veterans, active-duty military, and their families.

On our Friday morning drive from Crossville down the mountain to Pikeville, we drove through a small typhon of rain, which I’m sure had everyone wondering why we were still going on the trip. With chins up and smiles on our faces, we continued down the highway. By the time we made it to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame Museum, mid-afternoon, the clouds had mostly disappeared and we had a dry parking lot. The NASCAR Museum was well worth a visit. The facility was packed full of historical race cars and memorabilia. You’ll also find cars that are not part of the NASCAR history, like John Force’s dragster.

After our museum tour, we drove over to the Speedway and found the infield garage complex where we picked up our event packets, which included windshield decals showing your session number and merchandise (t-shirt) we had purchased in advance. To our surprise, we were given an early 8:30am track time. It’s a good thing we drove down the night before. We decided to go check into our hotel and then dine across the street at a newly opened Olive Garden restaurant. It’s not always easy finding a place that can sit 20 people.

On Saturday morning we woke up early to sunshine and warm weather. It was tops down on the drive over to the track. We arrived to see several long rows of Corvettes already parked outside the turn 4 tunnel waiting to be directed into the track. This gave us plenty of time to get out of our cars and take it all in the splendor of actually being at Talladega, socialize a bit with friends and strangers and put our session number decal on our windshield.  Soon we were given the signal to drive into the infield garages where we would stage for our laps on the track. It was odd how much right-hand turning force was required on the steering wheel to actually go left in the corners. Somewhere, I heard that you have to go a minimum of 80mph to stay up on the track. We were a little faster than that…..some more than others. (insert picture of smiling face here).

After we all finished our laps on the track, we drove about 35-minutes over to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.  Barber Motorsports Park an 880-acre park which features a 2.38-mile professional racetrack is anchored by the museum. The Motorsports Museum is a massive 5-story, 230,000-square-foot facility. [The museum holds the Guinness World Record for the largest motorcycle collection in the world, alongside an impressive array of vintage racecars, boat motors, bicycles and more.] It houses over 1,800 motorcycles (fully operational) representing 220 manufacturers from 22 countries, spanning over 100 years of production. It also features the world’s most extensive collection of Lotus racecars. Thanks to one of the docents at the museum entrance, I was able to find the collections first three monocycles. (Honda Interceptors #1, #2 & #3).