Any Given Sunday

It's snowing today.  There is already about 4 inches on the ground, though it is hard to tell exactly how much.  It's one of the sideways snow days with high winds and huge drifts.

We were originally planning to go down to Denver today, hit one of the museums.

Instead, I'm sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee, watching the pre-race festivities for the Daytona 500.

This is a big deal you guys.

I haven't watched NASCAR since my Dad died.

It was his thing.  It was never my thing, but it was something I would happily sit with him and watch whenever I got the chance.  We knew that if we were with Dad on any given Sunday, there would be cars driving 200mph around a track on a tv somewhere.

He left us a week and a half before Daytona two years ago, and I'm sure he would have rather held on to see it one last time.  Daytona is the first, the biggest, the best of them all, though he always liked watching Sonoma almost as much because it requires the drivers to turn right - something they don't do so well with.

I used to give him a hard time about it.  I used to wonder aloud all the time how he could watch the same thing for hours and hours and hours.

He loved fast cars. He taught his daughter to love fast cars.  He took us to races as kids.  We wandered the pits together.  He opened it up on empty roads. He laughed when I told him about racing cops in marked cars in the T-Bird we had when I was a teenager.  He laughed even harder when we took the governor out of my daughter's Barbie Powerwheels Jeep and she spun the tires bald.

This isn't a picture of his, but the closest I could find to his Camaro.

He cringed at the wrecks, and losing Earnhardt was rough on him.  We watched that accident as it happened on television together, at this race in Daytona in 2001.  Like most people who know anything about the sport, that accident just seemed wrong to him.  To me. It wasn't that bad.  It didn't seem that dangerous.  There were so many others, so much worse.  Then just like that, Earnhardt was gone.

My Dad wasn't a big sports fan for much else.  He never waited for opening day of baseball with anticipation, he could take or leave professional football.  He loathed the NBA.  There were three things sacred in his living room.

College football, PBA & NASCAR.

Today, I'm letting NASCAR back into my house.

Rooting for Dale Jr. to get it back.  Watching Danica make history.  Trying to make small talk about the drivers with my husband.

Missing him.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

NASCAR is back.