PicoBlog

If you are drinking in the stands at the Geico 500, keep in mind that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Though you’ve lugged in your own 14”x14”x14” soft-sided cooler, and are therefore not at the mercy of the price-gauging booze peddlers that that assault your bank account at nearly every other professional sporting event, you don’t want to down all those beers during the first heat. If you did, then you won’t have any available if a man fifteen rows up points and challenges you to a shotgun race. On a side note, never accept a beer-guzzling challenge at Dega from someone fifteen rows up. That man is a professional and, no matter your own training, you will lose. You don’t go up against Lebron in a one-on-one.

It is, of course, tempting to drink down the Miller Lite because it is hot in the stands and the beer is, for the time-being, still cold. There’s also the hangover that the beer helps curb, although if it truly helped, the hangover would have ceased with the third beer of the morning that you drank back at camp around 9 a.m.

At least, this is my experience. I can’t speak for all the 60,000 race fans in the Superspeedway stands, but for the twenty or so in my group, I suspect much of it holds true.

Dega is a Siren whose song pulls me in twice a year and threatens to destroy me each time. My first year, I left with a bone-bruise in my left leg that hobbled me for a month. I had jumped over a campfire. Twice! The landing on the second jump didn’t go so well. But it was a rip-roaring fire! What’s a man to do but jump it?

In subsequent Degas, I’ve returned relatively unscathed. A bruise or two on the flesh, a blemish or two on my dignity.  What follows is a guide if you, too, wish to spend a weekend in a paradise.

PREPARATION

Proper preparation for Dega is tricky but shouldn’t turn you off. An unprepared Dega is still a Dega and all Degas are good Degas. There aren’t many events that hit all the same notes as Dega, so it’s not exactly an experience you can practice for. Festivals have the length and intemperance but tend to bring in a different sort of patron. The county fair might get you closer to the Dega demographic but lacks the size and, generally, the degeneracy.

Politically, be aware that you have entered a parallel dimension, one where Donald J. Trump is to be worshiped at a gilded altar and t-shirts tell you that Black Rifles Matter. You’ll see more Confederate flags at a dirt track race in Ohio but that’s only because the South has moved on to slightly more coded symbols: Trump flags and Punisher stickers. The October 2021 running of Talledega’s Yellawood 500 was, perhaps appropriately, where “Let’s Go Brandon” was coined. If West Virginia is the heart of Trump Country, then Talladega, Alabama is physiologically its colon. Best tread lightly if you wish to avoid getting into some shit.

Materially, you will need less food than you think, more beer than you think, and coolers to keep both on ice. A camping set-up (tent, bag, pad) is preferable but you can also just sleep in your car, especially if you hit that beer cooler hard.

You’ll want to wear clothes that can be left behind by choice or accident. Whether in April or October, it’ll likely be hot, so generally, the less clothing the better. Thrifted NASCAR apparel is always welcome. If you need a style aesthetic, you can’t go wrong with “Banjo Player in a Hipster-Grass Band.” This season’s fashion featured cowboy boots and jorts for both men and women. While jorts are certainly classic Dega, unless you’ve got a pair of moisture-wicking Lucchese, I’d be wary of tall leather boots. Spring Dega is a great time to work on the summer’s first Chaco tan.

CAMPING

You can pay hundreds of dollars to camp in the infield, which I’m sure is a good time(?), but true connoisseurs will choose the free camping available in North Park, across the road from the speedway. If you’ve driven passed the racetrack on I-20 and seen the massive flag poles close to the interstate—that’s North Park.   

By daylight, North Park appears innocuous enough. Pick-up trucks, RVs, and campers line dirt roads that criss-cross the grounds. It could be any private campground in the easter US! But by moonlight, North Park transforms into a full-bore carnival, a Hillbilly Mardi Gras. Those innocuous campers become dens of depravity.

To walk North Park at night is to pass through a pornographic midway, a stretch of redneck Gomorrah that has earned the name “Boobie Boulevard.” Men, armed with plastic beads, work the passersby like carnival barkers in pursuit of one goal: to witness the unclad breasts of women. The most ambitious of them have brought trailers to their campsites that convert into stripper stages. The pole gleams and beckons women to embrace it. But ladies, if you find the stage irresistible, please keep in mind that it’s a tops-off only affair. Keep those panties on! As I heard one patrolman say, “If I see an asshole, I’m shutting it down.”

THE RACE

At my first Dega, I knew that I would enjoy the camping and the excess, but I had no idea how much I’d love the main event. On perfect days, the sun shines bright but not too hot—they don’t run the race in the rain—and you sink into your stadium seat for the next three hours or so. The Talladega Superspeedway offers the longest track of any NASCAR race at 2.66 miles. Consequently, the cars use stronger engines—around 700 horsepower compared to the 650 of smaller tracks—and achieve speeds around 200 mph.

These speeds do not translate onto television. Like the difference between watching, say, college basketball live or on tv, the tv camera slows down the action. If you, like me, don’t much care for televised racing, be assured that to sit in the stands of the speedway is to experience a visceral thrill unlike any other available on this planet. NASCAR begins with a rolling start—the cars all pull out of the pit and do a pace lap together before the green flag waves—and the sudden shift between the cars lurching along at 70 mph and opening the throttle to blast off to 200 mph is seismic. That first real lap of the race is awesome in the original sense of the word: a sublime mix of magnificence and terror. You do not so much hear or even feel it. You experience it. It is loud, rapturous, bone-vibrating, soul-shaking, life-refashioning. It is profound.

And it’s a joy you relive for 186 more laps. The next few hours range from enthralling to boring. It is striking how fast the cars speed by and how close they drive to each other. Speed, as Einstein famously showed, is relative between those moving and those not, but from our immobile spectator’s perch, you cannot imagine how the drivers navigate such minute spaces on the track. But sight is only one of the five senses that the race demands attention from. The smell of burned rubber rises to the stands and gives the air an industrial tinge. The sound is unavoidable (ear plugs are recommended): a mix of blasting internal combustion engines and an oddly high-pitched whine that strikes just before the pack arrives. Your body feels that pack as it goes by, so loud that the vibrations literally rattle you for a split second.

Such demands upon your senses sound intense and they are. And yet, it’s not unpleasant at all! It’s thrilling, it’s pleasurable, it’s decadent! To waste a beautiful Sunday watching cars burn through 5,000 gallons of racing fuel is, given the state of the global environment, pure depravity. But there’s also, strangely, a sort of grace to be found as you experience the 188 laps. Though it never stops being frightfully loud, the repetitive regularity of the cars passing by once a minute and the relative calm of the interludes becomes weirdly meditative. Maybe it’s the sun, maybe it’s the alcohol, but somewhere around the 400th mile, Dega offers is biggest surprise of the weekend. Despite the bombast, despite the exhilaration, despite the assault on your senses, you find yourself suddenly—and happily—at peace.    

ENTHUSIASM OF THE WEEK!

MACON!

I recently made my fourth trip to Macon, GA. I’ve always had a good time in Macon but I’ve never had the same time. That’s a credit to the city and to the graciousness of my hosts, Mike and Maria. Macon is the sweet spot of city sizes: at around 150,000 people, Macon offers enough of a city—good bars, good restaurants, good activities—to enjoy life but less of the ferocious traffic, dull hordes of tourists, and sprawling immensity that dampen one’s enthusiasm for urban spaces. It’s both big enough and quaint enough to satisfy. The city has some architectural interest in its residential structures and a downtown that’s come back to life. It also benefits from a number of close by and lightly traveled spots to get out in nature. Really, what more could you want out of a city? Maybe a more temperate climate: central Georgia gets hot and stays hot for longer than my body is built to withstand. There’s trout streams within a morning’s drive, though, so maybe I could adapt.

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