Off to the races...

November 8, 2009
Avondale, AZ

We finished up our preparations for the NASCAR races at Phoenix International Raceway (PIR) and made the long (15 miles?) trek to the track.

Thursday was an easy day. Geri and I both went to the dentist for cleaning and exams. With x-rays, it was a pretty expensive stop, but needed. Can't eat without teeth! After the dentist, we did a bit of shopping: Costco, Total Wines & More, and Sears for a new garage door remote - basic stuff). Dinner was wings and margaritas, very good but with probably too much of both.

We started Friday by getting the coach from storage and starting the loading process. We'll be headed to PIR for 10 days. Strangely enough, packing for a short trip is harder than for a longer one. We load less stuff, but are always weighing the need for each item, so it becomes more of a process. On the other hand, we know we're only 30 minutes from home, so forgetting or overlooking something is less of an issue. Dinner involved a take-and-bake pizza - no sense getting too complicated with travel in the future.

Saturday, we finished up loading, I put a coat or two of high-temperature paint on the exhaust stack for the generator, and we were ready to go. Our friends, Wayne and Eva, are joining us for the races, so we waited for their call (they left southern California in the morning), and met them where they got off the I-10, then made the short drive south to the track. I was hoping that we'd be able to get into the RV parking area, but we ended up in the staging area until they open parking first thing Monday morning. Geri and Eva made salads for dinner, and we had a good time catching up before turning in early.

Today was another beautiful sunny day in the desert. We took our time getting started in the morning. I took the pups for a long walk, all the way around the staging area. Many people have been parked here since they opened up for staging on October 30th. There are two lots in use, each holding around 200 RVs; we're about 300th in line. Given that there will be several thousand RVs here by next weekend, that's not bad. In the afternoon, we did some meal planning and ventured out to Costco and Safeway for shopping, so we're pretty well set for the week. We watched the end of this weekend's NASCAR race from Texas (gotta get in the right frame of mind, after all) and snacked for dinner as nobody was particularly hungry (must be those Costco hot dogs we had?). We'll have to get an early start tomorrow, as parking is supposed to start at 8:00 AM. We'll need to be ready just in case they start early. Once we move tomorrow, we should be set for the rest of the week, so we'll do the full deployment of mats, stoves, chairs, dog pens, etc.

Well, that's it for now...