Sara and I arrived in Birmingham Saturday evening. My uncle, who was making all of this happen for us, along with his associates, were already at the track where they'd been all day, so the wife and I promptly found a bar to watch Vanderbilt beat Auburn, much to Sara's delight, even though I had to inform her of Vandy's mascot earlier in the day, to which she responded, "The Commodores? What the fuck is a Commodore???" I also had to inform her that her excitement for Vanderbilt's victory needed to be tempered because we were in Alabama, where the city and university of Auburn are also located. There was no telling how many Auburn fans were actually in the bar but it's safe to say that Vanderbilt fans were outnumbered by it-doesn't-matter-how-many to two.
We hung around the bar for quite awhile to watch Ohio State beat Wisconsin (boring) and some Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA to the insiders (badass). Kimbo Slice went down in the first 14 seconds to some kid who was only in the fight because Ken Shamrock suffered a debilitating cut above his eye in training earlier in the day. Imagine that: you're some snot-nosed kid with absolutely no skillsets other than a high tolerance for pain so you decide to take up Mixed Martial Arts. You show up to the arena one day to fight some other snot-nosed dumbass on the under-card only to find yourself, the result of a technicality, standing across the octagon from a dude that looks more like an endangered silverback gorilla. The bell sounds and the beast comes charging at you like you're threatening a heard of his females and the only thing you can do other than shit your pants is flail your arms wildly. Miraculously, one of your swings lands on dude's jaw and momentarily knocks him out, instantly ending the fight.
I'm pretty sure your dumbass buddies are going to buy you a few drinks at the bar that night and in 30 years when you're driving a towmotor you can still talk about the time you knocked out Kimbo Slice.
At any rate, we stuck around the bar probably longer than we should have, primarily because they had Carlsberg beer on tap, which is the sponsor of the Liverpool soccer team. Admittedly it's kind of ridiculous to drink a beer just because it sponsors my favorite team, but I can assure you I legitimately like it. Though, I can also assure you I do drink it before or during every game as a matter of principle, which would be like following Kyle Bush in NASCAR and eating a pound of M&M's during each race. Actually, I saw a lot of people on Sunday who probably did that. And even though no one was driving the Oscar Mayer car, I saw a lot of people who would support that driver if there were one.
Morning came too early on Sunday, primarily because night lasted too long. We boarded a bus with the 20 or so other people in our group to head to the track, which is about 60 miles outside of Birmingham. At first I thought it was stupid that they would locate such a huge tourist attraction so far outside the city. Then we actually got there and I realized it was like a nuclear test facility but instead of highly enriched uranium they had alcohol enriched rednecks, both of which are equally dangerous to the general population.
When we arrived at the track we had two golf carts to take us through the tunnel, under the track, into the infield. Now try to picture this: the track is 2-1/2 miles around and while the infield wasn't packed, there were still a TON of people there. Basically, you pay for a parking space and then a pass. So if you have a space you can presumably have as many passes as people can fit in your mode of transportation. So, the infield becomes some sort of nomadic city beginning several days before the race as more and more people pile in. As you saw from the pictures yesterday, we were lucky enough to have a tricked out RV with 5 flat screen TV's and a roof deck for viewing the race. Other people… well, they did what they could.
Our RV was parked in a gated area with a security guard – basically the yuppie-ville of Talladega. As you got further away from the track and closer to the heart of the infield, the more despondent it became. It was like Dante's Inferno and the 7 layers of hell as you got closer and closer to the middle, except you come to find out the devil isn't as scary as he's made out to be, he just really likes to party hard, doesn't really care for shoes, and he's in hell already so what's the point in showering?
The epicenter of the madness is something called Talladega Boulevard, which is like a mobile Bourbon Street of filth, excess, and debauchery. Just imagine this: nothing exists at Talladega or the infield for 350-some days out of the year until race week when people arrive and actually create a temporary Bourbon Street. And the fucked up thing is, it looks and smells like Bourbon Street if Bourbon Street only had wheels and required a vacuum truck to suck up all the human waste, which it honestly probably does, or at least it should.
Saturday night is the big night in the infield and specifically on Talladega Boulevard, and while I was disappointed I couldn't witness it myself, I'm also kind of glad I didn't. The people who were there for it struggled to put it into words, other than to say you simply have to experience it. People say the same thing about Crystal Meth and we all know how that turns out.
The following will try to put the infield in perspective:
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