Queen City Trip

So last week, I spent a few days in Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte was apparently a queen of England who raised 19 kids. The good people of the Carolinas chose that name as flattery for the King of England. It seems like a lot of thing got named that way when the colonies were starting out.

So Charlotte seems like a great place to live, but not that exciting a place to visit. The people are nice and very willing to talk to you, which is very strange for a person like me who would prefer to be ignored pretty much everywhere.

I went to the biggest attraction there, the newly opened NASCAR Hall of Fame. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about NASCAR. Now I know enough to fill a thimble, most of which I'l pass on to you if you keep reading this.

NASCAR really started as just moonshine runners trying to evade the cops. These good ole country folk would make their cars go faster and faster and eventually, they wanted to race them. After a while, some guy sort of standardized some rules and got everyone to go along. He was the first inductee of this initial HOF class.

The most interesting place in the HOF was the section on the pitcrews. There are all kinds of rules and ways to accrue penalties. They teach you some of the basic rules and show you a video where you have to pick out the violations.

As I left the gift shop I got a Jimmie Johnson shotglass. I know he's won the last couple titles, but not being a follower of the "sport", I have no clue how he's doing this year. The check out clerk asked me if I thought Jimmie was going to win this year. I was pretty much speechless. I have no idea what the right thing to say should have been.

Glad I got to see the place.