Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600
Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Saturday, June 1, 2013

NASCAR SWAG: Coca Cola 600 edition!

Kids are weird. If you are a parent, you know what I am talking about.  I have been blessed with two boys, currently 6 and 4, and they have different "tastes." Personally, I like to sleep in, enjoy a late lunch, and wander to the race an couple hours prior to the start. Not my sons. They want to be there at 8:30 A.M.  While I think they are crazy, there is a method to their madness. 

There's hardly anyone there that early in the morning. Is very relaxing to walk up to the Krispy Kreme trailer, with no line,  and buy a hot donut or two. This has become a race weekend tradition in our family. The smiles on their faces is worth the couple dollar investment. 

The ease of getting sponsor freebies this early in the morning is laughable. We walked up to the "sticky fingers" promotion because a) they had a "spinny wheel" that my son loves and b) they were giving away free bottles of barbecue sauce. Once we got to the front, my son said that he wanted to win a shirt. He spun the wheel and was one peg away from a shirt, but didn't get it. As they started to hand him a bottle of sauce the lady asked, "Did you want a shirt instead?" and in two seconds there he smiled holding his a shirt. Ironically, all I wanted was a bottle of sauce, and I ended up on a koozie. The man asked, "did you want the sauce instead?"- I walked away with a big bottle. 
The photo above is only a partial selection of the freebies we received. We received 3 posters (National Guard #88, Goodyear, and Sprint),  "swamp people" sauce, silly putty, a couple collapsable coolers from Kentucky Speedway, Banana Boat lanyards and samples (which were needed!), bandanas, scope mouthwash samples, plenty of coupons, and Aaron's grocery bag, and a multitude of koozies. 

Both of my sons' favorite booths was the Smithfield tent. They received free "Fueled by Bacon" magnets, little piggy keychains, and a young lady administered "Fueled by bacon" temporary tattoos, and each of us walked away with a mini-cup of bacon. YUM!
My personal favorite was the Goodyear Tires promo tent(s). I have never seen a bigger game of plinko in my life! They created a board almost three stories tall and you used Goodyear tires as your plinko disk. The announcer asked me a Nascar based question as one of his helpers had my sons color down at the table below. I got the question right (he asked what NASCAR stands for) and so I got to drop two tires!  They also had a photo booth where my boys and I received a dated picture. 
Oh, the pictures. At almost every tent they had someone take a picture of us and give us a card to download it online. Here's a picture of my 4 year old son Caspian with Miles (the trophy) and a short/super-imposed version of Denny Hamlin. Also, on the right, the surprise of the day, they had Grave Digger on hand for pictures. That made Thaddeus' day!