Well, Team Save Ferris was incredibly psyched with the victory in Denver and we have been looking forward to go to claim our prize. The time was finally here and we were ready…or so we thought.
The plan was as follows. Leave Denver at 10am Saturday, arrive at 12 in Dallas. Get checked in, meet up with the team and enjoy the nascar experience. Then Fly out Monday and head back to Colorado to tell all our friends about the experience.

Here is how it worked:
Friday night at 6pm I was rolling out of work, getting ready to head to a friend’s art opening when my phone rang and a United recorded message announced
“Your flight at Ten AM has been canceled; please call us to confirm you on a later flight.”
Snow was already falling, and the winds were picking up so I could see why this may be happening. The thoughts started to cross my mind as well that we may not be able to get out of Denver at all! How crappy would it be if we weren’t able to go to Texas after all?!
I got on the phone and realized that the holding music was going to last a while. So I started driving home. Finally I got home, still on hold and went in to wait some more. I started to realize that my battery was dying on my phone at the moment that a voice came across the earpiece to discuss our travel plans. We were confirmed on a flight at 4pm on Saturday. The team communicated and we planned out the day: Meet at 12:30 at Jeremiahs Parents place, north of the airport in Hudson CO then ride over in one car.

Matt arrived at my place and we headed to the Hueske house. We arrived there a bit late. Snow was falling, wind was blowing, and we had moments of complete and total whiteout. What was the chance that this was actually going to work? Can an airplane take off in 40+mph winds? I mean our car could barely stay on the road! We did finally arrive and a realized we were the only ones there from the team. A bit later we received a phone call.
“Guys, eh, well, we got in a car accident” we made sure everyone was alright but then I looked at my watch…Hmmm. We need to wait for the police, tow truck etc still and we have to be on a moving aircraft in two hours and thirty minutes… The clock was ticking and we were still 30 minutes from the airport…

We headed out to the scene of the accident. Jeremiah was driving along when one of the white out areas cropped up. He was traveling along and said “suddenly a white PT cruiser was sideways, moving toward him, in his lane!” He swerved to the right a bit to try to avoid it, but the road crowned too much and it sent him down into a ditch. Of course, a car had already taken this same detour and Jeremiahs truck totaled the Ford Focus. Jeremiah, Sandra, Aspen and Tokyo (their dogs) all came out of the situation unscathed…well physically unscathed. They were a bit shaken up and they had Starbucks in their hair…

We recovered them from the scene and with about an hour till our flight was to take off we were headed to the airport. Of course we were in a rush and we were of course without proper instruction to the airport. But luckily I had brought along the trusty Garmin. I plugged the destination of Denver International Airport and we hit go. Garmin said 24 minutes. At the time I thought that wasn’t too shabby. Matt stepped on the accelerator and we followed the purple route line.
Talk of the accident, what happened and speculation of what the condition of the cars were dominated the initial part of the drive until it started to occur to us that, maybe this isn’t the right way. The first indication was the dirt road. But then again, it is eastern Colorado. You can come across dirt roads fairly easily. The next indication was that this dirt road got narrower. All this time of course the snow is still blowing and everything is still saturated and wet. So driving down these dirt roads in a Honda Minivan is resulting in a lot of mud splattering around.

Eventually this road came down to a single lane muddy road. This was clearly some sort of farm road and we couldn’t believe that Garmin, first of all, knew about this road and second of all, thought it was a good plan to take us down this road. Now in fairness, Garmin doesn’t know that it is snowing…
Matt was driving and at times we would hear “Hold on, we’re gonna need a bit of speed to get through this one” or “oooohh… I bit slick through here” and other comments that were very similar. Jeremiah was in the passenger seat and noticed that the road went straight on the Garmin, but the purple line seemed to indicate a left then immediate right turn. What the hell is that! I’ll tell you what “that” is, it turns out that the bridge was out up ahead and there was a “detour” that meant you had to drive down a small hill into a streambed and then back up the other side. This was obviously traveled in the past, but I don’t know if it had ever been navigated by a Minivan in the snow.

We were sure we were lost when we saw a fence and realized that we were driving the perimeter of the airport. The thought of just stopping to see how long it took the Department of Homeland Security to show up did cross our minds, but we had a plane to catch! This road dumped out on a paved road which was maybe 4 minutes to the terminal. It was actually quite impressive and our time was pretty spot on. We arrived at the airport with about 45 minutes before takeoff. Got our tickets then went to Security. Surprisingly we walked right through with minimal wait time, got to our plane and took off!

We landed in Dallas and hailed a cab. “Omni hotel in Ft Worth please!”
The cabbie took us to the hotel and as we were checking in a HUGE roar came from the front of the hotel. We turned and looked and our brains thought that our eyes were deceiving us. It appeared that Reggie Bush was driving a RedBull NASCAR. So after rubbing our eyes, it appeared that was actually the case. Reggie Bush WAS driving a NASCAR…on the street…and appeared to be valeting it at the hotel. Turns out he was not actually valeting it however because moments later the car fired up and he drove off.
We checked into our hotel rooms and recovered briefly from the flight.

We headed to dinner at Reata in Fort Worth. Nothing in the world sounded as good as a nice thick juicy steak at that point and Reata definitely delivered. It also delivered in the large hat department too.. Wow. After a nice meal we headed out to explore town a little. Fort Worth was full of activity but to us it was incredibly nice to be outside in short sleeves enjoying the weather and relaxing. It didn’t take us long to realize that the Red Light district was across the street from our hotel…though we were about 100 years to late to partake…

The next morning we were up and on a shuttle to the race. We were traveling with some RedBull Athletes and some other VIP’s in a nice black shuttle van. The trip there was pretty painless. I assumed that we would be in traffic for hours, but that was not an issue.
We got closer and closer and realized more and more that we were #1, in the south and #2, at a Nascar Race. I am pretty sure it was the confederate flags that gave it away, but who knows, it coulda been the big trucks.

We finally parked and it was time to load up. Golf Carts arrived to take us to our seats and we were ready for the engines to fire up.

We arrived at the Energy Station ready for the race. The energy station is a standalone RedBull building, fully catered with bars and wait staff. Anything you want is basically on hand…within reason. There was a yard in front two stories inside and a nice view of the track from between turn 3 and 4.

Reggie Bush and Brian Vickers showed up. Soon after Scott Speed showed up as well. They did a small interview session with them at the Energy station as well, which was fun to hear.

RedBull let us know that we would be heading to the infield to go check out the pits. So soon we were back on the Golf Cards and on our way to the Pits. As we left the bubble of the RedBull Energy station we began to get a sense of the true NASCAR environment. The DJ faded into the country music surroundings. We entered the pits which we had read were “Business Casual dress only” to find that they enforce that very loosely.

We arrived there and our host took us around and gave us a full tour of the pits. We saw the Crash carts, Garages, Pit box, piles and piles of tires and of course the cars. It is always interesting to me to see the workings of something new and this tour was great to be able to experience!

(notice the red rear wheel to fill in the RedBull logo…clever)

Then we were back to the Energy station for an afternoon of racing:

and yes, that is correct you cannot have two of any vehicle…without a race.

Catering commensed, from the time we got there to the time that we left, throughout the entire day, we had the opportunity to eat, at least 10 times and they had basically any drink you could possibly want.

In addition to that, the interviews and whatnot, there were also Red Bull athletes there and small demos happened occasionally as well.

The race was about to begin, so the crowd moved out front and to the rail on the upper tear of the Energy station. We started taking in the view from the upper deck.

The cars fired up finally and a roar filled the stadium. The echo through the bowl shaped stadium was pretty intense and the cars started circling the track. They were all in close formation and traveling at slow speeds at first, but soon…the action began!

I don’t think that anyone from TSF is a true NASCAR fan, but we all have an appreciation for FAST and it was incredible to see the speed, acceleration and how loose the cars were on the final corner. Wow, they just stitched up their lines perfectly and all the while they were skating around the track on the edge of traction!

Cars circled and there were a few incidents, but for the most part it all was pretty flawless. The crowd was huge! and you could see the fans cheering as their favorite driver passed someone. The race went on for 3 hours and it was fun to watch from such a close vantage point. I thought a bit about this podcast that I had listened to recently that talked about the early beginnings of NASCAR and how it started off as a formal race for Moonshine runners. I could only imagine if a police officer was chasing one of these beasts down the road with a trunk full of Moonshine…
The racing came to a close and Jeff Gordan came out on top. He burned off the rest of his tires during his victory lap and made his way back to the victory circle to celebrate. We celebrated too. The Energy Station was open for another couple hours to let the crowds lighten up. The DJ cranked it up, the refreshments were flowing and we had a great time.
At the end of the day we headed back to the shuttle via golf cart. From the front we could feel a small shift in the weight of the cart and we turned around. Turns out Matt made a friend with their own golf cart so he leapt from one to the other at full speed. Why people don’t mention these things first is beyond me cause I woulda had a picture to show you guys.

We got back to the hotel and tended to our sun and windburn then met the RedBull folks for dinner. We had a great dinner and conversation with Adam from RedBull. We also had fun with the other VIP’s and Athletes that we had met through the trip.
We headed back to the airport in the morning and flew back on the smallest commuter jet that United could find. When we walked out of the airport we approached our car… Dirt had been falling off it while we were away and the wheel wells had unloaded some of their holdings in front of and behind each tire.

We headed home and back to our normal lives. TSF isn’t done however, we will be back and I am sure that with our experience we have now things will get even more ridiculous in the future…