Thursday, October 31, 2024

NMS Does Darlington


WARNING: OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE GOING ON TRACK!



After making a donation to hurricane relief, I drove down to Darlington and got to drive on the famous track known as The Lady in Black, AKA the Track Too Tough to Tame! Here's how that went:

Luckily, I didn't have school on the Thursday of this event, so I enjoyed a leisurely drive through the SC countryside to Darlington. Driving the non-Interstates is a great way to see more of the country, and the weather was great!

When I got to the track, they had everyone just go straight into a line. Some of the track workers had clipboards and printouts of who had registered, so they checked my name, and I kept moving forward in the line of cars. 

Any car can get on track!

By this time the first group was doing laps on track, and OK it wasn't a NASCAR speed race, so since it was just for fun there was a pickup truck pace car, no passing, and we didn't go over 70 or 80mph. Oh we got up on the banking, and that's always fun. 

Not a lot of fans!

It is amazing how wide the backstraight is at Darlington. You could probably run a race and have 12 lanes of bowling back there at the same time and everyone would have plenty of room!

On the way home I took the Interstate route since the sun would be going down, so most of that trip was uneventful, which is a good thing. I took the Killian Road exit in Columbia to check out the brand new Texas based Whataburger restaurant, and even though there were cars there, they aren't open yet. I'd guess the new store employees are still training and that the restaurant will open very soon. So I had to settle for Chik-Fil-A, which was good, but MAN that area of Columbia has grown a lot since we left in 2014. And that's not counting a couple thousand people that will be working at the Scout car factory up the road that's being built. 

The rest of I-77 north to Rock Hill was just a 45-minute reminder that most people do NOT know how to drive on the Interstate. For the people in the back, KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS!

For hard core race car drivers, driving laps like this would be a snooze fest, but for us normal people that like to help hurricane relief and drive our cars, it was a pretty good day!

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