Shake & Bake

08/13/06

            Shake and Bake Baby! That line and the fact that Ricky Bobby’s two sons were the kind of totally sarcastic wise-ass punks that you just have to fall in love with were the only redeeming parts of the new movie Talladega Nights. Could Will Farrell be any more of a dolt? I’ve seen all of the major movies that he has made and only went to this one because of its NASCAR theme and, as usual, walked away wondering why I bothered. Before I would go see another Will Farrell movie, I’d listen to Darrell Waltrip say boogity, boogity, boogity all afternoon and attend an Adam Sandler weekend marathon.

            Since my last column, the Busch East Series has had only one race, that being The Edge Hotel 150 Presented by Casella Waste Systems at Adirondack International Speedway in Beaver Falls, N.Y. Because the trip out there is almost as long as the name of the event, I stayed home and enjoyed a weekend of camping at Oxford Plains Speedway and watching a big Late Model race on Saturday night and an even bigger Pro Stock race on Sunday night. 350 laps of combined green flag feature racing along with another few hundred qualifying laps makes for a pretty intense weekend for some of the drivers and some pretty good race-watching for some of us fans.

            A number of the drivers, including former BNS driver Ben Rowe, did double duty and ran the ACT 100 on Saturday night and the TD Banknorth 250 on Sunday night. There were also a trio of Busch drivers, J.J.Yeley, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin that ran the 250 after having driven in the Busch race at Gateway International Speedway in Illinois on Saturday evening. The double duty thing didn’t pan out too well as Busch, Yeley, Hamlin and Rowe finished 22^nd, 29^th, 36^th and 39^th respectively. Even former 250 and BNS champion Ricky Craven could only muster a 32^nd place finish after getting into the field on a provisional. Ricky didn’t win or even finish very well, but was easily the fan favorite all weekend. I saw more signs, likenesses of Craven and Tide racing gear at OPS on the one weekend than I’ve seen in the whole past year anywhere else. I spoke with Ricky briefly on Saturday and it was easy to see the determination and focus that he was putting into performing again for the hometown crowd. It was also a lot of fun to get to see and talk with a lot of the former BNS drivers that were there to try to qualify for the race. Dale Shaw, Ben and Mike Rowe, Jeff Taylor, Kelly Moore, Travis Benjamin and Dave Dion were all on hand to try their luck with some very mixed results.

            Travis and Dion both scored top 10 finishes while Taylor and both Rowes were out of the top 25. Dale Shaw managed to get back to 17^th after some problems and Kelly missed getting into the show by only one position in the consi. There is something quite amazing about watching 83 cars try to qualify for 40 spots and do it all in one day. Dave Dion ran a 20 lap heat, a 20 lap consi, and then won the 50 lap non-qualifiers race, just for the privilege of running another 250 green flag laps. With the 102 yellow flag laps in the feature race, Dave went 442 laps on Sunday alone. Watching 442 laps of racing tires me out, and here’s Dave, out there kicking the asses of 32 other drivers, many of which are young enough to be his grandsons!

            The best part of the weekend, for me, came on Friday night. We were camped at the track and I had been there most of the day when the expected call came that my daughter was going into labor. I knew it was going to happen and was pretty sure it would happen on Friday, so I was prepared. I left the track at about 6:00PM, went to Farmington and met my wife, Robin, at the hospital where my daughter Tina and Jess, the nervous expectant father, had been since midnight on Thursday. At 9:30, we were blessed with our first grandchild, a wonderful, big, healthy baby boy named Adam Lee Legendre. After pictures and a lot of oohing and aahing, I got home for a few hours sleep and was back at the track by noon on Saturday. The day before he was 2 weeks old, he sat on my lap and watched his first Red Sox game with me and I fully expect that if I can come up with an official “Little Trees” onesie, that I’ll have him at a Busch East race by the beginning of the 2007 season and we’ll also watch my VHS tape of Days of Thunder, while I explain why Will Farrell is such a dolt and that Mommy and Daddy are wrong about Robbie Gordon, he’s just aggressive and he really can out drive Tony Stewart.

As always, send Questions, Comments, Hate Mail, and Indecent Proposals to, Fish c/o Busch North Scene or e-mail them to fishy@ctel.net