DEGA Baby!!

Dega Baby!! For anyone who follows Nascar, or lives in the south, that line is instantly recognizable as a call to all rednecks to drop what ever it is they are doing, jump into the least likely of the many vehicles parked in their front yard to make the entire journey, and head to the Talladega Super Speedway for the spring race. Like moths to a flame, the annual spring Nascar event attracts backwoods, barefooted hillbillys out of the hills and on to the surrounding interstate freeways, driving disintegrated scrap piles and rusted, smoking, bastardized caricatures of former road worthy automobiles, and causing madness and mayhem with the area roadways.

If you have never experienced a Nascar event, I urge you to get that to the top of your bucket list. There is no other event like it on the planet. Imagine if you will 100,000 drunken, screaming fans, gathered together to watch 43 cars travel 500 miles in a circle at 200 miles per hour nose to tail hoping to see a spectacular firey crash. Everywhere you look there are over-indulged, shirtless, sweaty good ol boys swilling budwiser and shouting JUNIOR every time the AMP Energy 88 car roars past the stands..

For full effect, you must purchase an RV and do the entire weekend camp. It is stated very clearly in the Nascar Fanclub Rule Book that the RV MUST be worth at least 3 times the appraised value of your home, and twice the value of the pickup truck needed to tow it. You need to fill that RV with as much beer as possible. If necessary, any other essential item is to be sacrificed to make room for more beer. Hotdog wieners are recommended as the sole food item due to the convenient square packaging that can be crammed in to the small cracks and crevasses between beer cases or stored in the glovebox. There is no reason for any other items since beer and wieners on a stick will now be the only source of nourishment between Thursday evening and Sunday's checkered flag.

About 25 miles out from the racetrack, traffic on the interstate will come to a complete stop. You will spend the next three hours either at a total standstill, or traveling at 0.5 miles per hour. Along the route you will pass many smoking and hopelessly broken vehicles on the side of the road some on fire, some with no wheels, usually one or two surrounded by police cars, each and every one having DEGA BABY!! written on it somewhere, along with the number 3. As you get closer to the track, hoards of people walking and vendors selling everything from more beer to fire wood will be passing your near stationary vehicle as helicopters, blimps, and planes circle overhead, and cops on ATVs race up and down the shoulders of the roadway. Always buy more beer, because no matter how much you've managed to cram into your vehicle, it is not enough.

Once you get to the site, you will be overwhelmed by the level of activity and excitement. Constant traffic, constant sirens, people passing, the noise of race crews working on cars in the distance, all of which will not stop until late Monday evening, transforming the area temporarily into the third largest city in Alabama. It is a site to behold for sure, and no other state in the union takes Nascar partying as serious as Alabama. It is a thing of beauty passed down from father to son and mother to daughter like a priceless heirloom or secret family recipe.

Dang, I love it.. Dega Baby!! Yeah!!