Kannon's Trip to the Racetrack

Kannon got to see his first race cars up close. He and I went to the qualifying and practices for the NASCAR race in Fontana. Noah had been with me a couple of years ago for a test session and enjoyed it. Kannon, however, is our car guy. He loves race cars and the movie Cars. He and his cousin Jake are cut from the same mold. He was very excited to get to go. It was a great day and very low key. We got there in between sessions so there were no cars on the track yet so we walked around outside the track and looked at all the things going on outside. We watched at the SPEED set for a while and then got to take a picture with a sea lion (only in California). We were still walking around outside when the next practice session started. We could hear the cars going around the track and Kannon immediately wanted to go check it out. We walked up from underneath the grandstands right to the bottom of the stands to the fence surrounding the track just as a group of 4 or 5 cars came around the turn together. Kannon just stood there with eyes wide for several seconds. I thought for a moment he was going to start to cry because of the loud noise or just the fear of not having anticipated what it would be like. Instead after a couple of seconds I bent down and he tells me, "Dad, those cars are really FAST!" It was quite a shock to him to see how fast the cars really go (almost 200 mph) compared to TV and riding in the pickup. He loved every minute of it and watched way more than I thought he would especially since it was 100 degrees that day. It was also cool to see the four F-18 Hornets that flew over for the start of qualifying (only in NASCAR). It was topped off with seeing our favorite drivers go really fast and trying to take pictures of them as they went around the track. Kannon even tried. Best of all Jeff Gordon (3) and Jimmie Johnson (1) our favorite drivers qualified really well.