Tag: salt flats

Sometimes I look through the “Hometown Mailer” that has coupons, etc.  They recently added a calendar section which listed the World of Speed 2009 on the Salt Flats.  I thought that would be a really fun activity to do with the boys.  Since it would take 3 hours to drive there, we decided to make it worth our while and make it a Friday activity (since Sat was a shortened day).   And yes, we did take the boys out of school, and Dave did his Friday workday on Saturday.  Fortunately we borrowed the Lewis truck so we could haul all the stuff needed to make it a fun day on  the salt; Bikes, trailer, Sun Oven, coolers, shade tent, water.

We wanted to leave at 5am to be there by the 8 am record races (those that had the highest from the previous day).  But we didn’t get away until about 6:30am. We had so much fun talking and imagining what it would be like and telling stories.    We arrived right at 9:30am.  The boys were so excited when we reached the entrance, they were hanging out the window like little puppy dogs.  (We did bring Ruxpin with us, but he didn’t have as much fun as we did.) 

We passed the pits and got set up 1/4 mile away at the spectator parking.  The boys got out of the truck and said, “This is salt?!?  It looks like snow, but it’s hard!”  Anthony even tasted it.  He said that it was REALLY salty.  🙂 

We brought quite a few chairs, but really only needed 1 out because the rest of the time kids were either biking, or just sitting in the truck bed.  It was a pretty good set-up.  A note on the hat Dave is wearing – it says, “Pushing 40 is exercise enough”.  James really wanted his dad to wear it, so he did.  What a good sport Dave is by driving 3 hours to a really dirty, grimy place to please his wife and wow his children.  3 cheers for Dave!

Anthony’s ‘new’ bike needed the back tire replaced, so today was a perfect day to work on that.  Once Dave got the rusty bolt budged, it didn’t take too long to finish the job, and then Anthony was off!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once we got the bikes fixed and the lasagna in the Sun Oven, Dave took the boys to the pits and the starting line to see the cars.  Anthony said that he pumped up the tires in my (grown-up) bike, and in the kid trailer.  So Dave took off with all the kids (and Ruxpin), while I stayed back to nurse Jacob, and get him to take a nap.

When the others got back, Dave told me that the tires weren’t really pumped up.  So he nearly passed out biking 1/4 mile with 80 pounds of kids (plus his own weight) doubled by the weight of the flat tires!  Poor guy!

I decided I wanted to go check out what they just saw, and took Samuel with me.  Everyone we saw was so friendly and loved to answer questions.  Samuel mostly liked playing in the salt, especially while we were waiting for a launch to take place.  There was at times some downtime while either course (there were 2 courses) had to be cleared when vehicles leaked oil, or dropped something.  When we were at the starting line waiting for an Aston Healy to take off, this was the case.  We waited about 20 minutes. 

It was fun listening to the announcer – I heard one car, driven by a husband/wife team, with their kids as the pit crew, that it was “sponsored by Mastercard and Social Security”.  Dave and I chuckled over that one. 

While biking back to our camp spot, my cell phone rang twice in a row.   I didn’t answer since I was biking, and wondered what the big emergency was.  Found out that James had chipped a tooth, and was in severe pain.  I had brought a few of my oils, but didn’t bring Clove to help deaden the pain.  I gave him the choice of trying Basil, which does take away ‘stinging’ pain, but he whimpered and whined instead, and begged (!) for a dentist.  We called Julles to see if she could look up a dentist inWendover, NV (just 5 miles away).   We found one that could see him.  However, James decided after about 30 minutes that he was ok, and could wait until we saw our regular dentist.  (Which is a good thing, for many reasons!)   I think he was also pretty hungry which made him even more whiny.  So we ate our now finished lasagna, courtesy of the sun and the Sun Oven.  Pretty yummy!  (Though next time I will be sure to rotate the pan every 30 minutes or so.)   And we even cooked some Toll House cookies on it.  Though not very many, as Dave was ready to go and wanted to pack up.

We said good-bye to our next door neighbors, whom our boys became friends with their 5 year old boy named Hunter.  He was pretty sad to see us go and take our bikes and scooters.  (Benjamin did get some bike practice in.)   I also talked to his dad about his foot-glove shoes he was wearing.  Very interesting!!!  I might see if I can find a similar pair to help me with my sore right foot.  

We left around 4:30.  Which it was a good thing we did leave earlier than expected, because by the time we got home and got everything unloaded, washed/scrubbed off, and kids (and adults) showered, it was 10:00 pm, and we were exhausted!!! 

Though it was a really fun day and we are definitely making this a bi-annual event.  Anyone want to join us?