Opening Day is finally here! Here are some pics from The Rangers vs. Blue Jays.

More pics are race weekend continues…

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This is a long overdue post.

After the Daytona 500 Dad and I drove back to Texas and I turned right around and headed to Kansas to help take care of my grandmother. I uploaded some of the pics to Flickr, but I never got around to posting them here. Sorry ’bout that!

Here are the pics from the truck race. There aren’t many of them. It was a little too dark to get much with the lens I was using. (Or just about any lens, for that matter.)

And here are the pics from the main event. The weather wasn’t cooperating, but I still got a few decent shots. (Although I would have had more had I not made a bigtime rookie mistake and ignored my settings as the sun set.)

Regardless, the race was a ton of fun. This is one of those things you HAVE to see in person at least once in your life.

My Dad and I were lucky enough to receive tickets to the Daytona 500 for Christmas. (Best. Mom. Ever!)

I’ve posted my pics from Thursday’s Gatorade Duels HERE.

Photos from Friday’s truck race may not make it up quite so quickly, since it’s a night race and we won’t likely make it back until late and we have to turn around and go back ridiculously early for the Nationwide race the next morning.

I really did miss my calling as a beefcake model, didn’t I?

(I figure I’ve embarrassed mom enough for a while, it’s time to turn the scanner on myself.)

Anytime I go through Vegas I buy what I call "trip insurance" in the form of placing a couple of ridiculously stupid long-shot bets at the sports book. I figure as bad as the odds are, they’re still better than the odds of collecting on that junk the credit card companies and shady travel agents usually sell as "trip insurance."

Anyway, I last drove through Sin City on my way home from a wedding in California. It was part of the great Road Trip of 2008.

Usually I just plunk down a couple of bucks on hard luck favorites like my dear Texas Rangers and Aggies.

This time I also put down a ten spot on the Rays to win it all. They were showing the same odds as the Rangers (i.e. very bad) but I figured based on how hot a commodity their young pitchers were in my fantasy baseball leagues that even if they were a long, long way out they at least had to be better than my hometown team.

Go figure, now halfway through the season they’re in first place in the AL East above the Red Sox and Yankees.

But based on my historical luck, I think I can pretty safely say that the Rays will choke in the second half. Heck, Florida may even fall into the ocean taking the team with it.

That’s more like my luck.

I fondly remember May 31, 1986. That was the day I got my own TV in my room. It was a big freaking deal. It was an old RCA relic with a blurry picture that kept glowing after you turned it off at night. But it was finally mine. And when I plugged it in for the first time that Saturday morning the VHF dial went straight to WFAA channel 8, our local ABC affiliate.

This was the first time that the Indianapolis 500 was shown live on TV rather than on tape delay, and I was about to pee myself with excitement. David Hasselhoff (back when he was Knight Rider cool, rather than ironic) sang the national anthem. Chuck Yeager (the badass who broke the sound barrier) drove the Corvette pace car. Rick Mears was the fastest man alive in my book, and he was starting on the pole.

Bobby Rahal ended up winning — the first person to ever finish the race in under three hours. It was a great day.

So as a racing fan, I’m quite happy to see the IRL and Champ Car Series reunified. There’s been a void in American auto racing, and it looks like it’s well on its way to being fixed.

For those who aren’t versed in the history of the sport, the shortened version of this story is that a few of the people in charge of “Indy” style racing have been bickering with each other for the last couple of decades. It resulted in the league splitting into multiple different racing leagues, and quite frankly the racing and the show suffered. This season marks the first season the groups have been reunified back into one entity, the IndyCar Series. And it’s a good thing.

My dad and I have been attending the IRL races at Texas Motor Speedway for the last four years, and while they’ve been very good races, Texas has actually been kind of unique in that regard. For the most part Indy racing just wasn’t all that popular anymore. Not only was NASCAR kicking it’s butt, but IRL wasn’t putting on the kind of spectacle that Indy racing used to be about. People would tune in for the Indianapolis 500, but otherwise people didn’t bother. And well, I can’t blame the casual fan. A race with 18 cars (only 6 or 7 of whom have a chance to win) isn’t nearly as exciting as a field of 30 cars. So it’s great to see that kind of excitement coming back.

If the kid sitting a few seats away from us who kept driving his Hot Wheels across his dad’s head is any judge, the sport’s definitely going to be alright.

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So it took me nearly a month, but my photos from the Bombardier Learjet 550 are finally up over on Flickr. (Here’s a link to the slideshow.) After past races I have rushed home from the track and gone straight to work organizing, editing and posting my photos. When you figure I take anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 shots on the average race weekend you can understand what a grueling process that can be. This time around I decided to pace myself a bit slower and be more selective — and to not kill myself with sleep deprivation after the race. This was partially a conscious effort at forcing myself to produce different and better photos. But it was also a simple matter of realizing that June was a pretty intense month work wise, and I needed to be able to concentrate on projects and let the photos come second. (Besides, it’s not like I lucked into something wicked like the Michael McDowell crash back at the Samsung 500, so there was no rush.)

Anyway, sorry for the delay. Enjoy the pictures.

Every year I take a bajillion pictures at the races, yet every time I’m surprised at just how much work I’ve made for myself pulling them off the camera, sorting them, editing them and uploading them. I took somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 shots on Sunday alone. Of those, I have processed and uploaded 33. You can check out the set here.

At the next race I hope to have some time to wander the campgrounds and document the culture as much as the cars.

Seriously, stuff like this just NEEDS to be on the internets: