I survived the "car"nage of my first Enduro

I debated going to last night's Enduro at Thunder Road all day. The weather weighed heavy on my mind - as it had cancelled a trip to Island Pond (home of Late Model driver Reno Gervais) earlier in the day - and the hard-to-ignore fact that yesterday was my lone day off for this week.

But, as I have written about earlier this summer, I had really wanted to see some good wrecks, and if it's one thing the Enduro promises, it's good wrecks. So I went.

And it. was. awesome.

I marched right up to the press box and announced to Times Argus correspondent Tom Herzig that this was my first-ever Enduro. He chuckled and quipped, "Oh yeah? Have you had your Tetanus shot?"

There will be more to come on my experience with this 101-car/101-relatively novice racecar drivers, 200-lap, two hours of chaos, as I plan on writing next Monday's edition of On Deck about it, but I had to say something before a week passed.

In his pre-race meeting with those who would score the event - each driver had to have someone keep track of the time said driver passed the start/finish line - Thunder Road/ACT president Tom Curley offered this bit of encouragement:

"I'd tell you to have fun, but this isn't fun. I don't know why you paid your $10 to do this, and I wish I could give you all that $10 back."

So...what does this mean? What have we all got oursevles into? Flips, fires, spins, crunches and all kinds of racin', that's what. There are only two flags used: the red one, which only comes out for a flip or a fire, and the black one, which only comes out of you are a real bad word. At the start, the cars lined up three-wide starting at Turn 1 and wrapped all the way around to Turn 3. When the announcer (and the HUGE crowd, easily the biggest of the summer) counted down "5, 4, 3, 2, 1 GREEN FLAG!", those at the front of the pack stepped on it only to run smack into the back of the pack in Turn 3, as the back of the pack had barely even pushed on the gas.

Ah yes, the Enduro. I think I found my new favorite redneck spectator activity.

-Anna Grearson