Race is at Watkins Glen this weekend and we're not going.
We talked about it for two weeks. Sarah pulled up the Airbnb she always books, the one with the kitchen big enough to actually cook in, and we sat there at the table looking at it. Then we looked at Crank, who was asleep under it, and that was pretty much the conversation.
He's eight. He's not sick. He's just turned into the kind of dog who follows you from room to room and looks personally insulted when you close a door. The thought of dropping him at a kennel for four nights — concrete floor, strangers, a chain-link run — neither of us could get there. He's never been boarded. Starting now, at this age, on a weekend we don't strictly need to be gone for, didn't sit right.
So we're staying.
The harder part is that this would've been the weekend Ricky's chili comes out.
Sarah's dad has a chili he used to make in the pits. Not at home — at the track. Cast iron pot on a propane burner, set up next to the hauler, lid on, ignored for most of the day while he worked on the car. He'd hand bowls out to anyone who came by. Other drivers, their crews, the guy from the tire vendor. By the last race of the season people would walk past his stall just to check.
He stopped racing in '95 and the chili mostly stopped with it. Started making it again a few years back when Sarah talked him into it. Now it's a race-weekend thing — wherever we go, the pot goes. Brisket trim, three peppers, dark beer, the kind of long simmering that doesn't really need watching but you watch anyway because that's the point.
We were going to make it Saturday. Sarah already had the brisket trim in the freezer.
So we're making it here instead. Fire pit, same pot, Ricky and Ella Mae driving over from Wilkesboro Friday afternoon. Wes said he'd come. The Meg's already in. Hank will turn up because Hank always turns up.
Sarah will probably have MRN on out by the smoker. She'll know who's running where without looking at the standings. Ricky will sit in his folding chair and watch the trees more than the radio. Ella Mae will read between cautions, the way she always has. Crank will be asleep in the gravel within ten feet of whoever's cooking.
It's not the Glen. But Ricky's chili is going to be on the fire, and the dog is going to be home, and that's the trade we made.
We'll catch the next one.