Getting to Texas
The heat, the politics, the guns, the “Everything’s Bigger and Better” mentality, all of these are punchlines for some of us “Yankees”. But alas, they weren’t enough to keep a few members of GTM away from attending this year’s USGP race at Circuit of the Americas (a very Texas name for a race track, by the way). That’s right, GTM went to F1!
Oh yes, the best way to get to Texas from the northeast is to fly, unless you want to drive 24 hours, but really, who has that kind of time? So on Thursday before the race weekend Eric M. and Brad N. left BWI airport in the A.M. for their long flight to Houston (by way of Atlanta).
Thankfully the boys were able to travel in style as they used a combination of Eric’s companion points and cold hard cash to upgrade to First Class. That’s right, we were sippin’ champagne and looking down on lesser folks as they boarded — just as every First Class passenger had done to me previously 😉 Oh the sweet satisfaction of being better than everyone else, if only for a few hours. Other than pretending to be important, the only other notable tidbit about the flight was the multiplayer Mario Kart tournament we had in silence. I am sure the other passengers wondered what was wrong with these two grown-ass men playing with kid’s electronics and giggling like school children. For the record, I lost, badly.
Arriving in Houston we picked up our sweet-sweet rental car, a newish Nissan Murano Platinum Midnight Edition. Of course, the original plan was for a Tahoe or some other full size SUV but Enterprise didn’t seem to have any left. After deliberating over whether to take the Murano or the Dodge Grand Caravan, we opted for the Murano. In retrospect, this was a mistake.
Food
Rudy’s BBQ, located off Exit 70-A on I-45 North, Spring TX
Once out of the airport – stylin’ and profilin’ in our awesome rental car – we needed food. If you travel anywhere with Eric M. you will learn one thing, it all revolves around food. He has a particular restaurant you must visit whenever you visit XYZ city. In Houston, it was obvious we needed barbeque, and there was a charming little place Eric knew called Rudy’s. This place can be described in one word… DELICIOUS! If you ever find yourself in Houston I highly suggest visiting this place. Get the (moist) Brisket and the jalapeno sausage.
Torchy’s Taco’s — OMG, Yum!
Later that evening, after we arrived at Tania M.’s house, by which time our BBQ lunch had finished digesting, it was time for dinner. I was in the mood for burritos so we headed out to Torchy’s Tacos. This place… omg, yum. You walk up to the counter and order whatever tacos you want, ranging from $3.50 – $6.50 per taco, and then you sit down with your sweet tea and wait for your food. I wanted a burrito, they were out of burritos, so I opted for 3 tacos; a fish taco, a breaded chicken taco, and a jerk chicken taco. All were tasty but the star of the show was the breaded chicken taco, playfully named the “Trailer Park” taco, we opted to make them “Trashy.” The jerk chicken taco however, was hot… like the fire of a thousand suns all burning through my tongue and throat …hot. It was good, but if you don’t have a fire hydrant near by then I wouldn’t recommend this taco for any amateur. Breakfast, we ate breakfast. We stopped and had these little Polish pastries called kolaches (“Coh-lah-chee”). They were amazing. Little balls of dough filled with whatever the hell you want. I had 4, pizza (with pepperoni and cheese), cheesesteak (with philly steak and cheese), rancheros (with eggs and peppers), and chicken enchalada (with chicken and what can only be described as love in a bun). As soon as I got home I started looking up recipes for these things. Even now I am thinking about them and my mouth is watering… Must. Have. More!
We did eat at a few other places on this trip as well but they weren’t really as memorable, except for Whataburger. I heard stories, tales and fables of Whataburger but I had never had a chance to experience it, until this weekend. Despite all the rave reviews, the myths and legends, Whataburger was just good, not great, not amazing, just good. Granted it was much better than any McDonald’s I’ve ever been to, but Wendy’s and Burger King have stepped their game up to the point where the quality gap has shrunk in recent years.
And on the way home, during a longer than anticipated layover in Atlanta for a delayed flight, we made our way to arguably the best tasting and least greasy Popeye’s Chicken in all the land. While we stood in line a gentleman asked if we were dining in (note that all the tables were occupied) and took our drink orders. We chuckled and joked about how he couldn’t possibly find us a table by the time we ordered… but sure enough as we grabbed our food a table was free and we sat down. THAT’s customer service! The chicken itself was excellent for fast food chicken. It was crispy and not greasy at all (as Eric pointed out, it doesn’t get a chance to sit around long enough). Airport Popeye’s is best Popeye’s.
The F1 Experience
Oh yeah, the actual reason we went to Texas. Friday morning we woke up early and hit the road from Houston to Austin, home of the USGP. when we arrived, we parked and made our way to the track entrance. Circuit of the Americas, or “COTA” (“Koh-tah”) for short, is a huge facility. You can see the tower from miles away and the parking lots around the facility added many thousands of steps to our daily step counters. Once inside, the facility is clean and well groomed. They have a soccer field and amphitheater as well as a separate main stage for larger shows that the amphitheater cannot accommodate (like Justin Timberlake & Stevie Wonder).
We had General admission tickets which meant we were able to go where we wanted and had many different views of the track. We spent a good portion of the weekend just walking around and checking out the different turns and sections as the machines practiced and took their qualifying laps. I say machines and not cars because these things are closer to aircrafts and spaceships than they are modern automobiles.
Sadly, our general admission passes did not grant us access to the race paddock so we could not get a closer look at the cars themselves, nor the drivers or the race crews. For that set-up you needed to drop a few thousand dollars for special passes.
And let’s talk about that for a minute. The tickets we purchased were about $160.00 per person (not including service charges imposed by ticketmaster). Plus we bought 3 parking passes at roughly $42.00 each. This was not a very cheap event to get into. Once inside the costs just went up from there. Remember Torchy’s Tacos, the wonderful place I mentioned earlier that sold tacos individually for a few bucks… they had a taco truck at the event… $8.00 per taco. I know it was because COTA was charging them a healthy sum to be there but we could not in good conscience spend that much for a taco that we paid half that price for the night before. Food costs and admission costs aside, everything at this event was expensive! They were charging $70 for a baseball cap, $100+ for a team jersey, and so on. I bought a t-shirt, it was for RedBull Racing and it was last year’s shirt — I paid $20.00. That’s how much that shirt actually should have cost for this year’s event. So long story short, the event was expensive and I didn’t get access to all of the things I would have liked to have seen.
As far as the total F1 experience itself. It was a little disappointing. The track was cold for longer periods of time than it was hot. Other than a go-kart track and racing simulator there really wasn’t much to see or do other than sit around and wait for cars to be on track again. Out of the entire time we were there we were fully engaged in what was happening for about 4 hours, of which 2 hours was the actual race itself on Sunday.
Max Verstappen #33 – Red Bull F1 Team
A few ways the event could improve moving forward, invite other series there to share the track that weekend. Have more things going on during the day. Also make the paddocks available to the fans. Let us walk around and see the cars up close and personal, let us talk to the engineers that designed and created those machines. And of course, make things cheaper and more accessible to people. There is no reason why a hat should cost $70.00 (when it’s $40.00 on the website) and a taco should not cost $8.00 for one.
In The Rearview
Since the F1 activities weren’t that enticing to see on Saturday, we took a side trip to Austin and walked down South Congress Street and even took in a famed city-wide garbage sale (correction: garage sale) at the local expo center. Austin was pretty neat, for those that haven’t been there before think San Diego meets Colorado. We also visited a few comic book stores and a really cool toy store called Terra Toys.
During the race, we made our way in front of the stands at turn 10-11 and ended up in a giant mud pit, created from the Sunday morning rains, that seemingly ate my shoes. I had to throw them out (I was going to anyway).
Buc-Ees… heard of it? Let me describe it. Think Wawa + Cracker Barrel + Wal-Mart + Target + Bass Pro Shops + Home Depot = Buc-Ees. This place was one of the more interesting things we saw on our journey. Tania randomly mentioned it during our commute from Houston to Austin and just as she was finished explaining it we saw one and had to stop. I really can’t say anything more about it except you have to visit one if you get the chance. Also, the bathrooms were super clean. Like, award winning clean. Mr. Clean would be impressed!
I would like to thank Mike & Mona Arrigo from HookedonDriving Northeast for their hospitality. They drove their motor home all the way down from PA (apparently they are the only people who DO have the time to drive 24 hours to Texas) and fed us and allowed us to use their motor home as our base of operations during the day. I would also like to thank Tania M. for putting us up for a few days at her house and taking me for a ride in her sweet vintage Audi.
(More pictures from this event and others are available at our Shutterfly Share Site).
