Our efforts during the daytime were\npretty non-existent but during the evening we went to the Truck &\nTractor Pulls at nearby Skagit Speedway. We arrived 40 minutes prior\nto the scheduled kickoff and lines were very long at the admission\ngate. That might have been because they let people pay with credit\ncards or cash in all the booths and their communication speed of\ntheir credit card readers is almost glacial. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tWe eventually got past the gate. We\nhave been to this racetrack before and we know their seating is\nterrible. The seating planks are only about six inches wide and,\nprobably due to rough weather and negligence, are laced with\nbuttock-piercing slivers and have all the flexibility of cast iron.\nWe brought in Peggy’s nifty grandstand chair and some ass pads for\nme, fully acknowledging the torturous seating available. The chair\nworks very well but their isn’t enough padding transportable for my\nrather wide bottom. About an hour into the show I noted that a\nthought kept coming to me \u2013 MY BUTT HURTS! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe tractor pulls started out with\nlittle bitty lawnmowers and hobby farm tractors dragging mini-sleds\nand was quite boring. The announcer was incapable of telling us who\nwas driving the tiny things but we did note that all of the\nlawnmowers were owned by the same person and driven by his offspring.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThen the stock, or mostly stock,\ntrucks started pulling a much larger sled which moves greater amounts\nof load onto the sled as the truck goes further. There was much black\nsmoke and whirling of turbochargers except in one case where there\nwas black, then white, smoke because a part went out the side of the\nengine block right about time the load got serious. None of the\ndiesel trucks could muster a \u201cfull pull\u201d which is 300 feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThen some tractors with enormous\nengines hooked onto the sled and started the sled really moving. The\ntractors were quite a bit more powerful and substantially quicker\nthan those utilized for, say, mowing corn or baling hay. Full pulls\nbecame regular after this point. Several of the bastardized rigs had\nin excess of 1,000 horsepower and two rigs were really fancy, one\nwith three big alcohol engines and another with four. They produced\nprodigious amounts of both noise and smoke. It was a good, noisy\nmeeting of the Church of Internal Combustion. Washington is not quite\nas big of a nanny state as California so folks can both smoke\ncarcinos and buy beer right in the stands. It ended up being a big,\nfun, noisy time for all and much fuel was consumed yet no crops\nharvested. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our efforts during the daytime were pretty non-existent but during the evening we went to the Truck & Tractor Pulls at nearby Skagit Speedway. We arrived 40 minutes prior to the scheduled kickoff and lines were very long at the … Continue reading