From my eyes: The race to Chicagoland

JOLIET, IlI. — When I woke up Sunday morning, I rose with high hopes and small pulses of electricity pumping through my veins as I took my first conscious breath.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was about to do something I never intended: I became the story.

My wife and I took care of our dogs, collected our belongings and headed southwest from our Appleton apartment to the NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway.

Apple Maps estimated that our trip would take about three hours and 20 minutes to reach the 1.5-mile track in Joliet, Illinois. We shipped off in the late morning with our ETA being right around 2 p.m. CT, enough time to scour pit road for the stories I intended to cover in my only day at the track this weekend before watching the race from the media center.

My wife’s 2011 Chevrolet Impala scythed through traffic with relative ease as we descended down the map amidst a swarm of RVs, campers and assorted off-road vehicles on dodgy trailers.

Independence Day weekend made the trip more arduous than Apple Maps projected as a sea of Illinois plates surged toward Wisconsin’s southern border with us.

Unfortunately, complaints concerning driving standards became commonplace on our drive as it seemed every blue plate out our windshield tried its hardest to obstruct our path to the eero 400.

Small hiccups like going to the bathroom and getting stuck in mild congestion added minutes to our drive, but nothing too severe that makes you scratch your head.

Then, the mild congestion flared up in a big way as we strolled through Milwaukee. Multiple stoppages in the Cream City did the opposite of Christopher Bell late in Sunday’s eventual race, coughing up chunk after chunk of time.

Suddenly, our ETA was 2:30 p.m.

Awash with regret for not foreseeing these setbacks, I began running contingencies in my head as I knew time with drivers and team members would be severely limited as the ETA continued to balloon.

We breezed through the state border and started scooting towards the Windy City metro area, where we hoped to be reunited with Joliet for the first time since “Old Town Road” dominated the charts.

My wife and I visit Chicago from time to time, and in the middle of the freeway, a Baby Ruth sign poked up on the right side. It is at this very sign that we often find ourselves stopped for one reason or another, whether that be road work or an accident.

“Hey, at least we aren’t stuck at the Baby Ruth sign this time!” I told my wife.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking of my words like a bad cast of a fishing line where you would like to just slowly reel the words back into your mouth.

The black Chevy Impala rattled onward with little issue, but as we approached the speedway, we noticed fluctuations in Apple Maps’ estimates.

An email blast from Sunday morning asked spectators to abandon the normal Chicagoland parking around the track, due to extreme precipitation on Saturday that waterlogged the ground.

It was certainly a reasonable request to be sure given the circumstances, as it would be inconvenient for everyone involved if some poor patron’s car required a tow out of a NASCAR-sanctioned mudpit.

The email urged fans to head to Route 66 Raceway, a nearby dirt oval and dragstrip, for parking, which sounds simple enough in theory.

As time burned away like fresh Goodyear tires on Chicagoland’s aged surface, my wife and I made the decision to aim for the track because the email indicated there would be directions on how to access the new detour to the dirt track as we approached the area.

Turns out, I overestimated just how much direction there would ultimately be.

Just as we thought freedom was about to ring because our exit was next up, a long, antsy line of cars stood in line on the exit ramp that we wound up joining because the exit for Chicagoland was closed due to road work.

While it would be easy to blame NASCAR for this folly, the Illinois Department of Transportation knew about this race for at least nine months, perhaps even earlier. There was ample time to prepare, and officials chose to close the designated exit for the race track on the same weekend that Chicagoland hosted its first NASCAR race weekend since HBO’s Euphoria debuted.

An eon went by before we officially made it to a main road, a simple two-lane street with stoplights and clusters of stop signs. We got two miles away from the track, and that’s where progress stopped.

This was a little after 3 p.m. Patience and time wore thinner than porta potty toilet paper.

My wife and I briefly found ourselves stuck in an intersection, blocking a woman from getting to her home for about a minute longer than she expected. The woman yelled out of her van and made several crude remarks, which were justified to some extent, but we were already so downtrodden that our empathy was running on fumes.

Just as we squeaked out of that intersection, our car started smoking a little, a nasty habit it has picked up when it sits still for too long. The oil temperature remained neutral, meaning our power steering fluid must have been dripping again from our leaky reservoir. All smoke, no substance, thankfully.

We crested the small hill we were on and eased our way inch-by-inch to the next stop sign. Critically, this was not a four-way stop like the previous one.

For those driving away from the track on the perpendicular routes back to their Sunday afternoon at home, they had no reason to sit in standstill traffic and kept it pushing.

A kind fellow traveler let us in pretty quickly, so we were officially in the line for the race.

Or, so we thought.

It almost seemed like the line moved even slower than before when we had more apparent obstacles.

After pacing in line at 2 mph, I told my wife that the nuclear option must be enacted: I needed to hoof it to the race track.

For those unfamiliar with the term, that means I vacated the safe confines of the car and the warm company my wife provides in exchange for exposing myself to the elements in hopes of reaching the track before the green flag of the eero 400.

I scurried to the trunk to grab my backpack, loaded my closed water bottle into the bag to conserve energy, kissed my wife goodbye and started blazing a trail, as any good mountaineer would do.

My wife kept up for a minute until I crested a new short hill and passed some officers that were doing a questionable job of directing traffic.

The first officer I saw told someone going to the track to travel down the path I took, but the very next officer told the next person that everyone sent down my route would need to turn around anyway.

I tried not to concern myself with these foibles and carried on my merry way, not knowing my water bottle had miraculously popped open in my bag.

A pod of homes on a wooded path led to a school where I stopped and chatted with a woman wearing Looney Tunes pants observing the traffic from her driveway, where she told me, “It’s never been this bad as long as I can remember.”

We exchanged pleasantries, and her dog let me pet her head before I hopped off again, this time walking down an expansive avenue of industry that featured a sidewalk that could have had its trees pruned a bit more often.

Just as I started hitting a consistent stride, a small, cool wetness made contact with my lower back.

Oh no, I thought to myself. There’s just no way.

Dear reader, there was, in fact, a way.

My Owala water bottle engaged its opening button while locked. So for an indeterminate amount of time, water freely sloshed around my backpack, consisting of my laptop, its charger, my change of clothes, my day planner and my notebook.

All my preparation and backups were damp and ruined, but I came this far. I was not about to let that knock me down.

I used the pants I was wearing to dry off any wet surfaces on my laptop and my backup shorts to dry the backpack’s interior. It was not a pretty sight, but my laptop still worked fine enough, which felt like a major blessing.

My belongings returned to my bag while I called my wife to tell her what had happened. She was still in line and would be in line for another hour. My wife did not enter Chicagoland until midway through the first stage.

The march continued as I finally made it by this large warehouse that seemed to stretch on for miles, and there it was. Sitting there in its pristine brilliance was none other than Chicagoland. 

25 years since its opening, seven years since it last hosted racing, I finally arrived at the track.

The entire goal of this walk and trip stared me in the face as I hobbled along, wet from impromptu spillage and sweat from the walk. I crossed the road and headed into the credential office at 4:57 p.m. local time.

A woman at the counter scanned a QR code on my phone before handing the credential to me just as the clock reached the top of the hour.

I closed the door behind me as I left before bolting down the tunnel and into the infield, where I bought an enamel pin to commemorate the event before taking a right into the media center while the pace laps rolled, reaching my destination and finding the reprieve I desperately sought.

Finally, I finished the race to Chicagoland right before the start of the 400-mile Cup Series event.