Start Your Engines!

So, every year attendees return from RT with interesting tales; I’ve already heard my share this week. But perhaps of greatest interest to me is the fact that next year’s convention will be held in Daytona! Daytona Beach, Florida. Now, see, I’m a native to the VERY deep south, my friends, so I can make a little joke here (plus our agency represents NASCAR insider, Liz Allison.) What will this be? NASCAR RT? Or, as an editor and I were just brainstorming about the themed vampire ball, how about NASCAR Vampire. Or would that be NASCAR vampar?

Ah, yes, let’s call it the Vampar Ball, shall we? And that just lends whole new meaning to the pit crew (pits of hell crew?)

But seriously, a trip to Daytona Beach will be interesting for me. Just the words conjure up a certain sense of strange childhood nostalgia, of a time when you could still drive on the beach (in my father’s convertible Cadillac Eldorado, no less, burgundy red with all white interior leather!) When the boardwalk still existed (does it now? I doubt it!) and the biggest thrill of my six year-old life was riding the chair lift out over those nighttime waves that seemed so fathomless and black. Those were the days when my father, who was later ill for so many years, still seemed vital and healthy. When he’d actually walk on the beach with us, or take us on the ocean drive with the top down and Aretha Franklin blasting from his 8 Track.

The thing about visiting lost places, though, is until you go back, they still exist. If you leave them alone in your memory, then their misty lack of substance is never disproved. I’ll go back to Daytona next year, I suspect. But I just might keep my eyes closed outside the hotel.
Deidre