Save Mart/Kragen 350 Live Report by Charles Campbell

By now everyone knows what has happened on the track, or as Paul Harvey would say, "You know what the news is, now you are going to hear the rest of the story."

My day started about 5:00am, I bumped around for around two hours getting ready. Nothing happens quickly that early in the morning. It was 7:00am before I was ready to head out. I gassed up at the gas station, made a quick stop at the Safeway Deli counter for a sandwich and cruised by Jack In The Box for a two Breakfast Jack breakfast, yum. Now I am ready to roll.

I live in Mountain View at the South End of San Francisco Bay and Sears Point Raceway is 75 miles away at the North End of the Bay. The quickest and most scenic way to get there is to start off on I-280 "The world's most beautiful freeway." How do I know that? A plaque at a local rest stop says so, that's how. This freeway travels through the open space west of all the Peninsula cities and heads up to San Francisco. At one point it goes over The Stanford Linear Accelerator. I make good time, as there is hardly any traffic. San Francisco traffic moves right along too. When I get to the Golden Gate Bridge I can't help but look up at the huge structure, what an awesome sight, and down at the water way down below. I think about all the great ships that have passed beneath this mighty span. How can I see anything when I look up, you might ask? I don't have anything to block my view, I am riding a motorcycle, my favorite mode of travel. After the bridge I am on highway 101 traveling North through Marin County. Next I turn East on Highway 37 at Novato. A few miles down the road I see a sign directing me to turn left at Lakeville Road. The usual way is to turn on Highway 121 the next road to the left. I make the left and in a mile or so I see a Highway Patrolman directing traffic through a new gate and road that meanders up the hill for several miles on its way up to the parking area at the top. Once at the top the view is terrific, you can see the race track on one side and the North end of the Bay on the other. By using this entrance I have missed the monumental traffic jam at the maim entrance. It is now a little after 10:00am and I can't believe how I breezed through so easily. Nobody even checked my ticket. The "cheap" way to get tickets is to go to a Kragen Auto Parts Store to get a discount coupon that you then have to take to a Save Mart Supermarket where you can then purchase your ticket, saving $10.00. I only saved $5.00 because I only went to the Save Mart Store.

After parking my bike I walked around looking at all the stuff for sale. They were selling every possible thing you could put a drivers name and a company logo on. I didn't see Derrike's name on any. Perhaps I wasn't in the right place, I didn't get everywhere. Foster Farms, the chicken people, were there giving away samples of their chicken cooked lots of different ways. They had a couple of large blowup chickens on the roof of their rig, the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. The chickens were the ones in the TV commercials you see driving around in a car trying to figure out how to become Foster Farms chickens. You had to be there, they sure were funny.

I found a great place to watch the race, on the side of a hill overlooking the new "Shute" or so I thought. Since it was several hours before the race it gave plenty of time for tall people with chairs to sit in front of me. I could stand and block people behind me or sit down (no chair) and look through or around the people in front. Oh well it was a pretty good spot. The two guys next to me had erected a sun shade. I got to share the shade. This worked great when the morning fog burned off and the suns rays could really be felt. Later in the afternoon the winds threatened to blow it and everything else off the hill onto the track. The guys were great, they even shared their food and drink when mine ran out. Here is a little known tip for watching races when there is a large crowd and all the good watching places are taken. Bring a 4 foot wooden stepladder. When you sit on top you are head and shoulders above all those people in front. I couldn't figure out how to strap one on my motorcycle or I would have had one.

The race? By this late date everyone must know who won. How did Derrike do? I am sure you know that too. He didn't win. I watched Derrike zoom around near the end of the pack until around lap 70 when a wreck happened. After all the pit stops, according to my account, Derrike was 10 cars behind the leader, I don't know what place that was, I never saw Derrike's number on the leader board. The race continued with Derrike losing about one place per lap. Lap 79 he was 14 behind the leader, L82-15, L86 a wreck, L87-17, L91-23. After Lap 92 I never saw Derrike again. I guess he was nursing that rear end until it finally went out. On lap 112 the race was over, Jeff Gordon won another one and the home town crowd loved it.

Now that the race is over, time to think about how to get out of here and get home. Well, one look at the all those cars and humanity leaving and I am thinking, no way. So I settle back and share some more food and drink with my new friends. I can't remember their names, blame it on the food and drink. Guys, if either one of you read this, contact me at ccamp250@hotmail.com and we will do it again at another race soon. With the record crowd (over 100,000) all we could do is watch everyone else try to leave. We watched a stretch limo parked on the side of the hill opposite us try to leave. He couldn't drive straight up, he got hung up on every little hump and bump. He ended up putting the car sideways to the hill and zig-zaged his way up the hill. He would go forward and then backward up the hill. Pretty smart I thought. I watched him as he headed toward a large group of tour buses parked above. The next time I looked he was gone. I don't know how he got past the buses. Over an hour has passed and it is now after 5:00pm. The crowd seems to be thinning out so I decide it is time to leave, bad choice.

I say goodbye to my friends and head out. I take a shuttle bus up to the parking on top of the hill. The traffic seems to be thinning out, great. It isn't until I reach the top of the next hill that I realize my mistake. There are two rows of cars as far as the eye can see on the serpentine road out, only now do I wish I had a different motorcycle. If I had my dual-purpose bike now I could go off road and be on Lakeville Road in less than 10 minutes. I can't even split lanes, my touring bike with saddlebags is too wide to fit between the cars, boo. I have to slug it out with all the cars. It took over 3 hours to make Lakeville Road. The next jam was only a mile or so away. highway 37. Next is highway 101 South and heavy traffic a few miles away at San Rafael. I turn off here for the Richmond- San Rafael Bridge, not spectacular as bridges go, but it gets me to the East side of the Bay to avoid the huge back up at the Golden Gate Bridge, (lots of tourists). East Bay traffic is fairly light, (not as many tourist attractions here). Most people by this time have already eaten dinner and are thinking about bed. I travel down I-580 past the San Francisco Bay Bridge interchange, to I-880 to Highway 237 West across the South end of the Bay and home, thank goodness. It is now just a little after 10:00pm.

Would I do it again next year? Yep. Next year I will either go with someone else, let them drive and bring my ladder or I will ride my other bike to handle all the traffic. That's it. Drive safely, see you next year.