Farrah, MJ and Carl Edwards

Lindsay recalls sneaking around to watch "Thriller"

By LINDSAY CZARNIAK

Updated 1:15 PM EST, Sat, Jun 27, 2009

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I just got back to the hotel in New Hampshire and just got done watching the Farrah Fawcett story on NBC. I was sucked in completely. I still can’t believe the news about her, as well as Michael Jackson. It's surreal.

I grew up on “Thriller.” In fact, when we didn’t have cable and my grandparents did, I remember sneaking into their family rooms after holiday dinners to watch MTV – "Thriller" was always one of the most popular videos.

As for racing, here in Manchester, it was a very busy afternoon. I did the first practice today, but then qualifying was rained out. It started pouring at the track shortly after the practice wrapped up, so I was dodging raindrops walking through the garage.

When I cover "practice" for the NASCAR race Sunday, it's broadcast on SPEED channel. The drill is that we basically go around the garage and cover what’s going on in the different garage stalls. This means talking about the drivers/teams and what changes they are making, as well as giving information about their cars, etc. It's also a good time to chat with drivers or crew chiefs if they are available to interview after they get out of their cars.

Anyway, I was supposed to cover qualifying, but it was rained out. So that meant we were able to go and shoot my feature for "Lindsay on Location" early. The feature runs each week in the pre-race show on NASCAR Live.

Today, we followed Carl Edwards with one of his friends boating on a lake here in New Hampshire. It was cool and, if Carl were not a racer, he could be a broadcaster because he has a great sense of timing when it comes to doing stuff for TV. We went out on a boat that Carl’s friend, Karl Ferguson owns, drove around the lake and got to talk to Carl Edwards about spending his time off the track and the things he deals with as far as the “mental” aspect of racing.

Last night, we did a feature that’s running in another pre-race show about Joey Logano and his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli. We joined them at a Home Depot and shot the interview between one of the aisles. I’ll write more on that tomorrow.

Right now, I’m going to hit the hay. Cheers from New Hampsha’ !

Lindsay