One of my favorite things about going to Michigan for the NASCAR race is the scenery. The drive from the hotel to the track is roughly 45 minutes, but it is gorgeous farmland in Irish Hills.
It didn’t look so pretty Sunday morning, however.
I left my hotel at 6:30 a.m. to get to the track early to get situated for the morning meeting, etc. I was running through some ideas and talking out loud (to myself) in the car, over my country music, about some thoughts for the show. I had just passed the small town of Saline, Mich., and was on the stretch of road that becomes really rural. I was having an enjoyable time when I noticed the flashing lights behind me.
Bottom line, and this is not an excuse, is that I was very alert but in a zone of “focus and preparation” when I should have been focused on the speedometer.
At any rate, the officer from the Michigan State Patrol was polite enough, but there was no way I was getting any sort of break. He asked me if I knew how fast I was going. When I said “35?” he looked like he swallowed a bug.
It was that bad.. I was roughly 20 mph off. He was kind enough to slash it to 5 over the speed limit, but I still got the citation and was a little concerned time-wise as I pulled away.
Don’t worry, I did not speed the rest of the way.
Sports
However, I was a little embarrassed. When I reached the TV compound at the racetrack, I saw one of my friends on the production side, who told me that she had heard from a member of Kevin Harvick's 29 team that I had been pulled over. Apparently, it’s the only road to the track, and I guess I was passed by many cars along the way.
Not so classy, but it got worse.
I was getting ready to have my picture taken with “Captain Morgan” (long story, it was for my father who is Pirate obsessed), and the “Captain” looked at me and said, “Oh wait a minute, I wanted to meet you. I saw you this morning pulled over on the side of the road. You were flying!”
The moral of the story: I was slightly freaked out because I really didn’t realize how fast I was going, but it was pretty funny that Larry McReynolds and Kyle Petty called me out on the air.
I will NOT be speeding in Michigan anymore, and will certainly watch my driving this weekend in California.
That’s it for now. I’ll post more tomorrow.
Cheers!
Lindsay
