The Grand-Am season is starting back up after a long two month hiatus. We are in Alton, Virginia for the Bosch Engineering 250 Rolex Series race. We arrived in the thriving metropolis of Alton – sense our sarcasm – and went straight to the track to pick up the golf carts and the boxes we shipped in. As we arrived back at the SunTrust tent, Andy tried to duck his boat-of-a-6-passenger-golf-cart under some pennant flagging BLOCKING THE WAY (on purpose, as you can imagine) and he snapped both strands. Nice start. Especially with our track rep standing right there. Good to meet you Tim!
After fixing the torn pennant flagging (and giving Andy some grief), we then began to set up the SunTrust tent at turn 4, 5 & 6. What a great spot to watch the race tomorrow! The set up went well and we were set and ready for our guests’ arrival tomorrow morning.
SunTrust Hospitality Tent
After the work at the track, we headed to our hotel to check-in. We had some reservations about this small-town, local establishment, since we heard that other companies would not manage it and will not any longer. We arrived to be greeted with a lobby with a glass teller counter for night time usage. Really reassuring. We got our room keys (set #1) and moved the car to the parking spot closest to the stairs our outside corridor doors. As we started to unload, the manager came running towards us telling us that he gave us double bed rooms. As we said we did not care (and Tyler got quite excited that he could jump from bed to bed), he then stated that he needed these rooms for someone else! So we went back for room keys set #2. Hope those guests don’t get our keys as well.
After looking around (the parking lot…) for the bellman, we grabbed our bags and went into our rooms. Tyler seems to have drawn the short straw this weekend, since the photos below are from his room. I, however, got what we quickly coined as the presidential suite since all faucets drained and the TV was the newest. We enjoyed a good laugh about our rooms before retiring to clean up for dinner.
Oh my! Tyler, what did you do?
At least the hotel had HDTV...
Andy, I promise not to tell you where to put that banner again!
After a great night of dinner at one of the two restaurants in Danville (yes, Mike and Kimiri – we went to THE Mexican restaurant), we decided to hit the Riverside Lanes for a bit of bowling. I was quite up front about my lack of bowling skills, but Andy, however, told us he was “not that good”. After a warm-up game where Andy scored 157 points, we knew differently (Tyler: 102, Lauren: 62). During the second game, Tyler came back for a rousing round with a score of 140! Nicely done. I even managed to squeeze out a total score of 91! Whaoo! The highlight of the evening had to be when Andy nearly slid half-way down the lane in style.
We started Saturday with some quick set up of the tent and the guests arrived. During a long hot (90 degrees in April?!) day of guest entertainment including pace car rides, driver meet and greets and a pit stop demo, we had a great time with our guests.
SunTrust drivers Max and Brian with guests
After packing the zillion boxes we shipped to the track and taking many-a-trips back to golf cart compound, we headed back to the hotel to examine the sunburn damageAndy and Tyler were quite excited to hit the one-and-only sports bar in town (Buffalo Wild Wings – BW3 – still don’t get that nickname…) for some dinner and the NFL Draft. During the down time of the Draft, team “ATL” competed in Trivia and swept 6 rounds in a row and ended the night 18th in the country. Go team. Well, really Tyler. He is FULL of useless information.
Yet another VIR race down and only 363 days until we are back in Danville, VA.
