No matter how much planning I do or how much money I throw at a trip, there are some experiences I could never plan for or ever recreate. This story is one of those. It isn’t really relevant to my job, and I didn’t have much to do with it, but it’s a feel-good story that I love sharing with people when they ask about my favorite trips.
We had a NASCAR trip to Bristol Motor Speedway for the annual April race. Our hotel was in Asheville, NC, which is about a 45-minute drive from Bristol, which meant we had to provide transportation to the race. We found out about a week before the trip that one of the guests was in a wheelchair. He was unable to walk or stand at all, which meant we needed to have wheelchair-accessible transportation.
This is difficult. Bus companies usually have an ADA lift bus, but the likelihood of it working and the driver knowing how to use it is slim. In this case, our bus company didn’t have one available because of the short notice. My colleague was able to find a local company that modified minivans to be wheelchair accessible. They also happened to rent these vans. It wasn’t cheap, but it was a solution. However, the van did not come with a driver, which meant a second host would be necessary. I was already going to be in the area, so I headed out to Asheville to help.
The gentleman in the wheelchair and his mom rode with me to Bristol. They were very pleasant, and it was an easy, uneventful drive. Another colleague of mine works at the Bristol track on race days, so he was able to get us a wheelchair-accessible cart to take the guests to the entrance.
Our package included pit passes, letting the guests go to the pits before the race started. I escorted this gentleman and his mom to the pit, but eventually, they were settled and exploring on their own and headed out to meet up with my colleague to watch the race.
Near the end of the race, a colleague who works at the track called me to tell me what had happened with the man in the wheelchair. Apparently, no one bothered kicking him out of the pits when the race started, so he had gotten to watch the race from the pit, which is generally not allowed at Bristol since there is no camping in the inner track at that raceway.
But the day’s extraordinary events didn’t end there. While in the pits watching the race, the tire on his electric chair broke. The tire came off the wheel at a strange angle and needed to be taken off and re-mounted. Imagine the amazing twist of fate: it just so happened that his chair broke in the pits of a NASCAR racetrack, right next to his favorite car’s pit crew. It also happened to be a rainy day, so the race kept getting stopped while they dried the track, and the chair happened to break while the pit crew was sitting around doing nothing.
The crew saw the man’s situation and came over to help. Not surprisingly, a NASCAR pit crew is very well-equipped to change a tire. A couple of the members of the crew propped the chair up, removed the wheel, repaired it, and re-mounted it while talking to the gentleman in the chair. When they were done, they set the chair back down, and he was able to continue watching the race from the pits.
How cool is that?! I could never recreate that experience for anyone. Having your favorite NASCAR pit crew change your tire in the pit during a race is one of the most unique, special things I’ve ever had happen on a trip I’ve hosted, and I absolutely love telling that story.
On the drive back to the hotel, the guest was beaming. He’d had the time of his life and was in awe of how wonderful the crew had been to him. I can only hope that those kinds of awesome events happen to people and I can share in their once-in-a-lifetime experience.
