I know all of my past posts have been…well, things from my past childhood or early adulthood, but I decided to add things from my recent past too. This post is from a very recent past event at Pomona Raceway, Friday, November 12, 2010 to be exact.

I’ve never been to the drag races before, not that I never wanted to go, but it was either because I didn’t have time when the event was in town or because something else came up, or I didn’t know anyone that wanted to go. I had put drag races on my list of things that I had to do before I die or in other words, my bucket list.

Well, before the ink could even dry on my new bucket list entry, my friend was picking me up on Friday morning so we could head out towards Pomona, California which is approximately 45 minutes from Los Angeles (for those of you that are reading my blog from a different state or country).

On our way out there, we stopped off at Manuel’s Original El Tepeyac Cafe in Los Angeles. That too, was a first for me (whoa, 2 firsts in one day!). My friend has been there many times, so I asked him what he suggested and he gave me a couple options, the Manuel’s Special Burrito shown here (notice the cell phone for size comparison on this web photo) or another burrito whose name escapes me now, but believe me, it was much smaller in comparison. I opted for the small size burrito and it was delicious and very filling! I will definitely have to go back there again.

After rolling ourselves out of the restaurant, we continued our trek to Pomona for the drag races. We arrived at the Pomona Fair Grounds, parked the car and made another trek, on foot to the front entrance. I had purchased our tickets online, so all we had to do was have our printouts scanned for entry.

Once inside, it was like a county fair, because they had food and drink booths setup everywhere. Mmmm, the smell of that BBQ was…ok, my stomach is telling me that we just ate, 40 minutes ago. We had purchased general admission seats, so we were walking around trying to find our seats among the hundreds…ok, thousands of other spectators there. We settled into our seats in the bleachers and I had my first look at a drag race, up close and personal. After watching a few runs, we got up to walk around again and decided to see if we could get to the other side of the track. It took some time to get over there, but we found some better seats right beside the starting line and several rows up. Wow, what great seats!

Okay, I expected noise, after all, these cars don’t use mufflers and they’re putting out tons of horsepower, but not even my friends description of the sound days before the race, could have prepared me for the magnitude of the sound coming from the dragsters and nitro funny cars! When these cars take off, the shock wave literally vibrates the bleachers and your body so much, that your eyes can’t focus clearly on the cars as they’re zooming down the track. Fortunately for my ears, my friend said I should bring both the inner ear type plugs and over ear headphones to block the sound.

Believe it or not, there was a gentleman sleeping in the row in front of us and when the dragster took off, he jumped!!! He wasn’t wearing any ear protection either, just his iPod earphones. His buddies were laughing hysterically at him as he was wiping the sleep from his eyes and wondering what happened.

Well, we saw motorcycles, pro stocks, dragsters and funny cars racing down the track that day. After all of the races were over, we walked around the pit area and saw a sea of tractor trailers and tents setup for an on-the-spot work shop so they could tear down the cars engines after each quarter mile run. And we think it’s a major deal to overhaul an engine after 60,000 plus miles!

Melanie Troxel is one of a few women drag car drivers, and she was on-hand in the pit area to sign autographs for her fans. Troxel drives the In-N-Out Burger funny car.

The sun has set and it was getting late, so on the way home we stopped for a bite to eat at Slater’s 50/50 in Anaheim Hills, CA, it’s one of those create your own burger restaurants, and it was delicious!

All in all, it was a great day at the races!