Rooting for Kurt Busch

          Kurt Busch will try something this weekend that sounds impossible.

          He is scheduled to drive in the Indianapolis 500 Sunday morning and afternoon, then drive in the Coca Cola 600 in the late afternoon and evening. That’s one race in Indianapolis, Indiana and another in Concord, North Carolina, all in one day.

          If he completes both races, that’s 1,100 miles of competition.

          Three drivers have attempted the double in previous years and one has actually completed the entire distance. Any rain delay or spate of caution flags at Indy could ruin the entire effort.

          I wish Busch well and I want to tell you why.

          Kurt Busch raced in NASCAR’s Southwest Tour in 1998 and 1999, winning the Rookie of the Year in his first full season and the championship a year later. Before he was done with the awards banquet following his championship season with the Tour, Busch had signed a contract to race in NASCAR’s Truck Series. His talent was pretty obvious.

          I saw each of Kurt’s SWT races because I was the PR guy for the series back then. I came to know him a little bit and I liked him. Never had the first moment of trouble with Kurt Busch when we were both with the Tour and I still haven’t.

          Busch tried his hand a drag racing a few years ago, twice racing in the NHRA’s Pro Stock category at the Gatornationals. I worked both those events and every time I saw him, Kurt stopped, said hello and we shook hands. Same thing has happened when I’ve worked at a few NASCAR Cup races since he joined that Series.

 

           Kurt Busch gets along with people, in my experience. When I read about how Kurt has changed since he had trouble with the media and had to leave Roger Penske’s organization, how he has now repaired his image, I think back to the guy I worked with for two years.  

 

           Wow, can Kurt Busch drive a racecar. In the 15 years since we were both with the Southwest Tour, he has only gotten better. Remember when he won his Cup title on the final day of the season? A wheel broke off of his car during the race and he somehow managed to get that three-wheeled thing onto pit road without damaging the car, then got back out there and won the championship. Drivers don’t just do that.

          Kurt Busch is a combination of other-worldly talent and tremendous competitive spirit. That drive to win pushes him to the edge of his car’s potential, which is what happens with the great ones. And when a driver hangs it out that way on every lap, it isn’t easy to turn off all the internal mechanisms and become cool, calm and collected immediately after climbing out of the race car, even if things went well. It’s really hard to be cool and calm after a wreck or some kind of trouble on the track.

          Kurt Busch is a heckuva race car driver. I hope he does well this weekend. And I’ll be happy as hell to shake his hand the next time I see him.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Walking and reading without chewing gum

          The Horseshoe Ridge area of the Chickamauga National Military Park is a hilly location. It is a historically important piece of ground that was among the bloodiest positions in the entire American Civil War.

          Yours truly has devoted a large part of the last five years trying to understand

The view from near the top of
Hill 1 of Horseshoe Ridge
toward the Snodgrass buildings.

fully what happened along that pretty ridgeline on September 20, 1863 and on the sides of the hills which approach the ridge. Professional Civil War historians, no doubt, know a better way to do this. There is probably some slick academic method, some logical process the big-name pros use to study battlefield history and determine who did what, where they did it and when. You have to learn how sooner or later, too.

          These professional researchers know where to read about all the information they need for a given project. Many of these professionals are professors and they have assistants (read that students) who produce the needed information. These assistants, in turn, learn all the fancy research methods. The cool tricks.

          Yours truly does not know the fancy tricks, the ins and outs of academia, the time-saving procedures.

          I have to do it the hard way. First, I make copies of the material pertinent to the mysteries I want to solve. I insert each sheet into a plastic page protector and put the covers in a small notebook. I carry the notebook in the field and I read as I walk.

          I don’t try to chew gum at the same time.

          This week found your loyal blogger at Horseshoe Ridge, walking up and down the hills, notebook in hand. It is instructive to read the post-battle reports and letters from soldiers while walking the grounds.

The gap between Hill 1 (to the right) and Hill 2 (left). Notice the low spot between them.

          For example, if you want to determine approximately where a specific battalion went up the hill, you compare all the reports. Did an officer describe the ground his battalion fought over in the regimental report? Did a soldier describe the ground in a letter home to his family?

          If so, try to match the description of the topography in the report to what you see. Maybe one report describes a gentle slope while another describes and steep climb. Photograph what you see for future comparisons.

          The hillsides of Horseshoe Ridge are not smooth and easily traversed. There are undulations and draws that can make it difficult to go up hill in a straight line. The only consistent thing is change.

For that reason, a 106-year-old letter from a veteran of the fighting to the son of another veteran is valuable to a modern day researcher because it describes the ground covered by the writer’s battalion and names the commanding officer of the battalion to his right.

So I read the letter over and over while walking the various pathways repeatedly. Once in a while I figure something out and, in an uncertain world, THAT is a blessed event.

          Reading that letter as you walk the Ridge makes you feel as though you have company on that hillside. You can almost hear the voice of the writer and it feels as though the boys are with you.

          It is a unique experience. I highly recommend it.

 

          Thanks for reading.

This is a just for fun image. The images available from here are interesting.

A few notes on life...

          A few notes from your loyal blogger:

          It turns out that I was wrong. Pop Tarts are not the equivalent to the military’s MREs.

          One of the causes of the dreaded shingles malady is stress. If you develop a case of shingles during the month of April, shouldn’t that be a tax dodge? I mean, what causes more stress than the tax season?

          I’ve seen a Dodge Ram. I’ve seen players from 31 different NFL teams dodge the Rams. I’ve even seen Chevys and Fords ram Dodges. And I have no idea what it all means.

          The NFL Network had a program ranking the quarterbacks of the 1970s. Fran Tarkenton, who never won the Super Bowl, was ranked above Terry Bradshaw, who won four in that decade. Huh?

          The NFL draft is about a week away. Newspapers and sports networks have devoted months to predicting what college players will be selected and football franchises have devoted thousands of man hours and millions of dollars preparing for their chance to select the next batch of stars. Keep in mind that these star college quarterbacks were drafted in past years: Giovanni Carmazzi, JaMarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf. These quarterbacks were not: Kurt Warner (won a Super Bowl, holds Super Bowl records) and Anthony Calvillo (professional football’s all-time passing yardage leader).

          No kidding, yours truly saw a product in the grocery store today named Joan of Arc Kidney Beans. You have to assume they were burned with the steak.

 

          Thanks for reading.