Start your engines and head to NASCAR, Feb. 26, 2012

The Daytona 500.

The day dawned cold, overcast and windy. There's supposed to be rain, with a 70 percent chance by afternoon. The race could go on, but in order to declare a winner half of the 200 laps must be run. If the race is rained out in less than half of the laps, it would be rerun tomorrow if possible.

Joe, Verlie and I headed to the track at 10 a.m. Good thing because it was still packed and time-consuming even though the race wasn't to start until 1:36 p.m. Traffic was horrendous, and we ended up parking a country mile away. It was more like the back 80 … not the back 40. But park we did, and we donned our rain panchos and headed down the street toward the track.

Got to the track and up to our seats, in row 42, which is high and a great seating. Then we waited. We were still wearing our ponchos but blew up our little air seats and sat them down so we were pretty dry at that point.

The driver introductions began, but it was a shortened presentation as they wanted to get the race started. There were eight jet dryers on the track going round and round to get the track dry so the race could begin.

The jet dryers continued to work throughout the afternoon trying to get the track dry so the race could begin.  Mother Nature did not cooperate and had no intention of cooperating today.

Then the rain began. Joe hung in for a bit then headed down under the stands. Verlie and I stayed in the stands since the rain wasn't too bad yet. Then it opened up and we made a run for it, heading down under the bleachers which provided some protection. We still had our rain gear on because even under the bleachers water comes down through and you catch some rain.

Rain coming down through the bleachers.

We didn't know where Joe was since Verlie had forgotten her cellphone and mine wouldn't get service and we couldn't see him on the main floor since there were so many people. At 1:30 p.m. it was still raining.

Looking down over the crowd on the main level of the track.

Verlie and I finally headed to the women's room to see if we could get in there where it would be dry. I figured it would be packed, but surprise, it wasn't. So we waited in there for over an hour, trying to get text messages to and from Joe. If I turned a certain way sometimes it would work, so we got a few back and forth. At 2:30 it was still raining. The jet dryers have continued to work to get the track dried, to no avail. We'd had a small bag of cashews each and half a Snickers bar, the provisisions we had in our bags. But we were still hungry and the Bubba burgers were smelling good.

The rest room was the driest place around except in the car ... where we rested later on.

Joe had walked to get the car and bring it up closer to the front gate. We were to call him at 3:30 and be down near the gate near the corn dog booth. We finally connected and went to sit in the car and get warm and try to dry out. We also wanted to listen to the radio to hear what was happening with the race.

We heard that the jet dryers were back on the track since it had quit raining and they were going to try to start the race at 5:30 or 6 p.m. So we went and got some food and came back to the car to eat in comfort. I had still avoided the Bubba burger, but had settled for a barbecued beef sandwich, which was actually pretty tasty. Just as we were finishing up, about 5 p.m., the announcement came over the radio that the race had been postponed until noon tomorrow. So, off we headed back to James and Elaine's house to spend the evening getting ready for the next day, hoping the race will commence as Verlie has to fly home Tuesday.

Wish us luck.