March is a fickle month here in the Midwest, capable of teasing you with afternoon sunshine one day and punishing you with frosty winds the next. The weather itself isn’t that big of a deal —unless you work outdoors for a living — but the problem is that it prevents you from doing something you’re very much ready to do.
The lingering winter won’t allow you to walk up to the pit window and see the same person the track has had there for umpteen years. It prevents you from holding up your wristband for the cop at the gate, your pace quickening because you just heard them call for hot laps on the rusty speakers atop the poles dotting the pit area.
It keeps you from seeing old friends, some hurrying and scurrying around race cars that are just now beginning to move, their exhaust kicking up dust as they slowly roll toward the track. You can’t shoulder a light jacket, strolling easily with the sun on your shoulders as it sinks off into the distance.
No, March only allows you to look outside at the drab, brown landscape, with plants still in survival mode, afraid to sprout in colorful glory for fear of yet another morning of deep frost that coats everything in sight.
Promoters are like those plants. They are eager to jump from winter dormancy, but their instincts tell them March is too soon. Sure, it might be sunny today; sure, it’s possible we’ll get a warm day. But just as sure as you put an official date on the calendar, it’s nearly a guarantee of torrential rain, biting, cold winds or a cover of wet, heavy snow. Or, all of the above.
Those promoters indeed go to the bank on Monday. They walk through the front door, but instead of turning right to go to the deposit window, they turn left to go see the loan officer.
Racers, too, are eager. So eager, in fact, they’ll load their stuff and tow two, three and four hours through snow flurries to stand huddled in bundled-up clusters in some pit area, smiling forlornly in the faint hopes that the temperature might make it above freezing.
So for the race fan, we just sit. And wait. And read the racing papers, peruse the Internet racing sites, and look at the long-term forecast. The outlook is usually pretty basic: cold during the day, and damned cold at night.
What makes it especially tough is to realize that racing has already started in other places. You read the race results and imagine everyone in T-shirts, driving home from the races with their windows down and then sitting on the porch at home to unwind. However, that’s just your mind playing tricks on you. That’s the thing you do in JULY, not March, no matter what part of the U.S. you’re talking about.
Like the South, where March evenings are often so pleasant you only need two coats, gloves, 14 cups of steaming coffee and two sled dogs to make it through the night.
Or Arizona, where sunny days make you forget that it’s usually just about as cold as Indiana at night, but, well, it’s a dry cold.
Or Pennsylvania, where they push snow from the track on Sunday afternoons in February to race. Nobody seems to know exactly how that hardy tradition got started; maybe it was one of those, “seemed like a good idea at the time.” But now an average of 27.5 fingers and 6.75 ears are lost each weekend at Keystone State tracks due to frostbite, not to mention numerous rescue squad runs in response to buttocks stuck to stainless-steel seats in port-o-lets (is that a Code 1 or Code 2?).
But you know what? The daytime high in Indianapolis was 53 degrees this past Saturday, dropping to a balmy 32 that night. I can make this prediction with some degree of confidence: If somebody had scheduled a race somewhere in Central Indiana that night, they would have race cars, and they would have a tiny, die-hard group of people milling around the pit area, hands thrust in pockets clear up to their elbows, wearing hunting pants and boots and two hats with fuzzy strings dangling on their shoulders.
Those people are absolutely the dumbest people I’ve ever seen. I know this without doubt, because I’ve closely studied them on dozens and dozens of occasions. I walk through the pit area and stare at them, chuckling to myself and shaking my head. How could people be so dumb as to walk around outdoors with their teeth chattering on a frigid March night? I usually have my hands in my pockets up to my elbows, and I’m wearing hunting pants and boots and two hats with fuzzy strings dangling on my shoulders.
Aw, we can’t help it. We’re desperate. We’re sick of staring at the dull brown landscape and counting the days until the local opener. Surely, it will warm up by then.