New Sport Seasons: view from Geezer Recliners

St Louis Brad posted on Concacaf and MLS in the suitable thread and I put this there, then my brain kicked in...that tells you somerthing right there.
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[BEGIN VAGUELY RELATED RANT].
And welcome to a new season of domestic Soccer fandom, followdom, and just plain 'imagine that!'
At my age I aint about to put my butt anywhere to watch the sport other than my own recliner.
My son however braved the chill to take wife and two boys to watch the Crew opener v Atl.
Twenty years ago, at a youthful 61 and having Season tix, I'd a been there.

Yesterday, however, the sport highlight was first Spring Training game... Reds v "Guardians" (sniff, hawwwk, Ptui!).
Why? Because after 40 years of indifference my bride became a Reds fan during their great streak last July.
Ah... We gonna watch Crew now and then, occasion permitting, but it won't be often cuz I added up all our streaming costs and there's no freaking way I am adding another one.
Edit 2: Not only that, Last season, I also became a NASCAR follower...AGAIN.
[END VAGUELY RELATED RANT]

 

The boy likes NASCAR and we are going in June. I don't want to discourage my child but I can't believe I have tickets to a NASCAR race.

 

@stlouisbrad as a toddler my son liked two things a lot - numbers and cars. So he easily developed a love of NASCAR despite my total lack of interest. We ended up going to the Pocono 500 multiple times and toured a few racing museums and tracks. After years of maintaining secondary interest just to be able to talk with him about his favorite sport, I came to realize that I was actually enjoying NASCAR too! About 6 months after this revelation, his friend group convinced him that NASCAR was dumb and he ditched it. With no one to watch races with me, after a while, I ditched it to. But you never know where your kid's interests may lead you!

My advice for going to a race...

• Have your eyes open for craziness in the parking area pre-race - some parts felt like we'd been dropped into drunken spring break party. Not kid appropriate!
  
• Have something to monitor the race (website/app/video) from the stands - it can be hard to judge what is happening since your view of some parts of the track may be obstructed or just far away.
• Bring binoculars especially if you have a view of the pit area.
• Have a plan for a rain delay - this helps manage expectations for your kid when you are trying to figure how long to stick it out should it come to that.
• And finally earplugs, earplugs, earplugs - the first time we went my kid wore his grandfather's chainsaw earmuffs with earplugs! Having two different kinds of noise protection worked out well for him because sometimes the earmuffs got sweaty and sometimes the earplugs just got irritating.

 

A couple years ago I got free tickets to the Indy car race because the place I bought my car was sponsoring the race. We stayed a hour or so and bailed without any argument from the then 6 year old. Now I'm like $125 in so I told him if we go, we are staying. He says he's game.

Truth be told I enjoyed the Indy car races but other than parking it didn't cost me anything. So that makes it more enjoyable.

 

Auto sports requires focus. If you squint it's like hi speed ballet with big consequences.
And it's dang well the widest front team sport.
I prefer to watch Road course, then Super. Picture driving Black ice all that time.
Somehow conjures up Dances with wolves.
Hungry ones.

 

I'm going to the Enjoy Illinois 300 today. Pray for me.

 

Brad's NASCAR review: Glad I went, won't be upset if I never go again.

 

Thanks for the in-depth analysis.