There were people in the grandstands and lining the track from all over the place. All over the world, I mean. Sure, the press release said there'd be drivers from places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina, but it didn't say anything about Greece! I'm not kidding. And all those drivers had their small contingent of loyal fans.

It turns out that this type of rally racing is only the most popular spectator sport in Europe. I guess the folks line the streets (which are pretty narrow, by the way) over there every Saturday or Sunday just to whoop at the drivers in all sorts of languages.

Just like last Saturday in New Bremen. I'm pretty sure that, at one point, Paul and I were the only two guys communicating in English. Well, except maybe for two guys from Cricket City, North Carolina; everything they said appeared to be pleasant and well intentioned, but I couldn't recognize any actual American words.

And this isn't NASCAR racing, either. These guys don't just go 'round and 'round. Paul has a road course that comes off one end of his big track and heads off into the deep woods where the drivers are then required to make any number of left and right turns before coming back out onto the track some time later. I'll bet those European guys had never experienced the size and variety of windshield insect splatter they encountered last Sunday in New Bremen. "Mon dieu! I zink I strike a cow!"

Being a local dignitary and press photographer, I got to stand right next to the track with my camera, which placed me approximately right in the middle of everybody else. "What's the excitement?" I asked this one other guy who looked like he might speak English. "You'll see," he replied. "Just make sure you have an escape route."

"What?" I asked, but my question was obscured by the roar of an Audi with 27 fog lights on its roof flying over a hill in front of me. It got a little sideways as it went by me at an altitude of approximately eight feet and a distance of 19 inches. I could practically read the driver's lips as he communicated with his navigator. "Where did the (Greek word for #@$%^) road go, Spiro?"

"You see what I mean?" said the guy who told me about escape routes. "If that guy had been a little off line, we'd have had to book in a hurry." "Ah, ta-ta, buh, buh, whoo ohhh," I replied.

Anyhow, after I had calmed down and established a workable escape route, this fellow, who turned out to be one of the SCCA's official photographers, started telling me about the organization. I had told him that I thought this was going to be a simple road rally, i.e., getting from one point to another in a specified time while adhering to speed limits and stuff like that. "Yeah, right!" he said. The club's motto is, "real cars, real roads, real fast". At that point a Volkswagen Bug (yes, a Volkswagen Bug) roared by, interrupting our conversation and leading me to wonder where they ever found the room to put a Chrysler hemi in the thing.

Anyway, during your typical SCCA rally race, there are interim stages where the drivers do indeed have to adhere to rules of the highway, but those stages are run primarily to get to the spots where the actual race stages take place, during which you can go just as fast as your conscience and your bladder will allow.

And even though they release each car at one minute intervals, it can get pretty exciting. At one point, a car came off the hill in front of us and did indeed go off-line, winding up nose down in a sandy berm, oh, ten yards in front of us.

Then the coolest thing happened. About ten or twelve spectators clambered off their hillside perches on either side of the track, and, yelping in many languages, attempted to yank the car back on the track before the next car came along. They weren't having much success until this one Algerian guy shouted, "Hey! We do one, two, t'ree, lift, O.K.?"

(The term 'O.K.' is one of a few Americanisms that have become international and are used by all races of man. I noticed while listening to other foreign conversations that there are one or two other words that have become universal, but this is a family publication and I will not repeat them here.)

Anyway, it worked. They all grabbed the race car at various points and waited for the Algerian guy to yell, "One, two, t'ree, lift!" A couple of coordinated yanks and the car was free. I swear one of the guys actually rapped on the roof and yelled,"Go!"

Paul, meanwhile, was out on the track ready to flag down the next car with his feed cap in order that he and his track might avoid any spectator fatalities. Hey, the guy's got a business to run.

Even though things got a little dicey, what with foreign spectators on the track and all, Paul had a twinkle in his eyes when I spoke to him shortly afterwards. "You know," he said. "If you released these guys every 15 seconds and kept 'em in view of the grandstands, and kept 'em out here a little longer, this could get pretty exciting. All we have to do is Americanize this thing." Hey, if it gets any more exciting, I'm watching it on cable from a safe distance.

As far as the Speedway goes, though, you should all know that there has been a lot of progress over the summer. The track is currently vying with New Mexico for the 'Most Sand in America' title. You really have no idea how big a mile oval actually is until you see it as an expanse of banked earth and sand with no wall and no spectators. This is going to be a huge facility.

The superstructure for the race tower is in place between the grandstands, and the race tower is on site. Paul is just waiting for the riggers to find an open spot in their busy schedule to hoist it aloft.

"That's the big reason we're kind of behind schedule with this," said Paul. "We're busy and so is everybody else. I've had a real busy season, but we're gaining on this thing. It's going to happen, and it's going to be big."