RaceBuddy road blog (cont'd)

Day 3 -- Sunday, June 7

• Breakfast at Miss Celie's: egg and cheese on Texas toast with bacon and sausage plus buttermilk pancakes and apple juice. Just like mama cooks ...

• It's race day in the Poconos! The "Tricky Triangle." The 2.5-mile track that hosts 1,000 miles of Sprint Cup racing within in two months' time. To put that into perspective, we've traveled about 850 miles from Atlanta to Long Pond the past two days.

Long Pond, Pa., is located in Monroe County, named after President James Monroe; I grew up in Monroe County, Miss., also named after the fifth president.

• Off to catch Marc Fein and talk baseball before he hits the air during the countdown to green -- and grab a pretzel with mustard. After that, it's the first of six weeks with Bill Weber & Co. Enjoy ...

Day 2 -- Saturday, June 6

• Wanting to get a jump on the day we left Roanoke about 4 a.m.; the chickens asked us to close the door on our way out.

We hit I-81 and headed north through Virginia and into Harrisonburg -- hometown to Ralph Sampson (can I get a Wah-hoo-wah!?) -- and also saw James Madison U. The Blue Ridge Mountains are beautiful, too. We grabbed a bite to eat and kept rolling; today was another 400-plus mile jaunt, so yellow-line fever was setting in.

• Hagerstown, Md., is pretty cool. Some intersections have brick crosswalks; kinda old-timey. More cities should do that. And we did stop to see the Heiskell weathervane.

• The Hagerstown Suns played host to the Lake County Captains and it was Matt Cain Hall of Fame Night (and the team wore pink jerseys for a charity auction). Fans received a statue of Matt, who pitched in a whopping 14 games with a sterling 4-4 record for H'town in 2003. Guess it's kinda like getting a diploma from Florida -- just ride through Gainesville with a window down and they'll toss in a sheepskin ...

• After the game we headed for Pennsylvania with a stop in Harrisburg; Lond Pond is another two hours away and we'll talk about wishing we could listen to Harry Kalas on the Phillies broadcast.

Day 1 -- Friday, June 5

• Hey Mama, the Harold's Barbecue was great; we were stuck in traffic outside Spaghetti Junction, so there was plenty of time to stuff our bellies! Best bumper sticker: "Driver Carries No Ca$h. He's Married" -- anyone who can't relate to that?

The ride through Georgia was good (gas is still too high!) and we rolled into Spartanburg about noon so we stopped at Big Daddy's Drive-In for lunch. I was thinking burger and fries but went for the bacon and egg sandwich, home-cut fries, side of slaw and banana pudding. (The pudding reminded me of granny's. I still miss her Sunday dinners.)

• We got into Charlotte about 3 and stopped at the Hall of Fame construction site. ... It'll be interesting to see how that thing shapes up. There were a lot of worker bees banging on stuff and it seems to be on track for the May 2010 opening. We'll see ...

• Rolled up I-77, through Statesville, and into Virginia and we saw the exit for Blacksburg but didn't have time to stop. Wonder if Beamer has 'em hitting the pads yet? Once we got into Roanoke it was already after 8 so we grabbed a hotel room and caught up on e-mail. We missed the deadline for getting into the Crime Scene Mystery Dinner Theatre; definitely will add travel time in the future to ensure getting to be part of that.