Oilpressure

By Susan Phillips

Like many of you, I read George’s article about ending the Indycar season on Labor Day weekend. Also like many of you, I disagreed with his argument—but not for the reasons that most of you did.

I dread seeing the Indycar season come to an end. Things are so much more pleasant around here during the season. During the Indycar season, there are off weekends. On those weekends we do things totally unrelated to Indycar, or sports in general. George is either outside doing yard work, or we might actually do something together. That doesn’t mean anything elaborate or expensive. We might go run errands together, or simply watch a movie at home.

On race weekends we are either traveling to races together, or we gear our weekend around the race when we are home. On Friday nights we’ll pull up that afternoon’s practice session and watch it together. We will base our Saturdays around the practice and qualifying schedule, but I don’t always see those. I’m back to decorating cakes, and many of my Saturday mornings are spent at the bakery. You can always count on both of us watching the races together. I know George is a bigger fan than I am, but I really enjoy them too.

It’s calm around here during a race. We both have drivers we like and dislike. Sometimes they are the same, but sometimes they’re not. We both really like Romain Grosjean, but we base that on a lunch encounter we had with him at Road America his first year here. We have pulled for him to ever since. George has made it clear he is not an Alex Palou fan, but I don’t understand that. I really like him. He’s never given me a good reason why he doesn’t like Palou other than “I just don’t”.

During a race, George will calmly sit in his chair and watch. We may or may not have party food for the two of us, but he will watch the race and talk freely about what’s going on—occasionally jotting down notes to refer to when he writes his Monday article that night. It’s a nice way to spend 2-3 hours on a Sunday afternoon. Then he goes back and writes foir another 2-3 hours, leaving me to watch whatever I want to on TV. I’ve grown to love race day Sundays around here.

That’s why I hate to see the Indycar season end, because that means football season is here.

Since Labor Day, I’ve lost the television for the weekends. It all starts on Thursday night. I recently signed up for a portrait class at Belmont University. I had the choice of Tuesday night or Thursday night, so I picked the Thursday night class to get me out of the house on a football night.

I get it that he wants to watch the UT Vols on Saturday or the Titans on Sunday. He and I met at UT and we are both fans. Since the Titans came to Nashville, we always try to make a few games a year. So I understand why we need to set aside time each Saturday and Sunday for the Titans and Vols.

But why did he give a flip about Auburn and Texas A&M this weekend? He was so focused on Alabama and Ole Miss just before the Tennessee game—I couldn’t talk to him. We watched part of South Carolina and Mississippi State, because South Carolina is the Vols next opponent. Was he planning on doing a scouting report? Why would we be watching that game? The he flipped over to watch Ohio State and Notre Dame. At least the other game involved the SEC. Why would he have any interest in that game?

It was during a commercial Saturday, that he said he needed to write something for Monday, but didn’t have a topic. I quickly volunteered to write it, because I already knew what to write about, because the thoughts had been going through my head all day—how the Indyar season is so much more pleasant around here than football season.

Did I mention the yelling and screaming that goes on around here when the Titans and Vols are playing? He points out what went wrong on each play. He is offering critique to no one in the room. I don’t really know much about an offensive line, and I sure don’t care about the poor play of the left-tackle. Long ago, I realized that he had taken the fun out of watching either of these teams.

I don’t know why he watches. He gets furious when things go wrong, but when things go right he doesn’t celebrate. He acts like it was expected. I’m not sure what joy he really gets out of watching our local teams. It’s too much to endure all day every day, weekend after weekend. But God forbid if one of his teams loses. He sulks for the rest of the day.

And in those rare days when one of the teams are off, he has to watch all of the other teams play. I don’t understand why on earth he would have any interest in watching two teams from the west coast play on a late Sunday afternoon, but we always have to watch the second game, as well as the Sunday night game.

I am writing this while sitting on the couch during the Titans game against the Cleveland Browns. George is across the room, sitting in his normal chair. It’s early and there’s no score, but I’m already hearing a lot of F-bombs, so I guess it’s not going well. He looks so intense; I wonder if he is really enjoying this.

I already miss the days of watching an Indycar race, when he just wishes for is a safe race that is exciting. No matter who wins or loses, race days are generally pleasant around here. There’s a lot of football to be played between now and the start of the next Indycar season. I hope I can survive it.

This entry was posted on September 25, 2023 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.