Keegan and I loaded up the FJ Cruiser this past Thursday and headed off to the ABA Sooner Nationals in Guthrie Oklahoma. We had made the commitment to go many weeks ago and Keegan wasn’t going to let me back out, he awoke early Thursday ready to go, eager for the challenge. I on the other hand was a little nervous, I was considering this a two-step journey, if we made it there, step one would be complete, if we made it back a full success.
Within 5 miles of home Keegan had the DVD player rolling and was intent on asking me questions about motocross, then came Ranatouille, and a whole group of questions about rats, in the meantime I prepped him for the first big city we would encounter St. Louis, we decided that would be our lunch stop, just prior to the city we picked a Steak and Shake because he wanted a milk shake, back on the road he learned a good lesson, Steak and Shake sucks, he didn’t like it, nor the shake which beat the other alternative which would have been a whole weekend of eating that..
The weather was great, the temps were the warmest we had felt in months and we were both eager to get out and enjoy it, we decided to make our evening stop a little sooner to do so. Soon we were hanging outside of our hotel trying to see who’s paper airplane would fly the farthest and cleaning out the truck from a days worth of driving.
The next day we woke up early and drove the remaining 4hrs to Guthrie, checked into our hotel and went looking for some lunch. When we returned from lunch the hotel was buzzing with bmx’rs and everyone seemed excited to head to the stadium. Keegan’s practice started that afternoon at 3:20 and was 20 minutes long. He was nervous the first time out, but that soon changed to excitement and he was begging for more laps. He did his normal 5 laps and we then waited for the race order to be posted. He ended up winning his age class main event and he didn’t qualify for his open class main, the fact that he won his age made the open class non existent, we both were so excited. I had told him he could stop for ice cream on the way back to the hotel if he won and he wasn’t going to let me forget it.
The next day was a whole different adventure, the crowd was bigger and the kids all seemed to be more in tune to racing. Keegan was the 4th and 76th races of the day, the first was his open and then his age class, he ended up making the open main but not the age class for the day, however he really deserved an award for being patient and being good for the entire day, it was long and he never once complained. We arrived at the track at 7:30 and left immediately following his last race at 4:30, I was beat, I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling after all that riding and excitement.
He immediately fell asleep for the first two hrs of driving and woke up as hungry as a tiger, if I didn’t find him food quick he may have turned on me in the truck. The next 3hrs consisted of round two of the rat movie and then once again he was out. In the best interest of “team safety” we decided to find a hotel at 11pm, it was a short stay at a Holiday Inn Express, alarm was set for 4:30am and we were soon off once again. Other than a two hr snow storm in Illinois the drive was pretty boring the rest of the way, I did manage to watch the rat movie again, for the third time, without seeing the end…againWe arrived home at 11am Sunday morning, both of us were ready to see both Brittney & Tanner along with celebrate her 2nd birthday, it won’t be long and they will be ready to be heading with us. I could sense that Brittney is ready to start making the big trips also after she listened to Keegan repeat the stories from the weekend over and over…
