On the Road Contest
Grand Prize Winner

By Michelle

Late one night as I cruised the internet, I stumbled upon a game on the STUDIO 2B Web site. It was called "On the Road; Driver's Ed Contest." It was sponsored by Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) as well as Firestone Complete Auto Care and I thought, "Hey, why not give it a try. After all, I just went through the driver's ed class at school and I received my license!" I got my mom to fill out the required entry form and that was that.

A few months later, I came home from school and my mom said that I had a message on the answering machine from someone at GSUSA that wanted me to call her back. Now, I'm a pretty active Girl Scout and I have worked with GSUSA a lot before for other programs so I figured that they wanted me to help them edit another IPA or something. Well, when I finally finished my game of phone tag, Lesley, the woman who called from GSUSA, said, "Are you sitting down?" I told her yes and she went on to say, "Congratulations! You're the grand prize winner of our On the Road; Driver's Ed Sweepstakes!"

I couldn't believe it! I was so excited that I won something! So, after my outburst of joy, Lesley explained what I would be doing. I and three people of my choice would get the opportunity to travel to Nashville, Tenn. to experience an Indy 200 race at the Nashville Superspeedway. Naturally, I chose my family and after a few months of working with a travel agent as well as some wonderful people at Girl Scouts and Firestone Complete Auto Care, we were all set for our adventure.

You see, my family has never been to Tennessee, let alone see an IndyCar race, so we were a little out of our element. When we arrived in Nashville we were greeted by really helpful people. Everyone is super nice in the South! So, on Friday we got to experience a little bit of Tennessee as well as our hotel which had nine acres of indoor gardens! In the evening we attended an autograph session with the drivers that would be racing the next day. I met Sarah Fisher, one of only three female drivers in the IndyCar series. She also helped to launch the Girls Go Tech program with GSUSA. She and her pit team all wore Girl Scout logos on their jumpsuits! Danica Patrick was there, another of the female drivers and a crowd favorite, but the clouds were looking ominous and we had to start heading back to the hotel.

The next day was race day! We arrived at the track and met with Dana, a woman who works for Firestone Complete Auto Care. She was one of the women that helped to coordinate my trip to Tennessee as well as all of the festivities that happen on race day. She has quite a job because there were a lot of festivities that day! We got a tour of the pit/garage area where we saw the teams like Team Penske working on their cars. Every time these teams race, they take their cars apart into a million pieces and then get it put back together and somehow, they can race over 200 mph in them!

We had lunch and met with some really cool people, drivers and important "big cheeses" from Firestone Complete Auto Care. It was finally race time! The opening ceremony went smoothly and then…the skies opened up into buckets of water! Everyone in the stands ran for shelter. The race was delayed and we decided that we were going to go back to the hotel.

My little brother and I turned on ESPN and found that it was going to be delayed until the next day. So, we dried out and then slept in Sunday morning. When we finally got to the racetrack after an adventure around the traffic, we were all excited for the race! It's so amazing to see just how fast these cars go, and stop, to take a pit stop only takes about ten seconds. The thing that they have to wait for is the gasoline because it can only fill up so fast. After the race, we went into the city for some lunch. We soon found out that pretty much everywhere is closed on Sundays in Nashville. After lunch we went back to the airport. Of course, we were delayed but the trip was over just as fast as the race was. It was an amazing experience to meet and watch an IndyCar race and drivers. Thank you to GSUSA and Firestone Complete Auto Care for the amazing trip!