I can listen to the races, but...

Folks who have been watching the Nascar races over the last couple of weeks in this area have had no problem seeing them. Well, except for the last four laps of the Busch race at Bristol.

As far as hearing the action, I just have not been able to adjust to ESPN's commentary crew - going into the season, there were somewhat high expectations, with them coming back after a six-year absence from Nascar coverage. It was expected that they'd have a high quality of coverage, but it just hasn't seemed to click.

My choice has been now to do the old trick that we all do in this area for football - listen on the radio and watch the pictures on TV. By doing this, you generally get a better idea of what's going on with the whole field instead of just the drivers the director decides to cover - and that's usually a choice of: the leader, the points leader, or Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The problem is that over the last couple of weeks, the races have been at night. This means that it's nearly impossible to find a good signal for the races, as one station that broadcasts races during the day is a daytime-only station and hand over the broadcast to a weaker station that's hard to get during the day, and the other station goes down to something like 250 watts.

Last week, I wound up listening to WSM radio. From Nashville, which is about 800km (500 miles) in a straight line from where I am, mostly because I couldn't get the FM station that is covering the race in clearly.

Luckily tonight, I can get the FM station (even though it is somewhat staticy) from about 50km (30 miles) away. At least there I can hear all the restarts... ;)

If you're interested in following the discussion of the race broadcast, you can visit The Daly Planet.

A question for drivers

As you might know, I've been walking every day now for over a week, and part of the path that I take involves walking along the side of a road. Out where I live, we don't have sidewalks, so I have to walk on the road. Most of the time, the road that I'm on has two full lanes, along with a decent shoulder (about three or four feet wide). There is also a part of the road that does not have a shoulder, but I'll get to that in a bit.

What I don't get - and it might just be purely a safety concern - is why people insist on going all the way over to the other lane when they encounter me (or anyone else) walking alongside the road. Do they seriously think that I'm going to suddenly jump out at them in some kind of bizarre attempt to take my life? Could it be that they think that I'm going to try to flash them (a very difficult task considering that I wear sweatpants when I'm walking)? Well, in that case, I don't think that going to the other lane would solve anything anyway.

As it is, almost all of the time that I am walking along the road, I make sure that I'm at the edge of the pavement, something that comes in handy in that aforementioned shoulder-less section. In that case, I can totally understand moving into the other lane since there is little to no room for me to move over to clear the way for them to use the full lane. In that case, when I can move over, I do make an attempt to get as far over as I can - within reason of course, considering that at one point, there is a straight drop of about 20 to 30 feet into the floor of a forest.

So, my question is - why do you do that while driving? I would think that you'd make a more dangerous situation for yourself by going into the other lane - though there is good visibility down the road. Is it something that is advisable to do in general?