Missing the Big Event

Kai is not much of a sports fan, certainly not like I was as a kid, but he does look forward to big sporting events.

He has enjoyed watching the Super Bowl the last few years, not so much for the game, but more just the event of the Super Bowl (like a lot of casual fans).

He also wanted to watch the Winter Olympics with us the past two weeks, though much of the time he was working on a Lego model or on his iPad instead of actually watching what was happening on the television.

Yesterday was another big event, the kickoff of the NASCAR season with its most prestigious race, the Daytona 500.

Kai and I have been watching the Daytona 500 together for the past two or three years. I wish he were as interested in watching a Chicago Bears football game together, but I’ll take my father-and-son bonding moments whenever I can get them.

I let him skip out of his usual Sunday afternoon special needs workout group, and we got his math work done in the morning. So we were all set as the race started at 12:30.

Kai has developed a rooting interest in NASCAR. His favorite driver is Jimmie Johnson – I think my son is a bit of a front-runner as Jimmie won the Chase last year. His second choice is anyone other than Brad Keselowski, who is his PE teacher’s favorite.

We watched the race for about an hour when a storm hit Daytona and the race was stopped.

We waited for the race to resume, but after awhile it became evident that it would not be a short delay. We went on to other things.

We made it over to the sledding hill.

With a brief warm-up earlier in the week, some of our snow had melted, and the resumption of the cold weather later in the week put a coating of ice over much of the hill.

It was great conditions for going fast. And with all of the sledding we’ve done this winter, Kai had no trepidations about the speed.

It was a fun time.

When we got back home, the race was still delayed. We told him that at this point, even if the race resumed, it would not end until after his bedtime and that Mom and Dad wanted to watch the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics.

Kai said that his PE teacher would watch the race until the end. Ha, well when he gets to be his PE teacher’s age, he can stay up late, too.

All in all, though, he handled his disappointment about not seeing the race very well.

This morning, the first thing he asked when he woke up was who won the race. He didn’t mind that his driver finished fifth, but he wasn’t happy to hear that his PE teacher’s guy had finished ahead in third place. In the past, some good-natured kidding from his PE teacher caused Kai to become angry. Let’s see if he can manage his frustration at school today as well as he handled his disappointment yesterday.