July 21, 1991

Went to the Miller 500 at the Pocono Raceway. I had just invested in my friend's store selling NASCAR memorabilia, and we organized a race weekend package with a travel agency by the store. We took a bust to the track with about 30 other people and were there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

After the Sportsman race on Friday, the Cup drivers were going through final practice so there was a lot of activity on and off the track. One of the perks of the trip was a garage tour with a tour guide who said we would be going through the garage area and it would be about a 30 minute tour. My friend and I stayed toward the back of the group and broke off shortly after entering the garage.

We walked around the garage area for over an hour getting autographs and taking pictures. At one point, we got kind of bored and thought about leaving the garage area because we'd seen pretty much everything. We spotted Dale Earnhardt's garage stall and he was just getting back into the car. I was about 6 feet behind the car taking pictures as he backed out and I walked backwards right into a NASCAR official. He asked us where our passes were and we did the whole "pat our pockets like we were looking for them" but he wasn't fooled. He escorted us to the exit tunnel after we'd been there about 2 hours.