It was like being dropped in the middle of some alien planet, with no clear indication of where to go next. There were no directional signs. Parking attendants and security guards had only vague notions of what existed outside their immediate areas of concern. The map that came with the parking pass was of virtually no use, displaying only a small outline of Daytona International Speedway that could have been taken from space. There were only cars and campers, acres and acres of them, all their steel and glass amplifying the kind of steamy, early-morning heat the rest of the world doesn't experience until June or July.

You walk past long rows of campers, or school buses with viewing decks set up on top, or expensive motorcoaches. If you'd have known about yellow rookie stripes, you'd have asked someone to stick one on the back of your head.

So in this situation, what do you do? You shoulder your laptop bag and walk, although goodness knows toward what. This wasn't the visitor-friendly Daytona of today, where everything is marked and identified, where there are plenty of signs with color-coded arrows, and where all the infield edifices look like they were designed by the imagineers over at Walt Disney World. This was the Daytona of 10 years ago, before the Fan Zone and the Fan Deck, before the renovation, back when the place was basically one vast campground and nearly every building was boxy and featureless and appeared to have been transplanted straight from a wharf.

Everything was different then. The sponsorship money was flowing like water down a hill, with Viagra and UPS about to announce deals that would send the price of funding a race car into the stratosphere. Race tracks negotiated their own television deals, a practice that was to end a year later in the sport's first national TV contract. Dodge was rolling out cars and introducing new teams in advance of its return to the sport 12 months later. Jimmy Spencer, Chad Little and Robert Pressley were regulars on the circuit. Newspapers in cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, Knoxville, Charleston and Raleigh sent reporters to cover most NASCAR races, something none of them do now. There was second-day qualifying and Happy Hour after the Busch race. Dale Earnhardt and Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper were all still racing. NASCAR was soon to be plunged into its darkest moments, and then reach its greatest heights.

But right now, on this bright February morning in 2000, you're just looking for someplace to cover what were then called the Twin 125s. Sure, it's the first NASCAR race you've ever been to -- for that matter, the first race track you've ever been to not built for horses -- but you're savvy enough to know that writers belong in a press box. Of course, Daytona looks like it has two press boxes, and it's only after being blocked by a security officer that you realize the suites on top of the backstretch grandstand (you haven't heard the term "superstretch" yet) are not where you belong. So you head in the opposite direction, pick your way down the infield's main drag with the big American flag and the palm trees, and at last find a wall separating you from pit road. (Continued)