In June I was fortunate to be part of the NASCAR experience at the SaveMart 350 in Sonoma, and I must say the highlight of the weekend was meeting A.J. Allemdinger for the first time. My business partner Gene and I sponsored a weekend for some die-hard A.J. fans and most definitely converted a few more throughout the weekend. Gene, who happens to be A.J.'s uncle, brother to his dad Greg, had done the impossible and converted me, a long time Jimmie Johnson fan, and I'm joining the Dinger bandwagon.
My experience from the weekend was most memorable and being able to have some of our Dinger Hill group meet him and win some cool prizes from the Best Buy team was awesome. His taking time out of what I'm sure is a busy schedule and meet with us made such an impression on all of us. I can sum that little get together up in two words "Dinger Fan-tastic". He was very down to earth and took time to answer a lot of questions from the group and signed autographs for everyone without hesitation, very classy guy.
We showed our appreciation by throwing on our A.J. gear and took our Dinger Hill gang to the crowds. We started behind the main grandstands and ruled the crowd during the NASCAR on SPEED segment, totally stopping the show with chants of "A.J. A.J." and "Dinger's bringing Sexy back to Nor Cal". We carried a sign, about 4'x5', made by Jensen and Milla Freeze, through the crowds, doing our A.J. chants and came up on the Sprint site and again stopped the whole ordeal, while the sprint girls took notice and snapped pics of the sign with their cell phones lol. It was pretty amazing. I believe I tweeted a pic of the sign during the NASCAR on SPEED segment. Then we headed to our spot on turn 7 where we parked our Kubodas and watched our favorite driver A.J. Allmendinger. At one point during the race we took our "Dinger's bringing Sexy back" sign to the turn 7 grand stands and had the whole crowd on their feet chanting "A.J.! A.J.! A.J.!!" It was awesome to see people in Gordon, Johnson and Bush gear chanting for Allmendinger, we definitely had the crowd.
What started out as a group of about 25 on Dinger Hill, which is the Cougar Mountain camping area, quickly turned into about 50 die-hard Dinger fans. Gene and a lot of this group have been doing this for about 4 years and it's going to become an annual event for he and I to sponsor for years to come. Next year we would love to have A.J. come to Dinger Hill and enjoy a game of horseshoes with us haha. Uncle Gene is pretty good!
It was one of the most memorable NASCAR weekends I've been part of! Thanks again to A.J. for the time he gave us, to Molly and Tara for their hospitality and to the Best Buy Team for the great prizes, even though Gene nor I won anything lol, the experience was awesome and our crew will never forget it.
Jimm
@bamasaints
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