The Day My Knee Quit in Row 40 and What I Brought Next Time

Forty laps from halfway at Bristol, my left knee quit. Not gradually. It just stopped cooperating up there in Row 40, with Linda on one side of me and a fella in a faded cap yelling about the outside groove on the other. Bare aluminum underneath, nothing between me and it but denim. I spent the next several laps doing math on how many were left and whether I could stand the rest of the way without toppling into the row in front of me.

I'm 61, retired after thirty-some years as a machinist, and the left knee is the bill for all that concrete. It aches on stairs. It aches in cold weather. It aches worst of all when it's bent at the wrong angle for four hours straight, which is exactly what a grandstand bench asks of a man. That Sunday was the day I quit arguing with it and ordered two Everlasting Comfort stadium seats with back support, one for me and one for Linda.

We do two races a year in person, spring at Bristol and fall at Talladega, and we watch the rest of the Cup schedule from the recliner in the basement race room. So we bought two Everlasting Comfort seats, one for each of us, and we have hauled them to both tracks ever since.

Understand, I had already tried the cheap fixes. A folded jacket does about eleven minutes of good. Those thin bleacher pads from the souvenir stand go flat by the second caution. I tried a blanket once and spent more time fighting it than watching the race. None of it addressed the actual problem, which was that my knee wanted an angle and a bench does not hand you one.

The Everlasting Comfort seat is memory foam with a padded backrest you can adjust to an angle, so you are not folded up like a pocketknife. It folds flat, it weighs about 2.2 pounds, and it has a built-in carrying strap. Set up, it is 17 inches wide and 10.5 inches deep, with the back at 13 inches, and it is armless, so it sits beside somebody else's seat without a shoving match. The cover is polyester and wipes clean, which matters more than you would think when a stranger's soda goes over.

There is a storage pocket on the back, and mine is where the scanner rides when I am not holding it, which keeps it off the bench where a foot can find it. Small thing. You only notice small things when they are missing.

Two seasons, two tracks, and I have not once stood up at the end of a race because I could not sit another minute.

The next April we carried them up the concrete steps at Bristol with the straps over our shoulders, and I had mine clipped to the bench before the command to start engines. Then I sat down. That sounds like a small thing. It was not a small thing. My knee was at an angle instead of jammed flat, my back had something behind it, and I watched a whole race from my own seat instead of pacing the concourse between cautions.

Two seasons in, they have been to both tracks with us. Talladega in the fall is the harder test, because it is hotter and longer and that aluminum gets warm enough to feel through jeans. The polyester cover wipes clean with a damp rag, which handles spilled soda and the general grit of a speedway. They fold flat when we are done, and they ride home in the back of the Silverado without eating the whole bed.

Linda likes hers for a different reason. She is smaller than I am, and the bare bench made her sit up straight for hours until her shoulders ached. The padded back gives her something to lean into instead of balancing on her spine all afternoon. She keeps hers in the truck between race weekends now, which tells you what she thinks of it.

Here is the part that is not a sales pitch. This is a cushion with a back, not a recliner. You are still in a grandstand with knees in your shoulder blades and a guy behind you dropping nachos. The back is padded, not rigid, so it leans with you rather than holding you upright like furniture. And 2.2 pounds does not sound like much until you are carrying two of them up forty rows in the heat. What it will not do is change the weather, the traffic, or the fella who stands up on every green flag. I would still haul mine every time.

We drove home from Talladega last October with the seats folded in the bed and my knee feeling better than it has after any race I can remember. That is the whole story, really. I bought a seat so I could sit through a race, and what I got was an afternoon I enjoyed instead of survived.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy it before the race, not after. Order it, open the box in your living room, and figure out the backrest angle on a Tuesday so you are not fiddling with it while the field comes to the green. An Everlasting Comfort seat is not complicated to set up, but a grandstand on race morning is no place to learn it. I would tell you to check your own track's posted rules about what you can carry through the gate, because they vary and I am not going to guess at yours. And I would tell you to get there early enough to clip it on before the row fills in, since a seat with a back takes up a little more room than a rear end does. If your knee is anything like mine, this is not a luxury item. It is the difference between going to the race and watching it from the recliner.