Think you've got a tough commute? It doesn't compare to the weekend that awaits NASCAR drivers Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick.
All three are entered in Saturday night's Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, where the green flag drops at 7, as well as Sunday's STP 400 Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway, which starts at noon â€" barely 14 hours and nearly 500 miles away.
It's a crazy journey that will crisscross more than 2,000 miles, which doesn't include the 700 miles of racing on the nearly identical 1.5-mile tri-ovals.
"With these airplanes, it's not very difficult to do as long as you keep the stress down and don't get wound up about it," said Edwards, a licensed pilot who travels in his own Cessna.
Of course, for most people, there's nothing all that easy about round trips to the Windy City on back-to-back days.
Shortly after Friday's two Sprint Cup practice sessions, Edwards and Keselowski briefly met with their crew chiefs then bolted Kansas Speedway for Chicago and the final evening practice.
A quick meeting there, and it was time to fly right back to prepare for Sprint Cup qualifying this morning at the 10-year-old track in Kansas City, Kan.
After Saturday's qualifying, both will return to Chicago for the Nationwide race this evening before taking to the skies one more time, arriving in Kansas City around midnight Sunday, barring unforeseen complications.
"Heck, I wouldn't go to bed before that anyway," Keselowski said. "Obviously, it doesn't do it itself and there's got to be some planning, but anything that's worth doing is going to be a burden. It's fun and it's interesting. It's not always easy, but I feel like I'm lucky to get to do it."
Harvick hired David Mayhew to practice in his car at Chicago to lessen the travel burden.
In fact, Harvick, who is second in the Sprint Cup points standings behind Edwards, indicated he'd rather not deal with the entire hassle.
"Honestly, this weekend, we made a mistake in the scheduling," Harvick said. "I have a set number of races that I have to run for the sponsor. I wound up having to pick up the slack a little bit, otherwise I wouldn't be racing it (in Chicago)."
Sponsorship deals often dictate such inconveniences, but Edwards and Keselowski are genuinely eager for the dual-city, dual-race challenge.
"The reason I do this is because we've got a chance to win that race up there," Edwards said. "That's what we do this for. (Nationwide Series Crew Chief) Mike Beam and those guys on the Fastenal crew work hard. I do it for the fun, the trophies and to see the look on my guys' faces when we do well."
Likewise, Keselowski said his commitment isn't as much to the all-important sponsors as to the guys on his Nationwide Series crew.
"There's a complete group of guys that make a livelihood off of me driving that car," he said. "It would be disrespectful of me not to drive it just based on it being an inconvenience."
Fellow Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman, who honed his skills on smaller circuits and still runs some races in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, isn't going to break his neck getting back and forth like Keselowski and Edwards this weekend, but he understands their willingness.
"If you're a dancer, you like to dance and it doesn't matter where it is," Newman said. "If you're a racer, you like to race, whether it's a Nationwide race, a truck race, a Sprint Cup race. That's what we like to do."
And when racing is what you live to do, racking up the frequent-flyer miles for the shot at a checkered flag isn't a sacrifice. It's an opportunity.
"I've had some of the greatest races of my career this year in that Nationwide car," said Edwards, who has three wins and seven top fives in13 Nationwide races this season. "Last week was a blast with Matt Kenseth. It was a lot of fun to race up in Iowa. A lot of people asked me, 'why'd you go to Iowa? You just won the All-Star race,' but I wouldn't trade that for anything.
"That was a fun race to be able to follow Ricky Stenhouse to his first victory and race that hard."
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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