What do you do when your husband wants you to attend the races with him on Saturday night? He's an avid racing fan and formerly raced stock cars in the midwest. He eats, sleeps and thinks racing.

You kind of want to go, but don't relish sitting in the hot Arizona sun from June through September, or sit with chattering teeth from Oct. Through May. Still, you want to be supportive of his interests. Then you think about all the work you have left to do at home.

Your heart gets the best of you. Deciding you might go, you wonder what to wear. How are you going to stay cool, or how are you going to stay warm? Then there's your fear of heights. He always wants to sit in the very top bleachers, but the bathrooms are all the way at the bottom.

He looks at you with those yearning eyes and you decide to go. He's more important than the work you're leaving undone.

We attend races at Manzanita Raceway, in Phoenix, Arizona, where there are a variety of races, on any given night, including California and Arizona sprints, mini sprints, late models, modifieds, street stocks and dwarfs. The track opens at five p.m., for special races, or six p.m. for the usual races. We leave for the track an hour early, so we can get into the handicapped lot and don't have to walk so far. My husband wears two artificial legs. We get home again between eleven and twelve p.m.

In the summer, the sun beats down mercilessly, so hot that you don't even want to touch your own skin. I learned to wear shorts, a sleeveless top and carry a water spritzer.

By October, the weather is usually cooler, so I wear jeans and sweat for a couple of hours until the sun goes down. I also take a jacket, which I stuff into the carryall. The supplies we take are a cooler of water and pop, and two chairs that clip on to the hard benches at the track. We also take two pillows to sit on, because after a couple of hours, our buns are sore. We sit in the third row so it's not so far to the bathrooms and I take an umbrella to deflect the dirt that's thrown by the cars racing around the track.

I've learned a lot about racing by going with my husband, but one of my favorite pastimes is watching the people there. Some people are there week after week, while others come occasionally. There are the girls wearing high heels, who go to the fence and talk to the drivers during intermission, there are the track regulars that you learn to recognize and there are the rowdy bunch, who sit at the top of the bleachers and drink beer, yelling all the while. There are the people who get there early, like us, the people who get there after the heat races, and then there are the people who come when the races are half over and who block everyone else in by parking in between rows. Manzanita warns them once, and if they don't move their cars, the tow truck hauls them away to the impound lot.

It's an experience you don't want to miss, if only to say you've been there, a few times. I've been going with him for six months now and am getting to be quite a pro at learning the drivers names, what their driving records are, and how many races they've won. Try it, you might like it.