JUPITER, Fla. — Boredom is the fuel of so many road trips.

Jason Isringhausen and a few other Cardinals pitchers let the tedium of the early daze of February take them places a few weeks ago. Here they sat around the spring training clubhouse, realizing that there weren’t many teammates around, there wasn’t anything to do on a Saturday night and, dadgum, none of them planned to work out on Sunday anyway. So, Isringhausen organized the obvious.

They were going to go RV’ing.

“There weren’t that many people here, there wasn’t that much to do,” Isringhausen said. “Seemed like a thing to do.”

And where else do you take an RV than … the infield at Daytona.

Isringhausen scored passes for the 30th annual Budweiser Shootout at the Daytona International Speedway. He had a 37-foot RV delivered from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and in piled a group of pitchers: Isringhausen, Chris Carpenter, Mark Mulder, Todd Wellemeyer and two of his buddies, Adam Wainwright, and bullpen coach Marty Mason. Isringhausen’s dog, Sierra Nevada (yes, you guessed it), also hopped aboard. They packed the standard-issue folding chairs for the kickback atop the RV. They bought some small grills to short-order cookout. They sought flags to fly like the other RVs. And they packed some coolers full of “concessions,” Mason said.

“We acted like your average redneck,” Mason said. “Just go with it.”

(If you’re keeping an atlas at home, that means Mason’s passport had quite the winter, as he went pubbing in London for Led Zeppelin and baking in Daytona for Budweiser. And people think I travel.)

Not one of the RV residents had been to a NASCAR race before. Several agreed that Chicago-raised and California-dipped Mulder was the most out of place, with his eagle-putt sunglasses and standard whatever fashion t-shirt. But all came away NASCAR fans, they said. They toured the track and got a feel for just how dramatically banked the turns are at Daytona – a 31-degree slope. A dozen years ago, as an intern for the Palm Beach Post, the editor sent me up to Daytona for the opening of Daytona USA and then to cover the Pepsi 400. I didn’t know a restrictor plate from a chafing dish, but it didn’t take long to realize the race is a lot more than left turns and the pungent reek of scorched rubber.

For me, it was standing behind pit row and having cars zoom-zoom by and feeling my polo shirt tug away from me, sucked toward the draft of the cars. You don’t forget that sensation. Don’t think a guy blazing by with a Willie Gault-like 40-yard dash at the combine has the same draw. Walking by a jet engine can’t be all that different.

For the Cardinals’ pitchers, it was while they were hitting the “concessions” stand inside the RV. That was when Bill Elliott’s tire blew. The Cardinals and Sierra heard it, heard it through the din out side. Heard it explode right outside their Winnebago. Isringhausen wasn’t prepared for how loud it was, or how close they really were to it.

This from a guy used to be in the middle of an infield.

Mason stressed several times that the day trip was “uneventful” and “that the most important thing is that nothing eventful happened.” Isringhausen said it was just a day for them to do “the redneck thing”, stuff into a spacious RV, follow the ribbon of Interstate 95 north for several hours and watch cars go in circles for awhile. As soon as the race was over, the Cardinals started their race against traffic.

“Capt. Wainwright took the wheel,” Mason said, “and drove us home.”

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