Speedway is its own town, wrapped almost entirely around the two and a half mile oval that goes quiet for ten months of the year, and in January the grandstands sit empty under whatever the sky is doing, the track itself just another flat stretch of asphalt holding a skin of ice nobody's driving on. The neighborhood streets around the track -- modest houses built up over generations of race fans and speedway employees -- get plowed at four in the morning and again well before the sun is fully up, because a lot of that workforce is out the door early no matter the season. Snow through Speedway drifts differently along the paddock-area roads, wide and flat with nothing to break the wind coming off the open infield, so those stretches get a longer, straighter pass than the tighter residential blocks nearby. A truck circling those roads before dawn, headlights the only light for blocks, has the strange feeling of working ground built for speed that isn't going anywhere in the cold. By the time the sun clears the grandstand roofline, the streets are bare and the town looks like any other small town waking up to winter.