There I sat, surrounded by drooling yokels and corn-fed half-breeds. They had crawled out of every backwoods barn and hillside shanty to pack the seats of San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium.

The sickening stench of exhaust wafted up from the track below, mixing with the audience’s putrid nacho cheese breath and body odor — so foul that it could only emanate from the dirtiest of unwashed heathens. So there I was huddled, shivering in my seat in Qualcomm’s frosty night air, wondering why I was among them.

Ah, yes, the race. Below me the mud-caked bikes boisterously made their way around the track for the umpteenth time, while the 60,000 or so other moto-enthusiasts cheered wildly. For me, it was more like watching a friend play the classic Nintendo game Excitebike, except without the excitement.

So instead I concentrated on the contents of my 20-ounce plastic cup, which, contrary to what the price I paid might indicate, was filled with neither liquid gold nor rare Pokemon cards. Alas, it was but domestic beer, but I greedily gulped it down, if to do nothing more than combat the rising nausea brought on by the fumes now permeating the stadium’s every nook and cranny.

What is it that had these yahoos on the edge of their seats, eyeballs bulging as yet another lap began? Clearly, these people are of a different stripe.

One need look no further than the Q’s parking lot to realize that, as it was stacked sky-high with gleaming monuments of mechanical carriage. It was a veritable smorgasbord of automobile excess, with monster trucks rising three stories high, and it was stocked with motors that appeared (and sounded) capable of running a 757 jet or one of California’s belabored “”power”” plants.

A look at the bumper stickers adorning the beasts gave a more extensive glimpse into the mind of a race fan. For the most part they bore witty, urbane slogans such as, “”Save a Mouse, Eat a Pussy,”” or “”Got Ass?,”” which I hope is a play on the popular milk campaign and not an anatomical inquiry.

I knew I was out of my element as soon as I entered the lot. As the rest of the race patrons revved their engines and offroaded over the metal barriers, I slinked on in with my friends, packed six deep in an Oldsmobile sedan with a rust-ridden roof.

Ours was such a manly rig that it was actually dwarfed by the tires of many of the passing cars and trucks. The gear-heads scoffed at our impotent little set of wheels as they passed in a roar of exhaust, yelling such derisive, stinging insults as, “”Hey Mario Andretti, see ya at the Grand Prix!,”” and “”Yo knuckle heads, how many horses ya packing under the hood?””

We absorbed the heat from the toothless goons and finally found a parking spot, beginning what was the impetus for many of us to take our friend up on his offer of free tickets to the event-the fastidious consumption of malt liquor.

We hunkered down in the shadows of the other behemoths parked around us and began taking generous pulls from our King Cobra Foaties. We polished those off in good time and continued our “”tail-gate,”” which was kind of hard with neither a tail nor a gate, by cracking a 30-pack of the good ol’ red, white and blues. Budweisers, I mean of course, and we drank not to get drunk — well, maybe that was part of it — but mostly to feel at home among our parking lot brethren.

Once drunk enough to make the trek from the car to our seats, we headed in, only to be met by the tired, dirty debacle that is motocross racing and the stomach churning odors of our 60,000 friends.