Silence can be golden

This past week I had the opportunity (along with my bro Ethan and sis Natalie) to tag along with my dad as he participated on Rod Hall's Hummer racing team in the Best in the Desert 1000 mile race. Overall the trip was a blast and I got to get our little Saturn really dirty and pretend it has four-wheel drive. But there was certainly an air of awkwardness about the trip as well. Firstly, the other 15 or so men on the trip don't really talk. At least, they didn't really talk to us - the random kids that no one knew. So that made for lots of sitting next to my dad's teammates in....silence..... and since I had NO IDEA about racing and for each of them racing is THEIR LIFE, I didn't really have anything to talk to them about. I tried a couple of times to strike up conversations - both awkward failures.
1) I remembered one spiffy racing phrase from previous conversations with my father: "open class." So when he was walking by with one of his racing buddies I very smoothly tipped my chin and said
> "so Dad, you guys racin' open class?"
...the other guy laughed at me as my dad said
>"Huh? No, Marla. This is full stock truck."
...I later learned that full stock truck is actually the very opposite of open class.
2)A little later, I tried to talk again. One of the drivers was saying hello to us, so I, the stunning conversationalist, said to him
>"Josh, your wife is Australian, right? That's so cool! I studied for a semester in Australia last year. I would love to meet her. Did she come along this time?"
...there was a slight pause, and he quietly replied
>"Well, no. She's actually still recovering from cancer."
...at this point I remembered that she had recently had major surgery for a terrible type of cancer. Way to bring up sad subjects and kill any remnants of conversation.

The moral: don't speak unless spoken to or just pretend to be mute.