Indianapolis 500

I'm having problems inserting pictures again, so scroll down to see a few, and go to my Flickr account to see the rest. I don't have all the descriptions on yet, so bear with me on that.

We had a good time at the races, but man, that drive is a BITCH! 12 hours (each way) in the back seat of a Toyota Highlander - don't recommend it. We left late Friday evening (9:00 or later), and stopped at a rest area somewhere about 4:00 am to get a couple hours sleep. We got to our motel around 11:00. We lucked out and they had another room available - originally, we were going to sleep on cots in their room, so we had our own room, and we promptly went to sleep. Perry & Destiny don't believe in sleeping while in Indie, so they went running around and came back and got us about 5:00, and we went to the IRP races (modifieds, sprints, mini sprints), and that was totally awesome! As we were walking in, there was a wreck literally right next to us that scared the hell out of both Chris and I. The cars were coming from behind us, so we had no warning that it was going to happen - just a loud bang as they hit.

Those races were done by 10:00, and since we were all still pretty tired, we went back to the motel to get some sleep.

Sunday morning we got up pretty early, but we still didn't make it to our seats until right at 1:00 (start time). I knew that there were some 400,000 people at this race, but that's just not a number my mind comprehended until we actually got there and SAW that many people. Even seeing it on tv doesn't really give you the feeling. Everyone got a good laugh at us. We wanted to make sure that we were going to have everything we needed for a whole day out there, so we had a couple of personal ice chests, a couple of camping pads to sit on, my bag o' stuff that I never leave home without (camera's, first aid kit, book, umbrella's, etc.) Turned out that we were in the paddock area, which is the only covered area at the track (except for the box seats), right on the start/finish line. The flag waver was directly in front of us and on the same level as us, so we got to watch him do his thing.

The honest truth is that I enjoyed the races we went to on Saturday much more than the big race Sunday. Here's why: you can't see what's going on. We could actually see the cars coming out of turn 4 all the way down the straightaway and into turn 1 - but nothing ever happened right there. NOTHING. So we'd watch these blurs of color speed past, and then watch the little display that showed what lap we were on and who the first 10 drivers were, and we'd see the numbers change, but never saw what happened or why.

Still, it was an experience I'll never forget. We met a guy from Jamaica who had come to America for the very first time just to see this race. We met a lady from England - again came just to see this race. We met people from all over the country - and every single one of them was pumped up and excited and ever so friendly. Even when they were laughing at us for bringing everything but the kitchen sink to the race!

But if we ever go back, we're hopping on a plane!