Initially I didn't plan on it. My parents were visiting my sister and her family in Noblesville over Memorial Day weekend, so of course I planned to go down to visit. But I really didn't want to go to The Race and figured I'd come back to Chicago on Sunday morning when they all headed off to the Brickyard.
The best laid plans are subject to considerable modification when your nephews start begging you to go, and when your mom says that, indeed, they bought you a ticket - something about how they could only get eight tickets, rather than seven, although that seemed as close to a lie as my mother can get. So I went.
Race Day is a well established tradition in Central Indiana. My sister and brother-in-law are no exception, even though they aren't the kind of race fans who go every year. Still, when they go, they go full out.
For instance, my brother-in-law Matt scored us great parking through a friend in Noblesville. We had typed-out instructions from said friend's secretary as to how to find Mr. Striker's garage, which is off an alley near 14th Street in Speedway.
Speedway is not a neighborhood, by the way; it is a legally established municipality, one of two within the otherwise merged Indianapolis/Marion County. They even have a sign in case you didn't make the connection between Speedway, Indiana, and The Speedway.
Food is an important part of all traditions and the 500 is no exception. Other people may do it differently, and if they want to be wrong that's okay with me, but the correct food for The Race is fried chicken, lemon Archway cookies, and a ton of whatever else you can find. My sister was having trouble finding lemon Archway cookies but finally found some Saturday afternoon. Crisis averted.
We packed up early and headed out before 8 a.m., EDT. First stop, the Marsh Grocery Store, to pick up our chicken. While sitting there we saw a number of other people make the same stop. Then we made the hour drive to the track, which is on the west side of Indianapolis.
We didn't really have too many traffic problems - none whatsoever until we got pretty close - which was a testament to the parking directions which told us to get off at 10th Street rather than 38th. (The back-up off the interstate on 38th was bad enough that I would have been tempted to avoid it even if we had been told to go that way.)
Oh, before I forget, this was a mini-Driveabout for the Vue, which hit 20,000 miles since November 12 on the way back from the track. Definitely an event worth commemorating on camera.
Since our directions to find Mr. Striker's house did not involve a house number, we overshot it initially but quickly recovered and I was able to back into his backyard without destroying anything. Not only did he let us park there, but we could use his bathroom which is quite a perq.
One thing that impressed me is how little price gouging there seemed to be. If you park about a mile away, you pay $5 (five dollars). As you get closer, the price obviously goes up - we paid $20 per car to Mr. Striker who lives about five blocks from the entrance (plus my dad tipped, since it never hurts to tip the guy who's got your car for a few hours, and we ran the whole family through his bathroom). I didn't see parking that was higher than $25. To me - and I'm just using "Karen standards," not "Chicago standards," that seemed more than fair. An enterprising property owner with the best location can make about $100 once a year - not really what you'd call a killing. This is true of everything that I saw priced at The Race - seat cushions, which would be $5 at most stores, are $10. Compared to what I once paid for a Cubs blanket (needed to prevent frostbite during a July game at Wrigley), that is darned right cheap. Hoosiers are Hoosiers, after all.
As we walked in, you could tell that we were approaching something huge.
The 500 used to have a bad reputation, crowd-wise, but that's been largely cleaned up. The only thing close to an altercation that I saw was a loud argument between a Bible thumper and a biker chick. (Why anyone argues religion with a guy waving a Bible on a street corner is beyond me, but this woman may have imbibed in another 500 tradition, drinking in the morning.)
And now, the Greatest Spectacle in Racing:
It is such a Spectacle that they even have live music - while playing recorded music at the same time.
We arrived at the track around 10, more or less, so that we would be able to take in the pre-race festivities. This starts when a helicopter arrives with the green flag that will be used to start the racing part of The Race. Obviously they are concerned about this important item being stuck in traffic.
This being Memorial Day weekend and all, they have a really nice salute to veterans, where veterans, young and old, are driven around the track to lots of cheers and applause.
This year they had 31 runners from the Boston Marathon "finish the race" on the Brickyard. It was a very cool gesture that was also greeted with lots of cheers and applause. (I was impressed that somebody was able to pull this together in a relatively short period of time - well done.)
They also bring out an enormous flag.
If you are unclear on the scale here, count the little white dots, each of which is a person holding onto the flag.
Sometimes the pre-race moments are a little slow.
Still, there are various patriotic songs and singers, including Indiana's own Sandy Patty. And, of course, it wouldn't be the 500 without Jim Nabors singing "Back Home Again in Indiana." I learned later that my brother-in-law completely traumatized his son, my nephew, by singing along. Enthusiastically.
During the pre-race festivities, there are a ton of people milling around on the track. I'm sure some of these people are official and some are sponsors or other high-end ticket holders.
My poor mother was very concerned about them, and that somehow the race would start before they'd all cleared the track. Fortunately, one of the things they've perfected at The Race is clearing the track before starting. My mother was most relieved.
The Archbishop of Indianapolis delivered the invocation. It was appropriate, as you'd expect, but also funny because he seemed to thank God for Izod, which saved The Race a number of years ago, and also suggested that as long as God was at it, He might help out the Pacers, who were playing in Game 3 of the NBA playoffs that evening. (God apparently was busy Sunday night, but showed up later in the week to help.)
Finally: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES!
First a bunch of pace cars drive around, mostly (it seems to me) so that Indiana car dealers would have a lot of pace cars to sell later. Then the race cars make a lap, and then the green flag drops, and they're off!
The thing about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is that it is immense. You cannot see the entire track from your seat. People have different theories about what are the best seats. My brother-in-law likes Turn 1, which is where we were, because you can see the beginning and end of the race. His brother prefers Turn 3 because he thinks that is where the best racing happens. To each his own. The drunk guys behind us didn't like the seats, but I thought that they were just fine. Here was our view of the turn:
Another Cook Family 500 tradition is that there is a drawing among all attendees so that we each have drivers for whom to cheer. We put in a buck a person and the winner gets the pot - $10 this time. (I forgot to mention that my dad's office manager from Omaha and her husband joined us. It was a big thrill for the husband and I think the office manager enjoyed it more than she'd thought she would. So we had a group of ten for The Race.)
I drew Alex Tagliani, Sebastien Bourdais, and JR Hildebrand as my drivers. Hildebrand was driving the National Guard car, and as luck would have it was out first. I was really cheering for someone else, because a guy who works for this other driver owes my brother-in-law legal fees, and told him he'd pay him out of his bonus if his driver did well. Although not the winner, I think the driver did well enough that my brother-in-law should get his money.
The Race is well documented by people who are paid to do such things, so I won't bother with that here. But it was an exciting race. Apparently it set a record for lead-changes and speed, which made it especially fun to watch, and although there were some spin-outs, no one was hurt which is a very good thing. There were relatively few caution flags which probably helped with the many lead-changes and definitely helped with average speed. (I learned a lot about car racing, including the rule that when they are driving "under caution," as we race fans say, the drivers cannot change positions although they can and do try to position themselves for changing positions once the green flag comes out again.)
We all had radios to listen to the race, but didn't really need them. I couldn't get mine to consistently tune in, anyway. The public address system was very easy to hear where we were seated, and they have a scrolling leader board (is that what it's called in racing?) so you can see who's ahead.
A lot of people bring earplugs, but I didn't think the noise level was too bad. ("What did you say?") For about ten seconds out of every forty, it was really, really loud as the pack drove by. Then you'd have about thirty seconds where the volume wasn't much worse than a typical 300,000 person event would be, and then the pack would drive by again.
And just for perspective, 300,000 people is nearly as large as the total population of Allen County, Indiana - Fort Wayne itself is a quarter million. That's a big crowd. When you think about other Giant Venues like the Big House (where the University of Michigan plays football) or the Dallas Cowboys Stadium - both of which seat about 100,000 people, you start to realize just how massive the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is.
At one point I went down to the main level and found myself right up against the track. It was definitely the coolest part of the race. You can see the cars zooming toward you and zooming past, but when they are right in front of you all you can see is a blur of color. It goes without saying that you can feel the power of the engines all the way through your core. Amazing.
The winner, Tony Kanaan, seemed to be a crowd favorite. My sister said that everyone likes "TK," as he is called, because he's a nice guy who had never won and does a lot of charity work in Central Indiana. So I guess I'm glad he won, too.
My brother-in-law had warned that Race Day inevitably ends early with all participants collapsing from exhaustion. Although it was unusually cool (high 50's) and we weren't drinking, I found his prediction to be accurate. The rest of the day was consumed with Monopoly and Big Ten baseball, and by 9 o'clock I decided that if I didn't get myself upstairs to bed I would be sleeping on the couch.
And that, race fans, is all she wrote.
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