The Indianapolis 500!

Luckily we had already scouted out the Indy Speedway the day prior, because it was a teensy bit more crowded on race day.

In a major contrast with the gestapo-esque policies of the Kentucky Derby, bringing booze into the Indy 500 was just fine. I brought my trusty plastic bourbon pint with me. Securing a cup of ice to pour it into took a bit of work but after that was taken care of I was good to go.

The day started off pretty entertainingly, with some racing greats driving some classic cars around the track. Luckily I had enough of an education from the museum that I even recognized some of the winning racers' names.

As you can see our seats were excellent, with a nice overhang taking care of that pesky sun.

We were in a red state, and this was Memorial Day, which meant some heavy torture was in store for us. There were military guys driving around the track in cars. Then there was the pictured parade of military guys. Then we stood for the singing of multiple patriotic songs. Then there was a prayer that was about half military guys rah rah and half "lord please bless these turbo powered engines".

Finally the cars came out. They did a safety lap or two with the black pace car out in front. Then they gunned it!

Sure they go fast, but the sound was the most surprising thing for me. It was really loud and a lot higher pitched than I would have guessed, like a pack of giants honeybees. I only watched one or two passes before the ear plugs went in. It was kind of like listening to the opening part of Ride of the Valkyries really loud on loop.

Yes, this shirt came from Target. Yes it was on the clearance rack. Yes it is a camo print with mermaids on it. I figured it would class the place up a little.

After a few go-arounds we walked down to the track to get a closer look.

Luckily the fence from Jurassic Park was on hand to keep flying car chunks on their own side of the track.

I thought the in-car camera view was pretty sweet.

The driver from Colombia had a Juan Valdez sponsorship.

 Watched some pit stop time.



I experimented with the slow mo function on my iPhone for the first time. It's pretty darn cool. Watching a lady ram a hot dog in her mouth in slow motion is the best part.

 The race went pretty smoothly until the end, we got to see a couple of good crashes, with car pieces flying all over the place. They would put up a yellow flag while cleaning up, which meant the pace car would come back out and everyone would go slow around the track. Once guy hit the fence so hard that they had to have everyone go back to their pit stop area in order to do repairs to the track. Extreme!