Bloomington Bound: Memorial Day Weekend

Its that time again… school is out and the CFO of our household is off travelling and enjoying some time away from work, leaving me alone at home to fend for myself. As I always say, “it must be nice.”

Luckily for me, I had plans of my own for the long Memorial Day weekend. My good friend from GA, Shawn, flew up on Friday and we drove east to Indianapolis for the weekend. I had already purchased tickets for the Indy 500 months ago, but the trip was sweetened with the opportunity to be “guests” of a major motorsports supplier. We ended up with a hotel room for the weekend and access to that company’s suite at the race track (AC, food and drinks!).
We arrived in Indy late Friday night and settled into our hotel room. Saturday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then headed to the speedway to visit the hall of fame museum. The museum is packed full of past Indy 500 winning cars, from the early years to last years winning car (driven by the now departed Dan Weldon). This was the 96th running of the race and the collection of cars definitely runs the gambit. It was very cool to see how the racing technology has changed and evolved over the years. While in the museum, we ran into Tim Suddard, the owner/publisher of two of my favorite magazines, Grassroots Motorsports and Classic Motorsports. We met Tim in 2009 when we did the Grassroots Motorsports $2009 challenge, so it was cool to run into him again.

Vintage Indy Cars

The Museum

After the museum, we rolled through the manufacturers and vendor areas, in the search of free swag (t-shirts, stickers, or whatever else they are willing to give away) and souvenirs from the race. In my own typical fashion, I decided what I wanted to buy before we even started shopping, I wanted a hat with "Honda Racing" on it. This is all well in good, except for the fact that such a product might not even exist. We ran into this problem while visiting Denver earlier this year. I wanted a colorado rockies shirt that just said "rockies" on it, but I wanted it in long sleeve. We found the shirt in short sleeve everywhere we went, but no one had it in long sleeves. Ugh. Because of my picky-ness, souvenir shopping with me can become a trip in search of the “holy grail” of souvenirs. We went through many shops, tents, displays and I kept holding on hope that we might find it… I’m sure Shawn was getting tired of the quest, but we did eventually find what I was looking for at the very last set of trailers halfway across the infield area. The track is 2.5 miles around, so we walked a long way. Did I mention that it was 94+ degrees and sunny outside? It was cooler in Georgia than Indy!

This was a cool military tribute Camaro that was on display:

After shopping, we headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner. Our host took us to dinner at Fogo de chao, a Brazilian restaurant that is not vegetarian friendly. Luckily, I don’t mind a plate loaded up with red meat and pork, so I was right at home. You have a disc with a red and green side, green = show me the meat and red = no thanks. The servers walk around with different cuts/meats on large skewers and they slice off what you want. Ribeye, bacon wrapped fillet, parmesan crusted pork, sirloin, the list goes on and on. The meal was really good, but I’m not sure it was worth the high price per person that our host paid.

After dinner, we rolled out of the restaurant and walked a couple blocks to monument circle, where the cars from the Gumball 3000 road rally were stopping after an all day, high speed run. The participants in this event are travelling from new York to LA and are required to check in at check points along the way. This was an amazing collection of cars, from Ferraris, Porshces, Lamborginis and many other supercars. There was even a Bugatti Veyron, a $1 million plus car with 1000 horsepower. I was excited to see this car in person, as it isn't a car that you are going to see very often. Shawn is a huge follower of the event and he was able to meet some of the participants that he has been following for years. Picture a kid on xmas morning and that would about describe it.

Bugatti Veyron

Mercedes SLS

Lamborghini with a roof rack! (and cool building lighting behind)

Sunday morning we rolled out of the hotel at 6:45 am for the 5 mile trip to the speedway. That drive took almost 1.5 hours because of all the traffic. We arrived at the suite and were greeted by our hosts and a table full of pastries. By the time the race started at noon, the suite was full of people and we headed outside for the start of the race. From the seats outside of the suite, we had nice view of the pits and the front straight. It was another 94+ degree day, so having an air conditioned place to retreat to to eat lunch was nice. After the race, we were stuck in the infield for about an hour before they started letting cars exit the infield. Once outside the track, we continued on a painfully slow procession towards the interstate. You'd think after having this race 96 times, they would have the traffic thing figured out!