Well, that's over with. Heat, humidity and a hypnotic eeeeennyoww.... eeeeennnyoww...eeeennyowww of ugly cars flashing past, and I slept through the race not once, but twice!
6AM, 2 miles from IMS, traffic was at a standstill; 2 hrs to park. Track: impressively large, but size more annoyance than wonder. Parking's all to the north, as were our seats; 'will call' is at the very south; a 2 mile sprint for tickets & I was hot under more than the collar. Crawled to our seats by 8:30AM; stands empty. Sun: merciless; our battery-operated fans couldn't cope. Smart people were hiding below, drinking.
Pre-race entertainment was sparse: huge, precise marching bands played very early to 2 1/2 miles of bare aluminum. Why don't they save these for later?? The partyers trickled in; booze poured in: you can bring as much as you like to the stands. 3 historic race cars made a single lap. As did 33 'Princesses' in nice 'vettes. And truckloads of actual vets. No driver's parade though. Strange. 2 old B52s flew over. Invocations and anthems were delivered. Florence Henderson belted out a desperate vesion of 'America the Beautiful'. Jim Nabors did his usual; nice rich voice after all these years. Hoosiers cried. The stands filled.
Finally, after 4 1/2 hours in the sweltering heat, the race started, everyone lept to their feet, and we couldn't see a thing! Caution on the very first lap as Marco spun. Then round and round and round they went. Slowly at first, then faster, then slowly again. Some skidded along the wall in front of us, to loud cheers. One bounced off dramatically, ending out of sight a 1/4 mile down the track. But other than their incredible speed, there wasn't a lot to watch. I don't know what I was expecting, but somehow I thought this type of racing MUST be better live. It's actually better on TV, though not by much.
Of course, on TV you don't get to see the apoplectic 9-year-old in Danica garb, red-faced, on the very edge of a stroke, screaming and pointing wildly at her car, EVERY lap, enraged that she wasn't trying harder or something; bizarre! They get the fans going early here, I guess, which might explain why most around us were there for their 4th, 5th 16th or 32nd year. I can't think of a reason to go twice.
With Robbi and I both nodding off, and not wanting to battle 400,000 drunken fans on the highway (oh yes, the police were ready) we left the track at lap 120 of 200, hoping to catch the ending on TV. And it wasn't even on! So I showered, napped, had dinner, watched the Sunday funnies, and went to sleep, only to awake to find Robbi catching the replay. I really tried, but fell asleep again, waking near midnight to a tearful Helio, choking down the milk. Robbi was asleep, so I have no idea how he won; he hadn't led a lap all day. Maybe it was 'dramatic'.
Anyway, I'm going back to road-racing, where they brake, shift, steer and pass once in awhile. And the cars are often quite beautiful.
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