Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

I promised you a post about the 500, and a post is what I will give you even though this is past the point of fashionably late. The events of the day have best been captured by Emily and Rachel, but I'll throw in my pictures with a few captions...since I DID promise you a post...

We met at Will's mom's house in Speedway to walk to the race. Not quite realizing what a 45 minute walk with two coolers would be like, I thought it would be a great idea to bring 5 liters of boxed wine. This also made our shoulder cooler weigh about 50 pounds, so we started carrying it separately about 5 ft. past the front door.

In the parking lot of a gas station - Justin: "Is the Franzia open for business?"

The gas station is my favorite place for a photo op...isn't it yours?

Pausing on our quest to find Jimenez in the infield. Here's how our many conversations with him went...

B: "Guys, I'm on the third turn...we're playing cornhole!"

J: "Brian, it's the infield, everyone's playing cornhole. Are there any flags or landmarks?"

B: "I'm the one playing cornhole!"

J: "Is Shawna there? Put her on the phone."

B: "Wait, I see a sign that says turkey legs!"

Found him.

And they're off!

The following pictures of kindness and generosity are the result of being a little bored starting around lap 13 and the realization that no one should finish a 5 liter box of sangria by themselves. Here's Emily sharing with our straightaway friends...

The classy Lady in Red kept flashing us in the early laps of the race so we could all see her nipple rings. Emily gave her wine anyway...she had behaved herself for the last hour or so. Wild.

Oh yes, the race...back to that. Helio won. There may have been some lighthearted cheers of "Helio 'I-Don't-Pay-Taxes' Castroneves!!" coming from the boys' row of bleachers...but we all know that whole incident was just a misunderstanding. I'm sure Helio will pay taxes on this $3 million purse.

Just to wrap this up, I leave you with the last few pictures of all the strange, random, grotesque things we saw that day...

I won't show you this next picture, because after I added it to the post it was making even me a little sick, I pride myself with having a pretty high squeamish factor. But, there was a bag of something dead...filled with maggots...RIGHT AT THE END OF SOMEONE'S DRIVEWAY!!! Isn't that something you might take care of if it was at the end of your driveway???? BLECH! We had to walk by it twice.

Darn it, why didn't I know about this limo two summers ago for our wedding????

And last but not least, we found this character (no, not Justin) in the Mexican dive where we ate after the race. He hadn't made it home from the night before. His name was Chompos. The restaurant owner shooed him out, but my guess is that he's still looking for his house.