Race Day - The Things We Dropped

The heat was on at the greatest spectacle in racing this year.  An announcer on the PA said it was the hottest race day in history, and I believed it.  We started the day with a greasy McDonald's breakfast on our way to Will's mom's house, the unofficial meeting place of the Indianapolis 500.  I think all four of us had looked forward to that McDonald's breakfast all week.  Yummmmm.  We walked to the track loaded down with our coolers and boxed wine, of course.  You can't go to the race without boxed wine, duh.  I think we started to sweat about 3 minutes in, and at the 5 minute mark I remembered why you don't bring boxed wine to the race - it's heavy!  

 

 

Made it!  Taking a quick break before walking to turn 4.

Party on, Wayne. 

Rachel and Emily ordered cookies from Taylor's for my birthday.  So sweet - thank you again, girls!!!

We parked ourselves in the stands and set up our food/beverage stations.  And by stations, I really just mean coolers underneath our feet in the bleachers.  This leads us to the things we dropped, in case you wondered where I was going with that title.  You see, like most bleachers, there's a large gap between the floor board and the seat part of the next bleacher down.  When you're parked in the bleachers all day long with lots of stuff, it becomes pretty hard to keep all that stuff safe.  Maybe it was just hard for me, because I was the dropper of 80% of these items. 

Here were the fatalities of the day, in order of their disappearance into the bleacher abyss below:

1.) Brent's new water bottle

2.) Our sunscreen

3.) Brian's $100 race radio (this wasn't my doing, luckily.)

4.) The entire bag of Sangria after the bottom of the box fell out.  I thought that shoving a bunch of ice in the box was a good idea, but totally forgot about the potential of the bottom ripping out.

My driver's license and credit card were loose in my pocket because I didn't want to carry a purse in.  I think you can guess what I'm going to say next.  Yup, dropped them.  By some miraculous stroke of luck, Rachel noticed them on the floor of the bleachers teetering on the edge of the ledge and grabbed them.  

I'm wearing an oversized fanny pack next year.  I've heard they're coming back in Europe.

Great idea, random race guy!

By Lap 32 I was absolutely melting, so I wandered down to a tunnel underneath our seats to get out of the sun. 

I was definitely more into the race this year.  Okay, maybe just the last 25 laps.  My favorite part is the hoopla in the beginning, when the troops are out on the track, the anthem is sung, and Jim Nabors belts out "Back Home in Indiana".  Hands down, this is the best weekend of the year and one when I am always proud to call Indianapolis my city.