Race Day!!

Today's post is a day late for obvious reasons...

The AM hours:

4:30 - wakey wakey, get dressed, eat breakfast,  and get everything together.

5:25 - hit the road

6:20 - get to the track, park in lot 2, talk to some of the others out tailgating

7:00 - cannon sounds which means the gate are open, stay in lot

8:30 - enter the track and go to the infield, walk around an look at everything

9:45 - eat lunch, but without a beer since it isn't 10:00am yet, and Indiana evidently has some communist laws pertaining to alcohol sales on Sunday morning.

11:30 - after walking all around the infield (literally), head to our seats since they are in the shade and the infield is not.

The afternoon hours

Noon - watch cars being pushed to the grid, talk to other folks in our section, etc.

13:30 - driver introductions

14:00 - God Bless America, Invocational Prayer, National Anthem, etc.

14:15 or so - Green Flag!!

The Good:

JPM and Jeff Gordon both had strong finished (2nd and 3rd, respectively)

The hated Dale Jr. ran strong all day and then blew and engine towards the end, hehe!!

The Bad:

Matt Kenseth was a middle of the pack runner for most of the day

Kasey Kahne crashed out fairly early

18:15 - back to the parking lot, wait around about 45 minutes for traffic to start to move, then get in the car, get in line, and be part of a huge traffic mess

21:00 - back at the hotel.  Clean up, drink some beers, watch drunk people swimming in the pool.

22:15 - someone from the front office comes out to ruin everyone's fun, everyone ignores her

22:30 - cops show up to break up the fun

22:45 - fun continues, but outside of the pool

In years past, the pool partiers were still going when we went to bed.  They probably let them go until midnight or so, and they certainly never called the cops on them.  Seems our hotel is now run by communist bastards...

Day Three - Qualifying

Short post today, folks...

Due to the rain yesterday, practice was postponed until today, today's qualifying was moved to the afternoon, and the final practice was cancelled.  Well, at least that was the plan...

As it turned out, this morning was hazy and wet, which pushed off practice even later, which also resulted in qualifying being pushed later.  The day started early and ended late.  I am tired and need to rest for tomorrow (race day!!!  Yeah!!!)...

Day Two - Downtown Indy

From Indianapolis

Today, Lisa and I spent the day in downtown Indianapolis. We usually do this on Friday while we are down here. It was rather overcast today, and drizzled a couple of times, was otherwise OK. Hopefully we will not have these problems tomorrow and Sunday. The weather people claim race weekend should be free from rain, but we'll see.

We started out at the Circle Centre, which is a beautiful downtown mall. After that, we took a walk down Maridian Street to South Street, and then over to Capitol Avenue, where they are building the new home of the Indianapolis Cols, Lucas Oil Stadium. We then circled back and walked through the Pan American Plaza, and then back to the Circle Centre to eat lunch at the Alcatraz Brewing Company. The food and beer were both wonderful.

After lunch, we walked over to University Park and hung out for a bit. While Lisa relaxed, I went across the street to the Indiana World War Memorial, climbed the stairs, and walked around taking pictures and doing other tourist stuff. Pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ken.sodemann/Indianapolis (the sunny ones are from a few years ago, the rest are from today). We capped off the day listening to a guy play classical guitar while we ate ice cream.



Well, that's enough writing for today.

Vacation Day One

Today was day one of our fifth annual vacation to Indianapolis for the Brickyard 400.

The day didn't start all that great.  First, it was raining hard in the morning.  I took the dog for a walk between showers, but didn't exactly get back before the next shower started.  Then, when I get home, Lisa is sick.  So, I load up the car and let Lisa rest.  I then go grab some breakfast alone so Lisa doesn't have to watch me eat.  When I got back, Lisa was feeling better, and hasn't have any problems since, so hopefully that will be it for people getting sick.

We are staying in Crawfordsville again, and the drive down here was completely uneventful.  Once we got here and unpacked, it was time to hit the exercise room.  I only made it 25 minutes on the stair climber, but it felt good after driving all morning.

For dinner, we decided to do something different, and drive down to Greencastle, which is about 30 miles south of Crawfordsville.  There we ate at a restaurant called Almost Home.  I had a steak covered with sauteed crab and a chili-lime sauce.  Lisa had a half rack of ribs.  The restaurant was very nice, and the food was terrific.  One strike against them, however, is that they had a mini Cubs shrine on one wall.  Still, it was certainly worth the extra driving.

Well, that's enough for today.  Tomorrow, we will probably head to Indy and hang around down town.

Stinky Feet!!

My wife loves Orchids. However, she's not getting any of these... Ewwww....

X-Files!!

It is certainly great news that work has begun on a new X-Files movie. The X-Files is the last non-animated show that I recall actually watching on a regular basis. Of course, my wife will try to tell you it is because I had a crush on Scully (which is true), but the X-Files also had excellent and clever writing, a compelling plot line, several sub-plots woven between episodes, and was just plain interesting.

Everything that has come since then has just been crap. Not only are our airwaves polluted with way too many "reality" shows today, but I really have a hard time getting into a lot of the other shows out there like 24, Lost, or Prison Break. C.S.I. is tolerable, but not a "must-watch" show (besides, my wife loves the show, and gets the seasons on DVD, so then I can watch without commercials).

Don't even get me started on what passes for a "Comedy" today... They all pretty much suck. About the only comedy writing left that is even remotely clever is limited to The Simpsons and South Park.

Hopefully the new X-Files movie will be as good as the first one was...

Cleaner is Happier...

The Washlet actually seems like a pretty cool product, but their advertising is so weird that I just had to share...