Indy 500 trip report (long)

[dinopoker]

To be totally honest I wasn’t looking forward to this trip. My dad had first proposed the idea a couple of years ago, claiming that it was a lifelong dream of his to attend, and that my sister and I should make arrangements for him to go the summer of his 65th birthday. He had been a racer himself many years ago, quitting after a horrific crash in about 1965 and, feeling now like retirement was right around the corner, and maybe like he was about to take up the rocking chair, he wanted to just once attend the event that, to him, represented the pinnacle of the sport of his youth. At the time of the proposal it seemed like a nice idea. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was a big fan of auto racing, regularly watching the entire Indy circuit and even getting up early on Sunday mornings to check out the F1 races from Europe. My interest had waned as the years had passed, but the notion of traveling to Indianapolis for the 500, I have to admit, was intriguing.

However, with the event actually approaching it was starting to seem a bit like a burden. My father is a difficult guy to get along with at the best of times and, lately, it had seemed like he was going out of his way to act even more difficult. He has a strong stubborn streak and so do I, and it seemed lately whenever we spoke or met up that he would see black and I would see white. Added to that was the expense – rental car, airport parking, meals and so forth, and also the fact that, as I travel fairly often for work, a pleasant long weekend for me involves staying at home and avoiding the hassles that go with air travel. A good holiday is playing some golf during the day and online poker at night with some good movies and keeping out of airports and crowds.

But I have made the commitment. Tickets have been purchased, flights and hotels have been booked, and there really is no way out of it. Yet as I leave for the airport it looks as though I may be out of it through things beyond my control. The New Jersey Turnpike is literally a parking lot! I have allowed plenty of time to make my 4:15pm flight, but the holiday traffic was a variable I didn’t consider. My apartment is only about 30 minutes from Newark Airport but the trip is taking far longer than that. Sitting in gridlock I am cursing myself because my original plan was to drive to Matawan train station and take the train to the airport, which would in retrospect have been a much better plan. Yet never having done that before I went with what I knew and elected to drive.

With minutes ticking by incessantly this is increasingly looking like a disaster, and at 2:50 and still about 10 miles from the airport I develop a backup plan. I call the airline on my cell phone and discover that there’s another flight to Detroit, my connecting city, at 6:00pm and another one at 9:00pm. Okay, so I should be okay, provided those flights aren’t full. There are probably hourly flights to Chicago from Detroit and, even if there aren’t, I can drive there if I have to – it’s not that far. The further problem would be getting in touch with Dad. Our plan was to meet in the Chicago airport and, as he has no cell phone, I will have no way to contact him if plans change. Possibly he can be paged at the airport but the more likely scenario is that he will call me on my cell phone when I don’t show up. Thus if I take an alternate flight I will change the voice mail message on my phone so that he will know my situation when I don’t show up, even if I’m on a flight when he calls. That’s my plan anyways.

Luck smiles on me at this point, though, as the traffic breaks slightly. I manage to make it to the airport, get parked (daily fee reduced from $48 to $20 per day, sweet!), get through check-in and security in less than 20 minutes, and make it on board the flight at the last possible second. There’s a delay in Detroit but it’s nothing serious and I finally make it into Chicago’s O’Hare airport only about 20 minutes late. Dad is there at the gate waiting for me, which I was marginally worried about because it was quite possible that he would come in at another terminal. He tells me that actually he did, but that the Northwest agents gave him a gate pass so he could get through security to meet me. Well done him.

From the airport we grab the Hertz bus and pick up our car, a Kia Sorrento SUV, which I know from previous rentals is an okay set of wheels. Dad hates it of course, because he hates all cars made in Asia, and we spend the first hour of so of our drive in our usual argument where he will not accept that Toyota makes the best cars in the world. I love telling him over and over about my friend in Atlanta who owns his dream car, a Mercedes-Benz S500 and is about to sell it in favor of a Lexus LS460.

The drive is about three hours from Chicago to Indianapolis. Dad is very worried about navigation but I am not, as I scoped the whole thing out on the Internet ahead of time. I don’t have any directions or anything but it will be easy. We need to take I-65 to I-465 (the Indy ring road) to the Indy airport where we’ll find our hotel. Despite the ease of this we actually do get lost once when I take the wrong exit for our hotel, get some lousy directions and get all turned around. I resolve the issue by calling the hotel on my cell phone for directions and we make it there safe and sound, just a few minutes after midnight.

Upon arriving we make plans for getting to the speedway. The desk clerk is a big help in this. The hotel has a shuttle bus that will take us to the airport for free. From there we can catch one of the “Indygo” shuttles for $15 (roundtrip) which will drop us at the race and pick us up afterwards. This seems like the best idea to us both but the problem is that no one seems to know for certain what time the race starts. The tickets say 12:00pm but we have heard both 1:00pm and 11:00am. Apparently Indiana has just embraced the idea of daylight savings time (they like to see how fads like that will turn out before joining in, I guess), which has changed everyone’s clocks. The definitive answer is found on the late local news – the race will start at 1:00pm. Opening festivities will begin at noon.

After that I explore my new digital camera that Dad has brought me for my birthday. This is actually something that I engineered because I’ve wanted one for a while now but, lacking both the time and the inclination to do a good job of shopping for one, I suggested to my parents that it would make a nice birthday gift. Getting Dad to do the shopping was a great call on my part because he will not buy anything that could even remotely be junk. He has settled on a Canon Elph with all kinds of features that I’ll never understand. Apparently, though the Japanese build horrible cars, they build the best cameras and televisions. Also, not one to avoid upselling, he has bought me a nice leather carrying case that can hook to my belt, a spare battery, and an extended memory card. The extras seem a bit unnecessary to me but the carrying case is a great idea for the race. The camera is cool as hell and I take shots of the hotel room for hours.



The next day we get up early, indulge in the complimentary breakfast and then plan out our trip to the speedway. It’s actually remarkably easy. The airport shuttle drops us off at the airport and the lineup for the buses to the track is only about 300 people, which disappears in only two buses. Things slow down as we get close to the speedway but the whole trip takes a little less than an hour. We are dropped about a block and a half from the main gate, Gate 1, to the speedway, which is pictured below thanks to the new camera. We are seated in the Paddock, so that means we have to trek to Gate 6. That shouldn’t be too big a deal, right?

Well the thing you forget is just how BIG this place is. It is the largest sports facility in the world, a 2.5 mile oval with permanent seating for almost 500,000 spectators. It covers 242 acres, which means that you can fit Disneyland inside 6 times over! Gate 6 is halfway down the front straightaway which, from where we are dropped, is a walk of almost a mile. I have planned for this and wore good Nike runners but Dad, like a dork, has worn Rockport dress shoes. He will be in agony by the time this day is through. As we walk I immediately regret my decision to wear jeans. The temperature is in the 80’s and shorts would have been a much wiser choice.

We pass several vendors selling all kinds of gear. Dad has brought a ridiculous hat and so, while he hunts for a restroom, I look through some of the shops to try and find him a decent one. As I am standing there a few people come up and buy cheap earplugs for $1. I’m not sure this is necessary but how can you go wrong for a dollar? I buy two pairs and give one to Dad when he returns from the bathroom. No hat is found that meets his high standards of headwear and so we take off to find the seats.

Turns out the seats are decent, but not what I am expecting. We are seated in the last row of the Paddock, which means we are under cover. This is great because it offers protection from the sun, rain, and possible flying debris, with the latter being no joke. This is an auto race after all, one of the most dangerous sports in the world both to participants and to spectators. In a famous crash at Le Mans in 1953 a car actually went flying into the stands where it exploded. The frame was made of magnesium and caught fire after the crash, burning in brilliant white light at over 3000 degrees. The driver and 80 spectators were killed in the incident, the worst in the history of the sport. The downside of our roof is that it prevents us from seeing the monitors set up across the track. It will be difficult to follow the race without them. Below is a good picture of where we are seated.



We are on the front straightaway about 500 yards from the start/finish line, which is a good spot. Pit row is right across from us. The Paddock itself extends down about half of the rest of the straightaway. It seats about 35,000, which is about twice the size of Northlands Coliseum. To our right is another seating area closer to the start/finish line but I don’t know what it’s called.

The problem of course is that we can’t see any part of the track that is not right in front of us. I have been warned that there are no seats in the stadium that can see everything, but you would think you could see the back stretch a little bit, wouldn’t you. I talk a little with one of the guys next to me and he tells me that he comes every year, and gets the same seats every time. “Don’t worry,” he says, “there are no bad seats at Indy.” I guess I’ll take his word for it.

As people are settling in they go through all kinds of festivities and so forth. There is a parade of celebrities (shown below) as the cars move into the starting grid and the Indianapolis University marching band plays song after song for the crowd. The national anthem is played at about 12:00pm followed by Taps (for Memorial Day). As the anthem is ending a cheer erupts from the audience. The Navy’s Blue Angels due a flyby in the “missing man” formation. We actually can’t see this thanks to our roof, but we do hear them, and see the shadows of the planes. No big deal, we’re here to see the race.

At 1:00pm the call goes out over the loudspeaker, “Lady and Gentlemen, start your engines!” The lady is of course Danica Patrick, whose talents combined with her looks are causing a new interest in the Indy Racing League. The engines fire up and wow, are they loud. The cars then crawl away for their practice laps. Generally they do two or three of these before the green flag is dropped.

At about 1:15pm the green flag goes down and we are racing. Holy cow these cars are loud, Loud, LOUD! I thought they were loud in the practice laps, they are unbelievable at race speed. They are the loudest thing I have ever heard. They are louder than a jet engine. They are a jackhammer and a jet engine and a bomb going off with a baby crying mixed in. They are loud to the point that your head is splitting apart. On every lap every molecule in your body is vibrating. They will go 200 laps and after two of those I am partially deafened.

Oh and one other thing, they are fast! Wow are they fast. They whiz by like miniature rockets. On our front straightaway every car is probably doing in excess of 230mph. On this 2.5 mile oval the leaders pass us about every 40 seconds. They are truly amazing machines, like little jet fighters, each one of them. As on planes, where the wings are designed for lift, the cars also have wings, but they are designed for the reverse effect – for downforce. So pronounced is the effect that the cars actually could drive upside down. Each one is powered by a methanol-based, 3.0 liter Honda V8 that is rev limited to 10,500 rpm, at which they produce about 630hp. They will go from 0-100mph in less than 6 seconds and pull about 2.5g’s in the corners. When they come whizzing by us, we all lean out as one to watch them enter turn 1 (picture 100,000 people all leaning forwards at once and you can get the idea of what that looks like). When there’s traffic I cannot believe that they don’t wreck. They have no brake lights and I think that a panic stop would kill them all. I’m a goof though, because this is a car race, not a freeway – they’re all taking the corners at maximum speed, more concerned with holding their line than with running into the car in front of them. It’s mind boggling.

After about 4 laps the cars slow. Clearly something has happened. The guy next to me in the stands is listening to the broadcast on his radio and he informs me. There has been a crash in turn 3. Dad seems oblivious so I tell him. He hesitates a second before nodding. I’m not sure if he can hear me, but it does remind me of what I think is the last auto race he and I watched together. It was the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, and I remember it well because it was the race in which Aryton Senna crashed and died.

Poor Senna was considered by many to be the greatest racing driver that had ever lived. His crash came the year that the active suspension system was banned from F1 racing, a move that he fatefully swore would make the cars unsafe. Only the previous day a driver was killed in qualifying and then came Senna’s fatal wreck, which would forever shake the richest sport in the world. Senna crashed in the first turn out of the straightaway at Imola and, though he wore the most technologically advanced helmet in the world and sat in an indestructible carbon fiber bathtub, he proved just how fragile we all are, dying not from the impact, but from the deceleration. Human bodies, don’t forget, are made from almost exclusively water and, as a body decelerates from such a high speed this liquid in our skulls slams against the hard shell of our cranium, crushing brain matter in the process. He is a dead man without a mark on him. I remember watching this race on replay with Dad back then, knowing ahead of time the fate of the Brazilian. The really tragic part was that, because of the driver’s death the day before, by Italian law the San Marino Grand Prix should have been closed down until the event was investigated. However the track doctor didn’t declare the driver dead until after he reached the hospital and the law was thus circumvented to prevent organizers from losing their shirts. Had the law been followed, Senna would not have died the next day. I don’t think I watched another F1 race in its entirety. Without Senna, F1 lost all of its lustre.

The race resumes and Dan Wheldon in the 10 car is clearly killing the field. After about 12 laps he is already lapping cars. Sam Hornish, the pre-race favorite, is trying vainly to keep up. Dad asks me which one is Danica Patrick. I tell him she is in the 16 car but he is having trouble seeing the numbers. Small wonder, it’s hard to see the cars at all they go by so fast. After a few tries at pointing her out he sees her. She is running in 8th and is clearly a fan favorite. Young Marco Andretti is nipping at her heels though.

I remember that I have earplugs in my pocket and put them in. Relief at last! With them the sound is tolerable. As you can see in the picture below, ear protection is a must for this race. Dad of course doesn’t wear his, opting instead to “live the experience”. Fine, go deaf, tough guy. We spend the early part of the race calling people on my cell phone and holding it up for them to hear the engines as the cars go by. What fun.



At about the midway point I wander down for some refreshments. The day is getting very, very hot, pushing 95 degrees, and I need liquid. On the way I stop at the front of our grandstand to take some pictures. I’m a little worried about standing in front of everyone until I realize that this isn’t a hockey game. You can stand right in front of someone and they can still see the entire track. The thing is huge! The view from here is a little better of the corners, but the cars run very low to the ground and if they are directly in front of you they can’t even be seen for the concrete retaining wall. Our seats are fine by comparison. At this level though, when the cars go by you get the full appreciation for how fast they are. They whiz by like bullets. I agree with the guy up by my seat – I don’t think there can be a bad seat on the track.

I take the pictures below and then head back up to our seats, cleverly grabbing a bag of ice to put the drinks in to keep them reasonably cold. The area in the distance of this picture was the original choice for watching the race, inside turn one, but was more than twice as expensive.







The picture above is looking the opposite direction, but taken at the end of the race. At lower levels the fence really gets in the way of looking down the straightaway. We have no such problem. The grandstand in the distance seats more people than Yankee Stadium or the Skydome. Early in the race a car crashed into the concrete retaining wall between the pits and the track and lost its front wing, which was then booted up into the stands by another car. I actually saw this happen, seeing the wing go flying up, but never seeing it come down. Apparently it landed in the stands in the right of this picture, hitting four spectators, none of whom were seriously injured.

When I return Dad is still standing on the seats, taking pictures. Because we are in the back row we can stand on our seats without blocking anyone behind us. This is convenient, as is the fact that our backs face open sky, so the breeze, when it comes, cools us down considerably. I can also hold on to the wire fence behind us and lean out to see action. About midway through the race an usher came up and told us all to get down and, though I dutifully obeyed, planning to just climb back up when she went away, Dad stubbornly refused. She yelled something at him but good luck hearing what she said. It didn’t seem to make much difference as the gang of five or six next to Dad were also standing on their seats and were pretty much oblivious of her. (Neither of us sat down for more than about 6 or 7 laps.) Watching the pit stops is fun, and I take a few shots of it. Apparently, Sam Hornish almost killed the guy fueling his car when he took off with the hose still attached during one stop, but this was way up pit row from us and we didn’t see it.

The race continues and I’m getting into it. Dan Wheldon has the best car by far, but he is stymied late in the race by a tire puncture and must pit. Danica Patrick is running well, but her car is not as good as the others. A caution comes out with about 10 laps to go and it seems as though it will be a sprint to the finish. Amazingly, when the caution comes out, it staggers the field and Michael Andretti (below) is in first place, with his son Marco right behind him, Sam Hornish running third. The crowd is going nuts for Michael, the driver who has led the most laps of Indy in its history, but who has also never won.

When the green flag comes out Micheal Andretti cannot hold off his kid, there is too much disparity in their cars. Marco goes flying by and Michael turns his attention to trying to do a little blocking of Hornish to let his son get a lead. Hornish is having none of it, though, and blows by the elder Andretti like he’s standing still.

As they come around for the final lap it looks like Hornish has no chance. But he slides into the draft behind Andretti and gets the final boost of horsepower needed to pass. He passes for the lead about 400 yards from the finish line, a nanosecond for Indy cars, but conveniently directly in front of Dad and me. The crowd goes nuts and we have just witnessed the second-closest finish in Indy history. It’s a breathtaking moment as Hornish does his victory lap.

As the crowd begins filing out I consider logistics. I’ve heard that you can go to Gasoline Alley after an Indy race and check out the cars and even talk to the drivers, but this is across the track, in the infield. Dad and I discuss it and decide that we’ll wait a while and take a look to see how hard that is. We mosey down after 20 minutes or so but clearly it’s a bad idea. There are 100,000 people coming through the tunnel from the infield heading out of the speedway. There’s no way to move through them. We decide to head for the buses.

This in itself is something. The buses dropped us off about a block from Gate 1 of the stadium, but they are going to pick us up four blocks from there. They use the whole four blocks for lining up the crowd. No big deal unless you factor in the fact that it’s 90+ degrees, we’ve been standing for four hours, we have to walk more than a mile to the start of the lineup, there are about 200,000 people going with us, and my dad is diabetic. Despite all this the line moves at a decent, but certainly not a quick pace. It takes a solid hour for us to get on a bus and we head back. We separate at the airport as I need a restroom and meet up back at the hotel. We catch a late dinner, tour the city a little bit and then head back, catching the last of the race replay on ABC in the room. The day of the Indianapolis 500 is over at last. A fun day, but very tiring.

The next day we head out early for Chicago. My flight, again, is around 4:00pm which means we could leave as late as noon from my point of view, but Dad insists we leave earlier. On the way we discuss racing and Dad tells me a little of his history. He was a top driver until the day he crashed, and he tells me of many of his good times and enjoyment of the life of the semi-professional racer. Right up until the crash, an incident that occurred because his accelerator stuck to the floor and he was forced into the wall. The car caught fire and he was severely burned, surviving only because he had remained conscious and was able to walk out of the burning wreck. He tells me that his own father was at the race that day and watched the whole incident unfold, trying in vain to jump down to the track to rescue his son, but held back by the crowd. It was a benefit race of some sort and, because it wasn’t a regular event, the corners had no safety personnel with fire extinguishers, as they would usually have had, and that made the accident all the worse. Dad suffered massive burns, especially to his legs, and would never race again. I am struck a little by the irony of the fact that he has often chastised me for the fact that I gamble on pool and poker games so much, yet he used to risk his life on a regular basis to win an auto race.

Yet at the same time I understand. I know the feeling of being good at something – so good that you win the adulation of a crowd, that people clap for you and cheer your name. I know this feeling well from my own exposure to sports, and I know especially how addicting it is. How people compliment you and come up and shake your hand, how so many know your name. It is the ultimate drug, more compelling that cocaine or heroin, and more rewarding too.

I can’t imagine what it was like – to lie in the hospital bed with those burns, the most painful of all injuries, for month after month. God, that must have been agony. Not just from the burns, but also from knowing, or at least suspecting, that the racing was all over. His sport is the most dangerous in the world, while mine is one of the safest, but I know exactly what that feeling is like. I will resist it forever.

And I guess that’s why, in the end, I’m glad with the way the trip turned out. I had a terrific time at the race myself, but it was more worth it for the fun that he had. I’d never thought about the racing that he used to do in those terms, but watching him over the course of this day, I can see that it meant a lot to him. I don’t know if the sounds and the smells of Indianapolis brought back the memories of his days in the driver’s seat, but I bet they did. Of those cool, crisp Edmonton nights with the engine’s roaring and the smell of gasoline filling the night air. Of races won and lost, purses collected and parties attended. They had to have been good times.



And I’m sure there’s a flip side. That seeing the Indy 500, the greatest race of them all, stirred up some melancholy. Those feelings of what could have been. He was a top driver of his era in his circuit and he knew guys who eventually made it to Indy, I’m sure that he had some feelings that, if not for the incredible circumstances that led to his crash and his injuries, that he maybe could have been there too. And who knows, maybe he could have. Yet I would say that this is not an area in which to dwell. Life is an unopened present, and you never know whether it’s going to be something that fits perfectly, or not. In the end, it is simply what it is, something worth living, to enjoy from one moment to the next, and to see where it takes you.

And more important than that, is to know that life isn’t over until the last possible moment, and there’s no reason to feel like you need to stop living it. If he wants to go to Indy next year, I’m definitely interested.

But I’m still not picking up the tab!