Indy 500, Cont.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes, the Colts stadium.

Saturday night, after a lovely dinner at the hotel, we were bussed down the road to the local Indiana Live Casino. Bryant gave each person a $50 voucher to gamble with. How generous! In retrospect, I really should have just cashed it out and gone home. The casino was lame. Despite the luxurious atmosphere of toothless rednecks, and smoking hundreds of second-hand cigarettes.

Apparently there is a law in Indiana which prohibit gambling with real money, or real cards. So, we had to get special card that recorded the amount of money we had/lost. And all of the tables were digital. It was basically just like glorified video poker. BORING!

So, I gave C my $35 voucher, and kept the $15 slot card for myself. It took me about 20 minutes to lose that $15 playing the penny slots, but I did win $4.39 back. SWEET! And I won a free T-shirt. SCORE!!
So, we took the early bus back to the hotel, and C went down to the hotel bar to watch the Lakers game. That didn't sound like fun to me, so I stayed in the room, thinking I'd just watch some TV. But there was nothing on.

This is what happens when you leave me in a hotel room, alone, and bored, with a camera.

Don't judge me. That's how bored I was.

Sunday morning we caught the fun bus bright and early, to head out for the race. We even had a police escort. See? We really are special. I felt like I was in a herd of cattle, there were so many people. They even had troughs in the bathroom to wash your hands. Cattle.

We stopped to get our headsets, and little radio thing-a-ma-jigs to listen to the pits/announcers, then entered the stadium.
Bryant was so kind as to supply us with a sack lunch and all the beer coke we wanted, so we didn't have to worry about lines. We found our seats and settled in. Luckily we got covered seats, so it wasn't too hot.

Now, I've never been a big racing fan before, so I had no idea how huge this thing is. Let me tell you, I'm fairly certain that half of the country was in that stadium. Seriously.
There were 350,000 people there. THREE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND! That is a lot of people! Makes for some good people watching. I'm pretty sure I saw Lou Feriggno walk by.

I tried to take pictures of the cars going by, but they were just way too fast for my slow camera.

Tony's pit crew
Danica's pit crew Dan's pit crew
After about half way, the constant whirring of the tires on the track, and the purr of the engines literally lulled me to sleep. I started nodding off right there in the middle of it all. I guess, at that moment, all of the week's activities finally caught up to me. But, then, sadly, our driver, Tony Kanaan, who had made his way into 3rd place, crashed. We were sad, he was out the race, but glad he was OK.

Tony's car was so banged up they had to tow it in some kind of tarp thingy. Crazy.

In the end, Helio Castroneves (who was on Dancing with the Stars) won the race, with Dan Wheldon (who Clint bet on before the race and won $50) in 2nd, and Danica Patrick in 3rd.



Helio pulled his car right in front of us after he won, then climbed the fence and waived to the fans.