We recently traveled back to the states to Indiana to visit Matt's family and to also go to the Indy500. We flew out of Calgary, leaving the chilly spring weather behind, and arrived in Indianapolis, where summer was already in full effect. We rented a car (Matt tried his hardest to land us a sporty convertible to allow us to soak up the sun while driving around Indiana, but all they had was a Nissan Maxima with a sunroof...) and drove the hour or so to West Lafayette. It felt so nice driving with the windows down, taking in all of the midwest scenery.
We spent the first few days relaxing in West Lafayette with Matt's parents, uncle and sister, with a few trips back and forth to Indianapolis. On Saturday, we traveled to Papa's house (he lives right in Indianapolis). We spent the night there in order to be close to the Speedway for the race on Sunday. Saturday night, we grilled out and had delicious birthday cupcakes to celebrate everyone's recent birthdays. Papa really enjoyed his German Chocolate cupcake :)
Melissa and I prepared ourselves for the race by painting our nails, Indy style. We wanted to try to fit in with seasoned race-goers. This was actually Melissa's first time at the race. I have been twice before, and always look forward to the people watching, almost as much as I look forward to watching the race.
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| Matt, Melissa, and I were enjoying the warm weather in Papa's backyard. |
Each year, the Meyers go to the race with the Surfaces (long time family friends). Skip works for Budweiser so he is usually able to get tickets for us. Sunday, the day of the race, we got up around 7AM to get ready. We left around 8AM and drove to our parking spot. Everyone who lives even remotely close to the speedway turns their lawn into a parking lot, charging $20 to park. So, we parked and started to walk, each carrying an empty cooler. We headed to the Bud tent where we enjoyed some shade, some hotdogs, and then stocked our coolers. Surprisingly, you are allowed to take coolers into the stands. About an hour before the start of the race, we headed to our seats.
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| Let's go racing! |
We were very close to being a part of history at the race this year, but missed it by one degree. The temp on race day hit 91 degrees, just one degree shy of the hottest race on record, set in 1937. It felt nice though because there was a breeze blowing up in the stands. We watched the first 50 laps in the stands, and then headed to the "snake pit" in the infield. The "snake pit" is definitely a spectacle. I'm pretty sure that most of the people in the infield aren't even aware that a race is going on...
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| Melissa took this awesome picture |
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| This is a picture of the infield from the stands. |
I finally discovered that you can post videos on here! So, here is a video of the race. The sound of the cars is pretty amazing.
We finished the race back in the stands. It seemed to go by pretty fast this year. Once the race was over, it was insanity. It is chaos trying to navigate through the crowd while still keeping track of everyone. In fact, we lost Matt's uncle and had no idea where he was. Also, his phone was dead so we had no way of finding him. We decided to take a "pit stop" at some random lawn to figure out what to do.
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| Not sure what Melissa is doing in this picture, and you can just barely see Matt's red shoe in the bottom corner. He was taking a quick nap while the rest of us figured out what to do. |
We decided to head back to where the car was parked and hope for the best. Amazingly, we found Matt's uncle there! After the race, we headed back West Lafayette. We had another day there to enjoy the summer weather. Matt and I got to walk around the Purdue campus.
The next, day we caught our flight out of Indy back to Calgary. Another race in the books...
