My Birthday Weekend

The NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) has a drag racing event in Indianapolis which takes place on or about my birthday every year. Every year, Phillip really wants to go. He went with Archie for one day of it last year, (which I also cried about) just so he and Archie could get out of the house for a bit and presumably away from me and my outta control post-partem hormones.

So this year, he planned a whole weekend for us all to go. We'd leave on Friday--one day after his surgery, no less--and return on Sunday. He had points to use for the hotel, so it would be a relatively low-cost weekend out for us. I must admit right now that I wasn't really looking forward to the weekend. Walking around with an additional twenty pounds or more on my back all day at an event that would be full of crowds, very loud, and nowhere to really get away from it and rest just didn't appeal to me. But I figured for the sake of togetherness, I'd suck it up and get through it.

He had a doctor's appointment on Friday morning to get the gauze and stuff out of his nose. So we did that, went home, took a rest, then were off to Indian-apples, as Archie called it. We arrived at our hotel, checked in, and went for a short swim in the pool. I mostly stayed in the hot tub part, because the pool was too cold.

We headed downtown to decide what we were going to eat for my birthday dinner. I chose a place which, as it turns out, was pretty fancy-schmancy. The food was delicious! I ate a fantastic dinner-a seared tuna appetizer that I am STILL craving more of, a corn and lobster chowder which made me weak in the knees it was so good, a beet salad with goat cheese, and topped it all off with creme brulee for dessert. Yum!!!! Archie had the standard kid cheese pizza, Phillip had some sort of fish with pasta, which was also pretty good. Lawrence ate about a ton of the bread (it was good bread!), some pizza, and tomatoes from the salads.

We lost track of where we parked the car after dinner, so we took an unintentional walking tour of downtown Indian-apples. Unfortunately, I left the hotel without the camera, so I took nary a picture of the capital building, cool fountain we saw and such. No birthday dinner pictures either. For shame!

The next morning, Phillip got up early to go to the track to get some alone--or otherwise known as complaining-free-- time to check out some of the racing. Which was great for us, because we got to sleep in and linger over the continental breakfast at the hotel. Phillip came back a little before lunchtime and we took another dip in the pool for a while.

We all went to the race track in the afternoon. I have to admit, I had a great time at this event that I had previously was almost sorta dreading! It was fantastic! Lawrence fell asleep pretty much as soon as we pulled in the parking lot. So we put his ear protection on him and stuck him in the backpack.



When we first arrived we sat on what reminded me of the grassy knoll at the Hank Aaron Stadium. We had a decent view of the racing and plenty of room for Archie to run up and down the hill. Lawrence enjoyed crawling around.





Here is a video of Archie rolling down the hill, which he did over and over. Ultimately, it wasn't a very good idea, because the grass made him feel all itchy. But he had a good time doing it. The hill was pretty steep, which was hard to capture in photos and video. But Archie got rolling pretty fast!




After a while, we walked around to take in the sights and get a snack. Here's Lawrence taking a break:



There were people in various stages of dress and undress at this event. Some I didn't feel comfortable snapping a photo of. Such as Nipple Guy. Nipple Guy was a largish fellow who walked around with no shirt and had both nipples pierced with these extremely large-gauge horseshoe shaped nipple jewelry. It made mine hurt just looking at him! We could only assume he was advertising his fierce loyalty to the Indianapolis Colts!

This guy wore an interesting home-made trench coat made from a denim vest and a few pairs of jeans, with lots of automotive-themed patches. AND he walked with a cane!



I saw sights like this a few times during the event: people rolling around these huge slick racing tires! It turns out that the tires from the Dragsters and Funny Cars are no good after a pass down the track, so people will just come up and ask the pit crew if they can have the old tire. So this guy in the red shirt is rolling around this huge tire all day long and is about to roll it up these-here steps to get to the other side of the racetrack. Isn't there a joke in there somewhere? How did the moron with the huge tire get to the other side of the racetrack? I wonder what he's actually doing with it at his home now. I would turn it into a planter. Plant a nice shrub or something in it. ;-)



We headed to the grandstands early to get good seats for the main event: The Dragsters and Funny Cars! The neat thing about this particular event is that it gets dark during the event and these guys run their cars at night! "Yeah, so what?" you're probably asking..."I drive at night all the time!" Well, this is neat because of the fire coming from the vehicles! Very cool! And it was SO LOUD!!!! You could feel it AND hear it. I was a bit worried the very loud sound might damage the camera's microphone, but it still seems to be working okay.



This was taken as it was getting dark. It was very difficult to get a pass on camera. The cars are going almost 300 miles per hour!



Here it is after dark. Pretty cool, huh????



This is what a Funny Car looks like. No, it's not 'ha, ha' funny. I thought it was a stupid name too when I went to my very first event that featured Funny Cars. This one stopped in front of us after he was finished doing his burnout. I dunno if you can see in this picture or not, but there were these sticks planted in the grass with bundles on top of them, about twenty yards from where we were sitting. This will be important later. A good example of foreshadowing, kids!



It was very cool being in the front row. The kids could move around and I took some neat video and pictures. Here are the guys enjoying themselves. Lawrence wasn't too hip on wearing his ear protection while he was awake. So every time the cars did a burnout, then their subsequent run down the track, we had to tightly cover his ears. He wasn't too fond of that either, but I was very concerned about damage to his ears. Listening to those kinds of cars run without ear protection makes your ears feel like they're gonna bleed!



This is what a pass looks like. Incidentally this was the last one of the evening. On the last run of the evening, a fireworks show of sorts follows. Who doesn't love fireworks??? Well, here is where the sticks and bundles come into play. Which were RIGHT in front of me.

What you're seeing at the very end of the video is this fireworks fire-bomb explosion. What you're not seeing is the fact that there were several that went off RIGHT in front of where I was sitting. With my arms hanging out of the grating, trying to get a good video of the last pass. The first blast scared the hell out of me! I was SO not expecting that! My finger must've pressed the 'stop' button on the camera, but I don't specifically remember turning it off. I kinda wish I had left it on. You would have heard me cowering. The heat I felt from those fire-bombs was intense! I was a bit worried about my eyebrows singeing. I jumped back and shielded Archie and hoped that Phillip was doing the same with Lawrence. They went on for what seemed like forever! I kept praying and wishing it would end. Every time I looked over my shoulder and saw another one of those un-shot packs on a stick, I would cower some more. This is what I think being in combat would be like. It was SCARY! And the heat from those firebombs...Well, it was terrifying and unpleasant to say the least. There was all this booming and banging all around and those firebombs kept shooting.

Thinking back, I wonder who was putting those sticks holding the gunpowder in the ground. Was it like carnies? People who drink and get high while doing their job? What if one of those firebombs fell over toward the crowd? We were only a few yards away! In the front row! Then I was reminded of the time Old E shot fireworks one fourth of July at my folks' house. Old E's fireworks fell over while it was shooting. Fireballs were shooting TOWARD the people, the house, and all the remaining unshot fireworks! All I could think about was trying to shield Archie. But this was on a much larger scale.

I've gotta tell you, my heart didn't stop pounding until well after we were on our way back to the motel! What an adrenaline rush!

We all slept very good that night. Everyone was exhausted from our busy but very fun day.

Sunday we woke up and ate a leisurely breakfast. The boys went for a swim and I checked out of the motel. We stayed swimming for a while, changed and headed home.

What a weekend! It was really fun! I'm really glad we went and had such an unexpected good time! It was really nice because we were not rushed to do 'everything' we took our time and felt very relaxed. I told Phillip that it would be extra fun to camp there. In a pop-up camper, not a tent. We could camp on the grounds, eat our own food instead of over-priced event food and drinks, rest when we were tired...I'm workin' on him!