Thursday 25th May – To Indianapolis

Happy to report that we did not get flattened or blown over last night. However, the news was showing pictures of the damage that the tornado did cause when it landed only 20 miles north of us!!
 

I don’t think poor old Harvey would have fared well - scary stuff…

Not wanting to pass through a park without seeing any of it, I went for a brief walk around but the trails were swamped so it wasn’t really worth it.

We wanted to get to Indianapolis in reasonable time, so we headed off for the 1-hour drive west.  The rain caught up with us again, so the signage is a bit blurry...

Back into Indiana

We had to stop off for some camping admin - Walmart & cheap gas before finding a campsite where we bought propane and emptied the grey and black tanks in preparation for a weekend with no hook-ups at all.

We reached the city mid-afternoon, heading straight to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS from now on!) administration building to queue for our tickets. We have different tickets for each day this weekend courtesy of Mr Newman.  The Indianapolis 500 race is billed as the greatest spectacle in racing. This is something that Simon has been looking forward to for months and our schedule has been fitted around us getting here. I don’t understand what it’s all about yet but I will, of course, be filling you in as the weekend progresses!

We were booked onto Lot 1A for the weekend, dry camping.  Hence having to ensure we are fully stocked up and/or empty in all of the necessary areas.  We rolled up to the lot that was already looking pretty full…. And muddy!  Looks like a lot of people turned up as soon as it opened this morning at 7am.  After the heavy rains of yesterday, the marshals were concerned about people getting stuck so they directed us towards a gravel siding to the road.  But Simon wasn’t having that!  Seeing a prime spot, slightly downhill and not too far from tarmac, I was sent to approach the group next door to check if they were saving the spot for anyone.  No problem there, and they offered to rescue us with their trucks should it go wrong and we ended up stuck in the mud.  I thought it best to stay out of the RV (no point adding more weight!) and stood back to watch in awe as Simon ‘Colin McRae’ Newman sped up and hurtled across the grass.  There was a moment when the RV was tilted at a scary angle to the left and he needed some opposite lock on the steering wheel to avoid running over our new neighbours but thankfully the manoeuvre was successful and we were in! I am disappointed to report that I didn’t get any of it on video. No one did.  Everyone was whooping and cheering as Simon stepped heroically out of the RV, now a parking legend.  How on earth we get out again is a quandary that can wait until Monday!

That's how we got in....

The neighbours' set-up

Time to get set up, meet some of the other Indy 500 fans and settle in for the weekend. There is no event this evening, so we’ll just enjoy the busy camping atmosphere.

Having got the RV prepped, we took some camp chairs and went to join the neighbours around their amazing fire pit (left).  The guys, Mike and Alex, work together at Honda and are best friends.  Possibly more.  I’m just saying they are very close! Their wives, Livia and Karri, are also good friends and the four of them together are looking forward to a weekend full of booze and high-jinks without their kids.  Each couple have amazing rigs that they have parked opposite each other, ‘owning’ the space in between and surrounding it with a boundary of flaming torches. What better way to kick things off and get well lubricated than some rounds of beer pong?! 

Simon nailing it at beer pong

I am very bad at this game.  We were introduced to it while in Canada a couple of years ago but, for those not in the know - you set up ten plastic cups in the shape of a set of bowling pins at each end of the table and in teams of two, try to throw ping pong balls into the cups from the opposite end.  If you are successful, then the other team has to drink the beer from that cup and the winners are the first to clear all ten cups.  The losers usually either have to drink more or do some other kind of forfeit.  

We were supplied with fireball shots throughout the evening – cinnamon whisky I think – and this wasn’t even as a forfeit! I could try and divulge more details about the evening, but I’d be lying if I said I could remember that much anyway.  It was a late one and chances are we both had a little too much to drink.