A Long, but Fun Weekend
posted August 30, 2009 by derrikMary's parents came up this weekend to go to the Indycar race in Joliet with us. Her sister, Jasmine, came as well to watch the girls. Jasmine, Mary and I went to see Inglourious Basterds Friday night, which was awesome. The opening scene was incredible. There was a lot more subtitling than I expected, but it is a movie set in Nazi-occupied France, after all. It was a fantastic film though and I highly recommend it. We got back from the movie and went to bed around 12:30 Saturday morning and then we were all up around 7am, which wasn’t good considering the long day we had ahead of us.
The race didn’t start until 9pm, but we left the house for the track around 11:30 Saturday morning so we could take in all of the events of the day. We got to the track in time to catch a couple of the Indy Lights cars qualify. A guy from Lafayette qualified first. It was a little chilly in the stands when the sun was hidden and wind was blowing, but it felt perfect when we got a little sunshine.
After Indy Lights qualifying, we walked around a bit to check out all of the stuff going on around the track and kill some time until Indycar practice started. Apparently, the teams didn’t feel the need to practice so we didn’t get to see that. The Indy Lights race started around 5pm, and that was actually pretty exciting. They are a lot slower than Indycars, but just as much fun to watch. The guy from Lafayette pitted multiple times and eventually just retired. Out of the 16 cars that started only 10 finished.
After the Indy Lights race, we headed back to the car to eat dinner. By the time we finished, the crowd had really started piling in. The sun was going down and the temperature was dropping pretty fast. I wore a long sleeve shirt so I almost left my jacket at home, but ended up taking it just in case. I’m glad I did, because it got really cold once we got back in to the stands for the Indycar race. The temperature dropped clear down to the low 50’s after the sun was gone.
As part of the pre-race show, the Firestone Firehawk mascot was firing t-shirts in to the crowd. One of them was fired about four rows over our heads but it bounced down the stairs right to me and I managed to snatch it up before anyone else. Free t-shirt! Score! I used it as extra insulation inside my jacket.
The race started just after 9, and looked really nice under the lights. There were a few minor accidents that brought out yellow flags. The last one was just a handful of laps before the end of the race so it bunched the cars up for an exciting finish. Ryan Briscoe took the win over Scott Dixon by 0.0077 of a second. It was pretty awesome to be sitting so close to the start/finish line and see it all happen so close.
I think we will be going back to this track for races in the future. It’s a very nice venue with a great view of the track and you don’t have to deal with insane crowds like the Indianapolis 500. It’s a pretty cheap race to attend, too. Hopefully they keep this race under the lights in the future, because it looked great.
Anyway, we got on the road to head home around midnight. Getting out of the track was a breeze. We were home and in bed by about 1:30.
It was a long weekend with little sleep, but a lot of fun. Check out our photos from the race on Saturday! Thanks to Jasmine for coming up to watch the girls while we went to the race.
I have to get back watching the Bears game now. Go Bears!
