Indianapolis Speedway

WARNING: MANY MANY PICTURES IN THIS POST!!!

This post includes just 2 pictures from our trip to the Indiana State Museum first. They aren't that exciting, but too bad for you. I just liked this art thing in the front of the museum. I wanted to get the shot more from the bottom looking more straight up, but it wouldn't work out with my camera. Or I just wasn't doing it right. But either way, I still like it.

This is the pendulum in the museum. I vaguely remembered seeing this on a school field trip one time. But the pendulum keeps time by the rotation of the earth. And the sign said something like, the pendulum doesn't rotate...the building does. The pendulum just keeps swinging and the building rotates around it, which ends up in the pendulum knocking over the stick things. We even got there just a couple minutes before it knocked one over!

After we went to the State Museum, we went to the Indianapolis Speedway. We got REALLY lucky and walked into the Speedway museum right before the last "special tour." That day they were doing the special tour that not only takes us around the track, but takes us into the pagoda, gasoline alley, winner's circle, etc. You'll see pictures of it all in here, so get excited!

The pictures are actually in reversed order of when we saw everything. But there are so many pictures, I didn't feel like taking the time to switch it all around. But I don't think it'll make too big of a difference.

This is the gasoline alley where all the cars get their gas... I guess I didn't need to clarify that.

Here is a shot of the back side of the pagoda. They were apparently celebrating 100 years. I think they did say that the Indy 500 (or some version of it) was started in 1910, or thereabouts.

This is some of the garages where cars are stored during race week time. There was also one larger garage door that's not in this picture which is how the cars actually get out onto the race track. We also learned that the Indy 500 cars aren't made to drive under like 50 MPH. So when the cars are back in the garage areas, they have to be towed everywhere until they get on the track.

This is a picture of me and mom in the richie seats. The tour guide said just 1/3 of this room costs $50,000 or so to buy for race week. He said that includes 80 tickets (I think) and 30 parking spots in the back (I think). So that's alot of people to fit in that area. Also, you can't even see the race track if you sit down in that room unless you're right by the window. So I don't feel like it'd even be worth it! But I guess rich people can do what they please.

We also learned there were other rooms that people could buy for like $116,000 for the whole year of race events. But you can't use it whenever you want. That seems like alot of money to spend for just a few weeks of race events!

This is showing the other 2/3 of the room. So it's really not that big of a space.

If you get lucky enough to get a seat in the middle of the track, these are the eating facilities during race week.

These are the cameras that watch the track during the race. There is to be ZERO debris of any size on the track during the race. So each of these cameras watches a certain specific part of the track. There is one person to watch each screen and make sure there is absolutely no debris. The tour guide said these cameras are so powerful they could look at you in the crowd and see the second watch ticking on your watch. So if they do see anything on the track, they bring out the yellow flag (or whichever it is to just slow them all down and tell them caution) and get the stuff off the track.

Steve wanted a picture of this to show that we were going in the "authorized personnel only" areas. He was really excited about that!

This is where the winner of the race gets interviewed right after he wins the race. I think this was called the media room. We felt really special that we got to be in this room.

And here's Steve being interviewed!

You can't see that little sign above the opening right there, but that's the opening to gasoline alley.

Here's a view of the winner's circle from the track.

Us on the winner's circle! Right where they take all the pictures!!!


Me, mom, and Steve's feet on the finish line. Well this is actually right after the finish line. The first track used to be made out of brick, and these are some of the original bricks. That's why there's the other race called the Brickyard 400. The track used to just be called the Brickyard. Soo all the original brick are now under many layers of blacktop. As you can imagine, the bricks started getting too rough and treacherous to race at such high speeds.

So there's a shot of the finish line with the brick right after. The camera that takes the picture of the winner at the end of the race is super fast! They did the calculations and figured out that when the car is finishing the race, the camera could take 20-ish pictures of the car crossing the finish line before it gets across it. That's REALLY fast considering how fast the cars are going when they get to the finish line!!

Here we are "kissing the bricks." I didn't know about this tradition before we went there. Apparently one of the winners of the 500 kissed the bricks right after he won the race. Then, as usual, it became a big thing to do for all the tourists to be like the winner. (Just so you know, we really didn't kiss them. Just posed for the camera. Right after we took this picture, our guide told us this: There is a "strut your pup" event once a year when people can bring their dogs and walk the track once. And he said many of the dogs stop and pee on those bricks. So I was very glad we didn't really kiss those bricks.)
We also learned where the tradition of drinking milk for the winner comes from: Louis Meyer was a 3 time winner of the Indy 500. He really liked to drink buttermilk to refresh himself on a hot day - per his mother's instructions from the time he was young. So in 1936, he won the race and was really hot from being in the car that long, and he immediately drank milk when he got out of the car after winning. An executive from the Milk Foundation saw it in his newspaper the next day and was determined to keep that as a tradition for as long as he could. There was a short time when milk wasn't offered, but it was revived in 1956, and has continued ever since.

The last leg of the race track. The track is 2 and 1/2 miles long. And you can't see the other side of the track from here. Even if the bleachers weren't there...

Here is the pagoda. This the building where the richies sit, and media people, and all the people that keep track of all the cars, tracks debris, and statisticians, etc.

A shot of the new safer walls and up into the bleachers.

I guess that's the thing that shows where all the cars are in order, etc. I'm not sure. I don't remember what he said about that.

This was in the Indy Speedway museum. It wasn't SUPER exciting, but it was kind of cool to see all the old cars (and bikes) used to race. Apprently bikes were raced before cars were.

There were many other pictures of the cars, but I tried to pick the really cool ones for you.

Oh! Hey, Helio!

This is a real person that just poses like that all day without moving...

Picture from the road.

Well, I think a couple pictures got accidentally deleted during the process of uploading so many. So I'm sorry, there may be a couple things you missed. But that was one of the coolest things we did while we were touring Indianapolis. Steve was sad he didn't have his video camera for that tour. I was sad too! But we didn't even know we were doing that when we headed out to Indy. We were just lucky my dinky little camera lasted the whole trip!!!

I hope you enjoyed this, and maybe you learned some new things like I did on the tour. :)

P.S.

This post took me like an hour and a half to make!!!! Holy whoa!!!