life in the fast lane!

A few days ago Rudee mentioned we should take advantage of our time here and go see a local museum. We have lived in this area all of our lives but it seems like we always travel to another area to see and do things. I guess a lot of people are like that, live and work somewhere only to pack up and spend their vacation time exploring another area of the country.

I have always been a huge fan of the Indianapolis 500. The race is traditionally held on Memorial Day week end and my parents, brother, sister and I would always go camping with our camping club here in Indiana. For years now the race has been "blacked out" on the local TV so the only way to keep up on the action was to listen to it on the radio. The morning of the race someone would buy a newspaper that included the photos of all the drivers, the photos would be cut out and for .25 cents you could draw one of the pictures out of the hat. What fun we had keeping track of all the drivers while listening to the race plus if you had the winning driver you got the majority of the pot!

Since those days I have attended a few of the races and have even worked there a couple of years as an emergency responder back when I still had my Paramedic credentials.

I knew they had a museum on the grounds and had been before but it had been years ago. Thursday morning I suggested that would be a fun destination and Rudee agreed.

The museum is located in the in field of the track and the admission was $5.00 each which is a pretty good deal seeing as a "car guy" can easily spend a few hours there just looking!

They have a lot of the winning cars on display including the very first one from 1911, the "Mormon Wasp" and all 4 of A.J. Foyt's winners.

We watched a movie explaining the history of the track and were able to take our time and linger over the displays we found interesting.

Here is the famous Borg Warner Trophy awarded to the winner of the Indy 500, this is the actual trophy with the winning driver and car owner each getting a smaller replica. The faces of the winning driver are added to the trophy each year, pretty cool!

This guy is NOT one of the winning drivers! :-)

This is a replica of a Roger Penske owned car driven by Rick Mears back in the day, lets just say Rick and I are built a little differently. That car was TIGHT! Hard to imagine being squeezed into that thing and then flying down the track at 200 miles per hour inches from a cement wall! Can you say Cahones' ? :-)

We spent most of the afternoon exploring the museum and, being a race fan, I really enjoyed it. They also offer a ride around the track in a tour bus for an additional $5 but we passed on that. We have ridden around the track on our motorcycle and just didn't think a bus ride would do it justice after that.

Leaving the track we made the short drive to Plainfield to visit Rudee's parents. On the way we stopped at Shoe Carnival and each got a new pair of tennis shoes. I needed the shoes for a new adventure! I had applied for a job as a work camper at Amazon and they called me for a telephone interview Wednesday morning. I guess I did OK on the interview and they offered me a position for this fall in Campbellsville, Kentucky. I will not know exactly which department I will be in but suffice it to say I will need some comfortable shoes!

I contacted fellow blogger Larry Harmon, http://mountainborn.blogspot.com/ , and got some suggestions on campgrounds. He and his wife Bett have worked for Amazon for several seasons and are the experts on surviving the Christmas rush. I will start sometime in middle to late October and work until December 23rd. Campbellsville is only about 3 hours south of Indianapolis so we are planning on spending Christmas with the family. Rudee is already excited about that!

We have no real plans for our Friday but Saturday morning we are heading south (hopefully on the motorcycle) to Louisville to attend the Mid-America Truck Show. The show is huge and I'm sure I'll get the chance to break those new shoes in a little! I'll keep you posted.