So in case you care, I had a great and fun weekend! It all started Saturday morning when I asked my boss if it was my last day at work and he said yes. I said goodbye to everyone and was gone by 11:15. I drove home, played Battlefield for a couple of hours, packed my shit, and drove up to Quincy to hang with my boys and other assorted folks.
The first thing I did when I got to Quincy was to head out to the Quincy Speedway for Budfest. I met up with Drew and Torrie (thanks for getting me in for free!!!) and we proceded to drink and watch the concert. Hinder was up first when I got there and they completely rocked!!! That Lips of an Angel song rules! Then it was some local band that was pretty decent. Up next was Firehouse. They were suprisingly good! I also learned a couple of interesting things about Firehouse even. First, they are not technically an 80’s metal band because their first album came out in 1990, and would have sworn…The second, and coolest thing, was that the guitarist was the person that actually wrote AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” isn’t that cool? After Firehouse was another local band and more beer. Finally, the headliner: Warrant! Unfortunately, Warrant was not nearly as cool as Hinder or Firehouse. We left halfway through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I assume they finished up with Cherry Pie, but couldn’t tell you.
So Drew and I, along with two lovely vixens, headed back to his radio station to drop off the station van. We dropped the girls off at their house so they could freshen up and then we went to pick up Savage. We drove back to some bar where we met up with the girls again. We also hung out breifly with fake boobies girl (from my previous blog), but no excitement was to be had there. Basically, we just chilled at the bar for a beer or two, watched SportsCenter highlights, and kept Drew from killing this guy. While we were sitting there, I had this crazy idea. None of us (Me, Drew, and Savage) had anywhere in particular to be on Sunday. I said I thought we should drive to Indianapolis for the big Nascar race. They said they were both poor and couldn’t go. I told them I’d take care of everything, let’s go. Savage was completely (I think) on board, but we couldn’t get Drew to budge. Savage said if Drew won’t go, we should go anyway. There was NO WAY we were gonna leave Drew behind. Drew kept shooting us down, so we finally kicked him in the junk, carried him to the back parking lot, bound and gagged him, and took him with us. No, but that would have been funny. I’m not really sure what changed his mind, whether it was the fact that he was damn near ready to rip this dude’s head off or he was too drunk to make rational decisions, but finally he agreed. Instead of sitting around waiting, I knew we had to leave immediately before Drew changed his mind. This was at about 12:15 am. We quickly bought beer, drove through McD’s, and stopped by Savi’s place so he could pick up a few items. At this point Drew did NOT want to go anymore, but he didn’t really have a say in the matter. He kept saying he wanted us to stop by his house so he could grab a few things, but we never did. Finally, at about 1am, the three of us were headed on a road trip. Indy or bust!
It took about 5 or so hours to get from Quincy to Indy. The only major hickup along the way, was when we damn near ran out of gas in the middle of Decatur at about 3:30 in the morning. We drove for about 30-35 miles with the gas light on. I wouldn’t recommend doing this in the middle of the night on a Sunday being that all but one of Decatur’s gas stations, close down at night. My Caliber’s gas tank holds 13.5 gallons of fuel. I put in 12.935 gallons of gas….we were that close. Thank god Savy kept a cool head because I was just about flipping out.
We knew we had to be getting close to Indy when we pulled into a Wal-Mart in Brownsburg (yeah, we had no clue either). We bought the supplies we thought we needed (for the record, you can not buy package beer in Indiana on Sundays) and as we were leaving we talked to a really nice guy that informed us that we were only 6 miles for Indianapolis Motor Speedway!!! He told us this back way to get into the track so we avoided all the traffic. He then proceded to tell us how to get into the infield. We thanked him profusely, and headed to the track at about 7:30am (eastern time). The guy was pretty dead-on with the directions and after a bit of trial and error we made in to the line of cars headed to the infield. When we got up to the guys taking money, they asked us for our tickets. We said we just wanted to go onto the infield. He said you had to have a ticket. We said can’t we just pay you. He said no. So we had to turn around and take this little path back through the parking lot against the flow of pedestrians walking into the infield. As it turned out though we were able to Rick James our way into another parking area by getting in line with the cars that may (or may not) have already paid. We pulled up between a Hummer H3 and a big blue van. The Hummer people were probably pricks so we didn’t really talk to them at all, but the folks from the van were extremely nice. They had an awning, a grill, good food, plenty of beer, a newspaper, and many other fancies. We had a hatchback, some foldy chairs, bologna, chips, beef jerky, and plenty of beer. The race didn’t start till three, but we were in the parking lot by 8:30. Around 10am I took a nap for a couple of hours and Drew and Savy started to drink. All went well for the next few hours as we just screwed around and made friends with the people from the van. We also rocked some Rage on the RyPod much to the chagrin of those around us. The prerace started at 2:00pm. So we watched that for awhile. Yes, I said watched it. Before they left to go into the track, our new friends asked us where our tickets were at. We told them we didn’t have tickets. They asked us again, just to make sure, that we drove all the way from Quincy, IL to the Brickyard and we don’t even have tickets for the race? YEP! One of the beautiful things about my Dodge Caliber is that it has a normal electrical outlet like you would find in your home. We had brought Savy’s television, purchased some rabbit ears and a europe to us adapter plug (why he has a European tv I still can’t remember) and were all geared up to watch the race on the television plugged into my car.
Before our new friends had left they said we could sit under their awning if we wanted to. We assumed that meant we could use it so we picked it up and moved it so that part of it was over my car and we could sit under the other part. It was a perfect set-up. The tv in the back of my car with the hatch up, 3 dudes drinking beer and eating bologna in blue and green fold up camping chairs watching the race from the parking lot of the place where they were actually racing. We were a few football fields away from the outside of the stadium, but I still can barely describe the sound of the cars as they sped past. It was almost like a train was going by, but not quite. It was so wild to see the race and hear the engines (even though we weren’t inside the track). Naturally, we documented the whole trip with a camcorder and you may see it one day when we ever get all of our other footage together. The race was over by 5pm. Since we were already in the parking lot, we really didn’t have any trouble getting out or sitting in traffic. We drove by the Indianopolis Colts practice facility and then headed back to the wonderful place(?) that is Quincy. Drew and Savy slept most of the way back (assholes!), but I rockstarred us all the way back home. We finally got there around 10:30pm Sunday evening. By this time, the only thing any of us could think about was showering and going to bed. Oh yeah, and we all had pretty massive sunburns. One of the few debates on the way home (when the other two were actually awake) was whether to take a hot shower or a cold shower. Drew said hot showers are better for sunburns because it opens up the pores in your skin and lets the heat out. I kinda thought a cool shower would feel so much nicer. Who knows. The only thing I learned is that when badly sunburned, if you take a hot shower, it burns like hell, and then you go numb and can’t feel it anymore, then if you wait 30 seconds and do it again, it burns like hell and then you go numb again. On the other hand, the cool shower felt very good, but the sunburn still hurt.
For those of you scoring at home, I woke up about 7:30-8:00 on Saturday morning. I went to bed again about 11:30 Sunday night. If you don’t count the two hour nap I took, I was up for 39 or so hours straight, of which 15ish were spent driving. The other guys have similar scores, but Drew slept most of the way down and back, and Mike passed out for the last hour or so of the race and also slept most of the way back, assholes…It was the best time!!! I still can’t believe that the three of us actually made it down there and back. I still can’t believe that all three of us agreed to even start this trip (for the record, Drew officially objected to the trip about 3 and half hours into it, hehe, and he didn’t really have much say once we got him in the car at the bar on Saturday night, we wouldn’t exactly let him out or drop him off at home. In fact, Drew gave us the quote of the trip, “Against my will, motherfuckers!”).
I love doing things on a whim. I think we should all try to be a bit more spontaneous, it makes life more fun. You don’t have to take it quite to the extreme we did, but think of something you haven’t done for awhile that you really enjoy or something that you’ve always wanted to do, but have never gotten around to it. The reason people lose their sense of spontonaeity is because we are all too cautious and never just do it for the hell of it, whatever it may be. Call in sick someday and just spend the day reading in the park, or go rent some fancy old car for the weekend and just drive around, or suprise your loved one with anything (I hear Bed and Breakfast places are big right now), whatever it is, don’t be a stuck in the mud, just get out there and do it!
Ry