Ladies and Gentlemen...

...start your engines. Yes, Bryan and I heard those famous sporting words LIVE yesterday at the Indy 500. And yes, it was "ladies" because there were 4 female drivers. Here is a picture of us in front of the track...look how close people sit. We did not sit here, but we think the big crash at the end (where the car flipped over and hit the net) happened right in this part of the track.
I had never been to any kind of car race before, so I learned a lot. The most amazing thing to me was the size of the track. The race is 500 miles, and the track is 2.5 miles long so the race has 200 laps. The amount of "stuff" inside the track was shocking. Do you see that little white building over our shoulders?

Here we are in front of it. It is a big Indy Car museum. You walk under some little tunnels that go under the track to get to the inside of the track. There is all kinds of stuff inside...this museum, lakes, a 9-hole golf course, tons of parking, and tons of grassy areas where people can hang out and watch the race. In fact, the track is so big that I don't think there is a single seat where you can see the whole track.

Here I am on the "bricks" that made the track famous. The whole track was originally brick. Now, there is just a little strip at the start/finish line made of bricks. But, the strip extends outside the actual track and into the big infield so you can take pictures.

Here is some of the infield parking. You can also see the big tower in the distance. I think some of the spotters for the drivers are up there where they can see the whole track. The "pole" is on the other side of it. It is a big pole that shows where all 33 racers are so the drivers can see their standings as they go by...I don't know how they can really have time to see it though.

Here we are in the infield. This is a road inside that they use for other races throughout the year.

This is a picture from our seats. I took this before the race started...it was waaaaaay more crowded when the race started. Down the track we could see the pole where the race starts/finishes.

And here is the view to the right from our seats. We could see the drivers come out of turn 4 on our right and then pass the pole and go into turn 1 on our left.

Here is Bryan, his Dad, and his sister Janet in our seats.

Remember that big tower I took a picture of from a distance? Here is a closer view of it. The strip of bricks are right here, too.

Here is a shot of the cars being taken out to the starting line. They drag them out with these little carts.

Here is a picture of Bryan and his Dad beside one of the pace cars. Notice I said "one" of the pace cars. You can see there are several. Before the race they have a bunch of college girls (some kind of princess court or something) that get to ride them in a parade. Robin Roberts from Good Morning America got to drive the actual pace car this year. She is only the second female to ever get to drive it.

Here is a picture of Will Power (#12 car) going into the pit. Our seats were right in front of the entrance to the pit. On our way into the race, we saw a merchandise trailer with T-shirts for a driver named Will Power. Of course he became our favorite and we cheered for him the whole time! How can you NOT cheer for someone named Will Power? He started right behind Helio in second place (based on qualifying) and stayed at the top for a while. Unfortunately, he drove off with the gasline still attached on his first pit stop and got black-flagged. This means he had to go back to last place. But, he did a good job of catching up and ended up in 9th place. It was fun to cheer for him though, and it made it easier to keep track of how the race worked when you had someone to watch for.

Here are a couple of pictures during the race. You cannot imagine how hard it was to get pictures of the cars when they were actually racing. Actually, I think I got the picture above when they were in the parade lap at the beginning and weren't at full speed yet.

Here, Will Power is about to pass Sarah Fisher. It took me about 12 laps (attempts) to get a picture of his car. They are driving at 220+ miles per hour. The track is 2.5 miles long, and Bryan was timing them on his watch at about 40 seconds a lap. You could hear them coming and as soon as I saw them coming out of turn 4 I would snap the camera to try to get a picture as they passed in front of us.

We had such a great time at the race! It truly is something that every sports fan should see at least one time in their life. This was the 94th running of the race. From 2009-2011 is called the Centennial Era because it will be 100 years since the track was built during this time frame. Dario Franchitti won his 2nd Indy 500 this year. Helio ran out of gas on the last couple of laps and missed his chance to win his 4th total and 2nd set of back-to-back wins.

Although we did a lot of driving on our trip, we had a good time and got to see some awesome parts of America that we had never seen before. The Lake Euphalla area of Oklahoma was beautiful. And, on Saturday night Bryan's Dad showed us around his hometown of Columbus, Indiana. It was such a beautiful town! And...in Missouri we even went to a full-station gas station where an attendant pumped our gas. Neither Bryan or I could remember ever being at one of those!