During the past week we've seen some publicity about a special event at the Sportsdrome speedway in Clarksville, IN, near the freeways we sometimes take to the mall, movie theater, or Target in Southern IN (and near another short freeway Stephanie takes to work). Weeks ago my co-worker Gail had mentioned she was interested in taking her son to the speedway. Somewhat like at the old Columbus (OH) motor speedway (and like the straightaway National Trails raceway where Stephanie used to race), cars race here all summer (essentially through baseball season). But this track is unusual - we learned - in that it has an optional Figure 8 part of the track. Many races involve cars racing around a short oval track. But other make use of the Figure 8 and go around the turns but also through the Figure 8 portion. This is much more dangerous and - as it turns out - entertaining but as cars become stragglers it's hard for them not to hit each other in the middle of the Figure 8. The special event Friday was not only eight school buses racing - but eight buses painted pink - with some of the proceeds going to fight breast cancer. Pictured above was the Speedrome speedway as I walked up from my camera. The image is kind of deceptive - it wasn't really that dark yet, at 7:20 (I missed the 7 p.m. race). The place was packed, with the corporate sponsors promoting the fund-raiser and people excited about the Figure 8 school bus races. Below is the black "pace bus" - with insignia from the Hooters restaurant chain, one of the corporate sponsors. At that point it was in the parking lot - later it was the real pace bus.
The place was packed - apparently even more so than usual - The food lines were terribly long - reminded me about what I'd heard about the beer lines at the first Churchill Downs night racing night. The souvenir and beer lines, ironically, were not too long. It looked like a third of the people had bought the cool black "Stop Cancer" and "Sportsdrome Blackout" on the back T-shirts (which raised more money). This was definitely a white working class crowd - that reminded me of the non-ESL families at Stephanie's school and of Hamas. Some of this Vincent would have loved when he was a kid. Lots of smokers (since it was basically all outdoors - although people smoked in the men's room with the one long latrine also - Clarksville has no smoking ban and it probably woudn't have been enforce here anyway). Except for the fact that it's private property: I wonder how I would have done trying to get pro-Obama health care reform signatures here. Pictured below are some Hooters staff members selling fund-raising raffle tickets.
I had gotten my colleague's cell phone number, but apparently written it down wrong (and got someone else twice - apparently in NYC - since she has a NYC cell phone number). So I looked for her and her son Tugi for a while. Meanwhile, the racing continued - conventional, stock-car oval racing - only there were a lot of wrecks - Lots of the cars were all beat up and there were lots of red and yellow flags. The announcer was omnipresent, and his trademark message when full-speed racing returned: "We go green! We go green! We go green!"
I was still hungry. There was a VIP area - corporate sponsors? where there was a wider selection of food and no lines, but it didn't look accessible. This was one side bleachers. There were two main sets of bleachers, one on each side.
With my poorly functioning camera and the sun starting to set, one can barely make out the racing cars below.
I was really missing the video feature on my lost camera, partly since much of the thrill of this is in the motion and the noise. The crowd loved the crashes - but not the clean-up wait in between crashes and full-speed racing resuming.
I took this picture below of the west bleachers while looking for Gail and Tugi. I was starting to lose faith that I would find them after I'd been through all of the bleachers two times.
But they yelled out at me - they were sitting in the front row of the east side bleachers. I crawled up there, taking a slightly better picture of the cars racing on my way up.
Even though I had not seen them on my own, Tugi did kind of stick out - He and I were the only Asians in the crowd of some 10,000? - there were a smatteirng of Latinos (any of Stephanie's ESL students?) and African Americans. He's also very outgoing. He appeared to bother an Anglo kid sitting behind us for an hour - talking, jabbing - until the kid finally relented and talked with him and let him sit next to him. He sat in Gail's lap part of the time before that. But still this wouldn't have been half as fun to watch without a family there to watch it with. Stephanie was out with her colleagues on a largely girls night out (partly - it turns out - at a bachelor's party with guys from Ohio!) evening at Fourth Street Live. I had dropped Vincent and Jessi off to see a movie at the Baxter Avenue movie theater. Otherwise, I might have persuaded one or more of them to go. Again, I still hadn't figured out how to get the flash on the camera not to work.
Enjoying the evening and the whole scene with Tugi and Gail was fun - although the whole scene was kind of incongruous - the only two Asians in this white working-class racing crowd with the woman who still has a NYC cell phone number.
The other folks behind us - perhaps after some beers - became impatieht with all of the crashes and long yellow and red (yes - they really came to a complete stop - though I couldn't always understand how the jockeying for places during yellow flags - or whatever color they were - was allowed) flags with no racing - and became rather profance in expressing their dipleasure. Still, none of the three of us could have predicted the thrill when the car Figure 8 racing began - with a really incredible driver who - after the first few of 30 laps - continually daringly threaded the needle so that he got way ahead (with just one other driver, car near him - conceptually - in actuality, they were always "lapping" other cars - so there were cars - and, sometimes, conventional crashes everywhere - amazingly, while I was there, there were no figure 8 crashes - but plenty of very close calls. From this YouTube video, it's clear that there are sometimes such crashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9v8bYXqlGI
And, then, finally, the pink school buses emerged. There was a lot of excitment and hoopla - but I needed to go pick up Vincent from Jessie's - and - while it was cool - frankly, ti was a little anticlimatic because it was very hard to beat the cars Figure 8 racing and that daring lead driver. The buses did not go as fast, there were no wrecks of any kind while I was still there, and that daring driver's bus conked out after not very long. Clearly, there are sometimes wrecks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv8nqzqlZPs
I continued to watch some as I walked towards my car and headed out into the night, past Slugger Field where the Louisville Bats had just lost a Game 3 International League playoff game to the Durham Bulls, and ontowards the Highlands.
I took this picture below of the west bleachers while looking for Gail and Tugi. I was starting to lose faith that I would find them after I'd been through all of the bleachers two times.
But they yelled out at me - they were sitting in the front row of the east side bleachers. I crawled up there, taking a slightly better picture of the cars racing on my way up.
Even though I had not seen them on my own, Tugi did kind of stick out - He and I were the only Asians in the crowd of some 10,000? - there were a smatteirng of Latinos (any of Stephanie's ESL students?) and African Americans. He's also very outgoing. He appeared to bother an Anglo kid sitting behind us for an hour - talking, jabbing - until the kid finally relented and talked with him and let him sit next to him. He sat in Gail's lap part of the time before that. But still this wouldn't have been half as fun to watch without a family there to watch it with. Stephanie was out with her colleagues on a largely girls night out (partly - it turns out - at a bachelor's party with guys from Ohio!) evening at Fourth Street Live. I had dropped Vincent and Jessi off to see a movie at the Baxter Avenue movie theater. Otherwise, I might have persuaded one or more of them to go. Again, I still hadn't figured out how to get the flash on the camera not to work.
Enjoying the evening and the whole scene with Tugi and Gail was fun - although the whole scene was kind of incongruous - the only two Asians in this white working-class racing crowd with the woman who still has a NYC cell phone number.
The other folks behind us - perhaps after some beers - became impatieht with all of the crashes and long yellow and red (yes - they really came to a complete stop - though I couldn't always understand how the jockeying for places during yellow flags - or whatever color they were - was allowed) flags with no racing - and became rather profance in expressing their dipleasure. Still, none of the three of us could have predicted the thrill when the car Figure 8 racing began - with a really incredible driver who - after the first few of 30 laps - continually daringly threaded the needle so that he got way ahead (with just one other driver, car near him - conceptually - in actuality, they were always "lapping" other cars - so there were cars - and, sometimes, conventional crashes everywhere - amazingly, while I was there, there were no figure 8 crashes - but plenty of very close calls. From this YouTube video, it's clear that there are sometimes such crashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9v8bYXqlGI
This more like what I saw - plus without the distracting music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbXbPr6D94
And, then, finally, the pink school buses emerged. There was a lot of excitment and hoopla - but I needed to go pick up Vincent from Jessie's - and - while it was cool - frankly, ti was a little anticlimatic because it was very hard to beat the cars Figure 8 racing and that daring lead driver. The buses did not go as fast, there were no wrecks of any kind while I was still there, and that daring driver's bus conked out after not very long. Clearly, there are sometimes wrecks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv8nqzqlZPs
I continued to watch some as I walked towards my car and headed out into the night, past Slugger Field where the Louisville Bats had just lost a Game 3 International League playoff game to the Durham Bulls, and ontowards the Highlands.
-- Perry
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