Adventures at Indy 500 Carb Day

Jello shots

Bottoms Up

Every year in May  The Indianapolis 500 and all of its festivities invade my home town.  I grew up on the west side, inside 465, and my high school was within walking distance to the track entrance on 30th street.   Carb Day Partying started early for me.  Every year we would ditch school and walk to the track for about 15 minutes of car watching and 6+ hours of drinking and other revelry.  I have been to  practices and Carb Day , but never the  actual race. The one year I had a shot at going with my  almost boyfriend  Sports Center , I managed to fuck it up royally a  few weeks earlier by making a drunk dial call to my first ex-Paul, from Sports Center’s apartment, while he was there.  One of my finest moments of pinpointing EXACTLY where in my relationship things started to turn wrong. Looking back there was a lot else wrong with that relationship, a story for another time perhaps.  Sports Center and I took his  crotch rocket down to the track on sunny  Saturday before things turned all wonky, it was  my first and only trip to the track on a motor cycle and perhaps the tamest trip I ever took to the track.

Midget and the pit passes

One summer while I think I was still in college Toshiba ( she’s been with me since freshman year of high school) and  I were working at the local TCBY ( This can’t be Yogurt)  when these two dudes came in  and started talking to us, which led directly to me busting both of their balls for as long as they would stand there and take it.   One was a cute  blond 24 year old midget race car driver and the other was his portly 30’s+ plus balding friend.  After we closed, they came back and we took them to a raging drunkfest apartment party and a friendship of a few years was born.   we made plans  for them to take me to the track and get me into the pits with a pit pass the next day.  I can’t remember if Toshiba or Bike Girl went with me but I know I got up close and personal with more than a few drivers and crews that day.   I was also hoping to  get up close and personal with Midget, but that never happened.  This was way before cell phones and Facebook, we exchanged  addresses and phone numbers. We then proceeded to write occasional letters to each other, usually starting around March and culminating with when are you guys coming this year and what day are you taking me to the track.  This went with Midget and I for two to three years and then we just lost touch.  I still  wonder if he ever made anything of himself in the race world, I’d like pit passes.

Another treat at the track is getting into a suite; air conditioning, free food and booze, covered watching area for right along pit row. These are always corporate sponsored and if I was in a suite I had to behave, but the perks of being able to wear really cute posh race clothing like a black and white checkered backless wrap around shirt with a very low V and white  wide leg pants.  It was indeed the 90’s and yes the outfit did come The Limited, where I spent a good 2+ years working as part time job right of college.    This next story is from that era.

Tuck a buck?

When I worked at  “Now HP”, it was nothing but a party. Every year there would be a big group of people going to the track. Ham Thief would get all the food and we’d pitch in and have a big cook-out drunkfest in the infield.  Indiana weather is tricky, that year I wore my red bikini under a pair of boxer shorts and a sweatshirt.  What I should of been wearing was posh cute suite clothes because my boyfriend  Mick was invited to a suite for work that day the  jerk didn’t  include me.  So here I was, at the track in  white trash clothes, hanging out with all my co-workers when things started to get interesting.   Ham Thief ( who may or may not have taken the whole ham from the fridge home from a work pitch-in once. It wasn’t his ham)  was grumpy because he had bought a crap ton of food and since it was cold out  not as many people came as expected.  If there is one thing I excel at, it’s problem solving in extreme situations.   I asked how many burgers we had left, we had all eaten, and if $1 was enough per burger to even him up.  Soon I found myself sitting in front of the grill in a red  bikini and pair of boxer shorts flipping burgers.   We had guys coming from all over the infield to get some of our burgers,  Mostly because they were all delivering the cash by tucking the buck into my  bikini top and my guys coworkers were screaming “tuck a buck for a burger” and pointing to me. .    There is nothing I love more than an audience of multiple men drooling all over me, and I had it in spades that afternoon.  Knowing  how pissed Mick would be if he saw it was icing on the cake.  That asshole went to a suite without me.  In typical Mick fashion I never saw him once that day and if I did it was in passing, he  was an emotional cripple with severe intimacy issues he chose to fix directly after I chose to leave him, but I digress.   I was stumble down wasted and having a great time getting felt up by sweaty, drunken boys and men. At one point a larger group of guys came over  with a video camera, they pulled me away form the grill. They were filming the tucking and   they were grabbing at my boxers and top.  It was at that point that I knew I had to pull my shit together. I managed to square my eyes and squirm out of their clutches and return to my grill master stripper post and resume my duties.  Another hour or so passed and here came  a few state troopers making the rounds.  One squatted down next to me and pulled something out of his pocket for me to look at.

“Do you know what this is?’

“It’s Pokemon, why?”

” I use this to see how drunk people are, see if they can focus enough to read it”

” Did  I pass?”

“Yes”

“Would you guys like a burger?”

I swear I think the cops got the last 3 burgers we had, without tucking and probably for free.

Sunshine and Lola

These days I have an annual standing date with Sunshine for  Carb Day. Sunshine is named that in my real life too, he’s blond and brought light into my life when things were really crappy.  He goes every year with a HUGE group of extended family and friends, including  some part of a set of 5 brothers not related to him.    There are way more guys than girls and Sunshine and I hang out down by the brothers.  They all know my name is Laura, but they call me Lola and we have a gooooooood time.  Once I arrive and nestle safely within the group I literally want for nothing.  There is food, alcohol, money for gambling being passed all around. This year went something like this

• I re-acquaint myself with the group, get settled. Out come the jello shots and pineapple. It’s like 10 am. This is an excellent plan as I have to drive home at some point and be up very early the next morning to head to the Chateau. I try 2 of each.
• Sunshine gets out the cigar, cuts it and lights it, Lola/Sunshine cigar smoking commences. The brothers love to give me shit with my jello shots so the Monica Lewinsky jokes star coming.  I inform them that I,  in fact, know what the fuck I am doing, and proceed to show them. I know my way around a cigar, it’s not rocket science and I have had a lot of practice.
• There are more jello shots coming and more pineapple infused with Malibu Rum. I LOVE pineapple and Malibu and I especially love it with Diet Mountain Dew, which I just happened to have in my cooler.  Sunshine made the pineapple so we called dibs on the juice and I proceeded to make a very large sippy cup drink with it.  It was at this point that brother #1 or 2 looked at me with this big shit eating grin on his face and proclaimed, “You’re gonna get fucked up”.  It was probably 10:30 am.
• We passed the big cup around for everyone to try the drink  (what’s a little Hepatitis C at the track among friends) and they all agreed it was good.  I proceeded to get just the right amount of happy drunk.  The low liquid to alcohol ratio in the delivery methods of jello shots and pineapple were the perfect combo.   This buzz took me through practice, the 100 mile race and the entire pit contest, only  fueling every 20 minutes or so with another jello shot. I think I peed a total of 2x the whole day in spite of the 4+ bottles of water  and the 90+ heat.
• Don’t worry,  I ate during the day , yummy buffalo chicken bites, cold out of a cooler and drove home quite sober well after 4pm.

Who knows what next year will bring, but I’m trying to get  Babu to come with us, and make jello shots.