Indy notes

Quick entry tonight because, well, it is a holiday weekend and I’m not in that much of a mood to write tonight. Spent today the way I believe that I have spent nearly every Memorial Day weekend Sunday for the past ten years, half asleep on my couch watching the Indy 500. It doesn’t matter how many things I had hoped to accomplish today, I knew that once I lied down on my couch you weren’t going to be able to move me without a forklift.

First off, a comment from qualifying that I forgot to discuss last week. One of the best stories of the year is Felippe Giaffone getting the last qualifying spot at Indy. See, he didn’t have a ride for the entire month so he basically hung around the track, did some networking and hoped that someone would give him a chance. It’s the last day and knowing that he didn’t have a car to drive he decides to go shopping at Babies R Us with his wife. Where he gets a call at 1:30 in the afternoon to make his way to the racetrack because A.J. Foyt wants him in a car. Four hours later he is driving nearly two hundred and twenty miles an hour and gets the last spot. And today he ended up racing well and had a really strong finish. That’s what I dig about race car drivers, anyone who can go from being at Babies R Us to pulling five G’s in a turn without even blinking is a pretty cool customer.

Of course, the big story was Danica Patrick (who was referred to as just Danica throughout the entire race today, which struck me as odd.) I’ll say it this way, she did extremely well for a rookie, much less for being the first woman to ever lead a lap at Indy. Though she made two rookie mistakes (stalling her car in the pits and taking out a significant portion of the field in a restart) she really showed that she belonged on the racetrack. She ran strong all day and at the end there it looked like she might actually have had a chance to win it. Really impressive. It was a good race and I’ll be honest, this is the most excited I’ve been for Indy in a long time. As an old school auto racing fan, I’ll be really happy to see open wheel racing regain some popularity in the States. Given that hockey, much like the revolution, will not be televised I have to have something to watch.

Holiday tomorrow so I’ll be either shopping or watching my Blue Devils go for the men’s lacrosse championship. Have a nice day off everyone.

The five random CDs of the week
1) Chris Mills “The Silver Line”
2) Kasey Chambers “Wayward Angel”
3) Jon Dee Graham “Hooray for the Moon”
4) Robbie Fulks “13 Hillbilly Giants”
5) Paul Simon “Graceland”