Can the Indy 500 Matter Again?

So when's the last time you read a blog about open-wheel racing? Let's try that again... who remembers what open-wheel racing is? If you live outside Indianapolis, there's probably a pretty decent chance you haven't seen an open-wheel race in a long, long time. You know, waaay before blogs.

Now I don't really care about racing. NASCAR is too Hollywood anymore, and it's the only racing anyone cares about. However, I remember back in the day when the Indianapolis 500 was a huge day in Indianapolis. We didn't get the race on TV, because it was always blacked out, but we'd gather around the radio and listen to the whole thing. I'm sure my mom had no idea who any of the drivers were, but she was there for every lap. After the race, we'd turn on the TV and watch the whole thing on tape delay. A few years later, the people who had satellite dishes (the big giant ones, not the little tiny ones that people have now) would invite everyone over to watch it live on a west-coast ABC feed.

For those of you still reading, there's good news. It looks like the Indy 500 might start to matter again. Speedway owner Tony George and his Indy Racing League have managed to broker a merger with the Champ Car World Series. Many of the details have not come out, but it definitely looks like there will be a full field at this year's race. That's not to say that Indy is going to be bigger than NASCAR right away, but at least it's giving itself a chance.

Maybe the Indy 500 will rise again... someday.

Construction and Potholes

When we moved back to Indianapolis, we were in a bit of a rush and had to get an apartment site unseen. So we did a lot of research on the Internet, and then sent friends and parents by a few different places to help make the decision. Then we totally didn't follow any of their advice and went with the one we thought we liked the best.

Fast forward to the night we arrive in Indianapolis. We left Hutchinson at about 8am local time and drove straight thru to Indy, stopping only for food and gas. It was cold and we didn't want to leave the cats in Katie's car for long, so it was all junk food and fast food. We got to Indianapolis around 10:30pm, and get up the off ramp to find construction everywhere. Well that's not exactly something you can plan for, but I was tired and didn't really care at the time. I just wanted to get to a bed.

Now that we've been in the apartment for five weeks or so and have driven to work every morning and home every evening, the construction becomes more and more annoying. In the midst of the construction on our route to work, they also closed a bridge on the other side of our apartment complex, which funnels even more traffic past our complex. Since this last mess of storms has gone thru, now our street is riddled with potholes. The good news is, it looks like a few of the potholes got filled yesterday. Hopefully they finish that job today.

Anyway, construction sucks. It's not too bad in the morning commute, but every evening, after you've been thru a full day of work and just want to get home, you get 90% of the way and then run into the bottleneck of traffic trying to get out of the city and sit thru about 4 stoplight cycles to get over the bridge. So, I guess the moral of this story is that I'm hoping this construction gets done before we end up moving out of the apartments, or that was a really poor choice for temporary living arrangements. And the other moral is, when you send someone to look at a place for you, don't just ask about the neighborhood, because no one will tell you about the SINGLE LANE BRIDGE down the street that you will have to take EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to go ANYWHERE in the city.

Thanks guys.

Total Lunar Eclipse

Tonight at 10:00pm eastern, there will be a total lunar eclipse. Apparently, it will be the last one until December of 2010, so it might be worth checking on. That is, if we have a clear sky. Odds of that -- not real good. Anyway, for you science types out there, here's how it works:
It seems like it might be a fun chance to pull out the camera and try to snap some photos, since I haven't had a lot of chances to do that since I got to Indiana. I guess we'll see. Enjoy the show, if you can.

Genesis

About 20 minutes before the Super Bowl, when everyone else is watching the pregame show (or at least watching the commercials that the cheap companies who won't pay for game-time commercials run in between Fox's video segments of Frank Caliendo making fun of Curt Menefee's weight and Terry Bradshaw's intelligence and fill-in-the-blank "analyst" slurping Tom Brady), I was doing math. Specifically, I was hanging pictures in our new apartment, and trying to space them evenly and keep them level so I don't look like an idiot. I won't look like an idiot, but mostly because I was lucky enough that the picture frames are covering up the three or four extra holes I made. We'll call them "back-ups." We have been in our apartment for a couple weeks now, and it was time to get those suckers hung.

Once I was done, I sat down to watch the actual game and said to Katie, "I need a new blog title." As you can tell, I'm really excited about this game. The first quarter is almost over, and I'm still typing this post out. The Giants are winning; I hope they are enjoying it. I don't think it will hold up. Katie came up with the title, by the way. So if you hate it, it's her fault. It's better than anything I could come up with though. Since Indiana is the "Crossroads of America," it sorta works, but now that I think about it, I don't really feel caught at all. Maybe it was actually her sentiment... hmmm...

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what this blog is going to be. It'll probably be a little bit about sports, a little bit about technology, a little bit about life. Hopefully, it will brighten someone's day or at least be good enough to read at work. Maybe someone will enjoy reading about it; maybe not.