I really enjoyed your post on the Indy 500, and the special way you weaved it together with life and spirituality. I have been a lifelong racing enthusiast and I actually raced for sixteen years in amateur road racing events. A special memory that I have is when I met my Dad, my brother and my son to the 2003 Indy 500 for Dad’s 80th birthday. He’s been gone for twelve years now but he was with me today watching the race! 🏁🙏🏻
I've driven five hundred miles many times. It's about as far as one can drive in one day safely; if one can call five hundred miles, during which one is bound to encounter a dozen or more imaginary race car drivers while crossing three states (if Texas is not one of them.) I teamed with my brother one towing a Uhaul trailer with all his belongs aboard, from Grand Rapids, MI to Terrell, TX. We had planned to drive there and back without stopping for anything but meals. That would be about as 2,200 mile trip, at seventy miles per hour, about a little over thirty-one hours plus meal stops. We were typical twenty year olds with no experience with such long trips, nor with experience with the only sleep possible in the back seat of a car moving at seventy miles an hour; namely NO sleep. But at that age, nothing is impossible, right? We made it there, but we weren't prepared to drive back. We decided to sleep a few hours before heading back. Twelve hour later, we got up to crawl back into the car. Twenty hours later we drug ourselves out of the car to sleep another twelve hours.
It was only after that experience that I began to understand what it must take to drive five hundred miles at over two hundred miles per hours. Began to understand, mind you. At one third of that speed, I could barely make it in one stretch. Doing so at two hundred, in a pack of other cars and drivers battling for every inch of pavement? No wonder only thirty or so drivers our of the world's population even try to accomplish that feat is amazing. My long adventure was back in the mid-sixties. We now have twice the world population of then. Surely there must by twice as many such drivers, besides having the other half of the population, women, competing. No. Today (literally) there are the same number tackling Indy as then.
Jim Clark of Scotland won in 1954, against a rookie class of 1965 was historically notable, including such drivers as Mario Andretti, Al Unser Sr., Gordon Johncock, Joe Leonard, and George Snider. Clark was the first driver, incidentally, to break the 150 MPH barrier that year. That year was also the first year that all but six cars were rear engine, and n which most of the cars had switched to methanol from gasoline. It was also the year that the "English Invasion" began in earnest. Ah, the importance of being earnest, eh?
Your blog brings life to "Nap" town as my father, 94 years a resident of Indianapolis used to call it. And on Race Day, the sacred Indy holiday.
I really enjoyed your post on the Indy 500, and the special way you weaved it together with life and spirituality. I have been a lifelong racing enthusiast and I actually raced for sixteen years in amateur road racing events. A special memory that I have is when I met my Dad, my brother and my son to the 2003 Indy 500 for Dad’s 80th birthday. He’s been gone for twelve years now but he was with me today watching the race! 🏁🙏🏻
How cool Steve. Do you live somewhere in the Midwest?
I've driven five hundred miles many times. It's about as far as one can drive in one day safely; if one can call five hundred miles, during which one is bound to encounter a dozen or more imaginary race car drivers while crossing three states (if Texas is not one of them.) I teamed with my brother one towing a Uhaul trailer with all his belongs aboard, from Grand Rapids, MI to Terrell, TX. We had planned to drive there and back without stopping for anything but meals. That would be about as 2,200 mile trip, at seventy miles per hour, about a little over thirty-one hours plus meal stops. We were typical twenty year olds with no experience with such long trips, nor with experience with the only sleep possible in the back seat of a car moving at seventy miles an hour; namely NO sleep. But at that age, nothing is impossible, right? We made it there, but we weren't prepared to drive back. We decided to sleep a few hours before heading back. Twelve hour later, we got up to crawl back into the car. Twenty hours later we drug ourselves out of the car to sleep another twelve hours.
It was only after that experience that I began to understand what it must take to drive five hundred miles at over two hundred miles per hours. Began to understand, mind you. At one third of that speed, I could barely make it in one stretch. Doing so at two hundred, in a pack of other cars and drivers battling for every inch of pavement? No wonder only thirty or so drivers our of the world's population even try to accomplish that feat is amazing. My long adventure was back in the mid-sixties. We now have twice the world population of then. Surely there must by twice as many such drivers, besides having the other half of the population, women, competing. No. Today (literally) there are the same number tackling Indy as then.
Jim Clark of Scotland won in 1954, against a rookie class of 1965 was historically notable, including such drivers as Mario Andretti, Al Unser Sr., Gordon Johncock, Joe Leonard, and George Snider. Clark was the first driver, incidentally, to break the 150 MPH barrier that year. That year was also the first year that all but six cars were rear engine, and n which most of the cars had switched to methanol from gasoline. It was also the year that the "English Invasion" began in earnest. Ah, the importance of being earnest, eh?
WOW Jesse. Thanks for sharing this. You are quite the road warrior.
I so appreciate how you distill meaning from every episode of your life. This is what I’m striving to do too. Thank you, sir. 🙏