Indianapolis in the Spring

INDIANAPOLIS IN THE SPRING

It's been a while since I've spent much time in Indianapolis, even though it's always been one of my favourite cities. When I found out I would be here for much of the spring and summer, about the only hard and fast rule I made was to steer clear of all the hoopla that surrounds the 500 mile race held the end of May. Not that it isn't a spectacular event, but I'm just getting too old
and grumpy to deal with the crowds and the traffic. I saw plenty of that when I worked on one of the broadcast teams for the race years ago when I was beginning my career in radio. I'm guessing you can already see where I'm going with this, and sure enough, even as long as I have been out of the game, my producer at the public radio station where I still do some work thought it would be a good idea for me to do some of those radio essays about the race.

The first essay is supposed to be something about this year's group of drivers, done in the insightful and meaningful fashion that public radio listeners have come to expect, or at least are willing to tolerate. My producer is a perfectly charming woman, but a bit overdosed with public radio philosophy. She really does say things like that, except for the willing to tolerate part, which I added myself. A loose translation is that public radio listeners will expect to hear some tweedy professorish kind of thing that has
precious little to do with the race, other than perhaps to wonder how the cars get away with making so much noise in an otherwise residential neighbourhood. At least she didn't tell me to do something about how the race affects the homeless, although she probably will when she thinks of it. For now, the assignment is to do a piece about the drivers, which seems like a surprisingly legitimate racing subject to me.

I always found race drivers to be a fun loving bunch and from a look at the driver profiles, this doesn't seem to have changed much. From the apparent propensity of Alex Barron to wear a set of those Billy Bob teeth around gasoline alley to entertain his friends, however, it certainly does look like the humour has become more sophisticated over the years. I don't exactly know
the basis of all this, but it wouldn't be a great surprise to find out it has something to do with some of the NASCAR teams or fans who will be here for a race later in the summer.

One the other hand, If there is any truth to what one hears about the rigorous physical training drivers go through these days, I suppose that walking around wearing Billy Bob teeth could be one of the less exhausting ways to get some exercise. I don't know if we are supposed to take all this exercise talk in the profiles literally, anyway, or if drivers like this Briscoe fellow from Australia really mean something else when they say they like to do things like participate in triathlons at the beach. Somehow, this sounds a lot to me like that Fosters is Australian for beer thing, and in this case, triathlon would be Australian for trolling for babes. I'm not real sure what the drivers mean that claim to do a lot of bicycling, either, unless it has something to do with that old joke about the missionary and his jungle guide traveling by canoe when they spot a couple "riding a bicycle" on the river bank.

Helio Castroneves, on the other hand, may very well be telling the truth when he claims not only to maintain a strict workout regimen six days a week but also to have opened the first Burger King franchises in Brazil. I can see how the two could somehow be related, having in mind the stories about Bill Clinton jogging to McDonalds, and then wondering why he wasn't losing weight from all the running.

Somewhat less ambitious, or perhaps just more truthful, is Sam Hornish, who is apparently a motion picture enthusiast of some degree. He has recently moved into a newly built home in trendy Napoleon, Ohio which includes a nine seat home theatre. Now I don't want to get into the one-up-man-ship thing here, but when I was in college, I had a 1966 Oldsmobile that seated a lot
more movie-goers than that, at least on Carload Triple-X Mondays at the Blackford County Drive-in.

Most of those driver profiles seem to end with some sort of highlight of the driver's career and this is usually the first big win or something like that. For some reason, Dario Franchitti lists finishing second to Juan Montoya in the CART standings in 1999. Somehow, that sounds a lot to me like bragging about being the last guy killed at Custers Last Stand or something. I guess he
didn't want to just come out and say the highlight of his life was the day he became Mr. Ashley Judd. At least he had the good sense not to get involved with her sister, which may also have been worth mentioning.

I'm guessing there is more to this story, as well as all the others, but they're just going to have to wait. It turns out I'm rather abruptly changing the topic of my research. I just found out that it wasn't the race drivers my producer wanted an essay about. It was the bus drivers that take the fans to and from the speedway. Well, this is public radio we're talking about, here. I
really should have known.