Day 3- Almost home

I should probably include the 3:00 AM communal shower (and no, I wasn't part of that action) as day 2, but it was officially on Sunday. The guys were yelling- I suspect that they were our drunken Canadians of Day 1. They were saying that they should just pee in the showers whilst taking a shower. I must say- ewww. Good thing that I wasn't using that bathroom- I was going down to the 3rd floor instead.

We got up pretty early in order to get to the track and watch some of the other races- the Ferrari Challenge was fun. Lots of smacking walls and eachother. Which is a shame when you consider that these were lovely cars and privately owned. But the guys have plenty of money, and seemed to enjoy the race.

Some things not seen on F1 TV coverage- they have a drive around when they introduce the drivers to the crowds. Our seats were good for this- we could stand up and see the vintage Austins that were lined up behind the stands in the old pit lane. I took some pics- I'll post some later, methinks.

So they also do this lame little UN walk about in the pit area that is on the jumbotron- thank God that they didn't walk the entire track- it would've taken all bloody day.

The weather was a little cooler- according to the Tivo'd coverage we've been watching, it was 92 degrees with 60+% humidity for days 1 & 2. But on race day it was breezy and cloudy. Nice.

The race itself was tremendously fun. A bit confusing since we're used to tv coverage, and it's kinda a challenge to keep track of the cars. But it was really cool.

Then comes fun. After the race, we broke through the fences and got on the track. Spouse got injured by a rebar post smacking him in the chest- I'll try to post a picture- if he cooperates. I also was in kinda bad shape by that time- my feet were badly blistered, and the heat was really tough on them. But we toughed it out.

There were over 120,000 people at the race- which I'm told broke attendance records. That makes sense, since the night before we walked around downtown and saw amazing crowds.

Post race we wandered the track, picked up some tire rubber and gradually filtered back to the downtown area where we met a great guy named Ahmed (our waiter) who was moving to NYC in 2 weeks. I wish him the best- he deserves it.

We drank fine French beer in the dorm hallway and crashed pretty early- we were all leaving at different times, and it was a long trip home.