Day 38 Rest day in Indianapolis.

It was nice not to be rushing about in the morning and Diane and I went for a stroll up to the Amtrak station to make sure that she got her ticket for tomorrow's train to Chicago. It wasn't open then but we got the ticket later so everyone was happy. We then decided to take a public bus out to the speedway so that Di could see it. The bus was cheap, direct and it didn't take too long. (Their buses are called 'Indygo,' very colourful). We repeated yesterday's tour of the track on the bus, but this time the guide was far better and stopped more often to allow pictures to be taken and explained a great deal more about the track. The greatest attendance was in 1977 when someone I had never heard of was going for his fourth victory in the '500' and the crowd was estimated at 470,000 people. The actual capacity is not known.
We came back to town on the bus and looked about the city a little. It is the capital of Indiana and has some beautiful buildings.
We went to dinner with Al and Steve on a warm evening, but when we came out it was spotting with rain. The hotel was a good 25 minute walk away so we got a move on. The sky was black and another storm was moving in. We didn't get very far before the heavens opened and we had to shelter for several minutes, then it eased off so we made a dash for it. but then it rained very hard and we were still about a quarter of a mile from the hotel so we sheltered under a railway bridge.
There was terrific thunder and lightning overhead and at one point the lights in the city went out, only to return a few minutes later. The 3 lane road in front of us was filling up with water and fortunately most of the traffic was in the outer lane, but inevitably a big truck came along in the nearside lane sending up a wall of water and we had nowhere to go. We were all drenched through and there was now no point in sheltering so we ran out into the storm and made for the hotel through streams of water running from side streets that were muddy due to the construction going on locally.
We arrived in the hotel lobby like drowned rats and caused some amusement amongst other members of the group that were enjoying the lightning display. We squelched up to the room and had to change, then go and wash and dry the clothes ready for the depart tomorrow. Didn't ride the bike today.