Back in September, Sean and I joined my mother-in-law, Sharon, and friend, Nigel, for a visit to the Grand Prix of Portland.  I've never been the kind of girl that has been into cars or sports or racing of any kind.  It just isn't my thing.  But Nigel has been an Indy car fan for decades and wanted me to check it out.  In today's post, I'm taking you on a little jaunt through my experience at the races!




The process for getting to the race track was pretty weird.  Apparently, we weren't allowed to park in the parking areas nearby because they "were full", without actually being full.  And the attendant that rejected us was not much help in sending us to the right place for parking. As it was, we had to drive down the highway to the parking lot of another race track to park (for $20 or whatever, instead of it being free like we were told), where we then had to board an old ass school bus that took us to the Grand Prix.  I didn't like this set-up in the slightest.  Even being dropped off at the race track, it was still a friggin' hike in the hot sun to get to the actual event.

There were a couple handfuls of tents set up for food, drink, and merchandise vendors.  There were various bleacher seats along this area also.  We all had Paddock Passes, which meant we could take the bridge across the track to go see the area in which the folks worked on the cars and moved them back and forth between their little areas to the track.  I found this part quite interesting, asking Nigel lots of questions about how the race works and that kind of thing.

It was supposed to be an overcast day, but the sun was beating down.  I was pretty miserable once we made it to the bleachers at the far end of this section of the track.  We sat down for a bit and watched a race, but there was no escaping the heat of the sun.  Once it was time to leave, we had to wait on a shuttle to take us to the front gate.  This part took a while because there were only two shuttles for a hoard of the type of drunken assholes you think you might find at a car race.  Eventually, the shuttle dropped us off at the front entrance where we waited in another line to board another old ass school bus to get back to our car.

Weather and transportation aside, it wasn't that bad.  Talking to Nigel about the happenings made it interesting to me since it was all so new and something I knew, literally, nothing about.  In the end, it just isn't my thing, though I am glad I had the experience.

I had to get an outfit photo of me pretending to be sporty. haha  The sweatband on my wrist was to protect my brand new tattoo from the sun,

Tee: Torrid (similar, similar, similar)  /  Capris: Lane Bryant  /  Shoes: Reebok  / Hat: Gift from mom-in-law  /  Backpack: Amazon