Doyel: Carb Day is the Indy 500's humanity insanity
Before the man with the blow-up doll, before the woman without the shirt, there was the Jell-O shot in Lot 2.
That's where I parked Friday, the final day of practice before Sunday's 99th Indy 500. Lot 2. Parked the car, opened the door, immediately heard these words:
"Who's got the Jell-O? Not the yellow. I'm six behind everyone else. I need orange."
His name is Rob Shive, and he's been to every Indy 500 since 1973. He saw rain postpone the race that year on Monday, then Tuesday, into Wednesday. He saw Swede Savage run head-on into the wall, his full tank of gas exploding 60 feet into the air. Rob Shive saw controlled drinking in the parking lot.
"It was more corporate then," Shive was telling me Friday in Lot 2. "Here's, it's a little more …"
I try to help: Sloppy?
Shive smiles. "Sloppy," he says.
I see he's wearing a shirt with a law firm's name. Shive points to a woman in his group. "She's (a partner)," he says.
The woman introduces herself as Kena. She's holding the orange Jell-O. She offers me one before they're all gone. She says she's about to get serious with this Jell-O.
It's 9:30 a.m.
It's Carb Day.
***
The Glamping area is lame. So is Carb Day. That's what I'm thinking as I pass tent after tent, all of them empty. This is where I went first to see the humanity insanity I'd been promised, but everyone's gone. Well, everyone but the dude in an Astros cap, sitting in a chair with a can of Lite, listening to racecars buzzing past in the distance.
"This is my third beer," he says. "I have 48."
I ask for his name.
"No," he says.
No?
"I'm from Houston. My family's in Kokomo. They don't know I'm here this weekend."
Carb Day is lame, I tell him.
"Sounds like you want a story," he says.
Yes. Exactly. I want a story.
"Go to Turn 3," he says. "The story's over there."
Come to find out, Turn 3 has a name. They call it the Snake Pit.
Carb Day's about to get real.
***
Pick a row of parked cars. We'll try this row, where one of the first cars has a sign next to it. "Free Mammogram!" it reads, alongside pictures of topless women covered only by pasties. A 40-something woman approaches the 23-year-old man next to the sign and asks about the mammogram.
"Step behind the screen," he tells her.
It's not much of a screen, maybe two feet wide and six feet tall. They go behind it, and I watch the woman remove her red shirt and brown bra. The young man cups a breast and massages it for 20 seconds while the woman's husband watches.
"All good," he announces.
The woman leaves, and I walk up to him. That works?
"Dude," says Thomas Decker, a Greencastle native who lives on the Eastside. "That was the fourth one today."
It's 10:30 a.m.
Four cars down the row, John Jordan and Evan Knoop are drinking beer. I ask if they saw what I just saw. They did not, but it's early, they say. Plenty of time for nudity.
"We're from the Eastside," Knoop tells me. "Eastside Catholic Irish guys."
I ask them if they're serious – do they really expect to see nudity out here?
"Yeah," Jordan says.
What will make it happen?
Jordan takes a drag on his cigarette and blows out the smoke.
"Fireball," he says.
***
Cars are parked under Notre Dame flags, Purdue flags, IU flags, American flags. But it's the yellow "Don't tread on me" flag that gets my attention. Underneath is a big red pickup, shiny and enormous, playing Uncle Kracker's "Drift Away."
Next to it is a tricked out Buick Roadmaster, a wood-paneled station wagon last made in 1996. From a distance it looks like a convertible. Up close, it looks different. Pebbles of broken glass are lodged where the windows used to be.
"They basically took a chainsaw and sheared the top off," says Anna Montgomery. "It's my friend's car. Look it up. Hashtag #TheDoose."
Two officers in a Speedway police vehicle roll past, eyed warily by several in the area. The vehicle looks like a cross between a golf cart and a Hummer, and it goes by so slowly that I notice something shiny in the utility bed in the back. A crumpled can of Bud Light.
The cops go, and the funnels come back out.
A middle-aged man hands a green funnel, the hose full of beer, to a woman who looks at least 50. She tilts it upside down, drains it, then makes a face.
"What is that?" she says. "Miller?"
A few cars away a man under a Colts canopy lifts a blue funnel, empties it, then falls over. He wipes out the canopy, disappearing under a blanket of blue. Nobody helps.
One more funnel story, but only because I noticed something before that dude disappeared under the canopy: That's not a belt holding up his pants. It's another funnel.
***
Carb Day takes a strange turn – no, really – a few minutes later at a restroom pavilion inside the Snake Pit. Women on one side of the concrete structure, men on the other, but a woman is standing just inside the men's room entrance. She doesn't look panicked, though she doesn't look quite OK. I ask: Why are you here?
"I'm peeing," she says.
Oh, I say. The women's room is on the other side.
"I can't help it!" she blurts, and I'm thinking that's not the appropriate response. Then it hits me. You mean you're …?
I look between her feet. There's a puddle there. And it's growing.
"Told you!" she yells, an odd smile on her face. "I can't help it!"
Seen enough of the Snake Pit. Interesting place, don't get me wrong, and I'll be back next year – but this was enough for one day. But I can't leave. Not without taking a quick picture of the blow-up doll and asking the red-bearded man why it's standing next to his lawn chair.
"It's a divorce present," he says. "It's 10 years old."
He identifies himself as Pinto Bob – "stage name," he says – and tells me he has been to every Carb Day since 1982. Then he tells me a story from that year.
"We parked in Turn 1 and walked through the Outlaws (Motorcycle Club) parking lot," he says. "Big guy says, 'Is this your first Carb Day?'"
Yessir, Pinto Bob told him, and the biker gestured to a large woman in the club and told her: Show him your (breasts).
"She lifts up her shirt," Pinto Bob tells me. "Dude, it was hanging down …"
Too much information, Pinto Bob. That was 1982? How old were you in 1982?
"Eight," he says.
Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel
