Friday morning report

SPEEDWAY, Ind. - I hung around the campsite for a few hours late yesterday afternoon and drank a couple of cans – yes cans – of Fat Tire. The Kroger had 12-packs of Fat Tire in cans! Who knew?

Charlie returned in due course with the ingredients for dinner – chicken chunks and vegetables in rice – which he cooked up on his camp stove.

A short time before Charlie got back, I got a call from Lauri saying she and Jim and the kids were over at the Major Taylor Velodrome where Jim was bicycle racing.

After dinner, I saddled up and rode over. Lauri was having a great time with her new Nikon D60 and Jim was burning up the track and looking criminally buff. I was glad I could help discourage a creepy guy who had been stalking Lauri and chatting her up.

It almost feels natural being back in Indianapolis. A few of the street configurations have changed, but everything seems to be pretty much where I left it when I moved to Thorntown in 2001.

The campground is less than half full, but we expect that to change today. There are a lot of people who have camped here for years for various events – the Indy 500, the Brickyard 400, MotoGP, Formula 1 – and they tend to pick the same sites.

Charlie brought us to the same spot against the west fence and just north of 25th Street that he and Deb have used for years and our neighbors are Canadians to the south in a camper and a guy from Naples, Fla. on a Kawasaki, all of whom are familiar faces to Charlie.

This is a party crowd, a lot like a BMW motorcycle rally, but with more car campers and motor homes, including this one with a somewhat rude banner.

We were up at 7:30 a.m. and rode to Einstein Brothers Bagels for breakfast and in hopes of finding free electricity to charge our phones and other stuff. No such luck.

The quest for electricity continues.