in which i bravely take the bus

It might be hard to believe, given that Liam is in sixth grade, but today I went on my first field trip as a parent. There are a number of reasons I don't volunteer for them, particularly because (a) I get paid by the hour and don't have any vacation/personal time and (b) it seems like pretty much every other parent in the class wants to go, to the extent that they turn away volunteer chaperones because there's no room and (c) our field trips really do not excite me. When I was in school, we had field trips to all the major museums in Chicago, and to Conner Prairie in Indianapolis; now, money and time restrictions mean that the field trips are to a local dairy farm, to the zoo in South Bend, and on one memorable occasion, to the post office and library in our town. But this year, something exciting happened.

Apparently, the good folks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway do a full-day program every year specifically for fourth graders, and they pick which schools get to go via a lottery. This year, our school won the lottery, so in addition to the dairy farm, our fourth-grade classes got special dispensation to take an extra field trip that extended outside of school hours. They had restrictions on how many chaperones could go, so Max's teacher asked the parents he knows best, which includes me. (He was also Liam's teacher in fourth grade, so we go WAY back, ha ha.) So Max and I got up at dark o'clock this morning, packed our lunches, helped get the students organized, and then crammed ourselves (well, the cramming was more for me) into those super-comfy school bus seats, and off we went.

The program itself was pretty amazing. First, we toured the museum, where we got to see the trophy, sit in race cars, see lots of cars, and watch a movie about the history of the Indianapolis 500. After that, we had a presentation on the history of the race led by one of the race princesses (there are 33), then another presentation led by another princess on the various jobs people do at the speedway (the drivers, of course, but also the pit crew, the office people, the scientists, the owners, the vendors, and others who work behind the scenes).

After that, it was time for lunch, which we ate in the grandstands while a pace car raced around the track. The kids were VERY impressed by this, and I'll admit that I was too.

After lunch, we got to do some more fun stuff. We went to the pagoda, where yet another princess talked to the kids about the suites inside, then we got to go to the winner's circle and take pictures (!!), then the kids got to go and kiss the original bricks like the winner does every year (gross, but they loved it). After that, we went to another presentation on the science of the race (including how to make the walls more forgiving in the event of a crash, so neat), and then the kids got to sign a huge banner that the speedway provided and that came back to school with us as a memento. Our last stop of the day was another princess presentation on the various flags, after which the kids all got to wave the flags around in a frenzy. By the time we got back to the bus, the adults were pretty exhausted, but the kids found their second wind, so the ride home was LOUD. But we made it, and I guarantee that this will be the trip that Max remembers as his BEST FIELD TRIP EVER.