Dave Harper 3/07/07

Le Mans, 07... There and back... AGAIN

This year marked my 16th return to this very changed place. Some say the ghosts of drivers haunt the Sarthe. I say it's just the pikeys. My journey started on a beautiful, humid and totally sunny day in Indianapolis, Indiana... my home. As I backed out of the driveway, bags loaded, roof off, I glanced down at the temperature gauge and saw it reading 93 degrees F. I sighed because I knew what we were in for once we arrived in France. I wasn't wrong. Since 1990, I've had 2 crappy weather trips - the 01 wash-out, and a pretty dull, cold one I vaguely remember, with a bit of rain here and there. Oh, and then there was 97 which was a bit of a wet one too, but had sustained periods of sun which canceled out the crappy stuff. Sipping some tasty champers on the plane as we left the gate at Cincinnati, I sighed again... knowing what vast and scary quantity of the stuff awaited us on the other side of the Atlantic.

Lurking in a benign-looking white trailer, attached to a Nissan Patrol, somewhere in Swindon. It called across the thousands of miles, taunting my liver and snickering at the thought of my destroyed mind and wretched body back in 2002 when it all went horribly wrong. That year I totally miscalculated my circumstances and was felled by the drink. Soon to be quasi-repeated at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona awaiting entry to that fine motorspeedway in the very wee hours of the night, when there was nothing else to do but crack the champers and have a "waiting in the camper line" warm-up session.

I started to get a bit nervous as my 5th large Heineken glass showed nothing but suds and my companions had not arrived at the meeting stop in Beaumont Sur Sarthe, just North of Le Mans on Thursday afternoon. I ordered a sixth and fired off another "where the fug are you?" text. The eventual arrivees showed all the signs of a serious drinking session about to start. The clouds showed all the signs of a very moist event. So we farted around, drank, hugged each other copiously, had a few more drinks and then convoyed our asses 2 miles into a standstill, gridlock, going absolutely fricking nowhere traffic jam.

Fast forward several hours later. The beers cold, the team's merry and it's not raining. Oh joy! Perhaps it'll all blow over! Sad fools.The rest of our gluttonous group arrived Friday afternoon along with the main force of the alcohol. You could feel it rolling under the track at Tetre Rouge and clinking confidently toward us. Palms moistened, tongues flicked nervously, people stood up for no obvious reason. It was coming. It was here. It was upon us. For many years, we've been doing something that we have perfected. It has reached the point where words are unnecessary. Hand gestures would be unnoticed. It all just happens. Large rolling coolboxes (R2D2s), lots of ice and an unreasonable amount of adult beverages comes together and become a vital component of the Le Mans 24 Hours. It is the fuel. Without it, none of us would come to this sorry place. It would be horrific. Unbearable. Utterly and totally pointless. With it, the sun shines, even when it doesn't, the race is interesting, the jokes are beyond hillarious, and our group becomes one.

Adding to our comradery was an epic battle of tremendous bravery, ingenuity and pure determination against our Number 1 Gazebo. But Mother Nature was just having a laugh. Our grizzled expressions, frantic adjustments and unwavering faith in our guy ropes meant absolutely nothing to her. She flicked our structure like a slightly persistant nose picking and that was that. Gazebo Number 2 took full responsibility for our shelter for the remainder of the event. But it too had received a significant beating, and substantial modifications were made utilizing the carcas of its recently deceased brother.Friday evening taunted us. Pissing rain turned tent set-up into an episode of It's a Knockout, circa 1980. It was not looking good. Champagne dulled the reality and allowed us to forge on.

And then the rain stopped. Houx roundabout is not a place to be if you don't like the odor of superheated rubber, the concussion of military-issue fireworks, or the painful antics of blathered Brits. Otherwise, it's worth a nose around.

A wayward firework nearly brought the outside world... reality... back to the event. But thankfully it didn't and it was chalked-up to something that happens at Le Mans.Saturday... race day! Time for it to all kick-off good and proper. Nervous giggles at the realization that ticket checkers were turning away anyone with glass containers. And we had 2 enormous rolling coolers stuffed with freezing cold bottles of synapse scrambler. What on earth would we have done if they'd called us on that one? Our session at the Champagne bar was relatively brief, but as enjoyable as ever. The knowledge that the many hundreds we had invested in our liquid support would have been thousands if we had continued to adopt our approach of the 90s (buying it at the track) made the sipping even more wonderful. Ours was freezing, perfect and a good price. A fair price - and not a fleecing. But it was all becoming painfully obvious that the "good weather" outlook we were kidding ourselves about was not going to be a reality. And of course, shortly after things started rolling on the track, it all went pear shaped weather-wise. So we were to spend the majority of the rest of the event standing under something that mercifully kept the relentless rain off our sodden selves. The conclusion of the event, as usual, came far too soon in hindsight, but likely right on time for many folks this year. And as the alcohol level slowly peaked and then began its slow crawl out of my liver, fighting to be metabolized, it dawned on me that I now needed to come-up with an efficient exit strategy from this event. I had a 5 a.m. start the next morning from South of Le Mans to make my late morning flight back to the US. Of course the event organizers had slightly different plans that didn't involve anything in Karting Nord moving anywhere. But finally, it did move. We rumbled out, blissfully avoiding the sea of humanity heading North.As usual, I left the majority of my companions still at the track, strong with drink and wearing the smiles of people who know that there's another good night left in this event, and enough icy-cold fuel to make it happen.As I looked in my rearview mirror, I sighed one more time. Knowing that it would be a year before I saw most of them again. Wishing it would be sooner. And knowing that I was carrying a little bit of all of them back to the warm, sunny humid place I call home.