I Choose Indy!

Oddly enough it wasn’t until the US Gran Prix F1 stopped coming to Indianapolis Motor Speedway that I first went to the Indianapolis 500.

A friend from Vegas is a huge F1 fan and came in every year to catch the race. I’d help him with his commercial website and other various technology questions and he’d buy my ticket each year. I love bartering for services. To make it even I’d also serve as pack mule for the weekend.

Anyway, I was pretty bummed when they decided to pull the race from Indianapolis and the United States completely. I think hosting the US Gran Prix is a great event for Indianapolis and we should continue to do everything we can to make sure we get it back. It seems the problem with that idea has always centered around F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone.

It was good news then this evening when I saw an article where racing legend Jackie Stewart, now called "Sir Jackie Stewart", says it’s time for Bernie and Max Mosley, president of F1’s governing body FIA, to step down and hand over the commercial interests to some successor.

"He has been so used to total control that if you look at his structure you have to ask yourself ‘is there a successor?’ and you would say ‘no’. That is wrong. The commercial reality has to be recognised … and there has be continuity that the ageing process makes necessary," Stewart said.

What do you think? Would Indianapolis be the shoe-in again for hosting the US Gran Prix if Ecclestone and Mosley weren’t in the picture anymore?

Did you attend the race when it was here? What did you think? It’s definitely not like American Indy car or NASCAR racing, that’s for sure. But it’s racing. And this is the racing capital of the world. We should host this race.

Here’s me saying "Happy Trails" to Ecclestone and Mosley. I say let’s make Jackie Stewart the successor in the interim and let him find an even more appropriate and willing replacement.

Source: Jackie Stewart says time for F1 supremos to go

Image: A photo I took somewhere from my car. Can’t remember if I was in Ohio or Indiana. If you know who drives this car with the F1 Girl license plate, tell them about this post, I’d love to hear their thoughts.

Just a quick note to let our readers know I’ve been doing a little bit of clean-up of our users list for I Choose Indy.

You may or may not be aware that you can sign-up and register yourself to share your own story of why you’ve chosen Indy to be the city you live in.

The problem is that there were literally hundreds of users registered that appear to be bogus and or other illegitimate additions to the database. I spent some time the last few days going through the lists and deleting anyone that didn’t appear to have a legitimate email address, hasn’t had any posts, or hasn’t completed the name fields on their profiles. I know this may give me some false positives, but the value of cleaning things up I believe was needed.

In the future, if you’d like to register and post a story yourself, just register and complete your profile as completely as possible. This way I know you’re serious and I’ll upgrade your user role to that of an author so you can contribute.

Of course we still reserve the right to edit and or delete a post if necessary.

A big congratulations to Bob Burchfield over at AroundIndy.com for hitting the milestone of publishing his 1000th podcast.

To help him celebrate and spread the word about what’s going on in Indianapolis he invited a number of local bloggers to record a little welcome in his upcoming podcasts. He was gracious enough to include me in his list and I’d like to thank him for that.

I first spoke of AroundIndy.com not too long ago when I found it to be THE place to see what’s happening in the city of Indianapolis and surrounding areas in just about ever category and venue you can think of to enjoy.

Here’s a list of the bloggers and their websites that are also congratulating Bob on this epic milestone in podcasting and the dates they’ll be featured on Bob’s daily podcast.

• Jan. 1 - Douglas Karr, Marketing Technology Blog
• Jan. 2 - Lorraine Ball, Roundpeg Business Services
• Jan. 3 - Tom Britt, the Geist Community Network (atGeist.com & atGeist.net)
• Jan. 4 - Hope Baugh, IndyTheatreHabit.com
• Jan. 5 - Jason Bean, IChooseIndy.com
• Jan. 6 - Jennette Fulda, PastaQueen.com
• Jan. 7 - Paula Henry, IndyRealEstateTalk.com
• Jan. 8 - James Paden, eCommerceCritics.com and Xemion.com
• Jan. 9 - Nicki Laycoax, SquishDesigns.com
• Jan. 10 - Kyle Lacy, getBrandswag.com and KyleLacy.com

If you know much about me you know I enjoy and am fairly active on twitter. It was good to notice something this evening as I was reading a news story on the WISHTV8 website that’s currently in beta I guess.

Down in the sidebar of the site is a box listing some of their site tools. Included in the list: RSS Feeds, Mobile, Weather Alerts, Newsletters, Closing Alerts and my favorite now to see them active and promoting their activity on Twitter.

last night I got to enjoy my first experience and meal at Famous Dave’s BBQ restaurant here on the south side of Indianapolis. This location’s address on the Famous Dave’s website says it’s in Greenwood, but I don’t believe that’s technically accurate as it’s still on the north side of County Line Road. and US-31S.

We ran into a bit of a snag initially as we were dining in a group of 12. My mother-in-law got there early and was able to snag a couple of tables with the promise of a small group sitting adjacent would be getting up soon. That wasn’t exactly the case as they decided to sit and chat after having completed and paying for their meal. The server said they’d been there well over an hour before we got there and it was pushing 2 hours now. A bit of a challenge for us, and for the restaurant as they were in a steady, standing wait for over an hour or more that we were there.

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