What the Yanks do best!

From what I've posted on this blog over the past 12 months, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd had a good time in America, and I did, it was phenomenal. While I was over there, there never seemed to be any lack of things to do, but crucially things to do that didn't cost a fortune. And this brings me to the topic of this weeks blog, "what the Yanks do best".

In my opinion what the yanks excel at is cheap, wholesome, family entertainment. Some of the pictures in this blog were taken at the Mid America Raceway, Iowa, just over the river from Omaha. For just 20 bucks you were treated to a full days entertainment, everything from top fuel drag cars, to jet trucks, and racing quads. 

The drag strip had cheap food and drink, the racing started around midday and continued well into the early hours. There was plenty of parking available, the access roads were more than adequate to handle the visiting traffic, and people were free to roam around the cars and talk to the drivers.

Now just the other day someone said to me again, "but isn't it boring just watching cars go up and down a straight section of tarmac?" I answered the same way I did about NASCAR. It's all about the atmosphere. At the drag strip it was the noise, the smell, especially of the cars running nitro methane, but also the enthusiasm of the crowd.

But if we forget about the drag racing for a minute and concentrate on all forms of entertainment in America. When I was in the states I saw more live music acts and attended more sporting events than ever, and the tickets were as cheap as chips as well. The Killers were 30 dollars, Ice Hockey 20 dollars, Baseball 15 dollars, MotoGP ticket 50 dollars, entertainment really is accessible to all. 

In addition to the issue of cost you can't neglect the stress factor. While away I was given free tickets to a famous Air show in the UK, as I was obviously unable to use them I gave them to a good friend so he could take his kids. Now after the event I was told the Air Show was indeed very good, but my friend also told me he would never go again.

The reason for this....Traffic!

He told me that although he only lived 40 minutes away, he ended up queuing for 4 hours, and when you've got two small children in a car on a hot day, that's no joke. 

I know it probably seems obvious to all reading this, but at some point in America someone decided that if you build a huge shopping mall, stadium, or any kind of sporting venue, you're going to have to think about infrastructure.

In the UK we don't believe in this, our planning officials and businessmen think this is pure distraction. A simple task like going to the shops of a weekend can be turned into a major undertaking lasting several weeks. Buying tickets to a large motor sport event means factoring in 2 days travel time so you don't miss the start. 

Just recently I was unbelievably stuck in a traffic jam, when I actually reached the source of the problem it was roadworks. That's not the funny part, the sign that was at the side of the road said, "delays possible from Nov 2013 for 3 years"!

What on Jesus's fair planet could they be doing that would last three years? 

My initial thought was that they were replacing the A46 to Cleethorpes, with the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard of Oz, but on my reckoning this would take just a little over 2 years, so who knows?

Anyway, after that short vent let's move onto the Indianapolis Motor-speedway, and what some consider the original speedway. This huge facility has the largest seating capacity of any venue in the world, some 400,000, it even has an 18 hole golf course!

During the MotoGP weekend motorbikes conquer the city. I've never seen so many motorbikes in one place, and all kinds too, from cafe racers, to custom show bikes, to easy riders. The heart of the city beats to a familiar V-twin thump, and the air is filled with the smell of hot engine oil and exhaust.

The track was easy to access, parking readily available, the whole experience was stress free. Even though the numbers attending the MotoGP were huge, you never got that feeling of claustrophobia, the only feeling you were left with was of open space.

So this brings me full circle. This is what the yanks do best, entertain us! 

Now I know that straight away people will make the obvious case that the Americans aren't constrained by space. Yes this is true, but aren't we the people who conquered the world, didn't our Empire cover every corner of the globe. 

As a nation we like to think of ourselves as cleverer than our American cousins, but surely if we were we would have engineered our way out of a lack of infrastructure?

For the past three decades we have relied on the extra capacity we built into our transport system in the seventies. Unfortunately that's all now been absorbed, and what we are left with is what we see every day on the motorways of the nation.

As with all things in America they always think big, and it's this is that makes it a good place to live for the average Joe.

The new World Champion.

Could this be the start of something special...