Dr Wife & Hubby sighting on LeMons-TV

Of course you gotta love the "24 Hours of LeMons Offical 10x  Loser" cowboy hat...

LeMons tribute cars.

Try reloading it. I go that too the first time

Cool! We are still in Europe but finally have an Interwebz connection for a bit. Too bad they cut out the part where we discussed that Toyota looked quick but we were skeptical of the reliability. They'll be a real force over the next several years.

Would have loved to confuse them with Spank/Simca/Tinyvette references, but at least I fried some onlookers' brain cells with my hat and NSF Cordia shirt!

We had a blast. Highly recommend others make "the pilgrimage" to Le Mans sometime. Don't wait until you're 900 years old and can't walk all over the place, get over there and have fun!

I find any attempt to write a summary of the Le Mans experience difficult. Le Mans shares the mud and camraderie of Lemons but also has a feeling of gravity, money and general Frenchy-ness not found at our crapcan extravaganzas. The scope of Le Mans is inspiring. The route is so large that I'm not sure I believe in the parts of the track. Cars just drive off into the distance and reappear about 3 minutes later. For example, the Mulsanne straight. It must exist, 'cause folks take each other out in the chichane on occation, but it's kinda like Wyoming. Present on the map but never seen.

Just get your tickets and go. You won't be sad that you did.

In terms of Le Mans ticket details, how/where to camp, general information and fun people to meet, www.beermountain.com pretty much covers everything. We camped for the pre-race week in a nice Coleman 4 person tent with cots we brought from the States. Pretty much everything else was purchased at French Walmart, aka Carrefour (for they will provide). Hotels are only an option if you have megabucks and book waaaay far in advance.

Even when freezing, wet and hungry, I was happy at Le Mans. You would be too.

I've loved every ALMS race we've been to (especially our trip to Road Atlanta in 2010 for Petit Le Mans), but there's a reason I call Le Mans "the pilgrimage." Sensory overload of the best kind.

Television is no comparison to the visceral punch of standing near the Indianapolis corner in the middle of the night, feeling the ground shake as the next car comes thundering in and whips by you toward Arnage. Standing closer to Arnage, the drivers brake so late one wonders if they'll actually slow down enough, but then the rotors on the cars glow red-hot for a moment and they swoop around the corner to thunder away from the crowd. Underneath your hearing protection, earbuds bring the sounds of Radio Le Mans to keep you apprised of the rest of the track.

We stood at Arnage and Indianapolis for hours both times we went, watching the drivers execute this sequence every few minutes again and again-- and yet when we left to go back to the rest of the track, they still had half the race ahead of them.

Attending any ALMS race gives you that wonderful punch of seeing these amazing cars and amazing drivers perform, but Le Mans is full-on motorsports immersion therapy due to the scale and duration. As a spectator, I feel like I can just walk around, and if something strikes my fancy, I'll take my time and soak it in. If the view from a particular chicane seems cool, go ahead and watch it for almost half an hour... that's less than 3% of the race's duration. Start at the Porsche Curves, stroll by the ferris wheel, watch the Ford Chicane, check out the action in the pits, proceed to the Dunlop Bridge and Tetre Rouge. Take your time at that and it'll occupy several hours, yet you'll see less than 1/3 of the track.

Then you'll be about ready for some crepes.