IMS - Day # 11 - Traffic Control - 6th Day

I was re-reading my entry for Wednesday and realized that I neglected to mention it rained pretty hard Wednesday evening, and into Thursday morning, which included lightning and thunder.  We awoke Thursday with the full expectation we would be working that day in the rain.  Weather.com showed 60% chance of rain beginning early afternoon, and extending at that percentage into the evening.

The interesting thing about Indianapolis is that the local weather guessers, when giving the day's guess, usually will refer to conditions north of I-70. and south of I-70......well, as it turned out Thursday that "guess" came to pass if you lived south of I-70, but for those of us who currently reside north of I-70, while very cloudy, it was dry all day long.  

The heavy cloud cover did keep the temperatures in the 70's, but the humidity stayed high most of the day resulting in personally damp conditions, if you know what I mean.

Both TLE and I are starting to experience a little fatigue.....typically we get into bed between 9:30 and 10 pm, and I get up around 4:30 am, while TLE rises and shines at 5 am sharp.  "Why" you might ask......okay I might as well get the truth out.....TLE needs a lot less time to get ready to go.....I need that much more time....I don't like having to rush around in the morning.  It was the same when I had weekend soccer assignments....I would get up at least an hour earlier than I realistically should need.....I am a morning person, and I love that time of the morning, so why cut it short?  To make a long story short, we are typically getting between 6, and 7 hours of sleep a night.......sometimes less..... but we have gotten used to getting 8-9 hours per night.  We are doing 11 hour shifts, and starting Saturday we will be doing somewhere north of 12 hour shifts.

The inbound traffic got heavier earlier on Thursday, and we had to open the 3rd inbound lane an hour earlier.  Thankfully the traffic was not as heavy as it was Wednesday.  From 10 am on we stayed on 30 minute rotations due to the warmish, high humidity conditions.

Because all of us, including the race teams, thought the rain was coming early afternoon, there were a lot more cars out on the track starting at Noon than usual attempting to get as many practice laps in before the rain came as possible.....as it turned out it never did, and the practice laps climbed into the hundreds by mid afternoon.  The result was the background noise level was significantly higher....a preview of Race Day, no doubt.

The people who "watch" us on the numerous TV cameras which blanket this facility have let those of us working Gate # 2 know we are doing an excellent job, which coincides exactly with our personal opinion of our team's performance!

The nice thing about this job, and I think I've mentioned this before, is the time does seem to go much faster, and we never seem to get bored.  If you've been following our blog going back to our Amazon experience you will know that was the most difficult part of that job....BOREDOM.  

Those employees who run the various shuttles around the track area have gotten their act together, and we have had no trouble catching shuttles to and from work.  We have found there is a time clock in a water proof metal box right at our Gate 10 destination at the end of each day where we can clock out as we exit the shuttle, and then it is a couple hundred yards walk "home".

That was Thursday........Friday will mark 7 days on the job, and 9 to go.  Friday is known as "Fast Friday"....it's the last day before Pole Day, Saturday.....that will be a very, very busy day.

Thanks for stopping by!