Mardi Gras & Monster Trucks

Today was the Mardis Gras parade & party in Soulard, which is the historic district south of downtown St Louis. It was the first time that I have really experienced traffic congestion in the city with it taking almost as long to get off the highway & into the car park as it did to drive from Fenton to St Louis.

I met up with Phil, Steve, & Sally & her friends at Phil & Steve's appartment. After waiting about half an hour for a shuttle bus we got a taxi to Soulard. The party was in full swing but it wasn't that busy as most people were watching the parade, which is where we headed after buying Hurricanes. These are a bright red, fruit flavoured cocktails with Southern Comfort. As we all bought a 32oz drink they were served in a bucket (which was actually quite good at it made them easy to carry).

The place was absolutely rammed with people after the parade had finished. In the meantime, we had met up with Brad & Todd from work & after standing chatting for about 2 hours we went to watch the drag racing, but being Mardi Gras this was drag queen racing. As I was stood in the crowd I was given a length of bunting to hold on to. This was the edge of the race course & so I was in a prime location to watch the race. All the men were wearing high heels, some of them dressed up, others not. One person that stood out was a six foot four bloke dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, complete with red sparkly platform shoes! Anyway, the race was over pretty quickly, but one of the contestants decided to eat tarmac right in front of me - he slid along the road for a good few feet (ouch) before getting up & finishing 3rd.

We walked back to downtown St Louis & had some Mexican food at the Downtown Cantina, before I left Phil, Steve, Sally & Brad in Jack Patrick's as I was meeting up with Vish from work to go & watch the Monster Jam moster truck racing at the Edward Jones Dome.

This was a sell-out event & our seats weren't even next to each other, but it was a still great night. These trucks are completely mental, being fully spaceframed & running 'top fuel' style supercharged V8 engines pushing out 1500+ horsepower on open headers (earplugs are a good idea as they are slightly more than noisy in the enclosed stadium).

All the trucks were introduced & the first part of the event comprised a time trial to decide race order. Then the racing commenced on a knockout basis. In between this there was the second heat of a quad bike race between St Louis & Seattle.

Before the main interval there was a stunt show where an ex-Florida police car was barrel rolled off a ramp into a row of cars. After the break there was a motorcross freestyle competition & then the monster trucks returned with their freestyle competition. Each truck has 1 minute 30 seconds to do as many stunts as possible arounf the arena. All the drivers really go for it with about half the trucks breaking upon impact from the huge jumps that they do, or ending up on their roof after being rolled (which the crowd loves!).