Life is about experience…sometimes it’s my international trip to Cambodia and other times it’s visiting a local regional park for a picnic! This week, was a new experience for me right in my own backyard of Long Beach, The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. My friend Cameron (designer of this website), has been going to this event for several years and invited me along this year.

The Long Beach Grand Prix is the longest running major "street" race held on the North American continent, having completed its 33rd event. Attendance for the weekend regularly reaches or exceeds 200,000 people.

The Long Beach Grand Prix in April is the single largest event in the city of Long Beach. It started in 1975 as a Formula 5000 race on the streets of downtown, and became a Formula One event the following year. Since 1984 it has been a CART/Champ event. Other popular events during the Grand Prix week include a Champ Car Series race, a Historic Grand Prix featuring pre-1990 cars, and the Toyota/Pro Celerbrity Race.

The current race circuit is a 1.968-mile temporary road course carved out of the city streets surrounding the Convention Center of Long Beach. It is particularly noted for its last section, which sees a hairpin turn followed by a long, slightly curved front straightaway which runs the length of Shoreline Drive. The circuit is situated on the Long Beach waterfront, and is lined with palm trees (especially along the front straightaway), making for a scenic track.

We spent the day walking around inside the convention center where various cars and home living products are on display. But the focus was outside where we watched three races. Although the Champ Car World Series is the main event, a number of other races are also held. My personal favorite was the drifting race which began in 2005. This event included a demonstration by participants in the Forumula D Drifting series, in which participants engage in controlled slides, moving their cars sideways across the track. We were close to the track and it was exciting to not only hear the noise but smell the burning alcohol and rubber from the screeching tires!

There truly is something exhilirating watching these cars scream by. I could not believe or comprehend how fast these cars whizzed by and part of me would love to ride in one of those things (yet another part would probably crap my pants!)

Amidst the convention center and the track is also located Rainbow Harbor and The Pike. We then met up with a few friends of Cameron (Jesse and Travis) and headed over to Bubba Gump Shrimp Company for some seafood dinner and desert.

It was a long day but a lot of fun. Going to a Grand Prix was never something high on my to do list but I believe if you don’t know about something, you should give it a try..a new experience to learn something new and you might even really enjoy it as I did in this case. The most important thing is to experience life!