No matter where you are around the country, and in some places around the world, you might have possibly heard about a crazy little weekend-long party that takes place in my neck of the woods every year. Have you ever heard about Little 500? It's apparently so famous that sometime a few years back, some goof made a movie about the event called "Breaking Away". When I moved to Bloomington, I heard a lot of people mention "Little 5", as natives and students refer to it. I didn't really pay much attention to what it was all about, because I figured it was just some hippie bike race, and it wouldn't be anything that I would want to participate in or even watch. After all, there isn't time to do stuff like that when you're in graduate school...ya know, to get an education. As time went on, I would hear mention of Little 5 every so often, but I paid it no mind. In retrospect, I wish that I would have paid a little bit more attention, because as the frenzy of anticipation for Little 5 has risen in Bloomington over the past week, I was caught very off guard. All of the sudden, restaurants, stores, and even the newspapers in town and on campus started advertising special events and special sales, all on account of Little 5. I didn't think it could possibly be all that important until I read a short article about the history of the events taking place during Little 5 weekend in our university newspaper. I read how students, alumni, parents, and even faculty flock to Bloomington for this particular weekend just to party way too hard while watching teams of bike riders race for two hundred miles. It's like NASCAR, but without all the noisy engines. Apparently, Little 5 is one of those things that bike teams train for all year. It's supposedly a pretty big deal. The truth behind all of this hype became very apparent to me as I heard of people starting to party and prepare themselves for Little 5 weekend...a week ago! Sure, I was glad to take advantage of Little 5 specials, like a sale price on cases of beer and free cookies at some of the local bakeries. I didn't mind coexisting with the Little 5 crowd very much until this afternoon. Although the official activities for Little 5 technically began yesterday evening with the women's race, the real craziness started today with the events surrounding the men's race. I was on my way home from working from six AM until noon today at the store, and when I got out of work, all I wanted to do was get home quickly, wash up, and relax for a while before getting started on the work I needed to accomplish for the day. As soon as I left the store, I saw that the traffic in town was worse than I had ever seen it, and that a bunch of the roads home were closed for the race. Mind you that the race doesn't take place on the roads through town, but rather at a track on campus. The roads were closed so that drunked pedestrians could walk around and fall into the road if need be. My usual four to five minute drive from work to home ended up taking me over twenty minutes as I had to weave through side streets and back roads in order to find a way home that wasn't blocked off. I had made it to the top of campus to near where I live, and then I had to cut back through to the bottom of campus to find a street to get me to the other side so that I could approach my house from the opposite side. What a hassle! Sure, events are great, but I just can't deal with when such crazy times happen the week before finals when people don't have the extra time to wander around in their cars trying simply to find a way to get home. That was some bad planning on someone's part!