Dave On Speed

* By Dave Barry Miami Herald *

When I was offered the chance to drive a NASCAR-type race car, I expected it to be fun, but not necessarily the ultimate in motoring excitement. I figured that I had already experienced the ultimate in motoring excitement: driving on I-95 in Miami.

I-95 is no place for the faint of heart. You’re out there with people who apparently took Driver’s Ed from Saddam Hussein; people who observe the traffic laws to the same degree that Ted Kaczynski observed the postal regulations; people who refuse to allow trivial matters such as steering to interfere with their cellular phone conversations, hair care, nasal hygiene, narcotics ingestion, etc. And you cannot get away from them, because your path is inevitably being blocked by some elderly or possibly deceased retirees on their way to the Blindness Clinic, oozing forward at the speed of rust in their 1974 Chrysler El Humongo. And then comes that awful moment when you glance into your rearview mirror and see, growing rapidly larger as it hurtles toward you, swerving violently from lane to lane like a testosterone-fueled missile with a defective guidance system, the scariest sight of all: the Teenaged Male Death Wish Idiot – a person who cannot grasp the difference between a car and a video game, and thus believes that the worst thing that will happen if he crashes into you is that he’ll see a sign saying GAME OVER, PLAY AGAIN? Oh yes, it’s pretty exciting out there. And so, as I say, when the Richard Petty Driving Experience offered me a chance to drive a real race car on a real racetrack, my initial reaction was that, for a veteran Miami driver, it would probably not be a big deal.

I was wrong. I can admit this, now that I have returned home and changed my underwear. It WAS pretty darned exciting, after all. Strap yourself in, get a good grip on your newspaper, and I’ll tell you what it was like.

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