Posted by Roy Hobbson on September 7th, 2010 •
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En route from Indianapolis to the Kentucky Speedway on Saturday afternoon, a navigational discrepancy occurred. The car’s lovely GPS Lady advised me to take a certain exit off of I-74 — my wife quickly & vehemently advised against it. Right or wrong, I chose to go with the one who had every single back road in America manually downloaded into her brain. It seemed like the smart play at the time. It was not.
Because for the next 100 or so miles, we crawled up & down winding dirt roads and one-lane blacktops at LITERALLY 12 mph. That’s not a joke. Nor hyperbole. GPS Lady apparently wanted to give us the scenic route — and if it took three weeks & a divorce to get there, so be it. Have you ever been in a terrible rush & slowly inched along behind a tractor tiller deep in Southern Indiana hill country as your scorned wife silently fumes next to you? Holy Jesus. Misery. Total misery. If I could’ve crawled into the glovebox right then, I would have. The resentment in the air was so thick, you could cut it with a court summons.
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on September 1st, 2010 •
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[Dreyer & Reinbold Racing drivers meeting -- Wednesday, September 1st]
PT: Whaddup, homes? I’m Paul Tracy. But all my friends call me Big Dick McWinnerscircle. Someone here called me, so now I’m running this operation. Who the f–k are you?
Justin: Named after the naughty bits, are you? Right then. The name’s Wilson, friend. Justin Wilson. We’re teammates now. We’ll be driving together.
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on August 30th, 2010 •
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It was going on 4:00 AM Sunday morning when we finally paid tribute to a fallen friend. Because there in some crazed campground outside of the Speedway, we honored the life & death of IndyCar in Chicago — and we did it in our own inebriated fashion: by senselessly burning anything resembling fuel. We torched most of our tents & also a railroad tie we found & various electronic goods, among other things. And as we stood around the noble funeral pyre taking turns eulogizing the departed, massive PLUMES of black (and certainly toxic) smoke filled the Joliet sky. Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” blared from the iPod speaker dock, but that was not by design. It was a moment. It was a glorious tribute befitting a life well lived, and if throngs of downwind campers awoke in the morning freshly paralyzed & genderless, so be it. Sacrifices are necessary on these occasions.
Because this race — this trip — had become THE seminal moment of the IndyCar season for us. More than the Indy 500, frankly. And now it is gone. Likely forever. The good ones always die too young — and yet Mid-Ohio lives eternally. Pffffft.
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on August 25th, 2010 •
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Few things can be as dangerous as a sense of entitlement. Because frankly, if Reality wanted to know what you think you’re entitled to, It would beat it out of you with a commercial table saw of some kind. And then laugh dismissively & continue on not caring about what you feel you deserve.
Not everyone learns this lesson, but I did. I did indeed.
Because my senior year in high school, I received a full scholarship to play basketball in college. All those miserable summer games in 128-degree gyms & 9,000-degree blacktops … all the horrible travel & missed opportunities & gruesome floor burns … all the work & the injuries & the stupid, never-ending ball-handling drills … they were all about to pay off. Finally. My thoughts of what I felt I was owed were not subtle:
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on August 22nd, 2010 •
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Well — not CLOSED closed. Just temporarily relocated. Because today we’re making a mad dash out of these here parts & jumping the big stupid Wall of Oppression that has long held us back & we’re running roughshod through the terrified audience at VERSUS.com. Or to put it another way, we’re the bull shown here:
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on August 18th, 2010 •
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August 18, 1923 — At the annual National Football League Board of Directors meeting in Akron, Ohio, Cotton Whittaker of the Columbus Panhandles was named League President. His first order of business? A queer & revolutionary concept that involved transforming the very long & very continuous 60-minute NFL game into TWO SEPARATE 30-minute games. Except the first game wouldn’t really count in the standings — only the final cumulative score at the end of GAME NUMBER TWO would determine that day’s victor. The other owners were mighty confused.
“Well bust my buffers, boys!” Whittaker famously bellowed. “TWO GAMES INSTEAD OF ONE!! We’re gonna be rich, I tells ya! Rich as Persians!!!”
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Posted by Roy Hobbson on August 17th, 2010 •
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Going to the Chicago race, are you? Splendid. A fabulous event, that. But why stop there? Why return to an unoriginal hotel or domicile when there is revelry to be had? Answer: you shouldn’t.
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