Out for a Spin?

MAN I wish I’d had a camera ready on the way home from work yesterday!

I was headed down College, driving the same route I’ve taken nearly every single work day for approximately eight years. This route goes through your basic mix of residential and light commercial areas. It’s pretty much your average sort of middle to upper-middle class neighborhood, so it’s not like you’re going to see anything unusual…very often.

As I was crossing 86th Street and heading south I saw a car in the approaching lane of traffic about two or three blocks away. It looked odd. The headlights were down very close to the ground and extremely close together. My first thought was, “Man, that thing looks like a dragster with headlights. What the hell is it? Sprint car? No way. What IS that?!”

Getting closer, I saw that it was, of course, not a dragster with headlights.
It was, most definitely, a sprint car!

That’s right, a sprint car (non-winged, because that would just be too much for the street, you know) with headlights mounted on it was driving down a busy thoroughfare in rush hour traffic on the north side of Indianapolis. He rumbled by (headers had to have been baffled) and I just started laughing. Awesome! Totally kickass! What better sight could I hope to see on my usually boring drive home from work? (Maybe Ed Roth’s Mysterion, but how can I possibly be picky?)

Of course, I’m wondering what prompted this guy to drive his race car around on the street. Maybe he was just doing a lap around the block to check the ignition or the fuel system or something. I don’t know. All I know is I got to see him motoring around in a vehicle that is slightly more exciting than your average Taurus, Jetta, or Scion.

Sometimes I’m just in the right place at the right time.