Weekly Roundup: Back On The Chain Gang Edition

"What do you do for a living?" The readers ask me that all the time. The truest answer is that I'm a temp laborer. My rate is definitely in the upper quartile of the temp laborers out there, but that's what I am. Which means that if I don't appear at work, I don't get paid. And that is why I drove to work today on a broken leg. Because --- sing it with me, everyone! --- it's nice / to be liked / but it's better by far / to get paid.
In theory, I should be able to race on this broken leg during the upcoming AER weekend. In practice, every shift causes me to wink out for a split second from Ye Olde Shooting Paine so maybe I should not try making 140-mph passing maneuvers at the same time. I'll just have to be content watching my team of Bark M., the Tinman, "Mental" Ward, and Sam Smith contend for the win.
Before I get started on today's TPS reports, however, let's see what I managed to get written this week.
This week, in addition to having the main feature in the R&T print edition, I did a Z06 opinion piece for the web and a story about a kid who took his mom's Chrysler 200 to Mid-Ohio for the weekend.
The way the Chrysler piece ended up being edited for Web kind of buried the lede, I think. The neatest thing about Justin's Mid-Ohio weekend wasn't necessarily that he was driving a mid-sized sedan but rather that he was a teenaged African-American kid who didn't have any help getting there. The vast, and I mean vast majority of track rats started because they had a friend doing open-lapping or they were part of a Web community that did it or their car club decided to rent a track or something like that. We all kind of sat on the shoulders of giants as far as actually getting on-track does.
Justin, on the other hand, is an auto-tech student at a career center who went to Mid-Ohio for a race and decided that there was no reason he couldn't go on the racetrack himself. That's success behavior. Remember the name, because one day you'll see it associated with something wonderful.
At TTAC, I explored the limits of reader ennui with increasingly obscure "cross-country records" and used a Michelin safety campaign as an excuse to post a picture of Iceberg Slim, so that was a double win right there.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish up my day and assume my role as Burt-Reynolds-playing-Frank-Williams-in-Driven. More race results, and general rabble-rousing, over the weekend!