What A Difference A Year Makes

But how many more times can I do something like this because it’s time to just settle down and be my son’s father? How many more fast cars, vibrant nights, lipstick-smeared pillowcases, four-figure hotel bills, cross-country weekends, new adventures can there possibly be... But if it stopped tomorrow — if I went to bed as myself and woke up as every other suburban dad — I’d look back at this weekend as a true and proper high point. Nobody should have this much fun at the age of forty-two.

That's what I said. When they make the movie about my life, they'll leave this out, because it would seem fiction-ish, too dramatically-foreshadowing, for the audience to swallow.

Just fifty-four days after I wrote that blog entry, I'd be strapped to a tilted table watching an LCD widescreen showing a tiny robot methodically burning out my spleen, trying not to breathe because every motion of my ribcage was producing a sensation closely akin to being stabbed in the lung with a BMX seatpost. At that point, my life was changing with remarkable and daunting speed.

I spent the months afterwards sleeping ten minutes at a time while my faceless detractors on the Internet high-fived each other over the accident and the resulting injuries to myself and my passenger. I had to leave what I had thought was a dream job under conditions that I've legally agreed not to disclose. I spent a month pushing a walker through a snow-covered parking lot, visiting my passenger in the hospital and watching her endure the unendurable. Relationships I'd had with people for years withered and died in the aftermath of the crash. I was released from my editor-in-chief position at TTAC and for a while it looked like I might be let go entirely from the site.

This year I celebrated my birthday 1,959 miles as the crow flies east from the Hotel La Jolla. I started with a nine-and-a-half-hour weekend workday at a job that, although it is at a very decent place full of very decent people, doesn't offer me the opportunity to do something as big and bold as the old one did. I finished the day with my son, who made the wrapping paper himself and managed to write "Happy Birthday" on the inside of it pretty well. I drove no high-performance cars nor did I party with any Danielle Fishel lookalikes. The sky above was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Yet it would be uncharitable of me to complain. I received some lovely, thoughtful gifts. I spent time with my son and observed him becoming noticeably better at throwing and catching a tennis ball. I set a post-accident personal best for my bench press and curl. I heard from the people who are most important to me, including my grandparents.

It was also a good chance to have some perspective on the past year. Yes, things have been difficult. But I have also been lucky enough to visit new places, make new friends, win a race at NJMP, race for the first time at CMP and Watkins Glen, race a biodiesel car at VIR in a failed attempt to set a Guinness World Record, and even bring my Neon out to qualify at Mid-Ohio. I wrote a couple of big pieces for R&T including the "Misfits" Z/28 test and the 2014 Performance Car Of The Year, which should be arriving at newsstands any day now. I received a kinda-standing ovation performing the Air Force Song to a crowd of airmen in Oklahoma. I drove a World Challenge GT car at High Plains Raceway and took a McLaren 650S to the top of Mount Evans in Colorado. I jumped a Viper TA off the ground in the Hocking Hills and spun the back wheels in fourth gear behind the wheel of a Lingenfelter-tuned Corvette ZR1. I drove a thirty-five-year-old Chevrolet Impala halfway across the country and power-slid an Aston Vantage V12 S halfway around a private racetrack. I crossed the Canadian border in an AMG Black Series SLS so I could drive something even more exciting --- a Radical SR3 Supersport --- around TMP.

More importantly than that, I've seen proof that my son was completely unaffected by the crash, and I've watched the woman who was sitting next to me in that crash overcome a series of daunting obstacles to return to work and move her life forward as well. Her road to recovery is not yet complete but I have faith in her and I know she can do what is necessary.

As the man once said, the future's uncertain and the end is always near. But I'm optimistic, for myself and for the people I love. This year wasn't anything like the year before, but I'll take it and be grateful.