OK! a little "Editor's Talk". Background: There once was a band called "the Kinks", Compatriots of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, (from before Auto-Tune fixed everbodys' singing voices). They had a hit called "Lola" about a young man's encounter, with a Lady(?),in a Loud, Dark, Questionable, Smoky dive of a bar in London circa 1966. An encounter that most certainly left him dented.
When I asked her her name she said "Lola, LO-LA, LOLA"
She was in a word, a Witch, totally bewitching and I was under her spell. What was she wearing?, who remembers such trivialities? Imbued with Mystery, Voodoo Spirits and Dark Magic; probably Toxic as well. The most alluring creature I had ever encountered. She was Sophia Loren, Raquel Welch, Marilyn Monroe and Ursula Andress all rolled into one. We were about the same age in 2006. Attending the Walter Mitty Challenge at Road Atlanta, I made her acquaintance. She was the Bardahl Special Lola Roadster. On her sides were names like Foyt, Unser and TraCo. Right hand drive, Left shift, Mid engine V-8 with a forest of chrome velocity stacks sprouting up behind the driver's compartment.
A friend of mine was wrenching on her for her current man. My friend had badly twisted his "lucky left ankle", a body part he was "lucky to still have" after a motorcycle Flat Track encounter in his earlier days. Thus She was in need of a driver. Her Guardian approached me and asked me to consider driving that day, but just damn!, the stars were Not Aligned. I had no practice time available, I had no safety gear/equipment, no extraction practice time, I had not driven The New Road Atlanta and it had been a decade since I had driven the old course. Plus, I had my son along that day with no other guardian. Should I Borrow a fire suit and helmet and head out onto an unfamiliar track in a veritable museum piece that has the "stones" to effortlessly do 140(MPH) in the straightaways? I must say I was terribly tempted in spite of all of that!
"How about doing Parade Laps?" With only a helmet I would have been "allowed" to follow a "pace car" around Road A, a few laps, top speed limited to 50mph. I just couldn't, I do not possess that level of self control! I'd have passed the pace car in the first turn, bad form, I know! (Either way I would have been leaving there under flashing lights and sirens, In the back of a Cop car or in an Ambulance.) Her custodian said he understood. He told me, smiling, he felt my concerns made me an excellent choice as a driver, maybe another day, but not Today; they let me pilot her into the carrier.
Yes, I am a fool. Any driver worth his salt knows this about himself.
She has since haunted my dreams lo these 15 years, my sleeping and the wakeful type.
She was beautiful,
She was a car;
Her name was Lola, LO-LA, LOLA.