Aaron’s 499 - Ford Saturday Quotes

JARRETT AND ROUSH HOLD COURT AT TALLADEGA

Dale Jarrett, driver of the No. 88 UPS Taurus, is the last Ford driver to win a race here at Talladega when he won the Winston 500 in 1998. Jarrett spoke about a number of issues, including NASCAR’s judgement calls last week in the Busch and Winston Cup Series races at Texas.

DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus -- HOW IS YOUR CAR THIS WEEK? "You bring cars here and it doesn’t matter if they’re new, it’s what they see in the wind tunnel. If that’s made it better, then that’s good. Supposedly, it was a little better there so, hopefully, all of that translates into something good on the race track but that will remain to be seen when we get in traffic."

SOME GUYS MISSED PRACTICE TIME ON FRIDAY DUE TO INSPECTION. "Yeah, I guess they’re getting pretty tough. I don’t know what it was exactly that they didn’t like about our car, but as long as they’re that tough on everybody, then that’s fine. I don’t really know what we were trying to do, to be quite honest, I’ll leave that to those guys. But by the time I went out for the first time, practice had been going for an hour, so we basically got two runs before it was time to qualify."

INSPECTION TAKES A LONG TIME. "Yeah, it does take a long time. With all the templates and measurements that they have now, you have to be right on and then if you’re not right on, which you should be before you leave, but if you have to go through that process again, you have to wait until everybody has gone through. It’s not like it used to be where you could just jump back in, you have to wait. It’s a long process, but I think that’s the message they’re sending. ‘This is gonna take us a while to do this and do it right, so you better come here with your cars right.’"

HAVE YOU HEARD ANYTHING MORE ABOUT WHAT NASCAR IS GOING TO DO WITH THE NO. 20 CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO THAT WAS IMPOUNDED LAST WEEK? "No, I haven’t heard a thing. As a matter of fact, I pick up the paper to read to see if there’s something I don’t know about. Other than what we were told at Texas about the measurement being off, that’s as much as I know right now."

ARE PEOPLE WAITING TO SEE WHAT NASCAR DOES AS FAR AS FURTHER PENALTY? "I think everybody is certainly anticipating what the penalty may be. I don’t know that it’s keeping us from doing anything at work because we know we have to be right, but I think we’re all a little bit anxious. We might be wondering exactly why it’s taken this long. I mean, they’ve already found that it wasn’t right, so why is it gonna take that long. They kind of set a precedent in the Truck Series and the Busch Series and they were pretty serious about that. If that’s for a coil spring, what are you gonna do for a whole car? So it’s pretty serious. I know nobody over there, by what I’ve read, wants to take the blame. I guess it just happened to the car and those things happen, so it’ll be interesting to see."

RICHARD CHILDRESS SAID YOU COULD VISUALLY LOOK AT THE CAR AND SEE IT WAS OFF. DO YOU VISUALLY SCAN YOUR CARS? "That’s left up to the guys in the fab shop and the crew chief to make sure that’s right. I’ve gotten better over the years at being able to see things. Before it became so difficult with all the templates that we have now, you could visually see what guys were doing and that’s how everybody changed around and made changes to their cars and tried different things. Now with everything being as close as it is, it’s hard to tell there’s that much. But that car was something you could visually see, so that tells you it was off quite a bit."

THERE WERE QUITE A FEW JUDGEMENT CALLS LAST WEEK – VICKERS ON SATURDAY AND RACING BACK TO THE CAUTION ON SUNDAY. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT JUDGEMENT CALLS LIKE THAT? "I think the one on Sunday, they went back and did the right thing. It was obviously a mistake on their part (NASCAR’s) at the time because all that is is a gentleman’s agreement. It still states that we race back to the flag. They ask us not to. They ask the leader to be the only one, but the guy in second has that right, if he’s not wanting to let somebody have a lap back. I fully understand that. I know they made a mistake and they apologized for it. They say it won’t happen again, so we have to leave that one alone and chalk that one up to experience. The one on Saturday, I had an incident about four years ago. It wasn’t me, it happened to someone that was in front of me on a restart and they got black-flagged. They did not make a pass. They were up beside the car. I went to NASCAR to find out exactly what the rule was and I’m telling you here right now that NASCAR did not make a wrong call as you all have reported all week long. NASCAR did not make a wrong call on Saturday. I’m not against Brian Vickers. I think the young man did a fantastic job on Saturday getting his car in that position. When I saw him get in the accident, whenever that happened, I hated it for him, but NASCAR did not make a wrong call. The way they explained it to me four years ago, because I wanted to know what the rule was, it’s a judgement call. Just like every other sport that we have there are judgement calls at times. A ball or a strike, that’s a judgement call. Pass interference in football, that’s a judgement call. A personal foul – block or charge – that’s a judgement call and that’s the same way that this is on a restart. You cannot make an attempt to pass to the left. It doesn’t say a pass constitutes being all the way up beside or past him when you get to the start-finish line. If, in their opinion, you’re making an attempt to pass, it doesn’t matter if that guy spun the tires or just didn’t get in the right gear. That’s just your unfortunate time of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If a guy has a mechanical problem, then NASCAR looks at that and that’s the way they explained it to me. The car that I was following that day, that got black-flagged, barely had a fender up to the guy’s quarter-panel and they black-flagged him in, so it’s just an attempt to pass. As everyone saw last week, that’s what Brian Vickers did. I understand the argument that he was trying not to create a wreck behind him, but that’s everybody else’s job to not make that happen and to watch what’s going on in front. So, NASCAR did not make a bad call. As much as I hate it for Brian Vickers, that was the proper call on that Saturday. We’re gonna have these calls and that’s part of the sport. We have to hope, the way it has been explained to me, that these calls equal out for you over your career. You can’t look at them from year to year. If you’re gonna be in this business for 20 years, then you’ve got to look at it over that time. When you’re getting ready to retire you look back and say, ‘Well, they were pretty much right,’ or you say, ‘Maybe I got the best side of that.’"

SO AS A DRIVER YOU HAVE TO MAKE A SPLIT-SECOND DECISION, BUT IS THAT SOMETHING THAT JUST COMES WITH EXPERIENCE? "Yeah, experience is about all you can chalk it up as, but as much as anything I see a lot of guys try to take advantage of restart situations. That’s a time where they really want to make a pass or do something big to separate themselves or to take a spot and that’s really not the time or place to me. You’ve got all the cars bunched up and it’s a recipe for disaster. NASCAR is trying to help the drivers because sometimes we’re not smart enough to do that on our own. Before we had this rule, we were four-wide at places where the front straightaway was wide enough to get that wide or however many we could get, so NASCAR is doing us a favor by allowing us just to go on and race after this restart has taken place. I think that it’s something you learn with experience and you don’t look at it as though, ‘That’s gonna be the time I need to make that pass.’ Now, if it’s down to the last two or three laps of a race, then, yeah, you’re gonna do whatever you can do to make a pass on that, but, to me, I think guys are gonna learn the hard way sometimes."

DO YOU THINK DRIVERS UNDERSTAND THE RULE? "I think that’s one case where most people really didn’t understand and it’s not something that I know NASCAR has ever conversed with us about and sat down and said, ‘This is the way this is on a restart.’ We talk about it that you can’t pass to the left, but we never asked the question, ‘What constitutes making a pass?’ Do you have to be all the way up besides, by the guy? What do you mean by making a pass? Again, the way it was explained to me is it’s the intent of making that pass. It would have been nice if we could have covered that before. It probably would have kept some guys out of trouble, but I was fortunate in my case that I saw it happen to someone else. It didn’t happen to me, but it raised a question in my mind so I went to NASCAR. I didn’t tell the rest of them, that’s up to them to find out."

IF SOMEONE SLOWS IN FRONT OF YOU AND YOU DRIVE DOWN, WHETHER YOU’RE ATTEMPTING TO PASS THEM OR AVOID THEM ALTOGETHER, ARE YOU EXPECTING NASCAR TO HOLLER AT YOUR GUYS AND BLACK FLAG YOU? "That’s right. It’s your job to look at that guy in front of you. If he’s having a problem getting started, you need to do everything that you can do to avoid him. Certainly, putting up your hand to the guy behind you is one way to let everybody know what is going on, but it’s up to you not to make that pass. You have to pay attention. A lot of times that’s hard. You’re trying to get up to speed. A lot of times you’re having to look at your tach, so you don’t over-rev the engine, so it’s hard to look everywhere at once, but that’s part of the duties of a driver to do all of that."

SO IT’S LIKE THE YELLOW LINE HERE AT THE RESTRICTOR PLATE TRACKS? AS LONG AS YOU DON’T IMPROVE YOUR POSITION, YOU’RE OK? "That’s right. I’ve seen cases where guys had a transmission problem or stripped the rear-end gear on a restart and NASCAR takes that into consideration. That’s something that was unavoidable, the guy was getting out of the way, but a situation where the guy just spins his tires, that’s not one of those situations. Again, you’re just at the wrong place at the wrong time."

DO YOU LIKE HAVING DRIVER’S PREROGATIVE FOR THE LEADER? "I think so. Something we talked about last week too was cars that are on the tail-end of a lead lap having that opportunity to get up there. That makes things a little exciting at times, but I think it’s a good thing too. A lot of times, when you’re in that situation, it’s not that you’ve run bad and gotten a lap down, it’s that you probably just made a pit stop and then, unfortunately, the caution came out and caught you. So, it gives you that opportunity as a driver and as a team to stay out there and get that opportunity to make that lap back, so, yeah, I think we like that. The only thing I will say as far as racing back to the caution, I know what’s being said is we don’t have the technology maybe – I don’t know if that’s the proper term – but we’re not prepared to do that. I don’t really know why because they have about 50 officials sitting up there, or however many, and surely somebody can be watching the leader and know who was behind the leader when they throw the caution. You could wait just a second and pick up the leader and say that, so I don’t know if we have to have it electronically. We do a lot of things visually just like the calls I was talking about, so it might be time to look at it. Plus, we hear more guys and more arguments this day and time about guys not letting other guys have their lap back. I’ve never had the finger shot at me – well, I can’t say so many times because I haven’t led that many races – but here lately whenever I have been leading and had that opportunity – I mean, this is racing. I can tell the guys, ‘Hey, if you’re not my teammate, your chances are pretty slim that you’re gonna get a lap back from me.’ I just don’t understand it. They could save a lot of hard feelings here if they would just say, ‘No racing back to the caution.’

WOULD YOU BE IN FAVOR OF REVERTING BACK TO THE LAST LAP? "No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. They can pick up that leader. Put somebody in charge of that. ‘You’re watching the leader all the time. When we say caution, who was in front of him and who was behind him.’ It’s just a split-second. It can’t be that difficult."

DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT? IS THERE SUCH A THING? "For the gentlemen there is." ARE YOU A GENTLEMAN? "I think I am, yeah." ARE YOU GOING TO RACE TO THE LINE? "If I’m the leader, that’s gonna once again depend on who is behind me. This is a season long championship. I’ve seen guys get laps back and then they go on and win the race. I think, especially if you’re trying to hold a fast car back, as I said, if you’re not my teammate, you’ve got to be a pretty good friend and the circumstances be that I feel like on that day that I’ve got a pretty good chance of beating him. But, again, I think they could solve a lot of hard feelings if they would just go on and say we’re not gonna race back anymore. I was telling my guys the other day at Texas when we had been in a couple of accidents, I had to race Ryan Newman back that one time. I was fortunate that he slowed down. My spotter was hollering, ‘The frontstretch is blocked.’ But you’ve got to race back to the line. I mean, that’s not a lot of fun, but you’ve got to do it. That would have kept me a lap down at that time, but there would be other times it would benefit me, too."

IF THEY SAID NO RACING BACK TO THE LINE, WHAT DO YOU DO IF IT’S IN THAT FIVE LAP WINDOW AND IT’S FOR THE WIN OR FOR POSITION? "I’m sure that’s more of what they’re talking about is being able to look at where each and every car is and it get down to a situation like that. More probably than racing a lapped car back, it’s probably a situation late in the race to where they can’t maybe at this point in time account for where each car is on the track and did they hold their position. I’m probably being a little hard on them. It’s not as easy as it seems, it never is, but that’s probably a situation they have to cover before we could go to something like that."

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN MAD AT NOT GETTING A LAP BACK? "No. I don’t expect anybody to do that. I appreciate it when guys have and I think it’s simply because there have been times that I’ve helped them. If I help someone, I’m really not looking for something in return. If that opportunity comes and you can do that, that’s good. But there’s nobody out here that I expect that from. If Elliott would have lapped me last week like he was getting ready to do before a caution came out, I would have understood that. That’s not a problem. I need to run better and not get myself in that position. I’m not looking for anything from anybody out here."

WOULD YOU RATHER NOT OWE ANYBODY ANYTHING? "Yeah, that’s a lot easier situation if you don’t. I understand there are teammate things. You talk about the Roush cars, they have a lot of cars they have to look at letting back. That’s a different situation. I just have one teammate to worry about, but there are probably a couple of other guys that I would look at that in the past have helped me and I’ve helped them. We just have to be in the right situation. There again, they could eliminate all of that if we could get that proper technology."

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – Roush Racing Tauruses – HOW HAS YOUR PERSPECTIVE CHANGED SINCE THE ACCIDENT? "It’s been a great year. I feel like I’m coming up on my first birthday in my second life. I don’t believe in reincarnation, however, in anything but the biblical way and I look forward to having a reunion sometime with my God and to be able to be with some people that have preceded me. Having said that, the year has been really, really interesting. I’ve almost certainly paid more attention to myself and to things going on around me than I did in the preceding decade, for sure, as I was in the fray – so much conflict and so much competition in all the business ways and in the racing as well. I guess I look at everyday when I get up in the morning and I say, ‘I’ve got another extra day,’ and that has probably been the change in my perspective to just look at having more time."

The following section is being re-printed from the NASCAR Winston Cup teleconference on March 25. This story is the same one Roush recited on Saturday morning at Talladega, but in a condensed form.

"I thank God and thank Larry Hicks for giving me my extra days. It’s been wonderful to have a chance to get back at this thing. Of course, the folks at the University of Alabama Medical Center and the folks at the Troy Alabama Hospital and all the police folks and the emergency folks all saved my life and got me going in a way that didn’t result in neural damage or any other infections that would have slowed me down. I had a miraculous recovery. I come away from that with really two things in my mind. I step back and as I laid back and waited to get my leg healed so I could be mobile again in a normal fashion, I thought about whether or not I’m spending my life correctly. ‘Am I doing worthwhile things? Should I be doing these things?’ I thought back about the chance I’ve had to work with so many young people, the chance I’ve had to have so many business enterprises that had proven viable, even though they were untraditional. As I looked at all that, I said, ‘You know, I just want to keep going and doing the things I’m doing as well as I can and as long as I can.’ I realize the age thing will eventually catch up to me, so, with that, I committed to make everyday count as much as I had before or more and to not slow down – to go as hard as I could for as long as I could. After I spent 12 days in Alabama and was off antibiotics, I never took any discretionary pain killer, I had a walker, a wheelchair and crutches as my options. They checked me into the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor for physical therapy to make sure I wouldn’t run over some bystander with my wheelchair or wouldn’t fall on some toddler with my crutches. Anyway, they gave me seven days of that and while I was doing that I was exposed to two 24-year-old young men. Both of them were paraplegic as a result of accidents – one of them was just out of college and getting his life started and the other was just about to graduate within a couple months. One had a motorcycle wreck and the other had some sort of four-wheeler, recreational wreck. Their lives were dramatically altered based on their injuries. There was a young woman there, less than 30 years old. She didn’t have her children yet, but she had an accident and lost both of her hands above her wrists and both of her feet below her ankles. She had four stubs and they were teaching her how to walk. She was educated, she was articulate, she had her life in front of her. I was 60 years old. I had celebrated a 60th birthday, I’d raised three kids, I’d had a lovely wife, I’d had just a great chance to do many things I couldn’t have dreamed that would make up my life as a youngster. But if I could have given those two young men their legs back and that young woman her hands and feet, they could have left Jack in the water. I would have been just fine. Anyway, those are the things that have affected me. Except for that, I’ve got as much zeal for life everyday as I ever had – without any urgency but with the determination just to make it all worthwhile."

"Larry and I have had a great exchange. Dr. Moran, the fellow that told my brother at midnight on the 19th or going to the 20th of April as my birthday was ending, he told my brother, ‘Get the family ready for bad news. He’s probably not gonna make it through the night. It’s better if he doesn’t. If he comes back in two weeks, he’ll be 50 percent here. If he comes back in two months, he’ll be a vegetable.’ I was brain dead when they brought me in. The induced a coma in Troy and the information on the medication hadn’t been transferred. I remember being in the ambulance as they got me out of the airplane and two hours after he made that comment and he had gone to bed, I was trying to get out of bed again. That was the reason they had given me the medication in Troy. They had a tube in every orifice, I wasn’t gonna take this laying down (laughing). I raised myself not to put up with that (laughing). So he spent three days with me. Dr. Kirkpatrick, that put my leg back together with all the hardware out of his son’s erector set – screws and plates and tubes. I had both of them at the race track yesterday. Dr. Moran had a birthday party with he and his brother and his wife and his three children at his house last night. You’ve got to be careful when you’re really small. It doesn’t mean anything to us, but when I was 8 years old I wrote my name in a library book that they had given me at school. It was something about personal safety and health. He found that book on e-bay that had my name in it and it was just right because it was about being careful and not hurting yourself. It was obvious that, even though I had written my name in the book, I hadn’t learned much (laughing). So, anyway, he presented that to me as a birthday gift last night. I’ve rambled a lot here and I’ll stop, but my life is full of joy. I’m glad to be with all of you people under most circumstances (laughing) and I’m having a great time. Everyday is something real special, it’s extra."

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO DO ON APRIL 19TH THIS YEAR? "I thought about staying in bed. You know, unless a tree comes through the roof I’ll be OK. I thought about the Bingo thing, but I probably couldn’t get the numbers right. I am brain damaged (laughing). I am almost certain to go out and fly everything in my inventory that I can get my hands on. I’ve got a new J3 Cub that I just picked up from my son. Jack, Jr. has decided – in fact, what I did, right now he’s not a pilot, he’s a computer proficient entrepreneur. He’s out there surfing the web and helping people with web pages and he operates a search engine with two of his buddies. They were making money in the computer business before it was fashionable. Anyway, I told him, ‘Something you’ve got to think about is I’ve got nine airplanes right now. When I die, you’re gonna have to think about something here because Susan is gonna get the cars and you’re gonna get all these airplanes. You’re gonna be faced with the prospect of selling them because you’re not familiar or acclimated with them, or are you gonna be able to carry on and keep one and enjoy it.’ So that got him thinking. I told him we would by a J3 Cub this year, which is a 1947, 500-pound, 65-horsepower basic farmer’s airplane post World War II, and we’ll go out and terrorize the grass strips – the ones that don’t have wires around them – and he’s agreed to that. So there’s a J3 Cub, there’s a Mustang, there’s a T6 for sure that I will fly that day from sun up to sun down, if it doesn’t rain like it’s raining today."

DO YOU STILL WANT TO OWN THE KIND OF PLANE THAT YOU CRASHED? "I have kind of done that. The airplane that I crashed, I went back and paid the man for the airplane (laughing). I’ve got all the debris. The carbon fiber propellers that are all shredded and the wing tank is split open and all the fabric – the red, white and blue stuff that was covering it with – and my daughter is gonna make a collage of it. Whether I choose to fly that thing from an armchair or whether I really want to get in another one, I haven’t decided yet, but it’s out there for me."

HOW SOON AFTER THE ACCIDENT DID YOU START FLYING AND WERE YOU APPREHENSIVE? "That’s a great question. I’m surprised when I was rambling that I didn’t go there. This is a long answer to the question, I do that a lot. They told me when I was about to leave Ann Arbor after my little bit of physical therapy that I may not be thinking right yet. They told me not to make any decisions about the business, not to buy anything or sell anything. They said to go down to the Secretary of State office, which is where you get your driver’s license in Michigan, and tell them that I had a head injury and that I was disabled in some way. They said they would probably put a note on the back of my driver’s license that said if I’m involved in accident to give me some consideration. I said, ‘Right, that’s exactly what I’ll do (laughing)." So, anyway, the day after I got out of the hospital I had two young men that came to see me. It took them 25 minutes to drive to see me. It was my car. They were both under my employment. They were both less than 25 years old. The one that was actually going to drive me was 19 and the 25-year-old had seniority and he decided he would send the 19-year-old in. So I thought, ‘OK, I’ve got two people that are gonna be busy for about eight hours getting me to and from work today. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. I haven’t built this company like this.’ So I’m hopping along on my walker towards the back of my car, I’m doing this math and thinking what it’s costing me, and I looked over at the 19-year-old and said, ‘Bill, do you mind riding with me today?’ He looked at me and for a minute he saw his young career pass in front of him. It was one of those snap judgement decisions and it could be life-threatening as well and he said to me, ‘Well Mr. Roush, I’ll ride with you.’ So he went to the right side of the car and I went to the left side and I drove. For a couple of days I wasn’t that comfortable with it. I wasn’t sure of my timing a little bit. I had been on my back for the better part of three weeks, so my equilibrium system as a little bit screwed up. Just to go on and finish checking it out, I went on and that was the last time they made a trip to come and get me. From the time I got out of the hospital – to start with, I was in the shop the first day for five hours, the next day for six hours and I worked my way into my normal 10-hour days. But on the Tuesday after that Thursday, which I drove to work for the first day, I got in my airplane and I flew to North Carolina. I had to see my race teams. They hadn’t told me I should question whether or not I could fly. I had a pilot with me. Into the next week, my mother-in-law broke her hip and it was coming up on Memorial Day. I would have probably been in the suite watching Mark’s win at Charlotte had my mother-in-law not broken her hip, but, anyway, my wife and two children at home and one son-in-law, we all needed to go down and check on grandmother. I called Dave up, who is the manager of our 727 program, and said, ‘Hey Dave, you need to ride with me. I’ve got an extra car in Kentucky. You need to fly down there with me and then drive back, and then drive back on Sunday and we’ll go to North Carolina.’ He thought for a minute and said, ‘This is Memorial Day weekend, why do I want to do that?’ I said, ‘Well, you flew with me. I’m brain damaged and I’ve got a bad leg.’ He said, ‘If you can use that leg to control the brake and the rudder as well as you did when I was with you, you don’t need me. You’re just fine. Go on and do your stuff.’ So I loaded the wife and kids on the plane. As the wife is getting on, I couldn’t believe she got on the plane. My son-in-law, he’s in obedience training all the time (laughing). I pretty well keep him down and never give him a clear shot at the sun, so as we’re getting on the airplane to go land on 3000 feet in Southern Kentucky, which is the limited distance this little jet is supposed to operate on – it’s right there. You’ve got to land just right and stop just right to make it, and she got on the airplane. As surprised as I was that she got on the airplane, this is my wife Pauline, I was even more surprised when I closed the door and sailed my boot to the back and hopped in the seat that she hadn’t screamed yet. I looked over at my son-in-law, Dale, and said, ‘I can’t believe she did it.’ Of course, he’s the one, like I said, I’ve never given any respect to and he looked at me and said, ‘Well, she knew what you were up to and she asked me if it was OK and I said you’d be alright.’ So I had the ultimate indignation, he had to vouch for me and get me going. Anyway, five weeks from the time they put my leg back together, the doctor in Michigan looked at my bones and said, ‘You’re 100 percent healed. You can put 50 percent weight on your leg right now, 100 percent on it as soon as you can stand the pain and you’re strong enough,’ and I went out and took my P-51 and I went straight up as fast as I could go and as high as I could go and I went straight down as fast as I could go and as low as I could go. I did the loop-dee-loop and the twirl-dee-twirl just to see if my head would stop when the airplane did and it was perfect (laughter)."

DID YOU GET SOME MEMORIES BACK THE OTHER NIGHT? "I don’t want to be critical of anybody that helped me because everybody who tried to help me probably did the right thing, but I lost two days of memory. My head concussion was not that bad. They tapped it and put a hole in it to see if it would make pressure and it was never out of the realm of normal. My eyes never got bloodshot, which I’ve had before with concussions. I didn’t have a bad concussion, I had a bad leg injury, but I lost two days of memory. Thinking about that, I had them go back and check my medications. They had given me three shots of coma inducement. I don’t recall the name of the drug, but the second one was 10 times the dose it should have been. It should have killed me and the third one they didn’t write down, even though somebody was there and the doctor in Troy told him what he was doing. So I’m not sure what I had, but it wiped out two days. So I did not remember the flight in my 51 when I came down Thursday to Bessemer to meet with the people at Town and Country Ford. I did not remember the time I spent at Talladega before going on to Troy for my birthday party. So as I went back to Bessemer it was a time for some déjà vu. ‘Do you remember this?’ I remember the hotel, I remember the people, I remember the inside of the dealership. If somebody had asked me, ‘Have you ever been here?’ I would have said, ‘Yes, but was it 10 years ago?’ I wouldn’t have put it together with that weekend, but I got one of my days back and it was great to do that. I got some hugs from some women that I probably shook hands with before and that was great (laughing). It was really super being there. The police gave us an escort, we had a limousine and we had fun."

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