Once I got to the track (which took $14 of my only $20 bucks for a taxi – there’s no bus-line there) I immediately spot the team that Diamond Jim wants me to work with, already on their way to the lanes. By the time I clear the credential trailer, they’ve already blown up and loaded up. Well, suck it up buttercup and start shooting. I get some good work in and pretty soon it’s time for Pro Stock, and early in this session, Roy Hill starts sashaying one way, then the other, ‘Houston, we have LIFT-OFF’ and he sails/barrel-rolls onto, IN TO the finish line. ESPN has missed getting this, so I respond to the tower’s call for footage, doing backflips and cartwheels the whole time. But, again with the ELO record, expecting a slew of uniformed ESPN people working out of a semi, I miss communicating with who I need to speak with, which is two yahoos in a Ford Aerostar.

THIS leads to the IHRA guy going, “Oh, no problem, I’ll interrupt Bret”. Oh, this will turn out well. By the time Mister Dirt was done with me, I should have just gone straight to the doctor for a colonoscopy -- he wouldn’t have needed the micro-fiber-camera thing, a sketch-artist could have walked right in, without ducking. Yeah, he laid into me pretty good, with just cause. I TOLD the guy you do NOT interrupt the man while he’s working!

And then, as if on cue, the “You’re SO-screwed-Fairy” shows up, clonks the weekend over the head with her wand, and the Mills team has a nasty fire going through the traps. While filming the cleanup work in the pits, simultaneously clicking my heels while chanting “there’s no place like home”, I strike up a conversation with a PR guy who has been a noticeable presence throughout the weekend. He “likes my style”, and he’ll be turning in a piece on the weekend’s events, and wonders if I’d like to script up something, he feels he could “use it as a sidebar”. Hey, sidebar, sand bar, OPEN bar, for the right sum I’ll even be a SALAD bar!

Maybe this weekend isn’t the shipwreck I thought it was after all. My flight touches down at O’Hare, but my feet don’t make contact for a while, I’m still floating with all the possibilities. Alas, terra firma soon makes contact, with my FACE, because much like a jug of milk forgotten on the counter before leaving on a vacation, things are turning sour for our hero at an alarming rate. A disgusting amount of time is being spent on the phone, pursuing checks, tapes and more. My submission (17 pages!) is being subjected to an “extensive re-write”, and they are zero interested in the 20+ photos I submitted, rather, what they REALLY want, are photos of ME in Darlington…

So that’s how, on a sunny March afternoon, with the temperature a brisk and invigorating 34 degrees, I found myself vogueing atop a ladder in the parking lot adjacent to our apartments, showing intensity, dedication, and above all, DESPERATION, as I thought that if this missing piece of the writing-puzzle fell into place, I would salvage this boon-doggle and live to fight another day.

I’ll wind this up with a tip of a beleaguered straw hat to my first journalistic hero, the immortal Carl Kolchack.

ITEM: Although ESPN followed my instructions to the letter in the airing of my footage, the sub-contractor whose job it was to pay me refused, forcing me to lawyer-up on the IHRA, subsequently burning that bridge to the ground. The check that finally arrived remains thumbtacked to my office wall, uncashed, and a brutal reminder that life is funny, or not.

ITEM: After keeping the tape for three weeks, Roy Hill finally returned it, minus the T-shirts they promised me; something about “cost” was the explanation.

ITEM: The solicitor for the piece, and the editor of the magazine that ran it played ‘Alphonse and Gaston’ over whose job it was to pay me, with the obvious result being that no compensation was directed my way. Just as well, because much like a freshly neutered s.o.b., what they published possessed no balls, and did not reflect my talents. Thankfully the good folk here at DRO have better judgment than they. No matter, I had a ball and everything panned out pretty cool.

Thanks for hanging out, C-YAAA!!!