Danica and me

Even though I grew up in Indiana, home to the greatest spectacle in racing, I never had much of an interest in attending a car race. It always seemed like a sport that translates better to TV, especially if you have a bad seat at the track. Plus you get to see replays of all the crashes. Nonetheless, with the Indy cars racing in Richmond tomorrow, I got press passes for the weekend. Yesterday Chris and I made an appearance at Media Day, which really was a day. There was testing and press conferences in the early morning and later in the evening, but when we were there at noontime there were a couple of cars taking a couple of practice laps, and that was about it. We walked by the garages, where the crews were working on the cars, but we couldn't get too close to them and it wasn't much to see anyway. So we decided to get out of there and were walking past the trailers to our car when walking around the corner came one Danica Patrick. She was all alone, no entourage or security detail, dressed casually in a white t-shirt and shorts. We said hi to her, chatted for a minute, and mentioned that during the downtime of Thursday afternoon she was just hanging out, but come Saturday we'd never be able to find her. "That's the way it is," she said, as she got on her bike and rode off across the infield. Of course, we didn't have a pen or a camera to in any way document the occasion, but it was still a cool moment, especially because even in the short time Danica was in my presence, it was evident that she wanted me.