THE NEW MODEL APPROACHES THE CHAPPY FERRY RAMP

Senator Ted Kennedy is said to have recently recalled his younger days on the island – “it was always hard to swim the channel when the ferry was shut down after midnight, so the idea of making it across in a car always appealed to me. I figured the tires would float the car – boy was I wrong!”

Submarine/car hybrid design has come along way since the Senator’s carefree early days as a drunken menace on Chappaquiddicks roads and estuaries. The new designs sink fully twenty percent slower than the Olds 98 driven by Ted “Captain” Kennedy back in the day. The new designs also stay centered on narrow wooden bridges automatically – even when driving 50 mph down remote dirt roads at night with your headlights off and your pants around your ankles. The wonders of technology!

EARLY HYBRIDS MET WITH MIXED RESULTS

One of the age old challenges to this type of hybrid design is keeping your booze at the correct temperature when submerged. It always gets too cold or too warm, depending on the season, and this can lead to all sorts of unpleasant comments from party guests and friends…aside from the usual “you’ve got seaweed and minnows in your hair” barbs. This problem has been addressed in the new Honda design by including a water-tight, temperature-controlled cooler in the trunk. If, for example, you were to find yourself sunk in a remote area at night, simply go back in the morning after any casualties of the voyage have been taken care of, and presto! When they winch your vehicle out of the bay your spirits are ready to be consumed right away, at the optimum temperature…unless of course you swam the channel to consult with your lawyer that morning and are unavailable.

The bottom line (no pun intended) is that you can’t go wrong buying a hybrid tested under the demanding Chappaquiddick conditions. Like ol’ Teddy himself has been rumored to say, “wetness is just a state of mind – its how you HANDLE the wetness in your life that counts”. So get out there, get liquored up, and drive into a harbor, estuary, river or bay near you as soon as you can!

With a volatile mixture of gritty determination, sharply honed skills and a pinch of panache; Danica burst on the scene as a 22 year-old IRL rookie in 2005, driving for the Rahal-Letterman team, and never looked back. She finished fourth in her first Indy 500 at the fabled brickyard in Indianapolis, Indiana – and ended up in twelfth place in the IRL points standings at season’s end. She was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indy Car Series and the 2005 Indianapolis 500.

Since then she has gained the respect of motorsports fans world-wide for her driving prowess in a historically male dominated sport. In 2006 she finished ninth in the points standings; and then went one better in 2007, coming in seventh for the season, after switching teams to Andretti-Green Racing at the start of the 2007 season. She has yet to taste victory in the open-wheel Indy cars, but garnered a second place at the Detroit Indy Grand Prix on the tough Belle Isle road course. Patrick avoided a wreck on the final lap to finish in second, tying her with Sarah Fisher for best women’s finish ever in Indy cars.

Talk to anybody who has known this talented woman for any length of time and you will see that the determined and fiery competitive attitude has been with her since birth. Danica began her racing career in go-karts, becoming National Champion at age 16, then moved to Great Britain and raced in the Formula Ford and Formula Vauxhall developmental open-wheel series. She finished second in England’s Formula Ford Festival, best ever finish by a woman, and in fact, ANY American! The rest is history – with surely more to come.

So if you see that sporty little Honda S2000 pull up next to you at a stoplight sometime soon, and look over and see a 100-pound five foot two female dynamo at the wheel…think twice about your chances at besting her off the line. Not gonna happen!