Knuckling down to write in this heat has been difficult. The house simply holds heat and refuses to give it up. It was 104 earlier this week and 97 when I elected to take advantage of an opportunity to drive a racecar. Now this opportunity was never to take place. But there too lies a story.

Every now and then I pause before a TV in a restaurant or bar when a stockcar race is rolling. What especially grabs me are the views of the track from the driver's video cam, showing a blur of track, a blockade of cars, and then a view of open stretch if the driver negotiates the tricky, sometimes nasty driving techniques of those blocking his or her way.

So when an opportunity came to sign up for a stockcar racing lesson I delayed not. My paperwork arrived, along with instructions for my 15-lap ride, which I dutifully read.

"Dear Hank. Congratulations. You're going racing with Drivetech Racing School. We are the most realistic racing experience in the country, where passing is encouraged and speeds can exceed 150 mph!!!"

Right from the get go on July 23 I had obstacles. I had planned on arriving an hour early to check the track conditions. However, Lucas Oil Field in Speedway sits on sprawling acreage in Clermont, Indiana, off Exit 16A on Interstate 65, which happened to be closed both north and south this day, although the highway fathers decided not to note both exits were closed. One had to visit both exits to ascertain this truth.

So 20 minutes before my appointment, I was already in a car speeding--my own, as it turned out--through an alternate way I had called up on the GPS on my phone.

I ran into three men getting out their cars ahead of me. Turned out they knew each other and had been drag racers for years, using the lesson to upgrade to stockcar racing.

"Are you a racer?" one asked.

"Professor," I said.

He just looked at me.

"Just a novice doing something on his bucket list."

They smiled. "Like that Internet site bucketlist," said one.

"Yes, like that."

"I don't mean to be nosy, but you're not dying, are you?"

I laughed. He looked relieved.

We received directions to a media room but found a class full in session. "This is the 3 o'clock session," said a man in a black polo. "You're early."

I wanted to hold up my letter which said to be twenty minutes early, but why argue?

I went out with the trio and we took the stairs to the grandstand, viewing the cars racing on the track with pro drivers and drivers from the 2 a.m. class, wondering which vehicle each of us might be assigned.

The temperature was only 97, but the concrete seemed to make the temps well up in the 100s. I clutched the two bottles of Gatorade my son had urged me to bring and took a few big swallows. The other three had coolers and hauled out Gatorade bottles of their own.

At four p.m. we went back and found seven more men in front of the media room door. Most were in their twenties and built pretty much like pro baseball players, lean and strong, most definitely athletes. One was very grey with spectacles and one was short and botbellied.

The final racer was 64 going on 65 and bigger in the shoulders than any of his classmates. He had on a three-quarter sleeve blue baseball shirt to ward off sunburn. He ooked like the grandfather of all these students-- except for the greybeard and the potbellied men.

Yes, that guy would be me. Quite quickly it turned out that ten out of the eleven had done some racing, some even had raced stock cars, although most drag raced right here at Lucas. All of them presumably had driven a dragster at 200+ speeds, all except one guy.

That unlucky guy too would be me.

The instructor had been giving lessons all day, all week, all year He was from California and never got back home. "Welcome to my job, fellas," he whined.

"Everyone ready for some racing," he asked. His back was to us as he bent over papers, and he got only two halfhearted "yeahs" from the group.

He went over the basics, some of which I knew, but which the other ten all definitely knew. How the shifters were two sticks with first, neutral and reverse on one, and second and third on the other.

I made a note where reverse was. Dropping a transmission at 100 mph wasn't on my bucket list. He went over the yellow and orange tape on the track and why we didn't want to color outside the lines lest we whip the car into a wall.

"Do that and it will cost you $15,000 for the car," he said. "Unless you want insurance." He explained it was available now and most of us succumbed to the sales pitch and drew out a credit card.

He asked if there were any novices in the room, adding that it was really a good idea to sign up for a drive-a-long lesson inside a stockcar with a real pro driver to get a feel for what would happen on the drive-alone.

I raised my hand. There was another fee. I thought of that $15,000 damage fee and considered it more insurance.

He went over the flags and how our helmets would be equipped with mikes. An instructor on the other end would shout commands.

"Pay close attention to your car number," he said. "You will be called by your number to `lift and lock' or whatever.

He took a second to explain lift and lock which was a technique somehow associated with locked wheels, which even I knew was a bad thing. Locked wheels could send a car spinning like a top on the track. These other men had experience, but not that much stockcar experience. I had a vision of my car getting T-boned as it spun like a roulette wheel.

"One time I had a guy who was just terrible. He wouldn't listen to directions. 88 do this, 88 do that. We were going to give him the black flag and haul him to the pits to chew him out, but then I said, `Heck with it, let him finish the ride.

"When it was over I came to help him out of the car and congratulated him for finishing. `How was it?'"

"Great, he said, but that 88 just wouldn't listen. What a dumb-ass."

The instructor paused for effect. "He got out of the car and glanced at his number and walked off with his head down and back bent to his knees. He had called himself just what he was."

All of us gave a nervous chuckle. "Don't be that guy," he said.

Point taken. I might crash my car into a wall, I though, but when the door and panels came off I would have known what number was on them.

He went over the yellow, green, red and black flags.

"Y'all know the checkered flag?"

We did. "Don't you go taking an extra victory lap," he said. "This year two jokers took a victory lap and both crashed."

Another point taken.

We took the elevator down to the field and then the long walk under a concrete tunnel to the tents where our cars and the professional drivers lounged.

A female attendant waited under one tent with our black and white uniforms. An old buddy of mine from Middletown, Indiana named "Stormin' Norman Day" had filled my head with his stockcar driver stories, including his last race in which his car caught fire and he was down to his last layer of insulated protection when the crews sprayed down the flames to get him out.

I remembered the words of the instructor today. "Don't ever get out of your car on a track unless it's on fire," he said. "Then get out but be careful." I didn't need much imagination thinking of a Monte Carlo hitting me like a bowling ball putting away a ten-pin.

I was last in line. She had asked each of the men their true shirt size. Most said medium. One was small. The plump guy with a belly said "chunky size," making us all laugh.
Now my turn came.

"2T or 3T or 2 or 3 XX," I whispered to her, although a couple guys close by me gave me an interested stare. Apparently guys built like me don't race all that often.

"I don't think you're that big," she said, handing me a suit.

Now let me remind you how hot it was. Just getting the leggings and stirrups on caused sweat to roll off me. The suit went easily over my legs and my stomach, but when it reached my chest that is where the fit ended.

"See?" I said to the attendant.

"Try one size up."

I wanted to repeat, "2T or 3T or 2 or 3 XX," but this was her domain and I kept respectful silence.

By this time all the men but one were dressed. I hurriedly sat on the grass and this time the leggings and top came right up to my chest. I asked the last racer to help pull the rest of the uniform over my arms and shoulders. He tugged and tugged and grunted.

"No way, man," he said.

The attendant had been watching. "This one's our biggest," she said.

Perfect. It went on as if a tailor had made it for me. The problem was that the exertion had sent sweat Niagara Fallsing all over me. My briefs felt stuck to my butt and crotch. My baseball shirt was sticking to my pits, and my spectacles were streaked with salty sweat.

A male attendant came over to fit me with a do-rag and a helmet. "You're the drive-a-long guy, right?" he said.

We arrived at Car 29 and I slid my bulky bod through the car window. It looks real graceful when a Jeff Gordon slips in and out, but I think there are tortoises that would lose their shells quicker than I squeezed and maneuvered and slithered into that passenger seat. Now I had a clear moment of revelation. If my car caught fire, I hoped the men with fire extinguishers would get there fast, because I was gonna have a roasted butt before I slipped out that window in a crisis.

In fact, I couldn't get through WITH the helmet on and handed it to the attendant so I could drop on the seat. As he stomped the helmet on my head I slipped on the spectacles, and the water off my forehead and eye sockets blurred them right away. My eyes stung and worse, I was having problems getting air and I could feel every pulse in my body throbbing."

He saw I was struggling, whipped the helmet back off, and produced a cold bottle of water, which I consumed in two or three frantic sips.

At this point I made an executive decision. If I had heat stroke out there, or my fogged glasses failed to let me see clearly I might hit the brakes and either lock up or cause a pro or student driver to whack me from behind. The thought of causing a three or four car pileup and injuring someone else now paralyzed my conscience. I remembered the faces of the guys in the room and thought of them being hurt on account of me.

The attendant came back with the driver.

The driver slipped through the window in one easy swing. He was in his 30s--about three-fifths my size and short with blonde hair and blond hairs on his arms. The attendant leaned in my window. He gave my straps a last tug.

"I'm only going to do the drive-along," I said. I flipped the window of my helmet and pulled off the wet spectacles to show them. "I'm not ready for the drive," I admitted, hating the words as they came out my mouth but knowing they were true.

"Suit yourself," said Mark, slipping the steering wheel in place. "Let me know if you change your mind."

The attendant stood back. Mark hit the switch and we were off in the 500-horsepower monster. The gravitational pull sucked me in, and I just kept my gaze on the track ahead.

By the first turn we were nearly at top speed, and I barely saw the green and orange marker cones, let alone the tape lane markers. The billboard ads were a blur, only the Kroger one registering with its recognizable logo. It was ground-pounding sheer speed. We passed the cars of my fellow student drivers as if they were in neutral.

He kept the car in full throttle around every turn and took the car even faster on the straightaway.

Before I knew it we were headed off the track and into the pits.

"It was awesome," I said to Mark. We shook hands.

The first instructor was waiting for me when I tumbled out the window. The attendant had informed him I was through for the day.

Now I saw a much nicer, concerned face on the instructor. He was disappointed for me and ready to give me any tips I needed to make my dream come through. I took off the helmet and showed him my wet and steamed glasses.

"I just don't think I can do it safely," I said.

"All right then," he said. "I can refund your insurance to save you a few dollars."

I returned the uniform to the female attendant. A lovely lady in her early thirties stepped out. I had seen her earlier in the souvenir trailer where she sold racing shirts.

"I'm soaked," I said, pointing to my shirt.

"This is the second one I changed to in an hour," she said. She was blonde, cute, and had a large jewel protruding from her belly button.

"So did you just finish driving?" she asked.

"Just the drive-along," I said. "It's part of my bucket list at sixty-five."

"My Dad is sixty," she said. "No way you're sixty-five."

Well, whaddya know, I thought to myself. This day hasn't been so bad after all.

"Would you take a picture of me in front of that car I was in?"

"Sure," she said.

And she did.

I walked toward the tunnel, pausing to watch an ambulance finish loading one driver who had suffered heat stroke, causing a black flag and stopping the drive-alones for several minutes. I couldn't be sure who had collapsed during his drive-alone, but either Greybeard or Chunky would be my guess. I hoped whoever it was would be fine after emergency care.

Sometimes the race isn't to the swiftest, I thought, but to the pragmatic.

I passed by the remaining members of my class now waiting for the all-clear signal so they could take their turns. One of the drag-racing athletes stepped up who had sat next to me in class. His wife had purchased his dream ride as his surprise birthday present.

"How was it?" he inquired about my drive-along.

"A perfect bucket-list ride," I said, enjoying the thumbs-up he flashed me.