I am not only overwhelmed with excitement to be back in the seat but also to show my support to help raise awareness to end domestic violence and sexual assault by displaying the 'No More' symbol as I pilot the No. 24 car.
When I was 15, I worked as a bag boy in a grocery store. I also needed to walk old ladies to their car and put their bags in the car, and they would give me two dollars. I felt like the richest man in the world.
It was not until I started racing for car manufacturers that I found a car I could really get attached to. I am the son of a car dealer, so up until then, cars just came and went.
The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons.
Once when I was 16 I had my car taken away from me for being past curfew. Oh, and I said a bad word once, and I actually did get my mouth washed out with soap.
After I joined Toyota, there was a period when I drove more than 200 cars in one year - different types, other companies' cars. I want to be able to tell what distinguishes one car from the next.
Everything officers go through in any chase anywhere in the country, but amped up 100 times! I'm right in the thick of things in a car going like 80 miles an hour, and doing 360s in the middle of the road. It was a wild ride.
I bought a 1964 Bentley for $1,600 and re-built it over five years. When I drove it in Tokyo after that, it was the pride of the road. That car would command at least $150,000 today because 'Bikram' has restored it.
A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?
I'm constantly saying that I have bad hair days when I'm in New York. It's so hard. I've been lucky enough to jump immediately into a car, head straight to the location, and stay in the air-conditioning.
Growing up in Southern California, it's all car culture. When I was a kid, I knew every single model of every single car dealer; I knew every style of every year.
I really want to drive a Porsche GT1 car - also a McLaren, if I could fit. I want to do LeMans badly. I want to do Spa, a European series with World SportsCars.
I never had the high-paying job or the company car. It took me over a decade to pay off my student loans. I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes.
It was all that stuff about taking your parents' car when you're 13, sneaking booze into rock shows and ditching school with your friends. I could relate to that as a former teenager, rather than as a present parent.
It's like, no matter what I do, I always feel like I'm five years old, and I end up in the back of my father's car looking out the window, and nothing has changed in 25 years.
I borrowed my friend's car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.
I had my airplane, and I'd use it as a car whenever I could. If the drive was going to be longer than an hour, I was flying the plane instead. And in California, it's really easy to have a drive longer than an hour.
I did archery when I was in high school. In our gym class we had two weeks of archery, and I remember taking the bow and arrow and firing it up and across the street into a car parking lot.
We have an uncanny ability to make birds do what we want them to do. In Blood Simple there's a shot from the bumper of a car and it's going up this road and a huge flock of birds takes off at the perfect moment.
I'm not curing cancer or running a small county. I haven't developed a greener car. I just play act. And if I can bring people a moment of fun and relief in their lives, well, that's the win.
I don't mean to in any way impugn the makers of Bentley, but that car is nuts. When I do drive, I drive a Toyota Prius. So driving around the streets of Albuquerque in a Bentley made me feel so fake-a-rooney.
