Auto News 5

Sixteen years ago, after win-ning eleven consecutive Trans-Am races en route to one of the most dominant seasons in the history of professional racing, Tommy Kendall walked away from the sport that had defined his adult life. He was thirty-one.

Driving around the other day, I kept forgetting that my car had electrical power even though it had gobs of the stuff. That made it quite unlike my home, which, thanks to Hurricane Sandy, was dark as night even during the day. As an unexpected ancillary drawback to the many others that beset one's microenvironment when extreme weather events come calling, I suddenly found myself forgetting to employ useful things like directional signals, windshield wipers, and headlights, my failure to switch them on based possibly on a subconscious suspicion that there would be no point, since they wouldn't work anyway, like the rest of my electrical universe.