Auto News 5

It was 100 degrees when I landed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but it was a dry heat. Wait a second. After checking my notes -- no, it wasn't. It was a disgusting, moist heat, the kind where sweat pours off you like an angry geyser and you start wondering where you might find a nice, heavy torque bar to smash in your face on account of the ungodly humidity, and you're also asking yourself why people bother living east of the Rockies in summer. Down South proved, disturbingly enough, to be indistinguishable from my New York home -- no wind, 110 percent humidity, and not even raining. Although I didn't know it, the fact that it hadn't rained for some time here was to impact my life in ways I could never have anticipated.