Lawrence.com

Sometimes, I wonder how I find myself in such situations. I was flying back from Fort Myers, Fla., after a two-day midweek business trip. I was exhausted and just about to fall asleep when the pilot announced that in 15 minutes, the Endeavor was going to launch, and we'd be able to see it. By "see it" I thought it would be a million miles away and we'd barely be able to tell what it was. Then launch time came, and I'll be darned, it must have only been 100 miles away, and I had the rare opportunity to witness the shuttle take off from 30,000 feet in the air.

It was beautiful, like a giant flare had been shot from the ground. Then it just suddenly disappeared from the world.

It was a moment of serendipity I'm not likely to ever forget. I'd rarely find myself in these situations if not for my day job. I have the honor of being the assistant editor of Golf Course Management magazine, the No. 1 golf industry magazine in the world. Yeah, it's one of the many things we do out at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. When part of my occupation is to go stay at an island resort in southern Florida, well, life is good.

This particular trip was taken in order to test drive a vehicle that the Daimler-Chrysler people believed would be suitable for golf courses. At first I tried to shrug off the excursion, but they kept calling, and finally I was like, "OK, I guess I'll come to sunny Florida so I can romp on your vehicle."

Auto of tomorrow

I went to test drive a vehicle that's called the Sprinter. Basically, it's a passenger van that can be converted into a work/cargo van. It's pretty huge, I'm 6'4" and had no problem standing up straight in the back cab area. So after I was wined and dined at the Sanibel Island Resort and Spa for a day, it was time to go to work and take this Sprinter out and see what it could do.

By no means am I an expert on driving trucks or cargo vehicles, but by being a journalist, it's like they expect you to magically transform into one. After you sign a waiver, of course.

They gave me a Sprinter with which to motor around Sanibel Island for about 45 minutes. I was cruising with a fellow journalist from Automotive Magazine. I figured he was much more the expert on driving than I, so I let him take the first leg of the trip. As we pulled away from the resort, he jumped the curb, and I instantly felt more confident.

It seemed like the residents on Sanibel Island were, on average, three times my age. So the only difficulties involved in this test were occasionally getting stuck behind one of the got-nowhere-to-be, slow-moving vehicles on the island. I zipped all around the place and said things to my new friend from Automotive Magazine like, "It's got more torque than I expected." ("Torque" is a car word, right?) "The turning radius is exemplary" ("Radius" I picked up in geometry class in high school.) "I like the location of the turn signal." (Because, what if they put it out of reach?)

I avoided mentioning, "We could fit a helluva lotta kegs in that cargo area," even though we could.

Foolish me, I had no idea that by driving the last leg of the tour of Sanibel Island, it would be up to me to pilot this huge tank on the challenge course.

Flooring it

The first challenge was taking this giant box-shaped vehicle and weaving it through orange cones to pull off a perfect figure-eight without knocking them over. The car before me didn't even come close to a successful run, and was pummeling the obstacles so frequently it looked like the driver had some grim vendetta against orange plastic. It came to be my turn, and I looked over at my buddy from Automotive Magazine and revealed one more time how I'm more used to operating mowing equipment.

The trick was to move slow, similar to the residents of Sanibel Island. I crawled through the entire figure-eight space at a snail's pace, but did so without harming a single cone. OK, I brushed into one, but I was creeping so slowly that I didn't have the force to knock it over. Instead I simply poked it out of my way, feeling almost James Bond-like at the deftness of this move. For an encore Maybe I'd push a button and shoot a spike out of my tire and chop the cone in half. Then I'd say something like, "Hope you don't mind me ... cutting corners."

The figure-eight was completed, and the Daimler-Chrysler people were already impressed.

"Nice job," one of the attendants said in his Australian accent. "But you'll have to go a little faster on this next part."

He had me back up all the way to a fence. He then gave me very specific directions: "Slam on the accelerator full-throttle. When you reach the orange cone just before the fence on the opposite end of the course, stomp on the brakes."

I looked at him like he was mad.

"It'll stop in time; we've done it before," he assured me.

I looked over to make sure my co-pilot was buckled up. I took a deep breath and looked at the orange object, some 60 yards down the way. More importantly, I saw the fence and numerous trees right after the cone. That's when the thought hit: What if my foot misses the brake?

Despite this ounce of self-doubt, I pressed on. I stomped on the gas and was gratified that the Sprinter didn't exactly sprint right out of first. But then, quickly, the engine sped up. The fence was screaming at me to stop for the sake of all that is holy. But the orange cone was still several car-lengths away.

I continued, reaching what felt like warp-speed (but was really only 25 mph), when instinct finally kicked in. About a car length before the cone, I let off the gas and stomped on the brakes. The Sprinter stopped on a dime, considering I thought it would be more like a half dollar, and I was sitting well shy of where I was supposed to end up.

"I told ya it'd stop in time, but you still hit the brakes early, didn't ya?" the Aussie taunted. I smiled while my heart still raced at the thought of crashing through the backdrop. This was not Bond-like at all.

From then on, everything was less death-defying. I had to back up to a loading dock. The final leg was a series of U-turns, showing off the Sprinter's maneuverability.

Ultimately, it was a memorable trip. As I watched the Endeavor fly off into space from my plane, I thought to myself, in a Sean Connery voice, "Trips like this could really ... launch my career."