Off Wing Opinion

Every once in a while, I've come across assignments in my career where the burdens of work become light and sweet. When I was a young corporate PR drone, the company I worked for owned the Denver Nuggets, and got the assignment to write a season preview for the company newsletter, an experience that included watching a solitary Larry Bird take endless foul shots hours before an exhibition game.

Later in my career, I got to slip into the opening of the MCI Center here in Washington while I was working for the telecom company. At another time during my stretch at MCI, I took a tour of the backlot of Paramount Studios where all the Star Trek Series were shot. And when the CEO of PSINet appeared at a press conference with then Baltimore Ravens Owner Art Modell to announce a stadium naming rights deal, I got to play a small, but satisfying role in the day's events.

And now I've gotten lucky again. This weekend, the logo of my employer, the Nuclear Energy Institute, is going to appear on one of the cars from the Newman Wachs Racing Team as it participates in a Champ Car Atlantic Series event in Denver. It's all part of the industry's efforts to communicate the environmental benefits of nuclear energy, in this case the fact that nuclear-generated electricity doesn't pollute the air or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

Guess who's been asked to ride shotgun?

In any case, I'll be blogging about it over at my work blog, NEI Nuclear Notes, throughout the weekend, and probably into Monday as well. Anything that isn't work related, I'll be posting here at Off Wing.

I'll be bringing my camera, and the folks at Newman Wachs tell me that I should have more or less unlimited access to all sorts of areas around the track. And even though my official work will end once the Champ Atlantic race finishes up early on Sunday, I'll be sticking around for the Denver Grand Prix later in the day before heading home.

This ought to be fun. Please come back and visit all weekend long.

For those of you who would like to watch on television, the Speed Channel schedule is here.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 4:42 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Auto Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.