Leaving on a jet plane...

A few final thoughts while I surf some 35,000 feet above the ground and ponder just how long it took buttoned-up Roger Penske to ditch that gaudy Daytona 500 championship jacket they tossed on him at Monday's champion's breakfast inside The Daytona Experience...

- How ironic was it to see the Dodges of Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Reed Sorenson team up for top-5 finishes in the closing laps of Sunday's race? Newman, after all, blasted Sorenson following the Gatorade Duel qualifying race earlier in the week for helping a Chevrolet and not a Dodge get to the front of that event.

- Race car drivers obviously have selective memory.

Newman remembers sitting in the grandstands as a youngster watching the 500, remembers his days running USAC cars across the midwest and, if he was to be honest, probably remembers every time he's felt slighted by one of his competitors on the track.

But that crash in 2003, the nasty one that sent him flipping across the infield grass along the Daytona fronstretch in his second 500 start? Yeah, he wasn't so willing to rehash that on Sunday night.

Who could blame him? It's what separates these guys from one another -- some of them can put it behind them and some of them can't.

- Never thought I'd be one of those guys who blogged about travel problems. Then again, never though I'd be one of those guys who blogged while I was in an airplane. But since I am, it's worth pointing out that now I understand why writers blog about the complications of airline travel.

What else are you going to do when you show up 2 hours before your scheduled departure, only to find out that that departure has been pushed back 2 hours. And then, in a matter of minutes, the departure time changes three more times. Yeah, it happened to me - but we left on time, anwyay.

I've got air sick kids puking and crying, and a real jerk in front of me giving the flight attendants a hard time about headphones. Good times, trust me.

- Yeah, I fished Lake Lloyd -- if you could call it that on some crap Target passed off as fishing tackle. It was either the $26 dollar throwaway I went with with all of 2 color choices for lures or it was a $70 combo that wasn't going to make it back to Maine with me.

But, I worked the water for more than an hour the night before the 500, saw fish rising to the surface to feed and even got a couple of fruitless strikes, I'm willing to call that a success.

Did I mention that I fished the infield at Daytona International Speedway? Did I?

- And, in parting, just one final question: Are you Bobby Dickerson?