The Spirit of Adventure - Michael McCafferty

(to more clearly see the lights of any oncoming traffic) and passing a milk truck on the
curve of an old country road. I was an idiot when I was young.
I went through a lot of cars because I was so rough on them. I loved to experiment
with how they would behave in various situations (wet, snowy, icy, sand, bumps, hills,
etc). I remember doing 'donuts' in snow on a one-lane road, with cars parked on both
sides, just to show off for a friend. Surprisingly, I had few accidents, but one in particular
happened right in front of high school just before classes started for the day. Everyone
was out front catching a smoke just in time to see me hit the brakes and skid into the back
of a car which had stopped to parallel park. My target car then hit the guy in front of
him, and then he did the same, etc, until we had five cars destroyed in a pileup which is
still a favorite topic of nostalgia at reunions. And I can still see the hood of my car
crumpling up in slow motion, as it did that morning, just before my face was bloodied on
the steering wheel. I tell you all this only to underscore what you have by now
determined: I'm lucky to be alive! And aren't we all?
Cars were a major focal point of my life, being born into the business. I used to
hang out at my father's car lot, directly next to the famed Langhorne Speedway, where all
of the most famous stock car (pre-NASCAR) drivers of the time would come to race. Ford
Motor Company sponsored the best teams and they used my father's dealership as a
staging and repair place in preparation for the races. I wandered in awe through the maze
of racing machines, tires, tools, and legendary drivers, thinking that someday I would do
this.
And one day, I did. When I finally graduated from college (1964), a minor miracle
in itself because I never achieved academic distinction (except for achieving the lowest
end of the scale!), I seemed to go through a metamorphosis. My first job, with IBM as a
sales rep, was so interesting to me that I buried myself in everything I could read about
computers, and I became a very, very good salesperson, using a combination of innate
sales talent (Irish blarney), and technical know-how, and total focus. This combination led
to an excess of cash at an early age, which I spent on (you guessed it) fast cars. I raced my
own car in weekend races on the East Coast tracks, and performed very well, and had
some amazing experiences.
From early childhood I was fascinated with flying, but I was always told that it
would be impossible because I had such poor eyesight. I believed them, until one day I
discovered a magazine about flying which contained an ad selling remanufactured
Stearman biplanes, and then the thought finally hit me that I could buy my own airplane
and fly it without needing the military or the airlines to provide one.
Buying one of the "normal" (single wing) general aviation aircraft available at the
time (Piper Cub, Cessna, etc.) was completely uninteresting to me simply because they
just looked so normal. If I was going to fly, it was imperative that I would fly something
that looked extraordinary. This was just the natural extension of my philosophy
concerning the selection of cars, either for racing, or for everyday use.
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