[Tony Radford]

Interestingly enough, my first drive was a bit of a drag. I had a pretty severe case of snakebite and after three months of scrutinizing various "Cobras for sale" sites, I found the perfect car within a three hour drive of my house. I drove over on an Easter Sunday, met the owner at his home and was simply love struck when I first met "her". It was a cool, overcast day and the owner was incredibly "anal" about the car. He offered to take me for a ride, so we jumped in (a bit of culture shock after 25 years of refined vehicle driving). He fired it up in a one-car garage and freaked me out. We drove out a couple of miles at 45 MPH in city traffic and he stopped, offering me the option of driving back. Naturally, I jumped into the driver's seat and commenced to pilot us back at 45 MPH. It really wasn't much fun and since I had to be careful not to over rev her, or touch her paint job, or get her wet, or hit any bumps, I was a bit glad to get back to his garage. She was so beautiful, I decided that it was worth the money just to have her in my garage to share morning coffee and idle chat. We closed the deal two days later and she was delivered to my door in an enclosed trailer. It was noon on a beautiful, sunny day. We signed the papers, money changed hands, I got the key and he was on his way, leaving me in my driveway with the most awesome red vehicle I had ever seen. I jumped into "my" car, on "my turf" with "my" rules and headed out. UNBELIEVABLE! That was my first real ride! As you can probably tell, the venum has pretty well permeated my entire body.