For anyone who is interested, I can provide something of an epilogue to the story at this point.
Right when I got back to college, a fellow student came up to me, who I only vaguely knew, and I asked him how his summer was. He told me it was fine, and then told me, "I saw online that you met Ralph Lauren and saw that car."
That was weird.
It's been over four months since the Veyron spot. Naturally, I've heard a lot about it. It has been discussed at forums on which I participate without the members' knowledge that I am a participant. Typically, I get positive responses, but the responses in general break down into three different groups:
1. Negative responses from people who criticise my driving.
2. Negative responses from people who just don't get it. Mostly, this involves non-car people.
3. Positive responses.
To the first point, I've driven 80,000 miles since becoming a legal driver including 15,000 in the last five months. I have yet to be involved in an accident (how many people escaped their teens accident-free?), and I've received just one ticket, for speeding, more than two and a half years ago. To the second point, I've always been dismissive. It doesn't surprise me that non-car people can't understand the enthusiasm someone would have for such a sighting. Unsurprisingly, the third group of reactions far outweighs the first two amongst my friends and people in general on car forums, since car people tend to simply understand. In general, people have been supportive and positive about my sighting. This is reflected in post one, where I have received thirteen +reps (thanks, GTP!).
Regarding the original story, the girlfriend and I have since broken up. On September 29, I saw
a Maserati MC12 on the streets here in Atlanta, which is arguably a better sighting. This thread has come and gone. The Veyron photo is just to the left of the very central photo on a wall of car pictures I have in my dorm room (the central photo being the yellow Porsche Carrera GT). I still think about the sighting every day. I'm still on the lookout for dozens of high-dollar supercars that I've never seen before (Enzo, McLaren F1, F50, XJ220, etc.) but I crossed off number one the day I saw the Veyron.
I'll close with the most eerie thing about this sighting, which I only realized a month or two ago:
My lucky number is and has always been 222. My birthday is May 22, which is 222 days prior to the end of the year, my first car had 222 horsepower, in sports I always wore jersey number 22, etc. For as long as I can remember, I've always considered 222 to be my lucky number.
Anyway, I took my first car photo on May 14, 2005 (a
green Bentley Arnage). As everyone knows, I've taken hundreds since then, and I've seen many extremely uncommon and crazily rare cars, like the Ferrari F40, Ferrari Daytona Spider, four Porsche Carrera GTs, and the Maserati MC12. But for me, the Holy Grail has always been the Bugatti Veyron. So is it any surprise, then, that I saw the Veyron on July 16, 2007 - exactly
2 years,
2 months, and
2 days after that original sighting?
Oh, and the weirdest part? After seeing the Veyron my girlfriend and I went back to our hotel room at the Best Western in Ouray, Colorado. Room number? 222.
No worries - this morning I checked my phone at 11:20 to three texts and a voicemail saying things such as 'OH MY GOD YOU'RE ON AUTOBLOG.'
