Apologies to everyone who's already heard this story. The weighty responsibilities of internet citizenship demand that I record it for future generations.

One of the best things about almost being a fake journalist is that it occasionally affords me invitations to fake press events. They're not all that fake, I guess — like all such events, they're trying to attract favorable coverage. But they're a little more shameless about it than they would be were they pitching writers with a sense of professional self-respect. This works out better for everyone involved.

Last Friday this translated into an invitation to Chevrolet's "Re/v It Up" event. They've been holding these things all over the country; DC was the last stop. Racing fans and their beleaguered mates travel from miles around to drive Chevy Cobalts (as seen at Hertz!) through a sea of orange traffic cones. Participants' scores are calculated relative to the time posted by a professional driver who runs the course several times a day. At the end the top scorers from each city are flown in and compete head-to-head for a new Corvette.

I'm not exactly sure why they invited me — I don't know or write about cars, but somehow I've ended up on Chevy's press list. It's either not a very big list or, more likely, one that few people respond to: the media turnout for the event totalled about 8 people — and that's including a few VIPs who were rolled into our group for its line-skipping abilities. The participant that came closest to representing an august general-interest publication was from Washington Hispanic.

I took the Metro out to Fedex field, which was a big mistake. The Morgan Boulevard Metro station, like all above-ground Metro stations, was located principally to justify the creation of a godawful tract housing development. It was only when workers were plugging in the turnstiles that someone finally looked up and noticed an enormous football stadium looming in the distance — one that tens of thousands of people would want to attend on a regular basis.

As a result it's kind of a hike to the stadium, and it was even further to get to the corner of the parking lot where Chevy had set up. The day was hot, and I was soaked in sweat by the time I got there. They gave me a badge, waved me through and immediately began distracting me with a stratospherically hot (and, one presumes, equally evil) PR rep. She gave me water, laughed at a couple of my dumb jokes and congratulated me on riding public transportation in a manner usually reserved for developmentally disabled adults.

Eventually an artificially genuine-seeming media liaison named Dan showed up and led us to the "Rules & Regulations" tent, where a bored failed racecar driver explained to us what not to do. First on the list of proscribed activities: thinking that Chevy isn't awesome! Variations on this point consumed about two-thirds of his presentation. The only actual rules I remember hearing:

1. No spinning tires at the start line — although a later instructor told us that we should probably spin them sort of a little, but not too much(!) because that'd make us go slower.
2. In what I presume is a nod to the Unifest unpleasantness, we were forbidden from hitting any cones, and threatened with a two-second penalty per cone should we violate this rule. Except on the practice track, of course, where we could cream as many cones and/or street festival attendees as we'd like.

Next were the instruction tents, where Dan the Media Guy introduced us to a grizzled driver who had "done it all", which in this case means he's driven various cars on tracks both circular and straight. "He lost the original Cannonball Run by twenty minutes! The original one, the real one!" Dan repeated this factoid several times, perhaps after being disappointed by the lack of revery it initially inspired. I didn't and still don't really know what it meant, except perhaps that I was standing near someone who had once met Burt Reynolds.

Introductions dispensed with, we began receiving instruction. Over the next 45 minutes or so we learned a new and completely bewildering take on physics — one shaped by experience on the track, and one that I'm sure works fine as a set of heuristics, but also one that bears very little resemblance to everything I've ever been taught about how the physical world operates.

You've got your contact patches and apex points, of course, and the hilarious and heavily-stressed technique of "ocular driving" — which, yes, means that while driving you should use your eyes. But these are just jargon laid atop a more fundamental philosophy. The racing experience is explained in terms of a sort of motorsport panpsychism. Everything is anthropomorphized, and your progress down the track is recast as a complicated negotiation between the animistic spirits of the asphalt, tires, engine and brakes. The driver's will seems to have very little to do with it (which, to be fair, is pretty accurate in my case).

I left the tent confused, but in the mood to drive recklessly. We headed to the practice course and did a few laps — it was a slightly deflated loop with tight turns and a slalom section. I didn't kill any cones or people. From there we headed to the competition course, where we donned hairnets and fantastically stupid-looking helmets (see above) and took two timed laps around the track, competing against one another.

So alright, I didn't win. But hear me out: of the three people from the media group finishing ahead of me, one was a correspondent from Motorweek, one was a professional racecar driver(!), and one was, uh, well, just better than me. But I'm pleased to report that I kicked the hell out of the 80 year-old guy from the Chinese-American Travel Association. All things considered, I'm pretty pleased with my performance. If you own a car and would like me to do terrible things to your brakes and tires, I stand ready.

I could've stuck around and tried the go-karts or drag-racing or ignite-the-open-vat-of-gasoline booth. Or talked to the "NOS Energy Girls", I suppose. But I was ready to head home. On the way back I took a wrong turn, saw a fox and ended up in an overgrown cul de sac filled with weeds and Dharma Initiative-ish billboards emblazoned with the word JERICHO, but other than that the trip back was fine. I ended the day sweaty, exhausted and in posession of some extremely tacky Chevy promotional gear.

All in all, it was an overwhelming success. Car racing is almost as fun as it is stupid.