America's 67 LeMans Winners Now Driving Walkers

[John_Kernodle]

The co-drivers of the great American triumph at Le Mans in 1967 are currently wheeling walkers and trying to get a good night’s sleep.

Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt both had knee surgery last week and Tuesday they commiserated on their aches and pains over the telephone.

"A.J. said he left the hospital three days before his doctors wanted him to and now he’s suffering,” said Gurney with a chuckle.

"I told him he was just trying to live up to his reputation.”

Foyt, who turned 77 on Monday, went into the hospital in Houston to have rotater cuff surgery and also opted to have some bone spurs removed from around his knee.

"I let my mouth overload my ass,” said Indy’s first four-time winner. "They had to take my kneecap on and off and they said it would be a real painful operation and I told them I could handle it.

"So I go home early and tell them I don’t need any morphine and boy was that a mistake.’’

The tough Texan whose feet were shattered at Elkhart Lake, broke his back at Riverside, got burned at Milwaukee, battered at Michigan and run over by his dirt car at DuQuoin says this pain is as bad as any of his crashes.

"Hell yes, it’s keeping me up all night and I’m driving (wife) Lucy crazy.”

Gurney, who survived a little motorcycle accident last summer, is now the proud owner of a titanium knee.

"It hurts and it’s hard to get comfortable to sleep but they had me standing up on it the same day they replaced it so that’s encouraging for an old geezer,” said the 80-year-old icon of F1, Indy and sports cars.

"My wife (Evi) has become a damn good nurse and it’s a good thing.”

The two legends have canes and walkers but Foyt also needs a wheelchair.

"The bad thing is that it’s my left arm and left leg so I can’t operate a walker one-handed and I just keep going around in circles in the wheelchair,” said the grand marshall of this month’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

To which the ever-innovative All-American Racer replied:

"Tell A.J. he needs a locked rear-end in his wheelchair.”

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... -the-mend/

[TedV]

sucks getting old. Only option, die young.

[Wheelman_13]

sucks getting old. Only option, die young.

My plan is to take up skydiving at 70 and if that doesn't work by 80, I'm going to then start to live the "reckless youth" that I never had

[steverife]

Not being a race car driver in the 60's probably makes the getting old thing a little easier...

[SilverMaxima]

sucks getting old. Only option, die young.

My plan is to take up skydiving at 70 and if that doesn't work by 80, I'm going to then start to live the "reckless youth" that I never had

Sent from The Gentleman's HTC Incredible via Tapatalk

[John Brown]

ummph... ya know, Iv spent considerable time wrappin my head around this lately. But anyone close to my years,thats had a pretty fulfilling life can finally relate to a verse in a Bad Co. song.... "Johnnys life passed him by..like a warm sunny day" considering that these are just 2 of the men in my childhood years that led me to the path of motorsports... and now,they are done with the hands on..have been for a long time I reckon. I only hope I can be as alert for as long as Paul Newman was behind the wheel..

but for now................

[TedV]

Gurney is 80, crashed motorcycle last summer to screw his knee up. Doesn't sound like he was sitting on the porch in a rocker.

[Pewter Sonoma]

sucks getting old. Only option, die young.

My plan is to take up skydiving at 70 and if that doesn't work by 80, I'm going to then start to live the "reckless youth" that I never had

A co-worker of mine has skydived 90+ times (I think he said 93) and had a malfunction and broke his back, and he's only in his late 30s. I believe he said he lande don a fence...

I've been once, and will do it again. Such a rush, and the view is spectacular. I went near Morristown, TN.

[TedV]

I've been once, and will do it again. Such a rush, and the view is spectacular. I went near Morristown, TN.

I need the info on that place.

[Pewter Sonoma]

I've been once, and will do it again. Such a rush, and the view is spectacular. I went near Morristown, TN.

I need the info on that place.

http://skydivesmokymountains.com/directions.html

I suggest NOT going with a large group. I went with at least a dozen others, and I was also the last group to go up. I ended up waiting around 6+ HOURS to go up, b/c the plane can only take 2-3 tandum jumpers at a time, depending if you have another person film or not (which I HIGHLY recommend paying extra for). Thus, the plane took off 6 times before I was able to go up. By the time my group was ready, a storm came in and we had to wait before going up in the air. It ended up being a LONG day.

If you want to do it with a large group, there are other companies around (one in that area, too, I believe) with larger planes. I also remember reading about a company in the ATL area that uses the plane from the movie 'Point Break' and a large group can take off at the same time. The location I mentioned above is a small Cesna and it barely fit 7 of us (pilot, myself and friend, our 2 jumpers, and we both had a film guy) with the interior out of it. Also, we barely cleared the tree line at the end of the runway (grass field, I should say) with all the weight. That was just as scary as the jump....being ~70% down the runway and not being in the air at all.

This was 2006 so I'm ready to do it again! As a hobby, it's rather cheap once you buy a 'chute and learn how to pack it. You can have someone else pack it for a fee at most locations, I was told. My friend that jumped with me looked into it. The main cost after equipment is throwing some $ to the pilots to hitch a ride with other groups (bigger planes, I would suspect). When I went, a young girl was doing her first solo jump - and I think that's after you have done 6-9 tandum jumps and can prove you are capable to go on your own. Pretty impressive considering she was about 18 at the time. My instructor had jumped over 1000x! Considering he was probably in his late 40s, that's a LOT of jumps a year.