Sports

To most people without grease under their fingernails, to people without calendars in the garage showing scantily clad women striking suggestive poses in front of candy-flake Camaros and GTOs, to people without a need for speed, they are little more than car No. 77, car No. 55, car No. 81. Three numbers in the official program.

One of the biggest UNLV boosters I’ve known was an old Marine named Bob Snyder. He became a friend. He became a friend of the old baseball manager Dick Williams, too. We’d meet on Thursday for lunch with some other old baseball guys. But then Dick died, and then last September, I guess it was, Bob died, too.

The first car I owned in Las Vegas was a pre-owned 1983 Subaru GL sedan. Its official color was Extra Black. When I signed the cocktail napkin/lease, its unofficial color was Sunbaked Gray. Never buy a car with an Extra Black paint job in the desert.

It’s coming up on almost three summers since Destry Abbott, the five-time national American Motorcycle Association off-road champion, was riding trails in the Flagstaff, Ariz., foothills with his 12-year-old son, Cooper, and the sunshine on their shoulders that had been filtering through tall pines turned to storm clouds. Which can happen just about any day in Flagstaff during monsoon season.