Where is ... Rick Mast?

You pick up the phone and it's Rick Mast.

Almost immediately, you're laughing. There is no other sense of humor on the face of the Earth like Mast's. It's wild and wicked and, make no mistake about it, colorful. He absolutely, positively will not let you be in a bad mood. The world ... not the racing world, but the world, period ... needs more people like Rick Mast.

You've written a book in the past and he gripes because he wasn't in it enough. You ask if he ever got to sit in Robert E. Lee's office chair on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., near Mast's home in Rockbridge Baths, in the gorgeous Shenandoah Valley. "Hell no," Mast says. The author Tom Wolfe screwed that deal up by splitting the chair when HE sat in it.

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Rick Mast

You think back to another time years ago when you called him. When he answered and told you what he was up to at the moment, you had to hang up because you were laughing so hard. For more than 30 minutes this time around, Mast talks to you like you're a long lost buddy.

When the call finally ends, you reflect on the conversation. Given the circumstances that ended his driving career midway through the 2002 season, it's all the more extraordinary that Mast can still maintain such an incredibly positive countenance. Not only did carbon monoxide poisoning force him out of the racecars he'd driven for decades, it also very nearly killed him.

Surely, this guy has every right to be angry at the world. Since the sport began, drivers have retired due to circumstances out of their control. They've been hurt in crashes. They couldn't land adequate sponsorship. They were fired and couldn't land another ride.

Mast was different. This was an invisible problem, literally. It took months to finally figure out what was causing the stunning dizziness, utter confusion, incredible headaches and body-wracking nausea. Mast had been in wrecks, of course, but nothing that would cause anything like what was slowly but surely destroying his life.

Mast is too good a person for something like this to happen. That's not, however, the way he looks at it.

"People ask me all the time if I'm bitter the way I was taken out," Mast said. "What I had mimicked a lot of bad diseases. I say, 'Listen, man ... if any of those tests had come out positive for what they were testing for, I wouldn't be here.' So, to me, every day's a blessing."

Today, Mast owns and operates RKM EnviroClean, a company that does site work for underground utilities as well as responding to situations involving hazardous materials. He's also a regular contributor to Rowdy Racing News, a weekly podcast devoted to NASCAR. He has seen life outside the racing community, and it fits him.

Shortly after Mast left racing, he had the possibility of going into television. He actually worked a few races, but a full-time gig didn't happen. After watching son Ricky grow up from afar, he wasn't going to do the same with the twin girls, Katie and Sarah that he has with wife Sharon.

"I'm not gonna miss these little girls growing up the way I did Ricky," Mast said. "That put me over the top as far as contemplating going to the racetrack every weekend. Here's the deal ... here's how it happened ... you've gotta realize I'd done that stuff since I was a teenager. Racing has been my whole life, period. Even when I was a kid, that's all I ever thought about. My whole life had always been gone from home.

"When I got sick, I spent six or eight months forced to stay at home. I didn't have no choice in the matter. I laid in the bed the biggest part of the time, laying there ready to die. Those six or eight months ... I started seeing a different lifestyle, a life that I had never had. I started getting acclimated to that. As time went on, less and less did I want to have to travel." (Continued)