Hlas: Many of us are Carl Edwards, at least somewhat

In May 2011, Carl Edwards finished second behind Ricky Stenhouse Jr., in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Newton's Iowa Speedway.

I was there, to find an angle to write about for The Gazette. I've spent my career looking for angles. Which sounds like something a con artist might do. Let's forget I ever mentioned it.

Anyway, Edwards earned $1.2 million the night before the Iowa event when he won NASCAR's Sprint All-Star Race near Charlotte, N.C. He got to bed at 2:30 a.m., then awakened in time to travel to Newton by private jet for a race with a lot less glamour and payoff.

After the race, Stenhouse and Edwards were in the media center for a press conference. There, I didn't ask Edwards what I wanted to ask him because I didn't want everyone else hearing it and using it, making me look like a copycat if they published the driver's answer before I did.

Paranoia and insecurity are the spices of life.

So I approached Edwards as he left the media center. He told me he couldn't stop to talk, but I could follow him to his trailer. There, he quickly gathered his possessions. Not many minutes later, he was off the speedway's grounds and en route to the nearby Newton airport, where a plane waited to take him home to Missouri.

Edwards was a man in a hurry and I was a stranger to him, but he answered my questions while he was scurrying about. Which was all I could want.

I asked why he would go to all the trouble of competing in Newton less than 24 hours after he had won a king's ransom on stock car racing's biggest circuit. He was under contract to his Nationwide Series team to do so, but still.

'Are you kidding me?' Edwards replied. 'Just go to a local racetrack and ask one of those guys what they would give just to be able to race in one of these races. It would probably include some fingers and a firstborn child. I grew up dreaming about being able to race like this.'

The last thing he told me was 'It was an awesome weekend. This is as good as it gets.'

That was my one and only meeting with Edwards. I couldn't tell you a thing about him as a person other than he was cooperative to a stranger in a moment in which he easily could have declined and wouldn't have been faulted for doing so.

Does that mean anything? I'd like to think so, but I have no idea.

This week, Edwards surprisingly announced his retirement from full-time racing at age 37 with 28 Cup Series (the biggest circuit) victories and a lot more money to be made.

'I can stand here healthy,' Edwards said. '… that's a true testament to NASCAR, to the tracks, to the people who've built my race cars, to the competitors and to the drivers who have come before me who haven't been so fortunate.

'Having said that though, it's a risky sport. I'm aware of the risks. I don't like how it feels to take the hits that we take, and I'm a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in 30 years.'

How do you get from running yourself ragged to get to Iowa for a race in 2011 to being the man with a wife and two kids who feels the best choice in his life is to take himself out of harm's way in 2017?

Life happens, things change. Isn't that much more interesting than the sports themselves?

Aren't the people usually more interesting than their sports?