Decide Quotations | Page 10

We had been thinking about (retiring) for a few years, and this year we decided to take advantage of the early-retirement package and go ahead. We're excited, but I'm sure I'll have some melancholy times in the coming months. This district has a way of getting in your blood.

We had been in touch with them, and it looked like in April 2003 it was going to be sold. It happened a few times. We finally decided we can't continue to wait until it gets sold.

We had become friends, and when Stew died I told Chris that if he decided to run I would manage his campaign.

We had a vibration with the car after the second practice today. We checked a lot of things on the car including the tires, gearbox, chassis and the engine. Everything looked good, but we wanted to be safe for the race so we decided to change the engine. That way we are ready for warm-up and the race. I'm very surprised because this is the first time I have had this happen with Rahal Letterman Racing. We can work out some more things in warm-up and the car will be set to go. The car felt very good in traffic in the practice. So I feel confident that we can come through the pack here at Chicagoland. Some other tracks you couldn't do, that but here it is possible.

When I had photographed Prince William's mother, I brought along a CD of Dalida, a French singer, that we played on set all day to relax everyone. I decided to do the same thing for Catherine and William. The contrast of the contemporary informal music playing in the beautiful rooms with so much history caused a lot of laughter.

What this amounts to is they decided to pay $1 million and not add three years to his contract, so this is his last year. At the end of this year, Steve will be a free agent.

What they're really looking at is the long-term implications of this. In the past, there was a decidedly short-term mentality, and basically what (GM) would say is we'll settle so we can meet our quarterly profit projections. That's different today. The financial community is concerned about the short-term return?but what they're focused on is the long-term profitability.

Whenever someone goes down, somebody needs to step up. I'm aware things will change a hundred times between now and the regular season. I'm going to continue to work hard and wherever they decide to play me is fine by me.

When we began this process, we decided that we wanted to be a primarily private-sector-funded convention, and to limit the resources and finances from the city.

When we approached our next sessions in my house, we decided to completely go for things we couldn't even perform live. We went for a studio approach, really layering and cutting things down.