My real name is Bill Zahren and I'm a freelance writer who has a wife (since 1985!), two teenage daughters (which means I have several cases of antacid and a loaded shotgun in the house at all times) a dog named Chester.
I'm a fifth-generation Iowan and native of tony Lake Park, Iowa, on the banks of scenic Silver Lake. Population 1,000 when you loop in the pets. We currently live in West Des Moines, IA, a suburb of the Iowa state capital, Des Moines.
I grew up watching sprint car races at Jackson Speedway in Jackson, MN. I used to listen to the Indy 500 live on the radio and then watch it taped delay with my father. Rick Mears was (is) like a God to me.
I drifted away from Indy Car racing for a long time until Sarah Fisher showed up and got second at Miami. Her performance (along with the arrival of my two daughters which made me interested in females bucking male-dominated worlds) got my attention back to the series.
Now I attend a few races per year, depending on the financial situation. My real job is a self-employed marketing communications writer. I can bring the heat.
The name presssdog was my very first AOL screen name back in the 2800-baud days. I was a newspaper reporter then and it seemed appropriate. I've operated pressdog.com in some form since 1996-ish. First it was a site for just funny stories in general. The current version of pressdog.com is a credit to my buddy Lou Ann Baker who was Sarah's PR queen for several years. She encouraged my note-taking fetish and suggested I create a site. Add Lou Ann's suggestion to the rise of easy-to-use blog sites and bam, race-related pressdog.com was born. Today pressdog® is a registered trademark owned by me.
The entire goal of pressdog.com is to inject some levity and fun into racing. Too many people get all bunched up and freaked out about sports in general. We're not talking about trying to cure cancer here, people. Sports are supposed to be fun and people laugh when they are having fun. I'm also about representing the point of view of the people in sports organizations who matter most -- the fans.
So it's all about laughs. Hope you have a few on my site.
