I did an early flight out of Reagan with some co-workers to visit with Dr. Joe Coughlin of the MIT AgeLab. I see Joe in our offices once in a while, but I've never worked out a visit to his place in three years of visits to Cambridge.

As part of an overall lab update and tour, we got to kick the tires on the million-dollar Driver Aware Volvo (pictured here outdoors). The instrumentation-filled car has been in the works for two years and they've been using it in tests since late spring.

The red VW bug in Joe's lab (which isn't near a loading dock) was smuggled into the lab late one night up an elevator shaft.

The meeting got done early, so we made it on a US Air Shuttle two hours ahead of schedule.

- mike lee - washington, dc