Driving the Lamborghini Aventador Roadster, with an astronaut at the wheel

Car enthusiasts are basically adrenaline junkies. It is an addiction shared by all who love to feel their heart racing with excitement, whether it’s going fast on land, in the air, or even into space. And that is where my good friend NASA Astronaut Drew Feustel and I have in common: passion for cars and speed.

When Drew called to say he was visiting, I thought about what I could do to top his already-amazing adventures in space — twice part of NASA's Space Shuttle crew, once on the Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope, and the second on the last Endeavour flight in 2011. (He was the lead guy doing the space walk that “rebuilt” the telescope.) Instead of traveling aboard the 17,000-mph Space Shuttle, I asked Lamborghini for an Aventador Roadster to shuttle Drew around town for his official duties.

Our Aventador rocket ride for the weekend was dressed in spectacular metallic light blue that shimmers under the sunlight. Inside, the black instrument panel contrasts the beige handcrafted Italian leather. Picking up Drew Saturday morning at his hotel, he comments, “I liked it from the moment I saw it.” Unlike the usual sinister all-black, or even the flashier bright orange usually seen on a Lamborghini, our exotic roadster shows off the car’s bold styling lines with confidence without over-advertising it.

Often a convertible looks great in open-top, but turns into something awkward in closed form. Not so in the Lamborghini Aventador Roaster. The two-piece carbon-fiber top caps the car nicely, and doesn't detract from its overall styling. To take the lightweight hard shell off, simply unlock a few latches and store them inside the trunk underneath the hood upfront. One gripe: don’t look to take this car on long road trips as the hardtop takes all of the trunk space but room for maybe a baseball cap and a pair of shoes. And that’s it.