856 lines
42 KiB
Markdown
856 lines
42 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2013-08-03T20:23:56.000Z'
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title: The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory (2007)
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url: http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun
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author: nsp
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points: 92
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 72
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1375561436
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_nsp
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- story_6153244
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objectID: '6153244'
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year: 2007
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---
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**And so the clock starts and the taillights flare, and they’re off
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again, strapped** down, fueled up, and bound on an outlaw enterprise
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with 2,795 miles of interstate and some 31,000 highway cops between them
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and the all-time speed record for crossing the American continent on
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four wheels.
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The gear is all bought and loaded. Twenty packs of Nat Sherman Classic
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Light cigarettes, check. Breath mints, check. Glucose and guarana,
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Visine and riboflavin, Gatorade and Red Bull, mail-order porta-pissoir
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bags of quick-hardening gel, check.
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Randolph highway patrol sunglasses, 20-gallon reserve fuel tank, Tasco 8
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x 40 binoculars fitted with a Kenyon KS-2 gyro stabilizer, military spec
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Steiner 7 x 50 binoculars, Hummer H1-style bumper-mounted L-3 Raytheon
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NightDriver thermal camera and LCD dashboard screens,
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front-and-rear-mounted sensors for a Valentine One radar/laser detector,
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flush bumper-mount Blinder M40 laser jammers, redundant Garmin
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StreetPilot 2650 GPS units, preprogrammed Uniden police radio scanners,
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ceiling-mount Uniden CB radio with high-gain whip antenna. Check. Check.
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Check.
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At the moment, the driver and copilot of this E39 BMW M5 are illegal in
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intent only as they obediently cow along the tip of Manhattan, funnel
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into the Holland Tunnel, and spill out into New Jersey along a six-lane
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mash-and-merge. The speedometer reads a cool 60 miles per hour; the
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clock reads 9:12 pm.
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“Unacceptable,” Alex Roy says. The 35-year-old driver is addressing both
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the numbers and himself. Then, after 20 sickening minutes in
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construction traffic, Roy says it to the darkened highway, pushing up
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over 110 mph while his copilot squints along the scabbed blacktop for
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the deer that might end their lives and the policemen who might kill
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their trip.
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The quest itself — to cross from New York to Los Angeles with
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unthinkable brevity — is a drive, yes, in the same way that the moon
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shot was a flight. This is an engineered operation that has been
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financed, scenarioed, calculated, technologically outfitted, and (via
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digital video and triangulated time-stamped texting and GPS verification
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and support teams on both coasts) will be monitored and recorded (for
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proof, posterity, and a documentary film).
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Rain Driving – Video: Courtesy Gravid Films
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For nearly two years, Roy — a pale, shaved-headed, independently wealthy
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ectomorphic veteran of the Gumball 3000 road rally — has obsessed
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sleeplessly over every detail and thrown money at every possible
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electronic connivance. His mission is intended as a triumph of the mind
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over the base adrenal impulses of common speeders. His route is nothing
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like the careless line a spring-breaker might plot across a Rand McNally
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— it’s a painstakingly GPS-mapped and Google Earth-practiced manifest
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desti-document, waypointed mile by mile for detours, construction, and
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speed traps.
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White lines scroll through the windshield and mile markers tick past the
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tires as Roy flips a series of toggles on the center console, killing
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the brake lights (to prevent telltale flashes if he needs to slow for
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sudden radar), then flips a few more to illuminate the cockpit with
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night-vision-friendly red LEDs. The cockpit glows like a submarine at
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battle stations. Now Roy punches up the digital codes corresponding to
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the New Jersey State Police on the police scanner. The car fills with
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the coded squawk of emergency dispatchers, speeding motorcycles, and
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domestic quarrels.
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“OK, scanner is live,” Roy says. He hits another switch under the dash
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and a light goes green on his steering wheel display. It means that the
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vehicle is now traveling in a sort of force field of infrared light, a
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bubble that deforms the bandwidth of incoming police laser spotters.
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“Jammers are active,” Roy says. “Now let’s have the radar.”
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Roy’s current copilot, an English racer named Henry Fyshe, reaches under
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the seat and pulls out the Valentine One. He plugs it into the bank of
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fused circuits snaking from the car’s power supply and flips the switch,
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and now another instrument joins the cacophony. The Valentine picks up
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incoming radar: mostly the X and K bandwidths. The bleeps of X-band are
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usually just junk picked up from motion detectors and burglar alarms and
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the shipping docks of Port Elizabeth to the south. But the occasional
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croaking blaaat\! means K-band — and almost certainly a police trigger
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gun hitting
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home.
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The combination of bleep\! bleep\! blaat\! bleep\! is chaos pinpricked
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with information. Listening, sorting, interpreting — it’s all
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exhausting. Then Roy reaches overhead and flips on the CB, adding an
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overlay of truck-driver patois: twangy talk of big-boobie women and
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fishing and traffic on the I-78.
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“Fascinating,” Fyshe says. Compared with the thick southern drawl coming
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from the speaker, his polished Oxbridge English sounds as refined as
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drawing room French.
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“OK, CB is active,” Roy says above the noise. “Now check the thermals,
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please, Mr. Fyshe. We need to start banking time.”
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There’s something very Captain Jean-Luc Picard about Roy. Maybe it’s the
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top-gun lingo and ramrod driving posture. Maybe it’s his bald, ovoid
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skull or his habit of wearing faux-military uniforms during races. Or
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maybe it’s because Roy is actually in command of his very own road-bound
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USS Enterprise. Captain Roy is determined to boldly go faster than any
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man has gone before.
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Roy is attempting to break a legendary cross-country driving record
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known to most people as the Cannonball Run. The time: 32 hours, 7
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minutes, set in 1983 by David Diem and Doug Turner. Captain Roy’s quest
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is definitely illegal and quite possibly impossible. He is one of the
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few drivers wealthy and geeky and foolish enough to try it anyway. So
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far he’s tried and failed twice, but he’s still convinced that his
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careful calculations will allow him to beat the record.
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At the core of his plan are his beloved spreadsheets. Roy, with help
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from a car-crazy former New Jersey transportation department employee
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named J. F. Musial, has spent months loading Excel documents with the
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coordinates of all-night gas stations and open stretches of highway and
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weather projections — hundreds of data points arranged on an x-y axis,
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so that any deviation can be recalculated on the
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fly.
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Photos: Courtesy Gravid Films
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The resulting document is as thick as a stock prospectus — and just as
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unreadable, particularly if you’re driving in the dark at 50 mph over
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the speed limit. But the security blanket of overclocked data calms Roy.
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It’s his hedge against all the uncertainty and risk — of vehicular
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homicide, of jail time, of failure. Racing across the country is a
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foolish and dangerous and ill-advised dream, and Roy knows it.
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But after more than a year of bitter experience, Roy has discovered that
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even an Enterprise‘s worth of Excel spreadsheets can’t control the
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weather or the traffic or the deer or the possibility of mechanical
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failure. Or the police — especially the police.
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So far his failed attempts to beat the record have cost Roy a lot of
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time and money, at least one girlfriend, and even his original, trusted
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copilot. Instead of glory, Roy’s cross-country trips have brought him a
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mechanical breakdown, a police investigation, multiple radio alerts, and
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one arrest. And with each setback, Roy risks blowing the secrecy of his
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quest and putting the brakes on forever. He is quickly running out of
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chances to drive his dream. If he’s going to beat 32:07, he’d better do
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it soon.
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He’s hoping Fyshe is the right partner. Like Roy, Fyshe is wealthy and
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single and an excellent driver. Unfortunately, he’s also far more
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experienced steering his immaculate 1954 OSCA MT4 Maserati through
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Italy’s Mille Miglia endurance race than dodging minivans along
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Jersey’s I-78. Roy is stuck in the middle of a criminal automotive
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enterprise with a copilot who can’t spot an American cop.
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“OK,” Roy says. “Now, see that?”
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Fyshe frowns and peers through the windshield at a dark American town
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car.
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“That’s never a cop,” Roy says. “Just a taxi.”
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Fyshe nods, intrigued. “I see,” he says.
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“Now, see that?” Roy points out a yellow cab, just visible in the
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distance. “The taxi? That’s the type of car.”
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“It’s a taxi?” Fyshe asks.
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“Yes, it’s a taxi,” Roy says. “But in a dark color, that can be an
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unmarked cop.”
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“How can you tell the difference?” Fyshe asks.
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“You just have to,” Roy says.
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“I see,” Fyshe says. But he doesn’t, not really.
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Roy gives it the gas, easing up toward 90 mph, passing two trucks,
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flashing by a Corvette in the slow lane, and pushing up a hill at 93.
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“Ramp check?”
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Fyshe glances reflexively to the right and studies the cars pouring down
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the entrance ramp, looking for lights on top. “Clear.”
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“Now, see that overpass ahead?” At 100 mph now, it’s approaching fast.
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“Check the thermals.”
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Fyshe checks the dash, where the bumper-mounted night-vision camera
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feeds a thermal image to a 7-inch dashboard display. The traffic ahead
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glows in the darkness like the Predator.
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“If a cop is idling around one of those columns, he’ll have his engine
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on and show up as heat,” Roy says. “Unless there’s a concrete barrier
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that shields him. Check the sheet.”
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Roy feels into the side pocket and hands Fyshe a series of color-coded
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sheets. “Barriers — yes, except where marked by DOT signs,” Fyshe reads.
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“It also says the limit is 65 mph here,” Fyshe says. “What are we now?”
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“Ninety-eight.”
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“Jolly good,” Fyshe says, delighted. “But what if there’s a policeman on
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top of one of those bridges?”
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“It’s an overpass,” Roy says. “And there won’t be.”
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“Cameras?”
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“Nope,” Roy says. “The plate covers reflect flash anyway.”
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“In Europe, there are cameras everywhere,” Fyshe says thoughtfully. “The
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police see everything.” He watches the white lines blur into a
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continuous streak, lost in the Wild West of central Jersey.
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The highway crosses the state in an undulating sine wave. At each new
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rise, Fyshe scans the thermals ahead and glances behind to the ramp
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before Roy punches the clear valley at 100 mph, bringing the trip
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average up to 82.3 mph. This is the Jersey nobody ever thinks of —
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empty, three lanes, no traffic or stores or malls — so when K-band
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suddenly croaks on the scanner, Roy knows it’s no false alarm.
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“Where are you?” he mutters. A red arrow glows on his steering column,
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meaning radar from ahead.
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“If he’s behind us and not in sight, hit the gas,” he tells Fyshe. “If
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he’s ahead, ease off until you establish position.”
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Roy crests the hill, eases off the gas, and takes the right lane. He’s
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just a law-abiding citizen now. Standard police protocol is for a
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cruiser to lie at the side of the road just over the crest of a hill,
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exactly when drivers have their foot on the gas and no view ahead. By
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taking the right lane, a speeder approaches a radar gun with the
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sharpest parallax angle — the least accurate for getting a clean read.
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“I don’t see him,” Roy says. “I’ll take this hill easy and — “
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Blaaat\! goes the scanner. Blatt\! Blaat\! Sure enough, the downhill is
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lit by the strobing rack lights of a New Jersey state trooper, ringing
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up some poor schmuck in a minivan.
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“Now that’s a cop,” Roy says. He hits a button on the GPS unit’s
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touchscreen, adding yet more data — the location of this speed trap —
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before confidently stepping back on the
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gas.
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Photos: Courtesy Gravid Films
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Going cross-country fast is not rocket science, but in Roy’s world it
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does require a lot of basic math. To beat the record, Roy has calculated
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that he needs to maintain an average of almost exactly 90 mph from
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Manhattan to the Santa Monica Pier. For occasional spurts, 90 is not
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uncommon on the highway. But for a day and a half of barreling across
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the United States, 90 miles per hour is essentially insane.
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As a Cannonballer makes his way across the continent, the accumulation
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of his time and speed forms a rising and falling curve called a running
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average. For every second spent below his 90-mph target, Roy will need
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to compensate by investing a second going faster than that average.
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Which is why Roy doesn’t want to stop. Every second spent at 0 mph is a
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second he can never recover — even with his BMW’s factory-set 155-mph
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limiter replaced with a Powerchip ECU engine chip. Unfortunately for
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Roy, no matter how carefully he keeps to his fuel-efficiency regimen or
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how large his spare fuel tank, he will need to pull over and gas up at
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least five times.
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Then there’s the weather — projected to be nasty from Indianapolis to
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St. Louis, at least — and the reality that every 12 hours the rest of
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America will pack into their PT Cruisers and steer directly onto Roy’s
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racetrack. The only way Roy and his copilot can even hope to average 90
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mph is to plan (Roy has, fanatically), pray (a friend petitioned a
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Taoist spiritual master for them), and, wherever possible, stomp the
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throttle (they are).
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The trip has just begun, but Roy is already in trouble. There’s a closed
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gas station he hadn’t foreseen, and that surprise construction in New
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Jersey — not to mention a green copilot unfamiliar with American cop
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customs. Each small deviation from the plan ripples through the rest of
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the spreadsheet. His calculations are already starting to crumble, and
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Roy’s 72 mph cumulative average is pathetically low. He needs to put
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time in the bank.
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He grabs the CB mic. “Breaker breaker, I need a bear check, over,” he
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calls.
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“Yeah, you’re clear on the 78 all the way to the Buckeye,” comes the
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voice, and Roy punches it, hitting 130 along a black stretch of road as
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the topography becomes hillier, the trees leafier. He’s brought the
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average up to 78.4 by 1 am and 80 by 2 am when the BMW barrels through a
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tunnel and flicks across trestle bridges into Ohio — the most famously
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perilous state for speeders.
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“Switch the scanner frequencies immediately\!” Roy says, and sure enough
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the CB starts crackling with word of Smokies rolling westbound, then two
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more in the hammer lane, one with a package, another in a plain brown
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wrapper, now trailing just a half a mile marker behind Roy. Only
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unreasonable speed can put distance between them, so Roy takes the CB
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mic. “Breaker breaker, can I get a bear check?” he calls again.
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“Bear check? That something they teach you in trucker school?” comes the
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answer.
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It’s nearly 4 am. Roy gasses through Columbus, then Springfield. The
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billboards snap past the windows like the pages in a flip book. By 4:30,
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the speedometer shows a steady 102 mph, but the overall average is only
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82. It’s far too slow to break the record. At this point, it’s
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impossible to bring it back up.
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“I’m calling it,” Roy sighs, “that’s it.” And so, at 4:20 in the
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morning, some 70 miles shy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Roy puts
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his turn signal on like some average commuter and once again stops,
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2,160 miles short of his dream.
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**Alex Roy’s Cannonball dreams** started with a movie, but it didn’t
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star Burt Reynolds. At the time, the 27-year-old Roy was living in New
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York after his father had called him back from Paris, where Roy had been
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working part-time at a bar and trying to write the Great American Novel
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— set, arbitrarily, in Japan. His father was in the hospital, sick
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with throat cancer, and Roy had traded in his life as an artiste to
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manage the family business, a rental agency called Europe By Car. The
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young heir was at sea, fresh from an unsuccessful attempt to forge his
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own identity and sitting in a trendy Soho bar-cum-theater called Void.
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And then the lights went down, and Roy saw the future.
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Alex Roy’s Cannonball dreams started with a movie, but it didn’t star
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Burt Reynolds. The film was C’était un Rendez-vous. Made in 1976, it’s a
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dashing precursor to every Jackass-inspired digicam stunt ever posted on
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YouTube — nine heart-pounding minutes choreographed to a screaming
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drivetrain. Through a bumper-mounted camera, the viewer becomes the car
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— traveling more than 80 mph as the anonymous driver revs into the
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enormous traffic circle around Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, steers
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hammer-down from the Champs Élysées to Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre
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(through 16 red lights, wrong-way one-ways, stunned pedestrians, garbage
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trucks, and median strips) to meet up with a beautiful blonde waiting
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patiently in the park at the Montmartre church.
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The film was [C’était un
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Rendez-vous](http://archive.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/multimedia/2007/10/vd_cannonball_rd).
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Made in 1976, it’s a dashing precursor to every Jackass-inspired digicam
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stunt ever posted on YouTube — nine heart-pounding minutes choreographed
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to a screaming drivetrain. Through a bumper-mounted camera, the viewer
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becomes the car — traveling more than 80 mph as the anonymous driver
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revs into the enormous traffic circle around Paris’ Arc de Triomphe,
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steers hammer-down from the Champs Élysées to Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre
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(through 16 red lights, wrong-way one-ways, stunned pedestrians, garbage
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trucks, and median strips) to meet up with a beautiful blonde waiting
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patiently in the park at the Montmartre church.
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Roy left Void in a state of dazed revelation. From a public-safety
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perspective, he says, he knew Rendez-vous was just short of “a snuff
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film on wheels.” But it was also the single coolest thing he’d ever
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seen.
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The film’s unmasked director and driver, Claude Lelouch, eventually
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achieved immortal fame and respect on the Internet, fueled in part by
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old reports that Lelouch had been arrested after the film’s first
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screening. Standing in a bar on a summer’s night, a life as a feckless
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novelist behind him, another of trying to fill his father’s wing tips
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ahead of him, Roy began to wonder: Could he make his own Rendez-vous —
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in New York? Could he be the great driver, mastering the city and
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meeting the blonde?
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He approached the question with a formula he’d repeat throughout his
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driving career. First he obsessed, talking ad nauseam about Lelouch’s
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film to anyone who would listen. Then he drove his route repeatedly in
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his Audi S4, meticulously recording potholes and potential speed traps,
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then studying the lists on color-coded cheat sheet. He planned to
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recruit close friends from his Manhattan private high school days to
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impersonate orange-vested traffic police to block traffic on race day.
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The original idea was to make a full lap of Manhattan (skipping the most
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northerly and heavily policed sections of the city) in 25 minutes. This
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meant running dozens of red lights at absurd speeds and left little time
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to react to sudden contingencies like pedestrians. The stunt was
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dangerous and illegal, its success dependent on secrecy. But Roy has no
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talent for keeping secrets, particularly about his daring. (He was, in
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fact, using most of the recon runs to impress women.) By the end of the
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year, dozens of people knew about Roy’s plan to Rendez-vous Manhattan.
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But while outlaw street racing may sound romantic, the reality of a
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29-year-old with no experience skidding through the most populous urban
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center in America is terrifying, not to mention feloniously stupid. Even
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Roy’s girlfriend refused to play her part of meeting him at the finish
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line. The idea of actually having to follow through with his big plans
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started keeping Roy up at night; but the humiliating prospect of backing
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down was just as bad.
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In the end, Roy never attempted the 25-minute Manhattan Rendez-vous. But
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he claims to have raced a 27-minute “practice run.” He proudly estimates
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that he hit top speeds of 144 mph while committing 151 moving violations
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— enough to have his New York driver’s license suspended 78 times over.
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And afterward, Roy says, “I never felt better.” He had missed his goal,
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but found his identity. Roy wanted to be known as an outlaw driver.
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**The fastest way to his new goal** was to enter a road rally inspired
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by yet another movie — the 1976 cult classic The Gumball Rally. The film
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depicted a madcap outlaw road race; its real-life version is a
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3,000-mile celebrity-and-socialite-studded international road rampage
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first organized in Europe in 1999. There are no qualifying events, and
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no experience is required. Entrants need both flash (tricked-out
|
||
Bentleys, Porsches, and Lamborghinis encouraged) and cash (28,000 pounds
|
||
sterling — about $56,425 — for the 2007 rally), as well as the ability
|
||
to keep a straight face while agreeing to a code of conduct that
|
||
explicitly prohibits breaking any laws — including the speed limit. But
|
||
while most Gumballers are rich young men paying for 3,000 miles of
|
||
silicon-bimbo’d pit stops and Vegas-weekend-style bad-boy hoo-ha, Roy
|
||
was one of the few actually racing to win.
|
||
|
||
He impressed the 2003 Gumball entry committee by topping the already
|
||
well-represented freak factor: He wore a pastiche of authentic
|
||
international police outfits and drove a rare E39 BMW M5 he claimed was
|
||
used by the elite German “Autobaun Interceptor Unit,” complete with
|
||
police sirens and stickers. Roy’s “Polizei 144” shtick added yet another
|
||
layer of slapstick to the Gumball’s air of a movie-come-to-life. Roy
|
||
established a reputation as a fun-loving clown who also happened to be a
|
||
fast, safe driver. He was an instant hit with race fans. His Web site
|
||
attracted a small but faithful following that bought $500 Polizei 144
|
||
racing jackets and downloaded clips from his “Spirit of the Gumball”
|
||
trophy win in the 2003 run, held in the US.
|
||
|
||
Daylight Cruising
|
||
|
||
Video: Courtesy Gravid Films
|
||
|
||
Most of the comments on his site were typical rock-on fan blurts, but
|
||
one was a challenge to “check out the real deal.” Roy followed a Web
|
||
link and, stunned, met his newest dream.
|
||
|
||
Once again, it was a movie — this time a trailer for a
|
||
documentary-in-progress titled [32 Hours 7
|
||
Minutes](http://www.32hours7minutes.com/), covering the transcontinental
|
||
racing record set by Diem and Turner. Here was an automotive stunt that
|
||
had remained unequaled for almost 22 years. Anyone who topped it would
|
||
be guaranteed fame and street cred; for Roy, this was Rendez-vous déjá
|
||
vu. He immediately called the filmmaker, a diminutive speed fanatic
|
||
named Cory Welles. Roy had the funding — and the perfect ending for her
|
||
movie.
|
||
|
||
**Most people remember** The Cannonball Run as a campy ’80s road comedy
|
||
featuring, among others, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise, and Farrah Fawcett.
|
||
But to gearheads, the Cannonball Run is the original outlaw
|
||
cross-country road race, organized by legendary Car and Driver writer
|
||
Brock Yates. Entrants drove everything from cheap beaters to high-priced
|
||
tweakers, but all had an appetite for white lines, black tar, and speed.
|
||
|
||
Officially known as the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial
|
||
Trophy Dash (and later as the US Express race) the race set the standard
|
||
for outlaw driving. This was uniquely American car culture — free and
|
||
fun and fast. And nobody was faster than Diem and Turner, who hammered
|
||
their 308 Ferrari from a garage on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to
|
||
Newport Beach, California, in an unthinkable 32 hours and 7 minutes.
|
||
|
||
According to Yates and his fellow Cannonballers, trying to beat that
|
||
record today is pointless. Their argument goes something like this:
|
||
Cannonball records were set back when the free-wheelin’ ’70s hooked up
|
||
with the greed-is-good ’80s for fat lines of cocaine and unprotected
|
||
sex. But these, brother, are Patriot Act days — executive-privilege end
|
||
times in which no rogue deed goes untracked, no E-ZPass unlogged, no
|
||
roaming cell phone unmonitored by perihelion satellite. Big Brother is
|
||
definitely watching. Big Speed, the old Cannonballers say, is a quaint,
|
||
20th-century idea, like pay phones or print magazines.
|
||
|
||
But nobody had telexed Roy or his new filmmaker pal, Welles, the memo on
|
||
this one. Once again, Roy put his formula in motion. First, he planned
|
||
for weeks. Then, with his high school friend Jon Goodrich as copilot and
|
||
cameraman James Petersmeyer tucked in the backseat, Roy left Manhattan’s
|
||
Classic Car Club on December 16, 2005, and drove west, fast. They
|
||
arrived at the Santa Monica Pier in California bleary-eyed, exhausted,
|
||
and frightened — and two hours and 39 minutes shy of the record.
|
||
|
||
Roy and Goodrich flew back to New York to revamp their calculations and
|
||
tried again on April 1, 2006. They were zeroing in on the 32:07 space
|
||
shot — until the car broke down in Oklahoma. Roy was devastated. He
|
||
immediately began planning another run.
|
||
|
||
But this time, Roy returned to his calculations by himself. Two hairy
|
||
cross-country runs had been more than enough for Goodrich, and he simply
|
||
wasn’t willing to continue risking life, limb, and liberty for another
|
||
man’s dream. By now, though, replacing his copilot was the least of
|
||
Roy’s Cannonball problems. Despite the nondisclosure agreements, word
|
||
was getting around. Back in September 2005, Roy’s bearded and bullying
|
||
Gumball 3000 frenemy, Richard Rawlings, had bet him $25,000 on a
|
||
cross-country race — and another $25,000 that Rawlings would do it in
|
||
less than 25 hours.
|
||
|
||
Roy refused the challenge, but it clearly meant time was running out.
|
||
Sooner or later, somebody was going to try to break that record. If they
|
||
succeeded, went on Leno, stole the glory — that would be bad for Roy.
|
||
But if they got caught trying, that was even worse. Roy was sure that
|
||
the police would then crack down, and the window of opportunity for his
|
||
cross-country sneak would slam shut forever.
|
||
|
||
In fact, that window was closing already. After so many high-speed
|
||
cross-country runs, Roy wasn’t famous — but his antics were. He was
|
||
already well remembered in Arizona, where he’d been arrested for
|
||
speeding during a 2004 rally called the Bullrun wearing jackboots,
|
||
German police togs, and a regulation leather police belt with handcuffs.
|
||
(The concerned police psychiatrist asked Roy, “Do you know what year
|
||
this is?”) Ohio presented another problem. While running nearly 120 mph
|
||
in a 55 zone on the return trip from the aborted Cannonball run with the
|
||
English copilot, he’d been hit with radar by a westbound state trooper,
|
||
leading to a tense, 20-minute Smokey-Bandit chase deep into farm
|
||
country. Roy managed to escape, but the Ohio state patrol would be
|
||
unlikely to forget the blue BMW loaded with weird antennas.
|
||
|
||
Roy faced similar problems in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. On the April
|
||
2006 trip, Pennsylvania police dispatch reported a BMW without
|
||
taillights speeding down the interstate. Then, waiting in the airport
|
||
after the Oklahoma breakdown, Roy made the mistake of running his mouth
|
||
off on a cell phone. The traveler in line behind him couldn’t help
|
||
noticing the strange bald man and overhearing words like night vision,
|
||
escape, cops, and spotter plane. He called in a potential homeland
|
||
security threat.
|
||
|
||
Roy eventually made it home, but Oklahoma authorities tracked his car to
|
||
the local BMW dealership. The cops impounded the vehicle — still loaded
|
||
with GPS units documenting his street racing — for three days while they
|
||
investigated Roy.
|
||
|
||
“Needless to say, my attorney wasn’t pleased,” Roy says. “Actually, I
|
||
think stupid was the word he used.”
|
||
|
||
By fall 2006, the run-ins had reached critical mass. Before long, Roy
|
||
feared, state authorities would connect the dots and shut him down for
|
||
good. Within a month, winter snow might kill his time, and spring might
|
||
be too late. If Roy was going to break the record, it was now or never.
|
||
But first, he needed a new
|
||
copilot.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**It’s a typically rainy September** evening, only nine days before his
|
||
next scheduled departure, and Roy is bug-eyed, chain-smoking and pacing
|
||
the length of his 2,571-square-foot bachelor pad in Manhattan’s Cooper
|
||
Square while his race team waits on his L-shaped couch, drinking his
|
||
liquor and watching Battlestar Galactica on a massive projector screen.
|
||
Each surround-sound kinetic energy weapon rattles ice in the drinks.
|
||
|
||
Roy checks his watch and then his desk, where three GPS units and four
|
||
computer screens each display the time. Standing with his hands on his
|
||
hips in front of the rotating world-map screensaver, he looks less like
|
||
Captain Picard and more like a chain-smoking Lex Luthor.
|
||
|
||
“It’s not like him to be late,” he says. “What if he’s incapacitated or
|
||
dead?”
|
||
|
||
In choosing a new copilot, Roy considered lots of drivers (including
|
||
me), before finally settling on a straitlaced 32-year-old finance-sector
|
||
type named Dave Maher. From the first meeting, it was obvious that Maher
|
||
and Roy would make a particularly odd couple. Roy is a fast-talking
|
||
geek, as dead-eyed serious about the patches he Velcros onto his race
|
||
uniforms as a Star Trek reenacter is about having the right blades on
|
||
his Klingon battle d’k’tagh. Maher is quiet and has never watched
|
||
Battlestar Galactica. He likes sports involving inflatable balls and has
|
||
a penchant for red wine and amateur track club events for his 1996
|
||
Porsche 911 Turbo.
|
||
|
||
But both of them wanted to go fast, and something that Maher mentioned
|
||
when they talked about the cross-country attempt struck a chord deep
|
||
within Roy: a need to have something “that money couldn’t buy.” Maher
|
||
had the job, and the odd couple became a team.
|
||
|
||
Roy wears his phone on his belt like Batman or a paper-products
|
||
salesman, and now it begins to vibrate. He snaps it to his ear. “We’re
|
||
all here waiting,” he says to the doorman. “Yes, send him up.”
|
||
|
||
Maher arrives in a suit and tie, a bottle of excellent wine in hand,
|
||
ready for a civilized party. Instead, Roy hands him his latest
|
||
timetable. It is the product of 150 hours of work, a whopper version of
|
||
all previous calculations. Roy has titled it “31:39 Driveplan .9d
|
||
(Merciless Assault Reprisal -11).”
|
||
|
||
He hands the stack to Maher, who flips through the pages. The copilot
|
||
looks like a kid on the first day of summer facing a pile of required
|
||
reading.
|
||
|
||
“Ultimately, this drive is a math calculation,” Roy says. Maher looks
|
||
blank. Roy points to a series of cells in the spreadsheet. Maher scans
|
||
it, then turns the page, searching. “See,” Roy says, “that’s the average
|
||
we’re looking to hit: 90.”
|
||
|
||
“I know this average,” Maher says quietly. He flips through more pages.
|
||
“I’m looking for the extended stretches of big speed, the long
|
||
stretches where we can really hit it and make time.”
|
||
|
||
Roy straightens. “Well, those don’t really exist,” he says. “You’ll see.
|
||
It’s very rare to run over 100 for even a minute or two… “
|
||
|
||
“Oh yeah?” Maher says smiling. “Well, I’m about to change that.”
|
||
|
||
Alex Roy discusses modifications to his BMW M5
|
||
|
||
Video: Courtesy Gravid Films
|
||
|
||
**And so, on the Friday before** Columbus Day weekend, the clock is
|
||
punched and the taillights flare and Roy once again rolls through the
|
||
Holland Tunnel and across New Jersey. They cross the empty tarmac of
|
||
Pennsylvania and into Ohio, gas up maniacally, and are back on the
|
||
highway with Maher now doing 120 through the most famously cop-heavy
|
||
state in the union. By Akron they’ve been driving all night, and the
|
||
trip is just beginning. More Red Bulls are popped, vitamins taken,
|
||
cigarettes lit, and then comes the sun, shockingly bright. Roy finds the
|
||
Visine, then trains his attention on the shaking landscape. This is a
|
||
criminal game of I Spy, using binoculars designed for battle — Steiners
|
||
with independently autofocusing lenses — but at Maher’s speed they just
|
||
beat uselessly against Roy’s eye sockets.
|
||
|
||
“You know, I just have a very hard time spotting like this,” Roy says.
|
||
|
||
“We have to bank time,” Maher says.
|
||
|
||
“It’s averaging 91.3 mph,” Roy says. “The projections say we’re good.”
|
||
|
||
“Your projections are conservative,” Maher says. His eyes never leave
|
||
the road. He looks strangely relaxed doing 130 mph. The radar is
|
||
exploding with undercover police, and yet he’s doubling the speed limit
|
||
for the sort of sustained periods that Roy knows are potentially fatal
|
||
to this quest.
|
||
|
||
“We need to go as fast as possible, every chance we get,” Maher says,
|
||
glancing at Roy. “Otherwise, we are definitely not going to make it.”
|
||
|
||
“OK,” Roy says. But he doesn’t mean it. Maher’s stomach for risk isn’t
|
||
found anywhere on Roy’s spreadsheets, and this is way outside his
|
||
comfort zone. “But I’m telling you, Dave, you get caught and — “
|
||
|
||
Now the radio explodes with a fresh voice. “Cowbell Ground, Cowbell
|
||
Ground, this is Cowbell Air, over.”
|
||
|
||
“Yes\!” Roy says. He grabs the mic. “Cowbell Air, this is Cowbell
|
||
Ground, go ahead.”
|
||
|
||
“We have a visual,” the voice from above says. This is Roy’s secret
|
||
weapon, a small Beechcraft twin-engine spotter plane piloted by Paul
|
||
Weismann, a high school friend, along with another pilot named Keith
|
||
Baskett. They’re scouting for cops, traffic, and construction during the
|
||
vulnerable daylight drive across the Midwest.
|
||
|
||
“How are we looking, over?” Roy asks.
|
||
|
||
“You’re looking very fast and very nice,” comes the voice from above.
|
||
“All clear, boys, put the hammer down.”
|
||
|
||
Maher pushes the car, passing even the gutsiest speeders at nearly
|
||
double speed. The white line is a ticking blur, the overpasses are
|
||
distant, then here, then gone, and Texas is just a flat fuzz in the
|
||
rearview. Near Oklahoma City, they stop for the Chinese fire drill of
|
||
piss, pump, and go, and now Roy takes the wheel again, gunning to fly.
|
||
The GPS says that even with gas stops, they’ve crossed half the country
|
||
at 93.6 mph.
|
||
|
||
The highway ahead is fairly open, but the left lane is not, and this
|
||
time, inspired by Maher’s driving or the average or both, Roy does what
|
||
he needs to do to keep the pace — passing one car on the right, pushing
|
||
inches from the bumper of a 16-wheeler, then cutting left again to take
|
||
the lane. And as if on cue, a female voice cuts in on the police
|
||
scanner. “Report of a blue BMW speeding, weaving in and out of traffic,
|
||
and driving recklessly. Be advised, unable to get tags… “
|
||
|
||
Scanner report in Oklahoma
|
||
|
||
Video: Courtesy Gravid Films
|
||
|
||
“That’s us\!” Maher says.
|
||
|
||
“Shit\!” Roy says.
|
||
|
||
He cuts the brake lights on the panel and slows to double digits.
|
||
|
||
“What do we do?”
|
||
|
||
“Well, we’re stuck in traffic.”
|
||
|
||
“Where do we hide?” Roy asks. The land is flat to the horizon.
|
||
|
||
“We don’t hide anywhere,” Maher says.
|
||
|
||
Blaaat\! Now the cockpit fills with the awful croak of K-band from a
|
||
dead-on police trigger radar. “God damn it, where is that guy?” Roy
|
||
mutters, then suddenly sees him — an SUV highway patrol car headed
|
||
eastbound, and no median between them.
|
||
|
||
“Oh my God, he’s braking\!” Roy shouts. “He’s crossing\! We have to get
|
||
to the next exit and hide.”
|
||
|
||
“I don’t know if we’re going to have a lot of room to hide out here,”
|
||
Maher says.
|
||
|
||
Roy glances back and forth, mirror to road and back again. Already, he’s
|
||
soaked through his shirt, his bald head raining sweat onto his
|
||
sunglasses. The exit is coming fast. “Should we get off?” he asks.
|
||
“Should we get off right now?”
|
||
|
||
The scanner again, a male voice: “Blue BMW on up ahead of me.”
|
||
|
||
Then another voice — a second car: “Dark-blue BMW, tinted windows —
|
||
looks like it has some antennas on it.”
|
||
|
||
“I’m going,” Roy says. He pulls up the exit ramp, taking the rise,
|
||
rolling the stop sign like a normal driver, nothing in his mirror yet,
|
||
then moves quickly to the right.
|
||
|
||
But this time, there’s no getting away. It’s farmland, flat forever —
|
||
North by Northwest, a house in the distance, animals. Roy pulls to the
|
||
side. He hops out of the car. He unzips his fly.
|
||
|
||
“I’ll tell him we had to piss,” he yells.
|
||
|
||
The male voice on the scanner again. “They’re ahead of me,” it says.
|
||
|
||
Roy looks. Nothing. “Hey\!” he says. “He thinks we’re still going\!”
|
||
|
||
Roy zips up and turns, and now he sees it: a black-and-white coming up
|
||
the ramp behind him. “Oh no,” he says. The car pauses at the top of the
|
||
ramp, then turns toward him. “Here he comes… “
|
||
|
||
Sitting in the passenger seat, Maher now looks around at the piles of
|
||
GPS units, the maps and plans and scanners, the squawking boxes. He’s
|
||
sitting in an electronic crime scene. “Maybe I should turn something
|
||
off?” he asks.
|
||
|
||
“Turn it off, turn it all off\!” Roy shouts. He reaches into the center
|
||
console to kill the main power just as the police car approaches. “What
|
||
the… ?”
|
||
|
||
It’s a black-and-white, all right: one of those ad-wrapped VW bugs with
|
||
a giant GEEK SQUAD sticker where the sheriff’s star might be. Suddenly,
|
||
the sweat on Roy’s head is cool and soothing.
|
||
|
||
“Maher,” Roy says, “how come you can drive like that for seven hours and
|
||
no one calls, and I do it for three minutes and then someone calls?”
|
||
|
||
“Because I’m Irish,” Maher says.
|
||
|
||
They’re off the highway for a total of two minutes. Even with the time
|
||
lost to a dead stop, their overall average on the GPS stands at 95.7 mph
|
||
— well above record pace. But there are storm clouds on the horizon,
|
||
which become hard rain by New Mexico. The traffic clots, and the smeared
|
||
windshield glows red with truck lights. With the darkness, the rain
|
||
becomes blinding, blunting the vision of the thermal cameras. They enter
|
||
Arizona in traffic, with a soul-killing 22 mph on the GPS and a forest
|
||
of lightning on the horizon.
|
||
|
||
Maher pounds the wheel in disbelief. “No\!” he shouts. “I’ve been
|
||
driving so hard… No\!” He cuts into the breakdown lane to make a
|
||
desperate run for it. Even an unsafe pass isn’t possible. “No\!” he
|
||
repeats.
|
||
|
||
Mile after mile, their hard-won average withers, and the adrenaline dies
|
||
with it. The rain is impossible. Maher is exhausted. “Maybe I’m seeing
|
||
stars,” Maher says.
|
||
|
||
“No, you’re seeing the real thing,” Roy says. The weather is clearing.
|
||
|
||
By Arizona, the pavement is dry. Maher gives it his last surge of
|
||
energy, climbing to 122 mph, 142, 160 before the gas light demands they
|
||
stop for fuel. It’s 12:03 am local time. They’ve been on the road for 29
|
||
hours and 27 minutes. The effort of this last sprint has pushed Maher to
|
||
the breaking point. He staggers from the car on failing legs. The Casio
|
||
counts the seconds as Roy plugs in the nozzle and stands, tweaked and
|
||
muttering in front of the mini-mart like a meth kid getting a Big Gulp.
|
||
|
||
“You’re done,” Roy says. He falls into the driver’s side and guns it
|
||
back onto the highway for the final 131-mile stretch from Barstow to the
|
||
Santa Monica Pier.
|
||
|
||
“I’m not sure that we’re going to make it now,” Maher says. His fingers
|
||
fumble with Roy’s projection chart, suddenly interested, but it’s an
|
||
unintelligible jumble of numbers. “You’ll have to be above 100 the whole
|
||
time, or we’ve driven a day and a half for nothing.”
|
||
|
||
“I’ve got it,” Roy says. He stares ahead like a machine. “Just watch the
|
||
road.”
|
||
|
||
**After 7,700 miles and three** attempts to cross the country at warp
|
||
speed, Captain Roy has experienced something like a Maher mindmeld. As
|
||
in any marathon, exhaustion and fear make quitting seem smart. You can
|
||
say you tried, blame the weather, and find a hotel. But breaking a
|
||
record — any record — takes something more, something personal. Right
|
||
now, it will take everything. There’s no room left for strategy. Roy
|
||
simply has to hit it hard.
|
||
|
||
The radar is crazy with bleep\! and blatt\!, the spreadsheets litter the
|
||
cockpit like dirty floor mats, but Roy hits it anyway. He doesn’t need
|
||
charts anymore. He is the chart, and Excel and Google Earth and Garmin
|
||
MapSource and something more, too, a guy with something to prove.
|
||
|
||
He passes a minivan in the carpool lane at 102 mph and merges onto
|
||
California’s I-10 headed into Los Angeles with blocks of lit towers to
|
||
the right and oncoming halogens kaleidoscoping his bleary corneas. But
|
||
Roy sees only the road ahead and the best path through it, the racing
|
||
line that shaves fat off the hips of the curves as he apexes them at 100
|
||
mph, now 117 past Crenshaw Boulevard, La Brea Avenue at 115. The curve
|
||
and acceleration is a physical sensation in the gut, and now the city is
|
||
10 miles out, now 8, and Maher says, “Cop\! No — taxi\!” while Roy hits
|
||
117 past Cloverfield Boulevard, peels off on the exit to a light gone
|
||
green, the next one green — one, two, three more — through the gate of
|
||
the Santa Monica Pier, where wooden planks rattle beneath the car.
|
||
[**1**](#correction1)
|
||
|
||
It feels weird to slow, crazy to stop, but it’s over. The car stops, but
|
||
the buzzing of speed and road in their heads does not. Maher finds the
|
||
door, and his legs, and jogs up under the empty lights of the big Ferris
|
||
wheel. It’s exactly 1:30 am. He punches their card into the time clock,
|
||
flown from New York, and gives the ticket to Roy.
|
||
|
||
And this, of course, is the end of Roy’s Cannonball run. There are
|
||
people here — friends and family and a camera crew. The cameraman closes
|
||
in and asks the questions that you ask: Your thoughts? Why did you do
|
||
it? And there are jokes and platitudes about Mount Everest and the final
|
||
frontier, but no real answers.
|
||
|
||
Why? Because drivers drive. Movies have endings. Records are broken.
|
||
Perhaps there will be fame, blogs, even an appearance on Conan. Does all
|
||
that balance against the thousand what-ifs — the nearly cracked axles
|
||
and the reckless driving, drunk on exhaustion? The crimes that Roy and
|
||
Maher have committed, state after state, number in the hundreds. There
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will be months before the statutes of limitation run out, months before
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||
this story can finally be published. Roy and Maher have plenty of time
|
||
to think about what they’ve done and why.
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But for now, the pilot and copilot can only stand with glasses of
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||
champagne undrunk. Too tired to know if they are even happy. Or to fully
|
||
comprehend that their time, 31 hours and 4 minutes coast to coast, has
|
||
beaten the record by a full hour and three minutes. Or that this record
|
||
will surely be beaten, again, sometime, by some other drivers, most
|
||
probably for reasons they won’t understand, either.
|
||
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Correction: \[9pm EST 10.23.07\]. The BMW Alex Roy drove was not
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turbo-charged, as originally reported.
|
||
|
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Contributing editor Charles Graeber (<charlesgraeber@gmail.com>) wrote
|
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about tornado-car builder Steve Green in issue 13.10.
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