For the Record: 28:50 - A journey toward self-discovery and the Cannonball Run Record

by Ed Bolian

  The traditional route is to take the Jersey Turnpike to 70 and then drop down through St. Louis onto I-40. 20 and 80 were the theoretical alternatives although the southern route using I-20 was far too long and unfeasible. Some of the Cannonballers had tried it but it had never been terribly successful. I found I-80 to be compelling, particularly due to the Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah component. It felt like a great opportunity to put in some high average times. Some of the others voiced concerns about traversing the Rocky Mountains that far north but it seemed worthy of consideration. It would be a much more weather dependent, gametime decision.

  Timing was tough. The last two weekends of each month are very hard times to take off in the car business due to the accounting procedure of closing the books each month. Also, let’s not kid ourselves that being a cop is unlike any performance based job. They have ticket quotas to fulfill and the patrolling was going to intensify toward the end of each month.

  I went into this embracing the sobering reality that it would likely take three or four attempts. You can really only try once per month when coping with the logistics of getting the car home, re-serviced, and back to Manhattan. It seemed to make sense to shoot for Spring for a first attempt so that you would at least have time to try once more that year, likely in the Fall. There would be more rain in the Spring but you could never know when snow would present in the Northeast or Midwest forcing you to write the rest of the year off. Each attempt is also expensive. Lots of gas, flights, shipping, oil changes, tire replacement, etc. I had driven the car hard but had barely given it a taste of the torture test to come. It was tough to guess how the CL was going to react.

  Verification was a serious issue. There was no sense in doing this and not being able to convincingly prove it. I wanted there to be excessive redundancy in this area. The satellite tracking device was truly enough. It could not be cheated by flying the car but theoretically it could be counterfeited. The GPS trip data would be extremely valuable. The Garmin units had a screen that showed distance driven, average speed, top speed, time driven, time stopped, and total time. That would be the easiest way to show the result to someone in a set of pictures. The preponderance of circumstantial evidence would be compelling.

  The Mercedes on board computer was also great. It had a two screen system. One showed the statistics since the car was started. The other showed them since a reset. I knew they would be useful for the driver on each leg to evaluate how they were doing on a more immediate basis so we planned for those to be the resets. I planned on the data “since start” to serve as the trip data. This required that the engine not be shut off throughout the trip including during refueling. That would not pose any mechanical issues other than popping a check engine light for an evaporative system leak. While the extra fuel plumbing was not fully planned, there was a pretty decent chance those codes would already be present regardless.

  Each screen would show total time, total distance, average speed, and fuel economy average. It was a beautiful and holistic depiction of this trip containing all of the operative variables. In addition to these, we would have toll records from the fast passes and credit card records for gas receipts. I felt like we had this area sufficiently covered.

  The psychology and physiology of it was very tough to predict. I had done long distance drives, rallies, and high speed runs but there was no way to forecast what the adrenaline was going to do to us during the drive. I was glad to have comfortable, massaging seats in the Mercedes and it was a relatively roomy car up front but would we be able to sleep? Would our eyesight suffer? Would we dehydrate badly? Would the onboard bathroom facilities be necessary? How should we eat? What should we eat? When should we eat? How do you pre-game for something like this? The litany of unanswerable questions was a real concern.

  I decided that some of those were simply unknowable and I just needed to accept that as something that went with this explored, but truly uncharted territory. The first attempt needed to be treated as a reconnaissance run anyway. Success was unlikely and it would be the only way to learn the answers to some of these questions. It sure was some expensive and risky research.

  A broader question was of driving protocols. What was the goal? My personal goal, even before Alex and Richard established their records had been to break 30 hours. It felt like the benchmark of the idea within current technological parameters. It was also a comfortable margin ahead of Alex’s 31:04 time where I would be able to fail at my own goal while still breaking the record. 31 hours was a 91 average. 30 hours required nearly 94. Estimating three fuel stops at ten minutes and four driver changes to evenly divide each tank of gas at two minutes, forty-five minutes stopped seemed like a good guess on the time that we would not spend making progress. That upped the required average speed to 93 mph for 31 hours and just over 96 for 30 hours. That was really moving and pretty daunting from my perspective.

  I took the CL out on a few trips to try to see how long I could keep an average like that up. The answer was not very long. The style of driving that would be required and hopefully possible in this attempt would be in stark contrast to anything I did on a regular basis. Rally driving is the only form of auto racing where two people are actively engaged in the process of driving. This is necessary because the course cannot be memorized and success requires attacking the course as though it is memorized. This demands constant instruction. Maintaining the speeds to be competitive requires driving beyond what the driver can comprehend by themself. High speed road driving is the same way. This type of driving hinged on the co-driver/navigator so the selection was critical. I needed someone who was as invested in this working as I was. As the preparation went on, I began to question whether or not finding a useful car co-driver was actually possible.

  It was clear how a few hours of extremely high averages (110-120) would massively relax the required pace for the rest of the trip. I had driven 111 miles in one hour during a leg of the AKA Rally back in 2004 and I had averaged 85 miles per hour on one 600 mile trip from Palm Beach, Florida to Atlanta including all required stops. Those were a long way from what I needed here. The wild card was the co-driver. The speed that you achieve and the rhythm you settled into depended on the comfort level and confidence instilled by the person calling the shots. The driving protocols needed to encourage clear instructions that would foster confidence and relax the driver.

  Alex had used two things I felt were flashy but unnecessary. He used a private plane to fly ahead of him and watch out for cops. From what I could read and see in the documentary, it appeared to have had limited use and the air to ground communication was difficult. He also used a thermal night vision camera. I spoke with FLIR, Raytheon, and several distributors of night vision systems and none of them seemed to have enough range to show anything the headlights wouldn’t. Both of those ideas also ended up being prohibitively expensive for my current position so they were scrapped. It was nice, though, to leave myself some outs in tactics to employ in future attempts as I would try to improve my time.

  I had formulated a good playbook and the boxes of tools and goodies came in over the course of the next few weeks. As winter set in, life got extremely busy and my attention began to wander. We had gotten extremely involved with the church and were enjoying the connections being made there. It seemed like there was a wedding, a birthday party, a couples shower for something, or a car event every single weekend. It was easy for weeks to go by without me having much time at all to devote to the contemplation of and preparation for the record. None of the other guys were much help in making progress. Business was good at the dealership and I was actually growing more content in the areas of life where I had struggled in the past.

  Chapter 9

  Becoming a Christian Outlaw

  As an outspoken Christian, I am asked frequently how I reconcile extravagant spending and working in such a materialistic industry with living by faith in a relationship with God. Mine is usually the only Lamborghini in our church parking lot and
I don’t recruit a lot of customers there. I do not believe that there is anything inherently wrong with having or using the ability to buy something expensive but we will all be called to answer for those purchases sooner rather than later.

  We do a lot of volunteer work through the church. One of my favorite things is leading a discipleship group of high school seniors every spring on a weekend retreat. The youth ministers love it because the kids get excited to go hang out with Mr. Ed and I just love getting to know them and figuring out what is going on in their lives.

  The car, the jobs, the celebrity clients, the social media presence - it all helps me to get to them and makes them open up about what they struggle with. If maintaining a big car payment and chasing crazy dreams serves as a foot in the door to start a conversation with one of these kids about Jesus and how to balance life with what is truly important then it is worth every dime.

  Showing people how much you don’t care about your stuff is equally important to how much you do appreciate and take care of what you have. I am never shy about letting people take pictures, sit in, and even drive my cars when situations permit. I can’t preach that my treasure is in Heaven if I jump on top of every kid that leans on my car to take a selfie. It is a big box of carbon fiber and paint. It can all be fixed and no one would be more excited to call the AllState people than I would!

  I get a lot of customers whose wives and children all hate their cars. They resent the time and attention the cars get and they are critical of the requirement the car stay in such pristine condition. Guys walk into my showroom all the time to trade into their next car. They will tell me their current one never sees rain, they spend days in the garage detailing it after every drive and then they promise me that I won’t find a blemish on it. It is the cleanest one ever! Woohoo.

  Inevitably a comment comes up within the next few minutes about how upset their significant other will be that they just increased their investment in the recreational expenditure department. I always ask, “Does she drive it?” and the answer is always to the contrary. When I ask them if they would like their wives to drive, use, and enjoy their cars alongside them the answer is generally, “Yes.”

  The problem is, the wives are smart enough to know that it simply is not worth the risk. They know how devastated their husband would be if they came home with a scuffed bumper, scraped wheel, or scratch. Their distance from the car serves as a security measure to strengthen or maintain the wellbeing of their relationship.

  I told them all the same thing. Megan is not going to grab the keys to the Lambo and go grab coffee with a friend. She knows that she is always welcome to but she also knows that you can’t see out of it, the transmission is challenging, and the parts are expensive enough to bother her if we had to replace them. What she loves doing is driving the car in an easy situation. It is my job as someone who wants her to tolerate this obsession to create these opportunities for her.

  I told my customers to take their wives on a road trip somewhere reasonably close. 200-300 miles away is perfect. Once you get out of metropolitan areas hop off an exit and switch seats. Anyone can drive one of these cars on the highway. They learn how the car feels, how the controls work, and they get really comfortable in it. It is a great opportunity to give some encouraging words about how well she did, how fun it is, and how much her enjoying it adds to your enjoyment of it. Exotic cars - strengthening marriages! I think there is a seminar series in there somewhere.

  Once you get to the destination, get out and tell them how cool it is to see this beautiful car covered in bugs, brake dust, and filled with garbage from the trip. Be happy about using the car and make it clear that the next stop does not have to be the detail shop. Show her that you are not saving it for the next owner to enjoy. You want to have fun with the car and you are making her a part of it.

  After that you get to buy whatever car you want!

  I try to showcase that attitude with all of the cars that I own and drive. They are special things that do not require special treatment. Give kids rides. Let them take pictures. Answer their questions and show them you don’t have to be Kanye West to have and enjoy something cool. In fact, our recent election has shown that you can be a multi-Lambo owner and go on to become President of the United States. For better or worse, driving around in an expensive car makes you a role model to an impressionable audience. Even though I sold a lot of cars to people who should not be imitated, ownership comes with responsibility.

  Over the past ten years I have owned four Ferraris, six Lamborghinis, two Porsches, a Ruf, four AMG Mercedes, four Land Rovers, a BMW, and an Audi. The process of buying, driving them, and selling them has been a lot of fun but what I love most is sharing them with fellow car enthusiasts. I think that is what drew me to the rental business in the first place. Every day I was giving someone a supercar experience and creating memories they would have for a very long time.

  The ethical question pertains to the record in a similar way. Was the record my idol? Was breaking the law sinful? Was I putting people at risk? Each of those questions merit some discussion.

  We serve an amazing God that built a beautifully complex world for us to hang out in while we get to know Him. The idea of a record is a celebration of so many things about creation. It embodies the competitive spirit of humanity and the drive that allows us to attempt something extraordinary. It demonstrates how social groups can come together to collectively pursue and accomplish something truly special.

  The grace of God allows us to actually enjoy our time here, to win things, to set goals, and the have a lot of fun along the way. I love my God for that. What is even cooler is that because I set this record - you just got to read those words from me. Whatever we do can become a platform for a message that is much, much greater.

  Is it sinful? When I was interviewed on the TODAY Show, the hosts asked how I could reconcile being a Sunday School teacher with breaking so many laws. I told them this was an example of goal setting, planning an idea to fruition and being who you want to be. The actual answer is somewhat deeper than that and it was something that I spent this entire journey trying to figure out for myself. The “Why?” question is piercingly hard to answer.

  The safety question is similarly difficult and unwinnable. As I contemplated attempting this record it was clear that there was an element of danger and that I needed to understand what the true risks were. I would still need to sugar coat them for Megan and the rest of my friends and family, but I needed to be honest with myself about what was on the line.

  As the Spring drew closer I steered more conversations toward the record. The idea of accountability was something I wanted. If a year passed and I was nowhere closer to having this done then I needed someone to call me out on it.

  Throughout my life, I had never been shy about making my goals clear and then delivering on them. This felt different though. The longer my friends heard me talk about it the higher their perception on my personal investment in it went. Adding humiliation to the devastation of failure was a double-edged sword. It pushed me harder but it added some emotional tension and trepidation to the idea. I have always said I am not afraid of anything other than spiders. I do not really count the spiders because everyone should hate spiders. They are sneaky and they bite you. I suppose as I reflect on it I am afraid of the day that I find out I cannot do something that I truly wanted to do and what the people around me might think of that.

  At that point the group helping me consisted of Chris Staschiak (co-driver option #1), Adam Kochanski (co-driver option #2), Taylor Clark (support passenger option #1), and Forrest Sibley (technician and support passenger option #2). Taylor Clark was a great friend, bookkeeper for my exotic car rental business [read “masochist”], and a true source of good advice. I thought he would be a very big asset to pose the questions as to how hard I was pushing in a way that I might not immediately reject outright.

  Starting in 2012 I formed a group of ten friends that I occasionall
y met with to brainstorm entrepreneurial ideas and projects. The group included Tom Park, Taylor Clark, and several other people who knew about my interest in breaking the record. One of them brought Dan Huang to a meeting we had about an exotic car track driving experience concept. We actually entertained using the Cannonball World Record project as a business endeavor but the monetization aspect is so difficult/impossible it felt too risky as a profit seeking business.

  I had not spoken to Dan more than a handful of times since college. We had talked about a couple of cars he was interested in and he had come along on a couple of our drives. He would soon become very important.

  I told Forrest that we wanted to make an attempt in the spring so he needed to get the Radar Jammer operational. The Bacon Blocker had been a couple months from completion for about four years. Interestingly, his quest to build the device and my quest to break the record were very similar in duration and expense. Forrest was also building me the MIRT which was closer to completion.

  REMARKS

  From Forrest Sibley, Countermeasure Expert

  Our testing of countermeasures goes back to 2009 when Ed was still at Supercar Rentals. We discussed several options for disguise. Ed had a white Mercedes at the time and had the idea to rebadge the front and rear of it with something like an Audi emblem in the front and a Lexus emblem on the back. I remember very clearly that Ed wanted to have BMW hubcaps or center caps on the wheels because it is an obvious logo when the wheels are turning and the blue color is still discernible at speed.