by Ed Bolian
We were obviously very concerned about speed measuring devices. The two main devices used today are radar and lidar. There are a few other methods employed for measuring speed, namely the stopwatch method (VASCAR), but there isn't much that can be done for this other than slamming on the brakes. There were several options available for lidar. One was passive protection. This involves decreasing the optical reflection of a laser beam being pointed at the vehicle.
Ed and I discussed various methods of doing this such as painting the car black, putting a dull vinyl bra on the front, and wrapping the car. I found an infrared-absorbing polymer that could go on the most reflective parts of the car: the headlights and license plate. It is a green powder that costs more by weight than Heroin, several hundred dollars for a few grams.
I found a solvent for it that would dissolve in automotive clear coat and ended up with a lidar-absorbent green clear coat. I purchased an airbrush and sprayed down my license plate, headlights, and a piece of test plexiglass. The results were excellent. The reflectivity of whatever it was coated in was nil. I was having a hard time getting readings off my car at long distances with my lidar gun. However, everything was green, and within days, sunlight destroyed the polymer, the item turned clear, and the coated items became reflective again. This would not work in the long term, and so we abandoned the idea. For lidar, Ed purchased a set of Laser Interceptor jammers which I had had a lot of success with. That took care of that problem.
As for radar, I had something in the works and had been working on it for a few years at the time that I met Ed. It's my long-term hobby project, and I can't talk much about it, but let's just say that they would have a hard time getting a speed reading with their radar guns. At the time of the first run, the main circuit board was being produced in New Jersey. We were anticipating the first run to just be a test run and were going to do it without active radar protection. I had seven of these boards produced, front and rear each for six cars plus one spare. I have the spare hanging on the wall in my office. Since we were planning on using one of these devices on the run, I put a Mercedes logo on the bottom to make it match the car. We would have had points for style if we had used this. Instead, we went with a couple of Valentine One radar detectors. One pointed through the rear window and one pointed through the front windshield. Ed and I checked with one of my radar guns to be sure that the detectors could "see" through the metallic coating on the windshield after he pointed out the faint trapezoidal aperture at the bottom. The detectors worked well for the little that we tested them in this configuration. This was it for radar.
Ed and I discussed two methods for radio communication: a police scanner and a CB radio. Ed had me pick out the best scanner that money could buy, I found it, and he ordered it immediately. The same went with the CB. Not quite a week before Ed made the run, I went over to his place, and the two of us spent hours upon hours going through the road atlas of the route state by state, county by county, and city by city. I picked frequencies to upload to the scanner as Ed poured over the road atlas and named the geographic locations. Many of the frequencies had GPS metadata attached to them so that the scanner would automatically pick them up as we approached the particular municipalities. In practice, there were too many frequencies without GPS data that the scanner had to go through all the time for our sorting to be of any use, and the scanner was so bogged down that it did no good during the run. Hey, this is what test runs are for, right?
The CB radio was another important item that Ed and I worked on. We decided on the latest and greatest Cobra 29 radio, and he went with the K40 antenna since that was what I had used in the past. The antenna was a bit on the large size, and when I had one on my car, everyone referred to it as "the lightning rod." We had some problems with the radio being crammed back into the dash. When Ed got the car back from the installer, he noticed that he had no reception on the brand new radio. The installer had shoved the CB enough to break the connector from the coaxial cable. Reception was maybe good for a few hundred yards, and the VSWRs were through the roof. I ordered a 90-degree angle adapter to make more room behind the radio and installed it the following week. It seemed to do the trick, the VSWRs dropped below 2:1, and we didn't have time before the run to get a new crimp connector in case the connector was really bad. Several days later--and I don't know whether this was before the run or during it--the connection was bad again, and the CB was performing fairly badly.
A few months before the run, Ed asked me about controlling traffic lights. A few years prior, I had built a device that could do this on unencoded systems. It consisted of an infrared light source controlled by a microcontroller that pulsed it around 10 Hz. It worked on some lights and was a "nice to have," but I don't think that Ed ever used it. (By the way, Ed, if you ever take out all of the "good stuff" or sell the car, I want this thing back!)
Chapter 10
The Criminal in the Mirror
Spring quickly became Summer and I was not ready. None of the other team members were available and I was insanely busy. The car still needed its laundry list of service items and I did not have the cash to pay for that. Megan and I were doing well in our marriage but she was annoyingly anxious to have a kid.
I agreed eventually I would hop on board the procreation train but I told her that I had to break the record first. Our office was full of enough devices that she knew that it was close enough for that condition to be acceptable. She was finally egging me on to complete it sooner rather than later. The clock was ticking in more ways than one.
That Summer I bit the bullet and bought the rest of the countermeasure items I needed. My optimism was waning but I wanted to make sure I at least had one attempt in by the end of the year. I knew the big construction projects in Oklahoma and New Mexico had finished and I was running out of excuses.
Every conversation I had with planned co-driver Chris, though, was less than encouraging. He was busy with work, his girlfriend at the time had some health issues, and he was making it sound like he was not going to come through. Each commitment came with some kind of way out.
Backup co-driver Adam’s wife got pregnant. She had indulged the two of us in believing she was ok with him participating but when little man started baking she was out so he was relegated to the sidelines. It was quickly becoming clear I might not have a co-driver. It was also becoming clear that if someone had much time to think about the cornucopia of calamity that could come from attempting this run, it just might make it impossible for someone to remain engaged in the task.
In the same summer of 2013 I sold Dave Black a second Lamborghini. He was enjoying driving his Superleggera but he wanted a convertible. He had been driving the former press car very hard and it actually had transmission failure. I used that mechanical hardship as some leverage with the Lamborghini factory to help get him a great deal on a new car. Over the course of a few weeks I worked out the details for him to buy a new Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Performante Edizione Tecnica at a handsome discount. I placed the 2011 Superleggera with a West Coast wholesaler who gave him $20k more than he had paid us for it nine months and 5,000 miles prior. This was one of the final special editions of the Gallardo and a truly unique car for him. Dave was excited; still unemployed, but excited.
He had a lot of free time on his hands. He would find minor imperfections in the car and bring it in for us to fix it. He lives about two miles from the dealership so I would see him scream by in the car every day on his way to QuikTrip to buy the largest cup of fountain soda that he could carry. He would drop the car off and then explain how flexible and accommodating he would be in yielding to our timing to repair it. Then he would stop in every day once or twice to check on progress. Dave proclaimed himself to be the most laid back customer ever. The irony stuck and he earned himself the nickname Laid Back Dave Black or LBDB for short.
During one of our conversations Dave mentioned that he had seen a movie recently called 32 Hours 7 Minutes. This was the documentary by Cory Welles a
bout the US Express and Alex Roy’s record breaking attempts. He remembered reading the article in Wired Magazine about Alex and the preparation that he had done to the car back in 2007 when the news had broken about the record. He thought it was such a cool idea. He wanted to organize a screening and wanted to talk to me about the feasibility of organizing a race along the same route today. Of course I was familiar with the litigation between Alex and Cory and I was not looking to endorse Cory in that fight. I still wanted Alex’s acknowledgement of my record when I set it.
I also explained that due to the way tortious litigation works there was truly no good way to organize a race on public roads. It had been tried, failed to launch, and was generally socially unacceptable. There could not be anyone on Earth more interested in starting or participating in a race of that kind than me but it simply could not be done. I told him that was why all of the recent attempts were single car, one-off efforts.
I quietly revealed to Dave I was in the process of breaking that record. That meant setting up a screening for a film that would be yesterday’s news before too terribly long might not be the best use of his time.
It blew him away. He was very excited and asked if there was any help he could offer. At the time I had a team together and was holding out optimistic hope that they might actually come through so I did not have a role for him to play. I told him the CL was already at CarTunes getting everything installed and Charles was getting ready to build the fuel system. He offered to lead me out of Manhattan if I wanted. I told him that would be great.
It was a difficult conversation to have because I could see how truly excited he was about the idea. By historic precedent and I am sure by his own admission, Dave was far from the ideal person to do this. In one of my conversations with Alex Roy he mentioned that he felt the ideal age to try this was 28-35. I was 28 when I did it. Alex was 35. Dave was 45. He had a 15 year old daughter. He still needed future employers not to brand him as an outlaw. He was well outside whatever narrow demographic of morons I exist within that allows me to stomach the risks of doing this.
Of course, I could never fault anyone for an interest in the idea but when I thought about the person sitting in the passenger seat next to me the mental image was different. There is an overconfidence bred by the planning of this type of thing. In order to believe I had what it would take to challenge this record, I needed to convince myself that there was some aspect of my skill set and abilities that makes me make better decisions than the competition. Without such a distinction, how would I feel capable of success?
That meant when someone offered well-intended advice or an alternative to the direction I was headed it was very difficult for me to accept it. My character flaws are plentiful. They make me who I am. Nestled among the defiance, hubris, and snake oil shilling charm is a part of me that equally weighs all obstacles between me and a goal. Arrest, my own risk of death, and financial ruin kept equal ground with the weather and traffic patterns.
This is as good a time as any to mention this - there was a moment just a few months before the attempt where I had an unsettling moment of clarity. It was probably while driving to work, brushing my teeth, or selling a $500,000 car - some mindless task. There was an instant where it hit me. I am a criminal.
Throughout my life I had seen many circumstances where I truly admired criminal enterprise. It could be the Guy Ritchie movies talking or the emotional psychopathy acting out but I had always seen a greater appeal there than it felt responsible to admit. It could have been the sleepless nights in college researching the intricacies of counterfeiting currency, getting a bit too caught up in thinking how interesting a modern life of piracy might be (eyepatch-aaaargh! piracy, not Napster piracy), or the adrenal need for occasional rationalized deviance but I always felt like I would be a good criminal. I do love pyramid schemes.
I had always seen Christianity as an opposing force to this and I had never identified myself as a candidate for a life of crime. Then it hit me. I was a criminal. I was, and had been for quite some time, planning an elaborate scheme to break the law. As a professional rationalization consultant I spend a lot of time telling people it is okay to scratch that itch and take the plunge into an extravagant purchase. I clearly do it to myself too.
One hangup that I always had with the idea of Christian salvation was my need for Jesus. I never felt that much like a sinner, at least I talked myself into thinking that my sins were ok relative to everyone else’s. One day, though, it hit me. God sees all of our indiscretions with the same weight. The same way everything that could go wrong on this drive had the same amount of real estate in the “con” column, all failures were the same to him.
Saying you ate one Oreo when it was in fact all of them was the same as being an axe murderer of babies. We all clearly sin and from there, the insurmountable nature of reconciliation to God apart from a just sacrifice in Jesus made sense.
Of course, nine years of planning into an idea that was illegal, when a recognition like that hits you, it can cause some kind of a quandary. It didn’t. Maybe it was the fact I was not doing it for any personal financial gain, to gain an unfair advantage over anyone, or to hurt anyone. I was not doing it for any particular reason. It had just become the latest notch on the obsession belt. That next glance into a mirror felt very strange.
REMARKS
From Dave Black, Co-Outlaw
June 19, 1981 was not just my 13th birthday, it was the release date of The Cannonball Run movie. My brother and his friends saw it before me. They came back talking about a car called a “Lamborghini.” Up until this point, I had only known about Ferraris and Maseratis - especially the 308 GTS driven on Magnum PI. The next morning, I rode my bike to the theater and watched the matinee. The movie fades in with a black screen and an amazing exhaust note to reveal a black Lamborghini Countach driving across a stretch of desert highway. My jaw dropped - it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. The other 308 GTS driven by Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin was virtually invisible compared to the Lamborghini. After watching the movie, I wanted to see the car again. I snuck into the neighboring auditorium and waited for 15 minutes until the next one began, and snuck back in. I repeated this three times, and returned with a friend the next day to watch it two more times. When we eventually rented the movie on VHS, I probably watched it a dozen more times.
I was a crazed car enthusiast. I liked cars and loved driving. My first car was a canary yellow ‘79 Camaro (hand-me-down from my sister) that I totaled while racing a friend on an empty, rural Texas highway at 2 am. My second car was a charcoal grey ‘83 Firebird. I drove this to college for a couple years before trading in for a new, red VW 16-valve GLI Jetta that I totally abused. Within the life of this car, I had been pulled over by police over twenty times, and I developed a first-name relationship with my traffic ticket attorney. While I had always tried to achieve high average speeds during my commutes to college, spring breaks, etc.; I eventually got a job taking photos at gymnastics schools around the country. It was during this time that I checked off 30k miles of interstate and developed a “sense” for highway driving where I could avoid tickets while going fast.
When I turned 25, I traded in the GLI for a new, green ‘93 Jeep Grand Cherokee, followed ten years later with another one in 2003 that I kept until 2010 when I bought a diesel Jetta station wagon. I was enjoying being ticket and accident-free, and having economical cars that supported my mountain-biking hobby.
In 2005, my family moved to Beijing China where we lived for four years. I bought a Tian Qi Mei Ya TM6500 or Tian Qi Qi Bing which translates to “vehicle of the sky...great warrior” - a Chinese Mitsubishi 4 cylinder manual shitbucket of an SUV. Driving in China can be approached with two mindsets - 1: “OMG...look out...these people are crazy,” or 2: “Hell ya!...this is how I’ve always wanted to drive.”
I was #2 and had fun driving on curbs, service lanes, and oncoming traffic. The signature idiocy is at left turn lanes where people lock bumpers an
d never let oncoming cars through. If I were trying to pass through the intersection, I would go full speed at this cars as a game of chicken and would get them to open up a slot for the rest of the traffic to flow through. It didn’t hurt that I had installed massive steel bull bars on the front of the car my family dubbed “the soldier.”
I drove the diesel Jetta to San Francisco and maintained my highest record to Dallas from Atlanta - 83 mph including stops with a rolling average of 86, completely shocking my mother when I arrived 4 hours earlier than expected. While the car was a great car, the diesel Jetta began to push some wrong buttons - it was too small, too practical, and too...um...dorky - like a pair of orthotic shoes. Twenty plus years of suppressing my love of cars combined with a 100x increase in value of my company’s stock options became the fuel and air that would soon ignite an intense emotional fire for something more “me.”
Christmas 2010, I was walking through Phipps Plaza mall in Atlanta with my family when I came upon a Black Maserati GranTurismo on display. It stopped me cold in my tracks. My family went on to go shopping while I walked around the car mesmerized. It was funny...from my youth to young adulthood, I struggled with being materialistic and jealous of other people’s things - the result of being the youngest of three siblings. But once I hit my 40s, I learned to live rather practically...just give me a good laptop, a good bicycle, and a humble roof over my head and I was content. This was different - it was the first time that a physical object possessed me. For the next nine months, I configured this car online over ten times, had screensavers of it, and kept looking online at it.
Then, one day, I saw that our local dealer had a used one in a color combo that I liked. I went to the dealership, test-drove it, and found myself in the midst of an existential crisis about the meaning of life. I couldn’t resist - I went to the bank, got a cashier’s check, came back and bought it. I thought I should win an award for the most awesome mid-life crisis ever.