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

by Ed Bolian

  In the normal course of our lives, none of us might ever have darkened the doors of a TGI Fridays again but in this circumstance it somehow made perfect sense. Simple menu, easy parking, no mental strain in ordering. After a tenser day than any of us had wanted it to be, this was perfect. It was interesting to see what constituted comfort food on such an occasion - nothing interesting, nothing new. Just whatever got us fed without making us exert any mental energy on anything other than what the next day and a half was going to entail.

  I let Dave and Dan walk inside and get us a table. Before parting I told Dan that if I had to kill Dave tomorrow and bury him in the desert that he could never speak a word of it. He nodded his head and looked at me with exactly the right amount of uncertainty regarding my seriousness at the moment.

  I called Megan. I was exhausted, broken, and disheartened. I doubted Dave’s ability to help navigate and our capacity to operate as a team. The teamwork required to legitimately challenge this record seemed far beyond us.

  I told her there was no way we were going to break it. She could hear in my voice how crushed I was and it was the only time she ever said that I should plan on trying it again. Her advice was perfect, to treat it as an exercise and to make the next one better. It calmed me down and I was able to go back inside with some semblance of a smile. I still assumed that we would get into Illinois or Missouri, realize how far off pace we were, and ask the nav systems to simply take us home with our tails between our legs. I was already thinking of the defeatist text I might draft to Alex Roy. Regardless of dwindling confidence, we had come too far to stop trying now.

  Each of us ate bland food and some vegetables. It was a calm meal where we were all clearly trying to reduce our blood pressure and heart rates from the anxiety. Afterwards we looked for a place around us to go spend an hour relaxing and stretching our legs a bit. There happened to be a Target with a Starbucks inside of it just a few miles away in Watchung, NJ. We went that way.

  There is a point in the 32 hours 7 minutes documentary where Alex Roy is speaking with his friend and co-driver in his first real attempt to break the record (he tried four times). He discusses preparing his Last Will and Testament before the drive. He talks with one of his co-drivers about the idea that he is prepared to die in doing this and then they spend some time discussing the significance of that idea.

  I would not say I was willing to die to do this. That is moreso a rationale for decision making within a challenge than a recognition prior to undertaking a mission. I did, however, recognize that this was the most dangerous activity I had ever undertaken. Trying to exceed 200 mph on public roads, reading a text on the way home from work, eating beef tartare, and hair raising college stunts paled in comparison to the risk I felt in this activity. I knew we had taken as many steps as we could to increase the safety of the trip and I thought we had minimized the risk. It still existed to an extent approaching my threshold of tolerability. Anyone who knows me or has read this far can appreciate my risk tolerance is foolishly high.

  This recognition continued to remind me just how fortunate I was to be in that moment. Regardless of whether or not it could be rationally justified by even one other person on Earth, I was pushing full steam ahead into the storm of a challenge that was continuing to define me. The privilege of getting there and finding out just how far I could push myself was something I knew most people never got to see and feel. As unknowable as things were, my eyes were wide open and I was ready to go. Hundreds of people in the forty years prior had taken the same risks trying to lasso the same unicorn I was hunting. Only seven had held the record.

  When we got to the Target we began pulling the trash, empty bottles, wrappers, and general road trip shrapnel out of the car. We got rid of the food and hydration supplies that we had over packed. There were a few things that each of us recognized that we had forgotten so we went in to grab them. I needed some lubricating eye drops. I have been nearsighted with a slight astigmatism since Middle School and I knew that I would need to switch between contacts and glasses a couple of times through the drive in order to keep my vision functional.

  I had seriously considered getting a Lasik procedure done before the trip but one of the most common side effects is a halo glare around lights when driving at night. This risk was less acceptable than the inconvenience of switching between contacts and glasses. I ended up getting it done a few months after we got home and it has been fantastic. I now have vision somewhere between 20-10 and 20-15. The night glare lasted about a month and now it is better than ever. In hindsight it would have been very nice to have dealt with prior to the drive.

  Over the course of about six months, I developed a trigger like colonic response to espresso using the Lamborghini Dealership corporate identity coffee machine that occupied the center of our showroom. A couple shots by themselves or as the contents of a milk containing drink and it was happening. I walked up to the Target Starbucks counter and ordered a large/grande/whatever Cafe Mocha and sat down to let it work. Clockwork. The other guys tried in vain to manage the same without success.

  The bowel trigger prep showed Dan once again what this project meant to me. I later found out he was so nervous at that point leading up to departure that he barely avoided enunciating his intention to hail a cab and find his own way to LaGuardia and back home. Fortunately he stayed. We browsed around the store for a bit and then did some final organization of the contents of the car.

  We left in search of some gas. At 8 PM it was way past the waking hours of Wherever, New Jersey we were. We did manage to find a station. We pulled up to their air compressor and leveled out all of the tires. Apart from the ability to change a wheel I had no onboard ability to re-inflate a tire. That would be the last they were checked before California so we spent time attempting precision.

  News to us: you can’t pump your own gas in the state of New Jersey. We pulled up to the pump and opened our trunk. The arrangement that I had allowed us to fill the two tanks in the trunk with the near side nozzle of a two sided pump and then pull the opposite side nozzle around and fill into the main tank simultaneously. That was quite perplexing to the attendant at this Exxon station. After some strange stares and negotiation he agreed to go back inside and let us pump our own gas.

  I let Dave drive back to the starting line. I got in the back of the CL to close my eyes for a bit and rest before departure. Ash invited us to come up to his condo to change clothes for the last time, brush our teeth, and get ready for liftoff.

  The feeling was that of being on a high diving board. You don’t know how high it is. You can’t tell if the pool is full. It could just as easily be filled with Jell-o as water. You have only heard about people doing it but you can’t see anyone in any direction. Climbing up was a blur and you have no idea what to expect on the way down. All you know is...you are about to jump.

  REMARKS

  From Dan Huang, Navigator and Support Passenger

  It was slow Thursday afternoon. I was over at my girlfriend’s place when I received the Facebook message from Ed. It simply went along these lines: “Hey man. Give me a call at (770) 633-XXXX when you get a chance. I couldn't find your number.” I was curious and before you know it, we were on the phone. I was expecting to hear that he had a car in inventory that I might be interested in. At the time, I was considering an Evora, that is until I found out how terrible they actually are. Instead, the conversation asked about my plans for the next couple of days, which seemed strange to me. Finally, he tells me his grand plan - extending an invitation for me to partake in it.

  The only problem? We were going to leave tomorrow morning. I had less than twelve hours to decide. If I were interested, I would drop by his house to check out the car that night. I didn’t have enough time to process the risk or gauge what I was getting myself into. After getting off the phone, I asked my girlfriend for guidance: “What do I do?” I asked, while going over all the dreadful possibilities that could happen.

  I vividly remem
ber her answer, “I know if you don’t do this, you will regret it.” She said it in a way that only a supportive significant others could have - by having my selfish desires in mind while her eyes filled with worry. After hearing her answer, I texted Ed that I’ll be by tonight to check out the car.

  It was my first time visiting Ed’s place. The moment I saw the CL, I didn’t care about the stunning Orange LP640 Roadster that was its stablemate. I glanced over all the preparation and hard work that went into the car. The cockpit looked like mission control. It had all these devices that I had little to no idea how to operate. Ed reassured me that it was simple to utilize and that we’d get familiar with it on our way up. I still had my doubts though. After doing some test fitting and familiarization, I agreed to arrive Friday morning for our journey up, still unaware of the dangers. I just thought it would be a fun and interesting way to spend the weekend.

  My first real scare (which questioned what I was doing) happened with the fuel leak. When the car pulled up next to us yelling “You’re leaking gas!” everyone in the car (including me) went into a controlled panic mode. We had to get off the interstate and fast. Everyone was assigned a task when the car would stop. Luckily it was undramatic when we inspected what happened.

  While still traveling up to NJ, I was able to watch at least half of 32:07 on the iPad, which felt like I was cramming for a test. I didn’t know the history and significance of the Cannonball Run, US Express, etc. so I learned as much as I could as we headed for the start line. Seeing how much prep past Cannonballers did made me realize how insane this endeavour was.

  When we got to NJ, we stayed at an awesome hotel right on the Hudson. It was surreal to walk out at night and see the NYC cityscape when ATL suburbs was the last thing I remembered seeing. It was a strange feeling to think that we were so close to NYC only to leave it the next day. This trip didn’t feel like a vacation anymore - it became a mission.

  After all the practice runs attempting to leave the city we had been up for ten hours already. Drained from the frustrations of how the streets of New York City had treated us and the qualms of our navigation abilities, I had no idea how we were going to manage the 30+ hour marathon ahead of us. Our morale was low. I remember Ed stepping out of TGIF to make a phone call to his wife, surely to explain how terrible the trip had been going.

  When we got to the Target, things weren’t much better. At this point, I realized that all my possessions were in a simple backpack and I could just Uber my way to the airport in order to wait for the next flight to ATL. However, since we made it this far, despite all our setbacks, I should at least give it a shot. This was the lowest part of the trip for me, because the desire to bail was greatest. Still, just as things would begin to unravel, they always seemed to compose themselves just enough to allow us to maintain forward progress.

  I found it to be a great relief to hang out with Ash and his friends before starting our epic journey. They were really hospitable and gave us a boost of confidence moments before departure. All the worry I had built up faded after spending a few minutes in their company and lovely apartment.

  Since I’m so used to working from home, restroom usage was never a problem. However, when you are in a car for 30+ hours, you need to stay hydrated and you can’t use the restroom any time you want. I rationed my water intake so I didn’t use more than I needed or use the restroom as frequently. I tried to use the restroom on the shoulder once, but I guess i’m too shy to make it happen on the side of the freeway.

  An unnamed shipping company’s 18-wheeler almost ran us off the road. As we were about to make our pass on the left, the truck started moving into our lane. Ed performed admirably even when two of the CL’s wheels were kissing unpaved road. All of this happened at speeds my Volkswagen GTI would top out at. I honestly thought it was over at that point, and not just the race.

  Many times when I was tempted to close my eyes. I wondered if I would ever open them again.

  Chapter 16

  Down the Hot Wheels Track

  At 9:55 PM on Saturday, October 19, 2013 Dave Black, Dan Huang and I left from the entrance to the Red Ball Parking Garage at 142 E 31st Street and headed West. I was driving. The odometer of the 2004 Mercedes Benz CL55 AMG that we were in read just over 115k miles and the car was filled with every anti-police gadget that we could muster. We had sixty-seven gallons of fuel on board along with all of the food and supplies we expected to need for the next day and a half. There was no intention of stopping anytime soon.

  Our goal was to pay tribute to the classic Cannonball Run route. That would minimize potential objection to the record and feel more legitimate to us. Dave actually downloaded Yates’s book on his Kindle App as we were scouting around Manhattan earlier that day and read the first few pages. He had been leaning towards voting Times Square before but he immediately and wholeheartedly shifted his preference to the Red Ball. Of course I had to stop him from trying to read the entire book in the couple of hours we had left before leaving. I was comfortable with his exact level of misunderstanding of what the night and next day might look like. There was no benefit in making it any clearer at this point.

  Around the same time that we left the Red Ball, Danny Landoni left the eastern border of Pennsylvania. This put him approximately seventy miles ahead of us and he began feeding us status reports by phone call and text. The Garmin navigation system would not process the entire route all the way to the Portofino so we had planned on programming in incremental checkpoints around the rendezvous points with the lead cars. Of course that only covered twenty percent of the trip. The navigation for this drive did not require many turns and I had each instruction broken down clearly in the drive plan spreadsheets prepared months prior.

  We left and immediately found ourselves in gridlocked Manhattan traffic. As difficult as it was, we had all agreed to remain calm in the face of such a circumstance. It worked. We looked around at all of the timers, trip computers, and nav screens counting and continued the never-ending process of acclimating ourselves to the attitude of the drive.

  We exited the Lincoln Tunnel in fifteen minutes. That was ahead of our twenty minute “turn around and restart” time threshold. We navigated through two toll interchanges using our EZ Pass and got onto 78. Seventy miles into the trip we were into Pennsylvania. That first stretch had taken us one hour and four minutes bringing our average nearly to the speed limit barely into the journey. The roads were rough and traffic was dense but we were threading needles through it with relative ease and little drama. I had worried about how long it might take to get our average up to a level permitting optimism but this felt amazing.

  With the Danny-reported coast being clear, I pushed through Pennsylvania hard. The section through the Allegheny Mountains was a complete roller coaster. It was clearly marked but the road snaked through the terrain like an amusement park ride. The few other road users were mostly logging and transport trucks.

  It is tough to describe the excitement of actually being at speed on a real attempt. Even though my nerves were still firing somewhat unpredictably, the cathartic rush of traction toward the nicely paved PA roads as well as my decade of dreaming was incredible. The massive elevation changes, long tunnels, and overlook views were probably beautiful.

  We were not paying attention to those views and it was dark other than the excellent quantity of reflectors on the road. A few minutes into the state I was cruising consistently at over 140 miles per hour and Dan said his first words of the trip. “Are you serious? This is really how we are going to drive?” He said that 130 was the fastest that he had ever been in a car. That was changing. It was also not true.

  Apparently, Dan had blocked out the last time that he had ridden in a car with me. Years prior I had a routine of meeting a group of customers at the dealership early on Sunday mornings for a group departure to our monthly cars and coffee gathering. We would scream onto State Route 400 headed North to the venue. It is a commuter highway so on the weekend mornings it i
s typically empty. One week Dan had asked if he could tag along and ride with me to the upcoming show. I obliged him and he joined me in a black 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder that we had for sale at the dealership. This must have been in late 2010 because it was before I bought the blue Gallardo from Kimmi the prostitute.

  When we merged onto 400 it was a ghost town. I accelerated and found no reasons to let off. When I looked down at the speedometer just before letting off the throttle we were doing an indicated 180 mph. That look on Dan’s face in the rear view mirror of the CL as we tore through Pennsylvania was not entirely new to me.

  There are very few similarities between how we drove on this trip and any regular driving on a daily basis. That is the crux of incongruence between the critical public perception of safety and the reality of being in the car. Strangely, this is some of the safest feeling driving I have ever done. When I go on a road trip with Megan, she is on her phone, playing with the radio, plotting the next ten years of our lives, or doing a hundred other things to distract me from the road. When I drive on my way to work I am still groggy, tempted to get to the dozen text messages that come in, and mindlessly proceeding through a route I could drive in my sleep.

  This was not like that at all. It was just past midnight and we could not have been more alert. Further, my focus was completely on controlling the vehicle. The incoming data, phone conversations with Danny, interpretation of road conditions, and even checks on my personal well being were being done by Dave and Dan. We were our own mission control, dissecting every possible aspect of automobile operation in hopes of just making it through the next bend a bit quicker.

  There was very little traffic on the road. We were passing a car every 5-10 minutes and there was plenty of space. We would slow to 100-125 depending on the radius of a turn but progress was great. The attitude in the car was much calmer than I had anticipated and the objective oriented discussion was extremely efficient.