by Ed Bolian
There were times when it was clear that we were all sort of amazed with the speeds. I remember moving my hands along the steering wheel and noticing that I was gripping it so hard my palms were abrading the leather it was wrapped in. It was a good reminder to breathe, relax, and adjust my seating position. My med school friends had advised me that every fifteen to thirty minutes we should pump our legs and move our torsos in order to stimulate blood flow and minimize the risks of blood clots. The layers of unique problems to solve in this challenge never ceased to amaze.
It was 322 curvy miles across Pennsylvania and I averaged just over 100.6 mph. That was an average of 35 to 45 mph over the posted limits in the state. We were all surprised. There was nothing on the scanner, nothing on the CB to slow us down. Waze had no users ahead, Trapster reported nothing. Danny was right. Other than some early sprinkling rain we made it through the Turnpike exchange onto 470 and then to 70 without any reason to lift. Without the presentation of the endlessly possible reasons to slow down, none of us could really imagine any way to go any faster than we had been. The Pennsylvania roads were far from straight. How fast could we expect to go once the roads actually started to flatten out?
When we buzzed past Danny in his Volkswagen I had no idea the magnitude of what he had just done for us. We were literally going 20-30 miles per hour faster than I was expecting to on the high side and even though we actually dropped into the high 80’s and low 90’s when passing a few cars and navigating some of the harrier bends, it felt like we must have been averaging 150.
REMARKS
From Danny Landoni, Pennsylvania Scout
Who doesn’t love a Cannonball Run? When I got a call from one of my most frequent partners in automotive crime that he needed me to fill in as a scout for a NY to LA record attempt it did not take long to answer in the affirmative. I didn’t need to know who it was. It didn’t matter how late it would be. I was there.
I spoke to Ed on the phone for about five minutes the Tuesday night before the run and he explained what he was looking for. Drive the speed limit or however fast I cared to and let him him know if I saw any cops, bad weather, traffic, or construction. We would stay on the phone and my goal was to make him press the throttle just a little bit harder. What better game could you ask for?
There was a little bit of drizzling rain early on but the drive was uneventful. Well once you get past the AMG Merc barreling through our fine state at such ungodly speeds. I was actually on the phone with Dave for most of the trip and the numbers that he was relaying from their mission control hardly made sense. I sped up a bit to maximize the window of my own utility for them but when they stormed by it was utterly surreal.
The strangest part was driving home. I am never one to shy away from whimsy of any sort. Spontaneous road trips will find no greater enthusiast but the experience of watching their tail lights disappear with such warp speed and for me to return to daily life was hard to wrap my head around. I wouldn’t hear from Ed again until nine o’clock on Sunday when he said simply, “We did it. Thank you for all of your help.”
What a weekend that was. I couldn’t be any more proud to have been a part of the run and to have met Ed through the process. Learning more about him through the subsequent interviews and social media sharing has revealed that we have a lot more in common than being on that lonely stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a Saturday night in October.
I love stories like this because the illustrate the car hobby so well. It is not about speeding, although that is clearly a part of it. This idea is about solving the problems that face enthusiastic road users every day. The challenge is an exaggeration of my drive into work each day, of going to a grocery store, of going to see grandma. Ed met and conquered that challenge. I was just happy to be there to witness it.
Chapter 17
Roadside Urination & Driver Changes
We were using the Mercedes Trip Computer’s reset screen for each leg of the driving. To save my own sanity and to get a handle on what to expect I had reset it once we got out of Manhattan and up to speed. It was reading 104 mph for my first stint behind the wheel. It was too fresh to feel real. We were flying. The car was smooth, humming along and hitting 130-150 in each straight. The torque of the supercharged AMG V8 was surreal.
That set the tone. The sensation was unbelievable, particularly in America. I spend 99% of the time under the speed limit commuting around in life-sucking traffic in my 631 horsepower LP640. We forget quickly what these cars are capable of. Ze Germans would drive this way on the Autobahn every single day in a CLK320 cab because they can and the car can. Dave and Dan were particularly impressed. I think Dave made the decision to own an AMG car sometime within the first hour of the drive. I had to get him to shut down the browser on his phone and get off of Craigslist.
Some cars accelerate fast from a stop like a Chevrolet Corvette or a Lamborghini Aventador. Some handle with phenomenal composure around turns like a Porsche Boxster, V8 Ferrari or McLaren 650S. Other cars cruise comfortably at high speeds extremely well like a Rolls Royce, Bentley, or Aston Martin. This aged AMG beast was leaping from 80 to 130 with as much poise as I had ever seen out of a car and devouring every single curve. It was completely in its element and neither we, nor the car, were breathing hard. It illustrated what little margin of vehicle capability we deploy on a daily basis.
The attitude in the car was unique. It remained unlike any driving that any of us had ever done. While Dan’s wide eyes had returned to their normal size there was an idle discussion around the data entering the car. A system reporting nothing was actually more valuable than it saying there was something to be afraid of. Clear meant hammer down. For the first few hundred miles of the trip that was it. We saw no cops, no traffic, no active construction, nothing. No reason to slow down, so we didn’t. It was an invitation to test the limits of the car and of my driving. We accepted.
The cockpit dialogue was great.
“Nothing on the V1,
Passport clear too,
Waze clear,
road ahead bends left according the nav screen,
less than 30 degrees,
topography goes downhill after the next bend,
nothing on the CB,
scanner is quiet, clear ahead,
right lane empty,
move there,
slow Pontiac Sunfire in the left lane,
cut the brights to pass,
hug that shoulder and give her some extra space,
let’s keep them from calling 911.
You are doing great.
Need any water?
Adjust your seat a bit, we don’t need a blood clot.
Relax the grip on the steering wheel.
Car is under control.
You are clear to use the entire road on this one, stay left.
Get that apex.
Next straight looks like two miles or so.
Waze says there is a car stopped on the side of the road but it looks stale.
Clear on Trapster warnings for as far as I can see.
No traffic, no surprises.
Car sounds good, wow the revs are really low at this speed.
Give me five more miles per hour...”
It was fluid. It was inspiring. It was working.
We stopped for the first time in West Virginia. We pulled over to shoulder of the road, urinated there, and Dave took over the driving. There was some early stage fright on the part of the other two but my bladder was primed for eager evacuation.
My first shift was over. I had driven 394 miles in 4 hours 17 minutes for a 91.98 average. This was faster than the overall average of the Roy/Maher run. I truthfully had thought that it might take getting to New Mexico or Arizona to get the average where it needed to be to challenge the record. To have done it inside of the fourth state felt surreal. Further, if you take out the fifteen minutes that it took us to make it through the first two miles, the average was about 98 mph. That was strong for any leg of
the trip, particularly the curviest leg with the most elevation change. Now it was time to let the road straighten out but we were entering Ohio, the strictest state in the country for speeding.
Chris Staschiak had staged at the West Virginia/Ohio border and left when we were about one hundred miles out. I put him on speakerphone for most of our interaction as a shallow way to reinforce the enviable nature of the opportunity he had given up. Regardless of the success of this drive it would edify the told-you-so conversations I might have the chance to enjoy in the coming days. It was clear as he meandered through his home state he regretted missing out on the mission the two of us had been plotting for the nine years since his first email to me. We were only in West Virginia for thirteen uneventful miles, we went through it in nine minutes including the stop. Average was 86.67 mph for the state, just fast enough for none of us to lose half of our teeth or elope with a cousin.
A 100-150 mile buffer between us and a spotter generally gave us a three hour closing time. They would go the speed limit and we would be 30-50 miles per hour over it depending on how encouraging their reports were. Watching the gaps shrink was exhilarating.
It worked well. There was certainly a risk that a hazard or speed trap could present in the gap between when the spotter would pass through an area and when we would arrive there but our efforts to build our own strategic Waze style group were proving successful. Even if we found reason to question the absolute utility of their permission to throttle up without fear of obstacle, the interaction was very useful. Knowing that this was a team effort and that there were other people investing their time into the project that day made the totality of the drive feel more substantial and exciting.
We were generally radio silent to uninvolved parties. Megan had gone to a Halloween party that night dressed as a zombie Alice in Wonderland. We exchanged a couple of text messages offering little more than, “We are ok. Progress is good. Haven’t killed Dave yet.” She had designated Dan as the “mom of the car” and he was supposed to keep her abreast of our progress and prioritize our well being over an unabashed strategy of winning at all costs.
She ended up spending the night with some friends. Megan knew more about what we were doing than anyone else in the equation because she had been the bystander to most of my decade of research and preparation. My interest in exotic cars and the record definitely predated her significance in my life so I suppose she had opted in. Still, I recognize that it was a challenging emotional place for her to be. Before we were dating, Megan’s automotive expertise capped out at the ability to distinguish between a car and a truck. Now she was sitting by as her husband pursued one of the most infamous crowns of illegitimate motorsport. I was sure her parents were going to come around to approving of me now!
REMARKS
From Chris Staschiak, Ohio Scout
Ed Bolian is one of those people that you are proud to know, particularly if you are a motor-oil-for-blood gearhead like I am. Put another way, Ed is out of his f***ing mind. Normally when you get a bunch of car guys together, the stories grow faster than fisherman at a bar but when Ed says he is going to get some dream car or do some crazy drive, you need to listen. This madman will actually do it.
Like Ed, I was always consumed with the idea of getting in a car and driving fast for a long time. After I saw Ed on MTV in 2004 I had to get in touch with him. The dialogue never stopped after that.
Initially we talked about plans to get together and do some rallies. I did the Gumball 3000 in my 1973 Big Block Corvette in 2003 and 2004. In that time I became familiar with Alex Roy, David Maher, and Richard Rawlings - veterans of the same events. Ed and I talked about Bullrun, Players Run, Gumball, future iterations of the AKA Rally he had done, and what cars we would work on. Ed was in the process of starting his rental company and the kinds of things that he dreamt up continued to amaze me.
Although our plans to drive in an exotic car rally never came together, we became good friends and spoke a couple of times per week. I will never forget the experience of flying to Palm Beach to co-drive back to Atlanta in the gorgeous Ferrari 360 Spider that Ed had just bought for the rental company. I had been around supercars my entire life but this was one of those bucket list experiences for any car guy. We blasted up the Florida Turnpike and onto 75. The best part of the trip, though, was just getting to know Ed more.
Ed and I grew up in very different ways, made different decisions, and looked at life from different perspectives. Figuring out the way that Ed Bolian thinks is like trying to tune a carbureted engine. It is elegant in its simplicity but complicated to master. I love the transparency that he uses to evaluate and explain the world. We each struggle in coping with life. His ventilation methods are a bit more off the wall than mine but I guess speeding across the country can land you in jail just as fast as me punching some loudmouth in the face.
The discussion of rallies quickly turned to breaking the New York to Los Angeles record. Ed has an infectious enthusiasm and he is the best salesman on the planet. He probably missed his calling as some cult leader or street mentalist. Speeding in big groups is pretty easy. If you are not out in the front of the pack, you are pretty safe. Generally, in my experience, these speeding efforts are in short bursts. Ed wanted to do this without a group of cars and he wanted to go very, very fast. Despite some reservations, he had me hooked.
As Ed started down the road of planning his first attempt in 2008, I was broke and busy. I let him continue to believe that if he footed the bill, I would come along. Fortunately, life got in the way for him too. I went to Atlanta to be a groomsman in his wedding and got to witness the chaos of the renter who crashed his Lamborghini and sold the Ferrari. Ed had me out hunting for the Ferrari in the valets of popular Atlanta restaurants as we would get reports of sightings but we could not find it. We were always just one step behind and Megan was growing more and more frustrated with anything about a car.
I have never seen anyone as cool under pressure as Ed. It is weird. I have talked him through some really strange and crazy life experiences and he is unbelievably level headed about it all. I suppose that is probably what lets you believe he can do such ridiculous things. Watching him try them and do them for the past ten years has made me a believer.
In 2012 when Ed decided it was really time I told him that I would go but that I was still in no position to throw in for my half of the bill. Seeing Ed accept that and push forward showed me he was in a new place with all of this. It was moving in the direction of NYC with or without me.
As the planning continued, my life got busier and it was become less likely that I would be able to get away for the time needed to make the attempt. It seemed like every time I talked to Ed he had just sold some Aventador or Gallardo. It seemed like he might have trouble finding the time too. Fall came and went. Spring 2013 came and went. Then Ed changed. He seemed to realize that it was now or never. I expect that may have had to do with a ticking clock of another sort.
I had pretty much bowed out at that point. Ed and Adam Kochanski were planning in full force and I would do anything that I could to help from my home in Ohio. I remember the call saying that they were going that weekend in October. I loaded up and got ready for a long night on the road. That feeling of a missed opportunity started to creep in. Ed still seemed to think that they were unlikely to break it on the first try so I would try to move back onto the active roster for attempt two in the spring of 2014. I still knew that you should never count this guy out. I would help as much as I could.
I left the OH/PA border when they were about 150 miles out. Their guy in Columbus had the flu so my plan was to lead them across the whole state. Dave had taken over in West Virginia and it sounded like their average was strong. Their first scout had served them well and I intended to do the same. Driving alone in the middle of the night in Ohio is boring. I can imagine their trip was not.
Ed and I stayed on the phone most of the time. There was very little to report. When they got about twenty
miles behind me, they kept saying that they were getting small radar blips. I had not seen a single cop. Ed finally asked me to slow to 30-40 mph and try to let the cop catch up. They thought that the frequent blips were a sign that there was a cop between us, driving in the same direction. Eventually they seemed to figure out it was some interference between the multiple radar systems they were running and they got back on the horse.
I really can’t describe the feeling of watching that car that I should have been in fly past at 140 mph. I could not be happier for Ed but I could not kick myself any more for having given up the chance to ride shotgun for that trip. I am sure that this will not be the last crazy story for Ed. I will definitely be along for the next ride!
Chapter 18
Surely We Can’t Keep This up
The full moon was brilliant. It was amazing how much it improved visibility. I had gone back and forth with different lighting solutions. The historic Cannonball and US Express cars looked like Group B Rally Cars with auxiliary lights mounted everywhere. Of course the halogen lights that they were supplementing had nowhere close to the capability of xenon and LED lights of modern cars.
I bought a huge 30” LED light bar that the advertisement implied could stand in for the capstone of the Luxor but we could not figure out a good way to mount it to the front bumper so I ended up returning it. It had been designed for off road use and was generally to be mounted along the top of the windscreen frame of a Land Rover Defender or Jeep Wrangler so I had also been concerned that it would have made the car more conspicuous than I wanted it to be. We opted to replace the headlights with a simple HID bulb retrofit kit and they were working great. We didn’t need the high beams but we used them a lot of the time anyway.