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

by Ed Bolian

  “Yes ma’am it is.”

  Why not roll with it?

  Texas and Oklahoma both have a rolling statute of limitations. That meant that while I would generally be free from being subject to arrest in those states one year from the time of incident, that one year had to be spent in each state for it to expire. I had no intention of spending that amount of time in either so it was a sobering reality to think that I might be subject to arrest in each state for the rest of my life. Hopefully that was longer than the rest of this day.

  Oklahoma was the only state where we encountered any real construction. There were three areas where the highway bottlenecked down to a single lane and we had to drive 50-60 mph behind a tractor trailer for 3-5 miles at a time. Fortunately the general traffic level was low enough that there was not a buildup of congestion in the merging areas. The times of being forced to go slow were a great chance to grab some water, loosen the grip on the steering wheel, and adjust your seat a bit to avoid cramping. It did seem, though, that I found myself in the driver's seat for every single frustrating leg we faced.

  The thought that many people seem to have when they imagine what it is like to drive this fast for so long is an eventual numbness to it. It is true when you drive 130-150 mph and slow down to 100 it feels like you could get out and walk faster. That being said, the perception that we were grossly exceeding the speed limit never left me. The fear of arrest did. The recognition that the outcome of getting pulled over going 100 or 150 was likely the same actually served as some solace in keeping your foot in the pedal for a bit longer and pushing a bit harder. When conditions permitted, and they usually did, we were still flying. The sensation of continuously flipping a coin and it landing on heads every single time never left either. Surely there was a tails coming.

  Hygiene was an issue. I had purchased some Neutrogena grapefruit scented facial cleansing cloths. The gods have never felt something so amazing. “Pass me a grapefruit” was a popular and exciting request to make. Halitosis was also an issue. The following scenario happened more than once.

  “Dave, would you like a piece of gum?”

  “No, I am good.” He would reply casually.

  “Dave, I would like you to have a piece of gum.”

  I drove 305 miles. It was the longest driving stint that either of us took for the trip. Due to the traffic and construction it was actually the least challenging leg while being the most frustrating. We stopped around Yukon, Oklahoma and Dave took over. My average for the leg was 94.82, respectable for the amount of traffic and the daylight hour driving. Our averages were consistently ten miles per hour slower during the day than we had seen the previous night.

  Our roadside potty break took less than ninety seconds. We praised the decision to make side of the road pit stops and driver changes rather than staying in the same position for the entire tank of gas. I had always planned on it but then I would start looking at the math of being stopped for 2-3 minutes at a time and would question the idea. Doing it again I would stop every 2 hours/200 miles regardless of condition.

  Dave took over and got us to our second gas stop.

  REMARKS

  From Adam Kochanski, GPS Witness

  Ed Bolian is a bit of an enigma. You never quite know what to make of him or the things he talks about. I met Ed a few years ago through some mutual friends at the car shows that we both frequented. The cars that he drove added to the somewhat larger than life persona. We could never really tell if he was driving cars he owned or if they were from the dealership but Ed was always building his brand around the outrageousness of Lamborghini and the exotic car driving lifestyle.

  Despite the anticipated hip hop artist, gold chain, white blazer, womanizing, pet alligator persona; Ed was different. He always left the car shows on Sunday mornings early to go to church. Our wives were very much alike and got along well. Ed went out of his way to invite me and many other guys to all of his events. He welcomed us into the dealership to drive cars and enjoy them alongside him. Ed was and is invested in improving the landscape of local car culture in Atlanta.

  One of the first conversations that Ed and I had about cars was about his interest in Cannonball. I had seen Alex Roy at a local stop on his book tour and actually have a signed copy of his book somewhere. I knew of the idea and had seen the old movies. What car enthusiast hasn’t fallen in love with the idea of taking a special car out and opening it up on a long deserted interstate?

  Car guy conversations are full of people claiming that they are just about to go out and buy some crazy car, how fast they drove the night before, or what their grandiose plans were with their next project. You always need a serious grain of salt to endure the fluff. Ed seemed different. The first time he came over to our house for dinner, he and Megan were driving a blue Gallardo that was a bit rough around the edges but was still loud enough to make all of our neighbors ask what was going on the next time our paths crossed. When he talked about the NY to LA drive, it was not the tone of someone dreaming. It was the tone of someone planning.

  Ed insinuated that his co-driver, a guy named Chris, was likely going to back out. He asked if I was interested in coming along. It was a strange request, one I was enthusiastic to receive, but a strange proposal based on the amount of time I had known Ed. I told him that I would talk to my wife about it.

  Ed is overly trusting. It might come from the need to treat everyone as a buyer in the car business. It might be because he is a very trustworthy person himself. It might be from an optimism in humanity that most people people have grown cynical of. I say that Ed is trusting because he takes pretty much everything I say at face value. The skepticism that is usually necessary in car guy exchanges never seemed present in him. It is probably because Ed truly makes it seem like anything you want to do, any car you want to buy, any ridiculous financing arrangement - is possible. Normal driving seems to be a fairly mindless task for Ed. He calls me on his way to work at least a few times per week and I try to answer. Every time we hang up, though, I feel like I am on the cusp of renewing my home equity credit line and buying a Ferrari F430 Scuderia.

  Ed had not purchased the CL when I met him. He was daily-ing the Gallardo. When he got into hardcore planning mode in 2012, we looked at every possible car option. I liked some of the Audis - the 03 RS6 and 10+ S4s were great on fuel, had reached a nice price point, and made good power. There was a ton of aftermarket options for them and it seemed good. Ed kept coming back to the AMG cars but even with Ed footing the bills, I was terrified at the cost of maintenance. I am a BMW and Porsche guy. The Panamera Turbo was too much and the M5 was out. The M3s I loved were too small and the newer ones were too much money to tear up. Ed started to get aspirational and look at Bentleys but then the orange Murcielago came along and that was over. Ed quickly bought an AMG car and started sending me links to Amazon shopping carts.

  My wife and I had been trying to get pregnant for a while so I knew that wild card loomed. When it happened, I knew that I was going to have to let Ed down easily. I really didn’t. He took it very well. He seemed used to having people back out of this pursuit. There were no hard feelings and he was as welcoming as ever for me to stay involved.

  As the final team came together, I went over to Ed’s house on the Thursday night before they left. I had met Dave Black at our local events and Ed had described his character to me well. I met Dan Huang for the first time that evening. It was a motley crew for sure. It was also the strangest emotional environment I think I may have ever stumbled into. No one seemed to know what to expect.

  When they set off, Ed gave me the login credentials for the GeoForce Tracking Site. As they set off I checked in on the feed. It took them a few minutes to get out of the city and into New Jersey but once they did, it was all business. Ed was behind the wheel and was reaching 140-145 in each straight and barely slowing down for the turns. In his typical foot-in-the-door negotiation that we all love, Ed had said that he did not expect the driving strategy to dictate many
excursions beyond 110. With the goal of a 93-95 mph overall average to beat Alex Roy’s time of 31:04, that seemed like all that would be necessary. Clearly that approach had been thrown at the window somewhere in the Lincoln Tunnel.

  I texted Ed to let him know that the signal was good and the updates were frequent. It was feeding data every minute or two. There would be occasional signal gaps of 3-4 minutes but with each ping it seemed like they were going faster and faster. It was some very impressive pace. Eventually I dozed off to sleep with my ipad set to the web address for GeoForce on the nightstand next to me.

  When I woke up around 8:30 AM on Sunday morning, I refreshed the site. They were already in Missouri. The data from the tracking software showed that they were cruising along at 136 mph. They had been on the road for ten and a half hours. I plugged in the coordinates from the plotted point on the map. I set that as the destination with the Red Ball starting point in Google Maps. They had traveled 1,055 miles and were in a town that the tracking software said was Rolla, Missouri. 1055/10.5 meant that they had a 100.48 mph average. I did that math a few times because it just seemed impossible. A 100 mile per hour average! That seemed possible for an hour or two, but for 10 hours?

  I reversed the calculation with the starting point where they were and the destination, the Portofino. They had 1,756 miles to go. 31:04 minus 10:30 meant they had 20.56 hours to finish. That meant that they only needed to average 85.38 miles per hour to break the record.

  I texted Ed that they were doing great. I sandbagged it a bit and told them that they only needed to average 90 to break it. I was amazed, bummed to not be there by his side to continue on to what was sure to be an epic accomplishment, but amazed nonetheless. I spent the next day routinely checking in and doing some math to see how the trip was going. They didn’t slow down. They didn’t miss a beat. I really can’t explain the thrill of seeing it happen one dot at a time.

  I do a lot of track days in my cars. Each time, you show up, go through a drivers meeting, and see some new guy fresh out of the showroom in his new M3 or 911. They are dressed head to toe in the latest Alpinestars Stig suit, gloves in hand. They go out on the first lap and spin the car. More balls than skill. More talk than delivery. Ours is a world of careful social media glimpses into daily life, well manicured images of our diversions and recreations painted for the world, and an existence designed to be inoffensive while still self praising. This wasn’t that at all.

  This was real Coke. Nothing diet, nothing zero calories. It wasn't watered down. It wasn't tempered for the masses. He didn’t go out and buy a new Ferrari or BMW F10 M5 sledgehammer for the job. He did it by himself with the rest of us wondering if he was actually serious about it. He chose as much of an underdog car as could be imagined for the drive. He made no excuses and took no prisoners - just two guys who I had seen just a few days prior with absolutely no idea what they were in for.

  What a trip.

  Chapter 20

  Beating the AMEX Algorithm

  We stopped for gas the second time in Groom, Texas. We had driven 1,667 miles in 16 hours and 47 minutes. Our overall average was 99.32 miles per hour. That tank of fuel had taken us a preposterous 852 miles. We were only 7.83 miles behind a 100 mph overall average. The moving average was certainly dropping as we continued through the day. The prolonged 130+ jaunts were proving more challenging and without scout cars after we had left Tom in St Louis. We had left Oklahoma with an in-state average of 94.78 mph meaning that Dave had maintained almost the exact pace that I had in his most recent 260 mile stint.

  Before the run I had been concerned that there would be a glaring disparity between the pace of my driving and Dave’s. I was pleased to be proven so wrong. I do not think either of us thought we could have done any better than the other at any moment. I will say, and I believe that Dave would agree, that we went faster on some of the legs when he was driving and I was navigating than when the roles were reversed. We would also agree that the reason for the slight discrepancy was the stream of instruction coming from the passenger seat. When Dave had finished his sessions he needed to rest. I am sure that I needed to rest more than I realized but he made a better point to do it. That meant I found myself doing my own cop spotting a bit more often. For that reason I was happy to be taking some of the more heavily trafficked and technically difficult sections.

  Our first stop had been nine minutes of nearly perfect execution. This second one was not that. Dave and Dan immediately scattered to the restrooms, both appearing fairly delirious. When I opened the trunk I could see a few errant drops of gasoline accumulated around the line coming out of the pump for the passenger side tank. When I swiped my credit card it was declined. Darn it.

  I ran inside and told them both to get outside to help. Dan grabbed the duct tape from the rear tire storage seat and went to work on the fuel line. I was swiping every card in my wallet trying to get them to take. A MasterCard that I seldom used finally did the trick - priceless. I told Dave to swipe his on the opposite side of the pump. I saw the slight hesitation as he pondered the cost so I punched him very hard in the face [in my head]. I don’t remember why I walked behind the building and peed on a dumpster in the parking lot but I did. There was probably a line or something.

  That stop took twelve minutes. It was our longest time stationary by a considerable margin. When we got situated in the car I had two emails, one pertaining to each of the two American Express cards that I carry. Fraudulent charges were suspected. My cell phone rang. It was AMEX. The representative reminded me they had rejected two charges in Groom, Texas on my cards. They had seen the previous charge in Illinois just eight hours prior. There is a fairly advanced, but not quite advanced enough, algorithm that they use. It told them since neither charge was near an airport and the distance traveled was done too quickly to have been done by car they automatically declined the charges.

  I did not offer any explanation as to why these were in fact legitimate charges but I reassured her that my cards were not going to leave my possession for the next twenty four hours and asked that she approve any and all charges made to the account. “If I order every single as-seen-on-tv product on the shopping network from a telephone in Mongolia just assume I needed that rainbow of Snuggies and many, many expandable hoses. Let them send them on!”

  As we went through Texas it was starting to become clear just how tired we both were. I had dozed off for about fifteen minutes during an off shift the first night and the adrenal high was starting to peter out. I tried to rest as Dave drove earlier but we were monumentally faster when I was on alert offering him advice on where, when, and how to pass. This was a team sport and you never got to stop rowing for very long.

  The panhandle of Texas was uneventful except for a sport bike that tried to stay with us for a little while. This added an element of conspicuousness and danger I did not want. The last thing we needed was for me to bump into a motorcycle changing lanes. It also made it look like we were racing, a much more unpleasant offense than speeding. We came upon a red compact car that took offense to the motorcycle and made an aggressive swing at it. This enraged the motorcycle who sped off. The driver made the same move at me as I passed but we proceeded away without issue.

  I had packed the binoculars but they had been particularly useless. The stories of stabilized scopes were intriguing but our line of sight was unlikely to be radically different than that of a static police officer so the visual strain and the distraction from all of the other data sources sounded like quite the tradeoff. They were also really expensive and I wanted to keep a few aces in the hole in case I simply wasn’t anywhere in the ballpark of the record on this first attempt and needed to add to the arsenal.

  I bought the returnable binoculars to have on hand if needed but when I looked through them it was a beer goggles experience. I had assumed that would be the case, hence the beautifully preserved Bass Pro Shops original packaging and receipt back at home on my office desk. I had not anticipated the visual a
cuity of Dan Huang. I generally have a savant level ability to identify cars based on shapes, lights, and other visual cues and although this was the pre-Lasik Ed, my corrected vision was very good.

  He was on an entirely different level. I was flabbergasted at his ability to see and read this stuff. I could barely tell what color a vehicle was by the time he was reading us the license plate and clearing it as being civilian rather than police. Phenomenal stuff. I was told by an eccentric high school teacher once that there was a job pertaining to the farming of chicken eggs that was only staffed by Asians. It involved focusing on a spot on each egg to determine fertility. He said white people were incapable of doing it. I am not sure if that is true and I am not sure if it is racist but I was starting to believe it based on Dan’s performance.

  Dave’s wife, Lisa had been fairly radio silent throughout the trip. Megan had texted a bit to Dan reminding him to take care of me. Dave’s phone rang in Oklahoma and it was Lisa. It interrupted one of the applications that we were using and it was in one of the passenger side mounts so I answered it. She knew enough to have a “see no evil/hear no evil” mentality about it so she simply asked how things were going. I told her that they were going well and that we were cautiously optimistic. She said, “Do I want to know how fast you guys are going?”

  “I doubt that but let me say that we are very proud of your husband and his speeds are sufficient.” That felt like the right word.

  There was a moment in Oklahoma where Dave as driving. I looked down at the Garmin screen which had been estimating our arrival time based on its projection that we would average the speed limit for the rest of the trip. It read 2:04 AM. In my head we had left at the 10 PM target. That meant that after the time change, if we had simply averaged the speed limit for the rest of the drive we would match the Roy/Maher time of 31 hours 4 minutes.