We've never seen more cops per mile in our lives. It's like doughnut trees and rivers of coffee line the road. Modified F40s are fast, but radios are faster. You really can't ask for better cars running blocker than a lime-green Murciflago or a red F360.
We're heading north toward Niagara-on-the-Lake, just over the Canadian border. The men and women of the New York State Police are college-educated, letter-of-the-law enforcement machines. A red 360 and two Porsches are pulled over just before the border. With nebulous directions, we finally arrive at a beautiful winery for lunch and helicopter rides over Niagara Falls. Hey, it's good to be rich.
We start toward Ohio, where we'll spend the night. Again the rental SL is pulled over. The whole scene is like an episode of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Irresponsible." Robin Leach would be proud. Anyone can drive like an asshole anytime they want, but in the company of others doing the same, garnering tickets becomes something commendable.
Day two starts in Cleveland. We decide we need a ticket like a sharp stick in the eye, and let other cars do the crazy speeding. Between gas stops and cop stops, most of the day is spent swapping positions with many of the cars, and on a long stretch of tree-lined road, one of the modified F40s sidles up, sounding like an F1 car at Hockenheim.
Those bald tires we hoped would make it home don't make it past Nibbyville, Ind. We bolt on the safety spare, which has a tread about 1/30th the width of the tire it replaced. Ever try to find a 275/40-18 on a Sunday? In God-fearing Ohio? We're screwed.
Then a lightbulb illuminates as we study the map. Our route passes through South Bend, Ind., home to Tire Rack, the world's largest mail-order tire company. Tire Rack, however, is closed on Sunday. With nothing to lose, we pull into its parking lot and find a S2000 Club autocross at Tire Rack's test track. No shit.
Tire Rack employee Luke greets us and introduces us to Bob, who's also an employee and is autocrossing his C5 Corvette. His C5 wears 275/40-18s, and, no shit, he has four of them sitting in his garage a couple of miles away. A deal is struck, Luke fires up the mounting machine, and we leave rocking shaved Kumho Ecsta MXs on the rear.
Day two finishes in Chicago, and it's here we decide to finish the route on our own. What is a great time in terms of cars and contestant camaraderie, is ruined by a megalomaniacal and rapacious event owner. Spend your money elsewhere.
With two tickets and no more high-speed caravans to attach to, we knock back the speed and enjoy the drive, stopping at Pepito's taco-stand-in-a-school-bus. We buy a small-town paper and walk through an abandoned pioneer settlement.
A happening boulevard in Topeka is littered with American fare and big-tired pick-me-up trucks. Camaros with ET Streets sticking out of their rear fenders circle like sharks, but no one wants to race. The fastest-looking cars sit in a Mobil station, their owners sitting on hoods watching the squids incite the local cops. Screeching tires, usually all 14 inches of them, belong mostly to Cavaliers and Neons. The new guy in town is received with long stares and approving nods from girlfriends. We circle for a while and crash in a cheap motel.
We choose one of the hundred exits interrupting the passing flow of silos and cornfields and take a leak against an old oak tree. A local caff, all but unmarked, lies within pee-view. I order two pork chops, corn and "American potatoes." Pushed in front of me is the most satisfying, whole, real American meal, the greatness on which every Hungry Man frozen dinner was designed.
A large fellow in coveralls sits at the counter a few stools down, his hands as strong as the tools that burnish them. He smiles broadly at the high school-aged waitresses and farts loudly when they turn into the kitchen. When the fields are frozen, he restores old Harleys and has three 1966 Volvos under restoration.
I want to get home.
The Rockies loom huge and hazy. As we gain altitude, green turns again into sage and desert, and the vast expanse begs to be swallowed into the belly of combustion. The speedometer reads, well, too fast for stock brakes.
Colorado's Route 70 traces the same path through sandstone canyons which a raging river has gnawed at for millennia. Line is dictated not by engineers, but by stone and water, and in those miles we flow like mercury.
At a piss stop, we realize our once sleek silver bullet is now a dusty, bug-stained heap. The interior looks like a family of Sudanese refugees set up camp-every horizontal surface is home to artifacts of drive-thrus, navigation and boredom.
The next morning, we punch through the backside of the mountains into flat desert. Full of brown and devoid of feature, the desert robs you of perspective; we start down a two-mile straight, and still ply it 40 minutes later. In the distance, giant clouds like jellyfish suspend their tentacles of rain above the desert floor. An hour later, arroyos flush with virgin water race under the highway.
Signs advise us that Las Vegas is 296 miles away, which means we've got about a nine-hour push for home. The desert is hot and still. We turn the dial to max A/C, blessing the memory of Willis Haviland Carrier.
Two lanes in each direction stretch as straight and black as a typewriter ribbon. A gaining glint materializes in the rearview mirror. A silver ingot surfaces in the next lane with a large chrome star set in its grille and "AMG" scrawled on its huge calipers. The E55, its driver lost in the inky black tint, hangs just behind us, moves up, and falls back again.
What the hell?
The shifter slots into third gear, revs swing to 6000, and head meets headrest. Fourth gear and the VQ35 roars. Fifth gear and the throttle pedal is reintroduced to the carpet. The E55 sits tethered just behind our door, but its driver eventually grows bored with our six-cylinder, and taps into big supercharged V8 grunt. He promptly leaves us, decomposing into a distant vision of chrome and movement.
After two weeks on the road, we drive headlong into a wall of Los Angeles traffic. We creep into the Inland Empire, bathe in roasting clutch stink in Pomona and crawl on our hands and pedals through East L.A. We spend more time traveling the last eight miles than it should take to go 80 miles, sitting with five lanes of fellow sufferers and lodged between an H2 and an Escalade. Enough. We reach under the dash, yank the ABS connection on the brake pedal, turn off traction control, and do the biggest tire-shaking burnout ever to escape our right foot. Freedom found.