First of all, let me explain my car. It started as a Porsche Boxster, but has become the BoxsterSpec BSX racecar. It has PSS9 suspension, a solid chassis, a convertible, NO air conditioning, racing seat, etc.
I found out I was doing the rally, 12 days before it started, my car was in the shop.
I got a new transmission, new brakes, new exhaust, and new tires.
The decals that I got sent were flat black (my car is flat black, it wouldn't have worked)
Thinking that it only took 3 or 4 days to ship a car to NewYork, I waited last minute and ended up paying a lot more than I should have, for it to be shipped with Claus.
When I got there, I had to pay The Standard Hotel $165 for one night of valet, and they lost my spare key.
When we got to Pier 54, it was amazing, tons of people, tons of cars, everything, it got us super pumped up to drive. When Leaving NewYork, my radio went on "Protect mode" meaning that it wouldn't work until it got re-wired. Knowing that it isn't possible to drive 3500 with nothing to listen to, I took off the deck, and kept punching my radio until it worked haha.
In the first 10 miles, it started raining (in a convertible), and we were just going to ride it out.
Within 20 minutes, we got pulled over in NewJersey for "tailgating" the SLS Mercedes, also for no license plate.
We finally got to our first checkpoint, Intercourse, PA. It was still raining, (I have R888 R-Compound tires, and they are SLICK) We had the best Southern cooking ever, and even though I got pulled over, we still got like 50th to the checkpoint.
Then it was on to Cleveland. We were in route, about 120 miles when I stopped for gas. A cop pulled behind me and turned his lights on (WHILE I'M FILING UP GAS), Asks me for my registration, after about 20 minutes, he lets me go.
I try to start my car, and nothing, it was dead. Luckily a man in an Escalade jumped our car and we were ready to go.
I decided to let Harrison drive finally. We get about 3 miles down the road when I notice our radar detector isn't on, so I plugged it in, immediately the car just died, in the middle of the highway, we pushed it off onto the side and had no idea what to do.
Team CEC Wheels car #2 EVLAMG pulled over, but didn't know what to do to help. Until a PA State Trooper pulled over to see what was wrong. He was super nice because his daughter was a fan of iCarly, and he helped us get a AAA tow for completely free, not even a point on my record. Thanks officer Gaffney!
The tow truck driver took us to the Pittsburgh area, the PepBoys in Monroeville to be exact. The guys at PepBoys ran the tests and thought it just needed a new battery. They put the new battery and the tests still showed I needed a new alternator. It was Saturday night in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, we were screwed. The guys at PepBoys said that the battery should make us two miles to get to a motel.
I am driving off of 100% battery power so i have the lights/radio/everything off.
A local cop trying to be a hero, follows me because my lights were off. Pulls me over for not having a license plate. After being INSANELY rude, the officer sits in his car for 50 MINUTES, Calls back-up, gets two more officers there, and wrote me a $109 ticket for a "Valid CA Temp registraiton, in PA", yea, no clue.
We wanted to stay the night in Monroeville, thinking that the BullRun was over for us.
EVERY SINGLE HOTEL ROOM IN THE PITTSBURGH METROPOLITAN AREA WAS BOOKED. They were all rented out for the LPGA, U.S. Open tour, National high school basketball tournament, and a large business meeting.
We had no idea what to do, sleep in the Porsche? Randomly I just got fed up with all of it, and called my Mom to tell her what was happening, she looked all over craigslist for a mechanic in Cleveland. After 2 hours of trying, she called a man who said "It is way too late to call me, and I don't work on Sundays, goodbye!", and she said "WAIT, My boys are doing this for a great cause, CCRF, The Children's Cancer Research Fund", all of the sudden, the mechanic started crying and said "My neice just died of cancer, I would love to open my shop up to your boys tomorrow.
So we called AAA and got a flatbed tow, 168 miles to Cleveland, We finally rolled into Cleveland at 4:12 A.M., checked into the hotel, got into our room and had an hour and a half nap. Woke up at 6 A.M. To get my car towed. The towtruck driver said he would call when he got out front. No call and an hour later, they gave me the excuse that "He called, you didn't answer". I called every tow truck company in Cleveland and they were all booked except for one that was "around 20 miles away" that took an hour to get there. After paying a towtruck driver $184 for a 1 and a half mile flatbed tow, we got to an autobody shop that was in the back of a Mexican restaurant.
The first thing he does is rip out all of my seats and the back of my interior panels, I am freaking out ha ha.
He finally takes out the alternator after about an hour, and looks at it for awhile and says "well you don't need a new alternator, you just need new connections, it should be a quick fix. I get super excited, until we test the diagnostics and I have a bad regulator also. Not having a Porsche alternator/regulator on a Sunday in Cleveland, we resorted to extreme measures. Frank (the mechanic) had a Chevy S10 Truck alternator laying around his garage, and he chopped it to fit, and soldered/hick wired it into my mid engine.
After 13 HOURS in a mechanic shop in Cleveland, she starts up, the diagnostics run all correct, and after a quick photo op, we are good to go.
The drive to Chicago wasn't that bad, a little warm, but not that bad, we made it just in time for everyone to be done with Dinner. We decided to stop by the party that night, took a few pix, met some new people, and woke up super early the next morning.
We were the first people to breakfast by 30 or so minutes, and when we got out to our car, we had a nice little surprise waiting for us by TeamWU, a license plate on the back of our car that said "Gay4Pay". This was the first on a very long list of pranks of the WU/Kemper prank war.
Getting a great start in Chicago, we had an amazing trek through the empty roads at speeds well over 65 for hours on end. And we finished 19th in Omaha.
NOTE TO SELF, iPhone4 makes a bad alarm clock. WE DIDN'T WAKE UP! We missed breakfast and if it weren't for Scwab's F430 with straight pipes waking us up at 8:30, we never would have made the start line by 9. So we missed breakfast and made it to the finish line just in time for the madness to begin. We scream out onto the highway passing left and right, and whats this? OH, I'm in 1st place, but that isn't where I wanted to be in a lime green car. So I let the RS6 pass me, and I let Ice-T and CoCo in. then a state trooper pulls up behind me, I switch lanes as he pulls over Ice. Thinking everything is good, my radar detector goes screming, I pass a state patrol going 65MPH, and he pulls Me and the SuperSpeeder's over.
He makes me sit IN his cop car, as he tells me that, "Out of anyone, we had the most calls about you, We've gotten 16 calls about you and your lime green lamborghini", not arguing with the cop because I'd like to think that I own an Italian beast, he makes me wait for 35 minutes as he writes Rob Ferretti and I a "Careless Driving" ticket for $100, AKA He didn't see anything.
The cop tells me that if I pay my ticket within 7 days then I don't have to go to court. So I had Harrison pull out my laptop and pay my ticket while I kept driving. NO JOKE, 3 MILES LATER, I GET PULLED OVER AGAIN, This time, going the speed limit, Harrison is on my laptop when the cop comes by and says "Are you paying a ticket?", to which I responded with "Yea we just got pulled over 4 minutes ago", he chuckles, takes my information, and 20 minutes later lets me go. MEANWHILE, Every single BullRunner has passed us, so we had a lot of ground to catch up, but that wasn't going to happen with police airplanes in the sky. So we stayed on cruise control at 79 MPH in a 75, and I got 302 miles from my tank (a new record).
Did I mention that we made a pitstop in Omaha the night before? Well at the local mall, there was a vendor that sells 3 foot tall wall decals, so I had to pick up a "HelloKitty" one for our good buddies WU. When we arrived at our check point after Omaha, it was a bar in Ogallala, Nebraska, we were dead last, and didn't bother putting the top up because we knew it wasn't going to be a long lunch. I grabbed the Hello Kitty sticker and put it on TeamWU's cruiser with the cameras running. Then went in for a quick bite to eat.
Little did I know, Bill Wu saw the whole thing go down. Right as we ordered, Bill sat down next to me and started sparking up conversation for about 15 minutes then all of the sudden left, I was oblivious to the fact that Allen Wu was putting 60 crickets in our car! Too bad we didn't notice until we were down the street 3 miles on an under construction highway stuck behind a Semi-Truck. I felt them jumping in my pant leg when Harrison threw a cricket out the window. Then he looked at his feet, which were covered with Crickets! They kept jumping around, so we had to stop, but the first stop was 11 miles away in Julesberg, CO. We pull over at a gas station and get some bug killer and start removing them all (well most of them), and we hop back on the highway.
After than very fun 45 minute detour, we showed up to Colorado dead last, just itching to prank Wu somehow. Unfortunately for us, Richard Rawlings beat me to it. He had cancelled Wu's room, and ofcourse Wu blamed it on me. So Wu "got back" by taking our room, and having the hotel give us a one bed honeymoon suite. Long story short, Harrison got the pull out couch because the hotel was sold out.
So we got double pranked by Wu in one day, what do we do now? Get back? Get even? Nope, someone else pranked Wu, and he came to me with an alliance. We teamed up and the pranking on us had stopped.
Our breakfast for that day was at a Go-Kart track, but to get to this Go-Kart track, we had to take 10 miles of off-road streets. We got there too late to race, but atleast had a good breakfast. Then I see Bill Wu madder than Hell in the far side of the parking lot, I walked over to see a mound of boulders blocking his car in between rocks and a truck, with no culprit to be found anywhere.
After Cindy brekaing a man's truck, and moving the Charger, we were on our way to the first checkpoint. A small family restaurant in Colorado. We stopped for gas at a very bad time because when we got back on the road, there was an undercover state trooper right in front of me... and he stayed there... for 182 miles... going the speed limit... in a convertible... in the blazing sun.
AGAIN arriving last (well second to last, Claus got pulled over), Sunburnt as Heck, we decided to take our time and eat lunch. Got back on the road, and we were off. We caught up to the Orange RS4 on the road and started driving quickly, until our radar detector went off near Beaver Creek, when a State Ranger, and an undercover cop pulled out behind us. We got followed by the cops for 34 miles, before they turned off the road.
Having just about the worst luck ever with cops, we thought for sure we were dead last, but this wasn't so, about 8 cars hadn't showed up, we actually got there 6 hours before Team LuckyNutz and Black Maserati did. So I took a shower and we headed up the Telluride Gondola to the restaurant for dinner, but I did it in STYLE, In my skull footy pajamas and lime green hightops. (Andy didn't like my outfit... at all).
The bar/restaurant got kind of lame, so we headed back to the hotel, taking no chances, I asked Valet if I could have my keys so that no pranksters could take it.
We woke up and hit the road with a police escort, it was only out of Telluride, but we didn't know that. Infact, we kept going ***(well over the speed limit), for about 70 miles where we saw the black Porsche #55 pulled over. We slowed down quite a bit and headed through a small town. We were with TeamTexas, RedFerrari, RS6, Land Rover and a few others. I get pulled over by a local cop for not having a license plate. He was a BullRun fan and let us go after about 10 minutes, but in that time, everyone passed us.
The first part of the leg, to Monument Valley was by far the funnest (most fun), and although we got super sunburnt, we were absolutely flying for miles on end in the desert through twists and turns that you couldn't believe with Porsche #55 and Flatblack Mustang. We made back some very precious time on those back roads and got to lunch in the middle of the pack. Little did I know that this would be the second to worst leg of the rally.
Harrison was feeling super sick (as was I), but he fell asleep, so I had no choice but to drive. The drive was just plain brutal. It hit 118 degrees, in a convertible, with no AC, and an already bad sunburn. We had just gotten onto a freeway when I saw two F-150's that looked suspiciously like undercovers, so I took it slow. Then they passed me, I saw a computer in the car, and antennas, but the guys driving had a t-shirt on, and the other had a business shirt. So I thought, maybe they were construction workers.
I slowly passed them, enough to see two lights in their grill, so I slowed down, as the mustang approaches us. I tell him whats happening and he slows down. We stayed with the trucks as they started climbing in speeds. and when we were trailing them at more than 90MPH, I figured that they probably weren't cops. The flat black mustang flew passed them at 100+, and he didn't get pulled over, so I passed them too.
Little did I know that undercover cops don't pull you over in AZ, they radio in to other cops. So about 5 miles later, my radar detector goes crazy, and we see two Highway Patrols waiting for us, they pull out right as we pass them going the speed limit. I pull over, as does the black mustang, and about 30 seconds later, so do the two F-150's now with their lights on.
Since the cop didn't catch us or radar us, he could only write me a warning for no license plate (and he liked BullRun). I let Harrison drive the 30 miles to Scottsdale.
We arrive in Scottsdale, 118 degrees, sunburnt, sweaty, and crazy tired, needless to say, the first thing we did was jump in the pool. Had a great dinner by the pool, and decided to skip the party because tomorrow night was Vegas.
We made sure that Wu couldn't use they're balcony by putting 100 plastic cups on it, luckily for them, it was 109 at night and they didn't want to go outside anyways.
We woke up in the morning to a nice bucket of water leaned against our door so when we opened it, water came all over our room. So we immediately did the same thing to Wu (nobody expects you to play the same prank back to back), he opened his door, didn't like the prank, and threw 100 crickets immediately into our room. I didn't want to be in there anymore, and accidentaly left some stuff behind in the room.
We were headed off to the Taser Foundation, and thats exactly where we got pranked for the final time. After watching people get tasered, and the best breakfast ever, we walked outside to our car to see something very innapropriate stuck to the windsheild. THANKS TEAM TEXAS! Don't worry, it wasn't just us, it was everyone. So we got them back, I happened to have an extra set of number decals, so I changed they're car to 38 (which actually looked more like 88).
We all headed off to the highway, and we were on our way to the first checkpoint, when I noticed something very familiar, UNDERCOVER COPS, and a lot of them, so we hopped off the freeway with Team BMW, we decided that we would make a straight shot for Vegas because it wasn't worth getting pulled over 1000 times for not having a license plate.
We got some gas off of the exit, and headed for I - 74, It was a very fun highway until we hit I - 60, made a right turn, noticed a little bit of smoke, and BOOM smoke and flames everywhere near Harrison's feet, I told him to pull over immediately, I grabbed the fire extinguisher and put out the flames as fast as I could. It wasn't a good place to break down either, 10 miles to the closest town, in 117 degree weather. LUCKILY, team BMW stopped right behind us, and waited with us.
We called AAA and had them tow my car to Vegas on a flatbed, we weren't going to give up after all that we had been through. Team BMW waited patiently with us for the tow truck to arrive and we were on our way. I must be bad luck, because we even get pulled over when I'm not driving, but after 5 minutes and a $365 ticket to Jason, we were once again on the highway.
We passed my car on the truck (it had passed us while we were pulled over), and we kept yearning for Vegas. There was a release that said Hoover Dam had a roadblock and was going to take an hour to get over, we took our chances. And our Vegas gamble payed off, we made it through without even having to stop.
Thinking that we were way behind the pack because of all of our stops (it took the towtruck driver an hour and a half to pick up the car, THANK GOD FOR BMW AIR CONDITIONING!), we didn't even bother to drive fast because we weren't in the running. To our huge suprise, we were the second people to show up (Team Solstice/Lexus showed up first, they went straight through also), but none of the main pack had made it yet. Wait, I spoke too soon, what is that noise? That is Claus's C63 tires screaming down Freemont St. as he comes in first place! Then immediately followed by Seth in the GTR! It was a finish with only seconds in between them. Then to everyone's surprise, the red 360 finished 3rd (they hit 202 miles per hour). I think the biggest surprise though was Matt Farah's Team Black Magic Mustang blew a tire and had to be towed to Vegas after a pull-over, and them finishing last place! (The funny thing is that my car, on the flatbed, being towed, still beat a few of the cars to the finish line.)
It was a crazy trip, all in all. It was so much fun, so hard, so hot, so miserable at times, so memorable, so fast, so everything. I loved it, and I am officially now a BullRun addict.
THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME ALONG THE RALLY AT ANY POINT!!! !! ! Rookies deserve a break sometimes and we definitely had a crash course haha.
Big thanks to JebAng, Rob Ferretti, Matt Farah, WU, The Demas Twins, Andy, all of the tow truck drivers, AAA, Team BMW!, my parents, Frank (the miracle mechanic) and everyone else who had faith in us to finish.
AGAIN, THANK YOU SO MUCH! The spirit of the BullRun isn't about winning, we all know that we had the spirit of the BullRun, and so did many other teams, it wasn't about the trophy (and I like the boys from Jersey that won anyways, no hate), my nomination for the award was Eddie anyways.
I will see all of you again next year! Until then, STAY SEXY! ( Team Sexy that is ;) )
7 Days, 2 teenagers, 3500 miles, 18 checkpoints, 11 pullovers, 6 flatbed tows, 5 vicious pranks, 5 written warnings, 4 last place finishes, 2 tubs of crickets, ONE Heck of a crazy ride!
Drake.
PICTURES ARE AT
http://s804.photobucket.com/albums/yy322/drakekemper/BullRun%202010/
