Road fever : a high-speed travelogue Read online

  "It's twenty-six and a few hours," Alan Russell said.

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. Though, as I said, I'm not certain he obeyed the rules. For instance, when Garry came to me and said he'd like to do this drive I researched backwards through our files to see how his concept compared with other long drives. I decided that this was something very comparable. You see, it's very nice for people to come to us in advance and say, 'What will you accept?' "

  My 8120-a-night hotel room was clean enough, and there was a view of the crenelated roofs of Covent Garden, but it was small. Euros-mall. I took one of my dirty shirts, measured out what I supposed was the length of a cat, tip of the nose to tip of the tail, and swung it about. I could find no position at all in which the shirt did not hit at least one wall. Yep, not enough room to swing a cat.

  Everything was white, hard plastic Eurowhite, and there was a gadget in the corner that would press your pants for you, and a teapot. There were three television channels, and one of them consistently featured endless ceremonial events: guys in florid Elizabethan uniforms walking around stiffly, and commentators who elucidated the action in the hushed reverence usually reserved for golf.

  For an American, the room was claustrophobic. Worse, the hotel catered to the theater crowd, a well-dressed group, so that occasionally a house detective, noticing a man in a leather jacket and jeans, saw fit to check my room key. Who would want to break into the place: it was like a prison.

  So I sat at a cafe called the Pelican, eating venison with a tangy raspberry sauce—the Pelican saw itself as a French bistro—and perused the British version of the Guinness Book, which Alan Russell, not surprisingly, thought superior to the American edition.

  My impression was that Russell was inclined to not accept Jerzy Adamuszek's claim. I, on the other hand, was fairly certain that Jerzy Adamuszek, a Polish Canadian from Montreal who didn't speak Spanish, had driven a black 1981 Cadillac from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, alone, in twenty-six days. More or less.

  It seemed wise to set that as the time to beat. Jerzy probably wasn't going to get the record, but as Garry had pointed out in Argentina, if he did it—if he really did it—we were honor bound to consider his time the standing record.

  No forty days, no thirty-five days: didn't matter if those times would give us the record. "It's a matter of morality," Garry had said.

  And just in case, just to cover all possibilities, I thought, privately, that it would be nice to bring it all in under twenty-four days.

  No questions that way.

  Those would be our rules.

  I studied the book for a time and worked on my bottle of wine.

  "Many people," Mr. Russell had said, "think some of these records are trivial."

  Hmmm?

  The duration record for continuous clapping (sustaining an average of 160 claps per minute audible at 120 yards! is 54 hours by V. Jeyaraman of Tamil Nadu, India from the 13th to the 15th of December 1985.

  "We cannot consider anything trivial," Mr. Russell had said. "The person actually doing it is likely to be someone who will never be the fastest runner, never be Mark Spitz or Billie Jean King. Nevertheless, they are deadly serious in their endeavors and for this reason, we must treat them seriously."

  It occurred to me, over my second glass of Beaujolais, that what Alan Russell was saying is that while certain records may seem a little silly—duration drumming, cucumber slicing, prolonged sermonizing, continuous showering, billiard-table jumping—the person attempting the feat is motivated by the same soaring human desire for excellence that puts a man on the moon or creates a da Vinci. Over the third glass of wine, I began to imagine that the Guinness Book of World Records is about striving and desire, about courage, nobility, and the human soul.

  The record distances in the country sport of throwing dried cow chips depends on whether or not the projectile may or may not be molded in a spherical shape. The greatest distance achieved under the "nonspheri-calization and 100 percent organic" rule (established 1970) is 266 feet by Steve Urner at the Mountain Festival at Tehachapi, California, on August 14, 1981.

  Aside from cow chips, there was a lot more nobility in the book. Arthur Rank was sixty-nine in August of 1984 when he set the stone-skipping record ("fourteen plinkers and fifteen pitty-pats"); Chris Riggio completed a 28.5-mile marathon in four hours and thirty-four minutes while carrying a fresh egg on a dessert spoon for the official egg-and-spoon-racing record; a Mr. Shriv Ravi stood on one foot for thirty-four hours—the rules in this one require that the disengaged foot not be rested on the standing foot and that no object be used for support. Mr. Ravi is from Tamil Nadu, India, and would have been able to hire his neighbor, Mr. V. Jeyaraman, the human applause machine, to give him a hand for a couple of days.

  I bought a ticket for that night's performance of Starlight Express. In the final scenes, the railroad engines, who were actually actors on roller skates, massed for one last final race, and, as I recall, the old rusty steam engine (named, of course, Rusty) was inspired by a song sung by his old coal car, now sadly deceased but alive in soul and memory. The part of the dead coal car was sung by a black man, whose soaring and spiritual voice seemed, in a spectacular effect, to light up the backdrop night sky with brilliant and glittering stars.

  "Only you have the power within you Just believe in yourself, The sea will part before you Stop the rain And turn back the tide."

  I had a vision of human striving and the dignity of trivial pursuit: a vision of Mr. Ravi swaying on one sore leg, of Mr. Jeyaraman clapping hysterically. A tingling sensation shot up my spine and ran along the tops of my forearms.

  So: twenty-three days, mas o menos.

  A matter of morality, mas o menos.

  THE ADVENTURE-DRIVING BUSINESS

  [FEATURING AN AMBUSH IN AFRICA]

  July 1987 • Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

  I

  was en route from my home in Montana to Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, to work out the final details of the drive with Garry Sowerby. I made some notes about pursuing a phantom Caddy propelled by the spiritual advice of a defunct musical coal car and tried not to think about the flight. Airline travel fractures my equanimity. Delays. Lost baggage. Overworked and consequently curt personnel.

  I have lost my temper in airports. It's embarrassing. People staring at you as you scream and gibber, hands in the air. People moving away from you in the lounge as you fulminate. It is, I am sure, merely a personal quirk.

  I wasn't going to lose it again. This falling onto the ground and pounding my fists on the cold tiles simply wouldn't do. Time to put myself in a defensive mode. I jotted down some notes for an imaginary book about an airline crash in the wilderness. Everyone survives, but a large grizzly bear, as if directed by the hand of God, singles out and savages airline employees only. Call it Furry Fury.

  Flights out of Montana serve what are called "snacks." A stewardess tossed a bag of nuts on my tray, like peanuts at the ballpark. She was very busy, flinging nuts, this stewardess, but my companion, Karen, took the opportunity to ask a question.

  "Could you arrange for one of those carts to meet us at the gate? We have a tight connection and I'm on crutches."

  Karen had been experiencing pain standing for any length of time. She could outrun me for a mile or so before her feet began to hurt, hurt badly, and the doctors said it would only get worse. They told her that

  they could fix her up in two simple operations. It was a painful matter of breaking and rearranging a single bone in each foot. Karen opted to get it all over with at once: the same operation on both feet and then six weeks on crutches. We imagined that the decision would be an exercise in the conservation of misery.

  Our flight attendant said she would make the call later, after she had finished tossing out the rest of her nuts. It looked, I thought, like dinner in the monkey house. There were, by actual count, eight nuts in my bag. Was I supposed to eat them all myself?

  Th
e flight into Minneapolis was late, no great surprise. Seasoned travelers, in 1987, had begun referring to the airline as Northworst. Passengers suspected that the company routinely delayed flights— sometimes claiming mechanical difficulties—when in fact they were waiting for delayed connecting flights in order to fill all seats on any given flight. Disgruntled ex-Northwest employees insisted that this was the case.

  Indeed, most of Northworst's current employees seemed disgruntled. Flight attendants worked planes full of passengers who had been kept waiting for hours and who were certain to miss connecting flights. There was a feeling of antagonism that pervaded most flights. The attendants themselves had some labor-related gripes with the company, and were not inclined to simple pleasantries. They had begun to develop a kind of homeroom high-school-teacher attitude toward their passengers.

  This was par for the course: I wasn't going to steam myself into any kind of tantrum.

  An announcement was made about the captain and how he had instructed us to put our tray tables up and to return our seats to the full and upright position. As the flight attendant passed my seat I attempted to ask again if she had arranged for the cart. The woman was overworked—Northworst could have provided a couple more attendants on this flight—and the exertion of firing nuts at the passengers had dampened her hair so that moist ringlets framed her face. She appeared to be in her early forties, and wore a fatigued expression that said something about what I imagined were twenty years of professional glamour and fun at thirty thousand feet. With frequent stopovers in Minneapolis.

  "Excuse me," I said as she strode by my seat.

  The woman treated me as she might treat a flasher on the street. No recognition: all these perverts want is attention. Don't encourage them.

  "Miss?"

  But she was gone.

  I reached up and punched the attendant call button. Nothing. Once more.

  Bing, bing.

  And the attendant was standing there, towering over me, glowering. "Yes," in a tone that meant "now what?"

  "Did you arrange for that cart?"

  "Sir," the woman sighed, "I said I would call and I did." A dozen passengers within earshot now knew that I was the kind of guy, he's got a friend on crutches, he's gonna ask for help not once but twice. Twice! I felt my face flush with anger and consoled myself with Furry Fury.

  So, of course, when we had collected Karen's crutches and deplaned, there was no cart. We stood there, at the boarding gate, while the scheduled time for our connecting flight came and went. Karen could not walk more than fifty yards on her new feet. We were stymied. The other passengers were gone and the area was devoid of people. Presently, our crew deplaned, the pilots carrying their square flight bags, the attendants pulling suitcases on leashes behind them. When the woman with damp hair passed, I did no more than catch her eye.

  She stared at me coldly and in her best homeroom teacher's voice said, "Sir, I made the call. If the cart isn't here, it's not my fault."

  And off she went to have sex with animals.

  All right, I'm sorry. That was a little tantrum right there and it was uncalled for. Time has passed. I'm better now. I can say nice things about the airline industry if I really want to.

  For instance: the flight out of Montreal to Moncton, New Brunswick, left smack-bang on time, and the Canadian attendants seemed to enjoy their work. It was a pleasant flight and no surprise at all. Over the past six months, in preparation for the long drive, I'd flown to nearly a dozen countries in South and Central America. Not one of my flights originating from a Latin destination—not one—had ever been delayed. No bags were lost. The flight attendants had been professional and pleasant. Even American carriers were on time out of South America. Small Central American carriers—companies that might be called Firecracker Airlines—had been on time. Professional.

  And now a Canadian flight was proving as pleasant and professional as a flight out of El Salvador.

  I just want to know how it is that the United States of America suffers the worst airline service in all of the Americas.

  No, wait. A pleasant upbeat attitude is said to prolong life. I'm going to take a deep breath here, count to ten, and try to see it from the industry's point of view.

  So:

  Air travel, in the United States, is no longer the option of the privileged few—as it is in Third World countries—and what passengers experience is the result of a kind of economic egalitarianism. That's the way to look at it. The airports are crowded because more and more people can afford to fly; which results in more scheduled flights; which results in delays; which results in crowded airports; which results in seatmates who know, and can recount with enthusiasm and startling endurance, the plot of the latest Star Trek movie.

  Better conversation, I'd say, than the kind of things you hear from ticket agents.

  When I'd gone to London to talk with Alan Russell, my flight out of Kennedy in New York had been delayed. Natch. "It'll be about three hours," the ticket agent said. A line formed and several people changed flights. After a half-hour wait, I had my audience with the man behind the counter.

  "Can you tell me," I asked, "how long we'll have to wait?" I thought I could cab over to see a nearby friend.

  "You mean exactly?"

  "Sure."

  The man smiled one of those you-poor-fool smiles: the kind of merciless grin you might see on the face of a Marine drill instructor hectoring a naive recruit.

  "Sir," the ticket agent said, "we could leave in two hours. We could leave in five. There is no such thing as 'exactly' in the airline business."

  It's the kind of attitude you expect from bureaucrats in failing countries all over the earth, and the nicest thing I can say about the airline corpocracy in the United States is that it is not precisely evil. Odd that mismanagement and inefficiency should breed such arrogance.

  New Brunswick, bounded by the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, lies on Canada's eastern seaboard, just north and a bit east of Maine. It is one of Canada's Maritime Provinces along with Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

  Prior to the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which ceded the region to Great Britain, the area was known as Acadia and was French. During the American revolutionary war, British Loyalists settled the Mari-times. The Acadians, a French-speaking minority, however, have preserved their identity and have increased in population. The sense of struggle that Acadians live with has toughened them, and Acadian men, especially the younger ones, are regarded as tough monkeys: "Hey, Bobby Choquette, he can scrap, eh?"

  Many of the Acadians live on the Atlantic coast and are fishermen. You meet men of forty who recall the shame of going to school every day with a bag lunch that was the mark of their poverty. The rich kids had peanut butter and jelly. Sons and daughters of Acadian fishermen had to make do with lobster sandwiches.

  New Brunswick was once famous for the quality of its ships and the men who sailed them. Today, it is the eighth most populous of Canada's ten provinces, and per-capita income lags behind Canada as a whole. The best and the brightest of New Brunswick's young people often see little opportunity, and there has been an exodus to the more dynamic provinces to the west. On the other hand, forest covers over 80 percent of the province, and the moose population is increasing.

  Maritimers who stay in the provinces are often great travelers, adventurers of a sort, the kind of people who venture out to see the big world, absorb all they can, and return to commune with the moose in what they consider to be the finest place on earth in which to live.

  Maritimers, and Canadians in general, generally suffer a beneficent affliction that the Canadian writer Marian Botsford Fraser has forth-rightly and fearlessly labeled "niceness." An American who spends too much time engaged in a corrosive harangue about a bad airline flight falls into line soon enough. Persist in your ill temper and people begin looking at you as if you're wearing a leather mask and carrying a chain saw.

  Garry Sowerby picked the two of us up at the airpor
t in his family car, and older-model Oldsmobile 98 with ninety thousand miles on it. On the way into Moncton from the airport I believe I said that the land was inspiring and the people seemed, well, nice.

  "It's a national trait," Garry said sorrowfully. "We can't help it. It's like, well, you know why Canadians say 'eh?' at the end of the sentence?"

  "I thought it was a lingering French habit, like saying, 'n'est-ce pas?' "

  "No. It's this niceness. This Canadian niceness. You say, 'piss ofF!'

  and then add 'eh?' What does that mean? It means piss off but, uh, you don't have to if you don't want to. I mean, look at your national symbol. You've got a bald eagle. Fierce eyes, a snake in its talons. What do we have?" Garry bit down on his lower lip, thrust his face into mine, and widened his eyes so that he looked moronically eager. "Beaver, eh?"

  Sowerby, who had the slightest of Canadian accents—"aboot" for about—was a connoisseur of great "ehs?" but he himself never eh-ed except in jest. "Remember when we came back from Panama?" he asked. "We flew out just before the riots. And then you got back to the States, what were the big headlines there?"

  "Iran-contra," I said.

  "The big scandal here, front page across the country, somebody found out the prime minister owned forty pairs of shoes."

  "Yeah?"

  "That was it. That was the scandal." Apparently, Canadians felt that the prime minister was about thirty-five pairs of shoes to the dark side of nicety. Garry, like any man who deeply loves his country, purely enjoyed complaining about it.

  "You know who our prime minister is?" he asked.

  "Uh, used to be Trudeau. Now it's, who, Mulroney?"

  Niceness doesn't make headlines. Americans don't know anything about Canada. We read about Noriega, or Qaddafi, or Khomeini. We respect Canadians, we like them, but the great mass of ordinary Americans somehow missed the big northern footwear expose. Virtually any Canadian could tell you the name of the American secretary of state. I didn't even know what you called his Canadian counterpart.