After 7,700 miles and three attempts to cross the country at warp speed, Captain Roy has experienced something like a Maher mindmeld. As in any marathon, exhaustion and fear make quitting seem smart. You can say you tried, blame the weather, and find a hotel. But breaking a record — any record — takes something more, something personal. Right now, it will take everything. There's no room left for strategy. Roy simply has to hit it hard.
The radar is crazy with bleep! and blatt!, the spreadsheets litter the cockpit like dirty floor mats, but Roy hits it anyway. He doesn't need charts anymore. He is the chart, and Excel and Google Earth and Garmin MapSource and something more, too, a guy with something to prove.
He passes a minivan in the carpool lane at 102 mph and merges onto California's I-10 headed into Los Angeles with blocks of lit towers to the right and oncoming halogens kaleidoscoping his bleary corneas. But Roy sees only the road ahead and the best path through it, the racing line that shaves fat off the hips of the curves as he apexes them at 100 mph, now 117 past Crenshaw Boulevard, La Brea Avenue at 115. The curve and acceleration is a physical sensation in the gut, and now the city is 10 miles out, now 8, and the turbos spool up and kick and Maher says, "Cop! No — taxi!" while Roy hits 117 past Cloverfield Boulevard, peels off on the exit to a light gone green, the next one green — one, two, three more — through the gate of the Santa Monica Pier, where wooden planks rattle beneath the car. The curve and acceleration is a physical sensation in the gut, and now the city is 10 miles out, now 8, and Maher says, "Cop! No — taxi!" while Roy hits 117 past Cloverfield Boulevard, peels off on the exit to a light gone green, the next one green — one, two, three more — through the gate of the Santa Monica Pier, where wooden planks rattle beneath the car. 1
This is one of the best articles I've read in a while.
Gold Star.
