For once on the Gumball, I woke up in a bed. After a long day's journey into night and Athens, Herr Roy decided he wanted to be as close as possible to the M5 and booked a block of rooms at the Sofitel in Athens, rather than taking his room at the Hilton. A French cameraman was booked into the M5 for the day, riding rear-seat shotgun next to a spare wheel and Ross and Roy's excess baggage. Alex texted me to invite me down for breakfast with Fly and Jarod DeAnda. The morning was quiet and jovial, highlighted by Alex and I engaging in an impromptu game of Star Wars trivia one-upmanship that left Fly and Jarod gobsmacked at the sheer geekery. Then the text came in: the cars were ready to go.

We bolted for the rooms to pack. Alex had been requested to take Julie D., the on-the-ground French go-to girl to Tirana for a meeting with the Albanian president, who was reportedly hopping mad about the rally's delay. Then word came down that there was only one sheet of paper to get the non-EU cars out of Greece and into Macedonia. Julie was shuffled into another car. I ended up in a Sharan for the second day in a row. Most of the cars had fled the parking lot by the time we figured out how to divide up all of the gear in the Sharans to accomodate the necessary five passengers in each vehicle. I ended up with a snowboard for an armrest.

Meanwhile, a lone F430 sat in the parking lot, having been offloaded from the Antonov and parked, but missing its crew. They showed up right as we departed and followed us to the nearest Shell station, where we loaded up on goods and engaged in the first battle of what became known as Crewball 3000, making sure we found and pulled into the first diesel pump available.

At the fuel stop, I got to know the crew, headed by Nelson, a level-headed, no-bullshit Kiwi who'd owned multiple Mitsubishi Evos. We quickly dubbed the rest of the guys in the car Mandela, Ricky and Lord, while I ended up with the appelation of Horatio. Little did we know that a few hours later, our Crewball successes would be rendered as unfortunate as the Battle of Trafalgar was for the famed British Admiral.

With the Fezza guys in tow, we promptly got lost on our way to the tollway, but eventually figured out what we thought was roughly the right direction to Tirana. Meanwhile, the Ferrari guys had decided we were complete tools and went their own way. Pulling up a tollboth, we asked the super-pretty attendant with the tiny little diamond stud in her nose and the bright blue eyes how to get to Albania. She told us Exit 8 was the way to go, and we put our faith in that hottest toll attendant in recorded history. She did us proud, and once out of Athens we pushed the Sharan to 1.23 Fly, marvelling at the rolling, well-maintained roads with long sweepers, gradual-but-dramatic elevation changes, and simply brain-melting scenery. We all remarked that it was absolute supercar heaven; the perfect place to wring out an SLR or a Ford GT.

A couple of hours out of Athens, Nelson called out "Chivvy!" I didn't get what he was talking about. "The orange Chivvy!" he repeated. We'd come up on the '55 Chevrolet rolling on meth-addled Center Lines. We went by them as they cruised at a steady 80, taking it easy due to cooling problems. Just ahead, we pulled up behind a Mercedes SLR and a Carrera GT that would suffer an untimely end on the road to Bratislava. We relieved ourselves on the side of the road, shared some smokes and in due time, a certained mid-engined child of Enzo rolled up. The look on their faces was crestfallen. They couldn't believe that a Volkswagen people-carrier built in Portugal, loaded down with five corndogs and a ton of gear could have possibly been ahead of their Maranello-crafted machine of the highest order.

We, on the other hand, couldn't believe those schmoes were so entirely inept at navigation. Team Polizei, for example, was already in Albania before we left the Athens city limits. Giggles ensued in a bit of class-warrish smugness. Nelson climbed a wire fence with bare feet.

After making it to Larissa, which we all agreed is a hot girl's name, as well as a very neat town, we crossed up into the hills of Greek Macedonia on our way to the former Yugoslavian republic of the same name. Nelson mentioned that the landscape reminded him of New Zealand. Hobbit jokes flew. Regardless, it was the prettiest thing we'd seen yet, even trumping the coast of the Agean Sea, where in 334 BC, Alexander the Great utterly beat the armies of Persia.

We rounded a bend and were confronted with exposed male asses and a Honda Civic Type R with a camera rig mounted in the back. We stopped and conferred with the crew, had a few smokes and admired the view. Suddenly, someone spotted the Sharan that was supposedly a half-hour back coming toward us. We made with the rapid muster and piled back into the van, narrowly getting out of the turnout and up to speed on the two-lane road before they would've been able to get passed us. Dan, of Istanbul-to-Athens fame rocked a sublime pass, stranding us behind a truck. In the distance, we saw blue lights and prayed it wasn't the camera crew in tandem with wishes that the Greek police had hauled in the other Sharan. A couple of minutes later, we spottedn their Sharan on the side of the road, watching the flashing blue lights in the distance. We pulled up and blocked their exit. After a bit of chat, a group photo was called for.

Ricky did a runner. I followed. The rest followed me. In order for Mandela to get into the third row, Ricky ended up sitting on top of his folded-down seat for a harrowing minute or so. Then the message came in. Either the Chevy or the Escalade had crashed. Everything was confusing. The 'Slade ended up being okay. We decided one of the vans should go back for the Chevy guys, 45 miles behind us. But our vans were overloaded. Nelson argued that Gumball should have somebody there, even if we couldn't give them a ride. Then The Call came. Nelson ordered (as much as he had authority to order) the other van back to the Chevy boys, saying, "We've got another assignment. It sounds pretty bad." Within the next 45 minutes, I began to get sick. We grabbed dinner at a gas station near the Macedonian border. Old men sat around smoking in the mini-mart. We wondered why we couldn't get oregano-flavored chips at home. Nelson derided Red Bull as poison. I smoked nervously.

Eventually, after hearing that the other van had made it into Macedonia without incident, we gave it a shot. Somewhere in the night, we picked up the Kuwaiti Murcie, who'd been diverted to Thessaloniki due to some goof with their CoPilot GPS system. We also ended up with a Porsche 911 in Ivy Hotel livery from California. We passed a Maser with a tire problem that we couldn't help. We stopped for gas and saw footage of Morley's accident on TV at the gas station. We decided that the faster we got out of the country, the better.

Arriving at the Albanian border, we were informed that the UN escort we were promised to Tirana was done for the the night. Instead, we were to be led to the Albanian capital by a hyperserious off-road dedicated Land Cruiser and a VW Bora police car. While we were waiting at the border, the Turkish Taxi pulled up. We assumed that the convoy would be headed up front and rear by a police car. And in the spirit of the Gumball, we took up the rear position behind the Turkish Taxi, a vehicle that could take 45mph corners at roughly a third of that speed. Black humor crackled throughout the Volkswagen. One bridge was identified as leading to the Death Prison; distinct from the one leading to the mere Rape Prison. The darkness, the fact that we were supposed to be escorted by the military and instead got something that wouldn't have looked out of place at the Great Southern Crawl and the fact that we were stuck behind this great lumbering beast of a minibus while the rest of the pack had long-since pulled away started to eat at us. Then we got lost.

Somehow, somewhere, in some city, the Land Cruiser and the Polica Rrugorre Bora found us. The pretty, weathered, curly-haired Albanian woman asked if anyone needed a smoke. Having lost my pack of Davidoffs, I replied in the affirmative and she tossed a box of 18 Marlboro Lights through the window. We took off before I could hand them back to her, following the police car, leaving Kamal and Alikanur with the 4x4. We hit Tirana around 4am, having missed Prime Minister's proclaimation, "No guest is ever late in an Albanian house." Instead, I slept on a makeshift terrycloth mattress. The next morning's shower was a luxury I forced myself to indulge in. – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
The Inverse of Alexander: Istanbul to Athens; Travels With Commander Kokolari; More Gumball 3000 [Internal]

Alex Roy, Gumball organizer Julie Brangstrup and Michael Ross just before the cars are released at at the airport in Athens.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If that glory can be killed, we are lost.

There should have been something in place. Morocco, 2004, on the running of the fifth Gumball 3000 should have been a warning. A Ferrari 360 ate it in spectacular fashion. The Reyland Escort Cosworth nearly took out Team Polizei. Jerry "Torquenstein" Reynolds survived what looked to be a death blow of an accident when the ass end of his Viper got loose on a North African road. But Gumball organizers Maximillion Cooper and Julie Brangstrup got off easy. Single-car pileups, as it were; no fatalities, and only Reynolds' bandaged head at the finish line to illustrate that anything had gone wrong.

So when an elderly couple pulled out in front of Nick Morley's Porsche in an old Golf, the ultimate result wasn't a surprise to anyone. I talked to Dan Neil not long before I left and he cautioned me, "Be careful. One of these days, somebody is going to get killed on one of these rallies." The worst case scenario, of course, was that said somebody would happen to be a civilian.

Yes, the Gumball is a rally, not a race, but let's step back a moment. It took me twenty-two hours to get from Tirana, Albania to Bratislava, Slovakia. Around an hour and a half was spent in a police station in Montenegro with Team Polizei and a few completely confused real police officers. Another couple of hours passed in Croatia waiting to hitch a ride in a VW Sharan support van after the Dubrovnik checkpoint. If you've laid out around 40k in entry fees, had your car shipped from points unknown to London, been shut down around 50 miles from a checkpoint on the first day of the rally, been held in a Turkish airport bar while your car is diverted to Athens, you're going to be anxious to hit the fucking road.

Part of the problem was with the ALK CoPilot nav system handed out by the organizers. Instead of being held responsible for setting their own routes via their own GPS units or by good old-fashioned paper maps, the CoPilot — a system designed to work with mobile phones — was obscenely unreliable and required a great deal of attention to work with any semblance of accuracy. Nevertheless, Cooper defended the CoPilot's accuracy at the driver's meeting in Albania. Later that day, the CoPilot directed Team Polizei and numerous other drivers to a blocked-off tunnel. Who should come up the road but Maximillion himself? Roy leaned out the passenger side window and commented, "So there's no problem with the CoPilots, Max?" Admittedly, in short order, the under-construction tunnel was unblocked for our convoy, but problems with the units were legion during the rally, and time lost (a Kuwaiti team in a Murcielago en route to Albania ended up routed to within 300 km of Turkey before they realized that everything was wrong and sped back) led to fatigue and fast driving in situations where it may not have been prudent.

Interestingly, I don't believe that Nick Morley was engaging in wanton speed-freakery in Macedonia. I was in the support van called to the scene; according to the CoPilot people, we were the closest support van to the accident. Reports were mixed. Serious inuries. Wait. Gumballers walked away. Oh wait, a death. Rumors started flying. We debated de-stickering the Sharan and hiding Gumball-related articles of clothing. We worried that we'd get into Macedonia and not be able to get out. We sent the van behind us forward as bait, telling them to wait for us at the border while we ate at a rural gas station. We hoped they'd be unable to resist testing the border in their urge to spank us in the unofficial Crewball 3000. Somehow, the knowledge that we weren't going to be left to fester in a Macedonian prison outweighed losing a stage to the other Sharan. I immediately developed a stress-related cold that I've yet to shake.

We passed the accident site somewhere in the night, having missed it as the result of some wrong turn, we suppose. Kemal Sadikoglu of the Turkish Taxi team pulled into the Albanian border checkpoint a half-hour after we did and claimed that they'd held Nick Morley's brother Oliver up once the authorities called out that shit had changed when word came down that Vladimir Cepulyoski had died of a heart attack after Morley and Matthew McConville's TechArt Porsche had T-boned their Volkswagen. Although the information I've been able to glean is muddy, the #19 M6 piloted by a Russian couple pulled up and Morley and McConville hopped in, only to be yanked out at a border checkpoint, while the Russians were allowed to continue.

The next day, Roy, Ross and I were detained for an hour and a half by Montenegrin cops due to the use of the Polizei M5's use of lights and sirens in traffic. They pulled the Russians in simply because they were in a stickered BMW that happened to be stuck in traffic while they were taking us to the police station. I can't tell whether the Russians were dumb or just stereotypically Russian, but I'm guessing that you don't get to own an M6 in Russia by being dumb, although playing ignorant and foreign is an advantage in plenty of Gumball situations. It got us the hell out of Montenegro, after all. I honestly can't say one way or another that the Russians knew what they were involved in. Their English was too bad; yet I don't know if it was on-purpose bad.

What I do know is this. The Macedonian roads on the proscribed route would be hell on cars like that TechArt Porsche. Our diesel Sharan was as fast as just about anything on those byways. And if, as the CoPilot people suggested, we were on the route that ultimately claimed the lives of the Cepulyoskis, I'm willing to believe Cooper's claim that Morley was in the neighborhood of the speed limit. The aforementioned Kuwaiti Murcie had been purchased brand-new for the rally; its crew had been directed up and down a dirt road for over an hour before we showed up. The car was fucked-up, dirty and making unfortunate noises. Macedonia is no place for a purebred supercar, and a TechArt Neun-Elf is essentially that. And beyond that, a Mk II Golf is no match for a modern Porsche in terms of safety systems. It's not particularly surprising that an elderly couple in such a machine would succumb to their injuries, however sad and tragic the circumstances may be. Nevertheless, the oncoming vehicle they pulled out in front of could just have as easily been a truck, and the world media never would have heard about it.

Yet it was a sticker-covered sports car driven by two wealthy Britons. It's news. Because those two Britons were scared shitless of a Macedonian jail, even if it was the elderly couple who pulled out of them when the Porsche had the right-of-way, it's not hard to understand why Morley and McConville ended up running. In such an accident in the United States or the UK, one generally knows what to expect. People have posited that the guys deserve to die in prison for running. On the other hand, I'd ask our readers, if they thought they had a chance to get out when everything turned to shit and they faced rotting in a second-world jail, if they might not attempt to get away as well. I'm not calling their runner the right decision, but I'm not damning them for it either, given that from what I've been able to piece together, it apparently wasn't their first instinct.

We got into Tirana at 4am. I walked into the hotel and found Herr Roy at the hotel bar. It had been a brutal day for everyone. I slept on a hardwood floor with a bathrobe for a mattress and woke up three hours later. Max proclaimed at the drivers' meeting that there a ton of rumors flying around Gumball and urged us not to talk to the press; to let the Gumball PR machine handle things.

Not long afterward, at 7am EDT on Thursday, May 3rd, Team Polizei's support guru J.F. Musial called the Macedonian embassy in London and confirmed that Cepulyoski was dead. That's noon in London. 1 or 2pm in Eastern Europe. If some 21-year-old college student in Hoboken, New Jersey could verify that the accident had resulted in a fatality via government channels, one would think that the rally organizer would certainly know well beforehand. Yet the morning briefing in Tirana was essentially a plea to keep a "first rule of Gumball, don't talk about Gumball" code of omerta in place with not even a slight whiff of death's maddening stank.

Just past Dubrovnik, Team Polizei tendered their resignation from the rally. On the road to Split, in a Sharan with a number of green Gumball volunteers in their early twenties headed by Kitty Cooper, Max's younger sister (who, by the way is a total sweetheart) we ran into a number of Gumballers on the side of a suburban road. We chucked the people-carrier halfway up a driveway and hoofed it back to the huddled crew. Cooper's flat-black vinyl-wrapped XJ220 sat two driveways behind us. For the first time I'd seen, Max wasn't wearing his sunglasses. He seemed a small, tired confused man. He laid out to the crew what I'd set down an hour earlier from my experience in the support van the day before. He asked me to remove the posts from "that website." Kitty played dumb. But she knew. She'd known.

Of course she'd known, as one of Maximillion's own. The other crew boys, who'd signed up as volunteers as a way to collect foreign poontang and see exotic cars were shocked and pissed that they hadn't been informed. They were crew, in their minds. The drivers were trying to piece together what'd gone down from reports from those who'd happened on the scene, the news media reports and word from drivers close to the Morleys. Kemal recalled Oliver's face going sheet-white when the authorities said that Vladimir was dead and that Nick and Matthew needed to stick around. Bear in mind that Oliver Morley is an irrepressible individual who generally arouses the ire of anyone he decides he doesn't like.

At the morning-after press conference in Tirana, Max announced that we were indeed going to Germany; that there would be a police escort to Berlin and to get back to the UK, every team would be provided with safe-passage papers for every German state on the route. For most drivers, that fell apart somewhere in Croatia. The word had gotten to the mainstream media. Although the polizei roadblock outside Hahn was apparently the work of one overzealous policeman, it was obvious at that point that the whole mess would be spun in his favor, despite the last few days of work the Gumball staff had put into getting everything re-sorted. Sadly, though, more effort had gone into that than informing the drivers and crews of the accident, its aftermath and Morley and McConville's attempt to escape Macedonia.

A tad more Steinbeck: "Christ, I wish they hadn't killed off all the grizzly bears. In eighteen-eighty, my grandfather killed one up near Pleyto weighed eighteen-hundred pounds." But what if? What if the grizzlies set themselves up to be killed by doing the only thing they knew how to do? And if Gumball 3000 is the eighteen-hundred-pound grizzly of open-road rallies, it stands to reason that Max and Julie — only knowing how to be Max and Julie because they'd gotten by on being Max and Julie for years — didn't blink in the face of the small man with the rifle, because how could he possibly hurt them? How did it all come undone? Simple. They'd nearly bled out before they realized that the wound was serious. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again Wednesday. – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. And yes, Johnson's iPod is engraved with an Accept reference.

Related:
More Gumball 3000; Fast as a Shark: Living on Chinese Rocks [Internal]

The organisers wish to confirm that the facts of the incident were not withheld from the participants; as soon as the Macedonian Authorities confirmed clear details of events and confirmation of the fatality that occurred several hours after the accident on Thursday 3rd May the organisers cancelled the event without hesitation and issued an official statement at the earliest possible time.

The organisers are disappointed at rally participants Mr. A. Roy and Mr. M. Ross's blatant self promotion at a time when all efforts are being made by Gumball 3000 to manage this difficult situation.

The press release issued today by Mr. Roy and Mr. Ross promoting themselves as 'winners' of the event is misleading and Gumball 3000 wishes to make it clear that there is no recognition for finishing first and no 'winner' is recorded.

Maximillion Cooper and his team are further saddened at their request for the organiser's resignation and their complaints about the 'professionalism' of other participants.

"As the organiser and founder of the event I feel the timing of this press release to be in particular bad taste. The selection process of participants is designed to be fair and without discrimination. In the events 9-year history over 6 million road miles have been driven by 2000 participating cars without any previous accidents of this nature; proof alone that I and the rest of the organisers do everything within our power to ensure safety during the Rally. In the future we will work even more closely with the authorities in each country the event travels through to ensure the safety and success of the event moving forward."

Gumball organisers are in close communication with the Macedonian authorities and are doing all they can to assist the family in way at this time.

OFFICIAL GUMBALL 3000 STATEMENT [Gumball3000.com]

Related:
Team Polizei Takes On Gumball 3000's Maximillion Cooper Over Hit-And-Run Coverup [internal]

"In view of events of the past day, Alex Roy and Michael Ross of Team Polizei have withdrawn from the 2007 Gumball Rally. They are driving to Bratislava to thank the fans that have traveled from so far. They will make a further statement at 10.00GMT."

Team Polizei Departs Gumball 07 [Gumball144.com]

Related:
Nick Morley Given "30 Days Temporary Detention" In Gumball 3000 Fatal Hit-And-Run; Russian BMW Reportedly Picked Up Morley And McConville After Deadly Gumball 3000 Hit-And-Run; Gumball 3000 Race Organizers Attempting To Cover Up Hit-And-Run; Gumballers Nick Morley And Matthew McConville Arrested After Hit-And-Run Fatality [internal]

"An investigative judge of Struga Court ordered 30 days of temporary detention to the British citizen Nicholas Morley, Makfax's correspondent reported.

Morley has been detained for the purposes of the investigation into yesterday's traffic accident that took place at Struga-Qafasan road, which left one Macedonian citizen dead. The victim's wife, who has suffered heavy injuries in the accident, is in critical condition.

The tragic traffic accident occurred on the Struga-Qafasan road near KMR Petrol station. The speeding Porsche, driven by the Briton, crossed over the center lane and crashed into Golf with Ohrid registration plates."

...that the driver and passenger of the BMW with Russian license plates were released by Macedonian authorities after initially being taken into custody. As for the official charges against Morley — they were for:

"...a formal accusation against Morley for "heavy violation of traffic safety" and "failure to provide help to an injured person."

Briton reported for accident near Struga gets 30-day temporary detention [MaxFax.com.mk]

Related:
Russian BMW Reportedly Picked Up Morley And McConville After Deadly Gumball 3000 Hit-And-Run; Gumball 3000 Race Organizers Attempting To Cover Up Hit-And-Run; Gumballers Nick Morley And Matthew McConville Arrested After Hit-And-Run Fatality [internal]

[Hat tip to ZeroSignal!]
[Thanks to GTSpirit for the BMW picture!]
[Thanks to Richard Blakeley on the top graphic!]

Related:
Gumball 3000 Race Organizers Attempting To Cover Up Hit-And-Run; Gumballers Nick Morley And Matthew McConville Arrested After Hit-And-Run Fatality [internal]