On an absolutely sweltering, uncharacteristically humid Nevada morning, after a blast to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway with Noah Lehman-Haupt in the SuperSpeeders/Gotham Dream Cars Ford GT, we hopped in the back seat of the Rensing/Nicole Audi A8L, did a quick lap of the Shelby proving ground, and shot off for lunch in Lake Havasu. Click through for the tale.
As one of the first cars to leave the speedway, we knew it would only be a matter of time until characters like Lehman-Haupt/Ferretti, Tove Christensen, the Collins Brothers and Peter "I drive Porsche" Kolb would come hammering past us on I-15. We kept in radio contact with Noah, whose Garmin GPS had rendered the team nearly unstoppable on the eastern half of the rally. It had failed us plotting the route to the Speedway, however, and it was about to fail us again.
Noah had decided he and Rob were going to take 93 over to I-40 at Kingman, AZ. Which, of course, took us right over the Hoover Dam. Now, we've wanted to see the Hoover Dam since we were a wee Jalopnik, but today wasn't the right time to be sightseeing and moving slowly. But, slowly we were moving, so we made the best of it and took in the sights. We'd thought about counselling Keri and Jen against the route, but seeing as we'd met Keri roughly five minutes before we got in her car and Jen when we got in the car, we figured that it'd be prudent to let it lie.
We did have a piece of advice from Alex Roy to share, however; proceed slowly through Kingman, as it's a hornets' nest of speedtraps. The best part was when Lehman-Haupt got addled and radioed us later saying, "We're coming into Kingman. We've heard that Alex Roy says there are a lot of speed traps here." Thanks again, Noah.
We caught AZ 95 down to Lake Havasu City, and then something ridiculous happened. Lake Havasu's most famous attraction is London Bridge, which was disassembled in the late 1960s and put back together in Havasu, opening in '71. Yet off the city's main artery, there are no directions to the Bridge, which we were supposed to cross to find the checkpoint. Find it we did, with help from a local girl in a Jeep. Every Bullrunner without prior experience in the town had the same problem. In fact, many said that this checkpoint was the biggest goatfuck of the entire rally.
While we were refuelling, Jen stopped to talk to some folks who wanted to know know if we were making a movie or something, prompting a frustrated discussion between us and Keri, who finally hopped out of the car and yelled, "JEN!"
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