Road Fever

“Fascinating … Cahill can be a lot of fun to hang out with. Always observant, he’s a fine reporter with a gift for the mordant turn of phrase.… Here is a writer blessed not only with wit and style but feeling and compassion.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“You’re invited along on the ultimate road trip, a grand adventure … a wonderfully funny and observant book.”

—
USA Today

“The pace picks up and never slows down.”

—
Kansas City Star

“Droll, wonderfully quirky … Tim Cahill [has] the what-the-hell adventuresomeness of a T. E. Lawrence and the humor of a P.J. O’Rourke.”

—
Conde Nast Traveler

“Cahill’s ‘high-speed travelogue’ is an engaging package tour that lures us along by viewing its many facets through the kaleidoscope of the writer’s wry mind.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

“It’s a wild tale of an even wilder pick-up truck drive.… Cahill chronicles it all in a fast-paced fashion—just like that pick-up went.”

—
Houston Post

“Tim Cahill is one of those rare types whose fun quotient seems to increase in direct proportion to the diceyness of the situation.”

—
San Francisco Examiner

“This is an adventure story, wherein our heroes cross mountain peaks in blizzard conditions, traverse the world’s driest desert, navigate muddy jungle trails and worry constantly about bandits, the heavy-handed methods of banana republic bureaucrats susceptible to bribes, and winding up on the wrong side of dope runners, revolutionaries and/or the local constabulary.”

—
Bangor Daily News

A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles. Everywhere, in every country Garry Sowerby and I visited, people offered assistance, advice, and encouragement. We tried to sell Pan-American unity as a dream. The following friends made it a reality.

In Argentina: Jacques Crete, Monica Johnson de Escardo, Duilio DiBella, Oscar E. Barralia, Raul Oscar Capuano, Roberto O. Ducca, Hector O. Alberici, Horacio Zentner, Italo F. Delano, Jorge Fernandez, Roberto Nori, Daniel Leguizamon.

In Chile: Frank Chandler, Christian LaBelle, Gregory C. Nicolaidis, Daniel A. Buteler, Basil Drossos, Mario Archeta, Enrique Gutierrez.

In Peru: M. Dinev, Ricardo Cordove Freyre, Jesus Gonzales Marquesado, Carlos Gonzales Zuzunage, Noel Yriberry Lira, Mercedes Gotuzzo Balta, Dario Caamano Montero, Estuardo Melendez Hoyle, Carlos Garcia Salazar, Luis Zamudio Garcia, Norma Espinoza, Enrique Viale, Fernando Viale.

In Ecuador: R. Mora, Ralph Gillies, Dick Stead, Alejandro Penaherrera, Ivan Toro, Dr. Juan Herman Ortiz.

In Colombia: Perry J. Calderwood, Jaime Alberto Morales, Alan Carvajal, Elie J. Rezk, Santiago Camacho, Jaime Lopez Mendoza, Luis Eduardo Nieto Venegas, Captain Juergen F. Steinebach, Señor G. Giaimo.

In Panama: Ruth Denton, Luis Paz Cardenas, Jose Tapis, Manuelita del la Guardia.

In Costa Rica: James Lambert, Matthew Levin, Greg Cooney, Marco Antonio Pinto.

In Nicaragua: Chistita Caldera, William Vargas, Cesar A. Noguera Ch., Mayda Denueda.

In Guatemala: Thomas G. Cullen, Ricardo Pennington, Frances Asturea, William Gonzales.

In Mexico: Laurent N. Beaulieu, Mario Silva, Luc Javier R. Saucedo Renoud, Francisco Resendiz.

In the United States (lower forty-eight): Rich Cox, Tucker Willis, Pat Moore, W. Marvin Rush III, Bob Lake, Dave Fugate, Art Christy, and Paul Dix. We are especially grateful to Albert J. Buchanan.

In Canada: At Canadian Tire: Jim Miller; at GM Canada: Chris Douglas, Doug Terry, Gerry Gereski, Earl Weichel, Nick Hall; at Farmers: Barrie Reid, W. E. McLellan; at the Canadian Dept. of External Affairs: Anne Hilmer; at the Canadian Automobile Association: David Steventon.

In Alaska: Jim Messer, Bob Mills, Gordon Messer, Terry Tipoly, John Horn, Fritz Guenther, Phil Blackstone, Bob Lewis.

We are also grateful to the following individuals and corporations for special assistance in the U.S.:

At GMC Truck: John Rock, Rich Stuckey, Bill Hill, Steve Olsen, Al Walker, Russ Cameron, Frank Cronin.

At Detroit Diesel Allison: Jim Moloney, Wally Renn, Judy Kangas, Jack Blanchard.

At Stanadyne: Joe Boissonneault, Barbara Bartucca, Mary Seery, Lee Jannet.

At
Popular Mechanics:
Joe Skorupa, Joe Oldham.

At GMODC: Ron Royer, Fred Schwartz.

At Motorola: Dave Weisz.

At Delco Products: Dick Westfall.

Special thanks to those who provided invaluable letters of introduction: Alan Russell, former editor,
Guinness Book of World Records;
Ivan Toro, Automovil Club del Ecuador; Manuel Lissarrague, Automovil Club Argentino; Monica Figueroa Navarro, Automovil Club de Chile; Otto Jelinek, Minister of State, Fitness and Amateur Sport, Canada; Joe Clark, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Canada; David Steventon, Canadian Automobile Association; Deb Drummond, Canadian Automobile Association; Laurie K. Storsater, Canadian Embassy, Peru.

Finally, the author wishes to thank Barbara Lowenstein, a professional agent and personal friend. Thanks also to David Rosenthal, a gifted editor with a whole lot of patience and faith.

T
HERE WERE ABOUT
three thousand of us for dinner that night at the Bally Casino Resort in Las Vegas. We were seated at large round tables accommodating ten people apiece, and each place setting bristled with flatware. There were at least ten separate utensils per person: knives and forks and a few mysterious surgical-looking devices with shiny sharp points. I counted almost four hundred tables in the cavernous convention hall. During the meal an odd group of musicians played understated dinner music on a raised stage at the front of the hall. There was a bass, an accordion, and ten women playing violins. They played “Hava Nagila” and “Roll Out the Barrel.” They played “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.”

An army of waiters and waitresses, moving with military precision and import, delivered the food so that everyone—all three thousand of us—got his or her melon simultaneously. Next we were served a dish in a shell-shaped chalice that contained small pieces of shrimp and lobster in a cream sauce. The following course, designed to clear the palate, was a frozen peach cut in half, hollowed out and filled with sherbet, which was followed by steak with sautéed mushrooms. Broccoli with cheese sauce. Baked Alaska.

The women playing the violins wore green empire-waist shoulderless dresses and they produced “symphonic” polkas, with their eyes closed in feigned ecstasy.

As the waiters whisked away the gummy remnants of the baked Alaska, Nashville comedian Minnie Pearl took the stage and told a lot
of jokes about the knee-slapping problems of the elderly. She gave the impression that she herself was too old to enjoy anything much and that the audience, a reasonably flamboyant collection of auto dealers and their spouses from the Western states, should find this amusing. Minnie Pearl remarked upon a female acquaintance of certain years who wanted female pallbearers at her funeral. No men. The acquaintance saw this as a form of revenge for disappointments suffered regarding heterosexual romance in her latter years.

“If they won’t take me out when I’m alive,” Minnie Pearl quoted the embittered woman, “then they ain’t gonna take me out when I’m dead.”

Minnie Pearl wore a large garish bonnet with a price tag hanging off one side and said that a few years ago, in her hometown of Grinderswitch, there was a fad called streaking, in which people ran around naked as a means of self-expression. One of these erstwhile streakers was yet another older woman, who, Minnie Pearl suggested, was revealing her body in order to arouse men who might make her life a garden of sexual delight. Concerned onlookers pointed out the spectacle to an older gentleman known as Grandpa, who didn’t see so well.

“She’s streaking, Grandpa,” they said.

“What’s that?”

“Why, Grandpa,” the concerned onlookers explained, “she’s wearing her birthday suit.”

Grandpa squinted his eyes and said, “Looks like it needs ironing.”

Three thousand people laughed heartily at this and there was a smattering of applause.