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SYSK Selects: How the Cannonball Run Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here for another Saturday Stuff you Should
0:05
Speaker 1: Know Selects edition. This week I picked How the Cannonball
0:08
Speaker 1: Run Worked. October two thousand nine. This was a fun one,
0:12
Speaker 1: The Cannonball Run. We certainly talked about the movie and
0:15
Speaker 1: the sequel. It was one of my fabes growing up,
0:18
Speaker 1: but it was based on a real race. The Cannonball
0:20
Speaker 1: Run is, or was, Jeez and name sure still going on.
0:24
Speaker 1: This has been a while since we recorded this one.
0:27
Speaker 1: It is a a road race, a cross country road
0:30
Speaker 1: race that seems too strange to be true that people
0:33
Speaker 1: would actually get in their cars in the United States
0:36
Speaker 1: and drive super fast and elude the cops all across
0:40
Speaker 1: the country in order to win. I don't even know
0:43
Speaker 1: if there was money involved, a trophy Bert Reynolds mustache.
0:47
Speaker 1: Only you can find out by listening to how the
0:49
Speaker 1: Cannonball Run worked. Right here, right now, Welcome to Stuff
0:56
Speaker 1: you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
1:05
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me
1:08
Speaker 1: as always is our good friend Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
1:11
Speaker 1: Are you Chuck, your good friend? How are you feeling
1:14
Speaker 1: right now? I'm find a lot. I'm sitting yeah, Chuck
1:18
Speaker 1: is right red right now. Everybody, it's kind of weird looking.
1:21
Speaker 1: Thank you Martin for that are super fan and Seattle,
1:25
Speaker 1: thank you. But he's not a superman. He's a buddy.
1:27
Speaker 1: He has be He was such a fan that he
1:29
Speaker 1: actually became a friend. He's a friend that we haven't
1:31
Speaker 1: met yet. Yeah, so Chuck, take us back to one
1:36
Speaker 1: in the time machine. Yes, the way back machine. You're ready,
1:40
Speaker 1: Here we go. Okay, all right, Josh, I'm ten years old,
1:44
Speaker 1: knee high to a grasshopper. Disco is dead. Margaret Thatcher
1:48
Speaker 1: is the Prime Minister of England. I take issue with
1:50
Speaker 1: the disco being deadline. I don't know that disco ever died. Man,
1:54
Speaker 1: you cannot make the argument that all modern R and
1:56
Speaker 1: B pop soul is all disco. Doco is alive. Margaret
2:01
Speaker 1: Thatcher is the Prime Minister of England. Ronald Reagan is
2:04
Speaker 1: in office. Just as Jimmy Carter has exited. Walter Cronkite
2:09
Speaker 1: resigned from the CBS Evening News desk. That was the
2:12
Speaker 1: said day the first AIDS case was made public in California.
2:15
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen in the band played on? My
2:17
Speaker 1: brother worked on that. That was a great made for
2:19
Speaker 1: TV movie. It really was. It was really good and
2:22
Speaker 1: he had a great experience working on that. So find
2:24
Speaker 1: people in that movie. Major League Baseball has just gone
2:28
Speaker 1: on strike in the summer for what will be the
2:31
Speaker 1: first of eighty times over the next five years. Right,
2:34
Speaker 1: so America is depressed, but not for long, No, because
2:38
Speaker 1: one Mr Burt Reynolds is about to dash across the
2:40
Speaker 1: silver screen in a little movie called Cannonball Run. Great, great,
2:45
Speaker 1: great movie. It was a great movie. I haven't seen
2:47
Speaker 1: it in forever. I think I probably saw it in
2:50
Speaker 1: like n seven. It was one of the first movies
2:53
Speaker 1: we rented, along with Beverly Hills, Cop, very hockey and
2:56
Speaker 1: corny but still beloved. What's What's Yeah, everyone takes it
3:00
Speaker 1: as a comedy because it is a comedy. But this
3:04
Speaker 1: is not to say that it started out as a comedy. Actually,
3:07
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be serious and Burt Reynolds part
3:09
Speaker 1: was originally written for Steve McQueen, who died before he
3:13
Speaker 1: could film the movie. Sadly, it was supposed to be
3:16
Speaker 1: a serious movie and it didn't turn out that way.
3:18
Speaker 1: Why would anybody want the Cannonball rutten to be a
3:21
Speaker 1: serious movie? Well, because it was in fact based on
3:24
Speaker 1: a real race. What what true? Based on a real race?
3:30
Speaker 1: As you know? Yeah, I I do know after reading
3:32
Speaker 1: this article. I think I had heard that before, but
3:35
Speaker 1: I had no idea the details. I didn't either until
3:37
Speaker 1: I wrote it. This was really amazing, Like I have.
3:41
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna come out and say, I have a
3:43
Speaker 1: man crush on a seventy year old Mr brock Yates.
3:47
Speaker 1: He's a cool dude who I would have loved to
3:49
Speaker 1: have hung out with. I bet he's still a very
3:51
Speaker 1: cool dude and hung out with in a strictly platonic sense. Yeah,
3:54
Speaker 1: maybe a little makeing out, but aside from that, Yeah,
3:58
Speaker 1: I bet he's still away cool guy. I get that
4:00
Speaker 1: impression he is. He Um, this is this is kind
4:03
Speaker 1: of what I gathered about brock Yates from researching this
4:06
Speaker 1: and reading your article. Go and say who he is.
4:09
Speaker 1: He was a pretty much the premier automotive journalist of
4:13
Speaker 1: his Age magazine. Eventually. Yeah, but I think he started
4:19
Speaker 1: out as a journalist and something of a gonzo journalist.
4:22
Speaker 1: I take it, um, but yeah, he he was very
4:26
Speaker 1: well known and respected in the field. Um, and in
4:29
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies America was at a fork in
4:33
Speaker 1: the road, if you will, so to speak, and brock
4:35
Speaker 1: Yates represented one direction and that was the out, just go,
4:41
Speaker 1: and if you die, that was your number was up.
4:44
Speaker 1: Kind of mentality behind the wheel that is, yeah, you know,
4:47
Speaker 1: damn the torpedoes full steam ahead. Right on the other
4:51
Speaker 1: side of the road. At on the other side of
4:54
Speaker 1: the fork was a guy named Ralph Nader who was
4:58
Speaker 1: still there on that other fork. He is, um he
5:02
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know who Ralph Naders.
5:03
Speaker 1: He's run for president a couple of times. Um. He
5:06
Speaker 1: got George Bush elected in two thousand four. Yeah. Um.
5:10
Speaker 1: But he's also a very dedicated consumer watchawt. He has
5:14
Speaker 1: for many years lived in a tiny, little one room apartment.
5:17
Speaker 1: He uses a hot plate. Um. He just he lives
5:21
Speaker 1: his very meager life so no one can say you're
5:23
Speaker 1: corrupt because he goes after everybody else. And in the
5:27
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, in the early nineteen seventies, he was going
5:30
Speaker 1: after the automotive industry, right he went after He wrote
5:34
Speaker 1: this book called Unsafe at Any Speed and it was
5:37
Speaker 1: basically about have you read it? I've read parts of
5:39
Speaker 1: it through research and stuff. Yeah, Okay, um so, you
5:43
Speaker 1: know then it was basically about how the automotive industry
5:46
Speaker 1: was producing these incredibly dangerous vehicles right and at the time,
5:50
Speaker 1: we didn't really have much of a speed limit. So uh,
5:53
Speaker 1: as a as a result of his book, we like
5:56
Speaker 1: seatbelts became mandatory, new safety design had to be instituted
6:00
Speaker 1: by car manufacturer's a big deal. Um So, America's at
6:03
Speaker 1: this fork in the road brock Yate style one and
6:06
Speaker 1: and Ralph Nader on the other, and America went down
6:09
Speaker 1: the Ralph Nader. I think what you're referring to is, uh,
6:14
Speaker 1: the national speed limit. That's part of it, definitely, But
6:17
Speaker 1: I think even more than that, it's a more of
6:19
Speaker 1: a you know, the way you and I were raised,
6:22
Speaker 1: where like we could do anything we put our minds to,
6:25
Speaker 1: and we were special. I think that that came out
6:28
Speaker 1: of that collective decision to go towards safety rather than
6:32
Speaker 1: you know, fun at any cost, reckless, abandon exactly, devil,
6:37
Speaker 1: make care sure. But yeah, the national speed limit was
6:40
Speaker 1: definitely one part of that. Yeah, that was which was
6:46
Speaker 1: that has since gone up quite a bit in certain areas,
6:49
Speaker 1: of course it has, But even more than safety, do
6:51
Speaker 1: you know why they set the speed limit at gas consumption. Yes. Yeah,
6:58
Speaker 1: the the Arab oil embargo had just taken place. OPEC
7:03
Speaker 1: was like, hey, US, we're not real happy with you
7:05
Speaker 1: for siding with Israel during the Yam Kippur War, so
7:08
Speaker 1: we're gonna cut off your oil. And they did, and
7:11
Speaker 1: prices spiked and the US said, okay, we need to
7:16
Speaker 1: rethink our dependence on foreign oil. Had a huge rippling effect.
7:20
Speaker 1: But one of them was setting the speed limit at
7:22
Speaker 1: fifty which is too slow. It is too slow, especially
7:26
Speaker 1: in the opinion of somebody like brock Yates. I thought,
7:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna say, Sammy Hagar, Yeah, he can't drive. He's tried,
7:33
Speaker 1: he has, He's made a concerted effort, but it just
7:35
Speaker 1: came out. He tried. I love that song. It wasn't
7:39
Speaker 1: I don't like to drive fifty five or I would
7:41
Speaker 1: prefer to drive faster. It was I can't d tried
7:45
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't happen. It was very explicit. So
7:48
Speaker 1: Chuck um this this nineteen seventy one, brock Yates saw
7:53
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall that the speed limit was
7:55
Speaker 1: going to be reduced. America was becoming something of a
7:58
Speaker 1: mamby pamby us um and what did he do as
8:04
Speaker 1: a result, He uh, in V one, he took a
8:07
Speaker 1: trip across the country in a Dodge Van with three
8:10
Speaker 1: travel mates and he drove from New York to Los
8:13
Speaker 1: Angeles as a way of proving slash protesting. I believe
8:18
Speaker 1: his quote said something like this, good drivers and good
8:21
Speaker 1: automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way
8:25
Speaker 1: that the Germans were using their auto bonn Right, So
8:28
Speaker 1: he wanted to prove that you can drive fast if
8:30
Speaker 1: you're safe, if you're a good driver, you can get
8:33
Speaker 1: to point A to point being a car and it's safe. Yeah,
8:36
Speaker 1: and you you said reckless abandoned. There was definitely a
8:40
Speaker 1: certain level of professionalism or um. The people who he
8:46
Speaker 1: considered good drivers were actually good drivers. Like he had
8:49
Speaker 1: to be a good driver to drive fast in his opinion.
8:51
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like everybody go as fast as you can.
8:54
Speaker 1: That wasn't the point, right, So he did so. He
8:56
Speaker 1: drove a two thousand, eight hundred fifty eight miles from
8:59
Speaker 1: New York to l A in forty hours and fifty
9:02
Speaker 1: one minutes, which is an average of seventy miles per hour. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: which is pretty fast if you're talking about an average speed. Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: because that included stops. I think stops. Uh you name it?
9:12
Speaker 1: So Um, after that happened, I think it got a
9:15
Speaker 1: little bit of publicity, um, by word of mouth maybe
9:20
Speaker 1: the racing world. And there was a famous telegram that
9:23
Speaker 1: came I guess a month or so later. Yeah, I
9:27
Speaker 1: love this. Can I read it? Yeah? Yeah, it's awesome. Uh.
9:30
Speaker 1: It says this constitutes formal entry by the Polish Racing
9:33
Speaker 1: Drivers of America and the next official Cannonball Baker Sea
9:37
Speaker 1: to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. The drivers are Oscar Kovaleski,
9:42
Speaker 1: Brad Nement Check and Tony Adam Awicks. If we can
9:46
Speaker 1: find California, will beat you fair and square. So basically
9:49
Speaker 1: the gauntlet was laid and the Cannonball Run was born,
9:53
Speaker 1: although like you said, the official name has always been
9:57
Speaker 1: Cannonball Baker Sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy. That right,
10:01
Speaker 1: So who's Cannonball Baker. Cannonball Baker Irwin G. Cannonball Baker
10:06
Speaker 1: was a He was famous for for pushing the limits
10:10
Speaker 1: limits on a motorcycle. Yeah, so he would drive from
10:13
Speaker 1: Canada to Mexico, from New York to l a on
10:15
Speaker 1: an old Indian motorcycle. And we're talking starting in nineteen fourteen, right,
10:20
Speaker 1: So like the old Indian motorcycle was basically a bike
10:22
Speaker 1: with a motor. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like,
10:25
Speaker 1: you know. Um. He actually had a pretty well deserved
10:28
Speaker 1: reputation for like his nickname and just the stuff he
10:31
Speaker 1: was doing, his endurance level. Apparently on one ride, uh,
10:35
Speaker 1: he came around a curve and was about a barrel
10:39
Speaker 1: into a herd of cattle that was in the middle
10:41
Speaker 1: of the road because it's nineteen fourteen, and um, he
10:45
Speaker 1: swerved to miss him, hit a pothole, flew off of
10:48
Speaker 1: his bike onto the back of a cow, which bucked
10:51
Speaker 1: him off and eventually landed in a ditch, got up
10:55
Speaker 1: and drove away. That is the stuff of legends. That's
10:57
Speaker 1: how you get a race named after you, my friend, exactly. Uh.
11:00
Speaker 1: And he went on to become the first commissioner of NASCAR,
11:03
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty interesting. So there you have that.
11:06
Speaker 1: Nothing to do with Moonshine though, or did he I
11:10
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe, yeah, curious. So yeah, Yates wanted to
11:34
Speaker 1: pay homage to Cannonball Baker, so he named it after him,
11:37
Speaker 1: although he did shorten the name. Cannon Ball was two
11:41
Speaker 1: words for Baker, Yeah, for Baker, but he shortened it
11:45
Speaker 1: to Cannonball to avoid any illegal mess. Lawyers advised him
11:48
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, I thought it's kind of weird. Yeah. Well, anyway,
11:51
Speaker 1: so you have the Cannonball originally called the Cannonball Dash, uh,
11:55
Speaker 1: and then it finally became the Cannonball Run, which is
11:58
Speaker 1: how we know it today. Right, And thanks to the
12:00
Speaker 1: Polish Drivers of America who laid down the gauntlet. It
12:03
Speaker 1: was a real thing. They didn't They weren't the only
12:05
Speaker 1: ones to participate in the first official Cannibal. That first
12:08
Speaker 1: running made in the van was considered like a preliminary
12:12
Speaker 1: test run. It wasn't their first Cannibal because there was
12:14
Speaker 1: nobody competing with him. So this second one, Uh, there
12:18
Speaker 1: was the Polish Racing Drivers of America UM and seven
12:21
Speaker 1: other groups including three vans. Uh. There was a huge
12:25
Speaker 1: motor home. There was an American Motors, a m x
12:30
Speaker 1: an MGBGT and a Cadillac Sadandaville. And this is probably
12:34
Speaker 1: the coolest part of this entire story. Yeah, I love it,
12:38
Speaker 1: tell him. Uh. This Cadillac was UM owned by an
12:41
Speaker 1: old gentleman in New York, in Boston, in Boston, and
12:44
Speaker 1: he wanted to And this happened back then it may
12:47
Speaker 1: still happen now, where you would contract someone to drive
12:50
Speaker 1: your car from one place to the other case you
12:52
Speaker 1: didn't get it there. Richard Pryor contracted Dana Carvey and
12:54
Speaker 1: moving really great movie. Dude. I didn't see that one.
12:58
Speaker 1: I thought it was a stinker. No, it was good.
13:00
Speaker 1: It was a good. So this old man put out
13:02
Speaker 1: an ad in the paper, and I need to get
13:04
Speaker 1: my car to Los Angeles. And these guys answered it
13:06
Speaker 1: and said, we'll get your car to Los Angeles, and
13:09
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to him it was it was one of the entries.
13:12
Speaker 1: And um, I think one of the stipulations was the
13:15
Speaker 1: car not be driven faster than seventy five miles per
13:18
Speaker 1: hour at anytime or in the dark. Oh is that
13:21
Speaker 1: the other one? And clearly they broke both of these
13:23
Speaker 1: because the Cadillac averaged seventy nine miles per hour, right,
13:27
Speaker 1: which means they were driving a heck of a lot
13:28
Speaker 1: faster than that. I think they came in third too, yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: third place, Yeah, not not too bad. But I think
13:33
Speaker 1: they got the car there in one piece and so
13:36
Speaker 1: good for them, right, They're like, here are the keys, so, uh,
13:41
Speaker 1: go ahead and start with the first race. Where did
13:42
Speaker 1: it start? Where did it end? Well? It started in
13:44
Speaker 1: New York at the Red Ball Garage at midnight, I
13:47
Speaker 1: believe is when all of them started. Yeah, um. And
13:50
Speaker 1: this was what okay, November beieve uh And the ending
13:56
Speaker 1: place was a hotel in Redondo Beach what is it
14:01
Speaker 1: the Portofino in right, okay, which is from pictures I saw.
14:04
Speaker 1: It was a pretty lux little hotel. Um. And you
14:08
Speaker 1: didn't have to follow any specific route. You just got
14:11
Speaker 1: there any way you could, right. Basically the only rules were, uh,
14:15
Speaker 1: you could have as many drivers as long as the
14:17
Speaker 1: only one car, and you could leave at any point
14:20
Speaker 1: within the twenty four hour window. It wasn't like everyone
14:23
Speaker 1: started at the start line like a typical race, just
14:26
Speaker 1: like in the movie. You would punch a time clock
14:28
Speaker 1: for when you're starting time was, and then punch it
14:30
Speaker 1: again for when you arrived. And whoever won one and
14:33
Speaker 1: I believe there was no trophy at the time. It
14:36
Speaker 1: was only a fifty dollar entry fee and then they
14:38
Speaker 1: donated two hundred apiece to charity. Yeah, I thought that
14:41
Speaker 1: was pretty cool? Why not? So apparently two days before
14:44
Speaker 1: the race, Brock Yates had managed to finagle a Ferrari
14:48
Speaker 1: daytona brand new Ferrari Daytona a loner out of a
14:51
Speaker 1: out of an auto dealer. Um. And he had the car,
14:55
Speaker 1: but he only had himself. He didn't have a co
14:57
Speaker 1: pilot or a driver. Uh. And apparently he sent out
14:59
Speaker 1: all the his invitations and a lot of two race
15:02
Speaker 1: car drivers, like legitimate race car drivers, and they were like,
15:05
Speaker 1: you know something, if somebody dies or something, that's gonna
15:08
Speaker 1: look really bad for the sport of racing. And I
15:10
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. And then uh, one guy
15:12
Speaker 1: he had invited, Dan Gurney, who was a professional race
15:15
Speaker 1: car driver, had declined initially UM. But he apparently Um
15:21
Speaker 1: was told by his wife that his dying father in
15:24
Speaker 1: law said you should go do this. Life is short.
15:27
Speaker 1: So Gurney contacts um Yates the day before the race
15:31
Speaker 1: and says, hey, can I still come? And Yates said heck, yeah, yeah.
15:35
Speaker 1: And that proved to be fortuitous because they won. They
15:38
Speaker 1: did Cannibal run, Yeah, they did. They're winning time Josh
15:41
Speaker 1: was thirty five hours and fifty four minutes, not bad
15:44
Speaker 1: cross country, not bad at all, and not Atlanta to
15:48
Speaker 1: l A, New York l A, which is further Yeah,
15:50
Speaker 1: because I've made it in thirty three hours from Atlanta
15:52
Speaker 1: to l A. Have you. Yeah, that's way I've always
15:54
Speaker 1: done it. Three eleven hour days is how I schedule
15:56
Speaker 1: it out. I never time myself, but you know, I
15:59
Speaker 1: went drove around the West for several weeks and lived
16:02
Speaker 1: in a van with the dogs and all that chair
16:04
Speaker 1: and um, I would drive like I think the longest
16:07
Speaker 1: I drove is a twelve hour stretch. Um, that's about
16:11
Speaker 1: all I can mustard. Yeah, that's enough for me. Yeah,
16:14
Speaker 1: depending on how much coffee I drank or whatever, you know,
16:17
Speaker 1: then that I could drive you know, six hours or
16:21
Speaker 1: twelve hours or whatever. But it's amazing the toll that
16:23
Speaker 1: just sitting in a car with your foot on the
16:26
Speaker 1: gas has on you, especially when you're driving that fast. Uh.
16:30
Speaker 1: Should we talk about some of the some of the
16:32
Speaker 1: things they preferred to do on the on the first race, please?
16:37
Speaker 1: They One of the common tactics that seemed like was
16:40
Speaker 1: to keep it slow. In the eastern seaboard. Um, I
16:44
Speaker 1: think New Jersey and Connecticut, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. These
16:48
Speaker 1: states are notorious for for having some pretty hardcore highway patrolman.
16:53
Speaker 1: Yeah still do. Yeah, like you'll get pulled over for
16:55
Speaker 1: doing sixty? Isn't that nuts to you? Nuts? I can't
16:59
Speaker 1: image are for getting pulled over for anything less than
17:02
Speaker 1: seventy two seventy five. In Georgia, by the way, everyone flies, Yeah,
17:07
Speaker 1: as fast as you can, as fast as you can
17:09
Speaker 1: get away with us. How fast you drive generally. Yeah.
17:11
Speaker 1: Even my my friend Derek used to say that the
17:13
Speaker 1: deal with Atlanta Rush hour is everyone drives as fast
17:16
Speaker 1: as they can till somebody recks and then there's a
17:19
Speaker 1: big stops. Yeah, it's pretty funny to think about them.
17:22
Speaker 1: So the trick was to kind of keep it slow
17:25
Speaker 1: on the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest, and then
17:29
Speaker 1: once you got to the Great Plains is when you
17:31
Speaker 1: really opened up, yeah, and made up some serious serious time. Yeah.
17:35
Speaker 1: They got it up to a hundred and seventy two,
17:38
Speaker 1: I think, is how how fast they found out the
17:41
Speaker 1: Ferrari would go. Yeah. I think twelve speeding tickets total
17:44
Speaker 1: between all of the all the competitors, Yeah, between four
17:47
Speaker 1: of the competitors. Four of them didn't get a ticket
17:49
Speaker 1: at all. So four of them split twelve tickets. And
17:52
Speaker 1: the famous quote l A Times it is like kind
17:54
Speaker 1: of a blurb of an article from Dan Gurney, Right yeah,
17:57
Speaker 1: Dan Gurney famously said, at no time did we exceed
18:00
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy. They came close. Pretty cool. Yeah, so, Chuck,
18:04
Speaker 1: that was the first one, and as with all cool things, uh,
18:09
Speaker 1: that also began its co option. News got out, word
18:13
Speaker 1: got out by little Yeah, the Sports Illustrated covered it, uh,
18:18
Speaker 1: and so did the Los Angeles Times. Um. And so
18:22
Speaker 1: when there was a second one, I think the following year,
18:26
Speaker 1: there were a lot more competitors, right, yeah, they had
18:29
Speaker 1: um twenty five entries a second year, and Brock Yates
18:32
Speaker 1: finished second place, this time in a Cadillac UM. The
18:37
Speaker 1: third race they skipped a couple of years, and it
18:39
Speaker 1: was in ninety five, and they moved it to springtime
18:43
Speaker 1: this time. And if Ferrari won the third race with
18:47
Speaker 1: Yates and Gurney behind the wheel once again. But I
18:49
Speaker 1: didn't know they won the third one, yes, oh no, no no, no,
18:51
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. They beat Yates and Gurney's record time the
18:54
Speaker 1: third year, Yeah, by a one minute, right, but it
18:56
Speaker 1: was not in them. You're correct, so by five, which
19:00
Speaker 1: but the third one, fourth, one third one was okay,
19:03
Speaker 1: by five, it's officially co opted. There's actually corporate sponsorship.
19:08
Speaker 1: The Right Bra company placed three ladies in Pink in
19:12
Speaker 1: a limousine and apparently the driver fell asleep in Texas
19:16
Speaker 1: and rolled the thing and I guess rolled into a
19:19
Speaker 1: porta potty which tipped over and drenched the um the
19:23
Speaker 1: ladies inside with its contents and where exactly so by
19:29
Speaker 1: this time now you can see why Burt Reynolds would
19:31
Speaker 1: have chosen more of a comedic route than a Sharky's
19:35
Speaker 1: machine route. Yeah, well it wasn't Burt's choice. Let's should
19:38
Speaker 1: we move to the final year. Yeah. What happened was
19:41
Speaker 1: brock Yates was pretty much finished with it, and he said,
19:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's run its course. He said he was
19:46
Speaker 1: worried that somebody was gonna die, although no one ever
19:49
Speaker 1: got hurt. No, but the the the roads in the
19:52
Speaker 1: last eight years had become much more congested. Um. He
19:56
Speaker 1: was ready to scrapped the whole thing, but he had
19:58
Speaker 1: a friend direct your stunt man. Hell need him? How
20:02
Speaker 1: need him? Or is it need him? No, it's need
20:04
Speaker 1: him and he was. He was famous for a lot
20:06
Speaker 1: of the early Burt Reynolds movies. He did them Hooper,
20:10
Speaker 1: which is a great movie. Is it? I even seen
20:12
Speaker 1: that one? Are you kidding me? I kid you not, dude.
20:15
Speaker 1: I gotta get Hooper. That was the one about stuntman.
20:18
Speaker 1: You have to see My Blue Heaven though. All right,
20:20
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. So he did Hooper, and
20:23
Speaker 1: he did Um the Cannonball Run and a couple of
20:25
Speaker 1: other of the Burt Reynolds films. Yeah, they did a
20:28
Speaker 1: Smokey and the Bandit to Gates wrote that I'm sorry, okay,
20:32
Speaker 1: so how over the place today we are? How need
20:36
Speaker 1: him says, you know what, Brock, I want to make
20:38
Speaker 1: a movie about the Cannonball Run, and so I think
20:41
Speaker 1: the best way to do this is if we stage
20:44
Speaker 1: another one and I participate with you as my partner.
20:48
Speaker 1: So they did. They did that nine and they had
20:50
Speaker 1: a record forty six entries this time, and a lot
20:54
Speaker 1: of what happened in this race actually ended up in
20:56
Speaker 1: the movie. Yeah, there's some zany madcap stuff that was
21:00
Speaker 1: going on. Let's hear it. Well, brock Yates uh and
21:02
Speaker 1: hel Needham Uh actually had an ambulance and Yates's wife, Pamela,
21:08
Speaker 1: posed as a woman suffering from a lung condition and
21:11
Speaker 1: as a result, couldn't fly because of the pressurized cabin,
21:15
Speaker 1: so she had to be zoomed across the country at
21:18
Speaker 1: a hundred miles in the back of an ambulance that
21:20
Speaker 1: was their vehicle of choice, UM and definite. They they
21:25
Speaker 1: modified the engine, uh and it killed the transmission, so
21:30
Speaker 1: I had to be eventually towed across the finish line,
21:32
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty cool. Right, And in the
21:34
Speaker 1: film that actually happened. Burt Reynolds and Dom Deloise were
21:37
Speaker 1: the Needham Yates characters, and fair Faucet was the was
21:41
Speaker 1: the wife. Didn't didn't what else happened that was real?
21:46
Speaker 1: Three drivers actually did pose his priests. I remember in
21:50
Speaker 1: the movie. It was awesomely it was Sammy Davis Jr.
21:53
Speaker 1: And Dean Martin drunk priest in the movie. But I
21:58
Speaker 1: don't know that they were posing. They really were drunk.
22:01
Speaker 1: Part they were probably hammered. What else, Josh, I don't know.
22:07
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie in a really long time.
22:08
Speaker 1: All right, well, I got it for you. Then there
22:10
Speaker 1: were in fact, um scantily clad, skin tight jumpsuits on
22:15
Speaker 1: a couple of ladies in a sports car. I read
22:18
Speaker 1: the opposite. I read that that was the right broad
22:21
Speaker 1: company that inspired that part. I read the opposite. We'll
22:26
Speaker 1: have to check that, all right, we'll do it. And
22:28
Speaker 1: then there was a wealthy entrant that had his chauffeur
22:32
Speaker 1: drive him in a Rolls Royce. And in the movie
22:35
Speaker 1: that was Jamie Farr played a middle Eastern chic that's right, Clinger. Yeah,
22:41
Speaker 1: you know, he and I are from the same hometown,
22:43
Speaker 1: Talita Talita. Is that why he always wore the Talita
22:45
Speaker 1: mud hints hat and mash Yeah, And we talked about
22:47
Speaker 1: it incessantly. He really was not Talo. Yeah. And Tony
22:50
Speaker 1: Paco's hot dogs that he talks about all the time,
22:52
Speaker 1: real place, best hot dogs on the planet, really had
22:56
Speaker 1: no idea. So those are just a few of the
22:58
Speaker 1: things that actually happened. The final cannonball run that ended
23:02
Speaker 1: up in the film Um and a Jaguar driven by
23:05
Speaker 1: Dave Hines and Dave Yarborough one that year and they
23:08
Speaker 1: obliterated the time period with thirty two and fifty one
23:12
Speaker 1: minute seven mile per hour average fifty speeding tickets. That year, well,
23:17
Speaker 1: there were forty two contestants. Yeah, so that was the
23:20
Speaker 1: last one, and it has spawned imitators over the years.
23:23
Speaker 1: Before the before Cannonball Run the movie came out, there
23:27
Speaker 1: were already imitators. Really, yeah, there was one movie that
23:30
Speaker 1: came out in seventy five and two that came out
23:32
Speaker 1: in seventy six. You want to hear the weird thing
23:34
Speaker 1: about it. David Carriden was in two of them. Really.
23:38
Speaker 1: He was in uh, let's see uh Deathmatch two thousand,
23:42
Speaker 1: Death Death Race two thousand, which was set in the future.
23:45
Speaker 1: But he was also in Cannonball exclamation Point, which is
23:49
Speaker 1: a farctical take on the Cannonball Run. And there was
23:53
Speaker 1: a second one that had Gary Busey in it, or
23:55
Speaker 1: third one that had Gary Busey, and it called the
23:56
Speaker 1: Gumball Rally, right, and that's that's a real one. And
24:00
Speaker 1: the Gunball three thousand is still in existence. Is that
24:02
Speaker 1: European or in America? Well, they do both, and they're
24:05
Speaker 1: quick to say that it's not a race, it's more
24:07
Speaker 1: like an adventurous road trip. And then the lame tell him, yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: tell him about the European person of the Cannonball runs.
24:14
Speaker 1: Actually to you know why because they call it the
24:17
Speaker 1: Cannonball Run. They use that name, and this thing is
24:21
Speaker 1: not even a race. The goal of the Cannonball Run
24:24
Speaker 1: Europe is to stay as close to a sixty one
24:27
Speaker 1: mile per hour average as you can. And in two
24:31
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, a frigging smart car one. Oh so,
24:35
Speaker 1: talk about a slap in the face where brock Gates
24:38
Speaker 1: Steady would have rolled over in his grave. Yeah, he's
24:40
Speaker 1: rolling over in his Instead he rolled over a smart
24:42
Speaker 1: car with his bare hand. If anybody could do it,
24:45
Speaker 1: Mr brock Gates could, my friend? I think? So that's
25:21
Speaker 1: cannonball Runney. That's how fast have you driven? What's the
25:23
Speaker 1: fastest you've ever driven? Oh? I don't know. A hundred
25:26
Speaker 1: and ten. I actually once got a speeding ticket. Or no,
25:29
Speaker 1: you want to hear a weird story. Let's here. I
25:30
Speaker 1: don't know if this will make the final cut or
25:32
Speaker 1: not because it's kind of long, but get this. So,
25:34
Speaker 1: my friend and I were driving from Atlanta to Charleston
25:38
Speaker 1: in my old Toyota Corolla. It was an eight six
25:40
Speaker 1: Champagne colored Toyota Corolla UM and I was doing a
25:45
Speaker 1: hundred and ten on I twenty during a stretch where
25:47
Speaker 1: the speed limit. I was doing twice the speed limit.
25:50
Speaker 1: I get pulled over by this guy in this car
25:53
Speaker 1: um with a little dash headlight on it, spinning around
25:57
Speaker 1: and I pull over and this guy is dressed like
25:59
Speaker 1: a paramilitary cop and he's like, you're so dead. You're
26:03
Speaker 1: going to jail forever, right, And he goes back to
26:06
Speaker 1: his car and calls somebody, and this other guy comes
26:08
Speaker 1: out and he comes back. He's like, you're at least
26:11
Speaker 1: gonna lose your license. And he goes back and talks
26:14
Speaker 1: to the guy, who he said later was the sergeant
26:16
Speaker 1: on duty. And he comes back and he goes, you're
26:19
Speaker 1: gonna get a ticket of some sort. And he goes
26:22
Speaker 1: back and talks to the guy again, and he goes,
26:25
Speaker 1: here's your license back. You guys drive safely now, and
26:28
Speaker 1: let's just go. You're free to go. Exactly. So my
26:31
Speaker 1: friend and I are looking at each other like what
26:34
Speaker 1: just happened? But it was so surreal, and to this day,
26:38
Speaker 1: I wonder, have you seen pulp fiction? Of course you have,
26:42
Speaker 1: remember Zed? Yeah, I have the distinct impression that these
26:46
Speaker 1: guys were into ZED like affairs, and something else was
26:49
Speaker 1: took precedent. I I think my friend was. He's not
26:52
Speaker 1: a good looking guy. So I'm thinking maybe they're like,
26:54
Speaker 1: we'll pass on these two. Oh yeah, So they were
26:59
Speaker 1: going to get you back the police station. And I
27:01
Speaker 1: don't think they were cops. Okay, what cop would not
27:04
Speaker 1: give you a ticket when you're driving twice the speed limit?
27:06
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah, I got a story. Let's hear it.
27:10
Speaker 1: About four years ago, me and my buddy Scotty were
27:12
Speaker 1: doing it was actually the last TV commercial job ever did.
27:15
Speaker 1: It was a six Flags job and six Flags Massachusetts.
27:18
Speaker 1: Whatever that one's called six Flags over in Massachusetts? Is it?
27:22
Speaker 1: I think it's a great America anyway. So we go
27:23
Speaker 1: up there to do this job, and um, what kind
27:26
Speaker 1: of it was New Jersey? But we have to drive
27:29
Speaker 1: hit Yeah, we we we we drive. At one point
27:32
Speaker 1: my friend we had like two days off while we
27:34
Speaker 1: were up there and had a friend in Vermont and
27:37
Speaker 1: the third Star Wars prequel was being released that friday.
27:40
Speaker 1: So I said, hey, man, let's go up and see
27:42
Speaker 1: Johnny Pendell and uh rent a car and drive up
27:46
Speaker 1: there because we had a camera truck. He said, sure
27:47
Speaker 1: less do it. So we ran. We rented a like
27:50
Speaker 1: a little geometro whatever the cheapest little four stroke engine
27:53
Speaker 1: car you could get. And we have a time limit
27:56
Speaker 1: because we have to make the movie. It's like a
27:58
Speaker 1: six pm showing. And so we're speeding through Vermont, like
28:01
Speaker 1: the hills of Vermont's lovely, and this little engine is
28:04
Speaker 1: like and we top this hill and we see one
28:08
Speaker 1: of those signs that say your current speed, and it
28:11
Speaker 1: said your current speed and it blinked and went one
28:13
Speaker 1: oh two. And I've never seen a triple digit on
28:17
Speaker 1: one of those signs. So we just laughed and blaze
28:20
Speaker 1: right through it and made the movie. It's like, call
28:24
Speaker 1: the police, and we literally we made it right as
28:26
Speaker 1: the movie was starting, and you know, the engine was
28:28
Speaker 1: like it was like ticking, it was red hot. And
28:31
Speaker 1: that that's my fast story. Well, if you have a
28:34
Speaker 1: fast story, we'd actually like to hear it. Here's the caveat.
28:38
Speaker 1: Don't go out and commit any kind of crime or
28:40
Speaker 1: act that includes fastness. If it's already happened, then we'll
28:44
Speaker 1: hear about it. We'll tell you the email right after
28:47
Speaker 1: we get to listener mail, right, Chuck, Yes, Josh, all right,
28:50
Speaker 1: let's go, Josh. I'm gonna call this, uh second, the
28:55
Speaker 1: only time we've ever read a listener mail from the
28:57
Speaker 1: same dude. Oh, I don't know about this, chuck, we
29:01
Speaker 1: have to This is the hackster, Ryan Hack my buddy.
29:04
Speaker 1: Uh listen to the house history podcasts, and I have
29:07
Speaker 1: a creepy story. One of the houses I grew up
29:09
Speaker 1: in as a kid had a hidden door. As you
29:11
Speaker 1: go to the basement, it's more or less just blended
29:13
Speaker 1: into the wood paneling. As you walk through the door,
29:16
Speaker 1: you came to an open area with some shelving and
29:18
Speaker 1: a workbench. There are a couple of old bike tires
29:20
Speaker 1: and some random parts still lying around and a guy
29:23
Speaker 1: names it and a guy names it. Every once in
29:25
Speaker 1: a while we'd hear what sounded like people working on
29:27
Speaker 1: their bikes and chit chatting, pounding metal, gears dropping, laughing,
29:31
Speaker 1: chains turning. Every time we'd go into the room, there
29:34
Speaker 1: was nothing weird. Weird. Later on we found out the
29:37
Speaker 1: history of the house. Turns out one of the previous
29:40
Speaker 1: owners was a couple that enjoyed biking and they died
29:44
Speaker 1: in a biking accident and forgot to get them memo.
29:49
Speaker 1: So just thinking about it gives me chills. And this
29:51
Speaker 1: is from Ryan, and I'm gonna just go ahead and
29:54
Speaker 1: say that Ryan Hack has inspired me to exercise because
29:57
Speaker 1: he has a blog call Hacks First five k dot
30:02
Speaker 1: blogspot dot com where he started running in Lost Weight
30:06
Speaker 1: and is into it now. And he got me listening
30:08
Speaker 1: to another podcast called two Gomer's Run a Marathon. I
30:12
Speaker 1: don't know that I'm entirely okay with you leading this
30:16
Speaker 1: extra life that I'm unaware of until you read a
30:18
Speaker 1: listener mail. I know. But two Gomers Run a Marathon
30:21
Speaker 1: is actually a really funny podcast. These two guys that
30:24
Speaker 1: say they're Gomer's kind of nerdy and they're they're completely unathletic,
30:27
Speaker 1: yet they want to run a marathon. So their podcast
30:31
Speaker 1: goes through their trials and travails and it's really funny.
30:33
Speaker 1: They get a website called two Gomers dot com. Well,
30:37
Speaker 1: Ryan Hacks, since you got all those plugs and because
30:40
Speaker 1: you had to two listener mails read on there, you
30:46
Speaker 1: have to go contribute twenty five bucks to Keeva dot
30:49
Speaker 1: org on Stuff you should Know Team Chuck. You want
30:51
Speaker 1: to tell everybody else about that Kiva dot org. Go
30:55
Speaker 1: to the click on community and search stuff you should
30:58
Speaker 1: know Team join our team, and twenty five dollars to
31:01
Speaker 1: a to as someone in need. You can now donate
31:03
Speaker 1: to Americans. Yes, I've heard. If you're a nationalistic or
31:07
Speaker 1: an isolationist you can still donate. But right now, as
31:10
Speaker 1: a press time, we have raised more than in about
31:15
Speaker 1: ten days. And uh, who has seventy Chuck? Uh, the
31:19
Speaker 1: lousy cheap fans of the cold Bear quote unquote Nation.
31:22
Speaker 1: You know, it's sad that guy's got way more fans
31:25
Speaker 1: than we do, right, way more hundred and ten members
31:28
Speaker 1: on his team. We got a hundred and eighties so
31:29
Speaker 1: far already. Yeah, So way to go those of you
31:32
Speaker 1: and the stuff you should know Nation who supported kiva
31:35
Speaker 1: dot org so far. For those of you who want
31:38
Speaker 1: to get on the trolley, you can go to www.
31:42
Speaker 1: Dot kiva dot org slash team slash stuff you should know,
31:47
Speaker 1: and you can become a member, and like Chuck said,
31:50
Speaker 1: you can contribute as little as twenty five bucks and
31:52
Speaker 1: you actually get that back if you want, sure you
31:55
Speaker 1: can roll it over again or whatever. Yeah, yeah, so Chuck,
31:58
Speaker 1: that's it, right, that's it. If you have a cool
32:00
Speaker 1: high speed story, Chuck, and I want to hear about it. Uh,
32:03
Speaker 1: if you have a great unicorn story, you know, we
32:05
Speaker 1: always want to hear about that sending in an email
32:08
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
32:17
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32:19
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
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