Gumball Dreams In A Bugatti

A single phone call can rewrite your entire origin story. Tommy Davies grew up in the Welsh hills watching Gumball 3000 on DVD, studying the mission packs, the border drama, and the rolling circus of cars and characters. Then VinWiki's Ed Bolian rings him up with the question every fan secretly rehearses: do you want to do Gumball for real?

We talk through what that actually looks like on the ground, including the 2026 Gumball 3000 route from Miami to Amelia Island, New Orleans, and Austin, plus the parts nobody puts on posters: trying to keep a Bugatti Veyron cool in parade traffic, packing “light” when the trunk is basically a rumour, and navigating crowds, shuttles, crews, and nights that feel like a moving festival. Tommy also shares the surreal moments you can’t plan, from celebrity run-ins to seeing cannonball history echo through modern rally culture.

Around the interview, we get into our own endurance-rally world: motorcycle setup changes that make a difference, the reality of recording on the road, a brutally honest helmet experience, and why “self-rescue” is more than a slogan. We also sketch a Japan motorcycle trip blueprint with practical tips on rentals and the International Driving Permit Japan actually accepts, plus a reminder to travel like a good guest and respect local road rules.

If you love Gumball 3000, the cannonball run, adventure riding, and the logistics behind big rides, hit subscribe, share this with a friend who’d say yes to the Veyron, and leave a review so more rally nerds find us.

Transcript

Welcome And Docking Wisdom

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Season five, episode seven. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I am your host, Taylor Lawson, and today I am joined by the Master of Disaster, Rally Route Czar, and Waypoint Warden, better known to you as Aaron Pufal. Welcome, Aaron.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

Thanks for recognizing that I am the Master of Disaster. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_04 0:21

I am doing great. I am um just winding down here, ready to take a little bit of time off and go visit the Swedish archipelago.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

Nice. You're gonna take the boat out for a rip, huh?

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Yeah, man. I was just thinking about whether or not we should um we should try to record when I'm out there. Well, it won't be my sound studio, but it might be interesting to hear a little bit of, you know, I'll just try to do when somebody docking next to me. You can hear all kinds of chaos happening.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Yeah, Swedish chaos. Yeah. Swedish chaos. Yeah, but going to the sauna.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

Such bad. Going to the bastoo. Um as I say, when we used to say when we ran boats in the Caribbean, was um you always want to be at your docking spot. Like, you know, whether you're coming into a busy Anchorage or whatever you're doing, if you can get there between noon and two o'clock, you're golden. Anything beyond that, then you fall into this category. Come in early, watch the show. Come in late, be the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

That's true.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

I've been to show several times, but I've been in the early days, early days until I figure what that was like, oh, right, get in early. And here's the thing: if you're there early enough, no one's there to see your folly.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

I always thought that I was showing off without no problem, I can squeeze in there and you go squeeze the boat in somewhere fancy, and all the all the pedestrians are like, wow, you actually did that. I'm like, yeah, this is what I get paid to do. You you're never impressed when the Boeing 747 lands. You shouldn't be impressed as someone moved the big yacht into a tight little spot, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Yeah. Um, you know what? I want to tell you about my buddy Matt Plouf, who's a jet boat captain. I was on a I was on a uh a 50-meter boat with him doing a sea trial in Italy. But let me just let me just talk about what's coming up in this episode and then and then we'll jump into that. Remind me to tell you about Matt and the jetboat.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Listen, more importantly, yeah, what are you drinking? Cheery bud. Yeah, man. I'm I'm gonna go with go ahead. I'm drinking a juxtaposition IPA.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

Nice. I am drinking a long neck Budvisor.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Budweiser? What happened to the dream?

SPEAKER_04 2:20

Yeah, no, this is this is the dream. It is not a kid, you know. I live in Europe, remember. Getting a Budweiser here is a special thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

That's true. Well, cheers, nonetheless.

SPEAKER_04 2:29

Cheers to you. Okay, coming up this episode, Tommy Days Davies tells us about his Gumball 3000 experience in the Bugatti Vehron uh with uh Vin Wiki's Ed Bullion, uh Aaron's Rideouts, ADV Cannonball Rally News, and a few other things we'll just throw in there.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Nice. And uh I see you're wearing your ride through Japan t-shirt. Looks good on you.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Yeah, you're talking about Japan. I think we'll throw a little bit of that in there as well. So um, yeah, thanks for that.

Jet Boat Docking Like Magic

SPEAKER_04 2:58

So Matt, let me tell you about Matt. So we're doing a sea trial. We're in a 50-foot, I think it was a mangousta. Uh-huh. And sorry, 50 meter. So it's a hundred and yeah, 150 feet. I think that's where they line up. We're in Via Deggio, Italy, and we're backing in, and there's all of these boats are packed in, you know, it's turned to onto the wall, and he comes in and it starts backing down at three knots. So this boat has uh three MTU 4000s in them, in it. So it's got this crazy amount of horsepower. Uh MTU Meyerbach Turbine Union, uh also you walk in there, you see these, you know, it's Mercedes engines. So he's got these, and it's got a center jet thruster. So that's like it's like the Batmobile. You slam that thing in. Anyway, went out there for a speed seat trial. Uh we're coming in, center engine gets shut down. He's backing in, jet drive, he backs in hot towards these other boats. There's no room for him there. Like there's no room. I said, Well, what's going on here? He comes in hot, and then right about a half boat length out when he's coming in with speed, he splits the buckets. One, the port bucket splits to port, the starboard bucket splits to starboard at about a 45 degree angle. And it the the prop wash, uh well, it's no prop, but the jet wash blows the other boats out of the way. It also slows him down at the same time and opens up the speed, opens, opens up a slot. And then just as they're moving aside, he moves the buckets back into reverse and slides into the spot. It was like magic watching him dock. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

Yeah, if you have a chance, if listener has a chance, go on YouTube and uh just Google jet boat docking, and you'll see it's this ridiculous amount of jet wash because you can't stop the jet wash from coming out. You just put these buckets and you redirect. So it's quite dramatic to watch a jet boat come in.

SPEAKER_04 4:45

Yeah, and that was called Moonraker 50 meter.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Famous boat, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

Yeah, famous boat. He was the um that guy, uh John Silupi, he named all of his yachts after James Bond movies. As you do, I suppose, when you're a billionaire. Uh yeah, as you of course, as you do.

Motorcycle Upgrades And Setup Lessons

SPEAKER_04 5:01

All right. Um so I bought some farkles for my motorcycle.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Well, one's a farkel, one was important.

SPEAKER_04 5:10

Okay, fair enough. So uh the farkle. Let's cover the farkle first. So that would be the first important important stuff first. I was um riding with my riding back from the motorcycle show, actually, with my buddy Sven on his he was on his 1290 KTM, and he's got an Akropovich muffler on there and um a pipe. And I was on my Teneray with my stock, and we're at a stoplight, and he's like, and he's ripping it, and all and everyone's churning their head. And I and I, you know, like vroom, room, vroom, vroom. And he and he just starts laughing, and I I couldn't take it anymore. So I bought I bought a slip on.

SPEAKER_05 5:54

You felt you felt emasculated in the I was I was I was so downgraded I had to I had to do something to try to to get myself back there.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

But anyways, fan, thanks very much for the uh encouragement, I think. Okay, the other thing that I bought was I bought a uh a new spring. What is it, the spring tension?

SPEAKER_03 6:16

No, you buy a new spring. You needed to increase your spring rate after our trip to Europe. You realized you needed a little more carrying capacity.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

Yeah, so basically, um if I'm 80 kilos or what about 70 and uh pounds, and then I'm carrying another 80 pounds in stuff, way too much stuff. It's a toolkit's killing me. Anyway, by the time I put all that in there, you know, then I and I tighten my my uh the the not the drag, but I tighten that spring. The preload preload all the way down, then the bike's like there's like nothing left. So I put so I got a 95 for the weight on it, which would compensate for it. So it's at the high end. So maybe a bit much when I'm just riding by myself, but I can take it off. But at least it's there when I load it up and we do whatever, you know, next crazy thing that we do with too much stuff on the bike.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Yeah, it's all about compromise, right? You can never have the perfect setup all the time, right? But I think after you know, riding beside you, you definitely needed some more, some more rate in there for sure.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

Yeah, not to mention riding beside you, I need some more CCs, but that's a different story.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Depends which bike, right? We can't give it all away. But the new bike for the cannonball attempt on August 1st just arrived moments ago. So everyone knows Carrie, he runs the uh round table episode that always beats us in downloads. I don't know why. I can't believe that. I know, but uh, you know, my consternation. But it just arrived and it actually worked. So I was a little, you know, the bike was MIA for so long. I was starting to build a a story in my mind that it was never gonna show up, or maybe when it did, it wasn't working. But, anyways, it was sold to us as new, it was kind of like new old stock. All those details will come maybe even next episode. No, it'll be two episodes away. I I don't I don't want to give the give it away because we're doing something that's never been done before. So, anyways, the bike arrived and we are a go for August 1st. We have some people that are helping us, and uh, people have bought airplane tickets. So the schedule is set. We're leaving August 1st from the Red Ball Garage.

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Nice! Can't wait to hear about that. And you guys are gonna drop podcasts. How frequently do you think you're gonna try to get those up? And are you gonna do it like like we're gonna do in the rally? We're gonna try to do a podcast every day and it shows up the next day. What what's your plan there?

SPEAKER_03 8:37

We don't have a plan, but if you know, so Carrie will be uh in the support vehicle. So if we record interesting things and I'm not too exhausted, I can edit something. Actually, Carrie can edit because maybe we'll do it in Riverside. So nice. Uh yeah, so if it depends how everyone feels, it's gonna be uh a battle of attrition, it's gonna be a grueling cannonball attempt. So it depends how people feel. So if people feel energized, we may do one, we may do two. We're not we're not sure. So it it all depends on the safety aspect if we're if we're honest.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Yeah, okay, good. Fair enough.

New Bike Arrival And Cannonball Plans

SPEAKER_04 9:14

Let's talk about the 2027 motorcycle for that particular USA rally.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

We were kind of joking about it, but we absolutely have to find Robert another motorcycle. So, because we're not doing the Baja event and we're gonna have it US based, and everyone's have a real positive uh reaction to that, and we're really happy about that, he can't do it on a Kove 450. So uh we have to find him another motorcycle. So I don't know if that's through official sponsorship or someone has a bike to lend Robert, but he needs at least a T7 or better. Uh, there is a lot of off-roading in uh 27. Sorry, there's not a lot, but there's a good amount of off-roading, plus there's an actual race in an off-road park, uh a close course that needs to be considered. So we definitely we're not talking about a big GS, but maybe a GS900 or a T7 or somewhere in between, that would be perfect. So if anyone has any ideas, yeah, contact us through the send us a message down in the show notes. There's a little link you can click.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

And for those who may not have heard the previous episode, which of course that was no one, but in case you in case you hadn't, what we're talking about here is the the switch from the the shifting of the venue or the locational rally route in um out of Mexico, basically, to being more across the central US.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yeah, for sure. And there's been a really positive reaction to it, and it will sell out, but don't panic. Don't go, I don't want, you know, don't go run and buy a bunch of tickets. Uh it it will sell out, but it won't sell out until after this year's is over. So don't don't panic if you're uh if you're one of our rally alumni. So I will need to sell that bike. So we will use that bike for the 26th rally just for us to go rip some of the off-road stuff through Colorado, a Moab. But essentially, what we have is we have a Cove 450 off-road, full off-road, that has been registered legally, kind of through some, you know, dubious paperwork. It has a Washington registration and a license plate on it.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

Is it the rally? It's like the rally edition.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Yeah, it's not the pro, but it's the it's the off-road edition. So it means it doesn't have it has the race 1.1 ECU in it, it has a full race exhaust, it has no catalytic converter, it has all those things in it. And funnily enough, I followed some advice from YouTube, which is always a good idea. Great idea.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

13-year-old from from India telling you what to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah, no, no, no. It was uh it was a 20-something year old in Spain, so it's you know, even better, yeah. Yeah, just as good, right? It's just as good. So the issue was was the race C was so brutal. So this guy goes, you just unplug this one set of wires that goes to the engine, and and I did it, and it works fine. The warm-up uh sequence is a little delicate, that's the only thing that I can see that's different, but the power is there, you just gotta kind of stay on the throttle a bit to to warm it up in the first 10 seconds or so. But all of that jerkiness in the ECU throttle is gone. It rides like like uh you know, like a KLR650 or a KTM or something like that. It is a usable bike. So, anyways, if someone has some information about that, uh contact us through the link in the in the show not. Am I blowing up the bike? I'm not I'm not really sure. But all of the feedback from all the forums say that magically solves the issue. So when we sell the bike, it'll have less than a thousand miles on it. It's titled in Washington. I would say if you live in California, you probably don't want to buy this bike because of it not having a catalytic converter and being obnoxiously loud. The only thing we did, we changed the tires from the Moose's to Dunlop Trail Max Raids. I put a steering dampener. I actually have a spare steering dampener because I ordered two by accident. It has the tall rally windshield with two spare windshields. It has a full rally tower in a box that I never installed. It has bark busters, it has two-finger levers on the clutch, it has two Garmin GPS mounted and running, it has a proper 12-volt power supply system built on it. It has two quad locks with wireless charging with proper five-amp power supplies. Nice. Uh, yeah, it I have the new clutch cover with the actual sight glass on it, so you can actually check the oil level. And it has a full set of Moscow Moto bags. So that's what we'll be selling at the end of the rally in 2026 in Monterey. So as soon as we get there, we'll list it for sale.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

Yeah, or you know, anybody who's interested now, put your name in the hat because that there'll be motorcycle delivery at that point in time. You can just be like, Yeah, put the bike on the truck when it's right there the next day.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Yeah, someone wants it, they can just they can just ride it home. So I'm not sure what it's worth because it's kind of unique being legally registered and being an off-road version in all that. Because you would have to spend thousands to convert a uh a 40 states, 40 states, a 50 states legal version to this type of bike. So I'm not saying it's worth more. I'm just saying it's it's a unique opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

Very nice, very nice. Let's go back up here. By the way, when I when I first read that in her notes, I was like, I followed some advice on YouTube by unplugging this set of things from the engine, and it's really calm now. I was like, Yeah, was it the fuel supply? It barely goes anywhere.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

I think it's some sort of like temperature monitoring and things like that. So it's not getting all the information back, so it just you know delivers power in a in a more reasonable way. I'm not really sure the the science behind it, but seems to work. So it it makes going around corners reasonable, you know?

SPEAKER_04 15:12

That's good. Hey, um, you know, I see this note here, and I just wanted to, I'm just gonna intro it like this.

The Emergency Toilet For The Van

SPEAKER_04 15:18

You know, you sit and you think about all the different things that could potentially create a problem that we can solve in advance of any of these events happening, whether it's in the route, whether it's in the vehicles, whether whatever it is, you put all this thinking into it. I'm just wondering, like, what went through your mind when you were like, I need to put a toilet in the blue whale?

SPEAKER_03 15:39

Well, if you must know, I've had some bad experiences. Listen, it's it's really hard.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

Go ahead. Tell us about the toilet. Maybe you can skip the bad experiences. Listen, you're gonna love this.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

So when you leave really early in the morning, sometimes things don't come out as you expect. So thinking ahead, you know, Aaron thinks of everything, you know, everyone likes to to mention that. So it's the most ghetto toilet ever. It's literally a box. Okay, and you put these bags in it, and like you know, you crunch your loaf. It's like Borat at dinner. What shall I do with this? That's exactly very nice, very nice, but it actually has a toilet seat. Okay, yeah. So just in case, if there's an emergency, that's the three of us in the van, there's me, you, and my buddy Doug. So if there's an emergency, we have an emergency toilet, but I also bought it for the cannonball attempt. So there's nothing stopping a cannonball attempt, that's for sure. So yeah, we're all set. We got the uh portable bag toilet for the big blue whale. It's exciting.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Nice. Is you're gonna have a little one of those mounts on the on the back of the motorcycle so you never have to stop except for fuel. Uh don't mind me over here in the slow lane. Don't want to lose the don't want to lose the time by stopping at the toilet.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Listen, I got adult diapers for that. Okay, good. You're all done.

SPEAKER_05 17:07

Ah, can you imagine? We need to move on. We need to stop this conversation right now.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Listen, this is cannonball, man. This is the reality of it.

SPEAKER_04 17:19

Yeah, this is the reality of it. It's like an astronaut.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Actually, I was watching the uh Alex Roy video about him beating the cannonball record with a three-wheel variant, and I think he self-catheterized and put the tube through the floor of the three-wheel. So we're gonna talk to him at some point, but you know, people take this really seriously, right? Seriously, yeah. You know, so it's like on the Morgan on the Morgan three wheel, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that really cool. Kerry shared that with us.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

Yeah, yeah, super, super cool story.

SPEAKER_04 17:58

All right, so um, I encourage you to reach

Simpson Helmet Drama And Refund Rage

SPEAKER_04 18:01

out. You were you were complaining a lot about this Simpson helmet and that it did not meet the specifications. So you um I encourage you to go back and talk with them. So you did. Tell us a little bit about that story.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Yeah, and the end result is like I thought it would be, which is nothing, but it's really interesting. So I'm you know, people know me not to be someone who complains, but I went back and I looked at all the documentation. So it's an $819 helmet, right? And it's the Journey Bandit Carbon. And they said that they are aware of the Sun Peak vibrating at speed. Yeah. They actually replied in writing, and I wrote an article about this, it's in our news feed, and they said, we know that it vibrates. They said they couldn't figure out an engineering solution for it, which I pointed out that my 10-year-old TuroTech helmet doesn't vibrate because they figured out a solution to it. So I thought that was a huge cop out. And they said that yes, it's DOT approved, but people remove the peak to use it on the highway. I thought to myself, what a freaking cop out. I'm like, first of all, there is an engineering solution. You just didn't go do any benchmarking to copy someone else's engineering solution. Yeah, you gave up. And you come out and say that it is DOT approved, but we encourage you to remove this the sun peak, but you don't say that in your advertising or the website. You just say it's a premium carbon fiber helmet and it's DOT approved. But nowhere in the listing do you say asterisk, you need to remove it for the highway. I'm so infuriated by that response from them.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

You know, I just watched a review on the uh on Ryan F9. He talks about best helmets for 2026. And in there, interestingly enough, he talked, he reviewed a bunch of helmets, open face, uh, modular, all the way down to only one ADV helmet in there. And they had gone through, and he says it is the quietest, uh I don't know what name it is, but it's the quietest ADV helmet on the road. Doesn't have active noise canceling like the Cardo one that I saw um girl on a bike at a trade show wearing the other day. Um, but this particular one, they put sound, they put rubber dampeners, um, vibration dampeners uh all over the helmet, any places of vibration. And the main place I talked about was where the peak meets the actual helmet. If you've got these rubber dampeners in there to keep the vibration, the sound down.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

And with this uh Journey Bandit Carbon, uh it's so pathetic that the mechanism that connects the sun visor to the helmet, it is purposefully loose. You can actually wiggle it with your fingers and it actually moves. And they say in writing to me that that's by design, it's just obnoxiously bad. And then we talked about it earlier that, and I figured out why. I I did some research on the company. The visor doesn't have that detent, that one little millimeter detent that every motorcycle helmet in the world has. Except for this one, except for this one, and I realized why because this isn't a motorcycle helmet company, their genesis to the company is racing products. So they're like, if you think of a uh a top-fuel dragster, that is their genesis of the company. And they thought they could get into the motorcycle world easily, but it's not that easy, you know, it's it's experience, yeah. It's RD, it's it's a lifetime of experience. So the fact that the visor closes and it closes so bloody strong that you need two hands to open your visor, it dawned on me why. Because if you're in a top fuel drag car and it catches on fire, you want that to be closed, right? So they simply took that technology and they called it a motorcycle helmet, but it's not, it's a Garbage, right? It's very good at what it does for its original purpose, but you cannot have the hubris to say that, well, we make this helmet and now we'll call it a motorcycle helmet. And by the way, we'll call it a premium motorcycle helmet and we'll go on and we'll pontificate of how great it is, but it's really not. So, anyways, and then there was a few other complaints I had about it, but I found it really interesting that they replied and goes, Yeah, this is uh the way it is. And I thought, and I looked at the return policy and I'm like, you didn't tell me about all this, and then by the way, you won't take a return. So I'm like, what a great little racket you have here. You don't tell us about that, it's not really a deal, it's not an on-road motorcycle helmet, but you said it was a premium motorcycle helmet. And then when I get it and I'm unsatisfied with it, there's no way for me to return it. It's really an amazing business plan. Congratulations, Simpson. You're really screwing people wholeheartedly with your policies.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

So let me just see if I can summarize this. Is this a buy or a no-buy? You recommend this.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

I will burn it as soon as I can afford to get a real helmet. So my plan is just to simply go get the modern version of the Tour Tech helmet that I have, uh, because the other one's in Europe. And that's the only reason I bought another helmet. I'm quite satisfied with my 10-year-old helmet. It's fantastic, right? You know, it needs a little tuning once in a while. After 10,000 miles, you gotta tighten a few screws and this and that. Don't we all? Yeah. So I was just so enraged with their with their response.

SPEAKER_04 23:32

Um, it's it's a bit like insurance, you know. Like when I was in the US living there, um my theory on insurance was to talk about a great business model. This is something that you pay for, you hope you never use, and then when you call them and you say, I need it, all the premiums you've been paying, they take that money and they hire someone to find a reason not to pay you. What an amazing business model that is.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Yeah. And then, you know, there's that case in uh New York right now that a guy just got finally fed up and shot the the the uh the CEO of one of those healthcare companies because they just say no, right? And then we're just you know, we're peons. There's nothing you can do about it unless, you know, choose violence, I guess, right? Yeah, well, I wouldn't recommend that, but you know. I would, but that's a story for another podcast.

SPEAKER_04 24:19

Well, you know, that's what we you know, it's like the it's like uh it's like a good cop, bad cop on this podcast. Case in point.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Yeah.

Self-Rescue Stickers And Interview Setup

SPEAKER_03 24:25

And uh so we have some really cool new podcast stickers that are up on the website. And I made a really cool self-rescue sticker. So one of the mottos of all this is of the rally is you know, zero support is that ADV ethos of going out when you're rallying and being prepared, and uh both mechanically and physically and mentally being prepared and always expect self-rescue. So I made a really cool self-rescue sticker, which is free. So feel free to go on the website and order yourself some free stickers.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

I think it's probably a good time to transition into maybe a little bit of tee up about the interview we have coming in here.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Absolutely. And I feel bad if people are gumballers and cannonballers had to listen to all that. But uh, that's why we have chapter markers, right? We had recorded last week's or two weeks ago interview with Tommy, which was an amazing story about his UK cannonball experience and his trial and all that. If you haven't listened to it, you have to go listen to it. It's one of the best stories we've had here on the show. And then all of a sudden, two weeks later, he gets invited to do the Gumball 3000 with That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05 25:39

It's absolutely amazing, like a dream come true.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Yeah, and anyways, he just finished saying in that interview that, you know, as a kid, he went and did all these gumball things as a spectator and they were inspiring and all that. And then all of a sudden he ends up going. So I just get this message is like, hey, I'm going to Gumball. I go, holy shit, are you really doing that? That's a and you're doing it in what? With who? It was like, and it couldn't have happened to the nicest guy. Tommy is a prince of a dude, a nice guy, a real enthusiast. Uh, a man has put the rubber on the pavement. Like, it couldn't have happened to a better guy.

SPEAKER_06 26:15

And with that, we should roll the interview. Adventure, endurance, glory. This isn't just a ride, it's the ultimate test of rider and machine. The ADV Cannonball Rally challenges you to ride from coast to coast, navigating checkpoint to checkpoint by GPS and pushing past your limits. Take on every off-road stage and you'll learn bragging rights and a coveted Rough Rider trophy. Own the twisty tarmac and you'll claim the checkpoint crusher award. Every mile counts, every choice matters. Rack up the points, and your name could be etched forever on the winner's cup. This year the routes are harder, the mileage is longer, the glory is greater. The ADV Cannonball Rally is open for registration. Fortune favors the bolt. Sign up today.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Tommy

Tommy’s Gumball Origin Story

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Davies, welcome back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Well, great to be back, Aaron. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

So in podcast time, you and I just spoke, but in real life time, I have left Wales, I've gone to the Isle of Man, to the TT, we've done the uh Spartacus interview and a few other shenanigans. And you have been up to some amazing shenanigans. You got yourself an invite to do the Gumball 3000. And everyone kind of knows what the Gumball 3000 is, but maybe you can tell us what the Gumball 3000 is to you.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, so uh the Gumball 3000 was founded by Maximilian Cooper, uh British guy down in London in 1999. He was uh, I think he was a bit of a model back in the day. He kind of did art school down in London, and he had a few high-fashion friends and people in sort of music and film, and he decided he wanted to get them all together and combine all those sort of lifestyle and decided to do a car rally in 1999, which I believe was London to London via sort of like the Nurbergering, Le Mans, a little week-long trip uh around Europe, and it'd be basically like a rolling party, um, based obviously on the Gumball Rally 1976 film, which was kind of stolen from Brock Yates' Cannonball Run film and his actual uh you know Sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash races. Um, and uh it was a great success. It sort of rolled on. And 2000 and uh in 2000, I think they did the first sort of filming of it. It's a very uh hard-to-find VHS, but um to kind of show you the kind of scale they went the second year. They it was all very cloak and dagger and mysterious. So you didn't know where you were going until the morning morning of it, basically. They give you the mission pack. So you'd wake up that morning not knowing where you were going. And I remember seeing this tape when I was a youngster, and it was they were given this mission pack to drive to Stansted Airport. So they were starting in the middle of London, we're gonna drive an hour and a half north to an airport, and then they loaded like 70 odd cars onto an Antonov Russian aircraft and flew them to Bilbao, Spain. And this was just insane. You know, in 2000, I would have been nine, 10, something like that. Um, and it just kind of rolled and got bigger and bigger. 2001, I think, was the first time I actually came across Gumball uh at the time, and it was MTV Jackass. So coming of age in the UK, you know what kids are like, we're watching Jackass, we're we're kind of doing all those sort of stunts, throwing ourselves downstairs, and I was very much trying to be, you know, Bam Majera, Johnny Knoxville. And then one day on MTV, we saw this episode where they it was an hour-long special. Uh, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Steve O, um, they did the gumball. And that year it was London to St. Petersburg and up through the Baltics. And these seeing these places, you know, when you're at 12, 13, just like, wow, this looks like so much fun. And it would just be like week-long parties in Russia. They were really concerned about the mafias, they had armed sort of patrol security, and there was people getting hijacked and their camera equipped stolen. There's a great moment here where they're they're trying to get into the lat through the Latvian border, and people don't have their carnays or any sort of documentation, so they're at the border for like four hours, and someone decides to steal the keys of a Latvian truck driver from the other side. So now no cars can get in or out of Latvia, and there's just this stalemate. Um, and it just captured my imagination. And in 2002, it came to the US for the first time, and then 2003 they did the Gumball 3000 movie, and this is something that people who are into sort of cannibal, maybe on four wheels, so a lot of my sort of mutual friends now, they all sort of you know cut their teeth on this film. So in 2003, it was San Francisco to Miami. So I think it was San Francisco, Reno, down to White Sands, San Antonio, uh, then down through New Orleans, and then from New Orleans they went straight to Miami, which is like a 900-mile drive. Uh, big parties rolling along. It was Alex Roy's first gumball. He he really wanted to do it, so he did the gumball that year in his famous, now infamous BMW M5 with David Maher. Um, and since then, it were, you know, I was 14, I think that I was just obsessed. I was obsessed. And it was again, it was a time before sort of social media. So, you know, you'd have to wait to see, you know, you there was not really any internet or anything like that, especially where I'm from in the in the Welsh Hills. We didn't get the internet till sort of well into the mid-nouhties. Um, so you'd have to wait and see it in sort of like magazines, or you'd wait for the DVD to come out, which would come out probably eight or nine months after. Um, so it was it was a really cool underground thing that I really did just sort of come of age with, and it kind of combined my sort of or it grew my love of like travel, driving, meeting people, and just having those sort of experiences. Um, you know, some people wish they were sat by a beach, you know, in the Bahamas. I just wished I was stuck at some weird border, uh, you know, in Eastern Europe, in some, you know, sporty car, or not even a sporty car. I think one of the early days of gumball, it really did have the whole range. So you had like Citroen 2 CVs. So in 2004, there was a Citron 2 CV. They went from Paris all the way down to Casablanca in Morocco and then all the way back up to Cairns in a 602cc Citron 2 CV. I think they won Spirit of the Gumball that year just because it was like a the Spirit of the Gumball is like a trophy you'd win for the for the most outrageous team, or someone who just had the spirit or just the perseverance to keep going. Um so you had like ice cream vans, you had the high-end, you know, Ferraris and Koenigs eggs, you know, some of the early prototype Koenigs eggs were in the early Gumballs, and it just really just yeah, it had a profound effect on on you know my transition into adulthood, really. Um, so that's kind of a background on the gumball. Uh, I mean, again, they went to North Korea in 2008. Uh, you know, these kind of things where it's like how I think I've always been really sort of fascinated with the logistics of this sort of thing. You know, I've taken vehicles to America and to Europe, um, planning to hopefully take it to Africa one day, and I do kind of uh geek out on sort of registration plates and paperworks and exemptions, and you know, you know, when I see diplomat vehicles in different countries and all those sort of grey legal areas and stuff. So to hear that, you know, gumball are like taking a load of Americans, Canadians, New Zealand, a lot of Western people to Pyongyang in 2008, it's like unbelievable. And I think they finished then in Beijing for the opening of the Olympics. So I've just been in awe of it for years. Big fan, big fan, uh sort of big nerd. Um, so that's sort of my sort of background on gumball, really. And then in 2006 it was leaving London, and this was around the world in eight days. So it was leaving London, they were driving down to uh down Serbia way to then fly the cars to Thailand to do, say, a thousand miles in Thailand, to then load 120 cars up again to fly them to Salt Lake City, to then go from Salt Lake City to finish at the Playboy Mansion in LA. I mean, like the logistics of all that to literally go around the globe with 120 cars, 250 plus people, those Russian cargo planes, which I mean, I don't think they even exist anymore. I think the last one was destroyed during the Ukrainian war. None of them are in service if there is any left. You can't just wouldn't be able to do this anymore. Um, and again, different worlds, sort of just before social media really kind of kicked off. Um, and yeah, it was it was like the golden age for me, really, in sort of gumball stuff there. So I've been a big fan ever since.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

And in our previous interview, you had mentioned how the Gumball 3000 played a pivotal role in a young Tommy's relationship with the automotive world. Maybe you could describe your first real life interaction with the Gumball 3000.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Yeah, so I mean, like uh this would have been April 2006, uh, leaving uh London. It was set up on the Pall Mal. So I would have been 14 then, I think, just about to turn 15. So my friend uh Ryan, who again went on to do his own stuff, he cycled around the world so heavily influenced by this sort of stuff. We were obsessed with long way around when it came out. Um, he's read all the books, he he's done everything, and he's gone very much on pedal power and and sort of followed those dreams. So we were like, We've we've got to go. So I remember asking my mum, can we go to London? She was like, Yeah, we'll make a trip of it. We go down to London and then we say, right, we'll we'll see you know later on, we'll meet here, and we head down to the mall, and it is just crazy, just pure fanfare of fans and everything like that. Now, obviously, being a teenager, super into the detail and working out sort of stuff, we worked out which hotel they were going to be at, which meant we knew the cars would all be in the underground car park. And I've always had a way of just sort of like managing to get into the right sort of places. So we managed to like walk into the hotel because we knew the outside parking entrance was sort of covered by a load of gumball crew. So we went in the hotel knowing there'd be a fire escape down to the car park. So we went down to the car park and there are all the gumball cars, and we're talking from Ferrarienzo's on one end all the way up to, you know, things that stick out in mind. There was a 1969, I'm gonna say, or '68, like Samba bus that had had a Porsche 911 engine put in. And it was just phenomenal to see with a slide-up sort of plasma TV, really of the age, with some PlayStation 2s in the back, you know, that sort of era. And we just wandered around this underground two-story car park, just seeing all these cars. And if you'd watched Gumball, there was people that you'd recognise from the other films that weren't celebs outside of Gumball, you'd have to be a Gumball fan. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna name some names now that unless you're a hardcore Gumball fan, you won't know, like Shane Slovin. Uh, you know, there's this he was just like an art dealer from London who was just wild, you know, and he no one would know him outside of Gumball, but inside of Gumball, he's just a legend. Uh, Rob Kenworthy, Londman, as he's known, again, a legend inside the Gumball sort of world. Um, me and my friend 15 was we're kind of, you know, kind of getting comfortable sneaking around. And then we ended up helping putting some stickers on some of the cars. And then next to us, as walks down that the uh fire escape is Bam Magera and Ryan Dunn. So now we are like, oh my god, as teenage boys, we are just so excited. So we end up having a picture with Bamagera, Ryan Dunn. Um, we look at his Lamborghini Gallado at the time, again, Pennsylvania number plates on it. These are number plates we've only seen in films, you know. So we're seeing like Pennsylvania plates, Arizona plates, you know, Qatar plates, plates from New Zealand, Canada, all over. And you can just feel this energy that's building. And uh, we end up going onto the, you know, the grid. We walk up and down the grid, we meet um Mike Escamilla, who was a big BMXer at the time. My mate Ryan was really into his BMX. Tony Hawke managed to shake Tony Hawke's hand. So for teenage boys, this was like the greatest uh day ever. Then there was a load of glamour models with uh again another gumball veteran, Richie Warren, who had a fuel record company. His he had a BMW 850, I think it was a CSI that just spat flames out the back of it, matte black. And he just had a load of glamour girls, pirate girls, in their in their lingerie. So again, teenage boys, we all had photos with them, the best day of our lives. Um, and then the checkered flag's just about to be waved. We have to kind of leave the kind of grid and stand the other side of the barrier, and then we just see him leave, and all the engines rev, they wheels spin. Alex Roy is there in a uh Bentley Continental GT belonging to one of his UK friends, believe his M5 was out of action at that time. Um, and he was a hero of mine um from Gumball Films. Um, and this would have been just before he did New York to LA. He was kind of right in the middle of it all, so it was it wasn't public knowledge. So he was very much a gumball guy to me, and and that was it. So, of all the people I went up and spoke to that day, Tony Hawk, Bamager, Ryan Dunn, I couldn't get the balls to go and speak to Alex Roy. I don't know something about him. He was there programming these old school, uh, you know, Tom Tom Garmin satnavs. Um and I couldn't, I got a I got like a sneaky picture over his shoulder into it there. That's that's all it was. But um, yeah, so we sounded, we leave the grid, they drop the checkered flag, and then they all accelerate off to the first checkpoint. And I remember that feeling vividly of uh I guess they call it FOMO now, don't they? The fear of missing out, but of just the engine noises sort of die down, the crowds disperse, you start hearing the barriers getting taken down, and you're not going along for the ride, you know? So I remember it just being a kind of a somber day after that of going, wow, that is the coolest thing I could possibly

The Invite From Ed Bolian

SPEAKER_00 39:29

think of.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

That's because it is the coolest thing in the world, Tommy. But help me connect the dots. How do we go from being a young man, fanboying out in London at a Gumball 3000 event, to today being invited to an actual Gumball 3000 rally in a Bugatti Veyron?

SPEAKER_00 39:49

I don't, I I that's the question I've been asking myself for the last uh as soon, you know, as soon as I I mean Ed Balian rang me up, uh, I think it was about probably three or four weeks before the start line. Um, and he was like, What's your schedule like between this date and this date? And I was like, Well, I've I've got to be in Scotland on the 12th. I mean, or why why what are you thinking? He was like, Well, do you want to do the gumball? And I was like, Well, yes, obviously I'd like to do the gumball. Like this is uh phenomenal, right? And I'm like, but even to that point then, I was like, right, don't get your hopes up. Things can change, things can happen, you know, it could just be oh, unfortunately it's not happening. And that was all the way up until I was in Miami. And like with Ed, I was like, Oh, is this really happening? Like, I couldn't believe it. So, how that happened, I mean, I've just got to, you know, bow down to to Ed Bollion for just being an absolute legend. I mean, he he's a hardcore gumball fan as well. I think that's probably what we've bonded over. Um, you know, I'm 35 this year, and Ed had his 40th last year, so we're not too far in age range. He would have been more in his later teens when this gumball was sort of all kicking off. Um, and it's obviously had a a big effect on his life. Um, I think we we we get on well, but I mean his phone book would be very long for the kind of people he could have as a co-driver. So the fact that my phone rang, even if I was 25th down in that line, I'm still happy that he rang, you know. So um, yeah, I can't answer that question exactly because it is so alien to me. Like I'm, you know, I'm up in North Wales here, uh, you know, we're in the middle of hay harvest, you know, the sheep, we're talking about sheep shearing soon. And like only a couple of weeks ago, I was literally living how a billionaire lives. And I know that because I was with a few billionaires, and um, yeah, it's it's uh it's it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Well, it really happened. It's it's really amazing, and it's all documented on Ed's VinWiki channel. You can go check out one of his classic uh car stories episodes. We're all familiar with that. And uh every year the course is different, the route is different. Maybe you can describe for our listeners what the route was this year.

Route Breakdown And Mexico Reality

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Yeah, I mean, I think it's you know, everyone thinks that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You know, for me, coming to America is as exciting as it would be for someone in the States to go from Edinburgh down to the south of Spain or something, right? So it's you know, it's kind of it wasn't in my own backyard. So the route this year was Miami up to Amelia Island with a lunch stop in Orlando. Uh, and then from Amelia Island, we went from Amelia Island straight to uh New Orleans with a lunch stop in Gulf Shores, Alabama. And then from New Orleans, we went to Austin with a lunch stop in Houston, and then from Austin, we went down to Bandera, Texas. That was the lunch stop, and that was as far as me and Ed went. Um, believe it or not, insurance was a problem for a Bugatti Veyron over the Mexican border. Um, the rally then continued, and again in in classic gumball style, right? They could have just gone to San Diego or San Francisco, but no, they decided, no, we're gonna go south through cartel country, and they went to uh they had the armed guards. I mean, the Americans were really nervous about going over that Mexican border, right? And I was like, well, maybe I'm naive to it and everything like that, but it can't be as bad as you're making it out to it. Um, but yeah, they had armed guards, kind of the the National Guard, or basically Mexican military sort of convoying them down to I think it was Monterey and then San Miguel, and then San Miguel, finally to Mexico City for the opening of the World Cup. So it would have been amazing to do that. That would have been incredible. But I mean, I think any more excitement, and I probably would have passed out at the Mexican border anyway. So our leg was very much the US leg, which for me, again, you know, I've never been to Amelia Island, I've never been to New Orleans, Gulf Shores. Um, I've heard of these places, Austin, Texas, and I hadn't certainly been to Bandera, Texas, which is uh they call themselves the cowboy capital of the world. And uh I'll have to agree with that because it felt very much like the cowboy capital of the world. Um so yeah, great, great route. Um, and what was quite amazing for it, it was basically 70% of the that route, probably all of the American leg, was the reverse of the 2003 route, which is a film that me and Ed First, really kind of fell in love with Gumball with the Gumball 3000 movie, which was San Francisco to Miami. So there was some amazing helicopter shots in that 2003 film. And I guess it yeah, it'd be the I-10, sort of through Louisiana, coming into Alabama, and they're just elevated sections through I don't know what the term would be in the States. We call them swamp or marsh, or I guess bayou, right? Um, and I remember seeing it as a as a young teenager and just going, wow, look at that big open world out there. And then there I was going westbound in a Bugatti Veyron in the opposite direction, you know, 22, 23 years later. So there was a lot of moments of just like, wow, this is unbelievable, very sort of uh full circle almost. Uh I really did feel very content to be in that car of just wow, this is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

And speaking of that car, there wasn't many what you call, I don't know, hyper cars in this year's event. But you were down there in a Bucardi Veyron, it's notorious for being a hot running car. How did that vehicle perform, especially in those slow parade stages?

SPEAKER_00 45:03

Yeah,

Surviving The Veyron Heat

SPEAKER_00 45:04

so I mean, like in terms of I when Ed asked me to go, I mean, like, he's got a selection of cars to go. Um, I didn't really want to ask what we're going in. I thought, you know, I'll let him sort of lead with that. And then he kind of said, you know, the Bugatti. And I was like, okay, well, I think I've only ever seen a Bugatti from across the way when I was uh visiting a friend in Dubai and it was in some you know showroom somewhere, right? And again, that car came out originally in 2005-6, right around this time of sort of being teenagers. Again, my friend Ryan, we had a little shed down the road in the town where we'd all just spend the weekends there. We had posters up, and one of the posters was a Bugatti Veyron. So um my first very much like seeing one up close was Ed's in the car park of the Hard Rock Hotel in uh Fort Lauderdale. Um, so he told me to pack light. I was like, how light are you saying? He says, Well, it makes a Aventador's front trunk look, you know, look big. And I was kind of like, well, I don't even know what an Aventador front truck trunk looks like. You know, I'm thinking, you know, Vauxhall Coarser or some of these European cars that I'm used to. So I took kind of a duffel bag, realized it's definitely not going in that car. So again, in sort of gumball style, there was a guy over from Australia in a lamb in a Lamborghini Cuntage, so very brave Cuntage, very nice car, but he also had a support vehicle, which was a Mercedes G-Wagon. So I uh sort of made friends with the guy. Again, he was genuinely a billionaire from Australia and uh I think he owned a basketball team. I was like, Can I put my bag in your support vehicle? Yeah, no problem, mate. You're like proper crocodile dundee, absolutely ideal. So we managed to palm the bag off for the whole week in various different support vehicles and stuff. Um, and then there was, yeah. So we sat in the Veyron. Um, you know, the the the engines are starting up, and Ed had said, I am concerned about uh, you know, heat in this car. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm sure we'll we'll work it out. It was like a sauna in there. So I mean the car has like, I think it's 11 or 12 radiators. Um, it doesn't do standing still very well. Apparently the Veyrons run hot anyway, and the humidity in Fort Lauderdale was something I've never experienced. I looked on my phone, it said it was 87% humidity. I don't know what that means, but I feel like I could chop through the mist that was there. I think they'd had loads of downpour and then extreme heat. Um, so like parading was quite difficult. The temperature was rising. I don't know what it is in my language, but it was like 250 Fahrenheit or something, and it was creeping up. And if it went over 260, we could throw like a gearbox issue and the car would stall. So we had to be very conscious of that. Um, and then yeah, so we kind of how Gumball do it is they sort of parade their cars through the start line. So what it means is you've got like 120 cars and you know they've got a minute or two each, there's a big stag of start there. And we were nowhere near the front, so you know, we were kind of in this queue of cars for probably 45 minutes, building up to the start line, where Lennox Lewis was waving the uh checkered flag of all people. Like, so I got to meet the the the ex, I mean, he says he's British, but you know, the British champ, which was very exciting. Um, and then we head off and we ended up going to um so the first it's straight on the highway from there, so we get open it up, get the air flowing through. The only way I can explain it for someone who's never been in a Bugatti Veyron is like the take-off acceleration of a jet with the wings upside down. So like the quicker you go, you feel like you're getting hunkered down, and you can just hear the the quad turbos really just almost pulling your ears back. I mean, the car is a convertible, but we had the roof on the whole time. It's a grand sport, I think. So you can remove the hardtop, but even with the hardtop on, you can just feel this like negative pressure from the turbos. It's it's phenomenal. Um, and there was another Bugatti on there, which was a Shiron super sport. Um, and we ended up just by chance on the highway together to the first stop with a helicopter above head as well. So um there's some amazing video shots of these two Bugattis on the highway heading up some highway up through Orlando, and I'm in the passenger seat of one of them, which is still unbelievable. Um, so yeah, it was a it was a great, uh, great first experience of getting into the Veyron. Um, and then we got to Orlando, it's uh it's Gil Desert, I think I'm pronouncing that right. He has a huge car museum there. If you're ever in Orlando, go and check it out because it is like they have the tank from James Bond Goldeneye, uh, which is an amazing film if you've never seen it, but there's an amazing collection of cars. They have the huge nauticulus car from uh The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Sean Connery. They have just the most amazing cars, they're the longest limo ever made that has a helicopter pad on the back and a swimming pool. Great collection of cars. And then we we have our lunch, and then Ed's like, Do you want to drive? And I I didn't think I was gonna drive at all. I mean, you know, I th I didn't expect to drive in, you know. I thought maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get a picture behind the steering wheel. So I was like, yeah, no problem. Yeah. And he gives me the keys and we get into the car, and it's a very nice and easy car to drive. But we are surrounded by hundreds of car spotters because we've kind of put them on display outside this museum, and we've had to navigate up like a sidewalk, you'd call it, or a curb. And now I've got to navigate down this in this car that's X amount of millions of dollars, and a car I've never driven before. Left-hand drive, done a lot of driving in the US, but in my own cars, which are right-hand drive, straight out into one of those crazy American intersections where no one really knows who can turn right or left or anything like that, and you've just kind of got to commit to it. So it was a baptism by fire for that, and it was very hot in the car. Um, and then we we headed out and I drove up to Amelia Island. Um, and then driving the car was again just like a pinch me moment. It still hasn't really set in, really. I've been seeing pictures, we get pictures sent through now, and it's like, that's me in the driver's seat there, driving on some US highway, you know. I mean, uh, yeah, it was it was wild. Absolutely wild.

SPEAKER_03 50:44

It's such an amazing story, it's fantastic. And besides the cars and the driving and all that, this event specifically is notorious for the parties and the people and the characters.

Parties Crowds And Gumball Logistics

SPEAKER_03 50:56

Can you give us a little insight into how the partying was?

SPEAKER_00 51:00

Yeah, so I mean, like uh what I really like about Gumball, and I'm kind of proud about it, is it's very British, right? So Max is is uh very English, I would even say, you know, he's he's the English gentleman. Um, and the crew again. So we'd we pull up at stops. And how again, back to the logistics of it, you know, if you're into sort of cannibal planning, which me and Ed were, so you know, we're like, right, let's not, we don't need radar jammers and sorry, radar detectors or laser jammers, let's just run ways, we'll run with the pack, you know, it's all part of this. It's not who gets there first. You know, there's a famous saying from the early days of gumball, it's not a race, it's a rally, right? And that that's very much it. Um, but like the logistics of the crew, where the crew uh who are at, say, Fort Lauderdale, there's already a crew waiting at Amelia Island. And then when you get to Amelia Island, the crew from Fort Lauderdale are flying now to New Orleans. There's an A and B crew, never mind the lunch stock crews as well. So I've been totally fascinated with the logistics of how they move these crew around, and they're all sort of very passionate guys, guys and girls. Uh, you know, some was from Scotland, there was a guy from Ireland, you know, one's from down south. Got on really well with the crew there. Um, and then yeah, so Amelia Island, we um did a parade through again. I've never been to Amelia Island, I didn't know what to expect. Lovely part of the world. Um, I guess it's very sort of what we in the UK would think of, like what the Hamptons are on Long Island. I guess it's that sort of place. Uh the weather was was gorgeous. We kind of paraded through town. Again, Gumball has this way of attracting thousands of fans, and it wasn't lost on me that 20 years ago I was one of the fans the other side of the rail, you know. So uh we had loads of merchandise to give out, and I was very, I was very kind of I'm gonna get every kid I see, I'm giving them these cards or t-shirts or anything like that. Uh, and we loved it. And Ed obviously is very well known in the States, so there was a lot of VinWiki fans for him there. Um, so yeah, I was kind of joking around that I was his personal security, although he's probably you know foot taller than me. Um, and then we get to the hotel again, gumball style, it's the Ritz carton. Never stayed in a Ritz carton before, very fancy hotel, and then a kind of just like a parade of blacked-out Mercedes minibuses turn up, and there's shuttles to take us to an airfield off on the coast there, because one of the gumballers I think owns the airfield and is hosting us in a hangar. So there's an aircraft hangar there with country and western music, buffet style kind of beef brisket, and all the food you can imagine, drinks, open bar of all the drinks you could possibly want. And there's a Vietnam style chopper. I mean, I don't know my aircraft, but um, it was very blackhawk down sort of thing. Um, and that's just there, all lit up, and we're just there on the runway having food and drink and laughing. Uh Bill Warner was there, who does a lot on the Concourse the Alleghants in Amelia Island, but also did the cannonball run back in 75, I think. I think it was 75. Um, so a proper OG cannonballer was there uh with his um, I think it was a Ferrari he had there from the cannonball, like it did the cannonball in 75 in that Ferrari. Um, so that was quite cool for me and Ed to walk in and immediately see a little cannonball sticker on a car and go, right, there's probably not many people who will recognise that, and the two guys are here to know that. So that was cool. Um, and yeah, in terms of the parties, that was a kind of the first night was kind of you know more of a social night, you know, there's a lot of people, you a lot of chatting, which I thought was great because there's always that time you don't want to be straight into a nightclub when you don't really know people, you want to be able to talk. And I met a lovely lady from Bosnia and her husband who lived up on the the east coast of the states somewhere, they had a seafood business. I mean, the people you were meeting is is wild, and you're all kind of thrown into this experience together, and everyone's there for a good time, and there is like a real family spirit about it, which was was really cool. Um, and then the next night when we were in New Orleans, so we drove through Gulf Shores, the rain, I've never seen rain like it. I don't know, we don't have this in the UK where you can see the rain down the road, but you're perfectly dry, and you literally go through a curtain of rain. It it was phenomenal. So on Gulf Shores, we're coming along the front there, and we just drive into a curtain of rain, and you've got to go at a crawling speed. I mean, I've never seen rain like it. So we had a lunch stop in Gulf Shores, very wet and muggy there. Uh, and then New Orleans, when we got to Bourbon Street, they had closed off the whole of Bourbon Street. I'd heard of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. Um, apparently closing it off is kind of a big achievement, just sort of shows the pulling power of gumball. And there were estimates of 30 odd thousand people lining the streets there in Bourbon Street. We were the first car to convoy in, I guess being cannonballers and we were just on time and slick, and we were first there. Um, and it was pandemonium. Like the the the noise, the the just the vibe, you can't help but get sort of charged up by it. They had the National Guard walking up and down, which were very, very stern looking. They didn't smile. I, you know, I kind of spoke with some of them and they were very serious and kind of added to the excitement of it all. Um, and then they kind of gumball had these two sort of bars on Bourbon Street for the Gumball Party, where they had sort of, I guess it's Cajun, is it, food they have there, and just amazing chicken, and and again, uh cool drinks from the area, and the music's playing. They've got the gumball DJs playing classic tunes, and the whole it's just a massive street party. And they had these Gumball 3000 beads, and you're waving them over the sort of railings, and there's a I guess there's a tradition there when you wave beads, the ladies react to that and you throw them down. So I experienced that for the first time as kind of a a guy from a small village in Wales. It was absolutely insane. So, and that just it just built and built and built, and it was it was something that yeah, that the parties were. I mean, we we the next night we were in Austin, and that was at a Mayfair club for Max, the organizers' birthday. So it was we're all celebrating his birthday. Again, they put on these little shuttles that took us from the W Hotel in Austin to the Mayfair Club, and um again, just an absolutely incredible night. And you're meeting people from all over the world, and you're bumping into people from obviously from the UK and things, and you know, you might have something in common. You go, Oh, yeah, I kind of I know him, and that you know, you you realize we're not all that far apart from each other, there's always that common ground there, um, which was yeah, so it was absolutely just phenomenal. The parties were were were great. Um, yeah, I'm reminiscing now, it's all coming back to me. Yeah, it's great fun.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

That's so awesome. Did anyone recognize you or at least your voice from your famous Vin Wicki appearance?

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Um, I think there was somewhere we were talking, and I think, you know, sometimes uh, you know, my I I'm not very I don't do much very social media really, so I think there was more like it would be, oh, you're the guy with the UK case. Do you know what I mean? We'd be talking about it and something like that, and that's how it would come through, you know. So, you know, my face, I think maybe I was wearing a face mask in a lot of the press when I was uh when I got in trouble for mine. That probably helped a little bit to hide my identity. But I think the story does well in America. Ed's did a very good Vin Wick Vin Wiki video on it, and it got over like a million views, so it was it was well seen. And I think people know the story more than they know me, which is a nice way. Ed was very much recognized, which was great fun for me because I felt like I was with a proper celeb as well, so it was it was good fun. I mean, speaking of cannonball sort of legends, in the 2003 Gumball, you had Alex Roy and Dave Maher. So they they did New York to LA in 31 minutes, uh, 31 hours and four minutes. And at the same sort of time, because they were doing the gumball together and also the bull run, which was an American version at the same time set up by one of the ex-gumball employees. Uh, they so Alex Roy was doing bull run

Celebrities Characters And Wild Car Spotting

SPEAKER_00 58:23

and gumball, you know, each year for the for a couple of years, and so was Richard Rawlings from Fast and Loud. And they had this whole sort of bet, could they, you know, break the 32 hours, seven-minute record that stood since the US Express. Um, and I guess they were both secretly trying to do it. Richard Rawlings thought he had broken it in 31 hours and 59 minutes, but uh the kind of twist and Alex Roy being the sort of Doctor Evil, Alex Roy had gone a couple of months before Richard Rawlings and done 31 hours four minutes and beat. So Richard Rawlings never technically had the record, although he'll he's got the tattoo to say otherwise. So we're we're checking into Austin, and I've seen Richard Rawlings has got this six-wheel Ferrari Tester Rasta build thing he's done, and it was rolling right behind us in Austin. So we're rolling through the parade in Austin, which is on Congress Avenue or street, the main strip through the middle of Austin with the Capitol building behind. Couldn't get more American for us. And um, we're in the the bright red-on-red Bugatti Veyron, and then behind us is a six-wheel Ferrari Tester Rasta with Richard Rawlings in. We pull into the hotel in Austin, you know. I'm also trying to find out where my bag is because I put it in someone else's car. I don't know where they are, they could be there, they could be three hours away, I don't know. Um, and while I'm in the kind of reception area where people are checking in, Richard Rawlins is there, and he knows Ed because he, you know, in the kind of those circles, and I get introduced to him, and you know, I say, I I did actually beat your time because uh I managed to do 30 hours and 22 minutes, which I was uh quite proud of. Um and he says, Well, you know, you haven't got the tattoo to prove it. I mean, there's always been this kind of fun and jokes that Richard Rawlins and Dennis Collins didn't actually go, and he just got the tattoo, you know. So it's kind of a fun sort of story. Um, but there I am again, you know, 20 years on, and I'm with Richard Rawlings at the gumball. Yeah, absolutely mind-blowing, you know. So uh that was uh it was it was quite wild. And then the next morning we actually had breakfast with him. The three of us had breakfast, we were, you know, chatting away, talking about different things. Um very surreal moment. I think the other thing as well, because I'm not really into, although I'm not very up on my pop culture, if I should say, you know, I think, you know, in terms of music taste, I feel like music kind of went downhill after 2006-7, and maybe that's just me getting older. I think we all have that period, don't we? There's a lot of people there that I didn't know who they were. So there was um a very, very super famous DJ called Dead Mouse, who I didn't know who he was, but he was with us and a nice guy. And someone I did know who was there, though, was Tori from Mythbusters. So I watched Mythbusters when I was a teenager growing up, and Tori was on the rally with him. So we spoke with him, very nice guy, and I believe he's in the new Jackass film as well. So it's all come full circle for me. Um, so it was uh again, there's you know, American celebs. I was sat having a drink for a while, and someone came over to ask this guy for an autograph, and I didn't, I had to kind of say, I'm sorry, man, I'm not from the US, what do you do? And he's like, Oh, I'm an NFL player, and he was a guy called uh Jimmy Graham who plays NFL. So I was like, Oh, awesome! And that's gumball, right? You can be sitting with someone who, you know, yeah. I mean, there's a saying in Welsh, it translates to basically, you know, you talk to the king and you talk to the peasant exactly the same. And I felt like I was there. I was with uh the billionaires, and I was there chatting with the car spotters and everyone in between, and it just brings everyone together from all walks of life, and it was uh unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

Amazing story. You mentioned that six-wheel car. Was there any other cars that caught your eye, or was there any cars that didn't make it?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:49

So, yeah, so I mentioned the Cuntage. I mean, as soon as we saw the Cuntage, Ed knows his Lamborghinis, he was a Lamborghini dealer in Atlanta in his early years, and he's he's owned countless Lamborghinis. I was like, is that just for show? As in, you sometimes hear that some cars are on like display for that day. You know what I mean? They've come out for a bit of PR, a bit like Richard Rawlins' Ferrari six-wheel. It didn't do any of the rally, it just came to Austin for the day to kind of showcase it all. They wrapped it all up in the gumball livery, but it didn't go anywhere other than out of a trailer, up Congress Avenue, and then back into a trailer and back to Dallas or something. But no, the Cunzage was doing the whole run, and we were like, okay. We didn't see the Cunzage after uh Miami, so it didn't make it to Fort Lauderdale. I think it made it to Orlando. Um, yeah, so that that was one where we were like, mm-hmm. There were two guys in uh an AC Cobra. Um now there's a there's a great Welsh film called Twin Towns with Reese Ivan's, very niche here for the Welsh audience that are listening, but there's a line in there where they they steal an AC Cobra, really. Um so as soon as I saw the AC Cobra, I was like, oh, it's an AC Cobra, which is how they say it down in South Wales. And then we thought, hang on, it's the forecasted weather is going to be terrible. It's a convertible with no cover, uh, and it's you know, I don't know what it is, a 69, is it something like that? 68. They had that spirit where I think a CV joint or some sort of joint went in the middle, they they were behind like a day and still, still gumballing, right? So we're in a kind of shared WhatsApp group, and we're like, oh, that rain's bad. And then next thing we'd see them in the rain, and they've got aviator sort of goggles on, helmets on, and they're just getting absolutely they might as well have been sat under a waterfall and they're just cruising along, you know, the I-10 or whichever highway they're on, and then they'd broken down, and then they'd but they kept pushing on. Um, other cars that were quite interesting, I was like, that is nice. There was two guys in like a Mercedes E-class wagon, must have been like a 2010, 2008, something like that, you know. I think they were trying to sell it, they were just gonna sell it at the end for like $20,000. That's what they did do, actually. They weren't going to Mexico either. They just dropped it off at the Mercedes dealer on a Sunday, just left it there and put the keys through the rental key box, flew back, and then we're gonna ring them on Monday morning and go, hey, we've left the car there. Do you want to give us some money for it, right? Um, but it had, they were just, I think a lot of it is also the people who are in the cars can make the cars, right? So that Mercedes E-Class just had two cool brothers. I think they were brothers. Um uh he he was the one who had the Bosnia wife, and they were just great fun and they had a great outlook on life. He's the he we ran out of beads in uh New Orleans, so he ran down the street and bought a back box of a thousand plastic beads. He doesn't know what he paid for them. The joke was he paid two dollars a bead for them just to chuck them off the balcony in about five minutes flat. Um, so there's just cars like that that stand out where you go, you know, that that's quite a cool car to bring on Gumball. Because, yeah, you know, you've got the Bugatti, like we were in, and the other Bugatti. You've got obviously Ferrari F-90s or whatever they're called, I mean F-80s, or all kinds of Lamborghinis and Corvettes and Porsches, and you know, there's a lot of sort of um nice G Wirs, very nice, comfortable cars. The organizer was doing it in a Rolls-Royce Cullen, I believe. Um, but they yeah, so there wasn't there weren't the hardcore cars you'd see in the past in the past, like an ice cream van, for example, uh, or even those sort of Lamborghini uh pickup trucks these do, those LM, I think the LM2000s were they called, something like that. Um, yeah, so a lot of Corvettes, as you'd imagine. You know, I think with Gumball, you know, it changes each year where it's going.

How Gumball Changed Over Time

SPEAKER_00 1:05:24

Next year it's Korea to Japan. So obviously it attracted a lot of American drivers this year. Next year, you know, you're gonna see a lot of you know, Eastern Asian drivers and celebs and cars, and that's it kind of almost gives you a quick snapshot of that sort of part of the world's car culture, you know. So I saw a lot of Corvettes. Again, I don't really know my Corvettes, but the latest Corvettes were there, uh, very loud cars. Um, there were some really cool Lamborghini Mercy Largos there. There's there's some YouTubers called uh DDE, I believe. Yeah, David and Damon. They had a very cool Mercy Largo uh that I liked. Um, but again, I think it's more. Down to the people, right? You could have the most dullest car, but if you're fun to be around and you're, you know, you get what this is all about, for some reason you're kind of you're attracted to that vehicle. That's why I like the Mercedes wagon because the guys in it were so much fun. Um, and they you know they carried my bag for two of the days as well because they had all the space in the world in that in that wagon. Um, so yeah, there was some really cool cars in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:20

Just for the record, I don't need an invite in a cool car. I would literally do this in a tractor, I would do it in a open cockpit, you know, classic car. I don't care. I would do this in any vehicle given the opportunity. No questions asked. So to see you do it in a Bugatti Veyron, you obviously hit the jackpot here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Would you would you do it on a motorbike, Aaron? There's been a couple. I mean, there's a there was a guy, yeah. I think his n his name, oh, what was his name now? It's it's on the tip of my tongue here. Um, Carter Healy, right? So Carter Healy, look him up, very cool guy. Um, he has done it on a motorbike a couple of times. I think he did all the gumballs up until 2010 or something like that. He did like 10 gumballs in a row. Um, and I think he did it on a BMW GS bike in 2004 when they went to Morocco. And I think when it came to the States for the first time in 02, he did it on a Ducati bike with a couple of guys. Um, I find that's pretty hardcore until you obviously get to you know proper cannonballing. But I think you know, doing a week of partying and then having to get on the bike like a Ducati. And back then they were doing like 900-mile legs, where as Gumball sort of evolved over the years, social media and everything like that, content is eaten up so quickly now, it is very much a rolling parade, like a rolling music festival. Um excuse me. So it's it's very interesting now to do the gumball 20 years on uh and kind of go right, you know. I remember sitting with Ed back in Atlanta when we got back. Oh, we had a 15-hour drive back from Bandera, back to Atlanta, which I would have been, if he'd have said, Do you want to come to Bandera and drive back with me from the Gumball? I would have been so excited. Never mind, do the gumball as well. Um, so you know, we we kind of spoke about it quite a lot on going, you know, right, we're both sort of from, you know, speaking from the same place here now. What did we think? How did we find it? You know, we knew Gumball has changed over the years. It's not as hardcore as they would say it was. Um, but it couldn't stay that hardcore. It was hardcore back then because it was very much behind closed doors because you didn't everyone wasn't carrying a camera phone, you know, and people weren't streaming it live. You know, you'd have some crazy driving going on and very fast driving going on. Where this time now it was very much the destination, you know. So we're driving together, driving that sort of stuff, but it's it's a little bit more sedate. You get to the location and that's where it's all at, where it felt like when you were watching it back, and obviously the power of editing, it's it's hard to say, but um, you know, gumball was very much the drive was what was insane. You know, you'd you'd be getting a mission pack, and you'd like, for example, in the 2001 Gumball with uh the Jackass crew, they drove from London through into I think it was Belgium. You know, it was a long drive and it was into the night. And they thought, right, this is where we're staying. No, no, no, you've got another 400 miles to go. And they were like, it was a it was a good, like 18, 19 hour drive. You know, it was hardcore. And Gumball sort of you know built its reputation on on hard corners, but that was unsustainable. It couldn't stay like that, you know, it had to move into the modern iteration of what it is now. Um, and I think it's done a very good job of staying and growing how it has through this very, you know, 1999 to now, we're in a very different world in terms of music, social media, all that sort of stuff, and how it sort of stayed relevant and still, you know, pulling the crowds that it is. And I'm sure there was many children and young adults that were in those parades in all of those places we stopped who will love and hopefully will get to do the gumball one day. Um, yeah, it's sort of like it does plant the seed of dreams to kind of do it's it's a it's an unbelievable experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:52

Yeah, it really is amazing, and it's a great way to bring this conversation full circle, both interviews full circle.

What’s Next For Tommy

SPEAKER_03 1:09:59

What's next? Because we're always planning the next thing. So, what is the next big adventure, the big attempt, the big rally, the big whatever? What is the next big thing for Tommy?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

I never thought I'd do Gumball. So, like, you know, for me it was very much I'd done European rallies trying to sort of you know capture that sort of excitement. And I had some great times on a thing called the Rumble Rally, which is out of Europe, uh based out of Belgium, made some great friends there, and they were very much European rallies. But I I all always kind of hungered for taking cars or the journey very, very far, you know. So I was really, I loved the gumball when it went to Russia because it felt like wow, you're really going far. Or I I really kind of loved it when they flew cars to Thailand, or like next year when they go into Korea and Japan and go in far-flung places, you know. Um, so for me, you know, I think, you know, I'm sitting there in my garage, my Audi's below me. It's been to the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, you know, southern Europe. But it's like maybe it's time to, you know, Africa's the closest, you know, uh little trip round Africa, um, or maybe even further afield again, you know, Japan, somewhere like that. There's a lot of car called places I've always wanted to go. In terms of cannonballing, I think the last thing, and I think we spoke about it when you were here, for me, that feels like it the Holy Trinity for Tommy Davis would be, you know, uh doing John of Groats to Land's End, allegedly, um, New York to LA, which has been done. Um, and then I think for Europe, you know, as a Western man is uh Nordkamp in the top of Norway, all the way down to Tarifa in the south of Spain. So, you know, that's sort of uh the most northern point of mainland Europe to most southern point of mainland Europe. It's something that has been done before. I think it's 55 hours is the record, and that's uh, you know, that's just driving it non-stop, so there's no real speeding or kind of cannonballing as such in that. Um, and I think it would be a real nice bookend to this whole thing because you, you know, again, like you can't, you know, in terms of high-speed cannonballing, or you know, there comes a point where you kind of gotta, you know, rein it in now. And I think I find with the gumball doing it at this point in my life now, it was less about the driving and more about the social element. So if I go to the States now, it's more for social stuff, you know. So last year for a selection of different birthdays out there, it was just great fun to be with like-minded people, but all together, because of what happens is when you go to some of these events like the C2C Express or uh any sort of you know, the US Express that's running, um, you realize that you're all together having a great time, and then you've got this real inconvenient 3,000 mile drive across the country before you can meet up at the other end and continue the party, if you know what I mean. Um, so I've kind of feel like you know, I've done the US in a classic car, I've done it in my car, um, you know, and now it's more about the social element and meeting the like, you know, the right sort of people, people like yourself, Aaron, you know, and and talking about these things and sharing this very niche sort of motoring, traveling, social world that we're in, you know, that it crosses over into lots of different worlds, but you know, this little niche world is is something that you know I still get excited about. So I'm just trying to keep that excitement. And doing the gumble with Ed 20 years on from seeing it in London um made me feel like I was 15 again. But instead of them driving away into the distance, I got to jump into Bugatti Veyron and go along for the ride this time. So the inner child in me feels very happy right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:24

Listen, it's an amazing story. Thanks for sharing with us. And for the record, if you ever need a co-driver for that trip, you can give me a call and I'll and I'll be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:33

Yes, I think I think we could do that, Aaron. Definitely. All right, thanks very much. No problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:38

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball!

SPEAKER_06 1:13:54

Hey Cannonballers, thanks for subscribing to our podcast. We appreciate it. If you're not a cheap Canadian and want to buy us a coffee, head on over to buymeacoffee.com. Or better yet, buy us a case of sweet ass craft IPA. We'll list it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast in progress.

Post-Interview Banter And Future Guests

SPEAKER_03 1:14:19

And we're back. Yeah, great story. Again, super cool dude. And yeah, I can't wait to uh hear about his next story.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:28

So I want to meet him. I think we should get him at one of our rallies. He'd be fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:32

His demeanor is always the same, whether under pressure or you know, recapping something, he's just that that really cool dude.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:39

One of the things I think about in the previous, or I guess it was two drops ago, when you actually interviewed him in Wales and you rolled the clip about him being interviewed on BBC, and they were just like baiting him and being um really condescending. And and he just he just kept this cool the whole time and and explained things very clearly and like, don't you think it's a bit cheeky to think this? And and they were she was trying to catch him out, like, and don't you think that like your average speed was what do you think your average speed was trying to bait him into? And he's like, Oh, I don't know. And like his he just said, What was your highest speed? He's like, Oh, I don't know, 90. So he just kept this cool the whole time. So it really goes to your point. Um, that in that interview you can actually hear that happening.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

After I finished my cannonball attempt, hopefully it's successful. I've made the mistake of announcing it, which you should never do. I hope to reach out to Alex Roy and Ed, and we'll continue this um cannonball exploration with with some other cool folks. Very nice. Hey, check out I got here. Check out my cool little you see that, Taylor. It's my family backlit street sign in miniature. Do you know why I have this awesome bit of Tchotchke memorabilia?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:00

What is what is it? What is on it? What is it? It's too bright to see what the letters are on it. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:05

It says Family Mart.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:07

Oh, my leg on the it's yeah, yeah, I can I can see it now.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:12

Okay, what

Building The Perfect Japan Moto Trip

SPEAKER_03 1:16:13

is that? This is a street sign from one of the top convenience stores in Japan, which brings us to our next little segment. It's rather serendipitous that you're wearing your ride through Japan t-shirt. Nice. And one of our rally goers in 2027 just pointed, just posted on his social medias that he's going to Japan. And we have a little segment here of because you asked me, what is the perfect Japan ADV trip? So I thought about it, and here is my response.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:50

Hold on, before you go there, I think what I asked you specifically was what is our next big trip? This is a response. Go for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:58

We did a lot of, we've done a lot of third world stuff, and I thought, you know, let's maybe avoid some of the the sadness of traveling to third world countries. This is what I came up with. So let's go. So I would fly into Sapporo, which is this famous party town up on the island, uh north of the main island. Nice. You could do a solid week of street riding and you know, partying and isakayas and things like that. So you can rent bikes from a company called Rental 819. So phase one would do five, six, seven days of street riding in Sapporo and then take a train down to uh Chinku and rent another couple of bikes, some ADV bikes, and that company has everything, it has everything from Honda Cubs all the way up to Honda Africa Twins. Nice. So they have a one full day. I don't want to call it like a BDR, but it translates to Super Forest Road. I'm not gonna embarrass myself and try to say the Japanese version of that. So you could do a solid day of AD re riding and then spend a few more days on those ADV bikes up in the mountains. So these mountain roads in Japan, the secondary roads, are fantastic. So I strongly uh would recommend two, three days of that. And then I have this really cool bucket list weird thing. Head down to the oh my god, I'm gonna screw this up. Maybe I can do it. Maybe I can do it. I can do this one.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:37

I can do that. Here we go. It is the Shimani Okay, let me try it again. Shimonami Kaido cycling path.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:48

Nice. So it's a bicycle path, but scooters are allowed on it. And it goes between two cities and it crosses a bunch of bridges, but it has a designated cycle path, right? Because you know, the rest of the world has cycling paths, right? And you're allowed to ride small CC scooters.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:14

But how big are the Honda Cubs? Are they 50s or 90s?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:16

Because I know that we think it's 110. I think the I think the one this one YouTuber had was a 110.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:22

Okay, but didn't Ed March, was it Ed March who rode that one around the 90s CC?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The C uh a classic C90, but the modern version is like 100, 110, something like that. Cool. And you know, it's uh you know, it's kind of cool, but I I think there's some joy in riding small cc underpowered machines, especially when you're off the road. And this is the reason why I think this is really cool, is because you're on the cycling path and you're not dealing with the the fear of being on a main road with a small CC bike. Plus, it's kind of rarefied to be going over bridges and ferries on a cycling path. So it's part of my Japan bucket list to do this trail. That sounds like fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:08

And how and that's that's uh how many days is that that section of it? Is it days working?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:14

I think you can do it in a couple days, right? But I haven't fine-tuned it. But, anyways, that's my perfect like two-week kind of Japan motorcycle trip, which of course involves trains because everyone knows I'm a train geek. Uh, it involves ADV, it involves street riding, and involves something that is distinctly Japanese, which is a small CC bike, which is on a uh cycling trail, which is uniquely Japanese.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:39

The only thing you're missing there is a long boat.

unknown 1:20:42

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:43

We can figure it out. If we get a long boat, let's get a long boat. Skip the bridge, long boat.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

And I just want to reiterate something from the last time I was in Japan, in case you're going there. Make sure you have your international driving permit, but they only accept the older one, which is the 1947 Geneva Convention and not the newer version, which is the 1968 Vienna Convention. So there's a big difference between the two. And remember that that permit is only valid for one year. So that's what happened to me. I had the permit, but I didn't know it expired because it's not like on the cover. And we all know I don't read. I'm not so good with I don't do details.

unknown 1:21:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:30

Um, so, anyways, and you set up another pro tip is set up your rental 819 account a week or two before you go so they can check out your scans of all your licensing and make sure you're good to go. And yeah, it's that easy. It's just a great place to travel, and I'm looking forward to going back.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:49

That sounds like fun. Uh, I just recognized, I just I was looking through my uh my passports, yes, uh, two passports. Uh, and I also noticed that in there I have my international driving permit that we got to go to India, which was um usually get them through like a a motor club, at least here in Europe, you get them through like a car association or a yeah. So I got that. And then the first one that you mentioned, the one that is for the IDP international driving permit issued under the 1949 Jiva Convention, that one is one year, whereas the newer 1968 Vienna Convention International Driving Permit is a two-year one.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:30

And uh and the new one you can get just online, and that's why they don't accept it, right? Because Japan is very much into the old school culture. And in order to get it, like in America, you can go to AAA, in Canada, you can go to CAA, uh, or if you're in BC, for instance, you can go to that uh the public insurance broker. So you have to physically go somewhere, and a human actually gets a pen and writes it for you, and that's why they want that version, is because humans have to do it. Craigslist out. Exactly.

Travel Etiquette And Safety Realities

SPEAKER_03 1:23:03

And you know, just one little tip too. And when you're traveling, I had an experience the other day. So I hopped on the ferry with the with the Kove. I met a bunch of bikers and they were on some sort of scavenger hunt, and one of the checkpoints was up in Canada. And you know, especially when you're traveling to exotic places, is be respectful of their way of doing things and don't go on your dry diatribe of complaints, especially to the local people of how things are different. So this guy gets on the ferry, and when you travel on international ferries, you kind of hang out and you have an opportunity to talk bikes with people. And these guys just went on their diatribe of hate for Canada. I'm like, you were just there for two days on a motorcycle, but here's the list of things that he told me was absolute crap about Canada. He hated all the bike lanes in Victoria. He hated that bicycles have the right-of-way, which I'm sorry, but they do. Uh, he hated that you had when you turned, you had to check the bicycle lane. I'm like, it's not your country, bro. Like, that's their culture. Don't complain about it, right? He hated that. He hated the bikers. Yeah. He hated that pedestrians use the pedestrian crossings and in the cities, people walked. He hated the fact that pedestrians just walked out in pedestrian crossings. I'm like, what is your problem with that? Right. And then he was pissed off that he couldn't use his American cash in Canada. I'm like, uh it's another country. I'm you may not know that.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:36

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:37

And then he went on for 20 minutes that it was the metric system, that not only was the fuel was in liters, that the speed was in kilometers. I'm like, if you go to Japan, by the way, all those things apply. If you go anywhere else in the world, all those things apply. So my advice is if you're not used to traveling, don't think you're going to go somewhere and everything's going to be the same. Embrace it. It's a cool thing. And maybe check out the riding culture and make sure that you're not being a douchebag. And when a pedestrian is at a crosswalk, you, you know, you should stop because that's the way it works in other countries.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:12

That's actually, yeah. Well, they say that even in Sweden, where there's all those things you just mentioned, um, most, let me ask it, I'll put it as a question. Where do you think most pedestrians are hit by cars? In crosswalks, yeah, in crosswalks, because that's where they're walking, but but they're not seen. Also, like if you're going to walk around at nighttime, um, one of the things that we did in the in the uh in the Swedish motorcycle testing, driving test as well, is that you car driving, is that you have to memorize the distance that you can see somebody wearing dark clothes at night. How long until they if someone's dark clothes, no light, no reflective gear on until they show up in front of you, it's about 25 meters. Where if they have light color clothes and reflective gear at nighttime, they show up at about 450 meters. So a third of a mile ahead, you can see them. So anyway, these things happen. This reminded me of something I saw recently. The guy says he's talking to his buddy, and he goes, my wife says I'm too international. He said, you know, I should have seen that coming a kilometer away.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:20

I think I sent you a picture from that town in Germany, and there was a whole family wearing safety vests. And I'm like, I would rather get hit by a truck. I'm sorry, I would. I would rather get hit by a truck than have me and my family wearing safety vests to go for a walk. I know that's wrong. I know, I know, but even on my motorcycle, I have all black riding gear. I know it's wrong, but I'd rather die with dignity than wear a safety vest.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:01

I have to say that when we ride, one of the things that I take shit about from you all the time is how bright my riding gear is. So that helmet.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:08

Well, listen, I can't lose you in a crowd. So I may make fun of you, but it's highly effective.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:13

Hey, you know, if you go to a party and there's a uh a pilot there, how do you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:19

Don't worry, he'll tell you in five minutes. Or she.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:26

All right.

Rideouts Pick And Map Additions

SPEAKER_05 1:27:27

Um, let's talk about your ride outs.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:30

Yeah, this is an easy one. It's going to be the super forest road. I'll add it to the map. And uh again, kind of like when we talked about Denmark and riding on the beach, go do it while you can. So it's about 87, 87, 90 kilometers long. That's uh 55 miles for everyone else. It's a tough, rugged mountain road. Truthfully, it's quite easy. It's not a high clearance for four by four road, but in a place like Japan. Where everything is civilized and paved and regulated. It's one of the final gems that is out there. So I've added it to Aaron's write-out maps. And go do it while you can.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:11

Nice. Let's jump over to some ADV cannonball news.

New Rally Art Metal Prints

SPEAKER_04 1:28:16

Absolutely. Yeah, what's the skinny on this? I was gonna say, what's the skinny on this original art metal prints?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:22

So I was made very good use of my time. Yeah, well done.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:26

Like you, like yeah, like you normally do. Carry on.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:29

So I made some uh they're like posters, but it's printed by a third-party company. I actually don't make any money off of it. But uh people are asking for some keepstakes or some inspiration for the rally that they're going on. Nice. And so they're super crazy high quality, large format, high gloss metal prints, and they're unique to each year. So we have 2025, 26, and 27 original art available on the main site advcannibal.com. And I think they're super cool. So if you want some uh some wall art that's original and not AI slop, feel free to uh take a look.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:11

Is this like the the the metal print that you sent me that we did? We took sitting under Buttermilk Pass or one of these um we were out in Colorado with the route that you had curated with Elspeth Beard as our guest rider for that week. And we took a picture of us all lined up, all I don't know, nine riders underneath with the yellow mountains behind us. Is that it's a metal print? Was that the same thing? Looks kind of kind of etched.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:37

I have no recollection of that. Oh, I do actually know that was yes, it's similar. So that is a small format one that I sent you. Yeah. And this is a super high quality version of that. It's like art gallery quality. And it says high gloss, but yes, essentially the same, the same idea. Same concept. Very cool. Yeah, that's nice.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:59

What do you say? We talk about some new signups. I

New Signups And Rally Culture

SPEAKER_04 1:30:03

love the fact that we've we've got we have to split it out for the different rallies now.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:06

I know I keep saying this, but I'm so thankful that the people are signing up, and none of this happens without you guys. So thank you very much for signing up.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:14

2026 USAID rally. Silky from Louisiana on his Tiger 1200 joins the Mile Crusher class for 2026.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:23

And he was able to find his own hotel. So people are fine to sign up for 2026. The reason I took it off the website is I don't want a bunch of, you know, Karen's whining. He was able to actually find every hotel from our links except for Las Vegas, and he found one down the street. So there is uh the ability to join the 2026 rally if you're able to be resourceful. So just contact me. So he's actually signed up for 2027 as well. So uh welcome to the rally. Very nice.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:57

Yeah, and and it you do make it clear, clear in the signing. It says if you have inquiry inquiries about this, this, or this, contact me. And basically, people who are who are motivated to make this happen, they contact you and they make it happen. So that's fantastic. So welcome, Silky.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:13

And those are the people that we want, right? So if you're resourceful and you're self-reliant and you don't want everything on a silver platter, those are the people that we want involved in the rally. And and they and they come back year after year. So welcome to the family. Does that mean that I don't get my own room? Listen, we're on a budget, okay? I don't want to hear about anything because I sleep in the van, okay? So I want to hear any complaints about uh roommates.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:40

I'm gonna um there's gonna be some bags. You can use a pillow in the van now.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:48

So bad. Uh that was that was I apologize for that. What about the 2027 rally?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:54

2027 USA rally, to be clear. Well off home from Spokane, Washington on his 1250 GSA in the Mile Crusher class. Oksana Karaman on her Harley Davidson Pan American and Nathan Miller on his TC at T7. They're from Denver PA both on Mile Crusher class.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:17

Yeah, I think they're a married couple. And uh she actually bought my book and posted it on social media. So double thanks to uh to her and welcome to uh I think maybe the first married couple on two bikes. So that's really awesome. I'm looking forward to meeting them. Nice, another first, fantastic. There's tons of them. Yeah, I'm looking forward to to breaking all these barriers down.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:40

And coming up on the next episode, we have egg left.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:45

And for the music, I don't know what it's gonna be, but it's gonna be awesome. It'll be awesome for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:52

And with that, sir, I think we should roll the outro.

Five-Star Reviews And Closing

SPEAKER_02 1:34:59

Smashing a five-star review really helps the podcast and satisfies the algorithm gods. All hell the algorithm gods. A special thanks to our Patreon supporters. You're keeping this sink and chip afloat. Thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball Podcast. Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the pegs.