|
Posted on Sat, Apr. 26, 2003
Goofy, rich Gumballers end up here
By Alli Joseph
Special to The Herald
Firecrackers are going off in the quiet driveway of the Mandarin Oriental on Brickell Key, and the hotel staff looks worried. Three men in bathrobes, known to MTV audiences as "The Cuban Brothers," recline in chairs alongside the entryway, smoking cigars and heckling guests. Nearby, Playboy Playmates in tiny dresses lean their assets into billionaire playboys, sipping champagne while tuned Ferraris, Bentleys, and a 1972 Ford Torino rip up the driveway. The cars, like the crowd, are covered in dirt and bugs. This isn't the Mandarin's usual clientele.
It is, however, a high-rolling crowd, current appearance notwithstanding. They are participants in this year's Gumball 3000 road rally, a 148-car, 3,000-mile, notorious road race that spans 10 states and five days. When it roared into town Tuesday night, their need for high-octane partying was running on empty.
The original Gumball Rally of the late '70s featured fading pro-race stars with big bank accounts and lots of time on their hands. In 1999, English entrepreneur and rich boy Maximilian Cooper decided to revive it in the U.K. In 2002, he brought his race to the United States, challenging rock stars, actors, and anyone else who could afford the $12,000 entry fee to strap in for a wild ride.
This year, the Gumball began in San Francisco, and ended in Miami on Tuesday night with a booze-solvent hotel party and a Mardi Gras-like atmosphere. Alexander Roy, a 31-year-old New York travel executive, dressed in a lab coat and eye patch, is being photographed while giving a live interview to a local radio station about his Gumball experience. "It's the greatest thing I've ever done," he breathed into his cell phone, which hadn't stopped ringing with cop-spotting calls from simpatico Gumballers since he left San Francisco last Thursday. "I want to do it every year of my life till I die."
Organizers said they chose Miami for its fun quotient. Indeed, as late as Wednesday afternoon, the party continued when the rally-weary reconvened at the Shore Club on South Beach to nurse tired posteriors with poolside cocktails and swap stories.
The past five days had been exhausting, and expensive: One driver went to jail at least five times and had his $700,000, 655 horsepower Koenigsegg impounded for doing 210 miles per hour—almost four times the Texas speed limit. By the time the Gumball caravan got to Miami, they had racked up over 500 traffic citations.
The legal inconveniences weren't speed limited, either: In Texas, two blonds got pulled over in a Jordanian billionaire-owned Ferrari 575 Maranello. State troopers approached the car to find the women wearing pasties and little else. The troopers called for backup, brought over seven other stern officers, and posed for photos. The women did not receive citations, but another beautiful blond, supermodel Jodi Kidd, who fancied driving her convertible in diminished attire ("The Dodge Viper gives off so much heat, that by the time I've gone 300 miles, I'm in a bikini, because I'm so hot,") did. Doing 85 mph in a 60 mph Alabama zone, a state trooper pulled over her red Viper and wrote her a big ticket. "That really wasn't the worst thing that happened this week, though," she mused, clutching a glass of red wine and sporting a fresh sunburn Tuesday night.
Holding out a mangled credit card, Kidd explained that in her haste to get to Miami, she left a bag on the back of the Viper during a final afternoon fuel refill, then drove off without noticing. She returned to find all of her belongings, money and ID strewn across the median. "I hope they let me on the plane tomorrow. This credit card is all I've got," she sighed, "and four or five people ran over it."
Intentional pratfalls along the way are both encouraged and common, like when Roy, the travel executive, mounted a full police lighting kit on top of his BMW M5—decaled with the word Politzei, German for "Police"—and began pulling over other Gumballers so he could get ahead.
Though drivers did get ranked at checkpoints, the Gumball is untimed, so everyone's a winner. Wearing a big, faux gold Gumball medallion given to all finishers, Kevin Mikelonis, the owner of a baby blue '72 Ford Torino, proudly said he had come in 26th in spite of running through a few bills along the way. "I got a ticket for doing 95 in a 65 in some little s - - -hole jurisdiction, and I've got to call the judge at home," he laughed. "I'm gonna send him a T-shirt and some stickers, and try to get off for $20 bucks."
During the high speed week, when drinking and driving is both permitted and part of how you get there, it's amazing that no serious accidents occur. But Bucky Lasek, a pro skateboarder who drove a Jaguar X-type, wasn't surprised.
"It's not as dangerous as people think: All we did was drive cross-country. We opened it up here and there, but I didn't see one person, other than ourselves by little kids, get cut off," he said, explaining that fans in every state often trailed the Gumballers to shoot video and try to race them.
Many of the ralliers have brushed with death before, adding to their level of caution, and in some cases in the face of their bitter experience, irreverence. Wes Bruce, a stereo electronics expert in a bulletproof 1998 Dinan M3 Cabriolet convertible, had a near-fatal motorcycle accident that left him with one arm, and one leg. Still, nearing Miami, he rolled down his window and using a lit cigarette shot Roman candles into the I-95 twilight.
The Gumball can be a self-esteem booster. Another driver, Steve Crompton from the United Kingdom, was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident—he was a back-seat passenger—five years ago.
"It made me so happy to do this," said Crompton, who drives his M3 with special hand controls. "When I drive, I'm not disabled."
|
