The Art of Cannonballing: A Story of Flawless Execution and Unparalleled Experience

I've always been fascinated by the world of high-speed driving, particularly when it comes to the infamous cannonballs. These events showcase drivers' skills and endurance as they aim to break records for speed over long distances. For me, it's not just about setting a record; it's about experiencing the thrill of pushing myself to the limit while maintaining control and safety.

My journey into the world of cannonballing began with a desire to participate in an event similar to those featured in the script. The script described a car like my e63 AMG, which I chose because of its high-performance capabilities and sleek design. With some modifications, including a grey paint job, red calipers, and a full carbon package, I aimed to make my car almost invisible among other silver passenger cars.

One of the key aspects that sets me apart from other drivers is my attention to detail. I spent countless hours fine-tuning every aspect of my vehicle, from the interior to the exterior. The result was a car that not only performed exceptionally well but also blended in seamlessly with its surroundings.

Of course, safety is paramount when it comes to cannonballing. With 50 years of history and no major accidents or injuries, I felt confident in my ability to execute the drive safely. However, I understand that accidents can still happen, especially if drivers are reckless or distracted. My motto for driving a cannonball is simple: run as fast as you can without affecting anyone else. It's not about winning at all costs; it's about respecting the road and the people around me.

My own experience with cannonballing began with a practice run in Nebraska, where I was joined by fellow drivers and experienced participants like Kyle Loftus. We were a tight-knit group, working together to ensure our safety and the success of the event. With each subsequent run, I honed my skills and developed strategies for navigating challenging terrain.

One of the most significant challenges I faced during my preparation was determining the optimal fuel strategy. By using dual fuel tanks, I was able to fill up on gas in just 4 minutes, which significantly reduced my overall time. This experience taught me the importance of planning ahead and adapting to unexpected situations.

Another crucial aspect of cannonballing is pacing oneself. As drivers, we must find a balance between pushing ourselves to achieve our goals and avoiding reckless behavior that could put others at risk. By staying focused and maintaining control, I was able to maintain my speed while still enjoying the thrill of the ride.

Looking back on my experience, I am reminded of the importance of community and camaraderie among drivers who participate in cannonballing events. Kyle Loftus, with his impeccable safety record and infectious enthusiasm, played a significant role in shaping my approach to driving. His willingness to share knowledge and expertise helped me navigate the challenges of this extreme sport.

In conclusion, my journey into the world of cannonballing has been nothing short of exhilarating. With its unique blend of speed, skill, and camaraderie, this community has captured my heart and challenged me in ways I never thought possible. As I continue to refine my craft and push myself to new heights, I am reminded of the importance of prioritizing safety while still pursuing excellence.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso right here in Bradenton Florida at the GTI World Cup and there's a car here I was not expecting to see our friend Arnie who recently broke the Canabalt record by almost an hour and a half as his mercedes-benz here I'm gonna see if I can track him down and get the full tour mr. Arnie how's it going see ya congratulations finally get to shake your hand in person yeah no kidding yeah we saw each other for a brief amount of time and somewhere in Nebraska thank you yep as you're flying by it like a hundred and something miles an hour allegedly yes allegedly I got to hear the story about this car and what how you prepared it for the Cannonball Run then I'll hop in here so we can get away from all these loud GTRs and find a quiet spot and you can give me the rundown all right let's do it wait so you were basically planted in one of these seats for 27 hours 25 minutes yeah what was the longest break you had during that boom well I mean it was it was me and Doug were the only drivers good so there was four fuel stops and we would go depending on the distance between fuel stops we'd be going five to six hours or so so I would get a break but you know you're so amped up that you really you really can't sleep or anything so I just I would spend the time on another set of binoculars so it one guy it was full time on binoculars yeah so you know when I wasn't driving we just had commune I was on the binoculars and so is he give me a tour the electronics we got going on here there's a lot yeah that's looking at you know there's a lot going on but actually there's usually more yeah because we're usually running two phones over here on the left what are those four ones running a GPS with a speedometer so it's it's capturing trip data along with the Garmin GPS and then usually the person driving their phone is here running ways this is our plane crash avoidance system it sounds really high-tech but when you look at it it's really pretty basic all it does is it tells you if there's a plane overhead this is something that guys we use with small aircraft this is the screen for the thermal camera okay at night we have mounted I'm overseeing that in photos because it was just blindingly bright yes I've got another phone here running it's a it's kind of like an underground experimental app that scrapes data from ways and it creates a heat map of speed traps in the past like 30 days so really do you have an idea of you know where they may be patrolling you know it at the moment we didn't have super good luck was a little glitchy but you know it's just another screen and what we say in the cannibal world is the more screens you have the more legit you are continuing the tour on so here is the fuel cell fuel gauge that is for the forty five gallon cell that's going out in the trunk you hit that switch once it'll it'll pump for two minutes mmm and it's about four and a quarter gallons so I can I can hit that about 10 times or so on a run so then we got just a standard Cobra CB unit and police scanner okay Garmin GPS which we use to record data and that's where you see that the screen with all these oh all the names all the main stats and stuff my gyro stabilized binoculars right here we have two sets of those did we run but yeah we found him to be really what and work really well so what was the most helpful piece of equipment outside the binoculars I mean radar detector you can't do it without that I've got I'm running too I'm running a net radar which is a built-in system which attaches to the laser jammer system which is al priority and then I've got my passport max 360 so really the radar detector then laser jammer and so those two pieces are really like work really well yeah like I won't drive any kind won't go anywhere without both of those the thermal camera didn't really have any saves and it's very complex and difficult to use and it's taken a lot of time to kind of perfect it mmm and get it figured out it's still it's still clunky and cumbersome but I guess it gives you the these are the confidence at night because when you're driving down it's like when we're in Utah I mean it's just wide open huge open spaces is dark there shouldn't be I mean it shouldn't be anything there yeah you know but you're always if you don't have this you know in the back of your head you're like oh crap you just there's that one cop that's been waiting his whole life for you you know so in the backseat what I found is like in cannonball you really want to be organized because an all my other runs like the end back of the car just is a total disaster by the time you're done you got bins of stuff flying around so what I do is I cut the seat in half the bottom seat in half and we built like a shelving system so we have got our we've got our cooler we've got some other supplies fuses wire ties hey you know anything that we might need in the car should something come loose or whatever because we can't pull over and get something out of the trunk so you want to have everything you want snacks and that kind of stuff all you got the camera itself this wasn't like some like easy ball table thing this is a gimbal from a DSLR camera and it's not the best but there's really there's a huge disparity it's like this thing's a couple hundred bucks the next best thing is like thousands we actually 3d printed some found a person springs because we're having some problems with like but wind buffeting yeah so my buddy drew over at our machine shop MDI we designed these little spring perches and springs to kind of like preload it all right so tell me about the car itself what are we looking at here so this is a 2015 mercedes-benz e63 AMG and outfitted with the Alpha 9 package which is GT 28 turbos intercoolers intake tuned down pipes which usually make about 750 to the wheels got it turn now to about 700 just for the different gases and stuff you get across the country and you know I'm not trying to beat anybody on a drag strip or anything so 700 wheel horsepower is plenty for the car and for what I needed to do I'm all about reliability exactly of course it's a mess stuff because of your history yeah so I'm the co-founder of AMS so you know I just I'm not with them anymore but I just thought it'd be fitting to to kind of represent the brand that you know I helped create my buddy Fred from Ben's house put the whole system in put it together and it's really it's it's run great I've got 25,000 miles on this setup and it's all been rallies a cannonball I mean it's all been you know pretty abusive stuff and the cars just been flawless and the big thing I can involves you you don't want to take a red Ferrari you know you won't get out of New Jersey before there's a roadblock so you really need a car this like in the script and that's why I chose an e63 because I knew that if I made some tweaks to the exterior it would just kind of be just like any other silver passenger car out there so this cars actually a very highly optioned AMG has got red calipers which I painted grey totally D badge the car it's got a full carbon package I covered everything in silver vinyl and really what I think really makes this car just kind of totally blend in is what I did to the back of the car so sort of unintentionally I created what looks from the back to be like a 2006 Accord you know this is totally by accident - I'll just be honest with you I just got to saw the body line here I said you know let's throw some silver vinyl there let's cover up being the inner stuff on on the trunk and voila nobody knows what it is well in the trunk we got the oh yes I was very curious about this because I was wondering how the feeling worked so you have spear spear wheel and tire so we got ya full-size spare wheel and tire and then what we did for the fuel cell is we've got two inlets when you pull up to the gas pump you pull really tight to the gas pump you take the opposite side of the pump and you put it in the in the factory's tank you take your side and put it on the far side here so you're doing like dual fill-up yeah when the factory tanks done throw the other one in there so you know we were able to do fuel stops pumping in 60 gallons of gas and you know we were only stopped for like four minutes or so wow that's some pressure each stop and then another thing we did was should we ever get pulled over and there's questions like like what is this we've actually got real were sick German Mercedes stickers that we just kind of threw on there like a like a weight and air chart it says some who knows what that says in German and how long did it take to plan all this out you know the the the build itself probably about three months or so I guess if you strung it all together yeah well it wasn't terrible but the practice runs have been yeah yeah so yeah exactly so this this is my sixth run and you know I think it really came boiled down to a lot of experience you know some skill and a lot of luck for sure and what was the previous record an ad had the record at 28 hours and 50 minutes that was touted to be unbeatable and honestly when he when he did that like they kind of like crushed my dreams of ever doing it you know he was very forthcoming with information and very helpful and he's made really quite kind of like the community of cannon bollocks he's kind of like brought us all together where before it was kind of like kind of scattered and stuff so yeah I can't thank him enough what's your biggest piece of advice if someone's considering you know it's safety is absolutely number one because the cannon balls almost got 50 years of history and there have not been no major accidents or in no injuries at all on any cannon ball I think the only the only accidents ever happened was three women in a limousine in like 1975 one fell asleep or something and you know like went off the road it was it was really a non-event even yeah but yeah it's got it's got an impeccable safety track record so you've kind of got like 50 years of history like riding on your shoulders so safety is is paramount it's like running a marathon that's pacing yourself oh absolutely pacing yourself you can't drive recklessly because someone's gonna call the cops and you know if you're driving crazy enough there's gonna put up a roadblock you know they're they're gonna know where you are there's not like you can just turn off on some Road and and all that so yeah you really have to just run as fast as you can without affecting anybody and that that's my whole motto it's like I don't want any I want to scare anybody I don't want to make anybody break turn or do anything I want to affect anybody in any way I just want to go about my business and and not wreck their day and it worked and it worked and thank you if it wasn't for Kyle Loftus man I would have been a lot slower through Nebraska well I was it was a pleasure to be a part of it was very exhilarating to just be a very small part of the journey it was awesome well thanks thanks already there grabsso right here in Bradenton Florida at the GTI World Cup and there's a car here I was not expecting to see our friend Arnie who recently broke the Canabalt record by almost an hour and a half as his mercedes-benz here I'm gonna see if I can track him down and get the full tour mr. Arnie how's it going see ya congratulations finally get to shake your hand in person yeah no kidding yeah we saw each other for a brief amount of time and somewhere in Nebraska thank you yep as you're flying by it like a hundred and something miles an hour allegedly yes allegedly I got to hear the story about this car and what how you prepared it for the Cannonball Run then I'll hop in here so we can get away from all these loud GTRs and find a quiet spot and you can give me the rundown all right let's do it wait so you were basically planted in one of these seats for 27 hours 25 minutes yeah what was the longest break you had during that boom well I mean it was it was me and Doug were the only drivers good so there was four fuel stops and we would go depending on the distance between fuel stops we'd be going five to six hours or so so I would get a break but you know you're so amped up that you really you really can't sleep or anything so I just I would spend the time on another set of binoculars so it one guy it was full time on binoculars yeah so you know when I wasn't driving we just had commune I was on the binoculars and so is he give me a tour the electronics we got going on here there's a lot yeah that's looking at you know there's a lot going on but actually there's usually more yeah because we're usually running two phones over here on the left what are those four ones running a GPS with a speedometer so it's it's capturing trip data along with the Garmin GPS and then usually the person driving their phone is here running ways this is our plane crash avoidance system it sounds really high-tech but when you look at it it's really pretty basic all it does is it tells you if there's a plane overhead this is something that guys we use with small aircraft this is the screen for the thermal camera okay at night we have mounted I'm overseeing that in photos because it was just blindingly bright yes I've got another phone here running it's a it's kind of like an underground experimental app that scrapes data from ways and it creates a heat map of speed traps in the past like 30 days so really do you have an idea of you know where they may be patrolling you know it at the moment we didn't have super good luck was a little glitchy but you know it's just another screen and what we say in the cannibal world is the more screens you have the more legit you are continuing the tour on so here is the fuel cell fuel gauge that is for the forty five gallon cell that's going out in the trunk you hit that switch once it'll it'll pump for two minutes mmm and it's about four and a quarter gallons so I can I can hit that about 10 times or so on a run so then we got just a standard Cobra CB unit and police scanner okay Garmin GPS which we use to record data and that's where you see that the screen with all these oh all the names all the main stats and stuff my gyro stabilized binoculars right here we have two sets of those did we run but yeah we found him to be really what and work really well so what was the most helpful piece of equipment outside the binoculars I mean radar detector you can't do it without that I've got I'm running too I'm running a net radar which is a built-in system which attaches to the laser jammer system which is al priority and then I've got my passport max 360 so really the radar detector then laser jammer and so those two pieces are really like work really well yeah like I won't drive any kind won't go anywhere without both of those the thermal camera didn't really have any saves and it's very complex and difficult to use and it's taken a lot of time to kind of perfect it mmm and get it figured out it's still it's still clunky and cumbersome but I guess it gives you the these are the confidence at night because when you're driving down it's like when we're in Utah I mean it's just wide open huge open spaces is dark there shouldn't be I mean it shouldn't be anything there yeah you know but you're always if you don't have this you know in the back of your head you're like oh crap you just there's that one cop that's been waiting his whole life for you you know so in the backseat what I found is like in cannonball you really want to be organized because an all my other runs like the end back of the car just is a total disaster by the time you're done you got bins of stuff flying around so what I do is I cut the seat in half the bottom seat in half and we built like a shelving system so we have got our we've got our cooler we've got some other supplies fuses wire ties hey you know anything that we might need in the car should something come loose or whatever because we can't pull over and get something out of the trunk so you want to have everything you want snacks and that kind of stuff all you got the camera itself this wasn't like some like easy ball table thing this is a gimbal from a DSLR camera and it's not the best but there's really there's a huge disparity it's like this thing's a couple hundred bucks the next best thing is like thousands we actually 3d printed some found a person springs because we're having some problems with like but wind buffeting yeah so my buddy drew over at our machine shop MDI we designed these little spring perches and springs to kind of like preload it all right so tell me about the car itself what are we looking at here so this is a 2015 mercedes-benz e63 AMG and outfitted with the Alpha 9 package which is GT 28 turbos intercoolers intake tuned down pipes which usually make about 750 to the wheels got it turn now to about 700 just for the different gases and stuff you get across the country and you know I'm not trying to beat anybody on a drag strip or anything so 700 wheel horsepower is plenty for the car and for what I needed to do I'm all about reliability exactly of course it's a mess stuff because of your history yeah so I'm the co-founder of AMS so you know I just I'm not with them anymore but I just thought it'd be fitting to to kind of represent the brand that you know I helped create my buddy Fred from Ben's house put the whole system in put it together and it's really it's it's run great I've got 25,000 miles on this setup and it's all been rallies a cannonball I mean it's all been you know pretty abusive stuff and the cars just been flawless and the big thing I can involves you you don't want to take a red Ferrari you know you won't get out of New Jersey before there's a roadblock so you really need a car this like in the script and that's why I chose an e63 because I knew that if I made some tweaks to the exterior it would just kind of be just like any other silver passenger car out there so this cars actually a very highly optioned AMG has got red calipers which I painted grey totally D badge the car it's got a full carbon package I covered everything in silver vinyl and really what I think really makes this car just kind of totally blend in is what I did to the back of the car so sort of unintentionally I created what looks from the back to be like a 2006 Accord you know this is totally by accident - I'll just be honest with you I just got to saw the body line here I said you know let's throw some silver vinyl there let's cover up being the inner stuff on on the trunk and voila nobody knows what it is well in the trunk we got the oh yes I was very curious about this because I was wondering how the feeling worked so you have spear spear wheel and tire so we got ya full-size spare wheel and tire and then what we did for the fuel cell is we've got two inlets when you pull up to the gas pump you pull really tight to the gas pump you take the opposite side of the pump and you put it in the in the factory's tank you take your side and put it on the far side here so you're doing like dual fill-up yeah when the factory tanks done throw the other one in there so you know we were able to do fuel stops pumping in 60 gallons of gas and you know we were only stopped for like four minutes or so wow that's some pressure each stop and then another thing we did was should we ever get pulled over and there's questions like like what is this we've actually got real were sick German Mercedes stickers that we just kind of threw on there like a like a weight and air chart it says some who knows what that says in German and how long did it take to plan all this out you know the the the build itself probably about three months or so I guess if you strung it all together yeah well it wasn't terrible but the practice runs have been yeah yeah so yeah exactly so this this is my sixth run and you know I think it really came boiled down to a lot of experience you know some skill and a lot of luck for sure and what was the previous record an ad had the record at 28 hours and 50 minutes that was touted to be unbeatable and honestly when he when he did that like they kind of like crushed my dreams of ever doing it you know he was very forthcoming with information and very helpful and he's made really quite kind of like the community of cannon bollocks he's kind of like brought us all together where before it was kind of like kind of scattered and stuff so yeah I can't thank him enough what's your biggest piece of advice if someone's considering you know it's safety is absolutely number one because the cannon balls almost got 50 years of history and there have not been no major accidents or in no injuries at all on any cannon ball I think the only the only accidents ever happened was three women in a limousine in like 1975 one fell asleep or something and you know like went off the road it was it was really a non-event even yeah but yeah it's got it's got an impeccable safety track record so you've kind of got like 50 years of history like riding on your shoulders so safety is is paramount it's like running a marathon that's pacing yourself oh absolutely pacing yourself you can't drive recklessly because someone's gonna call the cops and you know if you're driving crazy enough there's gonna put up a roadblock you know they're they're gonna know where you are there's not like you can just turn off on some Road and and all that so yeah you really have to just run as fast as you can without affecting anybody and that that's my whole motto it's like I don't want any I want to scare anybody I don't want to make anybody break turn or do anything I want to affect anybody in any way I just want to go about my business and and not wreck their day and it worked and it worked and thank you if it wasn't for Kyle Loftus man I would have been a lot slower through Nebraska well I was it was a pleasure to be a part of it was very exhilarating to just be a very small part of the journey it was awesome well thanks thanks already there grabs\n"