Gumball Writeups

Steve just published his amazing writeup on probably the most unlucky Gumball experience ever. Denied access into France at least 3 times, then travel around the country to find alternative entry points into Continental Europe, in the end decide to go back to London, end-up in Brixton, nearly get car jacked - twice - and when they finally arrived at a Porsche dealership they rejected to look after the $ 400.000 Carrera GT, so they left it in the streets of West-London… The story reads like a small novel!

I am typing right now on a laptop on a boat on the Bosphorus Sea in Turkey, the Blue Mosque as backdrop…Surreal…as is evertying about this adventure. As you will understand soon, we are renaming the car from “The Beast” to “Handbasket”, because we certainly went to hell in it. Months of details and preparation should have mitigated the risk of disaster, or so you would think, but fate had different plans for Team Warrior Heart car “lucky” 13. The definition of “Warrior Heart” is to live life directly, its pains and limitations, its joys and possibilities. The universe decided Gumball was the perfect place to test that out and put our money where our mouths ware. We were supposed to receive a legally accepted front plate “sticker” for the Carrera GT, so Steve didn’t have to drill holes into the front of the car. Inexplicably our provider avoided us for 3 days as we heard “its coming” all the way till we were in queue ready to take off…in the end we were provided with our license plate details on cardboard paper taped to the front of our car. Some last ditch efforts to get the camera recording setup in the car worked…and with moments to spare, the incar LAN was humming like the 605 ponies waiting be unleashed. And…This is when it all started to go wrong… (You will notice lots of “…” in this post as everything is a cliff hanger. It just couldn’t get any weirder!)

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Team Fast Car (car 100) is back in the UK. Glenn Rowswell and Jamie Burr only drove to Hahn Airport. Here’s their full story:

Just to let you guys know that Team Fast Car and the Nissan Skyline Tokyo Highway Pursuit car are back in the UK. We were initially down just for the first leg, but after problems in Germany we were ordered by German Police to take the plane to Istanbul and leave the country immediately. Otherwise we faced the car being impounded (possibly crushed) and being locked up if they saw us on German roads again. After already being fined 420 Euros, we knew this was more than just an idle threat.

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Team Stuff returned to the UK yesterday after an exhausting first leg of the rally. Apparently they only entered the rally for the first bit. We collected some of their highlights of the the rally:

Funny stories:

“As soon as we pulled in we were mobbed by a coach load of teenagers, demanding stickers that we didn’t have. It was brilliant to see how enthusiastic they were, but slightly unnerving when we lost sight of the service station in a sea of grinning faces and flashing cameras. They would have ripped the clothes off our backs in a second. Fortunately we were saved by the arrival of a Gumball Porsche and Bugatti Veyron – the latter a welcome sight at the best of times!”

“Nope, we haven’t crashed. But it seems that Amsterdam has. We received a message on our CoPilot Live 7-toting MDA Compact III saying that the town centre is closed due to overcrowding. A few of the speediest cars made it in before the curfew was imposed, so we blame our ultra-officious customs officer for causing us to miss out on the Queens’ night fun. And we will never forgive him.”

“When we pulled in, a German traffic cop said, ‘ze game is over for you now’ (absolutely not a joke) and directed us round to a car park full of our old friends from Pall Mall.”

You can read all their stories here.

So my story concludes. Mussy will hopefully add some of his adventures and comments later. It is a bit long-winded (ie I ramble a lot), but it was to make up for not driving from SLC to LA! Regards to all and see you next year! BalkanExpress

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Well, we left the hotel in Budapest early to head to the airport in Belgrade. On the way we had one, of what was to be many arguments with the Co-Pilot, which had told us to turn round after we travelled 10 miles along, what looked to be a new motorway. After much discussion we decided we had best do this as we hadn’t seen any other Gumballers for some time. We eventually found our way back to the A road and met up with Damien, Richard and Ezra in their Phantom and Max in the NOD5 Ferrari. We thought great, we are back on the right road then, 20 minutes later we joined a motorway at the same junction we had made our u-turn some 45 minutes ago! Co-Pilot - sort it out!

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Monday, May 01, 2006

I’m Maximillion Cooper, the host and proud founder of the rally which kicked off for the eigth consecutive year on Pall Mall yesterday to the sound of thousands of people, the roar of over a hundred of the world most rock and roll supercars, and some dodgy music coming from Goldie Looking Chain’s Bedford Rascal!

Since then the 240 Gumballers have crossed beneath the channel, driven through France into Belgium where we stopped at the beautiful Blois Chateau at about one in the morning for dinner. To my surprise hundreds of crazy Gumball fans had waited up for us, a naked girl even tried to get into my car…so guys you know where to come! We then set off to our next check point, breakfast in Vienna and again crowds and crowds of fans lined the streets, motorway bridges and side road hedgeways al the way, I know that to me and all the Gumballers this support really makes the 28 hour drive worthwhile!

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Day 7

I was woken up at 7am by an early morning wake up call I didn’t order. I wondered downstairs to be told by someone on the Gumball team that I had to be ready and checked out in 15 minutes. Nice.

I went off in search of breakfast where Adam (White Murcielago) told me I owed him 120 Euro. I stuck a “F*#k the Polizei� sticker on his bumper on the starting grid in London. The German Police took offense and fined him.

When my co-pilot finally got herself out of bed stinking of Vodka and tuna (long story!) we left the hotel about an hour after everyone else. We skipped the airport and went straight to the Delta Center to meet up with all the other cars. The other cars turned out to be a Green Gallardo and John and Sam in their car. There were about 50 people there taking pictures but no other Gumballers. The Gallardo took off for the track and we took off in search of gas tanks with John and Sam. Jessica then realized she left her shoes at the hotel so the whole day started off behind the curve. I should have seen the writing on the wall at this stage.

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Team #96
Nick Morley - driver
Mat Kelshaw - co-driver / misinformation centre
Car – Porsche 997 Carrera S. 400 Bhp.
From Manchester, Uk

Day 1 – London Starting Grid

The anticipation built throughout the day as the crowd assembled to wish us all bon voyage and to catch a glimpse of the ever more colourful characters and machinery that the Gumball manages to attract and display each year to join the incredible party.
It is a scene of superlatives as each car is ever more shocking and exhilarating to witness than the last. Walking down the grid is akin to floating along in a dream of the worlds most exotic and glamorous vehicles (and women!).
Having received our pre-rally briefing from Maximillion, and then the London police, we were all in a festive and boisterous mood to charge down to the Eurotunnel and be the first to board the train for France…

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Stage One: Europe

As many of you are aware I made some notes last year, which, I hope gave you a little insight into the life of a Gumballer for those manic few days in May. At no stage throughout the rally had I any intention to do the same this year. However, I have now been back in the UK for some 12 hours now and, as a result, and the fact I cannot sleep, am now having the time to reflect on the last week or so’s experience’s.

We left Manchester for London around 2pm on Friday 28th April in the F50, this was to be a show car and we were to meet the FLA5H Gumball Lambo once there, having sorted out the transmission problems and the very distinctive wrap. On the way we arrarnged to meet T4NGO and antandpete.co.uk at Keele services on the M6. This we did and proceeded on our jouney south. However, due to poor weekend traffic and the fact a 40ft trailer was on fire we met with 15 miles of traffic. Well, being veteran gumballers, we put our famous lane to use and made steady progress! Ant even blagged an officer to let him use the police layby for a call of nature. Good work fella!

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Hi Guys,

This was my take on the European leg. Some details have been omitted to protect the guilty as my wench sometimes reads this site and I don’t want to be castrated! Our account of the USA final party will also be up in a day or two:

Friday morning arrived nice and warm in Budapest. Mussy and I were picked up by his chauffeur in a brand new S class Merc. Arriving at the BA desk we asked for an upgrade, but the lady said that we were already assigned seats in cattle class, but she would try and move us further to the front.

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Final Diary Entry for Team 74
20:33 GMT 8/05/06

So the whole Snoop Dogg party thing didn’t really happen for Team 74. Gavin went straight to bed after arriving from SLC, and I went to the party for a while but when I came up to get my bank card something happened, and two hours later I woke up on the couch. I think that was a message for me to go to bed!

Next morning (Sunday) was another scorcher. We had a goodie back breakfast in the car park, and headed off for Furnace Creek in Death Valley. Too hot to have the roof down, we put it up and stuck the A/C on full. The trip to Furnace Creek was fairly uneventful, passed a few Gumballers who had been pulled over by the Nevada highway patrol. Stopped to get a pic of the car at the entrance to Death Valley, and then at Furnace Creek for lunch. Met Graham Bolger at the lunch stop, who had hitched a lift in a Bently Flying Spur.

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We hit Salt Lake City after an Icelandic Air flight that was banannas with Dan getting a crazy art wall going and me getting the air hostess to wear a gimp mask..

We got the Rolls Royce boys reunited with their grille. We then went on to leave the airport with the pack and got about 200 yds and then the fuel pump dies…

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