Somewhere near Waverly, Virginia, we see our first sign for Miami. According to the Bentley's nav system, we're still 922 miles away. While I feel taunted and discouraged by this sign, Alex makes a salient point. "Imagine if you lived around here and you had to see that sign every day on your way to work all winter. One day, you'd be like, 'Screw it, today I'm just gonna keep driving.' "
We keep driving, clicking off the miles at a rate far above the threshold of legality. At one point, the conversation turns to hangovers, and Alex reveals that hangovers carry an extra deterrent for him. "I associate a bad hangover with a time I got my heart broken," he says. A pregnant pause fills the car. Deep into a trip that requires absolute cooperation, where each of us counts on the other to maintain vigilance and evaluate threats, Alex is letting his guard down and offering a glimpse of the human being behind the devil-may-care persona and the aviator shades. I respond to this gesture of vulnerability as any friend would: I make fun of him. "What was his name?" I yell, cackling maniacally at my cleverness. "See, because you thought I'd say 'her'--whoa!"
"Ha ha. She--" Alex begins. He's barely raised the binoculars back to his face when he blurts, "Sheriff! Sheriff! Sheriff!" I squint ahead at the middle lane, where I'm closing fast on an Impala. I glance down at the speedometer: 95 mph. I squeeze on the brakes, pray the cop wasn't watching his rearview mirror, and let myself settle into traffic a few cars back. Disaster averted. "Umm, thanks," I say. "Sorry about that."
I finish my shift in North Carolina, having covered 334 miles at an average speed of only 77 mph. And here I thought I was driving fast. Maintaining a high average speed is harder than it seems--throw in a few cops and the two red traffic lights en route to the highway, and your time is shot. "Average speed is a rubber band," Alex says. "We stretched it out in that traffic jam, and now we've got to snap it back."
This puts a lot of stress on me as a co-driver, since it's my responsibility to ferret out cops while Alex makes up time. If he gets busted, it's my fault, and if he gets clocked,he's definitely going to jail. I can't see the speedometer from the passenger seat, but the Bentley has a valve in the exhaust system that unleashes a furious growl when the engine is getting worked, and right now the cabin is constantly reverberating with turbocharged, twelve-cylinder anger. We're hauling.
The police scanner, which has been dormant, suddenly erupts with a crackle of static and a few unintelligible exchanges. But, for an instant, the static subsides and I make out one chilling word from the dispatcher: "Bentley." Alex didn't catch it and thinks I'm havingauditory hallucinations. "That would mean someone called us in, but nobody knows what this car is." I point out that plenty of truckers seem to know what it is, and truckers don't generally appreciate it when you pass them at 120 mph. Alex maintains his pace. ...next page >>