PRINCE GEORGE TO VANCOUVER: Where Adventurers Meet
Ben Folds recorded the tune, “There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You,” a few years ago. That I know that much about Folds’ music catalog makes the song title self-evident. Driving that point home, our Suzuki Kizashi entourage met much cooler, more adventurous travelers today.

We — the two Kizashis and the Equator, with V-Strom cycle rider Jack Lewis somewhere up ahead — pulled into a rest stop about five miles south of Quesnel, on Route 72, the route from Prince George to Vancouver, only to find the rest rooms out of order. After employing alternate means, we met Laura Beko and Erich Schafermeyer (pictured at left). They’re on day 34 of an epic trek from Palmer, Alaska, to Ushuaia, the southernmost port in Argentina (check out more about their journey at: polarbearstopenguins.com).

And they’re doing it — some 16,000 miles — on bicycles.

Erich says he worked at a cycle shop for a while to be healthy to assemble their bikes when they arrived in Alaska (Erich and Laura are from the Portland/Klamath, Oregon, area). They started planning the trip a couple of years ago, although it came together much more recently. Laura expects their journey to take about 18 months, although that’s just an estimate, and accounts for summer in the Southern Hemisphere. They can go two years, if necessary.

They’ll camp along the way, though they’re not adverse to offers of overnight stays where they can get a bed or sofa for the night, and maybe a hot shower, a meal and some beer.

Laura and Erich are far from the first people to make this journey, of course. So why do it? They say they just wanted to ride their bikes. I can understand that.

So we were feeling quite humbled, photographer Brian Vance, video producer Gordon Green, and I, when we bid the couple a good, innocuous trip, and got back into our Suzuki and drove out of the rest stop parking lot. Except … what’s all the writing about on that VW Microbus? And wait, it’s not a Volkswagen. It’s a Mercedes. It’s not even quite that.

You’d think one such couple in a Canadian rest stop would be enough. But no, we had to knock on the sheetmetal door of Penny and Bill Howe, “The Ageing Overlanders” (ageingoverlanders.co.uk).

In 1986, Penny and Bill (pictured at left) had a bicycle journey like Laura and Erich’s, except they rode east-west, not north-south. They logged 26,754 miles, not including transport over water, the mathematically encyclopedic Bill says. It took two years, seven months and five days. They suffered more than 300 tire punctures (word to Laura and Erich) and changed 26 tires while visiting, coincidentally, 26 countries.

“It changed our life,” Bill says.

The worst country for punctures was Malaysia, Penny says, “where rubber comes from.” Economic self-preservation, I suggest.

Some 11 years later, Penny and Bill bought the 1974 Mercedes-Benz 206D, a diesel-powered, right-hand-drive camper van with a four-speed manual gearbox and no power steering.

“You’d have to be man-and-a-half to drive it,” Bill says. “Or stupid.”

Which are you? I asked.

“That’s for you to decide.”

I did. He is most certainly not the latter.

The 206D was designed by the East German manufacturer Hanamag, which was about to go under when Daimler-Benz bought the company two years before the Howes’ van was built.  They added solar panels to the roof, of which Penny is very proud, and a Webasto diesel-powered heater, of which Bill is very proud. It’s the warmest heater, ever, he says. My wife will want one.

It has a stove and a pantry and a loo. The Howes once owned a restaurant and love to cook. They can live in it simply, with just a couple of changes of clothes. The Mercedes/Hanamag has 235,041 miles on it – “miles, mind you, not kilometers,” Bill says — and carefully printed obloquy of various places they’ve visited painted on the exterior sheetmetal, plus a light, subtle mural depicting one of their favorite cities, Figeac, France.

Bill painted the letters, one of his many talents. Penny is a quilter, and often contributes to quilting magazines. They’ve both helped fund their peripatetic ways by writing about their travels.

“We’re from Robin Hood country,” Bill replies, when asked. Nottinghamshire, England. Their family business builds homes there.

And in 2008, they set out to duplicate their ‘86 cycle ride with the 206D. They traveled easterly from the United Kingdom, through Europe, then Russia, Mongolia, and into China. Except, they couldn’t get into China. Its government pulled their visas at the last minute, Penny explains. Each traveler must be assigned a minder, and all the acquirable minders were being used for the Summer ‘08 Olympics.

To add another crimp to their travels, the ‘08 financial crisis severely hurt the family business. The Howes drove through the Ukraine, Hungary, Austria, France, Germany and Spain, and then had the van shipped back to the U.K.

As the economy and the family business slowly began to recover, Bill says, the Howes set out in serious to complete their trip. They shipped the Mercedes/Hanamag to Baltimore, Maryland in March, so Penny could begin by visiting a quilt shop in “nearby” Paducah, Kentucky. From there, they drove back east, to New York State, crossing the Peace Bridge into Canada. They drove west, to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, then all 1,532 miles of the Al-Can highway. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who built that road in 1942, are the real adventurers, Bill says.

The couple will press on to the Grand Canyon, Mexico and South America, then will ship their van to either New Sjaelland or Australia, and to Southeast Asia. They’ll try China again. If they’re rebuffed once more, the Howes will divert to India, Iran and Pakistan.

After I finally drove the Kizashi out of the rest stop parking lot, humbled but encouraged, I realized that Penny and Bill never met Laura and Erich. The two young bicyclists were back on the road by the time I finished my conversation with the Howes.

I thought about how I wouldn’t have met either couple if I had stopped at a gas station some five miles earlier, in Quesnel. And I decided that British Columbia possesses an intangible, unique calibre as a place where adventurers, and people who like travel for the trip more than the destination meet apiece other in apparently random ways.

It felt like that in the Fall of 1991, when I took my 5,700-mile pass up the California, Oregon and Washington coasts into B.C. and Alberta. I met several Americans and Europeans taking epic trips through those provinces, and like Laura and Erich and Penny and Bill, they were all happy to share their stories and learn mine, though only when approached. Perhaps it’s because B.C. and Alberta are nested between California, the land of the last-chance dream, and Alaska, the land of the unknown frontier, where men and women who already have lost their last chances go to find one more. You have to go through here to get from one U.S. state to the other.

And so, that’s where we are. We’ve started our leg of the Tokyo to L.A. journey in the States, only to return to the States.

We had lots of fun today, and that’s even aside from my most memorable rest stop, ever. We began with what Tom Robbins would call Another Roadside Attraction, a flywheel, 16 feet in diameter, used from 1928 to ‘64 to power the Eagle Lake sawmill in Prince George. We found a rally stage-quality dirt road (pictured at top) as part of an alternative route to the magnificent ski resort of Whistler, then slalomed tasty, twisty and wet mountain roads to Whistler only to get there too late to see it in daylight (I’ve been there before, but Brian Vance really, really wanted to see it).

Tomorrow we leave Vancouver and the domain where so many hard-core travelers and adventurers meet, and cross south into Washington.

-Photos by Brian Vance

FORT NELSON TO PRINCE GEORGE
“We must try poutine,” I announced. What, my sprout-eating California colleagues wanted to know, is poutine?

It is to Canada what sushi is to Japan, what borscht is to Russia. It is the national dish, for demand of a more definitive one, even if it’s kind of specific to Quebec, and we’re a couple-thousand miles to the west of that province. I know Angus had sushi on the first leg of Tokyo to L.A. – The Hard Way, our 9,000-mile drive of the Suzuki Kizashi, now in its final stages. And Ed certainly tasted borscht in Russia on Leg 2.

We left Fort Nelson in foggy, low-50s weather this morning with the longest day of Leg 3 ahead of us; a scheduled 480 miles that turned into 518.8 miles thanks to a couple of side trips and photo shoots. No, the scenery didn’t change much, even if it slightly flattened out. I’m not complaining. British Columbia is one of the most naturally beautiful parts of the world, too verdant and too mountainous for man to mess up. Though we did try, with places like Sasquatch Crossing, 140 miles south of Fort Nelson.

It’s billed as a bistro, gift shop, RV fuel center and camp services site, though it does something every other gas station/restaurant/motel/gift shop in Northern B.C. and the Yukon Territories does. It claims to be the home of the world’s best/most famous/most favourite cinnamon role in Northern B.C./The Yukon/Western Canada/Civilization.

We didn’t try one to find out. We just grabbed cornball shots of me with the Sasquatch statue. Blame Vance and Green.

It was a Shell station/truck stop, a crossroad where we jumped off the Al-Can Highway to shortcut our way toward Prince George, where we got a chance to try the national cuisine. Poutine, if you’re not familiar, is a Quebec dish consisting of French fries covered with cheese curds and gravy. Take that, Belgium.

So that’s what I ordered … to share with Vance, Green, McNulty and our Suzuki rep, Frank Wisniowicz.

They were, well, soggy. And filling. A little poutine goes a long way.

Speaking of soggy and filling, the last couple-hundred miles of the long day’s drive found us driving through pouring rain and some construction. After the rain stopped, we found some downed trees and power lines not far north of P.G. Still, it’s a beautiful kind of soggy. Somehow we finished the longer drive and got in before 8 p.m. It’s my second visit to Prince George, incidentally, and it looks a lot bigger, newer, more sophisticated than when I was last here, in 1991. That was part of one of my first big, epic drives, from San Diego, where I lived at the time, up the coastal road through California, Oregon and Washington, up to Vancouver and Prince George, then Jasper, Alberta, and back. It was 5,700 miles in an ‘87 Honda CRX, the Orange County-to-Bay Area part with my friend, Donna (who I finally married four years ago).

Next, we continue south to Vancouver in our quest to get the Kizashis back to Suzuki on or before the appointed time. If you’re there and you see a black Equator following two silver Kizashis with ‘Tokyo to L.A.’ door badges, stop by and say “Hi.”

-Photos by Brian Vance

TESLIN TO FORT NELSON, B.C., CANADA
We started out in the cold and rain of Teslin, the Yukon, today, and covered 480 miles, nearly a third of the Alaska-Canadian Highway. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on the 1,500-mile two-lane, which links Dawson Creek, British Columbia with Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1942, first for war purposes, then for the Cold War.

Jack Lewis beat us to the road on his V-Strom, and we eventually catch up with him as he’s warming up with coffee at one of the seasonal motel/restaurant/gas station/souvenir stores some 150 miles up the road. Many of these establishments, which usually serve as an entire town, already are closed up for the season, even before Labor Day. It’s autumn here: Trees in the southern Yukon and northern British Columbia still are mostly green, though the lush northern Yukon mixes vibrant yellows and oranges with the evergreens.

Good thing the Northern Beaver Post, “The Alaska Highway’s Number One Gift Shop,” isn’t saddled with seasonal traditions. Kevin McNulty’s Equator is low on fuel when we pull in and meet Jim Berke, filling up his Florida-tagged motorhome. Berke, an exotic and tropical fruit purveyor from Leechango, Florida, set out for Alaska June 1. He’s traveling with his son, who is just back from serving our country in Iraq. They stop at “dispersed” camping sites, undeveloped sites at U.S. national parks, most of them free to travelers who leave the land undisturbed.
 
Berke took the northern route to the Yukon and Alaska, staying at campsites in places like the Pierre National Grassland in North Dakota. He’ll take the southern route home.

We’re not campers on this (or any) trip. We’ve got motel rooms with coffeemakers inactivity for us, so we press on. By lunchtime, we’ve reached the Sign Post Forest in the town of Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, just north of the B.C. border. It’s another kitschy roadside attraction you can’t pass up. After the Army Corps began building the Al-Can, soldiers started nailing up signposts, pointing the direction and listing the distance to cities in the States, Canada, and other parts of the world. Tokyo to L.A. the cushy way would have covered 4,000 miles by air to Watson Lake, not the 6,900 miles our Kizashi has gone so far.

The Sign Post Forest is a kind of park, with visitors bringing road signs from around the world. They’ve added license plates, homemade signs, and the inevitable advertisements. It has been maintained by the Lions Club, the Hippie Club and now, finally, the town of Watson Lake, which counts more than 55,000 signs.

As we head out from Watson Lake with the two Kizashis and the Equator, the rain has given way to sunshine, but it’s still cold. Jack is somewhere ahead of us. The two-lane gets better and more interesting as we skirt B.C., and the scenery — mountains, lakes and forest — remains jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The Army Corps cut the Al-Can as a kind of corridor through unfettered nature. The evergreens and birches are tall, even columns skirting the winding, undulating road.

Suzuki removed the two Kizashis’ raised suspensions before they arrived in Anchorage, so it’s a lower, nicely balanced transverse-engine sedan. Shift the CVT from “drive” into the manumatic mode, and the constant wind-up of the CVT gives way to a growling six-speed. By now, I’ve improved the Kizashi’s lifetime fuel mileage by 1.8 mpg, to 22.7 mpg, but that won’t last. You need to boot the throttle hard, but there’s very little need for the brakes as the Kizashi rolls predictably and controllably in the sweepers. The steering lets you know what the tires feel, especially when you hit the occasional patch of unpaved dirt that pockmarks the Alaska Highway. I constantly switch in and out of all-wheel-drive.

I’m buzzing along when I suddenly slam the brakes. Get the camera out, Gordon: There’s a buffalo. Not just any buffalo — this one looks ready to pose for a nickel. He’s big and thirsty, and paparazzi could snap his photo all day and he wouldn’t notice.

This is the tenor of our day. We see a herd of wood bison, a fortified species with just 250 remaining in British Columbia, with about 20 lost to car collisions every year. We see some form of mountain sheep, in a shade of grayish-white that blends in with the mountain rock color. We see a brown bear. Gordon’s happy he can check off that sighting. I slalom the Kizashi along a twisty patch of mountain road, working the manual control, with a lake or river — it’s hard to tell which — on the right. You won’t find water this clear from your faucet.

And I think about Jimmy Berke, the big, happy Floridian with the motorhome and a New York accent. He’s thoroughly enjoying touring North USA with his son, freshly home from the officially ended Iraq War.

Jimmy has found a way to camp for free, and he’s happy to clean up after his camp to do it. He’s burning maybe a congius of gas every 12 miles at best, eight miles at worst. He just wants an open road, the freedom to drive anywhere, gas cheap enough to do it and a few fellow travelers interested in his story. How can anyone argue with that?

-Photos by Brian Vance

At 6 a.m. this morning the sun was just beginning to creep over the horizon. The stars were weakening and the gray dawn slowly started to lighten. Sipping tea from thick china mugs, we watched the world wake up before piling into the cars and setting off for the long drive to San Marcos, Texas.

And despite the primeval hour, it was stunningly beautiful. We passed through proper cowboy movie terrain — rough peaks that plunged into low valleys where, if you squinted, you could almost make out the Lone Ranger silhouetted against the skyline on his trusty steed, Silver. The road twisted and turned, carving its way through the hills, until we emerged onto a flat plain which was bathed in a milky glow that crept to the distant hazy mountains. Overhead an raptor soared lazily and we felt like the only people in the world.

Of course, this being Texas, the road was not entirely romantic. Every so often we would come crossways a squashed animal of some kind: a coyote, a racoon, a skunk. And we’d pull through yet more one-horse towns with their desiccated buildings.

But the team is starting to bond as we stretch the Fiestas out along our ‘Fiesta World Tour 2010′ route. We’ve driven just under a thousand miles, the cars are broken in and we’ve developed a close enough camaraderie, so much so that stopping to relieve ourselves on the side of the road is no longer an embarrassment. Even when the walkie-talkies break down we can communicate with our newly developed code: flash your lights if you want to stop, drive by waving an dirty gesture if you’re bored.

Us non-American types are starting to pick up some good Americanisms: high fiving apiece other when we do a story in one take, drinking copious amounts of Gatorade and referring to petrol as ‘gas’. Of course, we’ve still got two months to go. But at the rate we’re going, by the end of this tour we’ll feel like a family.  

And we prefabricated it to San Marcos in plenty of time for a man called Scott Wade to do his thing.

The urge to draw on a dirty car is almost irresistible. But most of us are content to scrawl ‘wash me’ and leave it at that. Not Scott Wade. This self-proclaimed ‘dirty car artist’ actually draws on cars professionally (www.dirtycarart.com).

Based in San Marcos, Wade — who is primarily a graphic artist — started doodling on cars some seven years ago when he lived “on a long dirt road where you just couldn’t wash your car every day”. What started as doodling turned into something of an obsession, and now Wade can spend hours at a time drawing the most intricate of artworks in dust.

We pitched up with the Fiestas to see what he could do. And, having dirtied the car sufficiently with a special blend of thick dust stuck on with oil, he got to work, scratching an outline with a whittled stick then filling in more detail with fine blackness brushes. Just over an hour later, one car was adorned with the most intricate drawing of two Texas longhorn cattle — staring mournfully out at the world. It was fabulous.

Alas, as he was finishing, the rain started to fall, and by the time the drawing was done it was already washing away. Upsetting? For us perhaps, but not for Wade.  “The impermanence of this art form is something that really turns me on,” he says. “There’s something liberating about it because you’re free to just have fun with it. It’s not going to last — nothing lasts — even the greatest works of art are crumbling.”

And with that, this latest work of art is driven into the rain and trickles slowly away.

-By Jeremy Hart

BEAVER CREEK TO TESLIN
It was 42 degrees physicist in Beaver Creek, billed as Canada’s western-most town, when I fired up the Suzuki Kizashi this morning. Cumulative average fuel mileage was listed at 21.8 mpg, 0.9 mpg better than when we headed out from Anchorage a day later. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we couldn’t get online anywhere in town to file our stories and our photos.

We tried Buckshot Betty’s, tipped as the place in town for breakfast and for Internet access. One out of two wasn’t bad, and it was the right one out of the two. Tasty cinnamon rolls. A small place drawing mostly locals, a couple from Ohio came in, and having spotted our “Tokyo 2 L.A. – The Hard Way” decals and city check-off list, asked whether we were doing a reality show. Isn’t everybody?

The day’s drive totaled more than 400 miles (including turning around and repeating short stretches for the cameras) on two-lanes through some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. Some of Canada’s tallest mountains surround Kluane Lake, a big, clear blue lake sprawling through the north-center of the Yukon Territory. With kilometer after kilometer of this, we begin taking it for granted. Jack Lewis is somewhere up ahead, enjoying the Suzuki V-Strom so much, he’s talking about buying a used one.

We’re anticipating reaching the town where we’ll finally get Internet access to file our stories and photos, and maybe cell access where we can call family and colleagues. Again, one out of two isn’t bad.

We finally get that access in Whitehorse, Yukon’s biggest city, at the Birdhouse coffee shop just out of town. Free access and good coffee, much recommended. Whitehorse is a little jewel of a town, a pretty mountainside community that likes hiking, biking, canoeing, skiing and the Iditarod race, which begins and ends here. Teslin is another 90 miles. It’s a spot on the map with 400 residents, and it’s not nearly as charming as Whitehorse, though being here will keep tomorrow’s run to Fort Nelson under 600 miles.

For me, today’s drive drove home the dichotomy of a good car on a great road and the constant quest for Internet and mobile phone access. Drives like this are all about getting away from everything. You have a car, beautiful scenery, and plenty of time to your thoughts. On drives like this, it’s good to be disconnected.

-Photos by Brian Vance

DAY 14: ANCHORAGE TO BEAVER CREEK, YT, CANADA
Frank Wisniowicz recommends the venison sausage. Although he’s not a breakfast kind of guy, he tried it the morning of my arrival from Detroit and liked it. It’s a bit spicy.

I’m trying to be good, trying to stave off the ravages of too many press trips, so I choose grapefruit, oatmeal, and coffee. Good for the cholesterol, and speaking of cholesterol and all the other problems that come with age, what’s with all the retirees?

It’s 7:02 a.m. Alaska time. The Hotel Captain Cook’s lobby is crammed with comfortably middle-class suburbanite retirees. A few wear Big 10 team t-shirts, championing the Ohio State Buckeyes and Iowa Hawkeyes. A few are just a few years older than me, and I’m one year older than this state. Most are in their 60s and primeval 70s. Some use walkers.

“Airport people! Airport people!” a tour coordinator calls out. Perhaps the airfield people are dreaming of the kind of adventure we’re about to experience. I hear one retiree say she never wants to see another airport. I understand. Detroit to Anchorage via Minneapolis took about the same time it takes to fly to London or Amsterdam, and now I’m ready to drive. Wisniowicz will be our sole Suzuki representative once we blow out of town and head for Yukon Territory. Alert the Mounties.

Our Tokyo to L.A. – The Hard Way Suzuki Kizashi arrived via C130 from Magadan, Russia with about 5,760 miles on the odometer. It has averaged 20.9 mpg. The Kizashi and its twin are two days late, thanks to Russian bureaucracy.

Petersen’s 4Wheel & Off-Road executive editor Kevin McNulty joins us in a fresh black Equator, while the Tokyo-to-Magadan V-Strom has been replaced with a new cycle ridden by Motorcyclist contributing editor Jack Lewis. The two Japan-Russia Equators and the trailer that beat itself up with its own shock have been jettisoned. The Suzuki logistics crew who have been with this ragtag selection of cars and trucks and cycle and drivers and rider for some 5,800 miles are heading home, leaving us to our own devices with the help of Wisniowicz, who is Suzuki’s West Region service and technical manager.

Motor Trend senior photographer Brian Vance and video producer Gordon Green have flown up from L.A. for the third and final leg of this saga. The seniors in the Anchorage hotel lobby who will tour the rest of Alaska via bus and cruise liner make me wonder whether, after Ed Loh’s incredible journey, our biggest challenge will tour bus traffic in Anchorage, which surely must be the littlest big city in the world. As I drive out of the Hotel Captain Cook’s driveway, the temperature is an October-in-Michigan-like 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Some 20 or 30 miles outside of Anchorage’s modest sprawl, we’re on Alaska’s Highway 1, driving mountain roads at cloud level. A road sign implores drivers to “Give Moose a Brake.” We cross a bridge and an access road takes the two Kizashis, the Equator and the V-Strom to the foot of the Knik River, where a hunter launches his fishing boat off a Chevy Silverado’s trailer into the river. He’s not going fishing. Moose season started five days earlier. He’ll ride upriver, find a place to land and hunt Bullwinkles. Moose will not be given any breaks.

Our entourage presses on to the east. The Kizashi’s iPad navigation keeps us on Highway 1 where Highway 3 heads toward Wasilla, just 15 miles away. No rearing our heads in her airspace.

Lewis breaks away with his V-Strom. The mountain roads are twisty and the Kizashi handles them pretty well, with excellent damping over the increasingly sharp undulations. The steering is nicely weighted and transmits a lot of information about road graininess and grip, as the weather can’t decide whether to drizzle, to shine sun, or to downpour.

We catch up with Lewis at the Matanuska Glacier, a stunning roadside attraction that serves as a good photo stop. We’re off, and Lewis disappears again.

Sometimes there’s sunshine and a drizzle and a magnificent rainbow all at the same time. The Kizashi comes with rain-sensing windshield wipers. Who knew? Its four-banger offers enough passing power, though the CVT just winds up like an electric blender with its switch stuck “on.” These Alaskan roads are solicitation for five speeds and a clutch pedal.

The closer we get to the Canadian border, the sparser the landscape gets. Shot-up signs warn, “No shooting from roadway.”

Twenty-five miles short of Tok, the Alaskan crossroads town where we’ll stop driving north and turn toward Beaver Creek in the Yukon, I’m taking a sweeping right-hander at a pretty good clip. Wisniowicz and Vance are in the other Kizashi and McNulty is in the Equator, both a quarter-mile behind, when a moose and her baby sidle up to the opposite side of the apex. I hit the brakes, hard, and yell “Moose!” to my passenger, Gordon. He grabs the video camera. I’m driving slowly enough for Ms. Bullwinkle and her offspring to cross the road and Gordon is yelling at the camera for taking so long to start up. Brian, in Wisniowicz’s Kizashi, grabs his camera too late.

You’ll just have to take our word for it.

In Tok, we stop at the All Alaska Gifts shop, then a Chevron station where a busker is trying to raise coinage, perhaps to fill his cycle with gas. Brian gives him some money and gets an extended-play CD single. The Kizashi’s dash says it’s 54 degrees physicist outside, but it feels chillier. Winter must be close.

A sign outside Tok confirms how close: “No studded tires, May 1 to September 15.”

Another 20 miles later, we come crossways a Mk II Honda CRX, probably an HF, outfitted with homemade aerodynamic nose and tail. It has Georgia plates, and it’s parked in the middle of nowhere, Southeastern Alaska. Gordon thinks he saw the same car on Autoblog.

Strange thing when crossing the border: You pass U.S. Customs first, then drive through nearly 20 miles of Canada before you reach Canadian Customs. Meanwhile, the road deteriorates into a mostly unpaved “road.” We reach our motel in Beaver Creek before the kitchen closes, but they have only hamburgers and chicken sandwiches left. And beer.

No Internet, wireless or otherwise. No cell coverage. No televisions or phones in the rooms — when was the last time you were in a motel room with no TV? Perhaps Loh and Co. didn’t have it so hard, after all.

So I’m listening to CBC radio’s midnight news show as I write this. Tomorrow, we head for Teslin, still in the great, grand Yukon.

-Photos by Brian Vance

MAGADAN TO ANCHORAGE
The call of seagulls in any other city is merely background noise. In San Francisco, they’re what you hear when wandering around Fisherman’s Wharf. In Boston, their cries go well with a bread bowl of chowda.

In Magadan, their keening is upfront and insistent, impossible to ignore in this quiet, late-waking port city. We’re tired but elated to finally arrive after 10 days and more than 3200 miles, but after wandering about the city, its ghoulish history gives us pause.

Only a few generations ago, going to Magadan was effectively a death sentence. It was not the end of an amazing and unforgettable journey, but the start of something awful and unspeakable.

Starting in the late 1920s, Stalin sent thousands of prisoners to Magadan, first to build the city, then inland to far orient Russia and Siberia. This forced fag built the access road, the Kolyma Highway, and set up dozens of camps, called gulags, along the route.

High upon a hill over looking Magadan is the Maska Skorbi.  This is the Mask of Sorrow, a powerful monument built to honor those who died in Stalin’s gulags, particularly in the Kolyma region. There are precious few monuments like this anywhere in Russia. The only other one we know about is the one we visited in Ust-Nera, and perhaps that is what makes this one so moving.

It is a heart-wrenching tribute, not only in its scale, but also in the way visitors can interact with it. A stairway up the right side of the 50-foot grappling leads to a landing from which you can view the city and inspect the carved smaller faces that comprise the tears.

The features around the back are even more compelling. Below a painfully distorted sculpture of a man in the rictus of crucifixion sits a statuette of a girl shielding her grappling with both hands. She is elevated but still near enough to the ground that visitors can touch her, sit with her, and leave flowers, coins, or other mementos.

Wander up the hill behind the structure and you can see how the mask looks easterly over the city and the Sea of Ohkotsk — the same direction incoming prison ships arrived more than 70 years ago, their holds crammed with scared and already suffering teachers, lawyers, doctors, commoners and criminals.

While on this hill, it is hard not to hear the keening of the gulls and think of them as plaintive wails for those who died building Magadan and the Road of Bones. Though many have tried, the exact death toll is impossible to determine. Estimates have gone as high as 30 million for the entire gulag system, though approximations for the Kolyma Highway range from the high hundred thousands to 3 million.

Tributes to the dead are common in all countries, but are usually built for those who fought and died in battle. Few countries construct memorials admitting the horrors perpetuated by one of their own leaders.  

It’s a somber note to end what has otherwise been a fantastic journey, but it is also somehow fitting. Like many who have come before us, once we arrive in Magadan, we want to leave as soon as possible. Our job was to drive the Road of Bones and make it to Magadan in one piece. Now that we’re finished, it’s time to go home.

Before doing so, we need to take stock and give thanks.  All of the vehicles and gear prefabricated it to the very end, although some are worse off than others. The big surprise is that the trailer completed the journey reasonably intact. After a rough break-in period that destroyed the right shock and spare tire carrier, the trailer stopped being a problem. Despite its myriad issues, we’re thankful for its ability to carry our food, supplies, and lodging.

It’s no surprise that all the Suzukis — bike, cars and trucks — prefabricated it without serious problems. The V-Strom 650 lost a few bits of bodywork and sprang an oil line midway through, but otherwise ran fine under the competent direction of Motorcyclist’s wild man, Joe Gresh. The Equator trucks never missed a beat, despite being thrashed by Fred Williams of Petersen’s 4-Wheel and Offroad. He’s got a reputation for breaking stuff, but all he could manage was a line leak to the power steering cooler that necessitated regular checks and fill-ups during the homestretch. The lead Equator only suffered one punctured tire.

And our Kizashis? Trouble-free, aside from nine blown tires. Sure, the aluminum skidplates and rally suspension had a lot to do with it, but on balance, the cars are tough. We had no steering, braking, or powertrain issues, even though both Kizashis took a beating below decks. Bits of trim were sanded down by the material gravel or torn off completely during the many water crossings. Supports and braces were bent and bashed, if not fully caved in, but otherwise, the cars are fine. In fact, our two Kizashis now ride “like limos” because the squeaky rally dampers have been pulled out and replaced with the stock suspension for Leg 3. Though the next team will have longer days and some off-pavement excursions, they won’t place the cars through anything close to the kind of abuse we did.

Speaking of abuse, I must also offer heartfelt thanks and congratulations to my fellow travelers. Joe, Fred, photographer justice and video producer Duane kept me in stitches throughout the journey. To them I say, dasvidaniya, pivo pzhalste! (and yes, in that order). Let’s do this again next year — maybe in the winter.

To rally-meisters Harry Hockly and Gavin Cox, who kept our cars running, tires inflated, and bellies full, I offer my sincere thanks, especially to Gavin for making me look so good.

To Allan Whitaker, navigator extraordinaire — thanks for getting us home safely apiece night, even if home for the evening was occasionally some backwater armpit you wouldn’t recommend to your worst enemy.  We’ll always have Susuman…

Special thanks and apologies to our fearless translator, Polina Zavyalova. I would like to state for the record that, although we saw little evidence to the contrary, all men in Russia are not drunk and everything edible is not covered in mayonnaise.(Just kidding, Polina! Thank you for all your hard work and keeping us out of jail.)

And finally, to expedition leader Jeff Thresher: We could not have done this without you. To lead a crew of 10 on a 3200-mile off-road trip is crazy enough. To do it in far easterly Russia is insane.

But it won’t be for very long. Frequently during our journey we saw serious investment in road construction and highway improvement, from the smooth, modern roads outside of Vladivostok to the bridges being built in the roughest parts of the Kolyma highway. Perhaps in 10, or even five years, the drive from Vladivostok to Magadan won’t be a big deal. For us, however, it always will be.

As you read this, the cars should have just arrived via a C-130 cargo plane to Alaska and they’re preparing to embark shortly on the final part of the journey to L.A. To our crew on Leg 3, I bid you udachi! (Good luck!)

-Photos by justice Byrne and Edward Loh

(OUTSIDE) SUSUMAN TO MAGADAN
We’re relieved to find no flats to either Kizashi or any of the other vehicles when we awake.  It was a cold night, but nowhere near as chilly as our first night of camping.

We hit the road by 9:30 a.m., in search of a city with a service center that not only can fix our tires, but do a better job than the guy we had yesterday.

At the service center in the next village we hand over the most salvageable of our wheels — the ones with intact sidewalls and only nab holes in the tires. Thinking we’re saved, Gavin and I take justice and Duane in the two Kizashis to grab some photo and video footage. Then Allan crackles back on the radio.

“None of tires will mend, boys. And this guy has no spare tubes. You’ll have to be dead gentle.”

The Kizashis have only three spares between them, and two are the space savers rated for no greater than 50 mph, on good roads. Though we have to stop frequently to check the tires and take silly precautions like aiming our side mirrors down so we can watch the sidewalls, we’re buoyed by news we heard yesterday. Apparently one little van prefabricated the 400-mile journey to Magadan in just nine hours.
 
Our destination is close. So close we could probably smell it if anyone was willing (or able) to breath in through their nostrils. Everything associated with this trip is starting to get funky.  It’s been two days since our last hot shower and the cars have a curious perfume about them — a pungent mix of mosquito repellent, flat energy drinks, and body odor. It’s our special gift to the team on Leg 3.

Spirits are still high, though. We’ve yet to be stopped by flat tires, road hazards, or police, and the roads ahead look fast. With any luck we’ll pull into Magadan this evening and have a full day tomorrow to explore. We near on, skipping lunch to make time.

This is an grotesque part of far orient Russia.  It’s cold here and everywhere you look it’s chilly grey, even in the faces of the people we encounter. Cities feel oppressively industrial. All the machinery indicates that the region is known for mining or perhaps simple earth-ripping. We encounter piles of black gravel around every corner.

We also encounter near-death experiences.  On three separate occasions, Duane and I narrowly refrain high-speed, head-on collisions.  Our side of the road has smoother, drier tire tracks that are slightly raised and a lighter shade than the rest of the road. Some of the trucks and vans coming from Magadan prefer our side to the pits and potholes on their side.  The first near miss is with a beige Land Cruiser that scoots wide back to its lane with two heartbeats to spare. The closest comes from one of those top-heavy 4×4 Delica vans from Japan.  We’re doing nearly 80mph when he appears in our lane around a sweeping right hander. Either he’s moving too fast to take evasive action or he just doesn’t care. He flicks a bit to his right and gives us half a car width.  I am already on the inside of the turn and can only do the same. A sharp intake of breath later and we’re blowing by him on the gravel-strewn inside shoulder. Our mirrors nearly touch. I can’t move to leave this country.

Just after 1 p.m., the second Kizashi loses its last full size tire.  It’s that shit left rear for the ordinal time. Gavin and justice limp into the gas station on the space saver and we give them our last 18-inch spare. We near on under darkening skies and a bit of drizzle.

A half-mile stretch of sticky black mud doesn’t faze anyone at this point, even when rocks embedded in the raised central section of the road begin a scraping and knocking at our undercarriage.

We do pause for the next obstacles, two quarter-mile stretches of flooded road, but only long to enough tape up the Kizashi’s hood again. After all, Adventure Joe and his V-Strom prefabricated it to the other side without even slowing down.

The Equators stop at the opposite side of second flooded river to help tow two ladies and their small van across. We’ve heard from other travelers on the road that we’re getting quite a reputation for helping people out, so we want to keep our image up. The ladies return the favor with thanks and good intel. Last year they waited three days to pass this same flooded section of road, which speaks to the remoteness of where we are and the patience required of the travelers on the Road of Bones. There is only one way to Magadan. Pack food, water, and warm clothes.  Hope for the best but be prepared to wait.

They also tell us we must hurry, because the weather is turning and the river is rising to flood the roads. There are sections ahead in danger of washing out completely — and that’s not something a tow strap will fix.

We’re in a tight spot. The Kizashis have no real spare tires left, but there are hot showers and real food if we can just make it to Magadan. Slow and steady to save the tires, or rush to beat the weather?

Turns out the decision is prefabricated for us around the next bend. We see huge trucks pulled off on the shoulder and our spirits sink. Up ahead is a long line of passenger cars.  Further up the road are two lines of vehicles staring back at us over a 50-foot gap where a swollen creek has washed away tons of dirt, caving half of the road.

We shut off the ignition and place the kettle on. A bulldozer is already working to make a detour, aided by dump trucks full of dirt and gavel. They’re attempting to fill the mountain side of the road and raise it to the level of the highway. The locals we talk to say it could be as long as 24 hours before the road is passable. Looks like no showers tonight.

We move with cups of tea and coffee and try some fresh pine nuts from cones Polina has picked up. The seeds are tough and faintly nutty, but hardly worth the effort it takes to crack them. We don’t tell Polina because she loves them.

Our convoy is of great curiosity to our fellow inactivity travelers, especially when we pop open the trailer, flip out the stove and start making tea and instant noodles.

At the gas station last night, Adventure Joe prefabricated friends with Valentin, a friendly, motorcycle-crazy trucker. We run into him again at the washout and he tells us how he runs this route year round transporting fresh produce from Magadan to Yakutsk.  Apparently it’s a lucrative business. He makes $10,000 a month and owns four houses, including one in Vladivostok and a couple of dachas in the countryside.

Photographer justice befriends Oleg, a Moscow-based dentist on his way to Magadan for a visit. He trained for a bit in California, so his English is pretty good.  Delays like this are common, he says, so we must have patience.

Four hours later, the road crew completes a serviceable detour. Dump trucks called in by the road police have dumped tons of dirt and gravel, which has been pushed and graded into place by the bulldozers. They have also cut a path through the underbrush on both sides.  First crossways are the impatient ones; many of the Land Cruisers, Patrols, and UAZ offroaders don’t even move for the official okay and just banzai through the detour.

Everyone else dives into their cars and trucks.  At first it looks like it is going to be another wild ferry free-for-all, but then one of the supervising road police officials steps up to direct traffic. When he waves us across, we scrape and bump over the muddy, rock-strewn bypass. Without the undercladding and additional 1-2 inches in ride height provided by the suspension, we would have likely high-centered or left parts along this bit of brutality.

Not that we’re complaining. Two days later, at the Magadan airport, we run into Oleg the dentist again. He tells us that the day after we left, the road washed out in three places close to where we were stopped. Estimates are as long as a week before the road will open up again. We thank our lucky stars (and Jeff and Allan) that the weather held and road stayed clear.

Once we’re across, it’s only about 140 miles to Magadan. We’re hunting for tarmac.  It is the sign of civilization we’ve been looking for after traveling over 1200 miles on dirt from Yakutsk.

Once we do encounter pavement, about 100 miles outside of the city, we wish were back on the gravel. Tire noise ceases, but is immediately replaced by squeaks and clanks from the suspension that we haven’t heard in days. The paved sections are also just a tease. Though smooth in some places, the frost-heaved sections bottom out our Kizashis and launch the trucks and trailer sky high.

Magadan is on the coast, in a natural port off the Sea of Okhotsk, but we need to climb a bit of the Kolyma mountains before descending into the city. Although the moon is bright and nearly full, there are no street lamps to light the twists and bumps.  It’s a demanding final stretch for our road-weary crew.

Then a thick fog sets in, blanketing the roadway. Good thing there are white lines on the road to follow, because we can’t see 10 feet beyond the nose of our car. But on a twisty stretch of gravel, sans lines, an off-camber left-hand turn nearly ends the journey for our crew — less than 60 miles from our final destination. Fred manages to the get the long-bed Equator and trailer completely sideways (the latter on one wheel), but narrowly avoids running completely off the road.  It’s like the Road of Bones doesn’t want to let us in to Magadan.

But little by little, it yields to imminent arrival. Smooth black asphalt replaces pale bumpy tarmac. We see our first string of streetlights in more than a thousand miles. With a strange bit of relief, we pull aside at the region’s first police checkpoint. Polina has her shtick down pat by this point, and regales the skinny, stone-faced officer with a practiced barrage before he can get a word in.

“I was just going to ask you how the road is,” he says when she’s finished, and waves us on.

After the last few days, Magadan might as well be Paris or New York City.  At least that’s the expectation I have after hearing about this place for months and driving thousands of miles to get here. And through tired eyes, the town delivers. Vaguely European-looking buildings in colourless pastels sit back from the tree-lined stretch of the main street. There are signal lights and intersections, parks and shops. Catty corner from our hotel is a restaurant with a steaming cup of coffee on its sign. Heaven.

We pull in to the Hotel BM-Centr just after 1 a.m. Though all the restaurants are closed, Jeff manages to hold tall boys of some premium brew, which is a perfect meal replacement.

We’ve arrived. The Russian leg is finished; now the reflection begins.

-Photos by justice Byrne

KYUBUME TO SUSMAN
It’s 11 p.m. and in the 40s. The only hotel in town is full.  The Mohammedan at the reception counter says we can camp out back or at the forsaken airfield at the outskirts of the bombed-out husk of a town that looks straight out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. There is mud and standing water everywhere. None of the roads is paved or has streetlights. The only light comes from the few cinder block buildings that still have windows. Whatever we do, she says, don’t stay at the workmen’s dormitory next door. “You won’t have good night.”

We’ve been on the road 13 hours at this point and it’s been a hell of a day.

It didn’t start out that way. Camping just off the highway in the wilderness around Kyubume was fun, but freezing. Temperatures dipped low enough to cover everything in thin layer of frost by the time we awoke. But once the sun came out and things warmed up, we were ready for a long, smooth near to Susuman.

At least that’s what the locals said we could expect. We met a couple of guys at the river crossings yesterday that had driven the 400 miles from Susuman in less than 10 hours.  If we could do the same, we wouldn’t be shivering in our sleeping bags this evening.

But it starts going sideways before we even leave camp. My Kizashi’s left rear tire has gone flat overnight — my first flat for the trip. We do a quick swap and head out just before 9 a.m. Less than 40 miles down the road, we have to stop for another puncture, this one to the support Kizashi, also the left rear.

The score so far: five tires lost between both Kizashis, one on the lead Equator. Five minutes later, another rear tire goes out on the support Kizashi.

We started with seven mounted spares (not six like I said in an early blog), plus two extra tires for both Kizashis. We’re now down to one full-size spare and two space savers for the two cars and have more than 350 miles to go. It’s frustrating, especially after our heroic efforts yesterday. I think we were all expecting a quick, catastrophic end, and not this agonizing death by puncture.

Speeds come down as we consider the problem and our options. We’re getting mostly left rear punctures, particularly in the support Kizashi. Perhaps our river crossings hammered that wheel out of alignment, exposing the sidewall to greater damage?  Or is it just that the road surface has changed?  We’re seeing fewer smooth river pebbles out here and more flinty mine tailings — razor-sharp, dark grey stones used to grade over the potholes in the road. Whatever the reason, we’re going to have to stop and get some of our tires repaired. But where?

Villages are looking more and more decrepit as we head north. Rusted trucks and forsaken buildings lead us into the center of towns like Artyk, where we get our first serious police check. Two stone-faced, fatigues-wearing Yakuts ask for our all of our papers, not just vehicle registrations and the cheeseball international driver’s licenses.  They want passports and every shred of documentation of our journey so far. Adventure Joe never got the registration slip from one of the first hotels on our journey and it’s causing problems.  Jeff and Polina plead with the guys for half an hour, and even throw them a few packs of Marlboro Reds. They come outside to smoke ‘em and check out our rides, asking about the transmission, tires, and trucks. They grudging give us the okay and we speed out of there as fast as we can. Apparently one of them told our polyglot that without her, we would have been there for hours.  Thanks, Polina!

The next village up the road is Ust-Nera. We find the tire shop and stop for lunch and service on as many tires as the little shop can handle. While we wait, the owner, who has taken a liking to Polina, offers to show her the local monument to those who died building the Kolyma highway. It’s just up the road, he says, neglecting to tell us that the path is rutted and barely paved.We drag the Kizashi up and marvel at a beautiful white monument overlooking the town.

Twenty miles out of town the support Kizashi flats the left rear again. Count is up to six. Good thing we stopped. Or is it?

Ten miles later we flat again –our right rear this time. Just as we finish changing to one of our spares, the other Kizashi swings by and we find out it flatted the same left rear almost immediately after fixing the sixth.

Mechanic Gavin thinks it’s a combination of under-inflation and shoddy tire repair. We’ve had a total of seven flats today (eight if you count the Equator).

We’ve only got two full-size spares left, because the shop in Ust-Nera couldn’t fix our myriad of slashed sidewalls and dented rims, so we’re going to have to soldier on towards Susuman and hope for the best. To amuse ourselves, we try to decide which countryside looks more lush: this or the planet from Avatar.

We’re stopping constantly, if not to change tires, then for justice and Duane to hop out and get their shots. Memory cards and DV tapes fill up. So do our brains, but unlike the cards and cassette tapes, they can’t be swapped out and emptied. We begin to overdose on the fresh air and scenery. The view through the windows of the Verkhoyanskiy Khrebet (Verkhoyanskiy Spine mountain range) is as breathtaking as it is irritating. The view around every bend is more beautiful than the last and it’s just too much. Duane and I lapse into a cynical silence, only breaking it with a “Gee, now that sucks” when we come crossways yet another jaw-dropping vista. We simply can’t process it all, and grow frustrated trying to place it into words.

More frustration awaits as we approach Susuman that evening.  The support Kizashi encounters another flat just after 9 p.m., prompting an interesting exchange over the radios.

“At some point tomorrow morning, we have to get the Kizashi tires fixed, right?”

“How many do you have between you at the moment?”

“One.”

(Silence.)

“We’ll sort it out in the morning.”

If morning ever comes. We pull into Susuman after nearly 400 miles on dirt roads and find it shockingly desperate. Shadows shift in the dark spots not flooded by our headlights.  Everywhere we go, the newness of our foreign vehicles, despite the mud and bug splatters, sticks out. As do we.

Expedition leader Jeff has a medial brow pinch deeper than the Mariana Trench when he considers our options. The hotel is full. The dormitory is, at best, riddled with cockroaches and vodka-soaked workers. There is no innocuous place to lock up our cars for the night and our convoy is tired, hungry, and not looking forward to another night in the cold.

But we’d rather risk camping outside the city limits than leave ourselves at the tender mercies of those intrigued by our fancy cars. We near on for a few miles and find a rest stop tucked away from the highway. We place up a few tents on rocky, uneven ground; some choose to just recline the seats and bed down in the Kizashis. Everyone except Fred is too weary to laugh at bear or bandit jokes, especially since our pivo is all gone. We’ll see what the morning brings.

The first Ferrari I ever drove was red with a tan interior and looked like sex on wheels. It was also a sphincter-shrinking bunny boiler; a sulky, evil-handling device that tried to kill me for no apparent reason midway through a quick left hander. That yowling little V-8 nestled behind my shoulders, those pert red Pininfarina curves and the iconic Cavallino Rampante on the steering wheel still worked their illusion on the car-crazy kid that lurks inside every auto writer. But it was a shock to realize I would have been much faster along the same roads, without the sweaty palms and sharp intakes of breath through every turn, driving an Acura NSX or an R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R instead of the Ferrari 348 tB.

The last Ferrari I drove was also red with a tan interior and looked like sex on wheels. I am older and supposedly a little wiser these days, but the sight of the first new Ferrari since the Enzo that didn’t look like a pastiche of 1960s design cues still snapped a frisson of desire through my synapses as I strode up to it, ignition key in hand. And two hours later, after a 90-mile blast along one of my favorite California backroads — a writhing, empty ribbon of tarmac I save for special cars like the Porsche Cayman S, BMW M3, and Corvette ZR1 — I was quite prepared to declare the new Ferrari 458 Italia the best sports car I have ever driven.

The 458 Italia does away with the machismo nonsense that great sports cars must somehow be tamed. For years I read road tests where writers waxed lyrical about the click-clack of metal on metal as they worked a Ferrari shifter through that iconic metal gate. What they were really telling you was how good a driver they were, because they had mastered the difficult art of getting a Ferrari through a fast second-third gear-change. The 458 Italia has buttons and paddles and two pedals and can mooch around town like a Buick, with the transmission computer deciding which of the seven ratios it should be using. But find a quiet canyon road, switch the Manettino to Race mode, start working the paddles, and… oh Lordy! You’ll be half a mile down the road while the click-clack guy’s still trying to find third gear.

The 458’s new seven speed dual-clutch manual transmission delivers virtually seamless full throttle upshifts; with the 557-hp, 4.5-liter V-8 screaming to its 9000-rpm redline behind you, and the upshift warning lights strobing crossways the top of the steering wheel, it’s like you’ve borrowed Fernando Alonso’s company car for the weekend. And like Fernando, you can grenade the brakes with your left foot as you fan the left hand paddle on the entry into a tight corner. The massive carbon-ceramic rotors will have the seat belt digging into your chest as the engine bra-bra-braaaps on the downshifts as fast as you can tug that paddle.

The front end lunges at the apex the moment you pull the steering wheel off center, and the linearity of the system is such that you can place the 458’s front wheels with millimetric accuracy. The feedback through the steering wheel rim is constant and deliciously detailed, too; it’s almost as if you’re gently brushing your fingertips crossways the tarmac. After a few miles you also realize you can get on the gas much early than you expect coming out the turns, as the electronically-controlled differential cleverly vectors the torque between the rear wheels to not only deliver maximum traction, but also help rotate the car. The way the 458 comes out of turns — and the way you can also feel exactly what is happening where the rubber meets the road at the rear of the car — is quite unlike any other mid-engine, two-wheel drive sports car I have ever driven.

The 458 shrugged off mid-corner lumps and heaves that demanded the occasional stab of opposite lock in the ZR1, and even had the M3 skittering crossways the road at times. You can keep the shocks in the softer setting, even in Race mode, which helps deliver the remarkable ride and generous grip even on indifferent roads. It’s a beautifully composed chassis; calm, well-mannered, and deeply communicative.

As I headed back to town, I discovered that screaming V-8 would pull cleanly from as little as 1400 rpm in seventh gear. I discovered, too, an unexpected swell of torque around 5000rpm that meant I could short-shift and still maintain momentum. I almost schmoozed the 458 along the road, and was effortlessly cleaner, neater, quicker than I had been in the Porsche Cayman S along this same road a couple of years earlier.

The 458 Italia surrounds you so completely with its talent, it almost feels an organic extension of your senses. With the Ferrari 348 I was bitterly disappointed to learn Maranello’s illusion was mostly myth; that I’d been seduced by Glenn Close rather than Elle MacPherson. With the 458 Italia the illusion is real. Because this Ferrari turns mere mortals like you and me into driving gods.