Stuff You Should Know - How the Cannonball Run Worked

Episode Date: October 22, 2009

The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. Tune in as Josh and Chuck take you on a wild ride through the real (and colorful) history of this infamous race. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as our good friend Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you, Chuck? Thank you, good friend. How are you feeling right now? I'm fine, a little hot. I'm shvitzing. Yeah, Chuck is bright red right now, everybody. It's kind of weird looking.

Yeah, thank you Martin for that. Our superfan in Seattle. Thank you very much. He's not a superfan. He's a buddy. He has been. He was such a fan that he actually became a friend. He's a friend that we haven't met yet. Yeah, so Chuck, take us back to 1981, man. In the time machine? Yes, the way back machine. You ready? Here we go.

Okay. Alright, Josh, I'm 10 years old. Knee high to a grasshopper. Disco is dead. Margaret Thatcher is the prime minister of England. I take issue with the disco being deadline. I don't know that disco ever died, man. You cannot make the argument that all modern R&B, pop, soul is all disco. Disco is alive.

Okay. Margaret Thatcher is the prime minister of England. Ronald Reagan is in office just as Jimmy Carter has exited. Walter Cronkite resigned from the CBS Evening News Desk. That was a sad day. The first AIDS case was made public in California. Have you ever seen him in the band played on? My brother worked on that.

That was a great made for TV movie. It really was. It was really good. And he had a great experience working on that. Oh, yeah? So he would find people in that movie. Oh, okay. Major League Baseball has just gone on strike in the summer.

For what will be the first of 80 times over the next five years. Alright, so America's depressed, but not for long. No, because one, Mr. Bert Reynolds is about to dash across the silver screen. That's right. In a little movie called Cannonball Run. Great, great, great movie. It was a great movie. I haven't seen it in forever.

I think I probably saw it in like 1987. Right. It was one of the first movies we rented. Sure. Along with Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, yeah. Very hokey and corny, but still beloved. Yeah, everyone takes it as a comedy because it is a comedy.

Clearly. But this is not to say that it started out as a comedy actually. It was supposed to be serious and Bert Reynolds' part was originally written for Steve McQueen. Right. Who died before he could film the movie. Sadly. It was supposed to be a serious movie and it didn't turn out that way. Why would anybody want the Cannonball Run to be a serious movie?

Well, because it was in fact based on a real race. What? What? True. Based on a real race, as you know. Yeah, I do know after reading this article. Yeah. I think I'd heard that before, but I had no idea the details.

I didn't either until I wrote it. This was really amazing. Like I have, I'm just going to come out and say it, I have a man crush on a 70 year old, Mr. Brock Yates. Yeah. He is a cool dude who I would have loved to have hung out with. I bet he's still a very cool dude. And hung out with him in a strictly platonic sense.

Sure. Yeah. Maybe a little make and out, but aside from that. Yeah, I bet he's still a way cool guy. I get that impression. He is. He, this is kind of what I gathered about Brock Yates from researching this and reading your article.

Go ahead and say who he is. He was a pretty much the premier automotive journalist of his age. Yep. At a turn of a car driver magazine. Eventually, yeah. But I think he started out as a journalist and something of a Gonzo journalist I take it. Yeah.

But yeah, he was very well known and respected in the field. And in the early 1970s, America was at a fork in the road, if you will. So to speak. And Brock Yates represented one direction and that was the out just go. And if you die, that was your number was up kind of mentality behind the wheel. That is. Yeah. You know, damn the torpedoes full steam ahead.

Right. On the other side of the road at on the other side of the fork was a guy named Ralph Nader. Yeah. He was still there on that other fork. He is. Um, he, for those of you who don't know who Ralph Nader is, he's run for president a couple of times. Sure.

Um, he got George Bush elected in 2004. Thanks for that Ralph. Yeah. Um, but he's also a very dedicated consumer watchdog. He has for many years lived in a tiny little one room apartment. He uses a hot plate. Um, he doesn't really, he lives this very meager life. So no one can say you're corrupt, right?

Because he goes after everybody else. Sure. So in the 1970s, in the early 1970s, he was going after the automotive industry, right? Right. He went after, uh, he, he wrote this book called unsafe at any speed. Great. And it was basically about, have you read it? I've read parts of it through research and stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Um, so you know, then it was basically about how the automotive industry was producing these incredibly dangerous vehicles. Right. Death machines. Right. And at the time we didn't really have much of a speed limit.

Sure. But as a, as a result of his book, we like, uh, seatbelts became mandatory, new safety designs had to be instituted by car manufacturer is a big deal. Um, so America's at this fork in the road, Brock Yates style one and, and Ralph Nader on the other. And America went down the Ralph Nader fork. Right. I think what you're referring to is, uh, the national speed limit.

That's part of it. Definitely. But I think even more than that, it's a more of a, you know, the, the way you and I were raised where like we could do anything we put our minds to and we were special. I think that that came out of that collective decision to go toward safety rather than, you know, fun at any cost. Reckless abandoned. Exactly.

Devil may care. Sure. But yeah, the national speed limit was definitely one part of that. Yeah. That was, uh, 55 miles an hour, which was in 1974. Yeah. It's since gone up quite a bit in, in certain areas of course it has, but even more than safety, do you know why they set the speed limit at 55?

Gas consumption? Yes. Really? Yeah. The, uh, the, uh, Arab oil embargo has just taken place. Okay. OPEC was like, Hey US, uh, we're not real happy with you for siding with Israel during the Yom Kippur war.

So we're going to cut off your oil and they did and prices spiked and the US said, okay, we need to rethink our dependence on foreign oil. Right. So it's a huge rippling effect, but one of them was setting the speed limit at 55 miles per hour, which is too slow. It is too slow, especially in the opinion of somebody like Brock Yates. I thought you were going to say Sammy Hagar. Yeah.

He can't drive 55. He's tried. Yes. He's made a concerted effort, but it didn't pan out. Right. He tried. I love that song. It wasn't, I don't like to drive 55 or I would prefer to drive faster.

It was, I can't drive 55. Exactly. I tried and it just doesn't happen. It was very explicit. Yes. Chuck, um, this, this was 1974 in 1971, Brock Yates saw the writing on the wall that the speed limit was going to be reduced. America is becoming something of a...

Mambi Pambi. Yes. Okay. Um, and what did he do as a result? He, uh, in 1971, he took a trip across the country in a Dodge van with three travelmates and he drove from New York to Los Angeles as a way of, uh, proving slash protesting. I believe his quote said something like this, good drivers and good automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way that the Germans were using their auto bond.

Right. So he wanted to prove that you can drive fast. If you're safe, if you're a good driver, you can get to point A to point B in a car and it's safe. Yeah. And you, you said reckless abandoned. There was definitely, uh, a certain level of professionalism or, um, the people who he considered good drivers were actual good drivers.

Like you had to be a good driver to drive fast in his opinion. Yeah. It wasn't just like everybody goes fast as you can. That wasn't the point. Sure. Right. So he did so. He drove, uh, 2,858 miles from New York to LA in 40 hours and 51 minutes, which is an

average of 70 miles per hour. Yeah. He drove fast if you're talking about an average speed. Yeah. Because that included stops. I think stops. Uh, you name it. Right.

So, um, after that happened, I think it got a little bit of publicity, um, by word of mouth. Yeah. Very little. Maybe the racing world and there was a famous telegram that came, uh, I guess a month or so later. Yeah. I love this.

Can I read it? Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. The racing drivers of America and the next official cannonball baker C to shining C memorial truck trophy dash, the drivers are Oscar Kovaleski, bread, Nemet check and Tony Adamowicz. If we can find California, we'll beat you fair and square. So basically the gauntlet was laid and the cannonball run was born, although like you

said the official name, uh, has always been cannonball baker C to shining C memorial trophy dash. Right. So who's cannonball baker cannonball baker Erwin G cannonball baker was a, uh, he was famous for, for pushing the limits, uh, limits on a motorcycle. Yeah. So he would drive from, uh, Canada to Mexico from New York to LA on an old Indian motorcycle and we're talking starting in 1914.

Right. So like the old Indian motorcycle was basically a bike with a motor. Yeah. That's exactly what it looks like. Yeah. You know, um, he actually had a pretty well deserved reputation for like his nickname and just the stuff he was doing, his endurance level, apparently on one ride, uh, he came around a curve and was about to barrel into a herd of cattle that was in the middle of

the road. Cause it's 1914 and, um, he swerved to miss him, hit a pothole, flew off of his bike onto the back of a cow, which bucked him off and eventually landed in a ditch, got up and drove away. That is the stuff of legends. You get a race named after you, my friend, exactly. And he went on to become the first commissioner of NASCAR, which I thought was pretty interesting. So there you have that.

Yeah. Nothing to do with moonshine though. Or did he? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Curious. So yeah.

Yates wanted to pay homage to Cannonball Baker. So he named it after him, although he did shorten the name, uh, Cannon ball was two words. Original for Baker. Yeah. For Baker, but he shortened it to Cannonball to avoid any illegal math. And lawyers advised him to do that. Yeah.

I thought it was going to weird. Yeah. Well, anyway, so you have the Cannonball originally called the Cannonball dash, uh, and then it finally became the Cannonball run, which is how we know it today, right? And thanks to the Polish drivers of America who laid down the gauntlet, it was a real thing. They didn't. They weren't the only ones to, uh, participate in the first official Cannonball that first

run he made in the van, uh, was considered like a preliminary test run. It wasn't the first Cannonball because there was nobody competing with them. So this second one, uh, there was the Polish racing drivers of America, um, and seven other groups, including three vans. Yeah. Uh, there was a huge motor home. There was, uh, an American motors AMX and MGB GT and a Cadillac sedan Deville. And this is probably the coolest part of this entire story.

Yeah. I love it. Tell them, uh, this Cadillac was, um, owned by an old gentleman in New York in Boston. Oh, in Boston. And he, uh, wanted to, and this happened back then. It may still happen now where you would contract someone to drive your car from one place to the other. Cause you can't get it there.

Richard Pryor contracted Dana Carvey in moving. Really? Great movie. I didn't see that one. I thought it was a stinker. No, it was good. Was it good? So, uh, this old man put out an ad in the paper and I need to get my car to a Los Angeles

and these guys answered it and said, we'll get your car to Los Angeles and, uh, unbeknownst to him, it was, it was one of the entries. And, um, I think one of the stipulations was the car not be driven faster than 75 miles per hour at any time. Or in the dark. Oh, was that the other one? Yeah. And clearly they broke both of these because the Cadillac averaged 79 miles per hour,

which means they were driving a heck of a lot faster than that. I think they came in third too. Yeah. Third place. Yeah. Not too bad. But I think they got the car there in one piece and safely. Yeah.

So good for them. Right. They're like, here are the keys, pal. Go ahead and start with the first race. Where did it start? Where did it end? Well, it started in New York at the Red Ball garage at midnight, I believe, is when all of them started.

Yeah. Um, and this is what 1971. Mm hmm. Okay. Uh, November 15th, I believe. Yeah. Uh, and the ending place was, uh, a hotel in Redondo Beach. Yeah.

What is it? The, uh, Portofino Inn. Right. Okay. Which is, uh, from pictures I saw was a pretty lux little hotel. I think so. Um, and it, you didn't have to follow any specific route. You just got there anyway.

You could. Right. Basically the only rules were, uh, you could have as many drivers as long as there's only one car. Mm hmm. And you could leave at any point within the 24 hour window. It wasn't like everyone started at the start line, like a typical race. Just like in the movie, you would punch a time clock for when your starting time was.

Right. And then punch it again for when you arrived. Yeah. And whoever won, won. And I believe there was no trophy at the time. It was only a $50 entry fee and then they donated 200 a piece to charity. Well, I thought that was pretty cool. Sure.

Why not? So, uh, apparently two days before the race, Brock Yates had, uh, managed to finagle a Ferrari Daytona, a brand new Ferrari Daytona. A loner. Out of a, out of a auto dealer. Uh huh. Um, and he had the car, but he only had himself. He didn't have a co-pilot or a driver.

Right. Uh, and apparently he sent out all these invitations in a lot of, um, to race car drivers like legitimate race car drivers and they, they were like, you know, something, if somebody dies or something, it's going to look really bad for the sport of racing and I don't want to do that. And then, uh, one guy he had invited, Dan Gurney, who is a professional race car driver, had declined initially. Um, but he apparently, um, was told by his wife that his dying father-in-law said, you should go do this.

Life is short. Right. So Gurney contacts, um, Yates the day before the race and says, Hey, can I still come? And, uh, Yates said, heck yeah. Yeah. And that proved to be a fortuitous because they won. They did win. Yeah, they did.

Their winning time, Josh, was 35 hours and 54 minutes. Not bad. Cross country. Not bad at all. And not, uh, Atlanta to LA, New York to LA, which is further. Yeah. Cause I've made it in 33 hours from Atlanta to LA. Have you?

Yeah. That's the way I've always done it. Three 11 hour days is how I schedule it out. I never time myself, but you know, I went and drove around the West for several weeks and lived in a van with the dogs and all that. Sure. And, um, I would drive like, I think the longest I drove was a 12 hour stretch. Um, that's about all I can muster.

Yeah. That's enough for me. Yeah. Depending on how much coffee I drank or whatever, you know, then I could drive, you know, six hours or 12 hours or whatever, but it's amazing the toll of it just sitting in a car with your foot on the gas has on you. Sure. Especially when you're driving that fast.

Uh, should we talk about some of the, some of the things they, they preferred to do on the, on the first race, please. They, one of the common tactics it seemed like was to keep it slow in the Eastern Seaboard. Um, I think New Jersey and Connecticut and Ohio and Pennsylvania, these states are notorious for, for having some pretty hardcore highway patrolmen. Yeah. Still do. Yeah.

Like you'll get pulled over for doing 65. Right. Isn't that nuts to you? I can't imagine for getting pulled over for anything less than 72, 75 in Georgia. By the way, everyone flies as fast as you can, as fast as you can get away with, that's how fast you drive generally. Yeah. Even my friend Derek used to say that the deal with Atlanta rush hour is everyone drives

as fast as they can till somebody wrecks. Right. And then there's a big traffic jam. And then it just stops. Yeah. It's pretty funny to think about that. So, uh, the, the trick was to kind of keep it slow on the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest and then once you got to the Great Plains is when you really opened up and made

up some serious, serious time. Yeah. They got it up to 172. I think is how fast they found out the Ferrari would go. Yeah. I think 12 speeding tickets total between all of the, all the competitors. Yeah. Between four of the competitors, four of them didn't get a ticket at all.

Okay. So four of them split 12 tickets and the famous quote LA times, it is like kind of a blurb of an article from Dan Gurney, right? Yeah. Dan Gurney famously said, at no time did we exceed 175 miles an hour. They came close. Which is pretty cool. Yeah.

So Chuck, that was the first one. And as with all cool things, uh, that also began its co-option. Sure. News got out, word got out. Mm hmm. Little by little. Yeah. The sports illustrated, covered it.

Uh, and so did the Los Angeles times. Um, and so when there was a second one, I think the following year, there were a lot more competitors. Right? Yeah. They had, um, 25 entries a second year and Brock Yates finished second place this time in a Cadillac. Mm hmm.

Um, the third race, they skipped a couple of years and, uh, it was in 1975 and they moved it to springtime this time and a Ferrari won the third race, uh, with Yates and Gurney behind the wheel once again. Oh, I didn't know they won the third one. Yes. Oh, no, no, no. I'm sorry. They beat Yates and Gurney's record time the third year.

Yeah. By one minute. Yeah. But it was not them. You're correct. So by 1975, which is what the third one, fourth one, third one was in 75. Okay. By 1975, it's officially co-opted.

There's actually corporate sponsorship. Right. The right bra company placed, uh, three ladies in pink in a limousine and apparently the driver fell asleep in Texas and rolled the thing and I guess rolled into a porta potty, right? Which tipped over and drenched the, um, the ladies inside with its contents. Right. Right. Right.

Exactly. So by this time now, you can see why Bert Reynolds would have chosen more of a comedic route. Sure. Than, uh, Sharky's machine route. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't Bert's choice. Listen, should we move to the final year?

Yeah. What happened was Brock Yates was pretty much finished with it and he said, you know, it's run its course. He said he was worried that somebody was going to die. Sure. Although no one ever got hurt. No, but the, the, the roads in the last, uh, eight years had become much more congested. Right.

Um, he, he was ready to scrap the whole thing, but he had a friend, director stuntman, Hal Needham. Hal Needham. Or is it Needlem? No, it's Needlem. Okay. And he was, he was famous for a lot of the early, uh, Bert Reynolds movies. He, he did, um, Hooper, which is a great movie.

Is it? I haven't seen that one. Are you kidding me? I, I kid you not. Dude, gotta get Hooper. Okay. That was the one about stuntmen. You have to see my blue heaven though.

All right. We'll get to that later. So he did Hooper and he did, um, the cannonball run and a couple of other of the, of the Bert Reynolds films. Yeah. Of the eighties. He did a Smokey and the Bandit too. Oh, it did.

Brock Yates wrote that. I'm sorry. Okay. So, uh, Hal Needham. All over the place today. Here we are. Hal Needham says, you know what Brock? I want to make a movie about the cannonball run.

And so I think the best way to do this is if we stage another one and I participate with you as my partner. Yeah. And they did. They did that in 1979. Yeah. They did 46 entries this time and a lot of what happened in this race actually ended up in the movie.

Yeah. There's some zany madcap stuff that was going on. Let's hear it. Well, Brock Yates and Hal Needham, uh, actually had an ambulance and Yates' wife Pamela posed as a woman suffering from a lung condition and as a result couldn't fly because of the pressurized cabin. Right. So she had to be zoomed across the country at a hundred miles per hour in the back of

an ambulance. So it was their vehicle of choice and apparently they modified the engine and it killed the transmission. Right. So it had to be eventually towed across the finish line, which I thought was pretty cool. Right. And in the film that actually happened, Bert Reynolds and Dom DeLewis were the Needham Yates characters and Farrah Fawcett was the wife.

What else happened that was real? Three drivers actually did pose as priests and if you remember in the movie, it was awesomely. It was Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin posing as a drunk priest in the movie. I don't know that they were posing. They really were drunk. Well, sure. They were probably hammered. Sure.

Uh, what else, Josh? I don't know. I haven't seen the movie in a really long time. All right. Well, I got it for you then. There in fact scantily clad skin tight jumpsuits on a couple of ladies in a sports car. I read the opposite. I read that that was the right bra company that inspired that part.

I read the opposite. We'll have to check that. All right. We'll do it. And then there was a wealthy, uh, entrant that had his chauffeur drive him in a Rolls Royce. Nice. And in the movie that was Jamie Farr played a Middle Eastern chic.

That's right. Yeah. You know, he and I are from the same hometown, Toledo, Toledo. Is that why he always wore the Toledo mud hens hat and mash? Yeah. And why he talked about it incessantly. He really was. Yeah.

And Tony Packo's hot dogs that he talks about all the time, real place, best hot dogs on the planet. Really? I had no idea. Yeah. So those are just a few of the things that, uh, actually happened in the final cannonball run that ended up in the film, um, and a Jaguar, uh, driven by Dave Heinz and Dave Yarbrough won that year and they obliterated the time period with a 32 hour and 51 minute,

87 mile per hour average. Wow. 50 speeding tickets that year. Wow. Well, they're 42 contestants. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that was the last one and it has spawned imitators over the years.

Before the, before cannonball run, the movie came out. There were already imitators. Oh, really? Yeah. There was one movie that came out in 75 and two that came out in 76. You want to hear the weird thing about it? What's that? The movie was in two of them.

Really? He was in, uh, let's see, uh, deathmatch 2000, death race 2000, death race 2000, which was set in the future, but he was also in cannonball exclamation point, right? Which is a farcical take on the cannonball run and there was a second one that had Gary Busey in it or a third one that had Gary Busey in it called the gumball rally. Right. And that's, that's a real one. The gumball 3000 is still in existence.

Yeah. Is that European or in America? Well, they do both and, and they're quick to say that it's not a race. It's more like an adventurous road trip. Oh. And then the, the lame year, tell them, yeah, tell them about the European version of the cannonball run. They actually hate this too.

You know why? Cause they call it the cannonball run. Yeah. They use that name and this thing is not even a race. It, the, the goal of the cannonball run Europe is to stay as close to a 61 mile per hour average as you can. And in 2008, a friggin smart car one. Oh, so talk about a slap in the face where Brock Yates, Teddy would have rolled over

in his grave. Yeah. He's rolling over in his steady road over a smart car with his bare hands. He did. If anybody could do it, Mr Brock Yates could my friend. I think so. So that's the cannonball running. How fast have you driven?

What's the fastest you've ever driven? Oh, I don't know. 110. I actually once got a speeding ticket or no, you want to hear a weird story? Let's hear it. I'm going to make the final cut or not cause it's kind of long, but get this. So my friend and I were driving from Atlanta to Charleston in my old Toyota Corolla. It was an 86 champagne colored Toyota Corolla.

And I was doing 110 on I 20 during a stretch where the speed limit was 55, so I was doing twice the speed limit. I get pulled over by this guy in this car with a little dash headlight on it spinning around. I pull over and this guy's dressed like a paramilitary cop and he's like, you're so dead. You're going to jail forever. Right.

And he goes back to his car and calls somebody. This other guy comes out and he comes back. He's like, you're at least going to lose your license. And he goes back and talks to the guy who he said later was the sergeant on duty. And he comes back and he goes, you're going to get a ticket of some sort. And he goes back and talks to the guy again and he goes, here's your license back. You guys drive safely now and let's us go. You're free to go.

Exactly. So my friend and I are looking at each other like, what just happened? Right. Right. It was so surreal. And to this day, I wonder, have you seen Pulp Fiction? Of course you have. Sure.

You remember Zed? Yeah. I have the distinct impression that these guys were into Zed like affairs. And something else was took precedent. My friend was, he's not a good looking guy, so I'm thinking maybe they're like, we'll pass on these two and we hit it onto Charleston. I got you. Yeah.

So they were going to get you back to the police station. I don't think they were cops. What cop would not give you a ticket when you're driving twice the speed limit? I got you. Yeah. I got a story. Let's hear it. About four years ago, me and my buddy Scotty were doing, it was actually the last TV commercial

job ever did. It was a Six Flags job in Six Flags, Massachusetts, whatever that one's called. Six Flags over Massachusetts. Is it? I think it's great America. Yeah. So we go up there to do this job and, um, I don't know, it was New Jersey, but we have to drive.

Oh, it was a hit. Yeah. We drive at one point. My friend, we had like two days off while we were up there and I had a friend in Vermont and this third Star Wars prequel was being released that Friday. So I said, Hey man, let's go up and see Johnny Pindell and, uh, rent a car and drive up there because we had a camera truck. He said, sure, let's do it.

So we ran, we rented a like a little Geo Metro, whatever the cheapest little four stroke engine car you could get. And we have a time limit because we have to make the movie. It's like a six PM showing. And so we're speeding through Vermont. Like the hills of Vermont is lovely. And this little engine is like, and we topped this hill and we see one of those signs that say your current speed.

And it said your current speed and it blinked and went one oh two. Wow. And I'd never seen a triple digit on one of those signs. So we just laughed and blaze right through it and made the movie. You'd laugh in your Geo Metro and it's like, call the police. And we literally, we made it right as the movie was starting and you know, the engine was like, it was like ticking. It was red hot.

And that's my fast story. Well if you have a fast story, we'd actually like to hear it. Here's the caveat. Don't go out and commit any kind of crime or act that includes fastness. No. If it's already happened, then we'll hear about it. We'll tell you the email right after we get to listener mail. Right, Chuck?

Yes, Josh. Let's go. Josh, I'm going to call this the only time we've ever read a listener mail from the same dude. Oh, I don't know about this Chuck. Yeah, we have to. This is the Haxter. Ryan hacked my buddy.

All right. Listen to the house history podcast and have a creepy story. One of the houses I grew up in as a kid had a hidden door as you go to the basement. It's more or less just blended into the wood, paneling. As you walk through the door, you came to an open area with some shelving and a workbench. There were a couple of old bike tires and some random parts still lying around. And a guy names it. And a guy names it.

Every once in a while, we'd hear what sounded like people working on their bikes and chit-chatting, pounding metal gears, dropping, laughing, chains turning. Every time we'd go into the room, there was nothing. Weird. Weird. Later on, we found out the history of the house. Turns out one of the previous owners was a couple that enjoyed biking and they died in a biking accident.

And forgot to get the memo. So just thinking about it gives me chills. And this is from Ryan. And I'm going to just go ahead and say that Ryan Hack has inspired me to exercise because he has a blog called hacksfirst5k.blogspot.com where he started running and lost weight and is into it now. And he got me listening to another podcast called Two Gomers Run a Marathon. I don't know that I am entirely okay with you leading this extra life that I'm unaware

of until you read a listener mail. But Two Gomers Run a Marathon is actually a really funny podcast. These are two guys that say they're gomers, kind of nerdy. And they're completely unathletic, yet they want to run a marathon. So their podcast goes through their trials and travails. And it's really funny. They got a website called twogomers.com. Cool.

So Ryan Hack, since you got all those plugs and because you had two listener mails read on there, you have to go contribute 25 bucks to kiva.org on Stuff You Should Know Team. Chuck, do you want to tell everybody else about that? Kiva.org. Go to the Click on Community and search Stuff You Should Know Team. Join our team. Loan $25 to someone in need. You can now donate to Americans, I've heard.

If you're a nationalistic or an isolationist, you can still donate. But right now, as of press time, we have raised more than 4,500 bucks in about 10 days. And who has $7,100, Chuck? The lousy, cheap fans of the Colbert, quote unquote, nation. You know what, Sam, that guy's got way more fans than we do, right? Way more. 110 members on his team. We got 180 so far.

Already. Yeah. And for those of you in the Stuff You Should Know Nation who've supported kiva.org so far, for those of you who want to get on the trolley, you can go to www.kiva.org slash team slash Stuff You Should Know and you can become a member and like Chuck said, you can contribute as little as 25 bucks and you actually get that back if you want. Sure. You can roll it over again or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Chuck, that's it, right? That's it. That's my Speed Story. Chuck and I want to hear about it. If you have a great unicorn story, you know, we always want to hear about that. Send it in an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Got to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less.

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The South Dakota Stories, Volume 3. It was my first time traveling alone. Packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my dog, Randy. I don't know what I was searching for. Maybe it was something new with adventure. Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect. Filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers, whatever it was I set out to find. It was all there and more.

Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.