GUEST BLOG: JOEY REDMOND>> GUMBALL 3000 PART3

May 19, 2009
by TheSpeedhunters
7 comments

The journey continues down our Gumball 3000 path as we are nearing the home stretch of my trip at least. Through Part 1 and Part 2 you have followed us on quite some adventures surrounded by some truly amazing exotics. Sadly my journey would be coming to an early finish but you’ll have to keep reading Part 3 to find out what went down in the Louisiana Bayou!

The W Hotel in Dallas, Texas was great to everyone on the rally but we had a fun drive through the heart of Texas and into New Orleans ahead of us for the day. Most people had a hard time climbing out of bed at this point in the rally.

Here is the Jaguar XJ220 people have been requesting pictures of driven by Maximillion Cooper (Mr. Gumball 3000) himself.

That morning at the W many cars were starting to show battle scars and some road wear. This photo was taken of the sheik’s Drop Head Coupe that morning in valet. The cars would only be more destroyed as our trek to Miami, Florida went on.

The driver to Louisiana was pretty uneventful in it’s first leg. Dare I say too uneventful for a leg of the Gumball 3000? Everyone headed to Texas with some unpleasant weather on the radar but we trekked on. I snapped this photo of Yo from Rogue Status somewhere in the great big state of Texas. The lone Silvia on the rally he is even sporting a Wreckedmagazine.com sticker on his door along with his other “flare” has he called it.

Rolling into some town for a quick bite we ran into Dennis Rodman in his International truck and a few other Gumball cars. The guy in this Porsche GT3 were afraid their headlight was going to come off after the bracket snapped on the road so they taped the front of the Porsche up to keep it in place.

After a couple more hours we finished up our trip on I-10 and wound up in New Orleans, Louisiana. I hadn’t really been to the city since around 9 months after Hurricane Katrina and the place looks much better. We were in store for a quite a night of trouble on Bourbon Street.

The cops were all over downtown New Orleans as the Gumball 3000 team rolled in.

The final group of cars started to roll in as nighttime fell upon New Orleans that is when the real fun begins in this city.

Once morning arrived everyone rushed to pack up his or her belonging and trek the longest leg of the Gumball 3000 rally into Orlando, Florida. This was going to be a hard leg, as the slower cars couldn’t make it into Orlando before nightfall no matter what they did. Given the fact most of us were up all night in New Orleans wasn’t going to help forward progress either.

This Nissan GT-R shows a gorgeous look of grime after driving through a day of rain and plowing through bugs down the I-10.

The day is officially on as we are off for a long hike down the I-10. Little did I know what awaited me just past this bridge down the road before even making it to Mississippi.

This is my last memory of the Gumball 3000 rally before things went into full panic mode. While sitting in traffic we managed to avoid most of it but drove down some sketchy Louisiana back roads. We ended up running over a huge nail in the road. On the bridge the nail was inside and sealing the tire so we trekked on in traffic. Once traffic cleared while I monitored the tire pressure system we started gaining speed. With a loud pop and a crack the nail flew out of the tire and immediately we got an unsafe operation error on the car (our fourth one of the trip mind you.)

We limped the car off the highway and wound up in front of a dealership row. We selected a General Motors dealership in Slidell, Louisiana. Robert Levis Chevrolet to be exact. They of course stocked no 19-inch wheels that we needed but had one on a Corvette in the showroom. After some schmoozing we couldn’t convince them to sell us the tire on the Corvette so we kept looking for alternate plans as the mechanics worked on the car.

I got on the phone with some friends at General Motors HQ and Andy Williamson at Theory PR who tried to help us lend the Corvette tire and overnight them a new one. Sadly the dealerships are privately owned so we couldn’t really work that out either.

At this time I was going to surely miss my flight that waited for me in Orlando, Florida so I had to make some quick booking arrangements and ring a car service from New Orleans that was 45 miles away for a ride to the airport. I found a Delta flight that left in 4 hours and someone to pick me up. The Bentley ended up getting fixed up after some more hours of hunting and they rolled into Orlando, Florida late that night and finished the rally. As for me, I made it to Formula Drift Round 2 for WreckedMagazine.com. Mike Garrett here at Speedhunters has done a great job producing you guys content from the best drifting event I attended to date. That was my Gumball experience and I am ready for the 2010 rally. Hopefully a little smatter, wiser, and educated but if one thing will be changing I will not hold my faith in British engineering.