Alex Roy’s Official Team Polizei HQ Blog: Covering Cars, Driving, Races, Rallies, Technology & All Things Automotive. Facts & Figures? Go Somewhere Else.
We made it…and owe part of our success to Trapster. Don’t use it? Download it now. It’s free, and if you have an IPhone and like to drive…utterly indispensible. Of course, I use it on a Dash Express GPS as well…
…and today I’m off in Polizei 144B to visit Trapster HQ to learn its secrets straight from the source.
Polizei 144B has once again been freshly, er, refreshed by the Polizei stalwarts at Ai Design, Roy and Johnson are fueled on a cocktail of caffeine, their trademark manic banter and the Mission of Burma DLC for Rock Band (”That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate” being a deceptively tough track.) We’ll be overnighting in Oklahoma City with 2008 Gumball US champion Jack Wheeler, meeting up with Rene and then setting off for Los Angeles.
Why, you ask? Along the way, we’ll be testing numerous cutting edge GPS/logging/tracking hardware & software, starting with some very interesting gear from Team Polizei’s new allies over at EveryTrail.com, along with a lot of new and as-yet unrevealed gear and tactics.
We’re just on vacation, of course, and we’ll be sharing much more in the hours to come. Tonight. Live tracking. Video. Real-time logging and content. Trapster. Convoys….
Recognize that image? How about the map? Yes, the infamous Gumball ALK CoPilot live GPS track which inspired Polizei 144 uber-kreator Josh Vietze to create our first new shirt design in two years. (Hint: Here’s the back-story.)
I’ve left New York. What started as a ten-day trip to hammer out some business with Alex turned into five weeks of sleeping on his blue velour sectional, plenty of brainstorming, a ton of new friends and adventures the wooly world of startups that I couldn’t conceive of when I boarded that eastbound redeye in Sacramento over 4th of July weekend. But come to an end it has. We’re off to Monterey in 144B. We’ve enlisted the talents of Autoblog’s resident Northern California boy, Damon Lavrinc, to handle additional driving duties. We’re also attempting to warp the poor man’s brain. We’ve never attempted a driveplan that involved meeting an airline flight before, but that’s exactly what we’ll be attempting this time when we pick up Liz Moses.
She claims that she’ll bring some much-needed sense to the proceedings, but we’re a bit curious as to how much sense anyone who hitches a ride in a fake German police car crewed by a bald man, a bearded man and a blogging man could possibly have. Nevertheless, we intend to make our trek a memorable one. We’ll be broadcasting live video from Seero, as well as putting together one of our signature maps. We’ll be ruminating on the nature of driving in today’s America, passing through hamlets large and small as we travel the entire length of Interstate 80 — from the George Washington Bridge in New York to the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, then tooling down 101 through Silicon Valley and south to Steinbeck Country — where we’ll take in the goings on during what’s internationally recognized as the most fantastic collection of automotive events in one weekend. If you call yourself a car guy and haven’t made it to Monterey, mark your calendars. And once you experience it, you’ll want to come back every year.
We’ll see you on the shores of the Pacific. Meanwhile, consider 80 in 40: NY/SF a go.
Shot just days before this Audi R8 - appropriately code-named "Blackbird" - was shipped to the start of this year’s Bullrun, Alex Roy interviewed the car’s anonymous owner on what even he admits may be the most technologically advanced rally car on the road.
Can you say, "liquid-cooled, infra-sonic, pulse generator?"
Polizei M5 144B was attacked by New York’s infamously skilled car thieves last night whilst briefly parked on the street. Yes. I’m an idiot, but I’ve parked 144A and B - fully stickered - on numerous streets in dozens of countries throughout the world, and never had a problem.
144B won, of course, surviving with only a broken passenger window, a well-abused yet-still-functional ignition cylinder, and the loss of but two of its four Garmin GPS units.
Given the surreal deterrent effect our Polizei livery has had on both law enforcement and civilians in the past, I’ve been grappling with the psychology of these particular thieves. The questions:
I’ve never understood houseboats. Bad houses, worse boats. How many seemingly congruous combo "things" have ever been as good as their separate components? TV/VCR’s? No. TV’s can last decades, yet VCRs seldom last 5 years. TV/DVD players? Same problem. SUV’s? If you want a sports car yet need a truck, even a Porsche Cayenne Turbo isn’t as good a sports car or truck as the Porsche Cayman S and Ford F-150 you could buy for the Cayenne’s $115,000+.
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