What’s the exact opposite of luxury German engineering?

 

A few weeks ago while I was in Miami doing girly things like bacheloretting and bridal dressing, Charlie was in Ohio doing equally masculine things at the ChumpCar Longer Longest Day race which takes place over a 25 hour, 25 minute, 25 seconds period of time.  It all seems to boil down to an all night race interrupted only by pouring fuel into the car every two hours.  Judging by the smell of Charlie’s belongings there is also a lot of fuel spilling and sweating involved.  Woof.

I know what you’re thinking, did Charlie bring a pig and a caja china? No, not this time.  One would assume the typical meals consumed at these races involve barbeque protein.  That isn’t too far off.  But since Charlie isn’t a man of averages, he takes his smoker (the size of a large mini-fridge) and a brisket and cooks that all day while they race. Once it’s time to eat, they indulge the way their paleolithic brethren would, except for with what appears to be plastic utensils and paper plates (cavemen didn’t have gasoline on their hands and under their nails).

 

 

The way Charlie describes the race it’s an adrenaline-filled fantasy, but once you see all of the safety gear they wear you realize they aren’t racing fluffy clouds.  I choose to focus on the fact that the cars in the race sometimes don’t even finish the race let alone go very fast, and also the fact that their car is an antique Volvo station wagon – a tank for all intents and purposes.

 

 

In the end they finished in 13th place out of 74 cars that managed to finish the race, which is great.  Congratulations, gentlemen!

 

All pictures courtesy of Drew.