Race Across Missouri - Recap

On September 26^th, Justin Meyer, representing Kansas City International Airport, and myself, representing Aristocrat Motors met at One Kansas City Place in downtown Kansas City, MO to answer a question that had been debated for several weeks: Is it faster to go from downtown KC to downtown St. Louis by car or by plane? We would race from the second tallest building in Missouri to the tallest, the Gateway Arch.

The Aristocrat Motors Porsche Panamera 4

At 8:30am, I met my partner, Vanessa Cumberford at my apartment just around the corner from the start. Vanessa, a representative of INK Magazine would be responsible for live-tweeting during the event to update our followers on the progress of our vehicle.

At the same time, Jake from Garmin International arrived with a series of GPS devices designed to help track our trip, as well as measure real-time speed and location data from within the Porsche Panamera I would be driving. As a side note, the rules specified that if I exceeded the posted speed limit at any point on the trip I would be immediately disqualified.

We left the Porsche in front of my apartment building and walked to the start, where Justin and I wished each other luck and counted down the time until the start.

At 9:30am Justin and I left from the start, with Vanessa and I sprinting to the car, while Justin leisurely walked to the nearest bus stop (to catch a 9:45 bus to the airport). We hopped in the car, and drove down Main St. to the nearest I-70 on ramp, where our journey was underway.

Justin, Kris, Vanessa, and Jake (From Garmin)

Justin’s bus left the downtown bus stop at approximately 9:45, and arrived at the airport around 10:44am , based on his Facebook check-in at KCI. At 10:44am, Vanessa and I were speeding along at 70 mph on I-70, without a bit of traffic in sight.

For the next hour and a half, we put major distance between Justin and the Porsche, passing Columbia, MO before he had even taken off.

Then at 12:05pm, everything changed. We were still plugging along at 70mph, and Justin was now traveling in excess of 350mph, as his Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 took-off for St. Louis.

Our Garmin Nuvi GPS unit has an incredible feature that predicts your time of arrival at a given destination, and it had us arriving at 1:27pm. We knew that Justin’s flight was to land at 12:55, giving him just over 30 minutes to get from the airport to the Arch via Taxi.

We were feeling confident. The drive thus far had been smooth sailing, and we had encountered little to no traffic the entire time. Then, St. Louis happened.

Entering the metro area, the speed limit slowed down to 60mph, and the local authorities decided that this would be a good day to pull over every single car between the arch and us. Sure, we were prohibited from speeding, but the dozen or so cars pulled over because of the speed traps caused traffic to slow considerably.

Eventually traffic flowed normally and we were back in the hunt. With downtown in sight we planned out where we would park, how to get to the arch, and tried to figure out just where Justin was.

With our Garmin showing 10 minutes to the destination, the in car phone system rang, and it was Justin. 

The race was over.

Figuring in the distance to the arch from the parking lot, we estimated that we had lost a race of over 250 miles by just 15 minutes.

We met him at the arch and congratulated him on the win.

On the way back, we had some time to reflect on the trip, and on the buzz that it generated… 500 + tweets under the #RaceAcrossMO hashtag, millions of impressions, and half of the trending topics at 2:30pm that day were related to the race.

We sincerely appreciate all of the support behind this event, which both of us will remember for a long time. 

The Panamera, after it was all over....

Aristocrat Porsche is a Porsche Dealership in Merriam, KS under the umbrella of Aristocrat Motors. Aristocrat Motors can be found on the web at www.AristocratMotors.com , on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/AristocratMotors, or on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/AristocratKC.

Race Across Missouri - Post #1

In five days time, I will be in a competition that spans the state of Missouri. At 9:30am local time, I will depart One Kansas City Place downtown for the St. Louis Arch in a 2011 Porsche Panamera. Justin Meyer, from the Kansas City International Airport will be headed to the same destination, but in a slightly different way. He will be taking a city bus to KCI, a Southwest Airlines flight to St. Louis, and then a city cab to the arch.

I don’t need to detract from air travel to extol the merits of driving. Simply put, I will be in a vehicle that has been designed to be luxurious, fun to drive, and above all, comfortable. These advantages all will be overshadowed by the fact that I am going to beat Justin, despite his ability to travel at speeds exceeding 400 miles per hour for a (small) part of the race. [Note- for those following along, I will be tracked by the good folks at Garmin to make sure I don’t break the speed limit, which would disqualify me]

Public transportation has its place, but at the heart of my win will be a victory for grand touring vehicles and the age old American road trip. We have the freedom to pack it all up and go wherever we want, without schedules and hassle is a spirit this country embodies.

Getting behind the wheel of a car of this caliber is an event in itself. Dr. Ferry Porsche, the founder of the company is famously quoted as saying “I could not buy the car of my dreams, so I decided to build it.” This is what the Porsche represents, dreams. Since a young boy I have dreamed about taking a cross country road trip in a car like this, with the sound of the engine and the open road. Win or lose (unlikely), this will be an experience that I will remember forever.

Can that be said for a bus, a coach class ticket, and a cab ride? I doubt it.

With due diligence, I write this post from a Chilis in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, en route to a training session in Newport Beach, CA. Obviously I am taking to the friendly skies in an effort to get their quickly, but I can’t stop but wonder how many more memories I would gain if I was in the Porsche.

Expect more posts of the smack-talk variety in the coming days, but I will end the post with a single question: Despite the final result of the competition, have I already won?