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Mark Wulfe:
From The Aasgaard Company studios in beautiful Wichita Falls, Texas... From the finest mind in the modern fitness industry... The One True Voice in the strength and conditioning profession... The most important podcast on the internet... Ladies and gentlemen! Starting Strength Radio.

Mark Rippetoe:
Welcome back to Starting Strength Radio. It's Friday and so are you. So here we are. And on Friday, we put up, as you know, a new episode of Starting Strength Radio. And in these trying times, we have been searching for some some spiritual relief from all the chaos and chickenshit that surrounds us on a daily basis.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, we've got... On the one hand, we have people saying that if you leave your house without your mask on, you're going to die. And on the other hand, we have people saying that if you leave the house without your mask on, you're going to kill their grandfather.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'm tired of all this shit. So we're going to talk to Fred Ashmore today. And Fred is the embodiment of Fucking that. All right, Fred, thank you for being with us. I appreciate you and I appreciate your time.

Mark Rippetoe:
And let's start off by saying Fred is the current holder of the Cannonball Run record. And that was twenty five hours, fifty five minutes. Is that? Do I have the time, right?

Fred Ashmore:
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for having me here today.

Mark Rippetoe:
Fred, Is that a... All right. Let's we want to talk about the Cannonball Run for for a while. And because... For those of you detached, safety conscious people that are watching the podcast right now that don't know what the Cannonball Run is: Grow the fuck up, man.

Mark Rippetoe:
Cannonball run's important. And it's been important for a very long time because it is a rallying point for crazy people. OK. And Fred has gotten something accomplished here that nobody's ever even come close to.

Mark Rippetoe:
So, Fred, Cannonball Run is what? Let's.. It is a race against time across the country. It starts in what garage in Brooklyn?

Fred Ashmore:
It starts at the red ball garage in New York City and it goes to Portofino in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles.

Mark Rippetoe:
And the total distance is... Is it.... You can go any way you want to between these two points or is it a is it stipulated the highway route and everything?

Fred Ashmore:
No, there's no stipulation on highway route. It is your preferred route. The fastest route you can possibly get to L.A. And I've actually done both routes. I've done the northern route and I've done the southern route and set records on both of them, so.

Mark Rippetoe:
So what's the total mileage on the longest one?

Fred Ashmore:
Southern route is we call it twenty eight hundred and change. It's it's anywhere from twenty eight hundred to twenty eight hundred and twenty depending on different routes or bypasses and things. You may have to take.

Fred Ashmore:
The northern route tends to be a little bit longer depending on which, which route you take. And that's, that's closer to twenty eight twenty is kind of the shortest distance on the northern route.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. So they're both a little bit more than twenty eight hundred miles.

Fred Ashmore:
Correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you did that in twenty five hours and 55 minutes. 112 miles an hour average speed. That's the average speed. An average speed of 112 miles an hour.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, this is interesting. And if if you're not interested in this, something's wrong with you. All right. If you're not interested in this, your estrogen is too high. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
So this thing starts from this garage in Brooklyn. And is there any time of day that it is traditionally started? Morning. Afternoon. Does it matter? Probably better to get the hell out of New York at midnight or one o'clock in the morning wouldn't it?

Fred Ashmore:
Everything really is kind of, you know, up to you. When you do the transcontinental runs you choose everything. You choose the day. You choose the time you leave. You choose the month. You choose the weather. I mean, most people you do these runs based on the weather. So you actually choose pretty much everything you want to choose in regards to in regards to, you know, your your journey on a transcontinental run.

Mark Rippetoe:
So when did you choose to leave?

Fred Ashmore:
I made the choice that I was going to do something a little unorthodox and I actually chose a weekday, strangely enough. And I chose a weekday because with the covid the way it was reacting around the New York City hub area, there was more traffic coming in during the weekday than there was going out.

Mark Rippetoe:
Is that the opposite of normal?

Fred Ashmore:
Yes, in a lot of aspects, because during normal times and stuff, you have people coming in and out of the city in the morning during a weekday travelling to and from work. But with the New York and its its semi-lockdown, people kind of had enough of their shit and, you know, started doing things on weekends. So the weekend road started picking up a fair amount of traffic.

Fred Ashmore:
So I actually went around the normal of leaving on a weekend and I found a weekday basically that had the least amount of traffic leaving the city.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, now let's further explain why yours is different than the way most of the most people that approach this have approach the Cannonball Run and, you know, everybody else that does this does it as a team. There's a couple of guys in the car. Sometimes three guys in the car.

Mark Rippetoe:
I remember the team that did this thing couple of months ago had an extremely expensive, custom made Mercedes. Which what what Mercedes was it?

Fred Ashmore:
It was an AMG Mercedes that was the base of their.

Mark Rippetoe:
AMG shop, highly modified, extremely fast Amg Mercedes. Four door. One guy in the back seat running nav. Two guys in the front seat. One driving, the other one running radar detector or whatever the situation was. And those guys beat the piss out of the record by about an hour. And then you come along and murder them by something n like two hours.

Mark Rippetoe:
And look, everybody listen carefully, boys and girls. Fred was by himself in a rented Mustang GT. And this crazy person that you see in on the screen next to me right here rented a Mustang GT -- and I don't guess we need to talk about what company you rented it from -- but just rented the car, took it to the shop, took the backseats out, took the passenger seats out of the goddamn thing and put gas tanks in in the front seat, front passenger seat and the back seat. And another gas tank, I believe in the trunk.

Fred Ashmore:
Correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
And filled the damn thing up.

Mark Rippetoe:
So here is this person who is driving at an average of one hundred and twelve miles per hour, completely surrounded by hundreds of gallons of flammable liquid.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, that's cool, right? Now who doesn't think that's fucking cool? You know, that's just that's that's that's fucking amazing.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you rented the car. Let's not say the rent company name because they don't need to know and we don't need to know. But you rented a car. And how long did it take you to get the thing ready to do the trip?

Fred Ashmore:
Realistically, it took me it took me about two to three days to get everything done. I sourced the tanks. I had to get the car first. And then I had to start measuring the seat, the seat area in the back, and then in finding tanks that were legitimate enough to make this run. And I was I wasn't just throwing in five gallon cans and running siphon hoses out of them.

Fred Ashmore:
I want to optimize my my area with the amount of fuel so that the first tank that was on the way back is actually the tank that was in my 2019 record setting Cobra and that's fifty, fifty two gallons. And that actually slid right in the trunk of the 2019 GT. So I already had that tank, the other two tanks I had to source on Marketplace. Make sure they were semi-legitimate certified tank and they fit in the actual areas I needed them to.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And how did you strap them down? Just tie wraps or what?

Fred Ashmore:
Everything was actually bolted down with safety straps. The back, the rear tank, was actually tied right into the tie downs of the back seat. And the middle tank was tied down between the seat belt buckles and the child safety seat holds and was actually tied down via those as well as the passenger side straps were actually hooked down with the seat bolts to the floor and then tightened down.

Mark Rippetoe:
Had you had already engineered the setup before you rented the car or did you rent a car and then crawl in the backseat, pull the seats out and see what you were going to do?

Fred Ashmore:
Basically, I had to get the car in my possession first to decide, you know, several things. You know, where I was going to access the fuel delivery on the car, what size tanks I needed and and how I was basically going to balance out this amount of fuel throughout the entire car. A lot of people just think that there was one hundred and thirty gallon gas tank hooked on the back bumper of this car and I was driving like a maniac.

Mark Rippetoe:
You were driving like a maniac, but that's kind of part of the deal, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
So this took you three days to get from the time you picked the car up to the time you left the red ball garage?

Fred Ashmore:
Correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
Man, that's a lot of work. It's a hell of a bunch work in three days. And how many people did you have helping you with that part of it?

Fred Ashmore:
A good friend of mine in Oklahoma had a shop and and did help me with minor things, but for the most part, I did pretty much everything myself as far as, you know, finding the tanks, putting them in the car.

Fred Ashmore:
You know, he had he had a real reaction like most people do, you know, what the hell are you doing with this brand new car in my garage tearing it all apart? He obviously thought I was crazy. So he just kind of looked and laughed and watched me go to work on what I was doing.

Mark Rippetoe:
This took place in Oklahoma?

Fred Ashmore:
Correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you did the modifications in Oklahoma?

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, I actually rented the car in Tulsa. And I have a home in Oklahoma as well that I purchased earlier this year. And it actually really worked out good because my friends and stuff from the area where the guys that I hired to refuel the car just off the interstate at the halfway mark.

Mark Rippetoe:
So Tulsa's about halfway?

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, Tulsa's about your halfway mark.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's interesting. So what was the total fuel capacity of the the gas tanks and the the onboard OEM tank?

Fred Ashmore:
I figured it out to approximately one hundred and thirty gallons. You know, there's residual in there, some you aren't going to get out.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. It's hard to tell.

Fred Ashmore:
127 to 130.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. And one refueling did the whole did the whole thing? So 260 gallons got you to Redondo Beach. Well, that's that's pretty good gas mileage, really.

Fred Ashmore:
Twelve twelve point three is what it said on the dashboard.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's not bad. You know. Twelve point three.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I noted in the story that I read about this, that your your statement was, I found this fascinating, that no matter what anybody tells you, a Mustang GT will not go any faster than one hundred and fifty nine and a half miles an hour.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, think of the enormity of that statement. Yeah, it's a it's a that's a that's quite a statement. I mean, you actually know, don't you? It's just it's governed at one hundred and fifty nine and a half mile an hour, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Why did they pick that number? Why did Ford decide on a hundred and fifty nine and a half for the governor? Oh, God. That's just that's insanity.

Mark Rippetoe:
So, you know, I've never spoken to anybody that's done this, done this this race before, it is a it's a race against time. It's not two cars. There's just one car and a clock. As I mentioned previously, most people have a crew with them. Most guy...most people that are driving have a standby guy, or at least at least one, maybe two. And the driving is divided between the two people. You drove this thing and stopped for fuel once.

Fred Ashmore:
Eight minutes.

Mark Rippetoe:
Eight minutes was the fuel stop. I guess you just peed in the floor of the car. This has to obviously be explained when you turn it in, but...

Fred Ashmore:
No, large Gatorade bottles work well.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, let's remember that. Right. Right. Right. Got that? And you know, and I think it's significant that that Fred tells us that it's a large Gatorade bottle.

Fred Ashmore:
So I just don't want anyone to think...

Mark Rippetoe:
No I wouldn't want anybody to think that anybody that would do this and they could even use a small Gatorade bottle.

[off-camera]:
Or was it a Mexican Coke bottle?

Mark Rippetoe:
No, no, no. It wasn't one of those.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you carried food. You had you had some Gatorade. You get stuff and so you don't have to stop. Twenty five and almost twenty six hours is a hell of a long time stay awake in a situation like this. And you got, you know, you can pull over and change out drivers and which obviously costs time, if you've got a driver to change out with. How did you stay awake for this whole deal? Just Vivarin?

Fred Ashmore:
It's not terribly unusual for me to stay up these long amounts of hours. When I did the run in 2019 I stayed up the whole thirty two hours for that run as well and stayed up the rest of the day after I'd gotten there.

Mark Rippetoe:
Guess, the adrenaline probably.

Fred Ashmore:
I normally drive, I normally drive 20 hours and sleep four when I bootleg for people. So realistically, staying up another five or six hours when you're used to staying up 20 isn't a big deal.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. You're already adapted to that.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
So when you bootleg for people, what are you doing? Corn whiskey or something else? Or should I even ask?

Fred Ashmore:
No major contraband. Let's put it that way. Like a lot of times somebody'll buy a new hundred or two hundred thousand dollar camper across the country and then want it to go the 4th of July weekend. And where a CDL guy can't do it, they'll call me and I'll head out across the country and go get their one hundred, two hundred thousand dollar camper for the weekend.

Fred Ashmore:
Or they'll want their new sports car for the weekend from California back to Maine or wherever. And they just can't get it here. So they'll hire somebody like me and I'll go get it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, have you got a website, Fred? We need tp plug you -- a book? Video? Something?

Fred Ashmore:
I just I just have the black book. People that know me give me a call and if they need a hand with something, they they holler at me.

Mark Rippetoe:
You've got to get a little chain of contact there. Well, it's interesting.

Mark Rippetoe:
So tell us about the drive. Tell us about the drive. Was it eventful? Was this... you've done these before... How did this one compare to the previous times?

Fred Ashmore:
This one was was obviously different because I've only done one other solo. And this was the fastest one by all means. Really, it's hard to make it exciting because there's so much monotony going on for twenty six hours. I mean, most people can't sit in their living room for four hours and and binge watch a TV without getting up and go into the bathroom or goint to make something to eat.

Fred Ashmore:
So really, you know, once they got out of New York and got on the road and everything starts being taken out by math calculations and checking in with my brother back home to try to get my marks. Watching for cops.

Fred Ashmore:
The first half of the trip, other than a little construction here or there where I get on the wrong side of the cones, you know, to get around people. Other than that, the first half, the trip was highly uneventful.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Well, it's just passing a bunch of cars all day. It's one after another, passing a whole bunch of cars.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, I. All right. Here's a just full disclosure here. I've got two fast cars. All right. I've got an 11, 2011 Shelby Cobra GT 500 Mustang. It's a death trap. I don't recommend anybody drive it. It's a fucking death trap. It's about three times as fast as the suspension is designed for. It's a idiots car. It's like a really, really, really fast dump truck. All right. And I have in addition to that, I have a 2008 model BMW M6 with a six liter stroker motor in it that is that is of it's also stupid, but it's drivable and the Mustang is not.

Mark Rippetoe:
The with the the the the M6 at one hundred and thirty miles an hour drives just like it does at 75 miles an hour. It just gets faster and it sucks down on the highway at one hundred and twenty miles an hour. The Mustang is about to leave the pavement. Yeah, I mean it, you'll just wad yourself up in the bar ditch in that damn thing. I just at that stupid car.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't know how they designed it that badly, but it's just... God, I hate it. But it starts and it runs and it's kind of dependable transportation. So I haven't sold it yet, but I don't like driving near as much as I do the M6.

Mark Rippetoe:
My question, when I first heard this, that you had done this this thing: Is that is was this a 2020 GT that you rented or 19? It was a 19. Has that car been redesigned since the eleven? That's a seventh gen, seventh generation.

Fred Ashmore:
A different animal. A completely different animal.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, thank God. I've got a I've got a hard straight rear end in this and you've got independent rear suspension. That had to make a big giant difference.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh yeah, definitely does. It helps the car plant better and corner, especially with the added fuel in the back of the car. My first experience with that was when I built my COBRA for 2019. It was a seventy nine Mustang wide body Cobra from Miami Vice. But I put two thousand and one Cobra Powertrain in it. So I had IRS and a wide body kit. So the car was quite wider normal and it was, it was just night and day from any body I'd ever gotten into.

Fred Ashmore:
And moving into this car. This car was a very refined, way better version of what I had before. It's just a just a way better car.

Mark Rippetoe:
Ford did that, though. This was a stock. Stock rental. Right? Stock G.T. five. And that's a... Is that a five liter? V8

Fred Ashmore:
A five liter. It's a premium. It has a drag pack in it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Now, I think mine's a five point four aluminum motor. It it's it's it's scary fast. It's got that blower on it and shit. You stick your foot in that thing and it just every time you do that, the back end is going to come out from under you. It's just it's a it's an idiot's car. It really is.

Mark Rippetoe:
And and if, you know, I probably will sell it before I get killed in it. Because I just dislike driving the damn thing because it's so different.

Fred Ashmore:
If you can't enjoy driving them....

Mark Rippetoe:
The damn thing. I mean, why else have the thing, you know? If I want to just for transportation, I'd get a Camry. Right? What's wrong with the Camry? Nothing. Except it's a Camry. You know,

Fred Ashmore:
It does just look as cool.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, no, it doesn't. I mean, I you know, I pull up to the gas station in that. In my in my shelby and all kids. Oh, man, nice car. You get compliments. Three, four people pull through and say what? That's a great car, man. Nice car. Right. I pull up to the in the gas station and the BMW and nobody knows what the hell it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of people that have remarked on that, even though it's a that's a seven hundred and twenty five horsepower car. And normally aspirated seven hundred twenty five horsepower. Oh, it's a it's it's vicious, but it but it's a pleasure to drive, but it's a BMW, which means that it's a piece of junk despite the fact that it is a nice car and fun to drive.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's a... BMW's are essentially computers with a car. With a car built around it what it is. And if is there some problem with the computer? You know, I I've talked to people who've had BMW, so I say the first time when the lights on the dash comes on, about forty thousand miles, trade it in.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh. Yes. I agree. I've heard it 100 times.

Mark Rippetoe:
Get out of there. Yeah. You do not want to own the thing. You want to lease it. So and this is thankfully what you did with the Mustang.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the trip itself was rather uneventful. No wrecks, no ticket.

Fred Ashmore:
For the first half of it. When I got to St. Louis, we had put down a pretty good pretty fast number as far as averaging. And then I got tailed right after between St. Louis and Tulsa. I had a good tail of pretty hard. And right after I got tailed...

Mark Rippetoe:
What did that involve?

Fred Ashmore:
Just a just. Just an officer come up behind me and rode on the back of my car at the at the speed limit for a little while and started taking away from my average.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you had to slow down when that happened and then he turned around and left when he got to the edge of his jurisdiction. And then you ramped it back up.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. And I brought it back up. And what you do on these runs is you try to make as much cushion as you can on the front side because you always start losing on the other side of the country, it's it's just the way it is.

Fred Ashmore:
People think you can drive faster on the Westerns, but you've lost so many things. You've lost your your. You're you're as aware. You're not as on point. You're not as pumped up. You don't have as much adrenaline going.

Mark Rippetoe:
You're tired. You're getting exhausted. Sure.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. Yeah. Your attention span kind of goes away. So you want to build as much as you can on what we call, you know, the right hand side of the country. You want to get on that, get a good buffer. You know, if you have a number you're looking at, you want to have that buffer by the time you get... I would say to St. Louis, really.

Fred Ashmore:
And we had a good buffer. And then right after St. Louis, you know, little things started happening. I was tailed for a little while and then I caught an officer. Catching an officer is just as bad as getting tailed.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, God almighty. Yeah. You're prima facia convicted if you do that.

Fred Ashmore:
So you just you just kind of follow along. And I got through Tulsa. Once that guy got off, I made some blistering time in Tulsa. And right after Tulsa was where my fuel stop was and I got off and pulled in behind and they fueled me up with the bolt truck, with a 20 gallon per minute pump and I was gone.

Fred Ashmore:
And I was I was already at one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty when I got a message from the guys refueling me and the police were there.

Mark Rippetoe:
Wow. How'd they know?

Fred Ashmore:
Apparently there I got called in company through Tulsa or I got spotted just off the interstate.

Mark Rippetoe:
Somebody spotted you being fueled. Called it in. And so what did they say to the fuel crew that came in pulling it? Don't do that.

Fred Ashmore:
They really didn't even. They didn't even really confront him. But the guys that I don't think they really knew who they were looking for other than the silver Mustang. So my buddies actually took some pictures of the police officers and sent them to me. And we laughed about it. And I got out of Dodge.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, that's great.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the trip wraps up in California, in L.A. County. And that's at a hotel in Redondo Beach. So know when you're leaving, when you're leaving Brooklyn, when you're coming in to Redondo Beach. What do you do? Do you speed limit there or in and essentially what time you've made, you've already made or do you push on it even then?

Fred Ashmore:
Well, I actually got... Once I got to California, I got held up at the agricultural checkpoint. Which they with the whole covid thing they were little more scrupulous than they have been in the past of stopping cars to check them. And I actually lost, you know, 20 minutes there at the checkpoint.

Mark Rippetoe:
In a line. Backed up. Them checking for grapefruit coming into California.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. I think it was a double kind of a double whammy here where parts California was shut down there. They are also asking people I got asked what my business was because obviously I was in a Texas car. The car had Texas plates on it. And I basically told the guy I was an essential worker and I was reporting for work and bringing all my stuff. So, you know, when he is quick, I glanced my car. It was kind of, you know, OK, well get out of here. But I still had to sit in that line and wait to get the front. And they tore some east car apart ahead of me.

Mark Rippetoe:
So this thing might have been twenty five hours and 30 minutes had there been no damn line. That's nuts. So the previous fastest run of this thing was what?

Fred Ashmore:
My previous?

Mark Rippetoe:
No. The previous fastest run.

Fred Ashmore:
The previous one that we know about that - it's kinda sort of been released was the the twenty six thirty eight that some, some guys did in the Audi. And they, it's got a lot of press and it got a lot of credit and these guys just kind of fell off the face of the earth. It was it was kind of weird the way the whole thing took place. It was all built three way up high and then just like a balloon deflated and was gone. So that the fastest number that somebody had said was twenty six, thirty eight. But there was no there were no names, no faces.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, that's not official then. Obviously nobody owns up to it. It didn't occur.

Fred Ashmore:
And they, they used the name Captain Chaos and things like that.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, fuck those guys. If they don't like that, they can call me.

Mark Rippetoe:
What makes it official?

Fred Ashmore:
Really. You got to. You going to have some proof. You have to have documentation. You have to have some some footage or stuff on your phone to show the places you were, timestamped. A lot of people ask me if I had filmed the run, and it's just like I'm not an idiot. I find a different category is a lot of these teams that do these runs because I'm subject to prosecution, because I'm the only person in the car.

Fred Ashmore:
If it's me, you and another guy did it or even me and you. And they said. Well, you sped across the country, I say, well, no, that was Mark.

Mark Rippetoe:
And you've got no proof to do the contrary.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, exactly. So. So for me, I had to do everything I could to document my run with photos and witnesses and stuff, you know, without incriminating myself to the point where, say, for instance, if I gave you information, that's not it. It doesn't have information that could cause you to get pulled into court or you to get subpoena or to turn things over.

Fred Ashmore:
Road and Track saw my my proof. Ed Bolian from Wikipedia looked it over in person. I brought my brother with me. He brought his evidence with him.

Fred Ashmore:
And, you know, everything is there. The fact why they say, I don't have the same proof - I didn't have anybody else in the car. Who is this guy? It's not like he had somebody sitting with me the whole time.

Mark Rippetoe:
There wasn't any room for anybody else in the car.

Fred Ashmore:
Strap him on the roof.

Mark Rippetoe:
Put him on the roof. Oh god.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, this is this is a fascinating process. And those of us amateurs that just have fast cars and drive them too fast risk getting a ticket. What do you do on in a in a in a race like this and a timed event to keep from getting thrown your ass in jail? Because if they catch you going one hundred and fifty nine and a half miles an hour, I mean that's not a ticket. That's not a ticket. That's a see the judge in the morning. Right?

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. Exactly. Definitely. And Doug Doug Doug is a good friend of mine, Doug and Arnie, the guys who set the record in the in the AMG. And Doug Doug and I had dinner over Christmas when we started talking about his time and I basically told Doug, I don't know if this is beatable by hours.

Fred Ashmore:
And he said, really, I only think it can be beat if somebody just doesn't give a shit. And it gets about all the all the foolishness of worried about this or worried about that. And first and foremost, straight off the bat, that's that's where I started.

Fred Ashmore:
I started up with saying. Plan on going to jail. If you go to jail, pick up the pieces afterwards and sort it out. And so so number one about staying out of jail. You have to forget about going to jail,

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not a factor, it can't be a factor or you can't do this. Right?

Fred Ashmore:
Just stop worrying about it. Just, you know, just stop worrying about going to jail. So I actually.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's not that big a deal anyway. Really. I mean I've been in jail. It's just, you know, you get out the next day and everything's fine. But you... So, yeah. That that's not even a factor. That's not something you worry about.

Mark Rippetoe:
But if you're going to complete a run, you've got to have some interdiction going on to keep that from happening or you wasted the whole effort. So what do you do?

Fred Ashmore:
So, you know, the first thing I did is I sourced a bunch of my - countermeasures is what we call them - from my 2019 Mustang cobra. And one of those is an ALP. It's called a "parking system." And what it actually is, it's a laser jammer and...

Mark Rippetoe:
It's a parking system. I see.

Fred Ashmore:
So, you set that car all up with these sensors on it and you reformat it so that it jams the lasers from the police officers. That's that's one of the countermeasures I have. I also use a Uniden R three, which at the time was one of the latest greatest radar detectors out there.

Mark Rippetoe:
So that's a KA band sensitive thing, right?

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, everything's KA, X, the whole whole works. And so I use that as my radar detector. I used Waze, which is based upon his father. You're probably familiar with that. And I also use Google Maps because Google Maps actually, they say they've started putting a monitoring police officers on Google Maps as well.

Fred Ashmore:
So and one of the important things in - and a lot of people don't talk about this - is making sure both your Waze, Android, Google Maps are on the same route. Because they're being formatted differently, they'll reroute you different ways.

Mark Rippetoe:
I guess they would.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. So if you don't sync them so that they're they're both on the same route, you can wind up one telling you to turn this way and one time you turn that way. If one thinks that Main Street's faster than High Street, just just as a for instance.

Fred Ashmore:
So I use those as my countermeasures. There's no thermal scopes on the car. There's there's not - I could never run them, I'm just one person. A lot of it beyond that was, you know, setting up my mirrors appropriately so I could see see like as soon as I go under an overpass, I could see the on ramp from that side to see if there's an officer sitting there. A.

Fred Ashmore:
Lot of it's predetermined spotting. When you do this stuff, you learn to look for certain things, like on overpasses, sitting in the median under overpasses, certain areas of road where you can see that there's a crossover ahead where a cop could be sitting behind a berm or , you know, a piece of construction equipment or anything like that.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. You just get used to looking for the topography and the landscape and the construction and the engineering. And this is the speed trap. I'm coming up on... If they're not using this as a speed trap, they're fools.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
So you're immediately aware of all that stuff. But so how many times did you run into a situation on the trip? Oh, that... I mean, you see a KA band, and going one hundred and fifty nine and a half miles an hour. I mean, my detectors.. I've got I've got Belltronix RX65 and I've got a I've got a red line.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I... You know, the red line is pretty good and I can see a KA band - depending on the depending on the landscape - seven or eight miles out. You know. It depends on the landscape. And if you're coming up over a hill, you may not be able to see that. And going that fast it's hard to react quickly enough to keep from getting from getting popped.

Mark Rippetoe:
Because KA band, for those who don't understand it, that they can't read your speed before you read, their beam. You'll see that way ahead of the time that that the their machine is picking up your actual data that they detect. We detect them before they can detect us. And so you have some reaction time on on a deal like that. In a KA band situation, you just stomp on the on the brakes. These are factory brakes on this car. They're not that good.

Fred Ashmore:
They're they're probably better than the GT 500.

Mark Rippetoe:
Any brakes are better than those damn things, I'm telling you. I think the back rotors on that thing are two hundred millimeters. They're little bitty bicycle looking things. They're horrible.

Mark Rippetoe:
But, now in the BMW, I can get that thing shut down. It's got,it's got custom Brembo 380s or something like that, but they're that that's that car slows down real, real fast. But in a situation like that, you run up on a KA band signal. What do you do? Just stomp on the brakes?

Fred Ashmore:
KA signal, you know, for the most part, I didn't run into a lot of them, number one. And number two, the ones the ones that I did run into, you'd start blending in. You tried to start blending and you start trying to, you know, get slowed down, maybe get to the right lane. If you're in the left lane, try to get over to the right lane so that you're not a sitting duck.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. You're not there by yourself in the gun.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. You try to you try to give them the reasonable doubt that it's not you. That's that's just, you know, it's kind of standard procedure. A lot of times I would pick them up on Waze. Somebody may have already marked some. So I was already slowed down.

Fred Ashmore:
I really never had an issue with the KA Band in that capacity where I hadn't already seen them either on Waze or spotted them way ahead. It just wasn't an issue on this run.

Fred Ashmore:
Now, in the past, what we do is we've run the brake lights and we as soon as we had something like that, would shut our brake lights and slam on the brakes. So wherever they were, if they were behind us or whereve, you'd slam on the brakes, they couldn't see you slow down. And, you know, back to the same thing, kind of give them the, you know, could have been that guy because the brake lights didn't ome on.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. So you use a brake light killer on this thing. How long does it take to put that thing on?

Fred Ashmore:
Oh the brake light killer oh, it's it's really easy. All you have to do is interrupt the signal and by the brake pedal pedal.

Mark Rippetoe:
So it's down under the dash.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. It's just a toggle switch. It's really easy to install those. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
It could be handy. I might need to think about that.

Mark Rippetoe:
So did you see anybody, any agency's running K band radar?

Fred Ashmore:
No, I didn't. K band I. I seldom if ever see K bands on any of the major interstates across the United States.

Mark Rippetoe:
We've got them around here. The county around here runs about, oh, probably half of their vehicles are K band. They're old units and stuff. But I mean, you've got to pay attention to that. The problem is, is you get so many false K band signals from door openers that it gets confusing. X-band I pay any attention to any more. But the K Band stuff can be a problem if the agencies are still running it because some of the low budget places are still running that that system.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, definitely. Well, the thing about that, though, is, like you said it, though, is counties. It's not very often that you're running and running up on sheriff's departments on the interstate. Not not where I run anyway.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, yeah that's a good point. You know, it's state police and local.

Fred Ashmore:
It is highway patrol or state police. Right. And you're 100 percent right as far as the KA band on the smaller, smaller groups and individuals. But running across country, you're just not seeing those smaller police departments on the interstate running radar. They just aren't there.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right, they're out in the county.

Fred Ashmore:
Not my experience anyway. Somebody's out there can be all I've seen.

Mark Rippetoe:
And maybe you could see one or two. But by and large, interstate highways are state police jurisdiction. And that's who that's who runs out there. And I'm seeing here in Texas, I'm seeing some some cars, some DPs cars with laser. And you didn't used to see that.

Mark Rippetoe:
You come up on somebody parked at 90 degrees to the pavement. They are probably lasering your ass. YAnd I had a ticket about two years ago in a situation like that. And man, he was right. He was in a perfect place. He was in a perfect place. He'd nailed my ass. And I was going prior to that, I'd probably been up at around 98.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'd gotten it down to about eighty five in the seventy five. So coming up over a hill, I just felt like something just didn't look good, so I shut it down a little bit. Still got a ticket.

Mark Rippetoe:
But yeah. I mean, Laser's hard. Laser's hard. It is, yeah. It's you know. There's not a lot of stuff on line about laser jammers. I've looked and I kind of think that all of it is kept in-house. You can read up on laser jammers and they're hard to locate and...

Mark Rippetoe:
There is, of course, that paint they used to sell for headlights. And And that thing used to be for sale. But a laser jammer is a fairly complicated system, isn't it? I mean, you have to and you have to install multiple emitters at various places on the front of the car and all those things have to be coordinated into a central system. And and I mean, what is a what is a laser jammer system properly installed actually cost? Two or three grand?

Fred Ashmore:
Properly installed, depending on how many sensors you end up using, I want to say ours done with all the upgrades and everything was right around three thousand dollars.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, that sounds about right. You know, which is outside the scope of most people's budget.

Fred Ashmore:
But, if you want to drive fast and you want to keep your license.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's what you do.

Fred Ashmore:
If you pay that for an attorney trying to get you out...

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, you know, that's a good point.

Mark Rippetoe:
So. Who manufactures laser jammers? Is there one company doing this or is this kind of a cottage industry that two or three guys are doing and in the garage and selling, you know, bootleg around black market kind of shit? Or what's the...

Fred Ashmore:
Pretty pretty much the standard that ever anybody uses - and it's called a parking system - is ALP's system. And what that does is it's a you reprogram it so basically all it does is it's set up to jam lasers.

Mark Rippetoe:
So the thing is designed to allow you to park the car with sensor information coming in from these emitters that tells you where the front car, the car in front is, car on the back side, curb, all that other stuff. So you've got you've probably got emitters on both sides of the car front and back, right? And you reprogram for being emitters to receivers.

Fred Ashmore:
Yes. That's the general, general principle. Yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
And they'll do that.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. It's like my brother's the guru behind that. He's the guy who does all the filtering and stuff, alln my radar detectors and my ALP. He could explain it better to you, definitely, but in a nutshell, yes.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think I understand the principle, it's just. That's That's always probably going to be a real specialty item. I mean, if you're if you're really, really serious about driving fast, three grand is worth the... I mean, and you can probably save that much in tickets in about a month.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, you very well could, compared at least to attorney's fees.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, right. It's a... What's the worst ticket you ever had? Oh, come on, Fred. Just fess up.

Fred Ashmore:
I would, but you won't believe me.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'll believe you. You're an honest man. You're not a pathological liar. You're crazy. But you're not a pathological liar.

Fred Ashmore:
I don't have any major speeding tickets ever.

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't believe that.

Fred Ashmore:
Exactly!

Mark Rippetoe:
I don't believe you, Fred. You can't possibley. You don't have a major? You don't have a eighty five in a 60?

Fred Ashmore:
Nope.

Mark Rippetoe:
What you're doing works. This is this is cool. This is cool.

Fred Ashmore:
I told you you wouldn't believe me, so.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, no, that's that's interesting. No, I mean, if... Why would a guy who gets tickets all the time be able to pull off a twenty five hour, fifty five minute cannonball run? Because he's obviously too stupid to do that. So, no, I believe you. That's that's just. Just being careful, you know.

Mark Rippetoe:
I get stopped, you know, once every two months, probably. And sometimes I weasel my way out of it. Sometimes I don't. But, you know, I have found that the cops like that car. They like that Shelby Mustang. Cops like it. They just they come up behind you. And, man, this is great car! And they'll be nice to you and shit, so.

Fred Ashmore:
Back to your laser jammers there for a second. Now, a lot of people don't understand laser jammers. They just think you drive around it and the cop hits you with the laser and you basically give them the finger out the back window.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, that's kind of stupid.

Fred Ashmore:
That's not how it works. If you actually laser jam appropriately, you jam to interrupt their signal.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. It buys you some time to slow down and that's all.

Fred Ashmore:
Exactly right. One hundred percent correct.

Mark Rippetoe:
I completely understand that. You can't sail by a laser at 160 miles an hour with a laser jammer because that's not what it does.

Mark Rippetoe:
Usually without a laser jammer, when they lase you - when they when they put the beam on your tags on the front - you are caught. There is no lag time like there is with K or KA band radar.

Mark Rippetoe:
And so how many seconds does the jammer give you on average? It allows your reaction time to actually get the damn thing down low enough that you you don't get the ticket, but what's time span?

Fred Ashmore:
The jammer will jam as long as you want. I mean, if you want to drive by them jammin them and they won't get a signal off you. But the problem with that is when they can't get a signal off, you know, that's when they know you have a jam. And that's where you run into major problems.

Fred Ashmore:
So usually you most people that run them that I know of, we use the theory that the first thing that happens, your alarms will go off in your car. It'll say laser and you'll flick your brake light switch off, pile on the brakes til you get down to a speed that you're comfortable with.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Five over, 10 over whatever you did.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. Then you flip the laser jammer off and let him.

Mark Rippetoe:
And let him see you.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
I see. OK.

Mark Rippetoe:
I thought he just interrupted the signal for a period of time that was determined by the physics of the of the system. But it will actually jam and interfere with him. So the problem, of course, is if he sees a car coming on him - and get good cops, know how fast you're coming up on them without the radar, they just need the number for the ticket. Right. They're all they're all trained to identify speed coming up.

Mark Rippetoe:
So if you come up on a guy at 120 miles an hour, he sees that here's a car coming at about 120 miles an hour. What the hell is wrong here? He can't see you. He knows now, radar jammer and so he comes out and and stops you on the basis of the fact that you're running a radar jammer.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, how many jurisdictions are there where radar jammers are actually illegal because it can't be all of them?

Fred Ashmore:
Ok, well, radar jamming is one hundred and fifty percent will puts you in federal prison.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, God. Why?

Fred Ashmore:
Laser jamming, laser jamming and radar jamming out completely different.

Mark Rippetoe:
Oh, OK. All right. All right. Radar jammers probably are regulated by the FAA.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. You get caught with them, there's gonna be no question if they're gonna call guys in the black car and you're gonna go see somebody more important than the judge.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Oh, God Almighty.

Mark Rippetoe:
So is it FAA? What rules are you breaking with the radar jammer?

Fred Ashmore:
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it's an FAA thing. It's to do, obviously, with, you know, planes and military and everything else, along with that. Laser lasers aren't regulated that highly right now.

Fred Ashmore:
Laser jammers are illegal in - I used to know all the statistics, I don't...it's a half dozen states or a dozen states that laser jammers are illegal. Virginia Virginia is one of the states that radar detectors are illegal, jammers are illegal. If you get caught... They have actually radar detectors to detect your radar detector in Virginia.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, I've heard of those. I've heard of those. At this point in Virginia, it's illegal just to make a living. You know, that's a very strange place, but that's the only state I'm aware of in the 40 in the 50s that a radar detector by itself is illegal.

Mark Rippetoe:
I mean, if you're running through Virginia, you've got to unplug it and put it in the in the glove box. Hell, they may be able to even see it then. I don't have any idea. But yeah, Virginia's not someplace you want to run a radar detector.

Mark Rippetoe:
But a laser jammer is actually illegal in six or 10 states. That's interesting. That's interesting. And I guess I mean, if they shoot you with their laser gun and nothing comes back to them, then, you know. They got your ass, don't they?

Fred Ashmore:
Well, yeah, if if you're if you're jamming. Jamming to jam. Yeah. They're not going to get anything. But if you if you do it appropriately...

Mark Rippetoe:
Like you're discussing, turn the thing off. Get down. Get down to 10 over. Turn it off and let him see you. Then they can't.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. They're probably going to probably going to benefit of the doubt you. They're not going to mess with you because they don't want to go over and split hairs with somebody like. Well, I, I thought he was going faster. But, you know, maybe maybe I just looked up to quick. They're just not going to mess with you. It's just not worth their time writing the paperwork.

Mark Rippetoe:
There's another guy going over. There's another guy going. Fifteen over. Right behind you.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. That I've just passed at one hundred and twenty.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
There's something about human nature, man. You pass a guy going 120, he's going to speed up ten miles an hour, for some weird ass reason, that's just what he's going to do.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, he's gone Bogey's. If they're going to drive that fast, we're going to right behind them. Faster.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. So if you were going to put together a package of stuff to use the drive too goddamn fast, what would it involve?

Fred Ashmore:
Number one, is it a solo package for one person or are you talking about..?

Mark Rippetoe:
No, I'm talking about me in my M6. What do I need?

Fred Ashmore:
You and your M6. For you and your M6 I'd probably get an ALP system if you wanted to run, you know, regularly at high, sustained speeds. I would I would look into the latest and greatest radar detectors because like anything else, if you don't keep up with technology, it's gonna just pass you by.

Mark Rippetoe:
They're changing that quickly. Right?

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
I didn't know that.

Fred Ashmore:
There's a new R7 out from Uniden already and it's a great. It's a great radar detector. Everybody swears by it. And just like Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, everybody has their preferences in radar detectors. Mine. Mine happens to be a Uniden. And I'm I'm looking forward to getting an R7. I would probably recommend you stepping up to the RS7 as a good radar detector.

Mark Rippetoe:
What do you what do you pay for an R7, about five hundred?

Fred Ashmore:
And I didn't I haven't looked up R7, but a good radar detector, a really good one, is going to coust you probably between five and eight.

Mark Rippetoe:
I've got that... I've got a red line. That thing was five hundred dollars. I have radar detectors in every one of my vehicles. And even if I am even in my trucks because I want to know who's watching me.

Mark Rippetoe:
You know, it's not that I'm not to speed in the truck goes are diesel trucks. I might be five over but you know, it's not for that. It's like. Once you drive with a radar detector for any length of time at it... you're blind without the damn thing. You just really feel. It's a horrible feeling.

Fred Ashmore:
But they also can give you a false sense of security.

Mark Rippetoe:
They certainly can if you're not smart about how to use the damn thing. That's absolutely true.

Mark Rippetoe:
If you if you think they work all the time and if you think that you can get around these things, these KA guys that are exactly positioned where they know damn good and well, you can't see themtill they can see you, then you're gonna get a ticket. I've had it happen, but none the less. I want one hanging on the windshield just to tell me what the hell's going on around me.

Mark Rippetoe:
And it gives me a sense of comfort just to know two miles ahead of time that there's a guy sitting up there on the in front of you and you get to where you use these things. You can tell if you're running with the guy or if he's coming up behind you. If he's in front of you. You can kind of get a feel for where everybody is. And that's just good to know that, you know, whether you're speeding or not. It's just good to know what the hell's going on around you.

Mark Rippetoe:
So I like them. I really do. I highly recommend a radar detector. And an entry level machine like an RX65 Belltronics works pretty good for one hundred and twenty five dollars. You know, it works pretty good, but you get more time... The primary deal is his detection sensitivity, I think.

Mark Rippetoe:
They R7 units in R7 probably tells you earlier what the RX65 is going to tell you later. Right. Is that what you're paying for.

Fred Ashmore:
Exactly. And what I tell you this is if you are going to run a lower end radar detector, I'd recommend maybe running like a tablet with Waze on it. I don't know if you have one or not, but you can mount them on a visor or anything. And you can just... It just will trace your route where you're driving and it'll tell you if there's a police presence.

Fred Ashmore:
If you're gonna run, you know, one that doesn't have as good a range, I, I would recommend maybe a small tablet with a Waze running on it, if you don't have it running on your phone.

Fred Ashmore:
But you know, the unit in R7, obviously using Waze with it, it's helped somewhat helped some. But the Uniden R7 does more than that, the other radar, the lower end radar detector.

Mark Rippetoe:
So an R7 has an interface with Waze?

Fred Ashmore:
You can...

Mark Rippetoe:
I mean, I seem to remember something about, you know, one of them feeds into Waze.

Fred Ashmore:
I know escort live has its own updates and stuff that that you can go to escort live and it gives you gives you bulletins and stuff. I don't... I've never had I never had an R7, so I can't tell you. But maybe it does now, I mean, you could be right, so.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, that would that would make ways a lot more useful if you've got a constant stream of data from ever all over the country coming into Waze. That's a pretty damn good system.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, no doubt about it. No doubt about it at all. And I know at one point New York was trying to get Waze banned in New York City so you couldn't use it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, of course, you know, it's New York, of course. You know, they're going to put people with covid 19 in rest homes in New York. Well, of course, they're going to ban Waze. They're just they're they're soulless beasts in New York. I hate the place. I'm never been there again.

Fred Ashmore:
So to answer your question, a really good radar detector. You want to do some speeding, get an ALP system. And, you know, borderline, you could, you know, spin off that with a Waze app.

Fred Ashmore:
That probably gets you about all you're really going to get for one person. So what I'm saying is one person, because beyond that, you start to pay attention to where you're going at one hundred and twenty.

Mark Rippetoe:
Right. When you're... The primary job at 120 miles an hour is not running into the back of omebody else.

Fred Ashmore:
Exactly.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah. That's the... People don't understand this, Fred. If if the biggest problem, the most the the most likely factor in a highway speed accident is not people going too fast. It is people going too slow.

Fred Ashmore:
True.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's the speed differential. I mean, if you've got a highway with an 85 mile an hour speed limit on it and everybody on a highway is going 80, because at those speeds, most people don't go full speed limit. You know, 10 percent of them are going to be five over, you know.

Mark Rippetoe:
But the problems on a road like that are little old men driving 55. They're in the god damn way. And that's where you run... And that's where you have big, horrible road accidents in a situation like that. It's not the guy driving fast is not the problem. The guy driving too slow is the problem.

Fred Ashmore:
It's proven over and over and over again.

Mark Rippetoe:
Yes. Oh, it's it's been recognized as a factor for a long time. And I guess when states jump up the speed limit. I think there is a section of I 10 out in West Texas where the speed limit's 85. Yes, I know there's 80 mile an hour speed limits here in Texas, but I think it's 85 out on I10. I may be wrong. Don't quote me on that, but. I guess they really monitor that road before they raise the speed limit to make sure that the thing's not infested with farmers.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, well, the same thing with that is, is more often than not, your farm stuff isn't allowed on the interstate anyway, right?

Mark Rippetoe:
Yeah, but I mean, farmers in pick ups going home on I10 between, you know, between one exit and another driving 55 miles an hour. That's the problem.

Fred Ashmore:
I don't think there's that many down there on I10.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, maybe not. It's not really farm land. That's true. That's mainly just the jack rabbits and cactus and shit over there.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I guess that's you know, we've probably tied you up long enough. Is there any... Have you got any plans for a book or a website or anything? I think you need to write a book on this because -- and I'll tell you.

Fred Ashmore:
I've had people ask me to write some books.

Mark Rippetoe:
I think you need to write a book in it and a reason I think you need to write a book is because of this stuff I've asked you about today. All right. There's a certain percentage of the population, most of them male. A few girls, most male. They're just gonna drive fast because that's what we like to fucking do. All right.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I'm willing to get a ticket every once in a while and do deferred adjudication. That's just - as far as I'm concerned, that's just the tax that we pay for getting too drive fast. You know,

Fred Ashmore:
The cost of doing business.

Mark Rippetoe:
It is the cost of doing business. I'm not doing anything intrinsically evil. I'm just driving too goddamn fast. But it's what I like to do. I don't have any more fun anymore. I'm 64 years old. I don't ride horses anymore. I don't ride motorcycles. So this is just what I do for fun.

Mark Rippetoe:
Occasionally there are problems with it. I, you know, we've got bunch of feral hogs down, had wrecked my fucking M6 a couple of weeks ago. Ran into a pig on my way home, standing in the middle of the...Feral hog, doing know if you've got them where you live.

Fred Ashmore:
Fortunately, we don't.

Mark Rippetoe:
They'll be there before it's over with. I promise you, they're just like, you know, welfare recipients. They show up everywhere. So this thing... Feral hogs have got a horrible trait. Their eyes do not glow in your headlights.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, yeah?

Mark Rippetoe:
You can see a deer along way off and you've got time to react to a deer. But feral hogs are the color of dirt because they're covered with it and their eyes do not shine and you can't see the damn things. And they're they're short and dense and they will run right out into the front of your car. And you have literally no time to react because you hadn't seen them. There's nothing to react to.

Mark Rippetoe:
And I hit one on the way home the other night and screwed the car up pretty bad, just the front end of it. It's All bolt on shit. Engine and frame are straight. But nonetheless, I don't know Fred, what is the right speed to run into a feral hog? You know, I was probably going 70 in a 60, I hit him going 70, but would 45 have been better?

Mark Rippetoe:
You can't react anyway. So, I mean, it's gonna happen, right? There's just shit like that's going to happen every once in a while. So this is one of the prices we pay for, you know, driving nice cars too fast.

Fred Ashmore:
Unfortunately, it is.

Mark Rippetoe:
But I'd like to I'd like to read a book written by a guy like you. In fact, we'd publish the damn thing. Just, here's a business offer. We'd published the damn thing.

Mark Rippetoe:
I'd like to read a book by a guy like you that has had professional experience with breaking the speed statutes all over the country. And I'm telling you, Fred, that would sell. There's 10 percent of the of the people in the country will buy that book. And I don't know, it may get our asses in trouble, but I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to do it.

Fred Ashmore:
I think you'dd love the story that in the same week that I broke the world record cross-country, I drove back to Oklahoma, picked up my dad, drove to Atlanta and then smashed the record in the Bandit run in the same rental car.

Mark Rippetoe:
Now, what's the Bandit run.?Tell me about that. I'm not familiar with that one.

Fred Ashmore:
Have you ever watched Smokey and the Bandit?

Mark Rippetoe:
Well, sure. Everybody's watch Smokey and the Bandit.

Fred Ashmore:
Oh, yeah. Well, it's it's the same run that Burt Reynolds does in the movie. He drives from Atlanta Motor Speedway to Texarkana, Texas, to get beer and then goes back to Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's back when Coors was only available in Texarkana, I guess. Oh, that's it. And how long is that?

Fred Ashmore:
It's almost 1400 miles.

Mark Rippetoe:
Roundtrip's 1400.

Fred Ashmore:
Round trip's 1400. And we we on the way back, I blew a tire with 368 miles to go at one hundred and thirty. And in the last two hours to break the record by 40 minutes we averaged 106.

Mark Rippetoe:
Wow.

Mark Rippetoe:
What what kind of tires? So that's a real good question. I hadn't thought about asking... What kind of tires did you... do you prefer if you're gonna do this? What did they put? What tires come on that rent car? Did you change them out?

Fred Ashmore:
I had to, I blew the tires right off.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, I'm talking about that on the first run.

Fred Ashmore:
The first one, I had perellies on it.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's what you rented it with?

Fred Ashmore:
No, I didn't do anything custom, I just used what was on the car.

Mark Rippetoe:
And those were speed rated tires I guess?

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah, yeah. I think they were just limited to one fifty nine or one sixty. But I think driving at that speed for such a high rate of time, it kind of took the center right out of the tire because it's a real soft compound. And then when I went and did the next run on the Bandit race, it just it just finished them offf.

Mark Rippetoe:
It was thin. I guess. So, Perellies are...

Fred Ashmore:
I actually like the Nito tires.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's when I got on my Mustang. Yeah. You need Nito five 50s. Yeah. And know I think I'm ready for a new set.

Mark Rippetoe:
But yeah, that's. I tried driving that Mustang with all season tires on it for a while, and it...that was a real stupid idea.

Fred Ashmore:
They're just not fun.

Mark Rippetoe:
It's you're just thinking to yourself, every curve you go around, you're thinking yourself... What would it be like to be in that barb wire fence over there at 70 miles an hour? You know, because it's just, it doesn't feel good.

Fred Ashmore:
Exactly. Yeah.

Mark Rippetoe:
That damn thing doesn't feel good, but. So, yeah, I went back to those. But you don't you don't have a preference for... So the guys that did the thing in the AMG, what tires did they use? Because I'm sure that was a that was a car was custom designed for this run. So what did they use?

Fred Ashmore:
I'm not sure what I Artie had on it. For some reason, Michelin is coming to the top of my top my thoughts and I could be wrong. I think he had Michelins on it. And again, Arnie or Doug would definitely tell you.

Fred Ashmore:
I always like the nitos. Michelin's a good tire. Honestly, to do what I was doing. I like something with a little harder compound myself because you're driving them so long, they're going to get softer anyway, right. So if you already have a soft tire, you're driving it that extended amount of time is going to make the compound even that much softer.

Mark Rippetoe:
And wear it out even faster. So you're right down to the carcass before you want to be.

Fred Ashmore:
Yeah. Yeah. And nobody wants that.

Mark Rippetoe:
No, no, that's bad. You don't want to see the threads on the thing. I've done that before. When I was a long time ago when I was buying used tires all the time, I got pretty good at finding good used tires for 20 bucks like 35 years ago. I could go into a tire shop. I want that one and it be a good tire for 20 bucks. But that's that's... those days are gone. You can't do that if you're driving like crazy person all the time.

Fred Ashmore:
It's funny you say that because when I turned the rental car in, I, I stopped at a used tire shop and put two used Michelins back on the car and he charged me 20 bucks.

Mark Rippetoe:
So they used tire business is still alive. That's good.

Fred Ashmore:
It's alive and well.

Mark Rippetoe:
That's good to know. That's good to know man. Oh god.

Mark Rippetoe:
Well Fred, thank you for being with us today. This has been a fun conversation and you know, we're not, Fred and I are not encouraging you to disobey the law. You must understand, we're not suggesting that you disobey the law. We're just suggesting that if you do, there's a proper way to do it.

Mark Rippetoe:
Fred, thank God for you, man, in these days of SAFETY. Everybody must be SAFEM. Nobody must take risks. Nobody must leave their house without their mask because somebody somewhere might get sick. It's good to know that crazy bastards like you are still out there with big giant cantaloupe sized balls doing cool shit. And I appreciate your being here with me.

Fred Ashmore:
Thank you for having me and don't break the law while you're breaking the law.

Mark Rippetoe:
Absolutely not. And thank you for being with us on Starting Strength radio. We'll see you next time.

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