The collection: Ferrari Californias ready to be driven
My friends complain. In fact they complain a lot. Often it is directed at their high-school counselors (“Why didn’t they point out writing? Oh yeah, it had no money in it!”) More often it’s directed at me. “What trip are you taking now? I don’t want to hear about it.” Click.
I don’t blame them, not least of all because I can be pretty smug. Becoming a writer was a pretty good decision for me all things considered. (Though the counselors were right: There is no real money in it. Damn details!)
But there are assignments and there are assignments. When a magazine like Outside Go calls up (or perhaps when I call them up, as in this case), and an ideal scenario is presented, magic happens. The scenario: Fly to Sicily for a road trip, driving the brand new, not-yet-seen-on-American shores, Ferrari California. [Read the story on my site here, or on Outside Go itself.]
Um, yes!
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OUTSIDE GO
The nose knows: The fire-breathing Ferrari California
[This article appears in the Spring 2009 issue of Outside Go—click to read it on their site. All photos shot by Joshua Paul.]
A quintessential Italian landscape: Rolling grapevine-covered hills, sheep tended by crooked-back herders, and ancient stone castles outlined against the bright-blue Sicilian sky. Beautiful, no doubt, but as I’m screaming down the road in a brilliant-red Ferrari at 130 miles per hour, there’s precious little time to look.
Fifth gear, and the Ferrari California’s 454 horses are absolutely howling. I trigger sixth, and the convertible picks up more speed, the wind ripping at my hair. My apologies for spoiling the peace, but chances like this come along once in a lifetime. [It's true: Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse in my blog.]
City scape: Slipping through back alleys in a Sicilian mountain town
There are road trips, and there are road trips. Exploring the dramatic island of Sicily by sports car is a good start, especially knowing that Italians adore any bella macchina. Bring the newest Ferrari out on the road-a car virtually no one has seen in the actual aluminum flesh-and you’re an insta-hero. Cries of “Bravo!” and “Bello!” follow in the California’s hot exhaust like ticker tape. (more…)
[The injury toll, Day 1: Lost watch; bleeding elbow, both knees, one shin; seriously damaged sense of immortality.]
SKI MAGAZINE
So, this is how it’s gonna be. I will be the rock eater, the Curly to the mountain’s Moe. Today, it seems, I’m going to be voted Most Likely To Bleed.
We’ve all been there-you get together a competitive group (usually dudes) for a challenging day down the slopes, and a high-school gym-class pecking order soon asserts itself. There’s the gungho leaders hucking down the cliffs and shooting through the trees; then the middle-ground contingent who keep up, but a little less spectacularly; and then, well, there’s the guy who’s destined to eat it. Repeatedly.
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[This story, first reported in 2005, was supposed to run in a men's adventure magazine, but was never published. The accompanying photographer froze up — freaked by the raw circumstances — and shot almost no photos. It's a shame, because this was one of the most amazing stories of my life.]
As blood bubbles down my left arm, and the chief’s No. 1 wife begins to slice into my right, John offers me a tasty bowl of thumb-sized fire ants. They’re dead at least, drowned. I stare at him, keeping the pain from my face as Kamaihá uses a tool made from rapier-sharp fish teeth to cut lines into my arms from shoulder to wrist. I don’t wanna look like a punk in front of the indians. It hurts meanly, though, and I can’t imagine that tool has been sanitized… ever. “Thanks, John,” I tell the former Airborne Ranger evenly, “but I think I’ll deal with one pain at a time.” John, his shirt off, shrugs and pops an ant in his mouth. “Citrusy,” he says.
Kamaihá tells me in Portuguese that I’m a warrior now. She could be joking, I don’t know. Blood coughs down my arms and into the dirt. She rubs green leaves into the wounds. The Kamayura ingest medicine this way, including natural anabolic steroids, which would explain why all the men are so pec-bulgingly yoked. Kamaihá is the chief’s first wife (he’s got four) and the only woman in the village not totally naked; she’s wearing a floral dress. I ask her what the plant does, but she just smiles. Screw it, though, when you’re in the remote indian village, do as the indians do, right? John takes my place and merrily snacks on ants as Kamaihá bloodies him. He’s lived in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso-with its indian wars, piranha-filled rivers, and cowboy gun-dueling ways-long enough to find it all perfectly normal.
[Members of the Kamayura, dressed in their party finery.]
This is the sixth day on a unique trip through a region of the Amazon that is half Wild West fantasy, half Conrad-inspired yarn. The Mato Grosso actually was the blueprint for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur-jungle fantasy, The Lost World, after a friend returned in 1910 and described the beautiful but inhospitable land. Almost 100 years later, John Carter, a Texan who’s lived here for ten years, has a plan to bring limited tourism that’s either mad or genius.
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