MEN’S JOURNAL
Forget driver’s ed. Rally racing takes place at near-NASCAR speeds on real roads, using souped-up street cars. And you can learn how to do it in just a few days. BY JASON HARPER
My rearview mirror sparkles with sudden light: the headlights of a car behind us. This is a bad thing. “Stay on the road; let him worry about passing,” instructs my co-driver, Jeff Becker, belted in tightly next to me.
I lay onto the gas, trying to put distance between us and the encroaching Mitsubishi. Rain hemorrhages down my windshield, and I’m a twitch away from smacking the car — a borrowed Subaru WRX STi worth about $165,000 — into one of the trees lining the sliver of dirt road. My vision is narrowing, my brain’s fuzzed, and, ridiculously, I’m trying to go faster. Rally race drivers call this perilous condition the red mist, and I’m choking in it.
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MEN’S JOURNAL
Motorcyclists in the South all flock to one place — the dizzying Tail of the Dragon highway. JASON HARPER goes deep in the hills of Tennessee to check it out
Is it odd to lust after a road? To lie in bed late at night musing about pavement as smooth as Halle Berry’s skin, outrageous curves worthy of Salma Hayek? Is it even odder to actually travel far and wide just to find such a road? As a friend asked me, “Who the hell gets on a plane just to arrive at a road?”
Well, I do. But when I show up at the head of Highway 129, near the borders of North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, after an 800-mile trip, I discover that I’m not the only freak.
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MEN’S JOURNAL
Not all cities are created equal. Not even close. These five GLOBAL CAPITALS OF ADVENTURE combine emerging food and music scenes, fun-loving locals, and the kind of terrain that turns your world into a playground.RIO DE JANEIRO,
I’m chasing away last night’s caipirinha fumes, running up a steep, twisting road that sparkles in the morning sun. My target, Corcovado, the rain forest covered mountain smack-dab in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, topped by the Christ statue. Racing up the crest, I can hear my reward, a silver waterfall that spools down the mountain. I reach it, breathless. Two women are already bathing there, wearing the tiniest of bikinis, workout clothes flung on the side of the trail.
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