Product Description

Tim Cahill reports on the road trip to end all road trips: a journey that took him from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking twenty three and a half days.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161360 in Books
• Published on: 1992-03-03
• Released on: 1992-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Amazon.com
If you define "adventure travel" as anything that's more fun to read about than to live through, then Tim Cahill's Road Fever is the adventure of a lifetime. Along with professional long-distance driver Garry Sowerby, Cahill drove 15,000 miles from the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego to the northernmost terminus of the Dalton Highway in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, from one end of the world to another, in a record-breaking 23 1/2 days. Just like the authors' camper-shelled GMC Sierra truck, the narrative bounces along at a relentless pace. Along the way Cahill and Sowerby cope with mood swings, engine trouble, Andean cliffs, obstinate bureaucracies, slick highways, armed and uncomprehending soldiery (not to mention the challenges of securing O.P.M., or Other People's Money--the sine qua non of adventure, Cahill observes). Author of such off-the-wall travelogues as Pass the Butterworms and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, Cahill is equipped with the correct amalgam of chutzpah and dementia to survive what can only be called "The Road Trip From Hell." Readers, however, will thoroughly enjoy themselves.

From Library Journal
This is a hip, rather self-indulgent, yet ultimately triumphant account of an attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Re cords time for a road trip from the tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Cahill and endurance driver Gary Sowerby spent 23 days piloting a truck while battling customs snafus, mechanical problems, bad roads, civil rebellions, terrorists, bandits, the vagaries of weather, their own anxieties and mood swings, and physical exhaustion, with grit and bluff, sporting lapel pins and consuming donated four-month shelf-life milkshake packages. For all the comic-opera aspects of the text, Cahill is an informed, serious commentator on the history and prospects of the countries through which they pass. Readers familiar with Cahill's alternate lifestyle point of view will know what they are getting into. Fans of his contributions to Outside and Rolling Stone , and of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh ( LJ 10/1/87) and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg ( LJ 2/15/89) will grab his newest work. For others, expect a treat.
- Libby K. White, Sche nectady Cty. P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
Chronicles a zany, record-breaking road trip from the tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, which took the driver only twenty-three and a half days despite run-ins with sadistic Peruvian troopers and an Amazonian gold rush. Reprint.

Customer Reviews

Half Road Trip Half Boredom
Half of this book details the planning process of the road trip which is far from a rip roaring laugh out loud time. The road trip part of the book is somewhat interesting and there are a few good laugh out loud parts. It appears that Cahill was contracted to write a book and found out that he didn't have enough material from the road trip so he had to fill it with the thrilling money raising and visa application process. The ending is the classic "need to get this finished before deadline" and the last 3000? miles are glossed over in five pages. I like Cahill's writing style but this book is definitely lacking interesting material for him to use.

Has its moments
A generally enjoyable quick read book that has some laugh out loud moments. Cahill tells a fun story about his trip up two continents and gives some insights into the worlds of adventure driving and travel writing. Nevertheless, at times the story drags and gets a little redundant. I would have given it 3 1/12 stars if Amazon let me do it.

Read It Fast
You probably can't race through it in 23 1/2 minutes, a minute for each day of Cahill and partner Gary Sowerby's Guinness World Record trip from south of Ushuaia, Argentina, (a lovely little city, by personal and Road Fever testimony) to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, but you should speed through the pages as they sped along the roads. The trip was in 1987 and would be impossible today because some of the route through Colombia is under violent guerrilla control. I would have liked much more of the trip and much less of the preparations. The logistics of preparing for long-distance race driving are staggering, but -- alas -- they are also not very interesting and well over a third of the less than 300 pages cover the getting ready. Once on the road some of Cahill's descriptions of the people and terrains through which they drive are terrific, especially the accounts of the Atacama desert in northern Chile and especially scary driving through Central America. I'd have liked more of that, but too much of the writing is of the "by five o'clock we reached x where we stopped for gas and got directions out of town" variety. Kind of like reading your MapQuest driving directions; they fill space, (usually) get you there, but are more functional than interesting. In the end, while I enjoyed Road Fever I thought it would be more fun than it was. Final note: absence of a map or maps is inexplicable.