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Road Fever

Road Fever

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Half Road Trip Half Boredom
Review: 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.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Has its moments
Review: 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.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Where's Furry Fury?
Review: A wonderful telling of how two roto documentaros travel from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to the North Coast of Alaska while battling time, the elements, gasoline bandits, leftist revolutionaries, pit searches, PR men and the dangers of sparkling water based instant coffee. The surreal scene of the impromptu press conference in Quito, Ecuador, with our intrepid author fielding questions while Garry is busying promising death for the mechanic who modified the electrical system on the truck, is worth the price of admission. I'm only disappointed to see that Mr. Cahill has yet to finish the sure-fire bestseller Furry Fury which he gives a sypnosis for early in the book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WE ARE NOT SOUTH AFRICANS WE ARE ROTO
Review: BESTEST, FUNNIEST, MOST MAGNIFICENT TRAVEL BOOK EVER.... NOW IF MY FRIENDS WOULD JUST GIVE IT BACK, SO I CAN READ IT AGAIN............

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It makes your own travel Hell's look harmless by comparison.
Review: Cahill is a perceptive master of travel Hell. He finds the most interesting and obsurdly unique adventures and makes you feel like your in the back seat riding along with a map upside down in your hands. For anyone who has ever experienced travel Hell, Cahill makes your worst adventures pale by comparison. Through his exploits you learn that travel can be what you make of it... Hell or an adventure at every turn. The chapter on "Northworst" airlines is redemption for all of us who have been treated like cattle. You can't help but smile after reading his personal tirade against the airline. And, his insight into the big business of the auto world in relation to an "unbiased" appraisal of the world record trek with a "standard" vehicle is classic. This is a book you will pass along to anyone who travles or loves/hates South America

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: frenetically-paced, often amusing travelogue
Review: Cahill, a fellow who does interesting things and writes about them for a living, went with Garry Sowerby of Canada on an endurance driving trip from Ushuaia in southern Argentina to Deadhorse, Alaska; this is the story.

Where Cahill succeeds most here is in descriptive talent. From his conflicts with Sowerby to the smells of the inside of the vehicle to the terrain around him to the encounters with customs officials of a dozen nations, he never fails to paint a credible and interesting picture. Tim has always been good about telling the story even if it makes him look foolish, and this sense of literary integrity is strong here.

The only thing I felt a little shorted by was the virtual lack of any description of any activity between the US/Mexican border and Fairbanks. I can imagine them blazing across the US and Canada up to the Alcan in a day with no trouble, and maybe not much happened, but the real Alcan gets more interesting as you get into the Yukon and beyond; it seems it was glossed over. If I had a half-star markdown I might use it, but it wouldn't be fair to Cahill to mark him down a whole star on what is otherwise a great book--maybe not much really happened, which would explain why not much is said.

Recommended for adventure travel lovers, particularly those focused on South America.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Half Road Trip Half Boredom
Review: 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.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Roto Warriors attack the Pan-American Highway.
Review: Hunter S. Thompson may be Gonzo, but Garry Sowerby and Tim Cahill are Roto.

Sowerby and Cahill run a GMC pick-up from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay in twenty three and a half days, breaking the world record in the process. Possibly even more amazing is the fact they survived almost exclussively on a thousand boxed milk shakes, beef jerky, and instant coffee mixed in ratios that can only be described as 'chunky'. As harrowing as narrow Andean mountain roads are, and boarder crossings made at gun point (literally)...one is left in awe and wonderment of their intestinal fortitude.

For anyone dreaming of such an adverture this book is a real wake up call. All you need is a bevey of sponsers,about three or four hunderd thousand dollars and enough international political contacts to qualify for an ambassadorship... before the trip begins.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Am Roto Also!
Review: I also have an addiction to travelling off the beaten path locations where it's usually much cheaper than a typical tourist
destination. Having travelled through much of Mexico as well as
a good stretch of Pan-American with my friend in Peru, I can really identify w/Mr. Cahill. These are the tales of misadventures not so different from many of my own. It's not that difficult to get stopped a dozen times by Mexican police in a beat up old El Camino, two-tone w/ primer spots here and there
and mag wheels, and pay a bribe only once. Licensia?, oh, he means license; Si,Si, it's on the bumper Senor, as they walk off in frustration.
In Peru, a policia may ask for a lightbulb for the station as a bribe. When queried as to where one might find a light bulb, they say that the equivilent cost in Soles(Peruvian$) will do instead.
Never really enjoying the luxuries of tourist resorts, the journey, is always more interesting!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't Expect Too Much
Review: I am a big fan of non-fiction adventure stories, and bought this book based on the advice from this board. The book is basically a yawner. SPOILER COMING: Nothing happens. I kept waiting for either the adventure or the humor. Needless to say, I played the part of the jilted reader. If you read this book, your response will be: "what's the big deal, I could have done that." I think Tim's motivation for this book was solely cash (nothing wrong with that - just warn me first). It was clearly written out of contractual obligation and not because he truly had something to say.


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