Sowerby's
Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind, by Garry Sowerby
September,
2004—
Garry Sowerby is currently on the
road with a team driving brand-new hybrid-fueled
light trucks from Halifax, Nova Scotia,
to Victoria, British Columbia. The trek
is calling attention to the work of 85 communities
working to enhance environmental protection
projects in Canada. Click
here for a field report in which
Garry describes his battle with thousands
of biting ants on a trash collection project
along a two-lane road in Prince Edward County. |
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Garry Sowerby has been called the "Indiana
Jones of Adventure Driving," and, after reading his book,
Sowerby's
Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind, if you substitute
a dash-mounted ball compass for Indy's famous bull-whip, the
similarities start to become apparent. Like his Hollywood counterpart,
Garry has successfully completed dangerous and challenging journeys
to remote places with exotic names like Tuktoyaktuk, Djibouti,
Kiev, and Multan. To extend the similarity, his road trip companions
are often very attractive women. Sowerby's Road provides an
extraordinary look into a world that most of us can only dream
about. Although the book was originally published in Canada
in 2003, it's going global this month with a new release in
the United States and other countries.
The beautifully designed high-quality paperback
features gorgeous color photographs taken on a variety of
driving escapades between 1958 and 2003. Although Garry includes
some reminiscences from his youth and some stories about practical
jokes his family has played on his automobile-crazy twin brother,
most of the book chronicles his twenty-five-year career as
the preeminent adventure road tripper. Garry is the holder
of four timed world records certified by The Guinness Book
of World Records. These include the 1980 and 1997 world circumnavigations,
a speed run between Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and Prudhoe
Bay, Alaska, (memorably profiled by Tim Cahill in Road
Fever), and a very dangerous drive from Cape Agulhas,
South Africa, to Nordcap, Norway.
Garry's descriptions of encounters with bandits,
bribe-seeking police, grueling weather, and dysentery-weakened
companions provide a dose of reality found in no escapist
movie fare. His road escapades also have a flair for the zany,
as witnessed by his successful effort to transport a drivable
car to the top of the CN tower in Toronto, driving a Subaru
Forester on 33-degree banked turns at the Talledega Super
Speedway, and seeking out quirky sites in Nova Scotia on his
"Funky Museum Road Show." One colorful tale (read
it here!) is the trip he and his wife, Lisa Calvi, took
in June, 2002, in pursuit of membership in Capt. Dick's Sourtoe
Cocktail Club in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
What I didn't expect to find and found particularly
intriguing were Garry's descriptions of his evolving relationship
with General Motors and the other sponsors who enabled him
to create Odyssey International Ltd., the professional organization
that oversees his adventure driving business. The symbol for
Odyssey International is five arrows pointing up to the right.
Four of them are gold in color, signifying Garry's four world
records. The remaining white arrow shows that there is another
epic road adventure still to come.
Sowerby's Road is not a linear telling
of his career, but rather it is, in Garry's words "…
a trip through time." It's one we can all share from
the relative safety of a favorite reading chair. It is definitely
a journey worth taking.
Mark
9/12/04
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