The great race took place on consecutive Fridays for a couple months. There was a cash prize, of sorts. The field of entrants was open to any employee of the bomb factory. It was a mad sprint of twenty two miles from the guard shack to the nearest credit union.

Every Friday at 3:00 PM, the paychecks would be passed out as the employees filed out the main gate. The first ones to the credit union got to cash them, so as soon as you got your hands on your check, you sprinted for your car like Goggles Paisano and drove hell bent for leather to the nearest town.

There weren't any banks, but there was a credit union with two drive through teller lanes. The paychecks were drawn on this credit union, so cashing your check there guaranteed that you'd get your money, provided the company had enough in it's account at the moment you arrived at the drive through.

Otherwise, you were out of luck.

There was a trick to it, of course: arrive early enough to get the parking space at the very back of the parking lot. That way, you'd be in fifth gear on the Interstate before the inevitable traffic jam.

Up in the Wild Northland, there's really only one road. It's straight and flat and wide, starting at the very top of the world and extending downwards through the birch trees for hundreds of miles until it finally reaches the Rest of the World.

A snowy owl sits on a fence post every morning, watching the cars as they make their way South. It sits there in the freezing cold listening to the wind whistle through the birch trees. Then from far away it hears the whine of tires on the pavement. A car appears and draws close, then passes, then only the sound of the wind. And silence.

Sometimes on the northbound side, you'll see a group of two or three mooses munching on reeds in a shallow creek. They stop and look up from their dinner when a car roars by.

On the day of the great race, the mooses would look up from their dinner and see the Gumball Rally bearing down on them. There's no inspections way up there. Anything with wheels and an engine is legal. And anything with wheels and an engine was hauling ass North past Mr. and Mrs. Moose and the kids.

It all started in a chaoitic mess in the parking lot, horns blaring and fists shaking. And it all ended in the drive-through lanes of the credit union with the same horns blaring and the same fists shaking.

Many cars didn't make it the full twenty two. Lord help you on a cold day if your rusted out beater died on a Friday afternoon. You couldn't even hitchhike home. Because of the prisons nearby, there was a sign every five miles that said:

PRISON AREA: DO NOT PICK UP HITCH-HIKERS.