The Cannonball Baker Memorial Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash was the brainchild of Brock Yates and Steve Smith of Car and Driver and was first run in 1971 as a protest against the national highway speed limits. There have been several starting and finishing locations, but the most trip is between the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan, NY and the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, CA. The purpose of a Cannonball is to finish as quickly as possible.
There are a number of ways to do a Cannonball, our favorite being the 2904 race organized by the most excellent John Ficarra. Kendall and Matt enjoyed a shop tour of Canepa in Scott’s Valley, CA hosted by John, who was the shop historian at that time, and were inspired by his epic tales of coast-to-coast racing.
Unfortunately, by the time our club became aware of the 2904, John had retired as organizer and there haven’t been any “official” runnings since.
Matt and Kendall kept the dream of a coast-to-coast race alive in their minds and hearts. However, they didn’t want to do a speed run like everyone else as they had no interest in getting pulled over for speeding across the US. Instead, an idea formed about doing a coast-to-coast endurance run in the spirit of a Cannonball, but with an interesting twist.
Unlike the original runs, where the goal was to break the speed limit, the ASCC wanted to do the route in exactly the speed limit. The “winner” would be the team who arrived at the Portofino on or closest to the time it would take a hypothetical driver obeying the speed limit perfectly to complete the course. Instead of a Cannonball, this would be a Slowball!
The difficulty in planning a trip like this lies figuring out the average speed limit across a roughly 2,800 mile course. Matt theorized that it should be possible to build a web-based tool to do it using APIs and other technical things, but neither he, nor anyone else in the club is a computer programmer. The dream would have to remain just that.
Or would it? In late 2025 the AI apocalypse arrived and with it, the ability to have a coding agent build stuff that a non-programmer would struggle with on their own. Thanks to Claude Code, this website and the ability to plan a Slowball now exist.
Slowball Rules
- The target time is the distance of the route divided by the average speed limit for that route taking into account all the speed limit changes along the route.
- The official average will be calculated by the ASCC website under the Cannonball tab.
- Any route may be used, but the calculation, and therefore target time needs to be calculated for each route. This means that if multiple teams are participating in a single running of the Slowball and there is more than one route selected, the target time will be different for each route. The winning team will be the one arriving at the Portofino with a time closest to their target time.
- Cars used in the Slowball can be purchased for the event, be a daily driver, or be rented; it doesn’t matter what you drive, only that you’re comfortable driving it across the country.
- Time starts with the stamp at the Red Ball Garage and finishes when the team arrives at the Portofino
- Teams may choose to leave the Red Ball Garage at whatever time they choose
Optional “rules” for the first running
- The first Slowball will be run from East to West in honor of the original Cannonball and all the pioneers who listened to the advice to “Go West, young man!”
- Because the event is “slow” all participants need to arrive in NYC at least a day before the race to rent their cars and experience the city.
- All cars need to be parked at the Red Ball Garage before the start of the race
- There are three tasks to complete in NYC before departure:
- Walk the Brooklyn Bridge
- Visit Central Park
- Eat pizza at Juliana’s in Dumbo, Prince Street, and any one of the many Joe’s locations (the Greenwich Village location is the best)