It’s lunchtime. Liu Zhen and her travel buddies pull over at a highway rest stop in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Using an induction cooker powered by a new energy vehicle, they heat up a pot and cook a simple yet nutritious meal — rice mixed with vegetables and salted meat — to ease the exhaustion from the long journey.

For this group of six, mostly in their 60s, this is just another day of their adventurous road trip across western China. A month ago, the three couples set off from their hometown in Southwest China’s Chongqing in three SUVs. Since then, they have driven over 7,000 kilometers to Xinjiang, passing through the provinces of Sichuan and Gansu.

“The most stunning scenery is always the kind you encounter unexpectedly,” Liu says. “The highlight of this trip for me is when we catch sight of some beautiful landscapes from the car window. We stop, hop out, and enjoy the view.”

Among all the scenic spots they encountered, one in particular left the deepest impression on Liu — the sight of horses galloping through a river in a wetland park in Zhaosu county, part of northern Xinjiang’s Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture.

“It was breathtaking, and we took lots of great photos,” Liu says. One of her greatest pleasures on the trip has been sharing those photos online.

Their entire journey revolves around their vehicles, which are equipped with portable water boilers. They refill at highway rest stops and prepare meals on the induction stove using ingredients bought along the way. When night falls, they transform their SUVs into cozy bedrooms by folding down the back seats and laying out a soft mattress.

“This way of traveling may be a bit tough, but it is economical and offers much flexibility and freedom. You travel as long as you want,” Liu says.

She adds that Xinjiang’s well-developed highway network and driver-friendly infrastructure have made the trip much easier. “The roads are wide and smooth and easy to navigate, and self-driving camps are easy to find. Plus, the well-equipped rest stops enable us to refresh and recharge,” she adds.

Silver-haired travelers are becoming a growing force in China’s tourism industry. According to data from the China National Committee on Aging, seniors now make up over 20 percent of the country’s total tourist population.

Many retirees are embracing self-driving tours as a rising trend. According to zuzuche.com, a Guangzhou-based self-driving tour platform, during this year’s five-day May Day holiday, the number of outbound self-driving tourists aged 60 and above increased by 6.5 percent year-on-year. The number of senior tourists choosing domestic road trips grew by 27 percent.

Liu and her companions are all members of a self-driving club in Chongqing, which organizes group trips. Among the over 400 club members, most are seniors.

For Liu’s friend Tu Jianping, road trips are nothing new. Over the years, her SUV has taken her to explore the plateaus of western Sichuan and traverse the border regions of Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Heilongjiang province. Next year, she and her husband plan to tackle the high altitudes of Xizang autonomous region.

“The children have to go to school. The young people have to work. For us retirees, we have savings and plenty of time on our hands; and this is our time to enjoy life,” she says.

By the end of 2024, China’s population aged 60 and above exceeded 310 million. As living standards and health improve, the country’s growing elderly population is driving a booming consumer market.

According to a plan on special initiatives to increase consumption, released earlier this year, China will develop industries such as antiaging and senior tourism to unleash the potential of the silver-haired consumer market.

Tu also keeps a habit of documenting her daily travel experiences and sharing them on WeChat Moments.

In one post, she describes driving along a section of National Highway 216, which runs through extreme terrain, including deserts and high plateaus: “Outside the car window, visibility is extremely low. The swirling sands seem alive, at times gathering into towering dunes, at others dissolving into a haze of dust and fog. My heart is clenched tight, my palms grow damp.

“The road ahead is but a slender thread, leading us into a 600-km stretch where the altitude soars beyond 5,000 meters. Our drivers’ eyes gleam with the thrill of adventure, but my heart remains as restless as the howling wind outside.”

For Tu, writing down her daily reflections isn’t just about sharing with family and friends — it’s a gift to her future self.

“I want to preserve these memories in words,” she says. “So that when I’m too old to move, I can still travel through them, reliving every moment as I read.”

PADDY:

Howdy, pals. While you’re listening to this I am at a small cabin in the woods with my family. Hopefully, I’m not so sunburnt I need to apply aloe with a paint roller. That’s right, I am on vacation. Which is why we’re dipping into our archive for this week’s episode. It’s one of my favorite stories I’ve ever reported on because it involves a buncha things I love: friendship, doing objectively fun and simultaneously dumb things with said friends, and 90s pop culture.

Way back in 2021, two motorhead friends were joking around about famous movie road trips. Ya know, those buddy films where a pair of pals set out on the road for an adventure. But there was one cinema-fied road trip that they became obsessed with: a 400-mile minibike sputtering from a cornfield in Nebraska to a little place called Assssspen. Yes, the road [00:01:00] trip from the 1994 classic Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels comedy, Dumb and Dumber. And this obsession transformed into the audacious idea to actually go out and do it. From the minibike to the costumes to the locations, this wasn’t a hilarious 3-minute movie montage. This adventure was a down-to-the-last detail recreation. And when I heard about it, well, I just had to find out about how the hell they pulled it off. And how they had so much fun doing something so very very dumb.

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It’s always just kind of been up there in a pedestal as one of the most ridiculous motorcycle trips of all time. And I remember it was very vaguely, it was like a, oh, it’d be cool to ride a mini bike like they did in Dumb and Dumber

ZACK: at, at the root of this was a genuine curiosity of what it would be like, what, what those characters would have gone through if they had tried to ride this, this clapped out, uh, little death trap for hundreds of miles [00:02:00] across the, the American West.

Yeah. And. And we

PADDY: were pretty sure we knew. That’s Ary Henning and Zach Quartz. And they love motorcycles, like really love motorcycles, like a directs your life and career kind of love. Ary and Zach work at Revzilla, an online motorcycle gear retailer where they write and edit RevZilla’s Magazine, common tread.

They’re also the co-hosts of the Common Tread XP YouTube web series, which is to say Ary and Zach get paid to test and review gear and dream up insane moto adventures. They’re basically professional road trippers, which is absolutely a requirement. If you’re going to recreate arguably the most absurd road trip in movie history, what are some of your favorite trips that you guys have done together?

We

ZACK: got this, uh, Russian sidecar, a Euro old sidecar, and we rode it from Los Angeles up into the Central Valley, California, where it was hotter in the hinges of hell. And we bought this really weird [00:03:00] old two stroke motorcycle that airy fixed up on the spot. And then we rode the, the sidecar and the crazy old

ARI: motorcycle back to Los Angeles.

We rode American V Twins from Casper, Wyoming. Back to Los Angeles. Uh, we road tripped from Mobile, Alabama. Up to Birmingham to race, uh, vintage bikes. We’ve ridden, uh, sort of like vintage sport bike across,

ZACK: uh, Southern Australia.

ARI: We’ve ridden motorcycles all the way down the length of Baja, which is pretty awesome.

Yeah, and we traveled around Thailand via sidecar selling hamburgers. Which is also awesome.

ZACK: We rode from Anchorage on the south coast to, to the northernmost point in the United States, refueling on the fly. So Airie had a airie, built a system on his motorcycle that he, he could pump gas into the gas tank, uh, as he rode.

And I did it sort of top gun style out of the back of a truck. I pumped gas as I rode, which do not try at home. For the record

ARI: that was. Adding fluids to the bike in order to remove fluids from ourselves. We use, uh, Texas catheters.

PADDY: What’s a Texas catheter?

ARI: Uh, is that just a funnel and a tube? No, it’s a little adhesive [00:04:00] attachment and a tube.

ZACK: Yeah, it’s ba it’s basically a condom with a tube that goes out the end of your paint

ARI: leg in our case. Which is brilliant. Which is brilliant for road tripping, I gotta say like,

PADDY: yeah. My God. It’s a lot, it’s

ZACK: a lot harder to go to the bathroom riding a motorcycle than we thought it was going to be. It really was like a psychological challenge, but eventually nature called hard enough.

Yeah, we, we built a, um. A five seater motorcycle. We stretched a motorcycle so that it was 11 feet long and would carry five people, and then we, and then we put pontoons on it and turned it into a motorcycle, which, uh, could have ended pretty

ARI: poorly if we, if we hadn’t, if we hadn’t only been six feet from shore, it might have been a bad situation.

You

PADDY: guys are quickly becoming my heroes right now. This is amazing. If Ary and Zach aren’t your heroes yet, just wait. Because the sheer audacity and stupidity of their greatest adventure will definitely win you over in [00:05:00] the spring of 2021, they set out to recreate the iconic road trip from Dumb and Dumber, the 1994 film starring a not yet super famous Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.

In case you’re one of the sad, unfortunate people who hasn’t seen it, know that it’s become a cult classic. The movie was written and directed by the Farley brothers and is credited for launching their careers.

SFX: You just wanna go to Aspen and find that girl and you need me to drive you there, right? Am I right?

Yeah. Am I right? Am I right? Lord? So sad. A lot. Partner. Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world.

PADDY: Guys, guys, guys, in addition to ridiculous gags and toilet humor, the heart of the film is an epic adventure. The two main characters, Harry and Lloyd travel across the country to return a briefcase loaded with cash they found in an airport to its rightful owner. And because they are [00:06:00] very, very dumb, they have no clue that this money was actually a ransom payment.

But because they are brave and very, very dumb, they end up driving from a cornfield in Nebraska to Aspen, Colorado on a mini bike, which is an incredibly tiny motorcycle powered by a lawnmower size engine. In both Hollywood and real life, this is the kind of odyssey that is only possible if you’re with your best bud.

Ary and Zach have known each other since they were little kids. Both of their fathers race cars all over the US and the boys often accompanied their dads during long road trips to race tracks all across the country.

ARI: When you’re a child at the racetrack and your dad basically gives you lunch money and then says, I don’t wanna see you till four or five o’clock, you’re, you’re pretty self-sufficient.

So when you see other children of your approximate age group, you gravitate toward them. It’s, it’s like when you’re at a dinner

ZACK: party, when you’re a little kid and there’s another kid there that’s your age, you’re like. Well, we’re stuck here together, so I guess you’re my friend now. Yeah, we’re, I mean, we’re friends now.

Um, except for Rie Night [00:07:00] happened consistently, you know, again and again, like multiple times a summer. Um, we would, our dads would take us or we would, you know, we’d ask to go to the races with our dads and then we’d get there and, and a lot of times, you know, like we didn’t have email, we didn’t have any.

Connection. We didn’t, we didn’t talk to each other. We would just like hope, like I remember going to the track and be like, I hope Ari’s there. I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. Yeah,

ARI: I’d ask my dad, I’d be like, do you think Zach and Tim will be there? And he’d be like, yep, they should be. And that was, that was it.

This is adorable. Heartwarming. I just wanna say

ZACK: we, we sometimes, we’ve gone through portions of our life where we spend more time with each other than anyone else. So sometimes, sometimes the relationship does. To take on a strange tenor.

ARI: I mean, we just, we just came back from an 11 day trip where the only time I was away from Zach is when I was in the bathroom.

So, and even then, and, and even then, I was thinking about him

PADDY: today, Ary and Zach live together in a tree fort. They built in the woods and sleep in matching race car bunk beds. Okay, that’s not true, but it feels like it is. What is true is that if any two dummies were going to squeeze onto a mini [00:08:00] bike for a ridiculous 400 mile quest.

It’s them, the amount of

ZACK: skill that you need to do that versus the amount of kind of creating your teeth and getting through it. That ratio was good for us because there are a lot of, uh, movie scenes with motorcycles where it’s like, well, we’d like to test that, but we’re not skilled enough. So

ARI: people, people have now suggested lots of other, uh, movie motorcycle scenes and we’re like, yeah, you don’t understand Jumping a Harley down into the aqueducts of Los Angeles, Allah, Terminator is not really something we’re cut out for.

Yep, exactly. And it just evolved. From there to becoming an obsession. I mean, I think we, we, we thought about it and talked about it for five or six years before we actually got an opportunity to do it. Yeah. And then when we did, we doubled down and made a replica of the bike, wore replica outfits, just tried to figure out what they would’ve done if they’d actually done it.

Uh. Yeah, we went a little, we

PADDY: went a little obsessive on it. That is a massive understatement to open their web series episode, documenting their travels ary, and Zach filmed this perfect shot for shot recreation of [00:09:00] perhaps the most memorable scene in Dumb and Dumber when on an empty road in Nebraska.

Harry explains to Lloyd that he has traded their van for a mini bike.

ARI: I can get 70 miles to the gallon with this hog. Just when I think that you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this

SFX: and totally redeem yourself.

PADDY: Ary and Zach’s love of the film is so over the top that they built an exact replica of the minibike, wore the same clothing.

That the characters wore in the film and painstakingly researched the route Harry and Lloyd would’ve driven. They even made sure to start the trip in early spring, which put them at risk of nasty weather, but again, was true to the movie In Dumb and Dumber. It takes about three minutes of screen time for Harry and Lloyd to put.

Put their way to Aspen. But in real life, Arians Act set off to roll 400 miles of twisting back roads and mountain passes on a single speed vehicle that is roughly the size of a [00:10:00] children’s bicycle with a one gallon gas tank and a pole start motor plus with a two of them on it. The top speed was a blistering 32 miles an hour.

Tell me about the bike, about making it, testing it. Deeming it road

ARI: ready. Um, thankfully living in southern California, the minibike scene is still somewhat vibrant and there’s a couple of companies that are making frames and we did some research and it looks like it’s literally the same frame kit that they use for the movie.

Uh, and like the same wheels, like, I mean, we just tracked it all down online, basically just did a bunch of research.

ZACK: Yeah. Like literally the same stuff. I mean, it’s, it’s been been produced since 1960 or something like that. And it’s almost certainly what they used for the, for the movie bike. And I mean, it wasn’t like we were like, oh, we found something that looks similar.

It was literally identical,

ARI: the obsessive attitude. Extended all the way, like even with paint colors to get the frame right. We got like three different paint colors and we’re comparing them and, uh, the, the turns of electrical tape on the uprights are the same. The reason we [00:11:00] blew through so many tires is ’cause we were insistent on using the same rubber that they used in the movie, which is totally inappropriate, but we stuck to it.

How did you like test it? You know, check the box, like it’s road ready

ZACK: air. He jumped on the frame when he finished welding it and was like, all right, it seems like

ARI: that’s gonna hold. That’s how we test things that we fabricate Patty, we jump in them in the shop and we say. That’ll probably do. Yeah,

ZACK: and I mean, we’ve never had anything break so far, so.

Arie predicted that we would be very excited for about the first 10 minutes of the ride. And then we would, then the, the novelty would wear off Uhhuh and that was accurate as we set off. It was so cold, um, which was not the plan, you know, we thought it was gonna be 60, um, but instead it was 27. And when we first set off, we were kinda like, ah, we’re doing it.

You know, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re finally doing the dumb and dumb road trip. And then sure enough, I mean, five miles down the road, we were just like. Holy crap. I can’t believe that we’re gonna do this for another, you

ARI: know that we’re only one 100th of the way into this trip. Yeah, exactly.

PADDY: Being cold was just the beginning.

As Rie and Zach would quickly learn [00:12:00] following through on an awesomely stupid idea, well, it can hurt. It can hurt like hell. That story after the break.

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MIDROLL

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not surprisingly riding a mini bike belt. Buckle the butt crack with your best pal for 400 miles. Well, that’s a pain in the ass. Literally,

SFX: you all right?

You’ll feel better after a moose burger.

PADDY: Riding that bike looked like what scientists or maybe doctors would call painful as shit. Can you compare it to anything?

ZACK: I mean, if you just set a a two by four between two sawhorses and then said, sit on that longitudinally for 10 hours. And then have it vibrate.

Have it vibrate. Yeah. Don’t forget the vibration. I mean, it was just terrible. It was just really [00:13:00] uncomfortable. Um, yeah, just like

ARI: a lot

ZACK: of,

ARI: lot of vibration and a lot of vibration. It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a comfort machine and it’s one of those things where you’re uncomfortable, but. You, you apply that discomfort over the course of 6, 8, 10 hours and it’s kind of exponential.

And we had a hard time standing up. I remember getting off the bike was the problem.

ZACK: I remember Arie got off and then I sort of slowly stood up and then he looked down and he was like, is that how much seat you’ve had? The whole time. And he, but he, I think he was taking up a little bit more of the seat than he realized.

And because the, because the sissy bar is back there, which of course was important for aesthetic reasons, but he couldn’t scoot back any more than he could. Like he just had, as the room that he had, he was stuck. And so I, the amount of seat that I was left with was just very minimal, just what I had. And it was, I think it was, it was less than maybe even I realized until, until it got

ARI: pointed out to

ZACK: you.

Yeah. And it was like, yeah, just. Brutal. Yeah.

ARI: It’s not, it’s not a, it’s not a means of transportation that I would recommend for covering great distances.

PADDY: In addition to the pain of [00:14:00] riding the mini bike, there was the fact that the thing broke down. A lot

SFX: Aspen or bust

PADDY: ary and Zach only made it 27 miles before their first mechanical issue.

SFX: Ah, oh no. You know, when I was ready for a break anyway,

PADDY: the bike ran rich and got pretty godawful mileage. I

SFX: don’t think we’re getting 70 miles per gallon.

PADDY: Air kept breathing in fumes. It’s so

ARI: obnoxious.

PADDY: Back

ARI: there. I’m starting to get a headache. I can smell it.

PADDY: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not pleasant. The bike was held together with nuts and bolts and bungee cords and rubber bands.

This is gonna be a really long trip. The tires were five inch lawnmower tires that wore out super quick.

SFX: Ah.

PADDY: It had sketchy brakes or like non-existent brakes, as in they had to use their feet like Fred Flynns down.

SFX: I’m not prepared to stop.

PADDY: Ah, the drive train deteriorated. I

SFX: think we lost a bolt from under there, so this thing’s flopping around

PADDY: and everything was vibrating so much.

It was actually shimmying off the bike.

SFX: It turns out the whole no suspension thing’s a of a problem,

ZACK: but wait. There’s more. [00:15:00] Ari was recovering from a separated collarbone while we were on this shoot. So the high five that he pulls off in the opening scene,

ARI: uh, took a lot of Advil.

ZACK: Yeah. Spare a thought for his, um, the tendons holding his collarbone onto his shoulder because he was, uh, only a few weeks out from that entry.

Oh, wow. There was a, at one point we were like, oh, what happens if the tire blows? And I was like, I don’t know. Like I don’t. I don’t think it would be that big a problem. Like I think I could wrangle this thing and not tip over. And Ari was like, if I hit the ground with my shoulder in this state, it’s gonna be a seriously

ARI: bad situation.

I had a lot of time just sitting there in the back doing nothing, thinking about all the horrible ways that thing could go sideways into under an 18 wheeler or into a guardrail or off a ditch. And it was just, uh, it was, it was a lot to bear. You

PADDY: guys had a lot of like mishaps on this thing. I. You seem to kind of like handle it though, like super well, how did you guys do

ARI: that?

I mean, we always have what we call dumpster fires along the way of any of these trips, but yeah, you just, uh, you just kind of deal with it

ZACK: as it [00:16:00] comes. I mean, it probably goes back to the road trips we did with our, our dads, our families. I mean, the, uh, that’s an aspect of road tripping period. You, you just sort of have to be ready for that stuff to happen and, and it’s not, uh, easy to be.

Calm or have the instinct to persevere. Uh, I think Aries especially good at, at sort of like being in a situation and being like, well, here are our options. Like, this is what we can do and let’s try the first thing. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll try the second thing. Um, and that’s a, like I said, a good outlook to have with any, with any road trip.

You know, it’s good to, good to think about what might happen and what you need to be prepared, prepared for. And, and oftentimes, uh, you know, the best stories

PADDY: come out of. When things go wrong, calling upon the road trip. Lessons learned in their youth allowed Ary and Zach to withstand the mini bike beatdown and breakdowns, but the boost of inspiration that you need to get through an uncomfortable saga, those came from the folks they encountered on the road.

Folks who love [00:17:00] Dumb and Dumber just as much as they do.

ZACK: Within the first a hundred miles probably. This truck passed us towing a trailer full of horses. Uh, and it was a crew cab truck and the rear passenger side window was rolled down and the, there was a guy kind of like dangling halfway outta the window.

And as they went by, we were going 30 and they were going 60. And as they went by, we could just hear the guy yelling, dumb and dumber. And then we got over a rise in the a crest in the road maybe. I don’t know, five miles later and the truck was pulled over and our assumption was that, oh, this is where they’re taking the horses to this pasture that’s off on the right, this endless pasture.

Uh, and then we saw the guy like jump outta the back and pull out his phone and he just like, they literally pulled this truck and trailer over.

ARI: He’s like pumping his fist in the air. Yeah.

ZACK: And he’s recording on his phone and like as we go by, he’s like screaming. He’s like,

ARI: yes. Oh yes.

ZACK: And I think that was like the, the first of many interactions we

PADDY: had.

Yeah. As it turns out, that was the first of many ary, and Zach met tons of diehard fans of Dumb and Dumber on the [00:18:00] road, many of whom had what seemed to be an uncontrollable reflex to quote one-liners from the film when they spotted two guys on a minibike at times. This came from the most unexpected source, probably the best was

ZACK: the police that In Walden.

ARI: Yeah. Yeah, in Walden. That’s right. We were out there in the morning and we were kind of shooting some shots, uh, before we departed. Some establishing shots and the police showed up. Uh, and you know, they were, they were polite, but they were like, Hey, you can’t, we got a call in that someone’s riding like a mini bike on, on Main Street, like, you can’t ride this thing here.

And our director was like, oh, no, officer. Like it’s, it’s uh, it’s street legal. And he, he walks over and looks at the license plate and just kind of takes a pause and looks back at us. And he is like. Where are you guys headed? And one of us said, Aspen, and he took another long pause and then he is like, where the beer flows, like wine.

No way. Yeah. But like after that, the cops were just like shooting off quotes

ZACK: left and right. There were a handful of moments like that where people were just, um, stoked on it and, uh, ostensibly excited about what we we’re doing.

PADDY: For sure. Cheerleaders along the way.

ZACK: Yeah. Yeah.

PADDY: And yet, amazingly Arian [00:19:00] Zach.

Were not given the heroes welcome in Aspen that they most definitely deserved. You guys are pretty damn excited when you make it to Aspen.

SFX: Woohoo. We made it to Aspen.

PADDY: But then you pull into the center of town and there’s like, there’s no band, there’s no parade. There’s no like celebratory festival.

There’s no one there to like greet you with the congrats. No movie magic here folks. What were you feeling and thinking when you got to Aspen? Thank God it’s over.

ZACK: We got to downtown Aspen and no one would even look at us and probably because we looked like hot garbage, like we were covered in road grime and we were like cold and windburned.

Yeah, just beat up brutal. I mean, we looked terrible

ARI: and dumb And Dumber is like a, a smear on Aspen’s record that I’m sure it would prefer. Was forgotten. So when people saw us, I’m sure they immediately knew what we were doing. They’re like, God dammit, these jerks, like [00:20:00] ruining, ruining the, the real estate here, ruining the vibe.

One couple walked

ZACK: by sort of, you know, tall, lean, good looking couple that you’d expect to see in Aspen and the, the guy was. Sort of like looking like, sort of looked over at us and was kinda like, he seemed curious and I, I I, I could sense this energy from his, his girlfriend or his wife, or who, the woman he was with, being like, don’t, don’t, don’t look at them.

Just come, come follow me. We’re walking, we’re walk. We’re not stopping. They’re gonna ask us for money. Attention. Yeah, exactly. There’s no, like, there’s no celebration. Nobody cares that you’ve struggled through this motorcycle journey or, uh, you know what, it’s taken you to get there. And, and I think that that’s the case with almost every.

Road trip, right? Like you, you get to this place, everyone’s just living their life and you have to kind of take

PADDY: in that moment yourself. The trip was over, but the guys now had a story to tell. When they did talent, they got a reaction that was beyond their wildest dreams. The 30 minute video of their adventure exploded in popularity On the common Tread XP [00:21:00] YouTube channel garnering 1.5 million views, along with a pile up of giggle induced compliments.

And here’s the truly crazy part. The video also caught the attention of dumb and dumber writer directors, the Fairley Brothers. Ari and Zach received an email saying that Peter and Bobby Fairley wanted to schedule a Zoom call with them. Them and Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, they had a lot

ARI: of questions.

They were very curious and, and, uh, really, yeah.

SFX: Yeah.

ARI: Um, and also, you know, complimentary. They, they seemed to enjoy it enough to, to actually reach out to us, which I, I find still, I find amazing that they all took the time out of what is presumably very busy schedules to, to get together and basically just hang out with us for half an hour.

It was remarkable. Um, it, it was, yeah. I think we were all kind of smiling painfully hard and. I know that when I was done with the meeting, my wife asked me why my face and neck were so red. So like, clearly, clearly there were some, uh, bodily reactions going on that I couldn’t quite control ’cause I was so excited.[00:22:00]

ZACK: Yeah, I mean, I laughed so hard watching that movie and, and I watched it so many times and I enjoyed it every single time I watched it. And so the idea that we could create something. With a, a few thousand bucks and a and, and a week of our time, uh, that would make them smile and would make them laugh and would make them shake their head, uh, in appreciation.

Uh, was just like, uh, it, this is like a, a, an unbelievable and, and incalculable amount of. Of, uh, reward for us. It was just

ARI: so, so cool. Initially, we were concerned that, um, that that Bobby’s assistant was reaching out to us, uh, because we were infringing on copyrights and that we might be getting a, a cease and desist order or getting sued, but it was quite the opposite.

ZACK: It was cool that they appreciated it as an homage to their art. You know, like they, they, they worked hard on this thing that they did, and, and they understood that the reason that we did it was that we love it too. And it wasn’t like, oh, you guys are trying to ride our coattails, or you’re trying to kind of like.

Take some slice of our pie. They were just, they were so [00:23:00] genuine and, and, uh, and it seemed like they really enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce a little bit about filming the movie because for them it was such a seminal piece of their career. And it was gonna, before Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels were super famous, so they, they, they could be more casual than, than, than Jim Carrey ever could in any shoot after that.

And, and it was sort of their, I think it was their directorial debut. Um, so it just, there there’s just so, so much stuff that was meaningful to them. And, and it was fun to hear them talk about it in such a fond way.

ARI: Did they ask you about the mini bike? Yeah, actually they did. Jim Carrey, uh, expressed an interest in riding it, and then I think he expressed an interest in owning it.

What did you say? I, I basically, by all means, like I was told him where we

PADDY: were. I was like, come on down, take it for a spin. Yeah. Chatting with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels and the Fairley Brothers is a pretty great trophy to set in your road trip award case. But for Ary and Zach, the journey had a deeper meaning.

They had set out to do something that seemed almost impossible and humongously dumb, and to see if they could still [00:24:00] laugh when it totally sucked. By all measures, they pulled it off. First of

ZACK: all, it was an idiotic mission, and second of all, we were in more pain than we normally are on a road trip. But we, we did have fun.

I mean, our shoots are, um, pretty punishing from a, from a logistical and, uh, and hours a week kind of, uh, standpoint. But, um,

PADDY: I was super excited about it. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. At first it’s almost like. Oh my God, what a smart idea. Second. Oh my God, what a stupid idea.

ARI: But I don’t think there’s anything that just like eclipses it in terms of.

Stupidity. Stupidity isn’t easy, man. It takes, you gotta work at it. It’s a good recipe for us. Yeah. Yeah. It’s

ZACK: been working so far.

PADDY: Are you guys gonna take the bike on any more road trips or is it like, no. Fuck. Goodness.

ZACK: No. Jesus. No.

ARI: Are you kidding me? What are you high? Oh, we, we wanted to just like ghost ride it off a cliff and Aspen and walk away.

SFX: I can’t believe we’re really doing this on a mini bike from [00:25:00] Nebraska.

MUSIC

PADDYO OUTRO

This episode originally aired in 2021. Zack Courts and Ari Henning are still friends who are still very much obsessed with road trips and motorized everything, and still making videos and hilarious, thought provoking media for Revzilla. You can watch their Dumb And Dumber road trip recreation on RevZilla’s YouTube page. It is amazing. And unsurprisingly, it’s my favorite episode of their highly popular Common Tread XP webseries.

And sidenote: You lovely listeners, we want to hear from you. Send us your guest nominations, show reactions, podcast thoughts, maybe even your favorite joke, or your nana’s sketty sauce recipe via email to Outside Podcast At Outside Inc Dot Com. We make this show, but it is your show. And we aim to please you and your ear holes.

The Outside Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O’Connell. But you can call me PaddyO. [00:26:00] The show is also produced by the storytelling wizard, Micah “my wife tells me that yelling while complimenting negates the compliment” Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

The Outside Podcast is made possible by our Outside Plus members. Learn about all the extra rad benefits and become a member yourself at Outside Online Dot Com Slash Pod Plus.

“It’s not quite like the Super Bowl,” said one of the staff members of the 2025 Mille Miglia to my very American question of equivalences. “But it is one of the biggest events in Italy. You will see the crowds.”

I got invited to do what is essentially Italy’s automotive Super Bowl (besides the Italian Grand Prix)—but with a twist. No, I wouldn’t be behind the wheel of some pre-1957 car as rules and tradition stated. Instead, I’d be piloting something unfashionably modern for the EV-only attachment of the iconic Mille: A 2025 Polestar 3, one of just seven official entrants, including five university testbed cars.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

If that sounds like cowardice, I tend to agree. We would be in an air-conditioned, power-steeringed comfort, with a nice stereo to boot. Meanwhile, the rest of the brave souls on the rally would struggle against a radiating Italian summer, willing their historic machines to the finish line of the famous Brescia-to-Rome run.

But what I saw was an opportunity to put the proverbial feet to the fire of EV road tripping. Two questions had to be answered: Could you feasibly road trip an EV for an excruciatingly long, 12-plus-hour per day, five-day rally without worrying about charging? More importantly, would it be enjoyable?

For those who aren’t familiar, the Mille Miglia is a historic rally that used to run as an endurance race until 1957, when deaths and safety concerns forced a temporary shutdown. It was reborn as a regulation rally in 1977, which is a race against the clock, but also against a predetermined amount of time. The rally would consist of long point-to-point checkpoint stages that aren’t timed, then various competition stages where hitting an average speed and time was critical.

For example, a stage of 600 meters has to be completed in 24 seconds. Any faster or slower than 24 seconds would result in penalty points—and organizers measure to the hundredth of a second. The biggest challenge of the Mille isn’t these competitive stages, as modern rally computers do most of the average speed work. It’s simply getting to the end in a vintage car. That would not be an issue with our Polestar 3.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Still, my co-driver, Michael Van Runkle, and I were determined to conquer the competitive stages to truly see if an EV was worth road tripping. It would be a test of Italy’s charging infrastructure, the Polestar 3’s range and efficiency, and whether the pleasure of the open road is diminished by the need to charge.
The Mille would start in the northern Italian city of Brescia, head down through Tuscany to Rome, then glide along the east coast of Italy back to Brescia—a route of 1,000 miles, covered over five days.

Each day had its own road book with checkpoints and specific turn-by-turn instructions. Each road book warned us to prepare for 14-hour days of driving, with average stage lengths of 320 kilometers, starting at 5:00 am and ending at 7:00 pm—a far cry from Stirling Moss’s 1955 record of 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds for the entire race.

With our liveried Polestar 3, alongside teammates in a Polestar 2 and 4, we departed Brescia with 87 percent charge, facing a 240-kilometer stage. We charged the night before to 100 percent, and lost a fair amount of charge transitioning from the charger to our hotel—a theme that would continue throughout the rally.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Still, with over 340 kilometers of range indicated, range anxiety never quite set in. In fact, it was largely smooth sailing. There was a police escort for most situations, which circumvented practically all traffic laws, and the crowds were genuinely enormous. Alongside our Green rally, the classic rally was the main attraction, as was a Ferrari owner’s run, which was open to new and more recent Ferraris.

Such was the disappointment from the crowds that we were not a group of fire-spitting V-12s; we received a fair amount of disapproval from locals. At our very first checkpoint, a man in the crowd yelled “No sound, no feeling,” into our open window. Thumbs down were the most common gestures directed at our Polestar, right after general indifference. Rock stars, we were not.

The first debacle came after we completed our uneventful kilometers. Our battery was depleted to 38 percent, a great showing for the Polestar. Yet, for all the effort that went into organizing a dedicated EV rally in the greater puzzle of the Mille, nobody seemed to think about the most critical part of driving an EV: Charging.

It may have been in the spirit of the rally to be self-sufficient, yet the first stop in Bologna had just a few high-speed EV chargers. The closest stations only had two stalls at one, and four at another. Chaos ensued, so we drove 20 minutes outside of Bologna to the suburb of Panigale, where a 14-stall charging station sat outside of Ducati’s factory. Crisis averted, but only temporarily.

At our very first checkpoint, a man in the crowd yelled ‘No sound, no feeling,’ into our open window. Thumbs down were the most common gestures directed at our Polestar, right after general indifference. Rock stars, we were not.

For all of the serenity of our days driving across Italy, enjoying Tuscany, Rome, and the many delights Italy had to offer, charging was a constant pain. Every night was a challenge on top of an already long day, leaving little room for rest. By day three, Van Runkle and I were in a sleepless haze of jet lag, struggling with charging after the incredibly long 380-kilometer stage from Bologna to Rome.

Our intermediate stop in Siena halted us for two hours, as everyone crowded around the only available EV chargers in a 50-kilometer radius. We got to Rome late and had to charge the car two kilometers away from the hotel. Day three presented similar horrors, a 346-kilometer run from Rome to Cervia.

While the Polestar 3 was a more than capable road trip partner with plenty of comfort, space, and performance, it was being let down by Italy’s charging infrastructure. Our haze was punctuated by genuinely once-in-a-lifetime experiences—chasing down a Ferrari SP3 on a tight backroad, witnessing the grand vistas and feudal towns of Tuscany, bombarding a country lane with pre-war cars that largely ignored the law—yet we dreaded charging every night.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Finally, on night three in Cervia, we encountered a broken charger that diverted us yet again. Rubbing salt firmly into the wound, our Polestar 3 suffered a malfunction in town that briefly bricked it, and with it, the charging system. We then had to reset the stricken EV at the charger, wasting another five minutes, before it would accept a charge.

It was with relief that days four and five reduced the onslaught considerably, halving the stage lengths. We finally got rest, peaceful, functional charging, and some reflection in.

The Polestar 3 was genuinely lovely at times, and extremely annoying at others. For all of its quietness and comfort, with excellent, supportive seats, the tech was frustrating. Having one central screen running most functions made simple tasks difficult, something we’ve noticed with a very similar system in the Volvo EX30. Though there was certainly no doubt it could boogie, with shockingly good handling and power.

Yet the lack of romance driving an EV had never been more glaring than in the most romantic race in the world. Literally, it goes to Rome. I remember less about driving the Polestar 3 than I do about the places I visited and the things I saw—which is almost romantic in its own way.

But without a vibrating, plucky, determined internal combustion engine, I never developed a kinship with it. For all of its cool Crate & Barrel-esque design, its stats, and the places it took me, the bond didn’t come naturally. Getting to the finish line in Brescia was more of a breathless gasp than a triumphant homecoming. I walked away from the car and hardly remembered its part in our trip, and that is the entire point of road tripping a car; the vehicle is a character, too.

Yet the lesson couldn’t be clearer: Don’t road trip an EV if you’re in a rush.

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Photo by: Chris Rosales / Motor1

Answering the questions above: Was this rally feasible in the Polestar 3? Yes, it was. We made it to the end, even with janky charging infrastructure. Range anxiety during the day was virtually nonexistent. The actual issue was that the Mille was designed for gas cars, not EVs. The shorter days proved easy and fun, while the long days were made longer by hours of charging in anticipation of tomorrow’s stage.

But was the Mille enjoyable in an EV? Well, I thought about that deeply as I stared at a two-person crew manhandling a 1930 Bentley Blower up a mountain pass, reaching out of the infernal thing to operate its various controls. If enjoyable is being in that pain for 12 hours a day rather than the air-conditioned serenity of the Polestar, then you’re a masochist.

I think I’d rather be a masochist.