Recently, I completed a year of exile in Albuquerque, New Mexico and returned to my home in Chicago. This involved a drive of 1,350 miles, which took about 21 hours split over two days. As I am not an experienced long-distance driver, I was concerned about staying awake and alert for the trip.
Rather than loading up on energy drinks or coffee, I think I stumbled upon an original and effective solution. I downloaded a steaming heap of Car Talk podcasts and did the unthinkable: I listened to nothing but Car Talk for the entire drive. That’s right - 21 consecutive hours of Tom and Ray blabbering.
While the permanent damage to my sanity is a concern, I must report that my frequent cursing at the radio kept me wide awake for the entire trip.
My question is this: have I earned the endurance record for the most consecutive hours of Car Talk?
You no doubt have. Although I like those guys, anything more than 30 minutes of their babble drives me nuts.
You missed a lot of good local radio. Your choice, but that was an opportunity squandered.
Noah, Congratulations ! As Far As I’m Concerned The Record Is Your’s And I don’t Think It Will Be Challenged Any Time Soon.
Although you hold the record, let me just say that there are some things in life to which people don’t aspire to set records. Records for consecutive near drownings or being struck by lightning are just two examples. There are literally millions more.
Listening to 21 consecutive hours of Car Talk is along the lines of kissing your sister.
CSA
You’ve Gone 30 Minutes ? That Places You In The Number Two Spot For The World’s Record.
CSA
Car Talk = 5% information and 95% barely-coherant babble.
You probably set a record. You definitely deserve a prize.
I’d like to add that I personally have no intention of trying to challenge your record.
Although 21 hours is a long time, I for one have listened to Car Talk much longer. On iTunes I have about 50 Car Talk podcasts measuring over a span of about 1 day and a half. I have listened to all of those podcasts consecutively on my iPod Touch.
As a matter of fact I play Car Talk on my surround sound stereo in my bedroom to help me fall asleep every night!
Evn with the influence of Click & Clack, I still have managed to maintain 3.89 GPA in school if you can beleive that!
- Derek Kitamura (13 years old)
fortsmacker@gmail.com
A very valiant if not insane thing to do. But I may be in worse shape. I have listened to car talk for the last 20 years on KQED radio 88.5 F.M. here in San Jose Ca. I always listen to both the Saturday show (which is a repeat of the previous weeks Sunday show) and I never miss the Sunday show which is always new (Well, its new to me.)
I do, for mental health reasons, sometimes miss one of the shows but I miss very few a year. So lets just say that if I listen to an average of 85 shows each year (A Low estimate) then I have subjected myself to at least 1700 hours of this insanity. That number does not include the many hours I have taken on trips with me as pod casts or burned on CD.
I feel sick. I must be sick. Maybe its the fumes from my 1969 Plymouth Barracuda getting to me.
Cagare! Sono Pazzo!
The Stig
While not a contender for longest continuous listening binge, I’d like to offer the following endurance anecdote. Last November I joined a six-week research voyage in the southern Atlantic Ocean (Canary Islands to Cape Town), investigating marine biodiversity - I study squid. Part of the research conducted included a 5-hour-per-day effort to record any whales or dolphins visible around the ship; each participating researcher scanned the horizon for two hours per day. (For the record, I saw whales once on my shift - that’s one day out of about 40, or five minutes of excitement out of about 80 hours’ effort). To stay alert, I too used a pre-downloaded pile of CT podcasts, and they worked a treat. However, I was the only native English-speaker on the boat, and the lasting damage of this prolonged Tappit exposure was that I developed a light Boston accent and an embarrassing laugh-snort. I did try very hard to learn my colleagues’ languages (Spanish, Portuguese and Russian) in order to get exposure to some kind of coherent dialogue.
I only want to address what “consecutive” listening is. Every year for the last
half-decade or so I take my long deserved three day vacation in October. It is largely spent in the car driving around the Western United States. Two years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the Podcast by putting a couple of Car Talk episodes onto CDs for my long drive. I was hooked. Last year I purchased an Ipod for the expressed purpose of listening
to Car Talk for my drive. Having loaded up the previous 28 podcasts onto the device, I started my car one Friday morning in October and hit play; I was on my way from Northern California to Colorado via Southern Utah. Having the relatively short time frame of three days and the hunger for the open road I do not make a habit of stopping unless absolutely needed so by Saturday afternoon I had listened to, with required petrol refills and natural breaks aside, nearly 28 hours of Car Talk consecutively. I quickly found a local bookstore that offered free WiFi so that I might download the then recently released Podcast and continue
my Car talk experience.
It seems odd to me that there are not more postings on this blog as a good laugh, snort, and car information is so effective at passing the time through the earlier hours of the Nevada and Utah desert, but maybe my oddness is only the result of the years of regular Car Talk infusion.
Well, a few weeks ago, I was really sick, so I stayed in my room for about 2 days. And because I couldn’t read or draw, or anything that I normally do, I leaned over and hit play on my ipod. And I guess I had been listening to Car Talk the day before, so that’s what played. Being to tired to change it, I ended up listening to Car Talk. I think I hit about 47 hours, although I was sleeping for maybe…10 hours of it?