Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, California (WABC) -- A man broke into an animal shelter in California, but he didn't try to steal cash - he tried to steal gumballs. The man dubbed the 'Gumball Bandit' struggled to drag the machine through a broken window at the shelter in Sacramento. At one point, the gumballs spilled out and left the man with only the machine. Eventually the bandit brought the machine out through another exit and tossed it over a barbed wire fence. His wild journey has gone viral.

Story of recent attempt by Roy and Fyshe to break record cross-country driving record of some 32 hours known as the Cannonball Run that was set earlier by Diem and Turner. The article is quite detailed and long. It is here at Wired com. However, this does have a dark side such as this accident death from someone else's earlier try.

Organizers of the modified-car excursion across Europe insisted that ModBall 2007 was "neither a rally nor a race." The German police on Monday afternoon, however, begged to differ. And the inaugural event, with its 77 cars and 143 participants -- most of them from Britain -- was shut down on just the second of a planned seven legs across Europe. The German autobahn police began getting reports on Monday afternoon of cars racing south near Düsseldorf. Drivers reported several cars -- each with similar stickers and numbers -- bombing down the highway with little regard for life and limb, some...

From the outside, it looks like another '70s muscle car. On the inside, it's a gearhead fantasy come true. Every chunk of this 1972 Ford Torino's innards has been swapped for fresh parts. An extra gas tank has been fused onto its body. Controllers for laser jammers, radar detectors, GPS sensors and video cameras now occupy areas once reserved for 8-track players and beige-tinted shades. The vehicle has been hauled 2,700 miles on a tractor-trailer, from Gibsonville, North Carolina, to San Francisco. And on Wednesday, it'll begin a five-day, helter-skelter dash to reach Miami before hundreds of other cars cross...