COMMENTARY

Buddies from Kansas test themselves in race across India

They both kept using the word “literally” a lot. As in: “We literally almost died like 20 times every day.” And: “The guy literally told us that our rickshaw wasn’t smoking enough.” And: “We were literally told if it came down to a choice between hitting a cow or a person, hit the person.”

It always amazes me the incredibly dangerous things people will do for fun. You run across these people all the time — friends, co-workers, neighbors. Vacation talk comes up, and you tell them that you’re going to Washington to see the White House or Branson to see Yakov Smirnoff. They say that they’re going to swim in a tank of sharks or go chase tornadoes or go eat burning coals or something. I don’t get it.

Konstantin Othmer and Giampiero Ambrosi have been friends since they were in sixth grade. They grew up in Overland Park together, played soccer together, went to high school together, stayed in touch. They both ended up living in California, and one day Ambrosi and Othmer went out for some Indian food.

“OK,” Ambrosi said. “So here’s the plan. Let’s go compete in this auto rickshaw race across India.”

Now, Ambrosi seems like a nice guy. Respectable. He’s the CEO of VirtualTourist.com, which has more than a million members. He seems as if he’d be a great friend. But see, for me, the words “rickshaw race” and “across India” would more or less end any co-vacation plans. First of all, a rickshaw (as I would find out) is a two- or three-wheeled hooded vehicle that can top out at 30 mph and runs on a gas and oil mixture, kind of like the garden tools in your garage. I don’t have many hard and fast rules in my life, but one is to never drive in a strange land in something with the same engine as a weed whacker.

Secondly, there are the words “across India,” which is (“literally,” as Ambrosi would say) the most dangerous place in the world to drive. No, literally. India, according to several studies, has by far the most traffic fatalities of any country in the world. Last check, about 250 people die every day on Indian roads. The odds of a tourist in a rickshaw dying, I’m guessing, are roughly 3-2.

But Ambrosi knew his buddy Konstantin Othmer, the CEO of a mobile phone software company Core Mobility, has an equal number of crazy cells in his brain. So they ate curry and drank plenty, and then Ambrosi asked his old friend to go race rickshaws in a far-off land where they might die. And Othmer said, “Sure.”

“I like that sort of stuff,” Othmer says now.

That sort of stuff. They prepared for the race by bringing a GPS system (“Pretty much useless,” Othmer would say) and taking the necessary precautions, such as taking medicine to prevent malaria and typhoid. Literally. The race began in Chennai, which is the fourth-largest city in India. This may not sound like much. But it has 7.5 million people in the metro area. This makes it about five times the size of Kansas City, or roughly the population of London. Imagine someone dropping you off in a rickshaw in the middle of London, giving you a rental-car style map and saying, “OK, go find a place called Pondicherry. And don’t die! And have fun!”

The race organizers did give the team detailed instructions on how to operate the rickshaw.

“Step one,” the organizer said, “this is the starter (he appeared to pull some sort of lever). This is the gearshift, OK? And that’s how you steer. OK?”

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To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.