Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Autumn 2007 | Page 26

FEATURE

Sowerby’s
Road:
creating
a driving
adventure
Do you love to drive? Does the idea of hitting the open road with a few friends, seeing what adventures might lay ahead interest you? Meet Garry
Sowerby: adventurer, driving enthusiast extraordinaire and the guy you should get to know if you have a yearning to ‘take it to the streets’...
Around the world in (less than) 80 days...
For Garry, a love of the open road began in September
1980 with a 74-day, 43,031-km ‘round-the-world’
record-breaking drive. This feat landed Garry on the
front cover of the Guinness Book of World Records.
Why was his accomplishment cover-worthy? Because
Garry and his driving partner, Ken Langley, had just
obliterated the previous record of 104 days!
As you can well imagine, the thrill of setting
a world record almost paled in comparison to
the incredible memories gained doing it! This
particular trek began at the base of the CN
Tower in Toronto. Personnel from the Tower
had graciously supplied Garry and Ken with
miniature replicas of the Tower to hand out

as gifts to special people they met along the way. In Jabalpur,
India, Garry and Ken stayed at the Jackson Hotel. They had the
good fortune to meet Mr. and Mrs. Jackson and thought so
highly of them that they decided that they were ‘Tower worthy’!
The Jackson’s reaction was a surprise, to say the least.
“When I presented the CN Tower replica to the
Jacksons, they were very excited and literally ran into
their library,” Garry recalls. There, the walls were lined
with hundreds of books. Lush carpets covered the
floor. At the far end of the room, a stone fireplace with
a wall-to-wall mantle held treasured family heirlooms.
“Mr. Jackson looked at Ken and I and smiled as he
placed the gift on the mantle, beside another
CN Tower exactly like it!”

Garry Sowerby speaking at a press conference.

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