Obsessions Die Hard

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Obsessions Die Hard is the story of Ed Culberson''s determination to fulfill his dream. As a teenager he was fascinated with the Pan-American Highway System, which runs the length of North and South America. In his early forties, he acquired another passion--motorcycling. It was only natural that he would merge the two.

Culberson, then a retired U.S. Army officer, wanted to ride his motorcycle along the Pan-American Highway''s entire route between Alaska and Argentina. However, in the Dari¿region of eastern Panama and western Colombia the road is broken by an 80-mile gap filled with jungles, rain forests, rivers, and swamps, forcing travelers to detour around it by boat or plane. The area is so inhospitable and unexplored that a myth about its impenetrability has evolved over the centuries, and a curse aimed at Dari¿trespassers shrouds the region. But the Dari¿Gap, known as el tap¿n del Dari¿/i>--the Stopper--didn''t dim Culberson''s