Oh, I meant to post this earlier- it's a blog entry MJ made for Jalopnik, though I haven't seen it posted yet:
Rally to the Oregon TrailI'm at the Oregon Trail Rally, I'd be here normally but this year it's taken
more than even I wondered if I could achieve. Wrecking the orange car at
100AW was a surprise and it was a totally destroyed shell. It doesn't look
that bad but it's bent through and through and the cage is knackered in many
places. It's been more of a _rally_ to build a new car and even show up with
a running and legal car than it ever is to actually compete.
I was planning to be number 4 now instead of 46. Since Kim and I placed 4th
overall in the national championship for 2006 I get the right to run that
number this season. I liked 46 because it's nice and round or something. I
have this need to situate shit sometimes, you know, move things around a bit
... For instance at the docs office I'll straighten the magazines or
straighten the paintings on the wall, also walking through the parking lot
I'll pick up trash... Anyway, 46 seems to meet my needs be being even and
having both it's numbers divisible by 2 thus properly situated.... Or
something. So the plan was to change to number 4 for the rest of the year.
Then as we enter tech and registration some helpful souls pointed out to
Worm (codriver) that we'd probably loose some friends running with number 4
at Oregon. I've been so busy building the car I forgot that 4 was the number
Mark Lovell and Rodger Freeman carried on their Subaru when they had a fatal
crash at Oregon in 2003. Maybe I'll stay 46 afterall.
http://www.markandroger.com/Determination.... While building this new rally car in just a few weeks I
remembered a little project I had when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I
cut a creosote timber in half with a hack saw. Imagine a square telephone
pole and cutting it in half with a fregin hack saw, I don't remember how
long it took but I decided it had to be done and sawed away... I think the
time is counted in days.. Not hours. I'm sure I was tired but I highly doubt
my hands or body hurt then nearly as bad as they do now. I've given myself
carpel tunnel syndrome on this go round. Yanking and banging on stuff for
hours and hours has never hurt before.. But now doing 15-18 hour days
yanking and banging and suddenly I reached the point of breakdown. My hands
are going to sleep at all hours of the day and I have to hold them just
right for feeling to return. It took two days of no activity at first to get
some feeling back, now they are much better but still needing rest.
My friend Andrew Havas was the only man I know for the job of putting the
roll cage in my new shell in the amount of time I needed it done to make
Oregon happen. Some pictures are at
www.havspeed.com Andrew Havas is one of
those wild and crazy guys that exist out there in racing world who can
muster the energy to do amazing things in a very short amount of time with
great quality; sometimes it just takes a bit to get him riled up and going!
He'd mentioned that he wanted to be the one to build my next rally shell so
when I suddenly needed one we worked it out. Within 2 days of the rally
finish in Missouri my main crew man, John Groo had already visited Vermont
Sports Car and picked up a shell and custom cages roll cage kit and
delivered it to Andrew. A couple days after that I moved away from Colorado,
stopped by NC to get parts off the orange car and headed to New York to his
shop with my Mom's old Silverado and a trailer with no brakes, lights or
good method of holding it's fenders on. 12 days and almost two cases of Red
Bull later I drove away with a really nicely installed cage. There is no way
to charge for or quantify the hours and the heart it takes to work as hard
as we did for those 12 days. The only way to appreciate something like that
is to be there working. We finished only a couple hours before Andrew was
departing for London to meet anxiously awaiting people from Hungary. The
last night we didn't sleep at all, just worked solid until the day light
came, loaded the car, took showers and went our separate ways. Somehow with
the help of RedBulls and coffee I was still awake and remained that way all
the way to NC driving the 12 hours home. By the last couple days we had
taken to calling Red Bull "Red Balls" like the skit in the Chappelle show.
36 hours is my new record for staying awake with zero napping. I'm so glad I
didn't get pulled over, I was so hopped up on Red Bull I'm sure they'd have
given me a ticket. I'm sure the Red Ball's skit is on YouTube somewhere,
sorry I don't have time to find it.
The orange car's motor was feeling pretty sluggish most of last season and
in the first two rallies this season so I needed someone to look at the tune
on the ECU and see if we could get it to make some power. My friend Franz is
one of the best tuners in the industry and I was sure he was the man to have
a look at it. The trouble was making the time to get up to Maryland to meet
him and that he was leaving soon for a Subaru race in Florida. Long story
short, I work all day to get the car drivable in NC, get it loaded and leave
Bob's around 9:30pm, home, shower, food, pack for 6 weeks, leave home at
11:30 and drive through pouring rain from NC to Washington DC area and show
up at Franz' at 4:20am (no not THAT 420..) He calls someone in Taiwan to ask
about a connection we needed to make for programming as we worked in the
rain for a couple hours. We did a few pulls on the interstate with him over
there whizzing away on the laptop and decide it runs much better than it
was before and feels nice. I pack up and head out around 6:30am headed to
Frederick, MD on my way to St Louis. Just past Frederick I remember how
tired I am and pull to a rest stop to sleep in the truck. Four hours later
I'm up and rolling again. I almost made it to St Louis that night, about an
hour short and so freaking tired I could have been mugged by a 5 year old.
Last season I got lazy and didn't write a season ending update. For 2006 the
season ended up going my way, I won the Production GT championship and I
ended up 4th nationally behind Pastrana, Block and Iorio. My achievements
weren't always from being the fastest I'm sad to say. Sometimes Tanner
seemed to find some speed in PGT that I didn't have, especially at Ojibwe
and COG. It ended up falling in my favor as he crashed on both of those
events. For 2006 I am proud of driving smart and constantly learning
throughout the season, striving to learn and do my best with the ingredients
we had at the time. New for 2007 is Jeremy Wimpey sitting in the codriver's
seat, his nickname is Worm so you'll see me refer to him that way. He's an
awesome codriver and a good friend as well, we're going to have a great
season this year. We certainly started it off right at SnoDrift with a win
in PGT. Keep an eye on the ESPN 2 show starting in June to show a bit of our
rally in the snow.
I have this great friend named Bob, he's perhaps one of my biggest
supporters and without his help I wouldn't be as far along as I am. He's got
a new rally car now but still has a super active family life with three
great young daughters. To help him be able to minimize time away from home
and to help me get down the road we bought a box truck that will tow and
service both cars when he can attend. So, I'm slightly sad but mostly over
joyed that my old Dodge is retired now and I'm cruising across the nation in
a bitchin' new E450 box truck. Yes, payments and insurance are no fun but it
really needed to happen. My last trip in the Dodge pulling the crashed car
back from Missouri was all without second and over drive.. And getting about
5.5 mpg. I mentioned to Cowboy and Pastrana that we need to rig up some
gnarly jump for a car to land on the old Dodge's roof rack while in motion.
Or maybe I should try to drive it on two wheels? I've tried to sell it
already but no one is feeling the love. Maybe they don't like the idea of
climbing in the passengers door to drive since the drivers door is broken.
Maybe?
Shout outs- I've mentioned Havas and Bob already here for their
contributions to getting the new car and rig going. I'd also like to mention
ElitePro, they are a high-end automotive performance product specialist who
gives my team a lot of help on parts and wheels and bits we need to keep
going. Thanks for all your support on the new car Dan and Andrew!
www.elitepro1.com I'm going to get you guys some new pictures soon!
The new car got treated to a full Hankook Tire paint/vinyl job thanks to
Hankook footing the paint bill, thanks Jeff and Hankook, that help couldn't
have come at a better time! Also, thanks to Travis Benzing at Steamboat
Detailing for the help applying graphics and some clearbra on the sides to
keep them looking good.
Oregon Trail rally recap
At the Oregon rally things were going awesome. I showed up a bit early to
Oregon to do the fan fest car display in downtown Portland, then gave some
press rides in the new car and attended a baseball game to sign autographs
and toss shirts into the crowd. As I was giving my first press ride I told
the nice lady that this was a all new car and that it hadn't yet been
tested. I was pretty sure all would be fine but it was rather funny that she
was getting the very first ride in the car which had not yet spun it's first
wheel on gravel at the time. As I finished the first run and those after I
was I in awe at how comfortable I was in the new car. I'm 10times more
relaxed in this new ride compared with the orange car. In the old car it
always felt like I was being pinched and stuffed in there.. Now I'm super
relaxed and more able to focus on the car and going fast.
The rally got started on Friday night and I was immediately on the gun and
leading PGT. I borrowed some good track tires from North Coast Subaru driver
Otis Dimiters and those made a huge difference. Worm and I had a great night
on Friday laughing and joking our way to a nice lead in PGT to start the
real part of the rally on Saturday morning.
Oregon has been perhaps the hardest event for me for the past two seasons.
It'd crowned roads didn't meet well with my style on the stages. This year
however I had a good set of differentials to help with that and allow me to
scoot along with out being so sideways. Worm and I started Saturday just as
planned, smooth and patient and getting slowed early for corners. The trick
here is to stay on the helpful side of the crown and use the ditches as you
can to keep cornering speeds up. Flying into corners and coming out slow
will totally kill your times at this event. We gave a up a bit of time to
Stephan on the first stage and gave up a little more on the next stage but
these were not reasons to worry. We were following our plan of smooth and
weren't yet trying to push for top times. Just as I was getting the rhythm
down and starting to use more of the cars ability on a 17 mile long stage
mid day on Saturday the transmission gave up and we were sitting ducks. It
wasn't in a gear change or anything, I was in 2nd gear and the teeth just
left the party and hung the box in 2nd. All the banging in the world I could
do on the gearshift finally got it out of 2nd but before I could coax it to
engage any other gear the shifter gave up and broke. Straight from class
winning heroes to spectating in half a second flat. That's rally.. After
watching some cars go by for a while we climbed back in the car and went to
sleep waiting on sweep to arrive and tow us out. BTW, whoever was driving
that Toyota sweep truck that got us to the end really knew how to flat tow,
we were really movin' through the rest of the stage on the tow rope!
No matter how much I tried to assemble a 15 person hell raising DNF (did not
finish) party train to take Otis' RV into downtown for Saturday night
partying I couldn't leave my friend Justin Pritchard hanging. He and my
former codriver, Kim DeMotte, had also lunched a gearbox and needed help
swapping it so they could compete on Sunday. With the help of North Coast
Subaru's Otis and Ryan and Arek we dug in and got the box swapped out for
Justin. His Sunday didn't get much better as the car ended up on it's side
with a small fire. I think there were about 6 roll overs and many more dnfs
from crashes at Oregon this year. Crowned roads are no joke!
Sunday night my dreams did come true, we were able to assemble the party
train and load folks up on the RV headed to downtown. Before we set off I
helped instigate the hooking of a couple rental cars together via tow
rope... The Kia I was driving lost the pull off battle to the Charger but it
put on the best smoke show. After downtown we got super lucky and found this
awesome bar called Dantes, it's a burlesque style place with some wild shows
on stage and some freaky people cruising around. I love places like that, I
just chilled back, watching and letting other people's world of fancy freaky
stuff relieve my mind from the intense rally focus of the past weeks. Most
of the crew was ready to roll early so we sent them off and Cowboy Kenny,
his codriver, Dennis, and I stayed back to hang a bit longer. Kenny and I
ended up riding back out to Hillsboro in the bed of some chick's small
Toyota truck freezing our asses off. I'll never forget looking up out of the
bed and noticing a police car with lights on chasing us. I calmly laid back
down and said to Kenny, 'Hey, cops are chasing us.' Kenny says really? Nah..
I point upwards with a big smile on my face and he leans up and sees the
PoPo in pursuit. About this time the driver takes another turn and I start
to wonder if she's running from them! Luckily she stops soon and we get a
chance to warm up as the cops walk up talking over the radio. "Cruszzzh
crrshh, and two passed out in the back of the pick up..crsssh" After a some
dui testing and a writing a speeding ticket later we're freezing again and
and make it back to the hotel. Kenny's crew is waiting to dash them to the
airport and I go to my room and sleep.
I'm working some ride and drive work for BMW in Denver and Minneapolis in
the interim before heading back out west to put a new gearbox in the rally
car and get the road show cranked up for the Olympus rally.
Thanks for your interest, come check us out at a rally this season! Oh, and
ESPN2 broadcast schedule is out, we'll be on sometime in June getting ramped
up for X Games.
MJ
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