RCAA in Alabama!
On August 23 the Rocket City Rock Crawlers hosted an RCAA sanctioned rock crawling event called the Summer Rock Challenge 2003. 25 state of the art 4x4's from around the country flocked to a small town south of Hunstsville, Alabama to try for the top prize of $1500! I heard about this event and its relaxed atmosphere last year and knew that it would be a great opportunity to test my Jeep in a competitive atmosphere for the first time. So I talked my brother, Tyler, into being my spotter, a task which he was all too happy to help with, got all my friends, and took them all to Alabama! MAN DID WE HAVE A BLAST! Patooyee functioned almost flawlessly! The battery went dead right before the first obstacle which was easy to fix using the battery out of my friend Marc's truck. (Thanks Marc and Jay for running that heavy battery up that steep hill!) I spent most of the rest of the day wheeling up steep and technical obstacles. My brother and I worked well together and I hope to work out what few kinks we had in future practice sessions and competitions. I learned that 118" is TOO LONG for competitive crawling as I ate cones (Balls hanging off of strings in the air.) like Pac-Man gobbling pellets! An all-out comp buggy is in the plans for when I can save up some cash.Overall, I think we did exceptionally well for our first try! In a field where over 1/3 of the competition left early due to breakage and we were working with a number of factors against us, we managed a respectable score, finishing all obstacles in the allotted amount of time. The highlight of my weekend definitely had to be when I towed Ken Blume, multiple ERoCC champion, out of the trails after he tore a hole in his oil pan on the second to last obstacle. (He drove the last obstacle with no oil.) He was nice enough to let me take a picture for bragging rights. :)
Thanks go to Hugh Green and the Rocket City Rock Crawlers for putting on an AWESOME event that was both challenging, fun, and laid back. I also thank Bobby Cox and Andrew Rice for helping me along and taking these pictures. It was great meeting people that I didn't know and seeing those that I did know again.
Photos by Bobby Cox, Andrew Rice, & J. J. Divin
