The CalROCS season ended August 14th with a bang. Literally, rigs rolled over, flopped over, and in one case, drove over the top of another competitor. If you missed the season finals in Oroville this August, you missed out on a great event. The courses were tougher than ever, tighter than ever, and the shootout was epic!
Finally posting up some pictures from this past weekends CalROCS Round 2 event for your enjoyment. And it's a big update to boot, about 90 pictures in the set! It was a crazy weather weekend, so the pictures turned out interesting. I was also able to get a media pass this time around so I was able to get right up close to the action.
It all started out Saturday morning. But let me first say mom and I purchased a 1992 motorhome days prior, and I decided to haul the Jeep with it to Oroville this year. I didn't really get to test out the 'moho before taking off. We left at 9am, got about 45minutes out and it died on me. John came over, Chris and the kids came over, and we worked on it for about 5 hours. To no avail, we had it towed to a shop in lakeport. Mom went back and got my truck so we could get the jeep.
By this time, I was pissed, frustrated, and not sure if I should cut my losses and go home or Man-up and go anyways. I decided we came this far, lets keep going. So we rolled in to camp around 6:30 or so.
Sunday morning we woke up early to tech. This year Mark was spotting for me, and John was manning the camera for us. We drew #69, which put is in the middle of the pack. We would be about the 6th person to run our course. In our first course, was a bonus obstical called "The Terminator". The terminator has 2 parts. One being a 30+ ft pyrmid of concrete culverts and cement, and part 2 being a 20+ ft table-top attached to it consisting of the same materials. This is a very intimidating obstical. So much that the 5 competitors before me avoided this bonus line, opting for the easier gates.
Mark and I passed through the first 2 gates with relative ease, and we opted to at least make an attempt at the formitable Terminator. One shot, and we made it to the top, front tires gripping the top as the back end is dangling against the cliff face. Slam it into 1st gear and crawl to the table top. Now most people have never been on top of this obstacle. When you are in the drivers seat, all you can see is the sky infront of you, and the Abyss at the edge of your front wheels. Marks voice comes over the headset "Just relax, and ease forward. Then remember to hit the gas coming down". We were told this is how it is done. But when you are in this position, logic is telling you "STUPID! You are going down a steep cliff, brake!!". As I edge forward, brakes engauged until I am clear of the edge, when I feel the vehicle is not responding to brake force. I tell mark "Brakes aren't working, its just gonna go. Look out". And the next thing I know i'm looking straight down at the ground approaching me. GAS!. Slamming into the ground, front wheels first, the car bounces back upright and I come to a stop. HOLY CRAP I did it!! We scrambled through the finish line, scoring a -13.
After a few high fives, and adrenaline out the wazzoo (and possibly some boxers lodged firmly where nothing should ever be), We had to line up for the second course. The second course looked to be the easiest. We were actually pretty confident that we would make it easily. Well, we were wrong. After executing a perfect line up over a culvert, my tire got lodged between some rocks, and caused my front differential to basically blow up. We were done for. After such an exciting, and amazing achievement, we were broke and being carried out of the rocks by the Crane-of-Shame.
It didn't really matter too much. We accomplished something none thought we would. We scored an amazing score, best we have ever done at a competition. Even though we were broken and unable to compete anymore, we could walk away with our heads held high. We were excited, the crowd was excited, Job well done.
Joe and I went north to Browns Valley last weekend to watch the CalROCS event. Browns Valley is about 11 miles east of Marysville CA. We had never been to any of the CalROCs events before, which is a little strange since we hope to compete in that event next year. Many of the drivers also run other events so we are already familiar with many of them so it's not that big of a deal really.
I was pretty excited to hear that Derek Trent was going to be at the event since I have never seen him drive before. at least not live. Since I am getting one of his vehicles I really wanted to watch to see how it handles from a spectator perspective.
Derek took home first place in the SuperMod class so that was great. He did break an axel shaft on the last course of day 1. Fortunately he was able to get a shaft from WFO in time for day two. In the end it all worked out and he went home a few bills richer.
Photos for me did not go to well. I totally failed to set my camera up correctly in the first place. At events like this I normally set my camera to a shutter priority at around 1/250s and try to maintain an aperture of about f8 to keep focus on the action. Like an idiot, I set it for aperture priority at f8 and never checked it once the rest of the day. Needless to say many pictures were completely ruined. Since I shoot RAW I was able to bring a handful back to life with some fancy photoshop techniques. They still didn't look that great so I added a faux HDR (High Dynamic Range)filter effect to bring the pop back into them. I was able to save a few pictures so thats good. But I had better pay more attention next time!
August 17 2011 by 
Mark Aplet
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