Monster Mash

Another life experience checked off my list… even tho it wasn’t on my list in the first place!  The Pirates and I went to “Monster Truck Jam”. 

Oh. My. Goodness.

We arrived a half hour before the doors opened (2.5 hours before the show started) so we could go to the “pit party”. This is where spectators can go down on the floor and look at everything. The trucks all out there with their drivers giving autographs.

 

There were HUNDREDS of people crowded in the vestibule of the arena trying to get out of the 20*F cold.  When the doors opened… they only opened one of six!!!  The crush was scary!!! 

We headed straight down to the ‘pit party’ and for a while there were very few people. 

The boys started gathering their autographs…  (Monster Mutt)

And getting their photos taken.  (Grave Digger)

They were able to get every one.  (Prowler)

It was fun seeing the trucks up close.  Some were quite imaginative.  (Monster Mutt)

The paint jobs were fantastic.

The eye of the tiger!  (Prowler)

Tires bigger than an 11 year old…

… so they could roll over these.

The boys finished looking around and we picked up our souvenirs (to avoid the mobs later). By the time we left it was really starting to pack up on the floor.

Our seats were way up in the top tier. At first I thought it wasn’t that good of a place. But we did have a great view. And it got us above most of the exhaust smoke (I hadn’t even thought of that – it was BAD). The truck noise wasn’t too bad but we needed ear plugs for the screaming rock music and commercials that played nonstop.

I was totally clueless when I walked thru the doors, and frankly still was when I left. There were all sorts of videos playing of monster trucks doing their thing. Apparently those videos are the “best of the best” because it was nothing like the evening. There was a lot of dead time where nothing happened or they had little ATV races or little kiddies trying to race go-carts. Definitely not what I was expecting.

The boys said it was better when it was done outside. They could go faster and jump higher. (And the exhaust wouldn’t be trapped in there with you!)

 

(Blue Thunder)

(Monster Mutt)

(Grave Digger)

The blue haze in the above photos was the truck exhuast!

Afterwards I told Pirate 1 that the mid-70s was the beginning of the “monster truck” thing and the famous Big Foot was from the area I grew up in. And it was the off-shoot of what a lot of people were doing back then… jacking up their trucks as high as they could get them. Bragging rights came with how many rungs were needed on the welded on stepladder under the doors (our neighbor had a 3 rung truck). This was the era where they put up the “you can drive that one the public roads” laws too.

There were some crazy things on the road back then.

Hmmmmmm…. doesn’t seem like much has changed…