Wotcha!

Last Friday, our friends Jaclyn and Willie invited us to see an American event that we had not previously even really been aware of; the Toughest Monster Truck Tour. My words cannot possibly do justice to just how fantastically American this event was, but I will do my best:

It took place in an Ice Hockey arena where local Colorado team “The Eagles” play in a town south of Fort Collins called Loveland. Before the event even started, everyone stood up and sang the National anthem towards a big US flag, then the announcer made all the Veterans in the audience stand up and have a round of applause from the audience for protecting our freedom. We were surprised and impressed by the patriotism (considering most English people don’t even know the words to the 2^nd and 3^rd verses of God Save The Queen) and we thought the applause was very sweet, although neither of us knew the words to the anthem!

Anyway, the trucks themselves were massive, like really really big and impressive:

• Size: 10 ft high, 12 ft wide, 18 ft long
• Weight: 9,500 lbs (roughly 3 mini coopers, and even the tires weight 500 kilos!)
• 1750 Horsepower
• Fuel: Methanol (56 yards to the gallon!)
• 572 cu in Ford Racing V8 engine, with a 871 BDS supercharger, in a Ford F150 body.

The sound was ridiculous and everyone had earmuffs on. Also the cars were really getting through fuel, so the whole arena smelt of weird nitro/alcohol fumes. We were lucky enough to see the tour championship and see 6 Monster Trucks (Big Foot, Quad Chaos, Heavy Hitter, Over Bored, Dirt Crew and Dawg Pound) perform three challenges;

Best wheelie:

A knockout race for fastest Truck:

And a freestyle round featuring some fantastic air:

The eventual winner – Big Foot 22 driven by Dan Runte – stormed the show and won his 5^th consecutive championship (Big Foot is also the original Monster Truck so that was pretty cool), although he might have been beaten by 2^nd place ‘Heavy Hitter’ had its front left tire not become detached from the axle half way through his freestyle performance!

Not wishing to let people’s adrenaline return to safe levels at half time, we were treated to a BMX and Freestyle Motocross show featuring some cool BMX backflips (which we didn’t get a picture of) and some pretty impressive Motocross stunts:

My favourite was actually this one below. The resolution isn’t great, but the driver us actually lead down on his bike with his hands behind his head like he is napping:

How is one expected to get a decent night’s sleep after all that excitement?

Rob