It has been far too long since I’ve accosted your eyes and insulted your intelligence with a Barnstormin’ column. It isn’t that we’ve been quiet at the BangShift executive level, quite the opposite actually. Over the next couple weeks we’ll be dropping some major bombs up in your business. These are the good kind of bombs that we’re dropping although it does seem completely impossible for their to be such a thing. Just stick with us, it is going to rule. Now, onto the subject of what this thing is actually about, our hijinks on the road in Florida and California.

As you likely know, Chad and I have been attending the PRO Winter Warm up at Palm Beach International Raceway for the last few years for the purpose of covering and live streaming the event for your viewing pleasure. We always have a good time for multiple reasons. The first is that there are nitro cars all over the place and it is our job to be there, getting blasted in the face with the spent remnants of the best racing fuel on Earth. The second reason is that we have a rental car and we’re immature jerks when we have the backing of a deep pocketed insurance company. Thirdly we’re buffoons and keep ourselves highly entertained at a level that is probably annoying to those in the general vicinity.

I was first to arrive in Florida which gave me the coveted assignment of scoring the rental car. We haul all kinds of gear and junk with us, so when it is possible to get a good deal on a full sized car we normally take it. In this case, the agency we rented from had a “pick your own car” situation going on so the bus guy dropped me off in the full size lot, lumbered away and I surveyed my kingdom. I had a couple of options like Chevy Impalas (older round cars, not the cooler new ones), Dodge Chargers (V6 power, burnout capable), and a kind of tired looking, used up Crown Victoria. SOLD. I hopped in the car and did a quick test to determine whether or not it could spin the tires. One stab of the brakes and gas later and I was handing my paperwork to the security guy and headed on down the highway. Check this mother out –

Rolling in the more door south on Route 95, I called my pal Justin Cesler and he told me that he was hanging out at Redline Motorsports, a premier builder of LS and now LT powered Camaros, Corvettes, Cadillacs, and other vehicles. Justin was working on a story there and he invited me to check out the shop and see what the whole operation was about. Shop owner Howard Tanner gave me the big tour and told us what was going on in the shop. Keep your eyes peeled on these guys, they build AWESOME stuff.

It wasn’t long before I had to haul tail back northward to pickup Chad at the airport. He’s been jammed into his seat between a couple of large passengers so he was full of those great “invasion of personal space” stories that modern travel seems to subsist on these days. We did our typical deal and headed for Wal Mart for supplies and rations for the weekend then we went to our hotel, which is the same place we have been staying at for years. This is also the place where we spotted the hookers in the hallway last year. Only the best for us. Not the hookers of course, the hotel. We were both secretly hoping for a repeat of the hooker spotting experience because it was weird and hilarious last year.

The next morning we headed for the track, met the scaffolding guy, got most of the pieces we’d need for a safe broadcast platform for the weekend and set to work erecting it. Chad and I have done this enough now that we could challenge any Italian masonry crew around in a scaffolding race. It isn’t pretty to watch by any stretch, but we get it done in a hurry.

We spent the rest of the day taping interviews with the NHRA drivers on hand for the test. This was doubly cool for me as I will be seeing these racers pretty frequently during the 2013 NHRA Mello Yello tour as an announcer. I’ll be doing 10 races or almost half the circuit. This was a great way to meet some of the drivers I hadn’t gotten to know and get their thoughts on the upcoming season. PBIR is an interesting track with regard to wildlife. There are gators in the water, there were snakes in the grass, and at one point we encountered big ass birds in the pits. Here you can see Chad starting the ritual mating dance. I am not telling you how it ended. My therapist advised me to never mention it again.

As you can see in the background of the Chad/bird nightmare photo, the place is empty and closed to the public before Friday. It meant unfettered access to the drivers and teams and it also meant that the drivers and teams were in a way more relaxed mood as opposed to how they will be in the midst of a championship chase. We were literally wandering around the pits and through people’s stuff like careful and self-aware mental patients. When these are the scenes…you would too.

 

After leaving the track when it was light out (which never happens) we sought out dinner and shockingly landed at a place called, “Crazy Buffet”. This place came on the recommendation of Roger Richards, the great photographer and a guy who has always been fantastic to be around since I first met him more than 10 years ago. Long story short, Chad and I will probably never be let back in there again. We caused serious harm to their sushi deal and the chef may have actually walked off the job at one point. Both Chad and I love sushi and seek it out on the road. After dinner like we normally do on the road, we stayed up until 2-3am getting content ready, getting the equipment ready, and getting the broadcast prepared to start later that morning.

While Chad was up on the scaffolding all day I was the photography department (as sad as that statement is). To steal a line from Mike Finnegan on Roadkill our visits to PBIR are some of the best workdays ever because on Thursday when the place is closed to the public you have access on the starting line to these cars like you’ll never get again in your life. I liked this photo of a distorted tire during a burnout –

 

We finished out Friday great. The weather in Florida was cold so the event organizers moved the schedule forward to get fans two rounds of solid, side by side action from the cars. This was a great move and it meant we were once again out of the track early and seeking a real dinner. I am not sure why, but this year I am going to try and share the places we ate more often  in these travel story recaps. Good, bad, or otherwise I always like to hear about food. Anyway, we ended up at a place called Miller’s Ale House. There are a bunch of these in Florida and in a previous life I used to be down there with some frequency. I knew two things. They had cold beer and they made great Ossobucco. I talked him into getting the Ossobucco and was rewarded with this –

We also decided to engage in a joking argument on Facebook even though we were sitting right next to one another. There was a dude who looked to be roughly 273 years old next to me that wasn’t really into our act. He chugged a couple of beers and then hit the bricks.

When we got to the track on Saturday, Jeg Coughlin was there and doing some film stuff with the other Schumacher racing drivers. We spotted this guy on the ground and had to go be in its presence. Chad wants to be a pro stock hero badly so this trophy was emanating the divine light as far as he was concerned. I just begged him not to actually touch it.

Our second day of broadcasting went swimmingly. We had a great audience, there were some good passes, and once again we were done at a reasonable hour. The only hang up was having to break down the scaffolding and move it to the pickup spot. We also had to load all of our junk and perform one last ritual before we left….the rental car burnout. It has become tradition that we fry the hides on our rental car on the starting line at PBIR when the event is over and we’re heading home. We accomplished that mission and celebrated in fine style –

There was fried chicken and fried pickles that came after those beers from a pretty forgettable place in Palm Beach. From there it was back to the hotel to pack up and prepare for Chad’s trip home and my second leg of the adventure in California where we attend a large media conference like we do every year. We knocked off as early as possible because the alarm was set for 3:45 to wake up and head for the airport. We had to give ourselves a jump because cleaning was in order. The rubber caked on our clothes was now caked on the seats of the rental car. You’d be amazed at how well WD40 works to clean a car interior at 4:00am in a gas station parking lot. Half a can of that junk and the slipperiest front seat in America later, we were headed west!

But wait! Hookers! Yes, we saw hookers again, this time entering a room as we were leaving ours at just after 4:00 am. How did we know that they were hookers? Well let’s just say that they didn’t get lost on the way to the Miss American pageant.

Normally I stay at Chad’s house for a couple days during this time but he had family stuff going on and was otherwise tied up so I called up ace Hot Rod staffer Elana Scherr and her main man Tom to see if they would put me up for a the balance of the weekend. They did and we had a blast. Tom and Elana are Mopar to the core so we rolled around their ‘hood in a 1969 Polara with a hotted up 440. Monday was MLK day so they both had work off. We ended up hanging out with an incredible array of tanks and military vehicles at the Melody Ranch (they rent this stuff out for the movies) and I was smitten with almost all of it. The guys were great and answered all my dumb questions.

 

Leaving this place, Elana asked if Tom and I wanted to visit Jay Leno’s car collection. She placed a call to Bernard, the head man there and a scant few minutes away from the tanks we were walking into a non-descript building adjacent to the Burbank Airport filled with some of the great automotive creations ever. Wanting to be a good guest, I kept photos to a minimum and soaked in the experience. I’ve always vowed to never let myself get jaded doing this stuff and after seeing Jay’s place I think that is going to be easy. I just have to remember my emotional state when we started looking around. I was flabbergasted in the best way possible. It is shocking at how homey and cool he has managed to make the place feel despite its cavernous size. It was an all time gearhead day, for sure.

 

Very early the next morning, Elana and I needed to head south to the conference we were both attending. She was going to meet up with her Hot Rod cronies and I was meeting up with Chad. We took Elana’s 1971 Opel GT for the ride down. It is the smallest and one of the coolest cars I have cruised in. It is shockingly OK as far as interior room goes, but when you are literally looking at minivans like they are cruise ships it can be a scary prospect. The ride finished without incident and now I want a damned Opel GT.

We spent three days at the media conference meeting with aftermarket companies about their newest and coolest stuff. Here’s a smattering of what we saw.

After three days at the conference, I was ready to get home as I missed my wife and my kids. Chad kept grinding with his coverage of the Grand National Roadster Show which was spectacular and very well received. I got home on Friday evening and was fooling around with my sons on Saturday morning. That’s when we built the coolest truck I had seen on the whole adventure….

That’s it for this trip but I can promise you a LOT more as my travel schedule is heavier than it has been in the 33 years of life I have survived on this planet. I am incredibly thankful for that and look forward to bringing you the inside scoops on our adventures on the road across this great country. Buckle up!