Written by Jack Adams, Pictures by various individuals.

Thanks everybody. It was a long bumpy road and here's the story:

Going into the race this year and still running my 5 plus year old trail buggy brought a few challenges. We had some issues in the race last year and wanted to get those addressed. It would overheat when really pushed, the farm boy steering ram was too sloppy and unprotected from the rocks, 8 gallon gas tank was too small, and we needed to carry a spare, along with a ton of other small things, safety items and such.

After working on my Cruiser restoration for like 6 months straight (build up is here ), I ran out of time and had to start the buggy prep. With the help of a few friends, we pushed to Cruiser into the yard and into it's new tent home. Drove the buggy into the small garage and got to work. With everything taking longer then expected, I kept pushing the test run date back and back. If it wasn't for a small group of friends and most importantly my Dad, there was no way I would have finished. Thanks guys.

The test run ended up being...............driving the buggy from the garage to the trailer, the day we left for the lakebed. This last minute stuff was not the norm for me and I didn't have the confidence that I usually do with all the last minute buggy mods. Either way, we loaded it up and off we went.
 

My crew chief Chad and I traveled out to the Hammers together. He was driving our home for the week (1986 Mallard motor home) with his buggy in tow and I was following in my truck (our pit truck) with my buggy in tow. All was good. We even got to use the nice PCI hand held radios. We we're about 12 miles from Quartzite and Chad says we need to pull over. Upon inspection it looked like the shock had popped off on one end. No big deal, then I noticed the 6 out of the 8 wheel studs broke off. There was 2 left and only one had one lug nut. This was the rear of the RV with the dual wheels. Good thing we stopped before the whole wheel fell off. We made some calls and found the parts we needed in Quartzite. I unhooked my trailer and hauled ass into town. Luckily, they had everything we needed. It is a extremely small town, but tons of RV traffic. The counter guys was into desert racing and knew all about KOH too. We get it all put back together and off we go again. Chad radios in about 1/2 mile and says to pull over. We tightened everything again and start driving. We repeated this process about 8 times before making into Quartzite. The rims had wallowed out and wouldn't stay tight. We are pretty bummed and totally worn out at this point. Luckily we found a tire guy. He pulls everything back apart to check it out. All is good but the rims. He actually has some used ones and hooks us up. Now we are rolling with unbalanced wheels and no shock, but we're rolling. About an hour later, we pull over to check. The tires had leaked down to like 10 lbs. We air them up and push on. We stopped like 4 or 5 times before reaching the lakebed. It took us 14 hours to make a trip that normally takes 5 1/2 to 6. All that doesn't matter cause we are now on the lakebed. It's 1230 am on Tuesday. There is already more people here then all week at last years race.

Since, we lost so much time, there was pretty much no pre-running. The week went pretty well though. It was great meeting tons of people and hanging out with friends I rarely see. The amount of people out there was impressive. The whole setup was great, Jeff and Dave really stepped it up.

By Thursday, the majority of my crew had shown up. I was pretty worried if we had enough to cover pit duties up to this point. We had plenty. Everybody that helped in the pits was great. Way better then I had expected. We would leave the pits in confidence.

As for the race....................we were ready as we could be. My co pilot was Scott. In the race last year, he we split the driving duties. This year it was all me. Scott managed to borrow a helmet with radio and pumper port the day before (thanks Bill). While waiting to get the rally tracker installed, he rigged up some pool hose and spliced into the pumper hose. We now had fresh air and could talk to each other over the intercom. We were starting in the 22nd position next to JT Taylor. Our plan for the race was pretty simple. It was to finish. My trail beater could not go one on one against all the new racers, but it could go the distance. Kinda like a marathon runner verses a sprinter maybe?

The race starts and all is good. We pass and get passed about the same. Scott does a great job of keeping me on track and in the "finish the race" mode. First crazy thing we see is my buddy Shane (whitebrowithafro) roll onto his roof in front of us as he passed us and the Jimmy's 4x4 car. They were okay and we kept going. Next thing was the car b que. Once we saw the orange buggy, we knew who it was. It was Robbie and Spotter Dan, who are friends of ours. They were out and okay and said to keep going. This was pretty tough to do. Seeing this was a reality check on how things could go very wrong. We then get to the traffic jam on the last fall on AfterShock (?). We sat there for like 20 plus minutes before making it threw. The next chunk of the race went pretty good. At this point we were passing all the rigs that had broke down. We were super beat and pulled into the last pits. A couple guys run over and ask if we can haul some parts up to car 001. Scott grabs the stuff and off we go. This is when the race turns into a race for us.

We head up Jack north and pass Tom and a bunch of other rigs. We come up on Adam Woodle and follow him, wanting to pass, up and down the ridge road and down most of Jack. At the bottom Tom catches us and passes us both. I passed Adam as well. We then head into the check point, Joachim Schwiesow runs over and grabs the parts we were hauling in. We head up Sledge and pass Tom again. The crowd was amazing and really got us going. At this point we realize, we are doing pretty good. Probably top 10. We race up to the plaque and I just barely touch the ledge. The front passenger stub shaft breaks (AlloyUSA gets a thumbs down). We are thinking it's over. Scott gets out and we start winching. Woodle passes in the process. We get threw there and with only 3 wheel drive, I start to ram my way up the trail. We winch some more. At this point, Joachim catches up. I wave them to pass. They then get in front and offer to pull us up. We winch off their rig and get to the mailbox. They offer a tow the rest of Sledge, but we tell them to go. I bash the 3 wheel drive up the rest of the trail and up the sand hill. I had to hammer on the rig harder then ever to make a few spots. This causes a flat in a rear tire. We were now about half way across the Fissure trail. We get out to change it. About 5 rigs passed us. My new beefy tie rod is now bent and the jam nuts are loose too. We tighten all that up and we go. We passed another rig and then finally..................we see the finish line. We made it. We made it. Partying begins.

Joachim and crew offer up a killer dinner for helping them. I think they helped us more though. We just brought them some parts. Racing karma it was. (this is especially funny considering all that single shear debating that took place between us last year).

This is the most I ever typed on POR. If I forgot anything, please forgive me. There are just too many cool moments, cool people to mention. But here's a few: thanks to Jeff and Dave for creating such a cool race, thanks to Ballistic Fab for some bitchin' parts, thanks to Joachim and crew for the tow and food, and most importantly.......thanks Scott and Chad and the rest of my friends and family that made this possible (I don't want to type any more and you know who you are).