Rob MacCachren - Round 2 - Professional Offroad Racer

Rob MacCachren is the GOAT of offroad racing, a living legend!  His stories of how offroad sftarted up until now blow us away!  Carl Renezeder calls in to talk with Rob about racing together and battling over the years as well as Robert Blanton of Warfighter made Cohosting.  This show truly is living the Dirt Life!!!

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:04

All right, who's ready for The Dirt Life Show? Yeah, yeah. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to Episode 84 of The Dirt Life Show. We are stoked to be in. Well, thank you very much Rob McCracken, for having us in his race shop in Southern California. We really appreciate you having us, dude. Yeah, thanks for coming. Try to get it cleaned up for you. And Cheryl's got the trophy truck, good spout. That's just starting to go back together for the VA 500. Hey, so I'll keep the introduction going. But a funny story, right when we got here. So Rob bland, who is also going to be my co host tonight. We walk in and I go the chair. Oh, and he goes, like, Who are you like, glamour and shit? Like, what do you like? We're the FedEx guys. Right? And, and then so he starts asking us our names. And then he goes, do you know what cero means? Like, yeah, it means the milkman. And then. And then we started getting in the conversation of like, how he got it and all this different stuff. So it was pretty cool. Because we literally could have been the delivery guys just infiltrated the job. He was very surprised that somebody was walking in here. You got yourself some parts? Yeah, we're here to pick up the engine transmission. Who knows, man, the FedEx guys? Yes, gives me thank you very much for joining us. I just looked at the last time Rob joined us. He's going to be the first guest that has participated in a feature twice. And the last episode that he did was Episode 66, which was really cool. We did a whole bunch of storytelling, and we had a really good time with him. But one of the main reasons that I called Rob to be back on the show was we had an audience member Tell me, George, you shouldn't Shut the fuck up and let Ron talk because I wanted to hear him tell stories more. So I was really, really impressed by that. And I wanted to have Rob Come on a little bit more, because he does have so many fantastic stories to talk about. And Rob Blanton had just come back from Mexico as well. So you guys have both been in Mexico in the last month. And so it'll be kind of cool to share stories like that as well, too. So I really think tonight's episode is going to be fantastic. We want all of you guys to join us online, you can hit us up on Facebook. Anytime we're always Live at Five on Monday nights. So you guys can hit us there. If you have comments for the legend, the champion, and obviously, if one talk a bunch of shit, we can do that as well. So it'll be a pretty cool show. We're on Facebook and YouTube. So either one that your preferred platform I already see comments and things like that coming in. Somebody said they can't hear but no audio. Well, the audio still recording for us. I'm not sure why that would be so low. But maybe you guys can tell me if you can hear now, because audio looks like it's actually going through pretty good on our end. So let me know if if you can or can't hear it. But anyways, we're gonna have a fantastic show tonight. We're really stoked to talk to rob about some of the stuff that he's got going on for 2021. This last race that he had at the San fleabay 250. We may have a special guest calling in around 530. Rob doesn't know who it is, it might be a little bit of a surprise. bland over there who it is yeah, Blanton over there. He's got the top secret information. And also, we're not going to let these guys see it. But we're going to also play Are You Smarter than a third grader? between the two Rob's Battle Royale? So that'll be pretty fun. And we're going to talk about some fun stuff, man. We're gonna talk about Yeah, works on Instagram. Oh, well. I don't know why it's not working on it. I'm looking at the list. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, took it away too quick. You guys want to hit the pause button like stopping your story. You're on your phone. I just know that I crushed Maddie what a king. So he did do pretty good on that one. Right. So I don't know if you guys can still hear us but you can please tell us if if there isn't any audio on YouTube or Facebook because we're getting audio over here on our end. No Audio on Facebook is what they're saying. I'm not really sure how to just fix the audio on Facebook. It's actually says that we have no audio on on YouTube either. That's weird. That shouldn't happen because if it's going through Instagram then it's going through to everybody else. Give me a soundcheck real quick roblin microphone check. Yeah 212 So you guys are doing good man. Chicken brown cow. I don't know what the deal is over here. Let me see if we got a loose plug or something. Technical difficulties. We're gonna work our way through this. It looks like we got everything. We I checked out his mountain bike over there. And he couldn't stop talking about that and that what is a yellow chair loves mountain biking. He used to be you guys know Eli tomac. Supercross, his dad john tomeka Lucero used to be mechanic form. So we heard all about it. Yeah, we know exactly. We saw about every single picture at his photo album as well as on his phone. So that was pretty cool. Please tell us if you do or don't have audio You can hear us. I the audio is coming through just fine on our side. So I'm not sure what the heck is happening over there, like you guys said on Facebook or, or YouTube, so please let us know. But we have some pretty cool subjects that we're going to cover tonight. One was actually a little bit of something that you've done before. We're gonna ask Rob how the adrenaline therapy session went this past Saturday, something that you've actually participated in? Yeah. It was pretty cool when you went out there to give people rides. No, absolutely. Um, you know, it's been probably earlier this year, when maybe the end of last year actually went out there and participated in that was real cool, given rides all day, and I was in a four seat players razor and it didn't have a rear sway bar on it. So a lot of corners and stuff. And so we were doing a lot of three wheeling out there and a lot of three wheel is I think I was I was having a ball, honestly, uh, you know, I could all sudden, you know, at the beginning, I'm okay, what are we doing, you know, let's give rides and super looking forward to it. But, uh, seeing the faces of the vets and all the people, their families and the kids and stuff that we're writing, and I realized I'm smiling, and it's half as much fun as they are. And yeah, exactly. It was really cool. So, awesome event. And I haven't able to get out to do another one yet. But we will for sure do that. It is really cool. And that's one of the things it's like the smiles are infectious, right? It just makes you smile. It makes everybody smile. They're like I remember leaving at the last gentleman therapy session I was at and I went back to the hotel at the time. And I was like, man, I can't even sleep. I'm so fired up. Yeah, definitely. I know the feeling. So we're going to talk a little bit about San Felipe Bay, do a little sampling pay 250 recap, Rob can tell us how his race was and kind of compare it to the normal rally that you guys did when I mentioned my race was a lot more fun. Cuz you got to experience it with some veterans, which was cool. And then you also got to, you probably ate more tacos. Yeah, we did. You know, when you go down to Baja, Mexico with a Ron Aaron weda, king of brb seats. You're not going to miss a taco stand? Never. That's what that was that white polar bear. Yeah. Yeah, never, you don't miss a taco stand. So a lot. I'm not sure if we should start over again or not. But if we have no audio on either of the platforms, it's going to be pretty difficult for us to have a good show. So Instagram, guys, maybe just hang out for a second. I'm gonna see if I can start this audio over again, when you guys jumped over and said that it is working on Igy. Right. But if it's working on it, it should be working here too. So let me just swap out a cable real quick and see if that helps. Maybe you guys can talk a little bit about Nora and some of the fun stuff that happened. So I have not done nor yet. But I keep saying one of these years, I'm gonna get to it. Because, you know, my racing, everything I've been doing is, for me is term pretty serious. And I gotta when I feel a lot of pressure and everything, and I keep telling Rob one of these years, I'm coming down there to help you guys got to come down to help us. I mean, because social function, you get to hang out with your fellow racers and, and just have a lot of fun and, and for us. My co driver. Alex Hernandez, who this is the first time he's ever done anything like that he's a combat wounded marine probar recipient. And he was my navigator for the first day. Should we good now. So we're cruising along. And you know, he's doing a great job for learning between because we use lead nav, we use Lorenz and we have the rally book. And when we finally cross over the finish line, handing over our time card. Everyone's all excited handing us beers. And he's not saying the word right. And all sudden I'm like, bro, what's up? He's like, I gotta throw up. I gotta throw up right? So we had to pull over you got to make this story a little deeper though. This dude is a big Samoan guy. I mean, he's got like the full like, the head the long hair the good beard like I mean like he's a good look in like Samoan dude. Like he's actually he's actually 100% Mexican, but he looks Yeah. So he's just this Yeah. And then he he jumps out is our first he's trying to get through the door. But we have a secondary locking system because we got to doorslammer and that still latch he can't push through it finally stops gets it done. jumps out. His main is just like flowing in the air. And then all sudden, oh boy just blows chunks everywhere. Right? Well, the race tracker guys, the Sella guys are right there. He's doing it right in front of them. Yeah. So from from that day on every time they'd see him. They would Just be like, Hey, don't throw up this time. He's like, Man, I'm gonna have to whip that dude's ass just to get some respect back. But the funniest part about it was on an Instagram Live. What he said was He's like, at least I didn't throw up in front of chicks want to throw up in front of the checkered pants? girls? Yeah, that's funny. Have you ever made somebody throw up in the passenger seat? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. co writers that gets seasick and you know, get motion sickness, stuff like that. Yeah, so I've had I've had my fair share of CO writers that that can't write anymore because of it. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of people take any medicine for that. I'm not even Yeah, I've had co writers try different things, you know, you know, trying to figure it out some some cured it with just chewing gum. You know, if they chew gum, then they wouldn't get sick anymore. I tried patch, you know, diet, you know, bracelets, just all kinds of different things. I've had two or three guys that that had issues that Alex Alex from that day on, because then he drove the next day and I was just go dog. Oh, but the third day where he was co dog for me again, Dramamine. He's like I'm not making that mistake. Forget no issues. Nice. That's cool. But then you also, you know, tell him certain things to like, stop staring at the book in your lap. Hold the book up and pay attention to the book that way? Yeah, yeah. So you're a little bit more focused. You got to keep your eye on the horizon and things like that. Sometimes you tell them you know, pretend like you're driving because if they, you know, head down and not paying attention, then they're always swaying. It's just like they're on a boat. So know all the tricks. I'm sure I try. You know, I don't know. So if, if you guys didn't hear the little bit of the intro, I know the guys on Instagram Live did but we're gonna talk about all kinds of fun stuff. today. We're gonna storytime with Rob's we're gonna play Are You Smarter than a third grader? We're going to talk a little bit more about the Nora 1000 rally. I want to talk a little bit about pre running. We actually have a really fun camera shot over here as one of your vehicles right? Yeah, that's my, my alumacraft prerunner How long have you had that thing in action for pre round? Oh, it's actually been around since 2006. Really? Yeah, it's got a lot of miles on it. Nice. It just takes a little refresh every year. What Yeah, once a year we go through the transmission the motor, just change the oil filters, but the transmission once a year, suspension, twice a year shocks, you know, once a year and just keep running it and whenever it really good right there. It's still dirty from San Felipe Bay. And, you know, about two weeks we'll be heading to baja 501 of the crazy things that I always hear. Or think about when I see these vehicles is I think like, Man, it's so like, if the vehicle goods tell stories, like how many miles and what different things have happened on the trail, you know what I mean? Like, it's just an insane for me to they actually, you know, what, once you tell a cool story about pre running that you've had over the past 10 years that just like stands out? Oh, it's been a lot. I mean, ultimately, you know, this pre runner was my dream for quite some time and always had a two seat buggy, but I kept saying, hey, I want to I want a pre runner that I can stop by the beach and make a sandwich a superior with Walker Evans, and he had a bring an ice just in the ram charger and, and I would stop along the ocean. So I said, You know, I want to do that. But I'm a buggy guy. And so anyways, this was a dream of mine, it's got an electric frigerator in it, and up there with a nice top box. There's actually a aluminum plate that goes on the front bumper to make a lunch table. Don't don't really use that. Matter of fact, I don't think I've ever used it. But ultimately, you know, a ton of fun three seats, a lot of fuel spare parts. You know, I've people have bought me hot, you know, 12 volt hot dog makers with button warmer, hot dog maker. So I have that, you know, got an electric microwave for the thing. So but that thing's been up and down the peninsula. You know, every it's been pre running, you know, every year since 2006. And I got I don't know how many miles the GPS says 40,000 something but I know it's, it's at least I guarantee it's double that. So, you know, usually, but that the you know, speaking of pre running stories, um, you know, that car right there, scored at a race down there from Cabo to Loretto. And I was down there pre running and had a my co writer wasn't able to make it down yet. So I had a an old guy, you know about 60 something years old, and we're out there at by toto Santos. And I said, Hey, I want to pre run the section one more time and there's an access road. You know, I've seen it on the map that comes back out to the main highway just meet me there and I'll get back and ended up you know, prayer in the desert section got on the asphalt road and we're just flying down the asphalt road headed east from the Pacific back into the highway one and just going down a road I've never been down before it all sudden got a little bit twisty and no big deal. You know, probably going way too fast. And all of a sudden the road just went over the rise over the crest and it started going right right right and kept getting tighter and tighter. We were probably you know doing close to 100 when I first saw Oh man. As we're going I'm like turning in trying to make the corner in the thing keeps getting closer and closer to the edge. So I got to turn in except it gets loose now. It's coming around. The way so I'm just sitting there seemed like forever going around this corner. You know, turn it in. Oh, it's loose, turn it out, turn it in, turn it out. Finally, I wasn't going to make it. So I just turned, pointed it straight. And it went right off the side of the road and I had no idea we were going, you know, as a downhill what jumped off the head. As we're in the air. As soon as we leave the road, we're in the air and all I see is trees. And then as it's going down, I see cows, and like, oh, we're gonna hit a cow landed. Boom, we made it we didn't crash, hit the brakes look up and there's just cows scattered everywhere. Everywhere didn't hit one. It was like, Oh my god, that really just happened. And thank God You know, it wasn't, you know, off a cliff into the ocean or a canyon or whatever. So we landed safely. You know, a downshifted got it back in first gear came back up on the road. And when I got up on the road, it's like you Okay, you know, to the guy. I can't remember his name right now. And he's like, yeah, oh, yeah. He's like, I'm okay. And about that time. You know, right there. On the inside of the corner. We got back up on the road. There was a Mexican rancher just standing there shaking his head, like you're getting ready to pay me mucho dinero for one of those cows. Exactly. That's hilarious. That's a good story, though. And not like nothing happened right now. No, is it's amazing. Again, like I said, we basically when I turned into it, and committed to going straight off, like I had no idea what was straight off. Do you remember what his reaction was? He just laughed. And honestly, he was a good dude. His name will come to me. But he was a super high energy, you know, guy and actually Cisco Bo used to ride with me, his dad Poncho was chasing us and then his good friend. It's not Mario, Gary. There's another one. But anyways, was riding with me. And he was just so upbeat. And like, the coolest, coolest thing ever to him to hold the whole ordeal. You know? prerendered from Cabo to Laredo. He got to do a lot of that. And he never experienced that stuff before. So that is definitely, definitely a lot of good times. Man. Have you guys had any pre reading stories like that? No. That's verbal. First of all, we've never pre ran because the Nora is, is a rally. So they hand everything to you. Oh, the day we've done the mid that's a non pre run, you know, course. And at least it is for our class. And you know, so we're just out there having fun, man. That right there just see men's why. You know, I'm not a good co dog at all, you know? Because Because I'm such a control freak. How hard would you have been puckered in that situation? I probably would have close my eyes, and just waited for a day. And that's a good story, though. Amen. So yeah, just like, let's see David pieces said, Hey, storytime with Rob is on? Yep, we're gonna have some good stories coming out. tonight. I want to talk a little bit about short course two, and see how things are going with short course. Um, I remember like, last time you started talking about the old pro for that sitting over there behind the I don't think you can see it in this camera. Yeah, you can see the top of the top of it. There the newer pro fours under the car cover there to the right. And then nobody's allowed to look at that. Yeah, that's top secret, but it's for sale. Come look at it. Ready to go. But I actually liked the the stories of the older pro for a little bit. And I was trying to remember what you said. But I couldn't. And you told us last time I wanted you to tell Robert bland a little bit about it. Because it's so nostalgic. But you said it was one of the best trucks you've ever actually gotten to drive. But it's not legal now. Yeah, no, it's that truck. That truck was built by Frank and Dave Clark and had air shocks on it. And that that truck has quite a few, at least two or three rules that have been made against it. And one of them. Yeah, because of it. So one, in short course racing, there's a rule that there's the minimum right heights 10 inches, well, it's because of that truck was seven inches. There's also another one air shocks that truck had air shocks on it. That truck the last two years that raised 2000 2000 111 11 races both years. And I think we ran 16 one year and eight in the next year. So it 122 out of how many ever that is in those last two years. And then in December of december of 2001, I got a letter from Marty Reid, who he owned core at the time, and I got a letter from him saying your truck is illegal, and you're not allowed to bring it back. And I end up making a phone call to him. And I said, you know, you know, what's the reason for that, and on and on and on. And he said, it's just that's what it is. And I couldn't argue with any more. And I said, you know, racing for me, it's my livelihood. It's how I put food on the table. And if you're going to make it harder for me to do that I'm not coming back. And I think he didn't believe me, because you know, we were doing pretty good at it and so on and so forth. So the very next season that that series started core. I don't remember where the first race was, but I got a phone call from Frank DeAngelo who used to be with BF Goodrich. And he said, Rob, are you coming? And I'm like, No, I'm not coming and he goes, Well, they have a spot for you here like you're coming. You're like Oh crap, you know, I'm not coming. So um, you know, I ended up stopping racing and that kind of short course in 2001. Thank goodness guy named Jim ball. One who's who's passed away recently a lot of people don't know that. But Jim Baldwin of the new core, he sent me another letter when he he brought he was running races back in the Midwest. And then he ended up bringing core out here. Right. And when he did that he ran some races at Chula Vista and he I have a letter I have a letter saying your trucks illegal it from Marty Reid. And then I have a letter saying from Jim Baldwin saying, Hey, we want you to come raesha drunk again. So bring it out. But yeah, that that truck there in the background that you saw earlier was built by Frank and Dave Clark, it had air shocks on it. Very neat truck. And it was pretty damn cool thing. You know, now it's just an expensive truck sitting there. That's doesn't race anymore. So a lot of good stories with that, a couple rules that were made against it. And you know, a lot of good times, man, it's so crazy to hear those stories. Like they go back so far. And the amount of off road credentials that sit just in this building that we're sitting in Rob that ready for that truck. Also, no one, RJ Anderson has a chance right now. But that truck is the only truck that's one three of the Labor Day Challenge races Woods back in that day, they were called the borgwarner trophy. So that's the truck that's the only truck that's won three of those in a row now RJ is on to and I'm pretty sure he's getting ready to go back try to do a three peat and good luck to him. Maybe he could be the only the second person to do that. So does that mean that like Mickey? Like, I kind of don't want him to beat my record. You know that that goes both ways. You know, honestly, yeah. You don't want him to beat it. But also, you know, with with time becomes development and, you know, rules are made to be broken. And, you know, that's it's something that we did it stood for a long time that happened in 99 2000 2001 or those years. So it's it stood I guess, for 20 years, nobody, nobody's you always got to feel good about that progression, right? Like you've done it and had that record for so long. When somebody beats it. It's like, wow, I gotta give this dude a pat on the back. No, it's absolutely true. And that's one of the unique things about offroad racing, you know, I think back and you see, oh, videos and stuff. And you know, what the trucks look like and what, what a trophy truck looked like in 2004. You know, I in 1994, it was the first year of trophy truck and I was actually an IBM class eight truck and won that championship. And, you know, I giggle for quite some time. You know, about five years ago. You know, people say the trophy trucks are the guys, the drivers are better than they ever wore. And I'm like, you know, I came from old school and I'm part of new school as well. And I said no way in 94 we had Ivan Stewart Walker Evans, you know, just some of the baddest dudes there were like, No, these guys aren't them. Well, now, I'm starting to say to myself, you know what, we got some really bad dudes right now. And he Luke McMillan, Bryce Menzies. You know, there's, there's 20 guys that can all haul the mail. So she's different perspective. And so, actually, I'm going to use this right now. So everybody is watching. I'm going to ask Rob and now no sometime during the show who your Mount Rushmore of off road is to start thinking about who Yeah, but on that bad boy, actually, you guys to think about who your Mount Rushmore of off road is, I know in my mount Mount Rushmore of off road. He's one of the top dogs that I would pick. So before we have our secret guest call in, I'm going to thank our sponsors. So thank you very much to all the guys over at. I know you're a visual guy, but that KMC and FX, those guys have supported the show since day one. So thank you very much to both Ryan's over at at excuse me wheel pros over there. You can always go to KMC wheels and get your get your wheels you can go down to four wheel parts, you can buy wheels, so look at the KMC stuff, man they got some awesome stuff. If you want to get any of the merch like the hats and T shirts and stuff like that, you can go to we'll merge comm check it out. They got a whole bunch of cool stuff, man. Thank you very much the guys over shock therapy. They've done some fantastic stuff that we can talk about maybe today or you can look at some of the Instagram stories that we posted to the unicorn Wags II that we have. They do awesome stuff for players can am everybody. They can get your side by side all set up with the RAD improvement system. They got steering racks they got. They got everything man so use the code dirt life over a shock therapist calm or just give them a call and say the dirt life sent you and they'll help you out. Thank you very much the guys over Zoolander racing products. Travis has been really pushing the RS one stuff, they've been doing some development on new product parts and products for that thing. They've been always doing stuff for the kandam so go check out soldier racing products comm for all their new stuff. They have tons of accessories. You just go dirt life, you can save a whole bunch of money at their website. Thank you very much to Josh over a cryo heat for being a part of the show. They make some fantastic parts or added bonuses to some of the parts that they have and they do Polaris pro mod transmissions. This one I keep pumping because there's so much lighter than a stock one. I don't know if you've ever seen a more if Caden Your son has ever seen him but they're all he treated so they have less rolling resistance. I think there's something like 15 or 20% less weight Mass in the transmissions they're actually really cool for the utvs Yeah, nice. So go ahead and check out crowd heat calm and if you have any questions give him a call over there Tom The Dirt Life Show sent you. And thank you very much the guys over solder weld. They have these awesome welding blankets and off road repair kits. You can use the code dirt life at solder weld comm you can save your race or your ride by using one of their kids. And like I always say, every time thank you guys for joining us because you guys are our lifeblood. So please always go on Facebook 5pm on or YouTube 5pm on Mondays and you can hang out with us if you can't check us out live on Mondays, he always got dinner with the family or whatever it is. You can check us out in the archives on iTunes and all of the different podcasts network, Spotify, Amazon, every one of them. So, man, we're gonna have some serious fun tonight. I don't know when we should like throw in. Are You Smarter Than third grade? I was a seriously long frickin thank you for sponsors. Look at all those questions that are rolling in. Or I just said look, it came Dan berry asked like 16 questions 30 minutes ago, what was Rob's first race vehicle. And john lewis has been sharing rad stuff forever. So trying to take it back to the early 90s. And wow, let's let's get through some of these comments. But why we're doing that I'm gonna try to think of ways to get through that quicker. I don't know if I could talk any faster. Okay, so let's see here. storytimes. Rob is on that's a full session, john lewis says let's take it back. even further than the old pro for let's hear some Mickey Thompson stadium series grand national sport trucks. Dang, that was a long time ago. Yeah, those trucks were little and skinny, aren't they? Yeah, they were they were actually when I look back now. They're like a mini truck. So he's talking like 93 Yeah, yeah, I started racing, Mickey Thompson in 1988 maybe 89 for Walker Evans and then in 91 moved to the Ford Rough Rider program. But those trucks they were they were small and they had a really low ride height Matter of fact in the moguls and stuff you had to go fast or you get high centered. A lot of times those trucks they were they had a rhythm section so like a you know about a two or three foot high jump and then there was two and then there's a gap and two and then like that you try to sometimes you try to quad him but you'd land on the land on the chassis and man sometimes they hurt but the bumping and banging and you look at some of the old videos Google that stuff making Thompson same stadium trucks and you you we would basically just drill each other in the door and I look back at the videos now and I'm like, Oh my god, like look what we're doing just trashing each other but it makes me remember why my back hurts so much when I was younger compared to now you know, but yeah, Mickey Thompson great days and race and Anaheim stadium. You know, I got to travel all across the country I've been to, to Montreal I raced in Tokyo with with trucks and how different was the actual racing portion of it like in those stadiums? Because like, you couldn't do that with the new trucks? Nah, not really. I mean, as anything, you know, the truck gets purpose built to what it's trying to do, you know, and those trucks they had to be battle worthy. We used to call it they had to have big bumpers, you know, front and rear protecting the bodywork and the rear, the rear bumpers wrapped around trying to protect the fiberglass in the beginning of the Mickey Thompson when I started the actual the roughs and the door skins were steel. And then the rest was body fiberglass, but as time went on, and that's kind of a funny story. We always used to wonder, why did why did they come up with colored duct tape? Well, the joke is and Mickey Thompson because the bodies were all patched together and to get the branding for back you had duct tape to put back on there. So yeah, the colors match it. Yeah, just kind of a joke because in the end, you know, and we also we raced three times in one night so you had practice during the day. 7pm was the first heat you know about 830 the second one and then the final main was at 11. So it's not like Supercross for you guys haven't seen it was like Supercross layout. He had the heats in the main and there was the grand national sport trucks, the super buggies, the ultra stocks, that was motorcycles, quads. Everything was really production but man, it's based off of like, like production. Yeah, many many Rangers yep your Chevy so at that time, and those were some of the best times ever an off road honestly. And it's because we had manufacturer involves Ford was involved Jeep, you know, Chevy Dodge, Nissan Toyota, they were all involved and that's you know, those were some of the best times for me and the whole my whole racing career was that mainly when I look back at us because manufacturers involved were involved yet tire companies will companies beer companies at the time. You know, a lot of that brings other great stories, but um, there was always Mickey Thompson leads me right into a story but Mickey Thompson, they always had a host hotel. So all the teams stayed at the same hotel. So after the night erasing you can imagine we're all bumping and banging. There's people pissed off one of the rules during the race was when you when you finish your heat and you get out you leave your helmet on for a little bit. You didn't take your helmet off, so you can imagine why. Yeah, a lot of times people be like, Oh, yeah, yeah. When Robbie Gordon came on board, you had Frank and LRC arrow Walker Evans you know, Ivan Stewart rod mill and Roger Mears, Roger Mears, Jr. And there was others, you know, Danny Thompson different years, but um, there'll be bumping and banging and there was always someone pissed off. So the rule was, you know, keep your helmet on for a few minutes after, make sure everything's good. So what since we're talking about rivalries right now? I got a surprise guest on the line. Yeah. Right on. His name is Carl Reynolds. Oh, yeah, right on. What's up, Carl, how are you doing, buddy? Are you still there? I won. He can't even talk. So Carl can probably hear us because he's still waiting on the other line. I'm going to give you a call back real quick, Carl and see what's going on with this audio. But yeah, so Carl is, uh, I want him to share a couple stories because you guys have had some fantastic battles over the years, man. Like some really, really good ones. Yeah, absolutely. So it'll be it'll be interesting to see. Carl Ren is better. What's up, bud? Hey, guys. How are you doing? longtime Long time no talk? Yeah, absolutely. Car. How are you doing? Glad hearing from you. Yeah, likewise. Good. Life is good. So Rob was just telling us a little bit about the Mickey Thompson days. Do you remember like when you first got news that a guy named call renovator was gonna start racing? Well, I do. I remember. There was a guy named Mike Leslie and he had a pro to with Lucas Oil sponsorship. And I think I was a I remember being back at Grand in my car was already racing. I was pretty aware of Carl and race and desert stuff they used to race A to C channels when they first started along with the Baldwin family. And yeah, Carl started if you know, it's my story, but correct me when when when I tell him when I tell him my story then you can correct me But yeah, you call showed up with Mike Leslie running the pro two. And that was what race was at. Ah, it was wasn't granted for anago. No. anago was the first one I actually had to do prep truck of mine. And then I think I teamed up with Wesley. And I literally showed up in a parking lot. My truck was sitting there and I don't know if you remember Dennis Elmore, but works are currently Duke. And he was my crew chief. And I just went out and started racing. Yeah, that's the way to do it. Man. These old stories are so cool to hear because it would be so difficult to do that nowadays. Right? Yeah, we you know, Carl, I'm sure like I did, you know, he raced motorcycles. I know. And I did as well. And, you know, we both had a huge passion for this stuff. And, you know, Carl's success, you know, I can relate to it. And also know his success was because of his passion. And honestly, he loved doing it. And he went after it and went after it hard. And he won a lot of races. So before we get into I want to ask Carl about maybe a story or so that he remembers, but before, I'm going to tell a little story, and it was about the first short horse race that I ever went to, and it was maybe 2012 ish or so. And it was a wild horse pass. And I've told this story a couple of times on the show that you guys both of you you and Carl were it was like a knockdown drag out MMA match dude, and it but it was also like poetry on wheels at the same time. Right. And at the end of the race, I think you guys both had your front fenders but no rear fenders. Yeah, so it was like that was pretty good, right? But you guys get the tires you couldn't see the writing on the side of the tires because the tires were smoked, but man it got me to the point where I was like shit this is actually bitchin like I love this stuff. Absolutely. Just because YouTube I would say I would say for the most part though, Rob and I were pretty good you know we've had our moments of course because we're pushing so hard with you know, 900 horsepower buyer breathing dragons undress, but, but I would say that as far from my perspective, I never drove with somebody as skilled as as Rob being able to race you know, and and work the track and understand Okay, I'm giving up this position but I know I'm going to get it to this next place. That was that was some of the coolest stuff for me for sure. Yeah, likewise for me Carl you know there was if there was ever a time that I was laughing and grinning not winning it was racing with you honestly I when we got in some of our battles and you know wheel the wheel and stuff I you know trying to work you you working me and and whichever whoever came out on top of those were honestly you know, we had enough battles that that's the ones I appreciate the most of in all my racing career and short cars honestly battling with you you know the respect that we gave each other and yes we as everyone does, we had our run ins but um for the most part and I've told you that before have told your family and everyone even Augie your son I you know, and Frank Frank Who was your spotter camera man and some of the your mom, your dad and all that stuff. So some of my best racing memories on the track without winning is actually battling you and and trying to work you honestly and yeah, can you imagine? So Carl, we have right Blanton of Warfighter made in the on the show with us here, he's co host. And Rob, could you imagine? Because both of these guys racecraft is elevated, like it's higher than most people, right? And so could you imagine what either like because their thought process is probably similar when they're on course, right? They drive different and stuff, but their mentality is kind of the same. Could you imagine what's going on inside their heads on their face during these times? Well, they're just battling so hard. The focus is probably, you know, off the charts and, and, you know, I can just imagine the setups and I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and push them widen this corner, so I get on the inside and whatnot. But my first lores race was around 2013 also, and it was when Warfighter made was just getting introduced into shore Corps. And, you know, the, we were a part of the regional series, but then when the Nationals came around, it was especially when pro four was, yeah, bro for you know, watching you guys was always was always kind of the the highlight. And and we were also hanging out in the rock star 10 Yeah, you know, those are some great race, I think back in, you know, how, how, you know, you know, glad I am to be part of that and just, you know, as amazing thing when Jim Baldwin had core going on and we were racing at Chula Vista or Pomona when he dug a big hole in the in the asphalt racing on the axle, just amazing thing, but um, you know, and then, you know, Carl racing and pro two and pro four, and how many? How many times call Do you think you won? We swept the weekend where you won both pro two and both pro four races. You know, it was interesting there, there was a few but then, you know, even even if you you win a lot, you still remember those those weekends where he just like, had just a terrible race and you just felt terrible. You know? I mean, it was, it was so up and down. You know, and that's what was great about it, though, because you wouldn't appreciate the wins if you didn't have those struggles where it's just like, oh my god, it couldn't even drive today. What the heck happened? You know? Yeah. But you guys both probably had the same thing. Let Carl answer this one. But Carl, did you have any weekends were like, let's just say you just got waxed. It was just a bad weekend, whether you're broken down or you just didn't drive good or whatever it was and the next weekend you just came out swinging against McCarron here. Well, there, there were definitely tracks that I tended to do better at and others I struggled at the end with with Israel beach. It's ironic because that's kind of where I first started driving my short course truck learning and setting it up and everything. So I thought I have an advantage there. And it's kind of the opposite. I just couldn't get my truck to work really good in that fan. But you know, like crammed in and some other tracks down in San Diego and wild horses just seem to have my setup pretty good. So, you know, just kind of depends. And then you know, remember the tracks prep different at all the time to make changes. So you know, you have to be adaptable. And, you know, Rob and I were we're always there. Always. Carl, just before this, we went to go have some tacos, and they were good. But we were chit chat. And I was trying to talk these two guys in this, tell them on their bucket list, they need to go back to Crandon and that's a question for you. We want to see you back there too. I know, I know, before you retired that you've mentioned, you wanted to get back there but you know, someday you need to show up if you don't show up for for racing. Maybe get back and hang out. Yeah, I would love to do that. And you know, my family you know, that's that was one of their favorite things to do. And one thing one thing now that I'm retired I didn't realize as much then as I do now is how important those experiences were to my family, my kids because you know that they that affected them so much being able to go back to the Midwest and to have those experiences at the races and to do the things they wouldn't be able to do like go to those lakes or you know, see the people run around the pit all that stuff. It's it's pretty special thing for them. Yeah, absolutely. As we get older likewise for myself. Same thing reminisce and the kids are all getting older. I think all yours are og he's the only one that's under 20. Probably I know him and Caden are both I think they're both 19. But you know, all the kids that we you know, we call them track kids or track babies, you know, they grew up at the track and as they get older, you're sitting at the table, some story comes across and you know, you think back and you're like, wow, I thought I was you know, hindering these kids and taking them away from other things but also realizing when they tell stories about how much they appreciated that and getting to see the country and like you said different lakes and but anyways made a lot of good memories for them as well. That's one of the things that I think people in racing don't. I don't want to say they don't. They don't do like, how do I say this? You? You don't like for me, I don't conduct an interview about a certain race usually like we don't talk about the race, as it was what the hell happened. It was like what good fun times did you have? And it's exactly what you guys are talking about, like you get to experience going fishing while you're there. You get to experience all these different things, because there's so many races that I've done. Not as many as you guys, but that I don't remember anything about the race. I just remember the weekend. Yeah, like the weekend was the fun part. Right. Like, so that's for sure. Yeah. No, and the relationships that you develop over the time and the experiences, I mean, I can guarantee you both Rob and I have more stories than we've forgotten, you know, but, you know, sitting around for a while and talking, you know, just these memories, especially in Baja, because so much stuff happens down there. And, you know, pretty running and the racing stuff. I don't know. You agree, Rob, I just, I mean, I wish I could write them all down. I want you guys don't have diaries. I said. So why Walker Evans. So let me go back just a step. So ba 1000 A lot of you guys don't know. But Carl renta center myself and Mark post won the 2007 ba 1000. Overall, together together. Yeah. So Carl, I started Carl drove in the middle about 300 miles and then mark posts finished. And we ended up winning that race. Carl didn't know he ended up doing a section and went home. And we got down to the finish line. I think I woke up the next day and I'm like, Where's Carl? You don't? He went home and it's like, Damn, but anyways, did you know that Rob that they won the Baja 1000? Oh, yeah, I knew that. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's rad man. You know, the funny story though. Rob is I remember coming in and you the truck, and you look in and you're like, hey, how come you don't have your lights on? I'm like, Oh, they don't work. He's like, click. How about this switch? Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of you guys know Oren Anderson. became a little bit famous. But Oren rode with he pre ran and rode with, with Carl and he also worked for VR at the time. And he was Karl's co writer, and I remember him coming on the radio and they say, yeah, the lower lights they don't work. And I'm like, Oh, shit, we got you know, I got to drive, you know, seven more hours at nighttime. And I'm like, the lower lights don't work. This is terrible. And they come in at that time. If you remember Carl, you were down there by this guy on Oh, just a little bit north of San Ignacio. And we're putting on the right side of the highway but they told you you had to go past the pit make a U turn and come backwards to pit the opposite direction because the the fuel was on the driver side. So yeah, exactly what I got in the truck gave orange I never never give Carl ship for that. But orange every once a while I give him shit for that go. Remember that time we won the ball 1000 together and you didn't think that he didn't turn on the light or smart enough. Turn the lights on? Maybe he was just trying to save them for you? Because Yeah, you know, you had you had a record. Yeah. That's a good story, though, man. So let me catch up on some of the comments here. I think you'll actually dig some of these comments here, girl. But one of the first ones was john hopkins asked, Did you ever race against Jimmie Johnson? So maybe that's a question for both you guys. I never did. No, I didn't either. I was in pro for when he was in $1. I did. Sorry. See, I have to remember my own story. So remember what happened. So me and Mickey Thompson days, right there at the end of Mickey Thompson. Jimmy moved up from he was racing the little. They forgot what they're called. They're kind of like a trophy card. But you sat in like an odd light. Yeah, super light. I think that's what they were called. So he was racing those then he moved up. Chevy got their eye on him and they moved him up into the grand national sport truck. So I raced with him against him for one year. He also went back and raced in the Midwest series soda but he was in pro two and I was in pro four. And that must have been before you were doing at Carl for me. Yeah, just before and we'd love to have him come back. I keep I keep waiting for Jimmy to come back and do dabble in off road a little bit. But right now he's doing the IndyCar stuff. But hopefully someday we get him back out there. Right. He might. Yeah, and then Caden Dan berry ask I'd like to hear both your guys's What was your guys's first race vehicles. So, so mine because they told me about it earlier. Mine was a high jumper single seater. No power steering, no radio, no spare tire. It was a type one. IRS transmission in one to 1600 cars. So it was a car that was sitting completely apart. And I was think it was 1981. I was into sports in high school playing basketball. And my dad said you want to try off road racing. And I said, sure. But what if I don't like it? He goes, Well, we'll sell the car and move on. So it first race I did it. I loved it. And I quit playing basketball. And I went racing. That's pretty cool. All right. What's this comment over here? Blanton. Let's see. Seriously, how does Rob always have the perfect hair? Especially after he takes his helmet off? Hey, Carl, you can't see their hair. But both of them have pretty nice, good hair this evening. So Carl, was your first desert car to see. Yeah, yep. That was really yeah. And well, what am I It was my father in law's he was a he was a real estate guy and he had an engineer. His name was Bill church. You probably remember them, Rob. Yeah. Remember the church guys. And he was one of the he was their engineer. So he took, he took them out in the cars, because they were big into the boss. And at the time, I was racing motor motorcycle. And he bought two cars to go pre run around. So I remember the first time we went in and drove him I went out for the first the first drive, and we went to what what's that dry lake out there by behind Big Bear? That's not soggy. Is it? Yeah. sockies out there. Yeah. soggy, dry lake. Yeah. So and that's the one that they have like that road that that's like a, you know, raised up, and there's a dry lake. So anyways, I drove I went out and drove this thing. And I saw this road. It's probably like five or six feet high, you know, when it was raised elevated roads. And I watched it and I cleared the road landed on the flat on the other side. Oh, I think I broke broken in half. So Jim didn't let me drive it after that for quite a while. is getting fixed. So for you guys. Also this this channel that Carl drove was actually built by Butch Dean. So the valley Yeah, so the valley performance Butch Dean. You know, it's a there's a lot of history there with with Collins brothers herps. You know, myself, jack Johnson, Ralph triblend, bud fell camp and just on and on. But the church family and the Baldwin family, along with call runners that are there was a lot of Kenneth cars that came out of there. So yeah, a lot of histories that I mentioned something about that. The first time I ever heard about a chance was Jeff furrier from up Er, yeah, show me his and those things are pretty cool, man. I never knew how nostalgic they were. Yeah, they were pretty. You remember when when I first started driving those, they had the credit carnac shocks, which were like, the weird needles in the hole, or whatever they call that? Yep. And then and then when they switched him out to Custer, which was the pre pre King was just a huge game changer. Yeah, absolutely. couldn't even imagine the difference in how those how much faster you go. Yeah, the coconuts are, that's they were pretty cool in their day. And they were they were the piston had no valving or no valve stack in it, there was just needles imagine a six pins in you know, six pins that went well two of them are guide rods and they went the whole length of the inside of the can inside the shock and then there was four more that were different lengths and they'd shut off a hole so that was really your valving so it was a pretty amazing thing. They were super loose and sloppy around right height but until they started closing the holes off, they got stiff so yeah, they were in their day they were pretty badass and ultimately, I just dawned on me a couple years ago the reason why I liked my cars kind of loose and sloppy is that's what I learned. I learned on that's awesome. Wow, yeah, they were definitely loose. But I remember it used to be used to like to backward come up a lot easier with with that valving unless we didn't have a valve dry but I remember when we put on those custom shocks man it was like that car stayed planted and it was it was fun. I love those love those guys name. guy named Don Custer used to my first introduction to him was with Walker Evans and Don Custer used to ride in the ram charger pre running, and the ram chargers had Rancho shocks on them. They had, you know, 16 on each corner, not that many customers, you know, like Walker, it's like we got to do something about this and a guy named Don Custer ended up coming out with the Custer shocks, which was the precursor like Carl said to King and I think the king some of the king. The father worked I believe he worked for for costume. Not sure about that. Yeah, right. Yeah, so that was a game changer right there. Those that time a period of auto racing going from the small 2.0 shocks to the at that time the customers read threes. Yep. So David Pease commented and said that your hair has its own Instagram account. It yeah did for a while there. And then Robert Hargis says Rob saves space in his race suit for comb for perfect hair on every podium. Does Rob know how many core Lucas races were delayed by the staging do so he could finish? So Carl, Carl was in some of those we, you know, podium? Well, no before and after the ones before we end up talking stories. And you know how many times Carl were we sitting there, you know, waiting for our race up and pre grid and the pre great guy would come over they get 10 minutes, you know, five minutes and we keep talking pretty soon. He's like, they're yelling and screaming. You guys got to get in your trucks and finally the staging guy, he would instead of coming in Tell us You just tell race director at that time, but in the end it was Greg Fouts. You just tell Greg, it's storytime with Rob So you're just gonna I don't think I don't think we ever were talking about race either. No. Everything else. Absolutely. That's cool. David also commented and said, The Carl passing line at the Vegas track. What was that all about? The Carl passing line. Did you have some sort of secret line at the track in Vegas? Well, there was there was one and that off for a couple years off campus. You can remember that Rob? Yeah. I had a nice little line through there. But you know, I don't know what they're talking about. Maybe somebody figured it out. Like there's no secret lines on the shortboard What's the next one that that actually you might know this person Amber. Amber, what does amber say? Yeah, I know. She says so. Fun fact. Robin is daughter Kayla is dating Carl second cousin. Someday that will be a great wedding. The mcac grins in the red is editors and the Baldwins under one roof outside of race also Okay, what's the question? really is what for what vacation? Are you guys gonna go on? I don't know. I don't call those but yeah, I'm sure he knows. The fronds is dating ambers daughter, Kyla and yesterday where we're at the lake together Lake Mojave on the and you know, we were having stories with you and they brought up, you know, maybe Carl could send us to Fiji. Oh, yeah. You know, it's funny you so you were just at Lake Mojave? Yeah. So about three weeks ago, I took my parents. My parents have a place there. Yeah. We talked about that yesterday. And I hadn't I hadn't been back, since Laughlin 2008. Wow. Because they're just because life's busy. So I took my parents up there because they'd been in the house for COVID. And I wanted to take them on the lake. They weren't feeling up to it. So I went out and rented a CD and I went around every single Cove from cost from not quite Cottonwood, but all the way. You know, like the telephone lines down to, you know, in and out just so much fun. Yeah, I love that. Like, yeah, it was great. That's some serious dedication going. Oh, yeah. Well, it's like a it's like a Racecourse. Yeah, I'm right with you. We did the same thing. yesterday. We were going in and out just sightseeing and getting in those are seeing how far in you could go with? Yeah, exactly. Beautiful. In the water. There's clear. Yeah, it was really clear. Surprising yesterday. Yep. Right. So when was the first time? Actually I'd like to ask both you guys this question. So you know, when you will call it in quotes, Matt, Carl. But when was the first time you were like, wow, this guy's the real deal. I can tell you a quick story. So and this goes way back in my memory. Because, you know, the first exposure I had to rob was really in the desert in the most vivid memory I have. And I think I even told you this before I was down in San Felipe Bay. And I was up ahead of our path, Zoo road crossing, and I was watching the trophy trucks. And it was like, maybe I broke earlier. I don't know what happened. But I was watching. And Rob hit that Zoo road and I swear to God, he was as high as the telephone wires. I was like, holy shit. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, back in the day, the zoo road used to be a big jump and it wasn't quite as rough on both sides. So you could hit it and just sail as far as you wanted. You know, you didn't check up at all. No, no, well, we weren't going as fast. Back then if you were doing 75 threw up that road. You were going fast. And now you know, pretty much doing 100 in the low cost. Remember what timeframe that was? Well, it was it was when he was in? In the you know, the Ford Class A Rough Rider days. Yeah, yep, exactly. So yeah, Rough Riders started 91 went to 96. So I drove class 891 9293. And then 94 was the first year the trophy truck. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Do you remember on the opposite end when you first like, felt like Carl was going to be a heavy hitter competition again? Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the beginning, you know, obviously, you know, I pay attention. And I knew that they raised the chances. And then Jim Baldwin built for Jason and Josh and Carl, they had some some trophy trucks and, you know, I think Adela Yeah. catella. Yes. And, you know, they, they were pretty successful with those and then, you know, Carl in short course, you could tell that I think he, in my opinion, he got a pretty focused on that. Yeah. And, you know, became worked out at heart and whenever, you know, typically whenever somebody has passion like Carl did and work hard out, they're successful. And he did, he got into the short course racing went all in and ended up winning a lot of races. Well, I don't know how you feel Blanton but for me, I feel privileged to be talking to both of these days. Carl is not here with us, but it's it's pretty rad man because I look up to both of guys Race. It's definitely rad just gonna sit here and listen to them go back and forth. You know, it is cool. I know that our audience members are definitely digging it as well. You got any funny stories that are kind of off the track stuff, Carl? optitrack stuff? I mean, you know, not really, I mean, you know, we all content on it at night after pre runner or after races, especially down in San Felipe Bay or down in Cabo. I mean, do you remember I remember having a bar bar brawl down? And I don't know if you were there at squid row after one of the 1000s. And something happened. And everybody was clearing out some crazy stuff going on, but I don't know. Tag. That sounds pretty crazy. Yeah, I wasn't there. Oh, look at this guy. Rob, probably the one that started it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we had so many good stories, though. I mean, you know, like I said, just have to have to remember all of them. Yeah. It's like one of those things. You got to sit down by the campfire and start having beers to be able to talk about that stuff. Because stuff just pops up every now and then when you make sure somebody is there to record it, dude for real. And that's that me racing with Walker and listen all his stories back in the late late 80s. And that's what I used to say is man, somebody needs to be writing this stuff down. And for now, for 30 years. I've been saying somebody needs to be writing all this stuff down. Yeah. And the nice thing about it is we have a little bit more technology nowadays. So I'm glad that you guys are both given us the opportunity to be able to share some of these stories. So one of the things that I wanted to ask Robert Carl was his Mount Rushmore of off road. And I mentioned to him You are also on my Mount Rushmore of off road, but he is as well do you have a Mount Rushmore of a off road? Carl? What do you mean by that? What do you mean like what's more like what's your top dogs and off road to fill Mount Rushmore? So like if I were to pick my Mount Rushmore of off road, it would be yourself, Rob, and a couple other guys. I was really a big fan of Evan Evans. I would probably I would probably put Ivan Stewart up there and how many presidents are on Mount Rushmore? 544. Yeah, so that would be that would be mine. Right there. So do you know how off the cuff hum, who you'd put up there? Well, 100% Rob, I mean, there's there's no question. You there's been a couple guys that that were that were important to me. Rod Millen was one of them. I really looked up to him. And he kind of took me under his wing. And I really thought a lot of him. I mean, who else? I mean, there's, there's Robby Gordon, there's, you know, Walker Evans, of course. I mean, we can go all the way back, you know, Jimmie Johnson. And there's, there's a lot of guys that are that are phenomenal. You know, brain vessels. Remember him? Yep. I don't know who that is. Yeah, scoop. Frank scoop that says he's a big guy and innovator at the time he used that to but he drove Class A truck and yeah, I mean, he I mean, he wasn't like, like winning a lot of races. But I just think he had some sort of impact, but I don't know. I would say for sure. Rob. Rod Millen? And I would say Walker. Yeah. Those are all good, man. Yeah. What do you think? Well, yeah, no, absolutely. It's funny. You said Rod Millen because in in my Mickey Thompson years, I actually wouldn't walk over and hired me in 89. I've actually actually only made it a year and a half. And I got fired, which, honestly, was one of the best things that ever happened in my life from short course. So I sat out but when I went back and sat in the grandstands, I realized, you know, Walker wasn't really helping me that much with my driving, but I ended up watching rod Millen and I said, once I sat out and started watching again, I'm like, I see what I'm doing wrong now. And anyway, so I, I, in short, course racing, I looked up to rod mill, and like, you're like you're saying, and then, you know, obviously, in the short course, like Lucas Oil, that kind of stuff, you know, yourself, you know, everything, all the wins that you've done. That's why I brought up the point earlier about, I don't know, has anyone else ever swept? I know, I never did swept pro two and pro four and a weekend, it's quite likely that you're the only one that ever did that. Good. Could that be true? And you probably did it more than once. So, you know, you know, you and I think of anybody either. No, I don't think anybody else did I know I wanted to try but, but um, you know, realize, no, is super hard. And guys. I bet Carl might have done it five times. Honestly, it seems to me I don't know. You did it enough to definitely make me to take notice and me to try it. And I know I never got one. But um, you know, you're you and I when you retired? We were very close into the same amount of short course wins. And absolutely today identical. Yeah, exactly. And right now, I think we're still quite a bit above anyone else. I know Kyle. Do we probably just hit 100? Total? And then, but he also Yeah. Do you know do you each know Carl? Do you know how many wins you have altogether? You know, I don't know. I like 125 maybe 124 or something like that. And Rob, do you remember it's somewhere similar to Carl? I think I got him by little. He retired one year earlier. I know when he was retired, and we were super close. You know, they started. Yeah, we're about a privilege, man. Just think about how many wins we're talking to on the phone right now. Rob? Well, just in short course. The the Lucas Oil type short course between the two of us were around 250. Holy smokes, man. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. That That is so cool, man. Well, I know Carl, you got a lot of stuff going on in your life right now. We really appreciate you calling in man. It was fantastic talk with you. We'd love to maybe get you on the show one of these days. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah, I think you should. Absolutely nice. It was nice talking to you. Rob. I haven't talked to you probably since last time. We were at the race. Yep. Likewise. We'll see you soon. Awesome. See, Brandon, by the way, you know, I heard your son's really doing well. So congratulations. Yeah. Good luck with that. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Caden is doing really well. That's awesome. We're gonna actually talk about that a little bit, Carl. So thanks for giving us a segue rather. Have a good one. Thanks, guys. Take care. We'll see you later. Bye. Man, it's so cool to to understand that like Robert Blanton, when you when you hear these guys talk with the amount of respect that they have towards each other. But the amount of adrenaline over the years that they've spent on each other Holy smokes there, could you imagine it's it's cool, you know, me being relatively new to off road. And when I stepped into off road, these, Carl and Rob Mack, were the guys that we were all looking at. Yeah. And now, you know, Carl retired, what, three, four years ago. You know, sitting here with Rob back now and you know, listening to these two guys talk. It's, it's pretty cool. You know, it's, it's awesome. It's awesome. Being here and experience in the I'm telling you, we were just talking about the pre render being like, you know, how many stories it can tell, can you imagine if we did actually have a camping trip and sit by the fire with a couple beers, man, yeah, add beer, those stories will come out? Well, you know, get in and get some of the older guys like Walker Evans, and you know, and love the opportunity for, for, you know, the people that aren't here anymore, like Bruce Meyers, who passed away this year. And just have them sit down and start talking about, you know, kind of pioneering all this stuff and, and what it was like then, to what it's like now, you know, you were talking about needle valve shocks. Yeah. What were those guys dealing with? back then? You know? Yeah, it would be like, it would probably be hard for some of us newbies to understand. I haven't, it's a story that I realized it's been maybe 10 years ago. And some kids that were 15 1617 years old came up to me and they're like, Oh, my gosh, you know, Rob max on my shirt and everything else. And how did you get started? And yeah, I was telling the story. And I said, You know, I and then I raced for Walker Evans, and they said, Who's Walker? Evans? Yeah. And I realized Holy shit, you know, but that's the realization, you know, it's starting to happen to me now is there's you know, as soon as I retire and you start not racing, you know, these young kids come up, and they get involved in sport, and it's their passion, and then they don't remember what happened. Dude, I can't even take it up one notch. Like, I was just interviewing a young kids at four wheel parts on Kaden, Dan Barry helped me co host and Jacob Peter, which is a player's racer as well. Both of them are young, they're under I think they're 1413 years old. But I said Who is your favorite driver? And they chose Seth cantero. Who's a baby compared to us? Yeah. It's like, to me, it's like the level there. The the generations are, are so different. But it's so cool, because you got to respect every single person coming through, right? Yep. Yeah, it's neat to see. So john lewis actually commented in and said, this is actually probably something that you can chime in on Rob super lights is where jimmy johnson started. Then he drove the second truck for Nelson and Nelson with Rick Johnson. And I don't know what the Nelson Nelson stuff is. Yeah. Nelson Nelson, john Nelson. They ran the Chevy team and they were actually, you know, right now, my race shops in San Jacinto and the Nelson Nelson shop was right over here in Hemet. We went to dinner a little bit ago and I was showing you where the old Venable shop is just a stone's throw away from here is the old venerable shop that I raced for 91 to 96. Day Western ran out of here, Larry miners from here there's some ties broadhall. Like we said, Nelson and Nelson. And on and on, I think, you know, Hemet Sandy sent to area back in the day, had a lot of the offroaders coming from here. So in that in that last statements are true about Jimi racing, the nature's recipe super lights and then racing for Chevy thunder. And that was his. That was his his way with Chevrolet into NASCAR. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Not very many people can say that. They raced against Jimmie Johnson. Yeah. So that's pretty neat. JOHN Hubbard's also said, Is it better races in the States or in Mexico? You know, it really a preference, right? Well, I always love going to Mexico, you know, ba has special, you know, Rob, you've been going to Nora, and it's a special place. And I think you know, Forever and always that'll that'll be my favorite. You know, there's there's good races in the states too. I used to love racing, the old Barstow tracks, and you had multiple roads next to each other. I love Parker. You know, there's, I love racing anywhere and everywhere. But baja is definitely at the top of my list. I think a better question is like, what do you prefer desert racing or short? course, that's always been a tough one. You know, somebody always said, you know, if you had to choose which one do you do? Well, you know, with my racing career, I always had to go out and solicit funding and sell sponsorship. And the easiest way for me to sell sponsorship was for short course racing. So in that short course, racing helped get my desert program started. So it was always tough for me to choose because I wanted to say desert, but I knew, you know, my bread and butter was what the short course, you know, now, things are changing a little bit. And, you know, ultimately, I've looked back at it, you know, the, the experiences that the desert racing give you, you know, whether it's pre running a baja or, you know, the longer races The more time you know, desert racing is, is definitely you know, as, as I get older, and I look back, desert racing is really worked out. For me, it's really from all the memories in the stories, but less helmet had In short, hair coming out of the car. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I always say that, you know, short course is more fan friendly. It's a one to two day event where desert racing can be drawn out. Right. And if you want up big time, in short course, safeties, right there. Yeah. And you're getting towed off the track, you're getting brought back to your pit area. You know, you load up and you figured out what went wrong. Open desert racing. Yeah, you but I think you could go both like teeter totter on both of that, because that means when I'm listening to you saying this, I'm thinking, wow, desert racing is really hard then because you're so out there. You're doing it all on your own right. And then but the short course is also a little bit more intense, so you can go back and forth on it. Well, you know, Warfighter made doesn't desert race, like Rob Mac desert race. But every time we go out there, it's, you know, because we're going so slow. You we get a second to break focus and look around, right? You're going fast enough to make a big ol angry dude throw up? Yeah, shout out to the men's clubs. There's the guys out there in the Supermax is that, that we ended up finishing ahead of them? How I still don't know. But out of 100 vehicles, we finished 42nd overall, starting at seventh. And, you know, those guys would always like every time we either had to come up behind you to pass or saw you in our mirrors. We were like, oh God, how's this Humvee even anywhere near, you know, total confidence, sapping, you know, whatever. And we're like, Oh, thanks, man. Appreciate it. So when I was fixing the audio, were you guys talking about you going down to Nora than Rob? Yeah, a little bit. I keep saying, you know, racing for me, has turned into, you know, pretty good job. You know, I, you know, I know sponsors, and people expect me to win and back in the day, you know, come home from a race it and win and my friends, you know, they'd bust my chops. And what do you mean, you didn't win? So I put a lot of that pressure on myself to and I can't wait, you know, I keep saying I want to go to nor I want to go race that because you know, at the end of the day, I want to have a beer, you know, and go the next day. Well, right now, it doesn't seem like that's possible. But, you know, I've been telling Rob for or thinking about it for probably almost two years now. Like, I know they've been going it's like, when I go I'm going to help them. So that would be pretty cool. You know, you know, one of the cool things for me personally and for Warfighter made is you know, you have one of the winningest off road drivers in history. While Lindsey geyser said a great this morning. She said the goat, the goat, you got to go right here. And he comes out to one of our events. He's, you know, driving his players razor. And he comes up to me afterwards and he's just like, I had a really good time. I forgot how fun off road computer. Oh, that's so rad. You know, so I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm drying my eyes. I'm like, I'm never gonna forget this. And, you know, but but now it's like, you know, you pioneer I mean, you. You made this sport. You've carried it this far into, you know where we are now. You know, come with us and have some fun. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm all about it. Let's have some fun in any vets that are out there watching this right now or listening to this or, or seeing this later. That's what Warfighter made is all about, you know we take all vets all branches all areas we have players razors to do adrenaline therapy Saturday's with, but we also we have quickly become known as the military vehicle race guys. And and we have a whole host of vehicles that we like to do either short course or desert races with and we just so happened to you know, been pretty lucky at it and, and doing doing well and having a ton of fun. Have you ever driven a Humvee? Rob? No, I have not. So hey, look, he'd be like, Wow, this is so underwhelming. That would be pretty cool to see though, at least to get a picture of him in the seat right? Just pretend latte this this last ATMs that we just did this. On the eighth of May. I got to give a ride in BP or Humvee named after Angus beefy powers who passed away last year. I got to give a Korean War vet and a Vietnam vet Marine, a ride and beefy and he's got stage four cancer and he knows he's on his way out. And he's just trying to pack as much fun into you know what remaining time he has left. And his grandson posted a video and he's just smile ear to ear. And I'm doing a whopping 30 miles an hour around the track because he can't go any faster. And you know, so it's stuff like that. And then we got to celebrate a 61st birthday with a lady who's never done anything like that. And her son in law's a veteran and you know, got to give her a ride on her 61st birthday. And she loved it. So Dude, that's fantastic. I mean, like how many people ask you you can use me for a truck? You know what I mean? And they're actually doing stuff similar, at least, you know, on a different level, but it's cool. In came Dan Berry, got to give a 91 year old lady a ride in his razor. And apparently, you know, he was doing the, hey, if you're good, keep the thumbs up. Or if you want to go faster, give me a thumbs up and if something's wrong, just give me a thumbs down. I guess she was like this. Faster, go faster, go faster. That's cool. And then Scott ran just commented in and said, How about Rob giving Johnny Greaves his first ride in class for pro for? You remember that? trying to remember Okay, so he actually at first I was thinking he actually rode with me. No, that's not what happened. Right, Scott? I think what you're referring to is the first race. And it wasn't this truck. It was a it was a different 1996 I think it was an ortho lawn and garden sponsored truck. And there's a brand new truck came last minute to the racetrack in Lake Geneva and I ended up in doing it. I thought, No test time, no shock tuning No, nothing. I think I started for that I came around, I was in second place. And I thought to myself, I could win this thing with no test time. And I end up in knowing it hurt my back. And then we were actually sharing a shop with Johnny Greaves and ended up asking Johnny, if he would drive my pro for the next day. So and Johnny did so here the off road community. Yeah, but what's rad is that you have viewers and listeners that are so into the dirt life. Yeah, that this is stuff that impacts them. And you know, they want to know about That's awesome. Do you have the memories? Like, I know Scott is but like the memories that these guys have? I mean, like I'm learning, right? Like, like Rob said, we're kind of newbies in the in the scheme of things sitting next to you. But the memories that I have are very vivid and these people have just as much or more like it's pretty rad. So what's what's this comment here? I know the reason I want you to ask this one, Rob is because you guys share a sponsor. Love that new paint scheme. Rob, you know, he's running the BF Goodrich truck now and it does. It's a it's a phenomenal looking. You know, we share we share sponsor would be Geez, yeah. I've been with BF Goodrich since 1991. So, yeah, and this year, the truck was all black. And it's like we got to do something special and ended up you know, looking at BF Goodrich, who doesn't love red, white and blue man. Absolutely. It does look pretty sick. And so some of the stuff I was looking for some pictures when we were doing your guys's intro, and some of the pictures that are from the San Felipe pay 250 the truck looks really good like just a black doesn't look that good in the dust. Yeah, white bread white and blue. Like you can see it through the dust and stuff. It looks awesome. Yeah, definitely got a lot of good comments. So let's see here. We got a couple other comments but but desert requires a bigger crew and becomes much bigger. A family. Well, I don't know about the family portion of it but the crew does. Well, you know and in for the Nora, we went down with six people right period for Vets That we're that we call it a skeleton crew. Yeah, because we've gone down before with tons of people. We did 20 something people one time when we had two vehicles for the 50th anniversary, the Nora. But this time we went down with with a total of six people for Vets to chase. And we had a great time. I mean, it really was a perfect amount of people for for what it was. Can you give us a comparison how many people you take to I, like I said, say a peninsula run? And then how many do you take to a Crandon peninsula run? We've had a little over 100 people. Wow. And the reason for that is, you know, typically peninsula run lately has been over 1000 miles. So we'll pit six times in each one of those fuel pits has to be separate, they can't be the same people. Okay, so pretty much have about 15 people in each of those pits and then chase trucks. The trophy trucks keep getting faster and faster. So the chase trucks down the highway, they have a hard time keeping up so so I guess we need more and I've kind of station or divide up the race into three sections. I have the top you know, third you know that chase guys there and then in the middle and then at the end. So we've been ended up having the last few peninsular runs over 100 people. Whereas in short course racing with one truck, we may have, you know, eight or 10 or 12 people. So definitely different amount of people. Yeah, it's that is a much, much bigger difference. So David is actually pretty right. I don't know what Stetson said, meant by this, but said DVR in the house. DVR is desert vets racing. Another nonprofit that takes that puts them in as passengers and they raise they raise a really all kinds of races, a lot of the local district type races, but they were just out at the the clear was a 300. That just happened. Oh, Silverstein the Silver State. Yeah, they just ran the Silver State. So read on Do you have any intention of doing any desert stuff? This year, there's nothing on schedule. For me at this point, just doing those score stuff, man or no? meant possibly, it's right after the ball 1000. So just see, I'll just go see how things go. We're still at this, you know, with last year with COVID. And everything the direction was a I was doing these races and then in the end, didn't do some of them did other ones. And this year, so far things are kind of staying in line and we'll see if that'll happens. But right now the plan is doing the score races and we'll we'll talk about the mint later in the year. It's so close to the 1000 with the same truck and just about being paused. It's crazy. 2021 everything's so staggered and scattered around. And Jacob Delta. Sorry, buddy, we've been talking so much but he out early asked Is there any 2021 short course plans come out champ? Yeah, there's we actually we sold the two pro twos still have the pro four here. You know, and I I end up the the Midwest series back. There's definitely a lot of good things happening back there. There'll be on TV this year. You know, and we'll see what happens. It should be pretty cool. Man, I would love to see you back on a short course track. So that's, there's a couple comments that are coming in. I'm going to go maybe you can take this one with Scott ran, but john Hubbard's asked, the most dangerous part of being in Baja is watching out for all the chase drivers. More More people. More chasers die in ba than the racers do. Yeah. Without What's the reason for that? That seems weird. It's just Well, first of all, there's more of them. Right? Right. You know, a numbers. And then two, you know, these guys are are they're, they're pushing quote unquote, just as hard, but the focus isn't there. You know? Because they're thinking about something else. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're on a asphalt road. And by the way, it the Baja, well, you were just having to say, Bob, all the rows down there. haiwan is all paved now and it's just so amazing. Or three or whatever that is, yeah, and yeah, but more more chasers, loser live down there, then the razor zoo, we could get into all those stories about safety and stuff. But I'm just gonna say I'm a big proponent of safety. So if anybody has any suggestions, please tell me raise organizers because we could definitely use some more safety. I'll tell you the other thing too, is that the roads are significantly more narrow down there. And so when you're, you know, chasing and you have a trailer, another vehicles coming at you, whether it be a local semi truck, or just another chase truck or whatever, there's not really room to move to the right when you're passing each other. So sometimes like a true single lane road, it is a true sink. And then for whatever reason Mexico or baja likes to put these concrete pillars right on the side of the road. And my biggest fear has always been specially towing a trailer, either getting too far off the road and catching the rear of the trailer on one of those concrete pillars. Or, you know, having a big rig catch the other side of the trailer, right you know, it's it's a you got to be on your game when you're down, you learn to know how to whip the trailer around the other way you do the whip itself and overtime all the years I've been going the road keeps getting a little better, a little better, a little better. But those concrete posts that you're alluding to those used to be the white the white line was there a long time ago, there was no lines, they didn't paint any lines. So now they have the lines but in this concrete post, we're actually right there on the side of the road, like really close so Dude, that's crazy. Got an axe and then you start learning don't drive at night because the you know, the donkeys and the cows come out onto the roads at night and, and also the 18 wheelers, they kind of own the roads. Yeah, and stuff. And it's, so he learned a lot of that stuff. So Scott also commented and we're gonna go to a commercial break in about 10 minutes here. So, but let's answer, Scott what he was talking about a story here. He said, what about the pro buggy days? Rob, where Rob was forced to start last What What was that? Oh, well, that's okay. So that's a good story. Um, let me finish what he said real quick. Okay. And then has the lead at the comp yellow, again, was forced to go back to last at comp yellow and still won in the days of 30 plus cars. Jim Baldwin. Love Rob. Yeah. So I'm sorry, go. So earlier on the show we told you about in 2001. I got the letter from Marty Reid saying my trucks illegal. So I didn't race short course all the way until 2007. And I was starting to miss it. So I did go when Jim Baldwin invited me back. I did go to Chula Vista one weekend, but I started missing it again between, say 2004 and 2007. I started missing it. And I'm like, I gotta do something at that time. JOHN Cooley was build me the buggy that my pre run buggy and I kept going in my like, Hey, you need to, you need to look into building these super buggies. And he's like, I don't have time for that. But one day, he called me up. He goes, What would you do a beam or a arm? And I go, I don't know. Let me think about it. So we kept talking about it. I finished my buggy and one day call and said, Hey, you need to come down and look at my super buggy. And I'm like, Oh, shit, you know, I didn't want one. He goes, No, no, it's mine. I'm building it. So I ended going down there and looking at and I ordered one because I said this is my way to get back into short course racing. And we're getting it built. It was about two thirds of the way down. I got a phone call from Steve Barlow, at that time, was running Red Bull pro two. And he said, Hey, I was talking to BF Goodrich, Frankie Angelo. And they said, you've been wanting to get back into Are you interested? I said, heck yeah. You know, like, I go on building the super buggy right now. And would you mind if I can I drive the buggy and the pro two at the same time? He goes, No, no problem. So I go count me and says, Okay, I'll get back to you. A couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from from core, and they said, Hey, we received your super buggy entry, and also pro to entry. You can't race a pro class and super buggy at that time. It wasn't a pro class. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, you got to be kidding me. Like I've got this money invested in the super buggy. Now, it's not even done. And it's worth you know, I gotta sell it. I can't do it. Where am I gonna put it? Yeah, yeah. Because in back to saying, again, the name used to be super buggy was not a professional class. And I'm like, Oh, my God, what do I got myself into? So I ended up I was in Baja, pre running when I got the news. And I said, I'm calling Jim Baldwin. Because, you know, I don't this this thing, right? I'm pissed. And they call the office and Secretary said he's in a meteor. And I said, You tell him I want to talk to him. He goes, I can't. He's in a meeting right now. You tell him I want to talk to him right now. So he got on the phone and we chatted and he was yelling at me. And he goes, you don't need to be in a buggy. And I'm like, I'll tell you what. I go. You take my entry. You take me out of that pro to I'm driving that super buggy. He slammed the phone down. About a week later, he called me He says, Okay, I fixed the problem. We're gonna call it pro buggy now. So he let me do it. And I was racing pro buggy and pro two. And at that time, I had a newer alumacraft car, and we were doing really well. And he said, Rob, you're stinking up the show. He goes, you got to start at the back. And I said, Okay, that's, that'll be fun for me. And so I started started in the back at the beginning, and we get all the way through and we'd win. And he said, Okay, that's it. Rob, you start at the back at the beginning at the halfway yellow, you're going back again. Let's try it. Well, I couldn't win anymore, while still having fun grinnin and stuff. And we were at Chula Vista at the quarry down there. And I remember finishing in the in the buggy, and put it away and I was running back up the grandstands to watch the pro for race because I was only racing pro two and and the probe at the time. And as I was going up the stairs, Greg Aronson and Ron Fleming from fat performance, they did my motors and they were coming down and I'm like, Hey, what's happening? And they go, not much. We didn't win. And I'm like, Oh, they did my motors. Yeah. And I continued walking up the stairs and I went straight to Jim Baldwin. I said, we can't do this anymore. He goes, No, I was the best thing ever go, No, you don't understand. I have partners and people that are helping me so that I can win and help them win and do their help them sell their product. So from that point on, you know, I think I only raised you know, maybe that rest of that season and it was over but at the time, it's a pretty hard situation at the time for you when you're walking up and you have to talk with all these people but that's another thing that changed the face of the short course racing yeah like that that literally made changes to have the what you see nowadays absolutely that's pretty cool all right awesome question man. Yeah all the all the buggies before that were being cars yeah and for most of them I mean there's very few a arm cars and and when john Cooley alumacraft did that basically now all the pro buggies or am cars, almost all of them. It's so crazy how times change and how just things progress. Hey, so we're gonna take a quick commercial break we got a bunch of questions or as comments come in Troy, we're gonna answer yours in just a little bit. And after the break, we're gonna play Are You Smarter than a third grader with these guys? So Instagram Live you guys go keep hanging on and we'll be right back. Hello, I'm Justin, the founder of shock therapy. Shock Therapy has been around for five years, but we have personally been tuning suspension on off road cars and race vehicles for over 25 years. We tune between 10 and 15 cars per day, every single day of the week. Our concentration is tuning shock systems and supplying components that improve the ride quality of your car in many ways. Not only do we work on the average UTV, but we also tuned suspension for race teams and professional drivers. We currently tune for over 87 race teams investment, desert and score. Our clients and race teams rely on our suspension components to allow them to win races and keep them safe. suspension is a moving target. We are always trying to hit that target with every customer that we work with. each customer's needs can be different and we tune our kits accordingly. 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All manufactured in the United States in house at their headquarters in nibley, Utah, Travis Zoolander and his team test in some of the most brutal conditions, racing in places like the best in the desert mint 400 Ultra for King of the hammers, UTV World Championships, and many more visit soldier racing products.com and use the code dirt life to get 10% off your next purchase and join us on social media at soldier racing products to see our products in action. Zoolander racing the best products period Finally we got Lance from solder weld in the studio. Thanks for coming down. But why don't we just record a commercial now? Yeah, why not? So good to be here man. It's been a lot trying to get down here for ever and wanted to talk about the off road kit Dude, I love those things. I got it in my pack. Yeah, we're running hundreds of vehicles now running them whether it's a UTV or some guys got an a backpack and was motocross he's got everything he needs to make a fix right there on the fly out on the trail or in the desert whatever it is what since I've already used when I kind of know what to use it for, but explain what it does. Alright, so let's pull one out real quick. You've got your aluminum rods remember their rods, right so you know light torch, small torch, you can throw it in there, throw it on the rig with your flux, it decontaminates and cleans, like let's say a radiator you get a random rock chip runs through as you're racing you get a rock chip and radiator you got to fix it right there. You're out of the race you can patch it up and patch it up. Now I'm good to go. Yep, just like welding. Yeah, also as well with that you've got a brake line fix. So with your flux, you can fix a brake line stainless steel steel, and then your hot block heat absorption putty. So yes, you from getting burned number one as well as keeps the heat from traveling. So what it's really, really not used, it's not even to fix anything. So that's that's how it works. So good man. Listen, it's easy. It's it straps in nicely so that you have everything you need in one little place and you don't have Carry a big bag and it's like a first aid kit for your vehicle. Yeah, Chase trucks have it as well so that, you know if they need to make a fix on the fly, they can get it done and get it done quick and get you back in the race dude, those things are so cool. All right, so it was at solder weld on Instagram, Facebook and solder. weld.com. Awesome. Alright. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Yeah, we are back. Thank you guys again for joining us on episode 84 of The Dirt Life Show. We got our featured guest Rob maxon. Right here to my left we got Robert bland from Warfighter maids into my far left. This has been an awesome show so far. storytime with Rob's has not disappointed that's for dang sure. But we're gonna stop doing stories for five or 10 minutes and we're gonna do a battle right now. Are You Smarter than a third grader? You guys ready for this? No. No, the answer. Probably no rod back was to go back to storytime. storytime. So you guys would have had an advantage if you saw the last episode of The Dirt Life Show with Kaden Dan Berry. Who is a very big proponent of Are You Smarter than a third grader and with a computer because it is the same questions. Oh, I was too lazy to find. So you could have got all the answers already. Alright, we're gonna get straight into it now. No Center, the starting line waiting for best in the desert. The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by Native Americans. And what other group of people? pilgrims. Okay, Rob got it pilgrims. by last name. Alright, Blam. Got it? All right. So he's off to a good start. He's got a whole shot. Oh. Question number two, named the American president on the half dollar coin, who was assassinated in 1963? Would it be Kennedy? Yeah, I gotta say maccagnan. Got it on that one. Alright, so they always help me out on all tied up one to one right there. Okay, cool. So question number three. Here we go. What is the name of the book about a friendship between a spider? Winnie the Pooh? Oh, Charlotte's Web. I didn't finish the question about spiders. And a pig named Wilbur. All right. Blam gets out. 1221. So far, I believe it or not, I read when I was a kid. Question number four. And this one stumped me. So what's the name of a body of land? That is completely surrounded by water and Island. Got that? Okay, that stumped you? Like was probably the only one on the whole thing I'll get when I get the answer. Now I look like a complete. I'm gonna go on Question number five. It's called the Hawaiian Islands for a reason. Alright, question number five here. What is the capital of New York? New York closed? A couple of people have answered that but it's not New York. It starts with an A. and ends with Oh, it ends with a Bernie. Alright, glad you got it. All right. Well, you guys were sitting there for too long. We can't have dead air for that long. I just ran into my old report cards. I was drawing race cars. Yeah. That's funny that you say that? Because in it when I was going to school, I was always drawing little dirt bikes, like hey, we're looking at the answers over here champion. He's got to be a champion everything he does. So pre pre running and look at and reading the questions. How about that? Okay, question number six here. What is the closest planet to the sun? mercury. Dude, you like it? You studied up? I got kids, man. Well, actually, my youngest is 23. So Alright, so Question number seven. What is any, by the way? The funniest game Are You Smarter than a third grader that I've ever played? Is was with Ronnie and RJ Anderson. That was good. Whatever. That was that competitive spirit that they had was off the chain. Man. It was so good. All right. What is h2o, also known as water, I'm gonna give it to him. Could you give it to him? Because he's so far behind that. Now. What is the score? Do you remember how many points you have? Okay, I think you have something to zip. solve this equation three plus two divided by one equals 550 Math guy over here. So any more math questions? Good. No more for me. That's like timing. Yeah. So when I'm racing in there, give me What were you? Were you like figure that out? Yeah, you can figure it out super quick. Were you good? When in school was your favorite subject? There was none. recess is Yeah, leaving, getting out of there and go and do whatever you want to do. Alright, we only got to get my lip on that. That's not a good. Not a good school role model who invented the light bulb in 1879. Thomas Edison. That was a good way he thought of at the same time. You just spoke before him. Okay, a gallon of water. Dude, it's more gas. Yeah. How much is the guarantee? Yes, we were actually just 6.6 I think it was what we were just talking about that yesterday. If a dog jumps in the water, and gets saturated, does it get heavier? As it's running around? I would assume so. Right? Like your truck has mud on it kind of thing. I guess. Oh, I don't know. We never figured it out. But we're like, well, water weighs eight pounds. So yeah. So you know, you know, I know that. Why? Cuz I used to race a limited class and had a minimum. Whoa. So when you get to the finish line, and you burn stuff off, your car's got to make weight and my cars are always very, very close. Yep. And so I learned that if you if you do well and they soak you with water, it saturates in the seat in the car gets a little heavier. Hey, there you go. I don't race limited cloud cars and racing tips. My Rob Mack Yeah, exactly. We used to measure fuel and do all that stuff. But nothing like the water man. That's pretty good one. I never did that. I never ever had one. What is the primary difference between ocean water and tap? Water? solidity? The salt? Yeah, so it's third grader. So salt? What is the freezing point of water? 30 degrees. Oh, I'm giving it to rob Mac. Gotta give if I'm even close. No problem. Dude, we got you covered over here. I gave you I gave you $1. Apparently we're surrounded by a genius with Blanton. No, yeah, with third grade questions. If you're asking fourth grade questions, I'd be freaking drooling on myself right now. Oh, here we go. This is a kind of a racing question. Because it has to do with coming over jumps and stuff. What is the force that causes objects to fall to the ground? gravity gravity. Oh, got it. Okay. What is the capital of Nevada? Last week? Vegas? No. Well, that pretty much is what everybody thinks. Yeah, Carson City. Nobody knows what the capital of Las Vegas is. I don't even think I don't know what New York's was either. In what country is the famous Taj Mahal located? India? Yeah, got it. I think you guys tied. We're gonna call it her. So next time, I'm buying tacos, you guys. So that was pretty fun though. I always think those third grader questions are super cool because at least gets a little bit of ice broken and a little bit of competitive spirit on the set. So you guys me off? Like, you know what? Getting a frickin vehicle right now. Yeah, let's see who wins if I get a steering wheel. So Troy commented in and said, Hi guys, I'm from Wisconsin and love the short course tracks and have never been to a desert race. Which one would you recommend as a must see event? Well, that's a loaded question because you're not at your you're talking about hi guys right here. And you might only be able to go the United States. I don't know what yeah, I think the men's the men's the no brainer because traveling into Vegas, the amenities there. They have, you know, tech and contingency downtown, sometimes for two days. So a lot easier to see it figured out and get more out of it. The main 400 definitely. Yeah. And yeah, three and a half lane wide. Michael Mike Gilson commented and said, Hey, task, but how many bystanders getting get hit in the desert? Oh, I think he's talking about the people like trying to film and do all that stuff. I don't know why. It's I think it's been a while. Yeah, it's been a little while. So, you know, it's it's definitely the fans in Baja. There's no rule. Yeah, there's no rules. There's, you know, we're racing, you know, San fleabay was just a, I think it was a 280 mile loop. And, you know, there's there's no fence, they can go watch anywhere they want, but uh, you know, and they're fanatics down there. So they, they want to see it, feel it, hear it, you know, they're the, you know, we're we as offered ratios that were the, the only live sport they don't have professional, you know, basketball, baseball, stuff like that in Baja. Right. And so one of the biggest thing they see and yeah, it's the Big Show. Yeah, we, the, the drivers, the Robby Gordon's and Ivan Stewart's Walker in Baja, they're like gods, you know, and, and all up and down the peninsula. It's an amazing thing. So, yeah, I'll tell you though, you know, obviously, whenever you see a trophy truck, or a trick truck or whatever, you know, you call it at that point. The local are losing their minds right? In my opinion, the next most popular vehicle down there is class 11 Yeah, that's wagons day. Love the Volkswagens and my homie Danny novo and I got to drive the Mac seven class 11 in the Mexican 1000 in 2019. And you would have felt we were like, rock stars. Yeah, they wanted to come up and and talk to you and and it was more than just asking for stickers right it was they they were it you feel like a rock at that point? relatable though, cuz it's it's just Have you ever driven a class? No, No, I haven't. Would you like to because I don't know how my back would feel highly recommended. It was so much fun. Your speed is relative to your suspension travel. Okay. It is so much fun. That would be kind of cool. much fun. If you do drive one. Rob, take me. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll go with you. And, john, yeah, I don't want to talk too much about that safety stuff. Like all the safety stuff. I'm a big proponent of safety, like I said before, so if you're out there on the course, please be careful. Without a doubt. David said, You should have heard Jim on the radio for that Chula Vista race. And so he's talking about one of your guys. Yeah, I think so. Maybe it was a Chula Vista. Baldwin? Maybe? Yeah, yeah. We talked about Jim Baldwin. Yeah, I Oh, yeah. Here we go. Yeah. So you should have heard Jim Baldwin screaming over the over the radio, Scott said. Don Hogan said if Tex Plex brings pro two and pro four next year to Texas. I don't know if they could do that out there. Man. They'd have to do some serious track changes. Would you come? They are doing mod carts series this summer. I mean, that actually sounds interesting. But I think it would be quite a bit of work for them to do that. Yeah, I haven't been been to textbooks. I've heard about it. You were there. And I've it's a little too motorcross. Yeah, we're a big truck, right? I mean, for the utvs. It's right at the edge of being too much. They basically made news because they were offering that big payout, right. Yeah, exactly. They are actually doing a pretty good job, though. And the way that they do it, it's really structured like a motocross race. Yeah. I actually think Caden would like to go out there, man. He'd probably have your son would probably have a really good, a good time out there. He's such a good UTV driver and his control of the car is so nice that he'd be able to time a lot of those jumps Really? Shooting maybe you'd even have a good time and a UTV. But yeah, I think that's more of a loaded question, Don, I appreciate you asking, though. Because that's pretty cool that they're even thinking about it. Shoot, there's not really any short course racing in the center of the country like that. Is there. Just the stuff they're doing in the Midwest? Yeah, so that's actually, Frank Han commented and what does he say about amber here? Rob Blanton? Oh, he wants to go to Fiji. Yeah, if everyone gets married, he wants to go to Fiji to France. So he's talking about the story with visitors and everybody. Yep. Frank's related to Carl. Yeah, well, who doesn't want to go to Fiji though, right. We're in Frank's you're already ready to go. bags are packed. Yeah. swim trunks are set up. Look at john lewis is trying to call me out Blanton and watch the show last week and studied all the hands. Oh, here we go. JOHN, just because you're a Rob Mac fan. that other people can be smarter than a third grader. Okay. Okay. And then my Gilson commented and said, Ask Rob, how many cobs of corn can rob eat at a corn roast. There must be a backstory behind this one. My first year back there racing and it was soda than before core and we stay back there were in Wisconsin. And in the Midwest in first year, we traveled back there to go race and we stayed at Johnny Greaves shop and we were looking for a place to test we were struggling with the truck. And Johnny said, you know, just go down, you know, through the fields and turn left and turn right. And we're in the middle of corn all around us. And there was a little place where the water would run and corn wouldn't grow sweet up, make it a little test track and one day, we're out there testing and Mike Gilson Mikey, we call him or the corn boy. And the reason why he named the corn boy is because as we're testing, we thought we were in the middle of nowhere. And he was about 14 years old, I think. And he came walking out of the corner, and we're like, Where did you come from? children? Yeah, exactly. So um, you know, Mikey ended up being part of the team, and we end up traveling around with us to the country. And when we go back at CRAN, and like this year, and last year, we went back there and we had him come out and help us so he knows a lot of these stories as well. That's pretty cool. How would you like having the nickname The corn was? He used to call No, absolutely. He's a corn man. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Can you read this one for us, Rob? real quick. Robert Blanton. Hey, Carl said to go to a live audience that he takes us to Fiji. Yeah. There's proof. There is proof. Sounds like we're trying to get to Fiji. Now, someone's going to feed so maybe when you get back, pack your bags are packed. That would be pretty cool. Hey, Carl said it in the live audience yet. And Robert harga said, killed me at KH last year seeing the star logo covered on a covered in tape. So rad The BFG stepped in. It really is cool to see the the stuff that happens behind the scenes is we're not gonna get too far into it, but is always business oriented. And no matter what happens, you see, you really see the cream rise to the top to people that care about racing, the people that support racing, and the people that support the families, drivers and staff and everybody that that does race. So I'm really glad that BF Goodrich stepped up to support your program, man, it's fantastic to see a company sticking by the people that they care about. Yeah, they're they've been good to me since 1991. We've been together and done a lot of things together won a lot of races together, you know, developed a lot of tires. And you know, I appreciate everything they've done for me and you know, the truck, you know, in these colors and everything looks awesome. Got a lot, a lot of great compliments. Yeah, that's super cool. john lewis comments, and I'm also a rubber Blanton fan as well. Have you ever run john Hubbard said have you ever run at the ers motor Park up there in Minnesota? No, I haven't. I've seen videos and stuff like that and looks like a pretty pretty cool track. It does look pretty insane. And what's your favorite short course track? Crandon? Obviously he's a Creighton doesn't exist. What's your number two, there's the tracking Wheatland that. Did you ever get to go out there, but I didn't get a chance to go out there. That place was pretty cool. How was it sending that big tabletop in? pro for a good story to lead up? Right? Yeah, well, that's a that's a good one. So the first time we get back there, I'm actually doing track walk with my son. And you know, it's probably been four or five years ago, the first time I went back and I look at that and I'm like, Oh my god, it's so big. And I'm like, I don't think we can clear this thing. And about that time. Brian Deegan shows up and he says we're gonna flatland this Deacon was right. I was wrong. So yeah, he hit the wide open and you'll flatland so you had to check up off that thing. I saw a couple pro fours kydex shoes and stuff like that. You had to be careful if you if you did would it off that you know you had to really worry about getting air under the hood and flipping over backwards. I think try to remember the guys name. I think it's Randy minear had Kyla Dukes old truck and it caught wind and basically just about blew over backward. There's some big crashes there. I think Rodrigo and pootie and Marty Hart's kid they had a big crash there. They get together I think so. Yeah, I just remember Yeah. When you when you're going through there you're coming through that Daytona turn in. Let's talk pro two and what gear second gear going around the typically Wheatland you know that corner was highbank. But we've got blue glue, groove and very slippery so you're basically in high gear pedaling it just trying to get Yeah, it would be spinning the tires all the way through that corner. So you've really really backed out of it and very low rpm. So you'd be surprised how you know we have an over 800 horsepower and in a pro two on a slippery track like that you can't get it hooked up. That's why a lot of times you see the prolights guys with fat about half Yeah, I mean about half the horsepower their lap times were right there it's because we couldn't hook up all that horsepower. So when you're going through a corner and you're getting ready to do a big jump like that there was a little kind of like a setup jump before it or whatever, but maybe what 80% of the way through that corner you're starting to think about getting the speed coming out of it. Yeah, you're just honestly you're just feeling it and you know paying attention the RPM and if it's revving up you know, you're lifting and it's really hard thing to do. You know, when you're basically giving a 10 15% throttle in the truck spinning the tires, so, you know, it's, you know, something else to talk about. They're these trophy trucks going across the dry lake you know, if they're going 135 the rear tires are typically doing 150 Yeah, they're spinning because you guys are wooded at the time. Yeah, the era trophy trucks aren't very aerodynamic nowadays. They have big blocks in them they have 1000 horsepower, and they just can't go through the wind they can't push it so if you would at the rear tires are spinning a lot faster they they've had data showing say the race is 500 miles but the rear tires they go 575 miles Whoa, really there's there's numbers like that dude, that's crazy. I wonder what the difference would be between one of the new all wheel drive trucks since it's has so much more available output? Yeah, wheels. I don't know the numbers but definitely a lot less wheel spin. Yeah, that's crazy. That's nuts to think about right? Because like a normal guy like me just thinks about seeing it a picture or a video okay, coming out of the corner. It's like cheating, right? Like, it's like yeah, so much faster. But then when you're talking about it in a real world like lake bed, I mean, you could gain I don't know how long Lake beds are legit saying five miles you could gain 60 seconds probably because, yeah. I can't speak to the trophy trucks on what the top speed is. But the short course trucks like eight grand and a lot of times the two wheel drive truck actually had higher mile per hour at the end of the straightaway. There was a period of time that that was It was hard to understand why they wouldn't get off the corners as fast. But at the end of the straightaway, that pro twos would have a higher speed if you did a radar clock. Yeah, that's crazy. That's pretty interesting to see. I would wonder what the scientific stuff is behind that. Yeah, so Scott Wren commented and again and said, What's Rob's secret to perfect hair? Scott rain? I think that question is directed towards me. All right. I've known each other for a long time. Right. And actually the first event that Warfighter made ever got invited to was a super stadium truck, Robby Gordon and Scott was announcing that you know, and then of course the last time we just saw Scott was at the mint 420 20 where he gave team Warfighter all of our finisher coins because you know, we had three vehicles total of 14 that's a total of 10 drivers you know we had a great time so Michaels closer your mouth too. So skip Scott's definitely talking about me on that. And when I see you in person, I'm gonna tell you all about it. All right, a lot of hair products. You guys are gonna have to go to Walgreens or CVS. She gets around. I'm gonna have to pick all this product out for him. Get down to the hair salon, Baba is over here. Okay, so Mike Gilson also commented and so he's asking that same question about the bystanders and stuff in Mexico So Mike, we're not going to get too far into that but safety is always key to all these guys. Anybody that gets in the truck is always concerned about the stuff that happens internally with their chase crew and then all of the people that are watching no matter what that is always the top priority so these guys would give up their race any day to make somebody safety the top priority asked Rob about his vans shoes, giving away his secrets to this rap his brothers Oh that sounds like a good story. I'm not wearing vans anymore but I don't even know from high school all the way to I mean like 30 years I think I wore vans and nothing but bands and Amber and I one time we we schedule a trip to go to I got a trip for her to go Christmas to go to New York City and ended up saying you know what, I think I better get some walking shoes and and not wear the vans and I ended up nobody will know me in New York City like that it'll be okay you know wearing wearing some walking shoes or running shoes and so anyways So ever since then in cameras still also used to tell me because when he did a commentary IndyCar used to have to walk a bunch and he was always advanced and he says Rob, you got to you need to put some those flats choose a kill. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, yeah, that's so ever since I started wearing running shoes, kind of stuck to it. Well, what's this? What's the secret to this rappers brothers though? I don't know. I like that. Yeah. Mike Gilson says Oshkosh had a nice table top back in the day. Where was Oshkosh is that was Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin. Some try to remember the Oshkosh track. It was at a tabletop Do you think that was as big as the one in Wheatland because nothing was a pretty big set. Yeah, no, there's we Linda's huge Oshkosh or anything? Yeah, the biggest jumps back there would be bark river has a pretty big jump. That's probably the biggest one that I know of crane and has jumped there. That's pretty pretty big. But so bland already asked you what your favorite track was. What was the most technical short course track that you had to drive on? At the end? Glen Helen was getting very, very rough. Very difficult. chopped up. So that's the first one that comes to mind. That was pretty pretty darn technical. Yeah, cuz it wasn't just thrown in the corner out. Yeah, no good. The dirt there kind of went away as as when they built a track. In the beginning, the tracks seem very good. very reasonable. As time went on, it seemed like the dirt just went away and the tracks got very narrow and, and they ended up getting routed up. Glen Helen used to be one of my favorite ones. But as it progressed, it just got narrow in one line. Yeah, it didn't. I hated how they put that little chicane before that last. Just made it right at the very end there. Yeah. Let's see. So I wanted to talk about a couple stories that I that I was thinking about asking do you have a most memorable was two questions, I guess, a most memorable baja 500 and a most memorable baja 1000. And I don't mean the memories like fuck yeah, we won by 30 minutes. I mean, like, you came home and you were either like just totally defeated or you were like, that was the best freakin trip we ever had. Yeah, I mean, just first thing came to mind ba 500 was 1996 racing. Larry Raglan earlier talked about the Mount Rushmore and Larry Raglan was definitely one of those guys for me jack Johnson. Rod Millen but I'm just really had a battle at the beginning with Ivan Stewart. The first half of the racecourse went down the room Rosa. And I remember, you know, I was driving the single seat trophy truck that some people remember that night Frank and Dave Clark built and as you're going down the room row, so the big trucks we couldn't make the tight corners, you know, in one turn, so I'd have to pull forward and back And I was first on the road at the time. And Ivan Stewart ended up he had a little Toyota and the thing could turn really sharp. And I knew he was right there. And I said, Well, I got to make this three point corner, but I got to block him. So we can't just go by. So I did it real tight. And he ended up driving right into my door. And I knew he knew I had to back up as soon as I backed up far enough to go, he could go. So I'm like, I stopped. And I looked at him. And you know, he's I looked at him and I'm like, backup. No. And he looked at me, he goes, no backup, and I go, No, you backup and he goes, one mom revs it up, and I went. This is this sounds like a parking lot at Walmart. Like the old lady that just doesn't want to give over a parking spot at Walmart man. He threw the thing in reverse started backing up and hurry up and threw it in gear to go forward. And he got me Oh, we got down to the bottom. And there was a little cut over the top of the hill. And I got him that I pull in my pit. And he went by and then he pulled into his pit. Now we were down there by Laguna salada. And we had a 60 mile, maybe 6040 mile graded road back in the old days, we didn't run on the goodest slot, we ran on the the main road, which is now a chase road back in there. And going down that road. I knew he just had a six cylinder and I had a big v eight. And I knew I catch him. So I was just pinned in the dust. I couldn't see anything. And I'm just I know it's getting the dust getting heavier, heavy, heavy, and all sudden, I got this big whiff of oil. And he blew his motor up trying to run from me. But that same race, Larry Raglan and I raced all the way into the finish. And, you know, he and I have great stories about that race. And you know, he said he kept pushing harder, and I knew, like he's coming. And so I kept pushing harder. And we ended up winning that race by six minutes. But that's my ball. 500 story. Dang, that's crazy. What about a baja? 1000? Because those are like quite a bit longer real there's there's good ones and bad ones. You know, good one was with Carl and Mark post in 2000. When in the longest bar 1000 potential runner was the Riviera truck. The number three Yeah, you know, that was a you know, winning the first ball 1000 for myself overall, just the feeling that, that that feeling like I never felt that again. Only the bottom 1000 bad memories ball 1000 was a winning the having the overall championship in hand in racing the 1600 guard one to 1600 car and having the motor blow up and a rod went through the block. And, you know, I was actually racing with gusto, though, so at the time, and I was sharing my one to 1600 car with Brian Freeman and Bruce Fraley. And after we were supposed to finish in the trophy truck, I was gonna get out and go back and get back in the 1600 car and then finish with that. But the trophy truck had a really bad day and gosfield also end up pulling out of the race. And the 1600 car got in front of me and I'm like, Oh no, I need to somehow get in front of it. So I get back in the car cuz I was driving record. And all we had to do is finish 35th to win the overall championship, but there wasn't even 35 cars. So the motor, I got the 1600 got in front, we ended up getting the trophy truck down to Valley to Trinidad. And the 1600 car was headed across the crossover road over San Vincent de and when I got to Valley to trynna. They told me Hey, the transmission broken the 1600 car and I'm like Oh no. And I was like Gus, you know, we have a spare transmission here for the buggy. Can I load it on the trophy truck and take it over there when I got there. They're like it's not the transmission. It's the motor, the rod went through the block. So all we had to do was finish and I had some great help from Vegas and some guys there and we ended up deciding we're going to take the motor apart and clean it up and and try to assemble it put it back together. So we did basically on the tailgate there at San Vincent, they had the BF Goodrich pit, we open the whole motor up, cleaned all the parts out of it that when the rod went around, it broke the cam. And we ended up rebuilding the thing as a two cylinder wall. And then the buggy went from salmon sent out to the Pacific all the way up the Pacific side. And it was coming into Santa Tomas and Brian Freeman was in the car at the time and I was following him with the trophy truck. And as he's going down the twisty Hill into Santa Tomas, I'm behind him and all sudden I realized, oh my gosh, he's going too fast because the RPM and being a two cylinder it's going to come apart again. And before I could get on the radio, stop him it did it again. So coasted down to the bottom of the hill there and then I ended up in the sun was up and I'm like oh my gosh, you know how much time we got. We had like, you know, four hours to get to the finish line. And I ended up calling fat performance who built the motor and I you know was 6am called Ron at his house and hey, this is what's happening and what do we do? And can we you know, what can we change on the motor, you need to look at the rulebook and tell me like what can we do because I had a spare motor from the 80s we had their spare 1600 motor in my case truck and I'm like I can't just put the thing in because that's against the rules. But what do I have to keep in the he didn't have the answer? Ultimately, Brian Freeman did call his dad and his dad knew the rulebook by the back of his hands he said you can change everything but the block so it's like okay, we're taking that complete motor apart. We're going to use everything in it but the block and rebuild this motor that had to the rod went through the block in two different places so we patch that thing all back together and, you know, got it going again and we couldn't get the timing set, right and it wouldn't run and we end up getting the finish line. We're 45 minutes late. Oh, so anyways, that year it was that that was the year when folks wagon was involved, and they were paying bonus money and car tech was paying bonus money. And I think the overall championship that year would have been about$35,000. And we ended up missing it by 45 minutes. And I still, to this day, I have the engine block with the the aluminum that was screwed to the top of the block to fill that hole. And then the other hole was JB welded and silicone and I have the piston with one of the pistons with the bet rod and it's labeled on it 2005 ba 1000. And then inside that the finisher pin which we weren't official or the pin is in there. So that was a great story, but also a bad one. Yeah, what is what a pisser but that's a constant reminder of like, gosh, dang it, man. That's why we love Baja. And that's why this desert racing, all things can happen. And, you know, if you got that group of people together and commiserated about all the things that happened that day, and that night and everything else. It's actually 45 minutes. Holy cow, man, if you could only figure out how to spare 45 minutes. Yeah, well, yeah, you always look back and go, we should have rebuilt it the first time with a new block with the new parts, not the new block. JOHN hoppers asked, Do you like the Baja 1000 loop or peninsula runs? You know, peninsula runs are the are the coolest, but they're also the most, you know, hardest to the net? The the logistics, figuring out your hotel rooms and you know, the traveling the pit plan, the amount of people that we need. There's a lot more expensive, but peninsula Ron's definitely cool. We add art art Franco commented and said, Ask him to tell you the story about the federal rallies stopping the race when he used to drive with Mark post. Yeah, so there's kind of two stories there with with that question brings two stories. So what were the vehicle for Yeah, so with Mark post, ones with filled ossola, the federally stopping the race, and then the Riviera truck was with Mark post. And that's basically when the famous video and the DVD that Jimmy cook put together, called above above the law with with Riviera racing, but I started that race and it was a loop race started in Sonata came up the Pacific side and finished in Sonata. And back in the day, we used to about mile 10 or so we used to get on the highway there, leave in sanada and then make it like a 180 on the highway. And I remember, you know, coming up there and I threw the truck sideways and basically the back that on the asphalt and went down the highway, gave the truck to mark posts on the Pacific side or San Vincent Bay. And when he got in the truck, he was going down the highway, and I had jumped in the helicopter. And I was up above and following and all of a sudden I see these cop cars like starting to chase him and I'm like, Oh my god, like, what are they doing? It's like they're going after Mario. It's like the first time that there's going to pass him. No, they pull up behind him next to him. And they're trying to wave him over and Whoa, and like what's going on and come to find out, you know, they were trying to pull them over which we really don't know the reason the only thing that I could think of is what I did in the beginning, which we all did, and I must have pissed them off. And they were coming after us later. So Mark figured out and Kelly curry who is the CO writing, they figured out if they stop and they knew we were in contention to win the race, they figured out if we stop and try to figure out what they want, like what do we do wrong? They were taking us out of this win. So they decided we're gonna keep going and we'll talk about this at the finish line. And so they did that and the video shows if you guys haven't seen it, the cops are basically trying to barricade him and they cut cut try to block the road where the racecourse got off the highway and got in the dirt they tried to block the road marches you know weaved around them and on his way and went on his way and and kept going well at that time. You know Jimmy cook was in the helicopter with me and he was filming everything and so they race all the way up the beach and I realize I'm doing split times in the helicopter I'm like you know this is really close and but I think we got this and as Mark they come down the twisty Hill into Santa Tomas the finish line was there when they got to the bottom there 300 yards from the finish line and all of a sudden you see Federer alleys walking out from the trees and they got their machine guns. Adam and Mark stops and I'm like holy cow and Jim Jimmy Make sure your film and film all this. So you know what I'm thinking at the time we're winning and they're taking it away from us right now if you stop so film this so you can we have record of how much time it was. And about that time. You know, we heard on the radio, you know Kelly, you know the getting out and they're like they're taking we can see it they're they're handcuffing, they they're on the hook they got the machine guns are aimed in the truck and they they drag mark out they handcuff him they take him away. And then you know Kelly's like oh my gosh, you know, you guys, where's the chase cars? There was a ton of traffic in Santo Tomas coming from both ends. In our case trucks couldn't get there. So we ended up in the helicopter Kelly's like, Hey, you know you guys see this What's happening? They're taking mark and it's like Kelly, you know, like Get in the truck and take it to the finish line please, like gotta stop that clock. So he did that and we stayed in the air hovering and they took Mark posts put him in one cop car started heading north, they pull over on the side, they got him out, they put them in another cop car started heading south, and it's like, man, keep an eye on mark, because what are they gonna do? We're gonna take them away. And about that time, they went south of San Santa Tomas and they pulled over on the one cop car pulled over on the side of the highway. And I'm like, Hey, you guys, you know, land the helicopter real quick. Let me get out, run over to the finish line, talk to Sal and tell him what's going on. So I did and sounds like what happened? What do you do? And I'm like, I don't know, because well, something must have happened. I don't know what happened. So Sal sent Oscar Ramos who's passed away with me to go to get into chase truck to go find mark. And when we got down there, they had mark in the cop car and Oscar tried talking to him to get him released and the federal had nothing to do with it. So they they ended up taking mark all the way back to San Katyn, they loaded the trophy truck up on a flatbed took it all the way down there. And ultimately, you know, we got mark out of jail. We went back to the finish line now it's like 11 o'clock midnight and Sal's tearing down the finish line with the light towers and everything. And, you know, Mark had a bottle of Don Julio and he's like, Sal, you know, and there. He's Mark's already been drinking a little bit and then ended up Sal goes, Hey, I don't have enough trucks to take the light towers back down. Senado can we hook one of these up to the Riviera j struck? So Mark and Sal got the chase truck and went back to town and and we put the light tower away. And Mark kept telling we dropped sell off at the hotel. I think that San Nicolas Mark kept telling Sally, he's like in the morning, we're coming back here. And we want to protest because we believe we won this race. So Sal says and if you want come in here and so the footage of all this was on the helicopter, and we tried to get Jimmy cooked to get it off there so we could take it into Sal to show it to him while he couldn't get it out of the helicopter. So they flew the helicopter from Cincinnati airport all the way up to near the San Nicolas hotel, they could land kind of where the start line is, they could land it there. And Sal told his nephew Paul fish go out there in the helicopter and watch the video and time how long they were stopped. And give me that and I'm going to stay here and talk with Mark and Sal made some phone calls to the local police and stuff like that to try to find out what was going on. And ultimately Sal never got a reason why what was happening. So when Paul came back with the footage, or told him what he saw and then came back with the time, and you look at the time that we Alan Pflueger ended up winning, and we ended up getting Second, the time that they held us was would have made us still be the winner. So all sudden Mark comes. Paul fish goes up the elevator, about 15 minutes later, Mark comes out and he's got his hand in the air high five and us going we won in about the same time we look and Alan pflugers walking in the sliding doors into the saddle Nicholas hotel to look at the the winning results in the guy. Another guy came down and crossed out. Mark and Pflueger just went up there. And he looked at it. And he looked at us, and he walked out the door. And so we really don't know the details on all that about what happened, why they tried to come after us and stop. But I'm Jimmy cook made that movie in one day. You know, he called me He's like, hey, videos coming close together. I got to figure out, you know what to call it, give us some ideas and come up with something Rob and I hung up the phone and sometime later, I'm like, Oh my gosh, the name of the movie needs to be above law. Right? I call Jimmy and I'm like Jimmy, it's got to be above the law. And he goes no way. We can't do that. No way. And I'm like, No, I think you got to like this has got to be it. So anyways, dude, that's a crazy story. It was Mark shitting his pants. Ah, maybe I know Kelly was because during that after they they dodged the cop cars and they were in the dirt. You know for some miles Kelly told me the stairs say you know 510 miles later all sudden, Kelly's like to mark mark. Yes, Kelly. I have kids. Crap. So you know Kelly was thinking about it. So he was definitely thinking about it. Troy contents are commented and said has Rob Mack been to the slip and slide in the Jurassic Park at Crandon is that like lobby or was that yeah, it's out in the camping area. And yes, a long time ago I have but but yeah, not recently. Good times and crowded in y'all. That's why these guys we were I was talking to guys earlier and we were eaten couple hours ago. Anyways, long story short, both you guys need to go back to Crandon. We really want to check it out. But the slip and slide is one of the things Barrett does that mean you're gonna go back to the slip and slide blend? I guess so. You're gonna have to get back there. Check it out. Yeah, David, it is all about the stories man. It's really cool to see how much love and passion is in off road racing. So Scott rain commented in and I pronounced his name I think correctly. Now. My last question guys. What does rob a tribute to the reason why short course for years has been on the edge of getting huge attention mainly stream media wise, but continuously fail or fall short. Sometimes I don't know, you know, like, I can talk different ways and look at it different, different ways. But um, you know, one thing I kind of come to realization about is, is I feel that the sport is been too much of a hobby, honestly, you know, there's, it's, it's been close and just never got over the end. And when I look back at it, I think to myself, you know, maybe, you know, we offroad community is always a big happy family. And, you know, we want everybody to race and everybody be there and we want all the different classes and obviously, that's what I want. I want everybody there but maybe that's been part of our demise where we should have only been one class, you know, it's the elite and that's it. And, you know, I don't know maybe maybe that's the reason you know, we back to, you know, off roading no matter what it is desert shore course, Mickey Thompson and that's, you know, a little bit give, you know, to what I'm saying is Mickey Thompson was a business and all the teams you know, Cal wells, Walker Evans, Ivan Stewart or cow wells, Roger Mears, Jim Venable, all those guys, they ran it as a business, it was full time shops, and they ran it as a business. And that's the most successful that short course or any offroad has ever been. And I think, you know, there was there was no hobbyists racing in the Grand National sport truck there was it wasn't there for fun you were there, to run a business to get sponsors and and basically work out at 24. Seven. And I think the other short course stuff, you know, yeah, there's been the top tier guys like myself, or, you know, that we're, we're working hard. And it's my 20 473 65 to try to be successful. But half the field, it's just there, it's their weekend getaway, it's their, their relax, and, you know, their time to blow off steam and get some adrenaline. And I think that's just always been the thing we're trying to include everybody in. And I hate to say it, because, you know, what I love about off road is that we are a family, we all get to camp together and talk together. But maybe that's what, that's what's happened. And that's what it needs. It needs an elite class, just like trophy trucks. You know, back in the day when trophy truck started, you know why the reason why it's called trophy truck, because we raced for a trophy, the owners, and those were the Mickey Thompson guys, they realized in order to make this big and try to make it sustainable with sponsors, we need to showcase one. And we need to have the trophy trucks race, by themselves so they can get all the attention and they get all the filming and try to put the best show out there together. And we did that for quite some time. And now you know, you get and I get it, you get the everyone else wants to be on TV. And you know, and that's ultimately what we've been doing. We've been letting everyone get on TV. And maybe that's the reason why it hasn't been all the way to the top. I think one of the most important things that you just mentioned, there is what you said the team is running like a business. But you also have to think about like, let's compare it to the technology industry. Apple has a certain amount of products, right? Apple has the best selling product, which is the iPhone. That's their trophy truck, right? That's their big dog. All the other products just get discontinued. Yeah, I don't care about these ones because they don't sell they don't produce. And so when you think about it, from a racing standpoint, it's very, very similar to what you just said, the things that produce should be the focus points. Everything else could be either a feeder or regional or some sort of other series. You don't have to get Stop it. You just have to segment it differently. We never Nate we never made the Big Show be the Super Bowl right now. We think we did you know crane is a Super Bowl. No, you know, you know, and I'm, I'll talk this way and this way. I love off road because of the family and the camaraderie. But when you want to talk about why did it never make it? Why hasn't it ever make it to the very top? That's probably why Yeah, much of a hobby. And you know what's funny is a lot of people say the same thing about motocross motocross is way bigger than off road. Supercross in stuff like that, but they still say the same thing. They say why isn't it bigger? It's so much cooler than let's just say football for offroad are these motocross guys, but they can't because they don't segment it properly. There's no Superbowl there's only 450s and 250s in the way that they produce. It is flawed, so to speak, and it can't grow any further. So it's just like, you get to a certain level and you stop learning and you stop growing. Yeah. Okay, well, let's get on something else. There's somebody that you might know Kate. Yes. Hi, Dad. Hi, son. That's pretty cool that Kayden commented, hey, well, I want to throw a shout out to Caden too, because he'd been kicking some serious ass in the razors these days, man. Yeah, he has, um, he's only been racing for three years. And he's already won, I think at least three championships. And he's getting close again. He moved up to the pro classes and in the work series, and then he had his first run in with jagad X in San Felipe Bay and the score race and they ended up winning. Yeah, exactly. Jamie Campbell, who you may know, said did you raise Willow Springs score off road World Championships? Yeah, I did. It's back in the late 80s or early 90s and I raced for Walker Evans there. Willow Springs was awesome. This is a good time. I don't remember what happened to me. But yeah, that that actually was another story that rod mill and then all the racing for Rough Riders. So I think that was 1990 8990, probably 90. And I had just gotten a phone call from Frank D'Angelo who was with BF Goodrich. And they asked if I was interested, they told me Robbie Gordon's moving out of the venerable ride. And he's, he's going, I think it was emza Racing then and he's moving out so that seats open. And we've been narrowed it down to two people that we'd like to give the right to, and we want to give you guys both test drives. And can you go do it right after Willow Springs? And I said, Yeah, who's the other guy and they go rod Millen and I thought to myself, I'm done. Like, he's got the ride. And I got the ride. Probably because rod was too busy or had to do something else. But yeah, but nonetheless, he got it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Dang. That's pretty sweet. And yeah, Jamie, I hope you're drinking a cactus cooler and Tito's buddy or maybe even some tequila with that cactus cooler. Yeah, it's john lewis says, here's part of the mark post video. So they have the video. Thanks for commenting on that. I'm gonna actually go check that out. That looks actually dude, it looks bad. Or sounded. It was oh, I don't know. Have you ever driven a SSD? Yeah, the first. So the question is, do you enjoy Of course, SSD more. So SSD, they're they're different, honestly, a lot different. The SSD trucks were. Ultimately Robbie started out. We were racing in stadiums and that was trying to go after what Mickey Thompson did, but very quickly, he got the opportunity to go to Long Beach Grand Prix, and run the trucks there at IndyCar racing. Long Beach. Before that race. He took all the off road guys, so they ran it. We ran at Phoenix at the football stadium there and and then the very next race we were running at Long Beach and everybody was off road guys and we needed some street asphalt time to see how these trucks work. And this leads to a funny story. So they they Robbie got us all to go down to Long Beach to where the shipyards are there and there's big empty asphalt yard. We're all good. They put cones up and we're getting to run around outside get the field because if you guys have seen those typically when they're asphalt they're lifted one tire off the ground there those trucks are absolutely not what you'd want to build to race on asphalt. But because of that they're so exciting. They're hard to drive they were they had not enough not enough brakes you know not enough sway bar too tall, too tall the tires just on and on and on. But that's what made them so exciting. So as we're out there running around Justin Lofton, PJ Jones, myself, Robbie, and many others already lined up Jr. We're all out there taking our turns and, and Robbie ends up going, Hey, it's okay. It's my turn and says Justin, give me your truck. I'm getting in it and just like no, no, my truck and Robbie gets out there. And he's, I don't even know he's going 60 7080 miles an hour and I guess he'd been doing this already in his own truck. And he ended up grabbing the E brake or whatever to spin the thing around. He's going 80 miles an hour across the asphalt and he was trying to spin the thing out and do a 360 well when he did it caught and it flipped on the asphalt just cook a cook and it's like oh my gosh, like he's dead. You know, we all took off running over there. Before we got there. He was out of the truck. It landed on its wheels, walked around the whole thing and got in it and he was gone before we even got there. Whoa, the reason why he was on toys normally and Justin was on Yokohama is in the Oklahoma's when they got hot. They got a lot softer and Robbie wasn't ready for that grip and he just just destroyed that truck. And Justin like that's my truck. Yeah, SST was a lot of fun, was it with those cars where they built like the Mickey Thompson truck, um, sort of, I mean, Robbie took that model they were small like that, you know, the chassis is were very small and Robbie made a modular so there's like the center part and then the rear on bolted the front and bolted and they were all identical. And I was really good model ultimately. And we had a lot of fun doing it. And ultimately, you know, we did you know, did a lot of the street stuff, but the IndyCar fans when we went along, because I was getting ready to say that wound went there. We practiced and then we got done with practice, and the fans were like, Oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like that. That when the trucks hit those aluminum ramps, the noise that it makes it makes you like what was that so everyone would turn and then the trucks were up as high as the top of the chain link fence and the fans are just blown away. So yeah, definitely a lot of fun driving those things. So Robbie appreciates Warfighter made and events and all that stuff and invited us out to a stands for Super Show where he was doing an SST raise. Yeah. And I brought out combat wounded double leg amputee, Davey Lin, Davey Lynn's a hos even without his legs, and he was supposed to take Davey for a ride in his truck. And Davey comes walking up there and he looks through the window talking about small chasse ease and he's like I'm not fitting in All right. So Robbie looks at me and he's just like, Alright, you're up, right? So I'm like, Oh, I'm not a good code dog. So I get in there. And, you know, Robbie's just like, Hey, you know, just just hold on your heart is, you know, don't touch this and whatever starts going around the track, it hasn't been tested yet. Right? The very first aluminum ramp, he puts it, he puts it on the bike and just starts driving around the course. Yeah, right. Then he starts hitting the aluminum ramps at full speed and even from the truck it is loud as can be right? Well, then he had like a joker lane where it was like two really big jumps, or just a whole bunch of moguls going down. So we hit the moguls and we're bouncing off the top of them come back around, and he goes to hit the first big jump and we flatland that thing's so freakin hard. You know, I got back issues like everybody else. And all sudden he comes over the radio and he's like, hey, Jim, Bob, go ahead and take about two feet off. And Man, I wish he would have took two feet off. Before we hit it. Oh my god. I used to be six, five now I'm only six three. But those trucks are pretty rad then No, they weren't. There are a lot of fun. And Robbie, you know, obviously he's an incredible talent and him putting those races on the finale was in Las Vegas. And it was at planet hollywood planet hollywood Caesars Palace parking lot area. And part of the course went around the around about around the Planet Hollywood sign. It went around that it was the park the driveway went down through Planet Hollywood. But if you went to the right, then you go into the parking lot of valet for Caesars Palace. So Robbie needed to figure out how to get the racecourse to come down around the roundabout and then back up in to the valet parking lot. So we end up taking those aluminum ramps. And he had one but he needed to. So he took k rail and then put the second one on top of the K rail, tie them together ended up rat come along in and doing all that to make them jump to jump over a planner and a block wall that had plants on it, and then land in the valet parking lot. When you landed, you were landing on the parking barriers, and then make a 180 or 180 and then a 90 then jump through a planner but underneath the Caesars Palace sign. And when we got there, everything happened in one day. So you'd show up practice, say two o'clock and then racing started at 7pm so we show up we're doing chalk walk trucks still being built, they like they couldn't start building the track till you know 12am you know, Friday morning and then the races Friday night so they had to do all that stuff. And they're still building the track Hurry and it's like, okay, you know, practice was supposed to already happen. And about that time we're looking, we're looking at this ramp to try to jump the wall and PJ Jones goes, Robbie, the ramp is not as high as the block wall. We're not going to clear the wall and Robbie's like it'll make it Don't worry. So Robbie's always notorious to say hey, Sheldon creed, get in your truck and see if it'll make it or Hey, Justin Lofton getting your truck. And everybody else would look the other way. Well, this time, I forgot who it was, I think just ended up doing it. And it's like, we're all I mean, PJ would stand back and watch and like, Robbie, the damn tires are hitting the plants as he goes over the top. It's back close, like you better do something. So about that time. Actually, this happened right before that. We're sitting there looking at the ramp. And there was a suit and tie guy coming from Planet Hollywood walking up the thing and he's, you know, walking along quickly, and he's like, Where's Robby Gordon? And it's like, He's over there. And Robbie, you haven't done one thing you said you were gonna do pack this shit up and get it out of here. Right? And Robbie goes and talks to the guy toxic guy turns around, looks at all of us. And he goes practice in 10 minutes. But that's Robbie, you know, so much stuff off. And you know, it were you when you guys are doing trackhawk re like What the? Oh, yeah. With Robbie, you know, he's always trying to entertain you know, he kind of had the Mickey Thompson mentality and he wanted to entertain he knew, you know, that he needed to make the fans you know, go crazy. And that's why, you know, he do the crossover jumps and stuff that you could never do this. Rob. It's like Robbie, we can't do this. No, we can do it. You know, we got it. So Peter Calhoun commented and said those new BFG graphics look bad. And then well, we can say to your ass. Thanks, Pete. john lewis crusher bound Cadillac one for the road. starts at 32nd Oh, it must be the video. Yes. Somebody said that the link wasn't working. So we want to know the name. Could you give some pointers to us racers just starting out on how to get sponsors? That's a loaded question. Right. So before you actually give a pointer, let's just give them one tip. But if you do want to see, Tim, if you do want to see some ways that you can actually learn how to get sponsors. We did a an episode with a gentleman named Alex styler. On Motorsports marketing and sponsorship. I'm not sure which episode it was, but check out the archives. For Alex trailers episode, and he gives some fantastic information there. So go to The Dirt Life Show calm and look for the Alex trailer episode because it's fantastic. He's written a book too, so I don't know the name of it. But Motorsports marketing. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So his book is a good start. And then yeah. So Alex is an awesome guy. And in fact, Alex, who helped me get Carl to come on the show today. So awesome. I have actually Alex actually does a whole class Alex trailer comm we'll plug him and he does every Tuesday, he does introductions to people who tell you how to get sponsors from their first person perspective. In fact, I think he had some big guys on maybe last week or the week or two. So go check it out, man. What would be your one tip? Um, just, you know, be a straight, honest person. And you know, always shake hands. Say hi, be good. Yeah, give back. And then work hard at it and show your passion. You know, for me, a lot of my stuff has happened through my life, specially in the beginning is the handshakes and being truthful and honest and working hard. Yeah. 100%. Let's say it looks like they're talking about the video and stuff like that. But yeah, it was evil Knievel all over it sounds like well, Robbie was over there in Vegas. How was it like racing that near home? Oh, can you probably didn't have to show up after you breakfast. 20 minutes down the street. That's the SST was pretty cool. Because you know, each sold sponsorship, you could bring your own sponsorship to a truck and buy a truck and get to drive it. But, you know, they brought the trucks, they prep the trucks, you didn't have to bring your own guy or anything. And you bring them bring the money and go drive them. And ultimately, you know, when you're done at the trucks all torn up, you know, there was times like I feel guilty, like put my helmet in my bag and just walking away. But you're like, didn't I need to fix something? In the end, you know, some sometimes I say, you know, my analogy is, you know, it's like going to the go kart track with your buddies. You know, you go in you pay, you drive each other. And when you're done, you're laughing giggling high fiving out the door going, How cool was that? So credit to Robbie for, you know, having those dreams and stuff. You know, he's an incredible person. And you know, I swear there's at least two of him as much stuff as he does and try. It really is crazy, right? Yep. Well, thank you very much for all you guys submitting all these questions and stuff. I have two questions left. I knew that I was should keep my list short, because we were gonna have so many people talking. Before I asked those. Do you have any Rob? No. Well, okay. Yeah. So, no, yeah. So people have always asked me from being in combat, like, oh, were you scared when you were doing this? And the answer is always like, no, you're you're so focused on what's going down at that specific moment. But I've been scared to death. Like way before it, or way, after your it's all done, and then you start thinking about all the things that could have happened. Yeah. Have you ever had like that moment? whether an open desert or short course where you were just like, holy? Fuck, yeah, I think it's at a totally different level. Yeah, but I understand what you're saying. And yeah, you know, a lot of times when you're leading up to a race, you know, there's times when, you know, very specially not prepared that, well, you don't feel good about it, but very nervous and things like that. And, you know, other times stuff happens so quick to, you know, and I think, for me, when you know, the crash happens or something, things go into slow motion, and you really take everything in, you know, it's amazing. You know, the last big crash I had that I remember was with Rodrigo and udia. Glen Helen, we tied up and went up in the air. But uh, you know, I remember that and like, how slow everything happened, even from going up the ramp. And it's like, thinking, you know, this could happen. And it did. And then seconds. Yeah, like, 30 minutes? Exactly. It seems like forever. Exactly. Someone things things go wrong. It does seem like happens a long time. What about what about, like, the? How about, like, there's two questions that he's asking. You get nervous before. Most I'm not I guess, ultimately, what I do is when I'm not prepared properly, you know, where things aren't quite going right. And like nervous that you just fix something you gotta go out and like, not so much that I got, you know, you know, the everything leading up to the race, there's just a bunch of stuff, you know, and, you know, if if, you know, I have basically any race or just the whole mental list or paper list of whatever Everything needs, get done. Yep. And if everything gets done, then everything's going well. And then it's, it's like nothing. Yeah, exactly. So what about afterwards? Um, no, not. I mean, sometimes there's some incidents that happen, you know, where you're like, you know, you almost hit something and you know, you have no time to think about it in your like, after the fact you think like, wow, if that would have happened is that's what Yeah, so unless it's like a big shaker. We were actually talking about this with the kids last week. Caden and Marian Jacob Peter, one of the best traits. And I think probably you guys have experiences to rob, in combat and stuff. One of the best traits about any racer, is that they can forget quickly. So you go into corner, a corner, B corner, one, two, and you make a mistake by the next quarter number three, you're back on track, and you're going straight forward to the front, or whatever it is, or you forget, you made the mistake. And you do it again. Yeah, that's actually a good point. But, but that's a good trait to have. And I think, does it happen in combat as well or no? You know, in on it, in all honesty, you try to train yourself to such a level, that the lot of the things that you're doing don't require conscious thought, everything is just subconscious, you're just consciously going through the motions, you know, pulling the trigger speed reloads, you know, getting your weapon back in the fight, whatever the case may be. Or as we always like to say, shoot, move and communicate, you do that to such a level that a lot of times you can't, like, people will walk up and be like, bro, what the fuck happened, you know, during X, Y, and Z, you'd be like, I don't really remember, because I didn't have to think about it. My body was just doing it doing it. And I was really focused on one specific thing, like, that bad guy, or making sure that my guys were, you know, doing what they were supposed to be doing type type thing. So I always refer to it as a picture book. You're, you're flipping through pictures. And each one of those pictures you remember specifically, because you're looking at that picture. But then you need somebody else to walk over with their picture book, to kind of fill in those blanks to put together a whole, you know, kind of a whole scene of Yeah, that makes sense. And that's probably what Rob was talking to alert Lena on a little bit was that you don't necessarily remember because you're just there, dude. Yeah, right, man. That's crazy. It's pretty cool that that racers can actually do that though, because that really shows you the different level of intensity mentally that the the professional racers have against the the amateur racers. Appreciate, Tim Curran said thank you for the input on the sponsorship stuff. john lewis said, yeah, that podio thing was pretty gnarly. We actually talked about it on the way up here, Blanton and I, it was a pretty gnarly, pretty gnarly crash. Stuff like that happens, though. You know what I mean? And you just have to unfortunately, you have to deal with it at the at the time, but those 15 seconds do seem like forever. Don Haugen said. Dude, you were pissed. I remember that. You took the short end of the stick on that one. Yeah, I don't think Rob wants to talk about that right now. So we're gonna move on Rob raised at Crandon after a bad wreck. And Glen Helen, with his collarbone still broken. You broke your collarbone then. Different it was a different? Yeah, it was a different one. She had to make a custom pad to put inside your suit that you borrowed Carl's mud MMU. Oh, they call him he has this like the the tariffs mud much or they call them? Yeah. So I had to borrow Carl's mud mature. So I could just push a button to have the tariffs and I had to go race. Oh, you couldn't really move your arm? Yeah, primarily. That was the year I was racing. I've definitely raced in both Lucas Oil and torque back east. And I had a race and my collarbone was broke. So when you have a broken collarbone, you kind of you probably have to hold it low and then just barely use your other hand. Yeah, I think I was driving one hand is mostly Yeah, that's crazy, man. I can only imagine. Do you remember what your results were that weekend? Not as good as you want it? I think we did. Okay. I think we were obviously in the points Chase. And do I did better than expected with one arm taught. There's no expectations when you're driving with one arm and a badass truck, man. So congratulations on doing all that and actually that's awesome that amber was able to hook you up with all that too. Yeah, thank you for your service Rob. Mike. It was a pleasure to serve in and David Pisa Yeah, that was gnarly. When he went over the the hot pits. Need sponsor for Atlanta Grand Prix. Hey man, go get him Steve. Check out that episode that we did Motorsports marketing and sponsorship with Alex trailer, you can find some really good tips over there. Alright, so the questions that I was going to ask his last two questions when you get free time. What do you like to do? Where do you like to go? Well, we like to ride our Polaris razors. I like to chill just do nothing sometimes high bed doing nothing is pretty, pretty nice. I'm starting to go We'll start to go to the lake river last summer a little bit and we just did it yesterday for Mother's Day and maybe start doing that again more and maybe that's Is that why you're glowing today. Yeah. That's makeup you got rid of. Okay. And then the last kind of question that I had was, who are some of the people that have influenced you the most over the years, whether they're living or passed? Yeah, I know that you've mentioned a couple to us, like, different people that are in the off road industry out here in San Juan siento. But overall, who do you think is influenced you the most? Oh, starting out, you know, my mom and dad, I was talking earlier to rob about it, but, you know, certain quotes that they've said, that have stuck in my head that I really didn't realize, you know, in the beginning, but how I've actually applied him, and now, you know, trying to teach him to the kids and stuff like that. So my parents, honestly, in the beginning, you know, hooking up with knife Frank and Dave Clark, and just all the knowledge, you know, it's really a 97, I had to start my own team, and try to figure all this out on my own the first time, I had to run my own team, and did a lot of traveling with those guys, and just a lot of stories, especially with Nye, just his thoughts, and you could be sitting in a group of people. And everybody be saying, you know, this is what that is, and NIH would come in and explain to you why that's not what it is, it's this, and then the whole group would understand, and he would explain it to us, so that we would all understand and so he was an amazing guy. You know, just as, as time gone, there's been a lot of people and ultimately, you know, I'm just picking up stuff from everybody. I, I realize, you know, a lot of stuff your your listen and learn and then apply it and you don't really know where it came from. Right. So, you know, honestly, my parents, biggest most NIH, buddies, friends, you know, just all the acquaintances over time, you know, you pick up stuff from everyone. One of the main reasons that I asked that question is because on the adverse side of it, you have been very, very influential and many, many racers careers. And I'm not just talking about the guys that are up now. I mean, throughout the years, even guys that you've raised against, at the same competitive level, same ranks everything, just like our renovator that we talked to today. You were influential in his whole career. I mean, I talked about this yesterday on a side by side ride with some of the motocross guys, what if Jeremy McGrath Excuse me, what if Jeff m ag never had a Jeremy McGrath to compete against, he would have been the top dog for so many years, right? And that influence that you bring to the track? Every time you show up helps elevate everybody. It's pretty, it's pretty dang cool, man. So whether you realize it or not, you're definitely changed. Yeah, making things as I get older, and as I you know, just kind of look at it stuff more. And I see these little kids moving up. And I realize these little kids have been watching and paying attention and they do admire, you know, and try to model what they've what I've done, and they're trying to do the same thing. Their parents have said, Hey, you know, that's what you need to do. That's what you need to be. That's how you need to act. So I know later in life, I'll even appreciate even more. Yep. But yeah, started with your son too. Yeah, I'm starting to realize it, you know, that these kids, you know, they're paying attention. And, you know, whether it's Clint berry son, you know, or Connor Berry, these these kids, and they're like, I realized, you know, they look at me, and you know, you know, high five them and stuff. And some of them will say, like, you know, I'm trying to be like you. Yeah, so that's quite an honor. And, you know, later in life, you know, it's one of the things that I'll probably appreciate more than anything is that dude 100% it's funny that you say it like that too, because one of my buddies from Arizona, his name is Brian forester. He has a son named Tatum forester that's racing 170s. Now, Tatum is he gets like, so giddy when he can go watch RJ Anderson's body panels after the short course races. You didn't know that this happened today because we showed up a little bit earlier than you to the shop. Well, Lucero, I asked him if you know he needed help because he was watching the body panels for your truck. And he goes, Yeah, drive this thing off. And immediately I thought, holy cow, I'm sitting here, a middle aged man washing a door on a trophy truck. This is amazing. And for me to understand what those kids think at that time, like that is got to be the most fantastic thing for all of those kids that the races. So I personally think that the more time and the more value that you can give to those generations as your career progresses, is going to really really make that sentimental when you retire. Yeah, that'd be really cool. Okay, so we already asked who your Mount Rushmore was. But we've already we had a couple people talk about and comment and what your plans are. I guess we'll call it the near near future here. Maybe 2021 and beyond. Yeah, it's really you know, racing is what I do. You know, I love doing it. Obviously short course with Lucas Oil going away. Losing the Rockstar sponsorship a couple years ago, through the sale to Pepsi just it ended up being bad timing there for myself and RJ, but You know, times have been hard with COVID. And things are changing. And I was explaining you guys yesterday, you know, for so many of my racing years I've been navigating through this one hallway or this new one tunnel. And now that hallway or tunnels just different direction trying to figure things out. Continue racing, you know, trophy truck in the desert, you know, cades Racing a lot of I think he's racing a lot more than I am. He's racing all the work series and he's been riding with a guy named Brett Fox in the best and desert series and it'll be racing this weekend, the the Nevada bond Nevada race and go kick some ass kid. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, I want to get back to you and stuff, short courses, you know, the stuff that's happening back at granton's, you know, it's, it's awesome. You know, Lucas Oil going away, and then you know, the guys that gas, picking that up the perfect Dave Cole, you know, the pull of already family and every buddy there, you know, it's, it's, it's a good thing, it's gonna take some time, and hopefully everything gets going again. And, you know, ultimately, as explained earlier, it's like my direction is kinda not as solid as it has been before. But things are starting to come back and, you know, score looks very strong. And all that stuff's been consistent. The desert stuffs starting to be here in the in the US has been pretty consistent. So hopefully things pan out and start racing a lot more. So a couple questions came in that are really kind of on that same line about where you're going to raise some stuff, but first, Don Haugen said, Rob represents how we all should act in motorsports. He is humble, competitive, and a true leader in the sport. I couldn't agree more man. Luke alkoxy says, How great was the mint 400 win? Let's see here. And I think that there's a secondary follow up that says, to cap your long list of races, you've won. Yeah, I was good. I went in the mint. You know, and honestly, I raised a really a lot of years, but I've only you know, in all those years, you know, maybe it may be a third of them have been racing in a vehicle is capable winning overall. So, you know, I hadn't won the mint overall, until I think it was a couple years ago. 17 or 18 was the first time I ever wanted overall, but, you know, 25 or 30 of the years I wasn't in a vehicle that was capable of winning it overall. So ultimately, that was a good one to get off the bucket list. Really Vegas Reno is another one I have I haven't won that one overall yet so really, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's another one I got to work on. We times he thought you know, other people think that I've got one you know, one winner at every major race, but the Vegas Reno is one of them that that are there any other ones that are on there? I'm sure there are. There's a few others. Yeah, I'm sure there's more. But definitely as a big high profile race. Vegas, Reno was one of them, let's say and then Tim Kern commented and said, I'm trying to be like you as well. I've looked up to you since the first time I watched you race at Firebird Raceway. A long time ago with Tim's got a story similar to mine because that's the first time I saw you in Carl battle. So that's pretty cool, man. You got a good person to look up to here. He's a solid guy for sure. And what's that last one that john lewis is saying that Rob says, uh, that's the feeling I had when I was a kid and got one of Rob's bedsides at the Mickey Thompson race. It's still up in the garage. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Warfighter made as a Rob back door. Yeah, there to there. That's pretty cool. Um, how does that work? So our audience members can know, like, at a short course race, do you give away panels and stuff? Sometimes? Yeah, usually after the race, or, you know, each night and maybe even during the races, if there's body panels that are torn up and stuff, kids come up, and we try to give all that stuff away and let them walk away with a souvenir, have some rad graduate. It's always one of the raddest things, too, is just watch like this five year old who can't even carry this thing. just dragging it through the dirt going back, you know, just the Stoke on his face. Yes. You know, memories. And apparently, you know, Tim has one of those are john john. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Man. It is pretty neat to see though. We did a contest with Jeff Proctor of Honda off road to have people do it. And, man, we got so many messages for people that want to graduate. It was really cool. So that stuff is pretty memorable for everybody. All right, we're gonna wind down the show a little bit. I know that you said that. You know, 2021 is going to be a little bit of a weird year. But if you had your druthers, and you could predict the future 2022 like 2023 What would you just be doing, man? You'd be racing short cars and desert every weekend or what? Yeah, as much as possible. Racing. Racing is what I've done for so long. It's about all I know. So I'm, you know, short course stuff. I'm hoping it gets going again. It's in the Midwest series, honestly, you know, again, telling you guys you need to go back to Iran. And but that series is looking pretty good. And then obviously, you know, the great American short course series out here with Dave Cole, you know, being killed hammers and everything that he can do. I'm looking for great things there, too. I think you know, we'll take time, obviously, and I heard there's a Nora in his future with water man. A couple more atss you know, yep. Yeah, I think in September, we'll probably go hang out on one of those ATMs as well. According to that, Hey, have you ever done kale? Ah, I don't know if I asked you last time. Yeah. So yeah, I've done it maybe five times the first couple times. The first time I did it was with the team. blowtorch. Oh yeah, it was in a big truck. And then the second couple years, I did it with poison spider, Larry McCray and ended up finishing I think 13 like my third year. Well, I'm pretty good. And then then, the last three or four years or three years, I missed a year and there I've been driving with Greg Adler. Yeah. And this year, I wasn't supposed to drive with him this year. He called me on Thursday and said, Can you help me out and do the desert desert section? So we went and did that and had fun and but yeah, David P said, yeah. And even the fiberglass shards. So people are really into those things. I guess. Tim, Karen says I got a fender mount from the last Lucas all raised at wildhorse. That's pretty cool. You didn't race wild horse when it was backwards? Did you know? Yeah, I didn't get to race there, either. All right. Before I get into rapid fire q&a, Robbie, got any questions for mcac run over here? I don't I'm just stoked to be here. Yeah, it's pretty nice. Alright, so actually, are you going to race Crandon in June this year? We'll see. I hope so. Yeah, that'd be a pretty good race to be at. Alright, so rapid fire q&a. And I don't know because I didn't I don't have the printout from one year last episode was so if these are duplicates, just tell me okay. dunes or the river. River now. Summertime. Yeah. Three Wheeler or quad quad. sensor railo. I don't want to say since roller Osborne. l obey or toe Mac. The reason I'm asking this is because we got a freaking lecture from Lucero today. I'm in the shop. So I got to say Tony Yeah. luceros a big Tomek? He actually said that it'd be his number two. Yeah. Okay, how about mountain bike or road bike mount? Might you go mountain bike? Absolutely. Do you haven't met me? I did. You did? Well, actually, I still do my son's comedy on mine. We we had a little depth and we lost his bike. So he's coming over here. I gotcha. Coffee or tea? Tea. ever tasted coffee? Yeah, on purpose. Same with me. Yeah, one fact you're the only one who's drinking coffee in this room. That is fun fact. Favorite soda. It's been Mountain Dew lately. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Mountain Dew Jamie Campbell over there. We can convert him over to cactus cooler so he's a big cactus cooler guy. If you could have one superpower, what would it be if you asked me that before maybe or somebody did I don't know maybe I think of invisible was one of them. What about teleporting? Because teleporting? Yeah, I'll ask. There's so many. Yeah, so some of these I may have asked you before hugs or crocs hugs. Like I hate the shoe so much. I need to switch it up because we're so over the crocs these days. most memorable race he already answered that one favorite flavor of ice cream. Sprite. I wouldn't mind if we got we got robbed by blank cookie chips and cookies and cream, cheese and cream or whatever it is. Robert Blanton, I would appreciate your answer as well. Strawberry rendezvous audio clip of the night dogs or cats. Dogs. Netflix cat. Is that Netflix or YouTube? YouTube? Supercross Yeah. Supercross motocross Supercross. I wonder why he likes Supercross and motocross I figured you'd pick one or crosses consoled. Like knockdown drag out manliness. I think they're doing more things in a shorter space or time. Oh, I got I'm getting to go like holy shit. And in motocross. There were my fan. They're all Yes, but I think I'm getting able to I mean, I'm seeing more technical things happen in a shorter period of time for the rider which is gone. Well, I could never do super. Yeah, this Caden read. He brought we both I raced when I was a little kid, and then I've almost always own a motorcycle. And then yeah, he's written out right now. Yeah. What do you have now? Husky Effie? 350. Nice. Dude. That's the one I was thinking about getting is it badass? I like my bike. Sweet. What's Kaden? Rogers? He read St. Paul. He writes mine now. Okay, he's got a CRF 259. So it won't start so he takes mine does have electric start and all that mine. Yeah, dude, that's, that's exactly what I want to get. Yeah, I think this question came up last time, but let's try to answer it again. What other form of racing Would you like to try? Well, you know, going to do the car, you know, going to try that. But ultimately, like I wanted, I want I knew that for a long time, but I wanted to do it to win, which made me never be able to go do it because those to me those rides were very hard to get. So yeah, in a way, but I'm okay with it too. Now. I'm, I'm cool. You've done so much. But what about if it was just in a UTV? And I feel like I'm like, no. And that's I yeah, I understand what you're saying. So, yeah, I mean, that's the thing that's opened up now is now with the UTV is it does make it much more attainable to go. Not affordable. Well, yeah, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's still expensive, but, and yeah, I looked at the cost of Batman's still. Yeah, it's still a lot of money. Yeah, exactly. And then final question, and I know you answered this one last time chips and guacamole or french fries, ranch chips and Glock chips and walk all day. You change that to French fries and ranch. Just on the fly. It still says ketchup. Oh, I was just thinking maybe it would mean how boozy white Do we have to be in here? Dude is half the days that we talked to is like, oh, I'll take french fries. But I'm gonna Mitch my ranch with the catch. Like, oh my god, Dude, seriously. All right. Well, thank you guys all very much for tuning in. There's some guys that came in and thoughts of racing antigo this year? anago anago. Is that what it is gonna be great. I've raced there before. It's a cool little track. Okay, well, thank you very much, Rob. We really appreciate it. Dude. Thank you for taking us to tacos today. That was awesome. I'm glad that you guys have had the opportunity to put BF Goodrich on the side of the car change livery up a little bit. looks fucking awesome, man. I'm stoked on it. I know that. Rob is stoked that you came out to the adrenaline therapy sessions. What was the last year? I know it was the beginning of the year. I think it was beginning of the year. Yeah. So that was super cool. And giving back to the community and doing all the stuff that you do is awesome, man. You're just a badass dude all around. So thank you for having us here. Likewise, pleasure to be here and honor to be here with you. I appreciate it, man. And Don also said thank you very much bland for all your services and stuff that you do. He wrote a comment in but already passed. So it's a pleasure. Next week's show we have. It's gonna be a motocross Monday, so we have Davey millsaps. I don't know you guys know him. But we might get some good stories on him battling Trey canard to Anaheim. That was a good one. So we're going to talk with him at IMG Motorsports. That's gonna be an awesome show. He's got stories for days as well. Thank you very much, Rob, for having us. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Robert Blanton for being my co pilot today. My co dog and you didn't even have to throw up. They got a very good coat. Oh, you did fantastic today, bud. So thank you very much. We really appreciate all you guys for tuning in. You guys are lifeblood, I say it every single episode. But it's really true because you guys are making this show tick. I'm glad that we get to give you a little bit of insight into what happens behind the scenes and with all these fantastic people that are in the off road community. It means so much to us that everybody has accepted us with open arms and that you guys are paying attention to following us because it gives us the opportunity to do all this stuff. So we really appreciate everybody that's been a sponsor of the show. I'm not going to go into full detail of it. I'm just going to go through the list so thank you to KMC thank you to all the guys that FX tires is older racing products, shock therapy, crowd heat and solder weld. You guys are awesome. We really appreciate you guys living your dirt life with us. We will see you guys next Monday. Good night. Thanks for listening to The Dirt Life Show.