Well, to start this story, an old friend calls me up one night and asks if I would like to do some pre-running in his rig that up coming weekend.

So, after that day in Johnson Valley he asks me if I would like to be his Co-Driver for the "King Of The Hammers" race. Unable to say no to such a fabulous offer I set out to get my stuff in order be able to do this.

David Buchberger of Buck Wild Racing, team 911, is who I had the pleasure of Co-Driving for. Here is a picture of his Land Rover.

We decided to get out on the lakebed on Tuesday, February 24th. We arrived just a few minutes late for registration, so we unloaded and set up camp. That night after welding an end back on a coil-over for a guy from Pirates of the Rubicon, they asked us to do some wheeling out on Wreckin' Ball. Well just about at the trail head, my heep decides not to run anymore. After about 15 minutes of messing with it, she decided to run and we wisely drove it back to camp. Not sure what that was all about.

Wednesday morning comes and we get registered and was able to get a download of the course onto our Garmin GPS, but can not get it to work, or I guess upload from the SD chip. After about a half day of trying to figure out how to do it and asking everyone we could if they had something for a Garmen, Dave broke down and bought a Lowrance GPS. Ya, it works great, and we go out and run about the first 15 miles of the course, not only for another shake down run, but to get used to using the GPS. Seems to be working great, the Rover and the GPS. By now some more friends have shown up, they will be working check point 4 at the top of Resolution on race day. Once they have unloaded it's now dark and we decide to go out and run Claw Hammer, half way through the trail, my heep stops running again. Still not 100% sure why it's doing this, we get it running and motor up to the top of the trail to wait for everyone. By now I have messed up the timing and god knows what else. That's it for the wheeling that night.

Thursday is here and LCQ, Last Chance Qualifying, is in full swing. Thirty four rigs are vying for 14 spots in the race the next day. The trail left the start line on the lakebed and went up Back Door and out into the desert for about 5 miles total. I was able to watch about the first 10 rigs and it was time for us to get lined up for Tech Inspection. We get lined up and go through all the venders, making deals with them to run their stickers at a chance for some additional money/prizes at the end of the race. At tech inspection we find out we do not have shut off valves on our fuel lines, so we have to drive all the way back into town to hit Home Depot for some brass ball valves and hose clamps. Get them on just in time for re-inspection and we pass, ya! About now is when a few other friends came in from Idaho and surprised everyone showing up in their Land Cruiser. So, off we go to do some wheeling up Back Door. Around 2300 Brian brakes his transfer case and we have to pull him back to camp. Wheeling over.

Race day, starting at 0530 we get our gear together and get to the line up and find our place, 69th out of 92 rigs. A few minutes after 0800 we were off and about a half mile into it I say to Dave, we are now 68th, as we pass our first broken rig. The total race course is 86 miles of desert and 10 of the Hammer trails and we have until 1800 to finish it. We pass the defending champion, Shannon Campbell around mile 8, seems he is broken down. Whoo hoo, we are kickin' ass! We run into our first glitch at mile 19, where there is a rig broken down on a rocky hill section, there is a steep sand hill for a bypass, but we do not have the horse power to make it up that. So, after a quick piss we run up to the guy and push him back about five feet so we could get by. This picture is of us after we pushed him out of the way, we are just taking off up the hill to get around him.

A short video of us through a desert section, this was early on, probably mile marker 11 or so.

 By the first check point at mile 23, we had passed probably at least 10 broken rigs and two slow ones, yes, slower than us.

We hit our second bump when we hit a rock hard and dented the rim, thus flattening the tire shortly after. We straighten out the rim and air up the tire, off we go. A few miles later it's flat again and since we are about to enter our first rock trail, Aftershock, we decided to change out the tire. Once that is done and we get into the trail some, we find a traffic jam, 4 buggies, one is stuck in the middle of the trail and two are trying to go right while the last one is heading left. Well, they are soon all hung up and we decide to go straight and end up driving over that middle guy's tires and off we go, leaving them behind and not seeing them again. These pictures are of us just after this, a few hundred yards farther, there was a Jeep in front of us and we have to go up the side of a rock to get around him. You can also see the Blue Torch Fab rig sitting there broke as we pass Nicole Johnson, the driver of it.

 We smoke that trail and the next, pass through check point two and are at the base of Sunbonnet where we find out we have a fried battery, yep, deader than dead and we can't get the Rover started. We sit there at around mile 42 just waiting and waiting, until a fellow competitor, Carey Steiner, comes down out of the trail with a broken transfer case and offers up her battery to us. We get it changed out and head up Sunbonnet, once out of the trail we run into three more broken rigs, one is Becca Webster, who informs us that check point three has just closed, we missed it by just a few minutes. Our race is over. So we hook up one of the rigs to us, who had a broken transmission, and towed him back to the lakebed.

Though not official we believe to have placed in the low 40's, pretty darn good for starting 69th out of 92 rigs and only around 32 even finished.

These pictures are from Last Chance Qualifying, which was Thursday, 26 February.

These are just some random pictures.

These are from the race itself.