I've been working in the ATV industry for about 10 years now, and each and every time I take a road trip, whether it's a race event or a photo shoot, some sort of strange and unforgettable story will surely emerge. It's inevitable when a group of us industry guys get together, some kind of trouble or carnage is bound to come up, especially when my good buddy Crazy Al is involved. It's actually fairly common when those of us who know Al get together; you can bet we'll probably be telling our favorite Crazy Al stories. For his own protection, I'm not going reveal his full name (as we don't want to see Al's mug shot behind the counter at Hertz, again) although his mug is adorning this story. I'm sure that some of you will recognize Crazy Al as he owns a prominent SoCal speed shop.
I was spending a couple of weeks on the East Coast shooting photos at the GNCC and motocross National race events as well as for one of my clients and friends, Mickey Dunlap. Mickey flew me to Florida for the first round of the GNCC series in Ocala. Crazy Al was flying in to join me-and just in case you didn't know, putting the two of us together unsupervised (with no wives) is an absolute recipe for disaster. It's much like turning two unsupervised 9-year-olds loose in a toy store. Crazy Al shows up in a rented convertible Z28 Camaro. After spending about five minutes with Al and his Camero rental, I just knew we would end up on the latest episode of the popular television show "Cops."
Friday night before the races were set to kick off, a good friend of mine Martin, owner of Elka Suspension, put together a little barbeque shindig behind the hotel at which he was staying. A great time was had by all of those who attended. But when it came time to leave at around midnight, I jumped into the Z28 with Crazy Al. There were a couple of carloads of others who tagged along as we were heading back to our hotel. Crazy Al slaps the rental car into reverse, pins the gas pedal and I don't know if he was dragging the brake or what, but the car just began burning and squealing the tires. Once the car reached about 30 mph in reverse, Al hucked the car and dropped it into drive. Amazingly, whether by luck or talent, the car performed a perfect 180-degree spin and began heading forward. I have no idea as to how he pulled it off, but as he held down the gas pedal, the car continued to smoke the tires for a very long distance. The crazy part is that there wasn't any room for error, not even an inch. There might've been 20 feet between the parked cars on both sides and it would usually take a four-point turn to get a normal-size car turned around in this spot. By the time we got to the end of the parking lot, every light in every hotel room was on and people were peeking out their windows. The whole parking lot was completely covered in white, puffy smoke. People were standing around looking and probably wondering what the heck was going on. All of a sudden, Al slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. He came around to the passenger door, looked at me and said, "Hey, I've had a couple of beers, you drive." At this point Al knew that every cop within 5 miles was looking for us, but like an idiot, I didn't think of that until a few minutes after taking over the driver's seat. So we're cruising down the street while Jimmy White was following us in one car, Richard Mendenhall from Douglas Wheel in another. Al waits till the last second and then says, "Turn in here." As I crammed on the brakes and began the last-second turn, Al grabs the e-brake and once again, we began another full 180-degree turn right in front of Richard and Jimmy. I felt like a complete moron as these guys just saw the coolest stunt followed by Beginner 1A failure.