Eastern US Nationals # 1 Hannibal, Mo

This year, 4Wheel Drive Hardware Team 311 made the change from running UROC to World Extreme Rock Crawling Series (WeRock) full time this year. I also anointed a new spotter for the 2007 season – Aaron Selway. Aaron has been a part of the team for the last 3 years, filling in as an alternate spotter and runner, and has been into Jeeps and 4-wheeling for the last 4 years. This year, he took the plunge and decided to be my full time spotter.

The weekend of April 14th marked the first east coast rock crawling competition in Hannibal, MO. We left around 7:00 p.m. Thursday night and drove straight through the night until we arrived in MO at 7:00 a.m. -- a 12 long hour trip. We checked into our rooms and took a nap until it was time for tech inspection. We went through tech inspection with no problem, so it was off to rest for the first day of competition for 2007.

Saturday morning, we woke up to sleet, rain, wind and temperatures in the mid 30s. We were second in line behind a Cherokee in group 1. There were 16 Stock Modified competitors running in the WeRock series.

The first obstacle was pretty tough. No one from our class even made it past the first set of gates. We finished with a score of 39. Obstacle 2 had a start gate that was a 4-foot tall rock we had to climb up and over. We were able to make the climb, but as we headed for the second set of cones, we were high-centered and that halted any further progress. We scored another 39 on this course as well, which was the same as most of the other stock competitors. You can imagine my frustration - the start of the season and we couldn't even finish a course. But our luck was about to change.

We moved through our third obstacle with ease. We hit one gate in the middle (which, actually, every competitor hit) and we finished with a score of 14. Finally, we were back on the score board. The last obstacle was the same as the third but we ran it in the reverse direction. The Cherokee ahead of us didn't make it up the first section to clear the first set of gates. Then it was our turn. We were able to finish that course in 45 seconds! A 10 minute course, we finished in less than 1 minute! It was the talk of the competition. I didn't even know how we did it. I saw the line from where I was sitting and just literally ran with it. We finished that course with a score of 7. Day 1 was over and we had nothing to fix. We had put on a good show and it was a great way to end the day.

Sunday morning, we woke up to sunny skies and a high of 60. A huge change compared to what we went through on day 1. When we arrived at the competition site, we saw we were in 11th place, out of 16 competitors. We also saw that from 6th place to where we were at was only separated by 15 points - so we all pretty much had the same scores for day 1.

On the first obstacle, I messed up and took the start gate too low, which ended up us taking 2 gates right off the bat. We were able to finish the course, but with a score of 30. We proceeded to course 2. We made it through the first two gates and as we came to the turn to the finish gates, we were sucked into a hole -- definitely a place we did not want to be. We worked with that spot for a bit. I turned the wheel and tried to work the Jeep out while my spotter stacked rocks trying to get more bite. While he was stacking, he noticed my passenger side front tire was not spinning. He took a look at it and the center section of the lock out hub was blown out. We thought at the time it was a broken up, but it actually was my passenger side axle shaft.

We got the jeep off of the obstacle and headed to the pits. We had 45 minutes of breakdown time to fix what was broken and head back up to finish the last 2 courses. As we are taking the axle apart, I realized I had no spare shafts for it, so we decided to button the Jeep back up, take out all of the broken pieces and 3-wheel the last 2 courses. What was the worst that could happen? Look out, it was show time.

We made it back to obstacle 3 with 1 minute to spare. We made it through the first set of gates and that was about it. Given our position on the course, the only tire that we needed to move in order to get us going again was the one that had no axle shaft and was not moving; thus, we were sitting ducks. We timed out on that course and headed to the last course for the weekend. The entry gate to this had a few big rocks right off the bat. I told my spotter to stack some rocks on the passenger side to give that side a little bit of ease and to look out. My plan was to use the gas pedal as much as possible. We launched (literally - I think we got 2 feet of air under the jeep) through the first set of gates and made it about midway through the course. We had to take a few backups to assist the vehicle’s broken side, but once we got that side moving, we were in the clear. We were able to actually finish that course (in 3 wheel drive) and score a 13. After that, our weekend was done. We loaded the Jeep back onto the trailer and made the 12 hour journey back to Ohio.

Our next competition is slated for May 12-13th in Dayton, TN.