RPM4x4
- Community Service |
Minnesota's
RPM4x4 Club Wows The Crowd At A 4x4 show! |
Editor: Eric Bewley
Story/Photo: Mike Hagen |
Forest Lake MN - Church
outings are about cake walks and pancake breakfast’s right? Not always.
The pastor at Marantha Assembly of God in Forest Lake MN drives a stock
car and also rides a Harley. His different personality puts a breath of
fresh air into this church community and that enthusiasm can be felt from
every parishioner. This group really knows how to let loose and have fun.
For 18 years now, Marantha has been hosting a car show as an outreach to
the community to raise awareness for their church. In the corner of the
parking lot there is a burn out box that they use every year at the end of
the car show. The last couple of years they’ve had a monster truck that
they drive over some cars. There must be a catch right? There is not. You
wouldn’t have even realized that you were at a church until the end of
the award show when they say “Now that you know where we are, feel free
to stop by for one of our services”
A
few members of the RPM club go to Marantha. Last year after the show was
over, Blake Savage, a member of the RPM club took his Samurai and drove
over one of the cars that were left. This sparked a discussion of having
an off-road show for next year’s car show addition.
| When this concept was
brought to the rest the RPM group we though it was a great idea,
but were a little nervous since we had never 4 wheeled for
anyone’s entertainment but our own before. Concern came up that
the church wouldn’t be able to deliver enough of a challenge to
a flat 3 acre lot. None of us wanted to do a show that we
wouldn’t be proud of when we were done. A couple weeks before
the show I heard of what obstacles they had. To say the least I
was pleasantly surprised. Arnt construction donated 2 large dump
truck loads of rock, Swede’s towing donated a pair of cars and
Royal concrete donated some giant concrete tubes. The exciting
thing for us was we had never driven over concrete tubes before.
Some of these tubes were over 4 ½ feet tall! We showed up a
couple of days in advance to practice on the tubes so we could
pick some lines over them. None of us had ever wheeled on tubes
before so we were a little concerned. This time was also allotted
to instruct how we wanted the jump to be made. Eric
Bergum was driving the bobcat and I must say that he has a lot of
patience for putting up with our revisions. None of us had ever
built a jump before. I think he spent 5 hours alone just building
and changing our jump. He also donated countless hours of bobcat
work all week long to put it all together. It was amazing to see
so many people dedicated to doing whatever they could to make it
the best show they could get. Without all these efforts RPM could
not have put on a show at all. |
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The show was made up of seven Suzuki vehicles, three samurai’s, three
trackers, and one half samurai-half tracker mix. If you look close at the
black Sami in the photos you will notice that it has a sidekick frame and
suspension.
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The day of the
show we show up early to get settled in. Our area has been in a
severe drought for months, so the course was setup with dry
conditions in mind. Unfortunately Mother Nature decided that today
was a good day to end the drought, in a big way. Any other day
rain would have been very welcomed but unfortunately we got rained
out pretty badly. Rain and car show obviously don’t mix so we
knew attendance would be down quite a bit. However, all this
preparation wasn’t going to waste. We looked at the positive
side and decided this would be a good learning experience with
less pressure from a smaller audience. On the side of the course
we see that there was a large box truck. Perry’s portable
welding was there to be assisting us with an onsite shop
throughout the day. His truck was set up with everything you can
think of and was really helpful throughout the day. This was
especially helpful this day because we were not going to be able
to finesse through the obstacles as planned. We had to pick new
lines that were possible in the rain to put on a show. Today
wasn’t about just making the obstacle, but doing it in a
spectacular way. The show started just as the rain started to
fall. We all
scrambled to get in any moves we thought would not be possible
once it got muddy.
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By the end of
the show we looked like we had bathed in the mud and wet to the bone! We
must have been doing something right for a crowd of people to stand in the
pouring rain and watch. When it was all said and done we were asked if we
would be willing to do it again next year, which we responded with a
definite yes. Hopefully we will get to.
 ZW
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