* Let me add a disclaimer: I wrote this daylog before the tragic events of Saturday morning. My sympathies to the American people.
Per Ardua Ad Astra.
FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY!
Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages:
Please direct your attention to the
center of the
arena
Introducing:
THE OUTLAWS OF MOTOSPORTS!
CANADIAN MONSTER TRUCK NATIONALS!
On Friday, I went to see to see something I have been waiting for for about 20 years.
Monster Trucks. Oh yeah. Living in northern
Ontario, not a lot of the traveling spectacles of
North American life came through town. I saw some
second-string WWF action when I was grade school, but it was nobody spectacular. It left me feeling kind of sad really. Why did nobody rate my
hometown worthy of a visit?
So, gripped with a
young boys love of
roaring engines and fulfilling the promise I made my
young self, I saw me some
BIG TRUCKS. I had a
blast, noting to myself that now that I live in the
big city, nothing was skipping town. I also noted that it was mostly kids and their parents bustling into seats around me and my friends. Oh well.
Better late than never.
On to the spectacle! I saw the likes of:
Sheer Insanity
The Ozz Monster
Cyclops
Thunderstuck
Predator
And boy was it
loud! Dang! I brought some
earplugs from home, as had most of the crowd. It was still loud!
Methanol engines 10ft away on top of a dirt covered
NHL Hockey rink is a treat! I think it must have been about 100 DB all night, if not over for some parts. It was one of those sounds you
felt as much as heard. Sitting close was great - we sat in the third row from the dirt. The space inside the
Corel Center was limited for them, but they pulled it off. It was a little sad to see them penned in like
animals, but what a show. I was grinning like a fool all night.
My friends and I identified all the makes and models of the poor
whitewashed
victim cars that sat on the dirt while waiting for the show to start. The show was amazingly long and varied, with "Tough trucks", regular
off-road trucks running a dirt track at
breakneck speeds,
Motocross riders doing amazing tricks 30 feet in the air, and even "Mini-trucks", a go-cart spectacle for the kids, with the
home town hero taking the
checkered flag from the bad guy, a driver from
Toronto, the local hockey teams
nemesis city. The kids loved it.
So did I!