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Photo/Story - Stephen Jones |
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Photo/Story - Stephen Jones |
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15th
Annual CTC Truck Center BIG RIG Nationals
Maryland
International Raceway
May
30, 2009
The 15th running of the CTC Truck Center Big Rig Nationals was held at MIR this past May 30 with perfect weather, a big crowd, and lots of fun and excitement.
Pepi Urban and his Xtreme Machine Jet Semi put out 2 great exhibition runs as did Jimmy DeAngelo's 1950 Studebaker Bulletnose wheelstander.
Baltimore
based rock band NO STRINGS ATTACHED played terrific music all day
long, there was plenty of vendors, and fun kids games.
Let's
not for get the variety of trucks drag racing all day long. There
were regular trucks, race trucks and, of course, the BIG RIGS. Every
big rig you could think of rumbled down the
the
track. Dump trucks, semi's, sleepers, wrecker, moving trucks, etc.,
and roaming through the pits, one could see that all these trucks had
gone through a complete clean down
and
polish before arriving at the track. AND some of the murals and
paint jobs were amazing. You can check out all the images on the
following image gallery.
As
a side note. yours truly will NEVER get on a "cherry
picker" again!!!
An
explanation...wanted get up in the air to get some wide shots of the
facility and the trucks. I arranged to get in the cherry picker
bucket late in the afternoon through some of
the
fine people from CTC Truck Center. Little did I know that you had to
climb about 6-7 feet up the truck to the bucket. I was starting to
get a bit nervous when I found out that the
bucket
was about 5 ft deep WITH NO DOOR...I had to climb over the top of
it. Even though it was covered, there was about 4-5 inches of water
from the morning's rain. After I sloshed
in
to the bucket, I told the operator (no controls in the bucket) to go
UP. Well, I'm not big on heights and after this thing got up to about
40 ft., I started to get REAL nervous. I took a
bunch
of shots all around and then told the operator to get me the F back
down. Got down closer to the ground and...COULDN'T GET OUT OF THE
BUCKET!! I finally got out after pulling
something
in my arm and shaking and swore I'd NEVER do that again! Hope the
pictures turned out O:K...they did!
The event ended several hours later than expected do to a few minor mishaps on the track, but, in general, I believe the event can be considered a success.
The next big event at MIR is PINKS (June 19-20) and my next 2 events will be The Ford Nationals at Carlisle, PA the NSRA event In York, PA.
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