Wednesday, July 15, 2009

PINKS ALL OUT

What an awesome weekend at Martin 131 Dragway! I am going to start by bragging about Liam a little bit. He is the best kid ever, and if you don't believe me then just ask! I'm pretty sure he is already a full blown gear head and loves fast and loud cars. Liam had the time of his life hanging out at the drags and playing with some new friends he met.

Jon Genzink and myself were 2 of 13 cars chosen out of 450 to be feature cars for PINKS ALL OUT. That in itself was more than enough to satisfy our entire weekend. Featured cars meant that we would both be guaranteed some airtime on PINKS ALL OUT TAKES (a separate show from PINKS All Out)and we had a free pass to lane 5 for racing with all the cameras on us. We also had Rod Dejonge in our group showing all 450 cars at the track how to do a wheelstand in a Jeep, and it was awesome!

The weather for Friday night to Saturday morning called for heavy T-storms so Jen and I decided to fold the seats down in our motor home/Ford Excursion and spend the night there. Liam slept through the night like normal while Jen and I were up till 3am listening to a dozen punks having a party right in front of our truck. The storm finally hit at 5:30am and we stayed perfectly dry!

Saturday morning Jon and I lined up at 9am to race. We had a racers meeting with the PINKS crew and got ready to race. I was 3rd in line to race until one of the track staff spotted all the cords showing on my drag tires and said they were unsafe to race. I then had to go back to the pits and try to find another set within the hour. This was apparently an answer to my prayers because I knew they were bad but thought I could get two more runs out of them. They were bad enough that I would pray the entire 1/4 mile that they wouldn't blow and then God sent the nice guy to tell me no more racing until you change your tires.

Jon had another set of slicks at his shop in Holland and Brad and Dave Haan were just leaving for the track and were able to pick them up. They were given a VIP pass to the pits by the PINKS crew. If that wasn't all cool enough, Peter Root (one of the PINKS producers) escorted them on our golf cart to the pits, waited for us to change the slicks and then brought me back to the track around all the racers, stopped the next two cars in line just to allow me to make my pass! That was better than any Hollywood story I have ever heard.

Alright, that's way more typing then I have ever done. The end result is, we all had the time of our lives and none of us are $10,000 richer. Maybe next time! I posted a Youtube video of some of our passes, just go to Youtube and search tbob80, then click on PINKS ALL OUT.


This is Peter Root from PINKS with Brad Haan driving.
This is Brad and myself changing slicks faster then a Nascar pit crew.


Liam with Grandpa DeHaan and ear protection!



Liam tried to convinced me that he can go faster in the Ranger and thus win the 10,000 dollars. My response was, who is going to step on the gas for you?

I told Liam he needs to practice with his own Ranger!

4 comments:

Matt Yount said...

So cool!!! Love Liam with his ear protection! Looks like a blast. I'll have to check the You Tube videos!

Kellie said...

Hey Jen. Love the pics. I know the Genzink family. I had their boys in swimming lessons :) Small world huh :)

Mami Sue said...

Liam's wagon is just too cute!!

Brad and Jill said...

That is awesome Tim - what a great experience for all of you! I am glad you had so much fun! Liam looks like a rock star in those pics! Jill