Digital Cowboy

My two beautiful little redneck girls and I went to the Major League of Monster Trucks event last Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway. I didn’t especially want to but we made a deal and they earned it. I’ve always found monster trucks to be fascinating… for about 15 minutes at a time. I was not willing to make the drive or spend the money for that reason, except that they were excited and wanted to go. So they earned it and we went.

I enjoyed it far more than I expected. If you’ve never done this and have the slightest interest, DO IT! Just GO. Those trucks, in real life, that close, are absolutely amazing. I found myself sitting there feeling like a little boy, giggling and thinking to myself, “Only in America! This is why the terrorists hate us!” Then I would giggle some more after each time that thought went through my head.

It’s the sort of thing that a thinking man looks at – in the midst of enjoying it – and says to himself, “Why?!?! This is ridiculous.” The answer of course, is “Because WE CAN!”

I think there’s a deeper lesson in there, certainly for me and I think probably for many people. I don’t have to justify what I find amusing. Or fun. Or pleasurable. It does not make me some knuckle-dragging, mouth-breather if I enjoy a display of redneck engineering. Furthermore, it most certainly is a display of great engineering. Those who would dismiss “those rednecks” have very much underestimated them.

Yes it’s silly. But not nearly as silly as “modern art.” Monster trucks – for that matter NASCAR – are amazing displays of the extremes possible with very practical mechanical engineering. Most art is worthless for anything except basic snobbishness. On that basis, I would argue that NASCAR and monster trucks are both far more useful and valuable than “art” and the ignorant ones are those who invest their time and energy into vacuous pursuits that serve no purpose except to make themselves falsely feel superior.

In fact, I would go a step further and say that anyone who does not see a monster truck as practical – and amazing – applied art is fundamentally ignorant and lacking a basic understanding of how the world works.

It is nothing short of amazing to see an 8-ton-plus vehicle using ~1500 horsepower to launch 30 or 40 feet into the air.

We were fortunate in that even though it was quite crowded already when we got there and we had to sit way off from the center of the grandstands, we got seats in the second row. Then, after the event began, the kids were allowed to move down into the unoccupied seats that had been reserved for the handicapped. So I watched from row two and my girls were in row 0 – in front of the front row, right at the fence.

Being off-center turned out to be a blessing. When they got ready for the Freestyle round – the best part – they brought out a giant forklift and started moving vans and a bus to set up… RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. A large portion of the big action in the Freestyle competition happened directly in front of us and only about 50 feet away.

I put a few pictures up. The first page of thumbnails is all mainly pics of my kids with the trucks. The second page is purely monster truck action. The first 6 pics are not of a “real” monster truck. It’s a truck we parked near in the parking lot. In the pictures you’ll notice Texas plates on it. It’s street legal. In Texas anyway.

(There are a few pics in the gallery that have boldface titles underneath. Those pics all have description text if you click on them to view the larger version.)