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1994 was a strange year. It was also the year I attended and endured the most extreme motorsports event in my performance marketing career: The World Championship Snowmobile Derby in Eagle River, Wisconsin.
In January... IN WISCONSIN.
Let that sink in for a moment.
As the Technical and Motorsports Manager at NGK Spark Plugs, I was sponsoring several amateur and pro 'sled' racers with dollars and product. It was decided I'd be on-site to support the competitors and our Regional Sales Rep who wanted a corporate presence for the 1994 event.
The Plan: I'd fly into Minneapolis to meet with Sales Rep Chris, we'd pick up a rented RV and, after loading it with food, gear and corporate goodies, I'd drive the rig North to Eagle River with Chris leading the way in his company car. We'd park the rig in the race pits as our base camp and spend several days spreading the gospel according to NGK. A typical race event plan, no biggie... except NORTHERN WISCONSIN IN JANUARY.
My arrival in Minneapolis was met with extreme cold and snow, and even though I'd been in town the previous year right before Christmas, I was shocked at the huge snow banks everywhere. I'd already learned about indoor self-service car washes, which seemed strange until my education about how ice, snow and mud can pack a car's chassis and needs to be removed with heated and pressurized water. Otherwise, it can fall off in large chunks on the freeway and impact cars following too closely.
Chris' advice about driving the rented RV on icy roads was very helpful:
1. Accelerate from stops slowly.
2. Never stab the brake pedal.
3. Use the 'thousand-yard stare' while driving.
4. When approaching a stop, begin braking at twice the distance than normal, with half the pressure on the brake pedal than normal.
The trek to Eagle River went well. The weather held off and gave us a clear run, covering the 275 miles without incident. I slid the RV only a couple of times, keeping it nice and straight. We arrived at the track on a sunny and clear zero-degree afternoon, parked the rig in the pits and made our way 20 miles North to the hotel in Land O' Lakes, hard on the border with the Michigan UP.
Thankfully, I'd borrowed a pair of high-end snow boots and had NGK snowmobile clothing, goggles and other cold weather gear to keep warm. I had no idea how critical this kit would be over the weekend.
The day we arrived in Eagle River would be the warmest and clearest we'd see for the entire race weekend. Nighttime temps would drop to minus-35 degrees, and I learned that Chris always parked his car with the nose partially buried into a snow bank. This prevented the wind from freezing the engine block solid and allowed the engine block warmer to actually warm the engine enough to start safely.
The next morning, Chris and I headed to the hotel restaurant for a hearty brekkie. We'd just ordered when a guy sat down at a table next to us. I glanced over, then looked again and realized it was Stan Fox, a notable sprint car and IndyCar driver from Janesville, Wisconsin.
Me (whispering): "Chris... do you know who Stan Fox is?"
Chris (whispering): "Yep, sure do... but why are you whispering?"
Me (still whispering): "Well, Stan Fox just sat down at the table next to us."
Chris (still whispering): Oh man... that's so COOOOL."
Without missing a beat, I went over and introduced myself to Stan, who couldn't have been friendlier and accepted my invitation to eat with us. It turns out he was a MAJOR sledding fan and attended The Derby every year, was staying at the same hotel, and wound up meeting us for breakfast each of the following mornings before heading to the track (we both loved oatmeal). He also loved NGK spark plugs and used them exclusively in all of his personal toys.
Snapshot: The Derby track is a self-contained high-banked half-mile oval of snow and ice, where several classes of sleds (snowmobiles) race at speeds of up to 100mph. The 'hot pits' is a Staging area just outside of the track where sleds and riders line up to enter the track and then cool down after each race. During my first walk through the Staging area, I noticed hundreds of small wads of multi-colored tape littering the area and asked Chris what they were. His answer: pieces of duct tape the racers stuck to their faces underneath their head socks, helmets and goggles to prevent facial frostbite while racing, then pulled off and discarded after each race. OUCH.
2021 Eagle River Derby Pro-Mod 800 Final Highlights
Snapshot: One evening just before dusk, Chris and I went to dinner at a family restaurant/bar overlooking a frozen lake. Before ordering, we heard what sounded like a flock of angry chainsaws. We looked out the expansive window and watched a group of six sledders speeding across the lake towards the restaurant. They stopped and came into the adjacent bar to tilt a few. After about an hour, the drunk sledders left the bar, mounted their rides and blasted off across the pitch-black frozen lake at high speed. This seemed pretty dangerous to me, but Chris said it was normal Derby-time behavior. "They're filled with anti-freeze and if they crash, they'll feel no pain."
Snapshot: We attended the Friday night grudge match races between the Super Stock and F-1 sleds, a very popular event. With the wind chill, the temperature was about minus-40 degrees and the ground was so cold that I couldn't stand in one place for more than a minute before my feet began to hurt. The solution: bounce back and forth from one foot to another, which everyone standing around the track fence was doing, resulting in a crazy group dance. Every time the sleds raced by, we had to duck below the top edge of the fence or we'd be instantly enveloped in a thick coating of ice dust and wind up looking like a weird snowman. Note: the track fence height has been extended since my visit.
Snapshot: We spent Saturday morning visiting every race trailer in the pits to hand out spark plugs, contingency stickers and ball caps in minus-25 degree weather. We took a break inside the RV to warm up and have lunch. Without a word, Chris dug out a hibachi and some charcoal, pulled a big pack of bratwurst outta the fridge and started a barbecue outside the RV. I was stunned at the idea of grilling brats in such cold weather but it was normal for him, a Minneapolis native. We grilled brats and shared them with anyone who came walking by. We ran out of brats.
Not the actual brats, but a reasonable facsimile.
When we arrived trackside on Sunday morning, the weather had turned ugly enough that Chris suggested we bug out early or we'd never make it back to Minneapolis before dark. We were soon on the road South in a horizontal snowstorm, and the temperature was still around minus-25 degrees. The RV's heater was useless, and the full-blast defroster kept one square foot of windshield semi-clear. The engine belts kept freezing up with a loud squeal, then would heat up and work only to freeze again, over and over and over. The volt gauge kept bouncing from zero to 18 and back again. I was wearing ALL of my cold weather gear but still froze inside that cavernous RV.
As I carefully drove through the blizzard, the road ahead was covered with icy snow, visible only by two barely perceptible tire track lines. I drove like this for hours, thinking the whole time that I'd skid off into the forest and die, get buried by the snow and be found only after the Spring thaw. Luck was with us and we arrived at Chris' home before dark, so we drank several beers to celebrate not dying in a blizzard.
Epilogue: Stan Fox entered the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and was involved in a truly horrific crash that ended his racing career.
He was severely injured and in a coma for a week but survived. In 2000 he was killed in a head-on road collision while driving to a race meeting during a visit to New Zealand. R.I.P. Stan Fox. So it goes.
By the end of 1994, I'd lost my job at NGK and Mom was rehabbing at our home after suffering an alcoholic coma. 18 months later I was supervising regional personal watercraft (PWC) racing events for the IJSBA all over the country, and my spark plug technical background made me a very popular guy in the pits. So it goes.
I've been incredibly lucky to have enjoyed a long career that was so directly involved with the automotive performanceand motorsports industries. I have Dad to thank for my love of racing, which he infected me with at a young age. Many people think race fans only like to watch because of the crashes. They're 100% wrong in every conceivable way.
Motor racing of any kind can be exhilarating and dangerous, and the threat of mayhem, injury and death is always there. However, as Steve McQueen's character Michael Delaney said in the film 'Le Mans':
"Motor racing is important to men who do it well. For them, racing is life; anything that happens before and after... is just waiting."
All images, Gracias de Google Images; all videos, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.
I don't know about you, but discovering new music has a way of planting me right into the ground on a specific day or time or place and it never wavers, not even a little bit. I hear a tune and I time-travel to that time-stamp, RIGHT NOW.
Kurt Vonnegut called it 'being unstuck in time'. I tend to agree.
Grand Funk Railroad's 'Phoenix' LP, released (surprise!) on my birthday in September of 1972, is one of those seminal vinyl pressings that has aged very well and grown almost as important to my audiophile foundation as records by The Beatles or the Stones or Stephen Stills or Janis.
Hyperbole, you say? Let me try to explain. First, a little background is in order.
In September of 1972, I turned 16 years old and almost immediately got my First Car and my First Paying Job. As a newly-minted high school Junior, I'd soon discover the joys of cruising Whittier Blvd. on Saturday nights, drive-in movie dates and having to work a steady job at $1.65 an hour to keep myself clothed and my car fueled-up and insured.
Musically, I was all Beatles and Stones and Doobies and Led Zep and CCR, but Grand Funk Railroad (GFR) wasn't on my radar. However, my younger brother Chuck (R.I.P.) was all over GFR, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and lots of other bands that hadn't yet pierced my bubble.
I recall the day he brought home 'Phoenix', closed the door to his room, played it loud once and was disgusted by it because they'd committed the Cardinal Sin of trying something new. "THIS RECORD FUCKING SUCKS!", Chuck yelled in his room. A few seconds later he tossed it onto the floor of my room as he walked out the front door, headed somewhere to smoke something with someone.
Curious, I slapped that disc onto my turntable.
As the band's 6th studio LP, it was the first one they'd produced themselves after having fired long-time producer/manager Terry Knight. That alone was a huge shift, but they also decided to experiment with a new sound, new instruments and a new production style that would lose fans but gain them many new ones.
Here's a tune sampling of one of my favorite LP's... EVER.
'Flight of the Phoenix'
The opening track of this LP showcases Mark Farner blazing away on the keyboards and guitar in a bluesy hot-rod boogie of an instrumental, with Mel Schacher and Don Brewer ripping up the rhythm on bass and drums. Thickening up the boogie goo is new member Craig Frost on backing keyboards with a brilliant cameo by famed fiddler Doug Kershaw on his electric violin. This was complete heresy to GFR's loyal fan base (STRIKE ONE!!). Although there's an extended mix of this tune available, the LP's original track is the best one.
'Trying to Get Away'
True to their original sound but with so many more layers of sonic depth, a classic tune about being on the road and how much it can sometimes both suck and blow simultaneously. Again, the keyboards are front and center and the groove they develop is just so fine. Mark Farner's vocals are perfect.
'Someone'
A power ballad about loving a person who doesn't love back, the basis for so many tunes written by so many heartbroken souls. Great vocal harmonizing, cool and sweet, and Mel Schacher's bass is really highlighted.
'She Got to Move Me'
Another bluesy rock boogie about that scourge of the road-traveling rocker: underage groupies on the make. Like so many of the tunes on this LP, there's a jazz-inspired thread that makes it move.
'I Just Gotta Know'
A surprisingly political stance is taken in this one, with the theme of all youth pitching in to make the world a better place, no matter what it takes. Classic rockin' be here.
'Rock 'N Roll Soul'
One of their biggest hits and released as a single, this tune rose to #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. These guys knew what they were doing in the studio!
For a 'hard-rock' 70's band, they also had several Top 40 hits that included 'We're an American Band', 'The Loco-Motion', 'Some Kind of Wonderful' and 'Bad Time', were produced by Todd Rundgren and Frank Zappa, and survived intact through to their first breakup in 1976.
If this music speaks to you, find 'Phoenix' and play all the tunes for a peek into my time-warp mode. You'll be glad you did!
Special Bonus Track: 'Out To Get You' from their 1976 LP 'Good Singin'/Good Playin', produced by Frank Zappa who also shreds on lead guitar. This tune kicks so much ass.
"You cannot talk about rock in the 1970's without talking about Grand Funk Railroad!" -- David Fricke, ROLLING STONE Magazine
Lead image, Gracias de Google images; todos los videos, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.
