Mohawks and Mullets

Due to popular demand (OK, it was just Leggy, but she expressed interest and she's popular), I am now going to share the story of how my family introduced ourselves to whole new facet of American Culture at a Monster Truck Rally. First let me prelude this with an explanation of how we came to find ourselves searching on Tikit Masstir for seats in the first place:

This summer we thought X was old enough to enjoy the finer points of county fairs: funnel cakes, hot dogs, big-ass pumpkins and kiddie rides. And it was during an attendance to a county fair that X was exposed to "monster trucks". From that day, he kept mentioning how he wanted to go to another fair to see the trucks. We knew that finding arena tickets would be very easy in this (red) neck of the woods, so we acquired three as a surprise to X.

When we arrived in the Metro and told X that we were going to see some monster trucks, he wanted to know if we would give them to him. He was thinking within the box and that we drove all that way to hand over a couple of toys. So imagine his face when he actually found out what was going to happen. Better yet, here's the look on his face that he had pretty much the whole two hours the rally was on:

As you can see I took some quick editing liberties to insure Mr. DD would not look out of place within the environment.

Have you ever seen a smile that big in your life? He was what I call over-the-moon. Ecstatic. He calls the head-phones "eartectors" and it was funny how he would mouth to us instead of actually speaking in a normal volume.

We brought ear-plugs, but Mr. DD decided he was a manly-man and wouldn't wear his. It isn't just monster trucks that you see/hear either. There were quads, xtreme moto-cross bikes, and even some gas powered radio contol cars. All loud - all the time.

If you weren't listening to the roar of the engines, you were blasted by the speakers with hard rock to which a little boy who was in the row in front of us, not much older than X and sporting an overgrown mohawk, would head-bang in sync with his mullet-wearing dad.

Here's an example of what we got to see:

Mr. DD has described the event several times to friends and family since our return. Always he adds the line, "There were more people then teeth." To be honest, I was suprised how many people there that were just your average, white-bread couples and families. Sure the family in front of us were serious fans (dad sported a GraveDigger t-shirt, which is the name of the truck in the pic above), but most were just like us and it was kind of fun to be out of the house doing SOMETHING.

Before the vehicles drove out of the arena and the announcer thanked everyone for coming, the crowd had already begun to get a head-start on the mass exodus. We made our move to step into the fray and when I turned to make sure X was behind me, I saw the tears start to well up in his big-brown eyes. I slipped into an empty row and pulled X to my lap who promptly started to sob quietly.

We sat there until the arena was empty with one sad little guy (I had another pix of him with me, but it won't download to my blog, sorry). We promised him that we would see if we could find another fair (he thought the rally was just another fair) so he can see the monster trucks again. Yes, I would do it again.

I really am a sucker for punishment and a pretty face.