Posted: 3/30/10
The latest stop in Axial's West Coast Championship Series was Long Beach, Washington. Long Beach is a small tourist town located in the southwest corner of Washington. There are many things to do in this small town from cart racing, moped rentals, horse back riding, clam digging, biking, etc. There are also a number of good restaurants in town as well, making Long Beach a nice location for a family vacation/getaway. The competition was held right on the beach by the ocean. The terrain was a mix of sandstone and jagged water eroded ledge that was covered in moss. The traction there, to my surprise, was extremely high almost like sand paper. We went into this comp expecting rain all day since that had been the forecast all week. But, to everyone's surprise the sun was out and shining all day long giving us perfect weather.For this comp Scott Hughes and I flew into Portland, Oregon. Once there we met up with Steve Brown from Vanquish Products who was riding along with us to check out the comp. After loading up the rental car we hit the road destined for Tammies Hobbies in Beaverton, Oregon. Tammies is known to have tons of crawler products in stock from scale accessories to full on competition parts.
A few pictures from Tammies Hobbies.
Steve Brown and Ryan Gerrish showing off some sweet Vanquish wheels
Ryan's custom rock racer, 50% rock crawler, 50% 4x4 Slash...................100% sick!!
Got scale crawler parts?
Need motors?
Comp wheels?
Maybe trains are your thing?
Me getting an education in rock crawling
Back on the road again, this was my view for the 2 hour ride from Beaverton to Long Beach along the Lewis and Clark trail. Yawn.....
That's a little better view
Scott and Steve, or Lewis and Clark.........................it's tough to tell the difference.
Almost there
Once we checked into the hotel, and scoped out the comp site a little we all met at the Light Ship bar and grill above our hotel for early tech. The view from the dining area was sweet.
Stuart checks drivers in while Brian ponders the meaning of life.
For dinner I choose pasta
Stuart dives into his freshly prepared steak
Brad Bailey helped Brian and Stuart with rig tech
Insert you own caption here
Drivers file in for tech inspection
The comp site on game day.
Group shot before comp
Driver's meeting
Comp time
Scott Hughes on his first course
Me on course #2
Cory Hannah working course #1
Parker doing work
A group of vehicles pulled into a cove beyond the comp site early in the morning. Once the tide came up they were trapped on an out cropping of rock for hours until the tide went back out. Coast Guard made a few passes through to make sure no one was in immediate danger.
Stuart Gartner on course #1
Random shots
Rock Candy winner Mindy Howe
Captain Axial, or a really bad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume? What is that on the side of your....................never mind I don't want to know.
More random shots
Ryan Gerrish
And the winners are.......
Rock Candy:
Mindy Howe
Sport Class:
1st Cole Bailey
2nd Tazz Judkins
3rd Rod Comstock
Pro Shafty:
1st Dave Copher
2nd Cody Cannell
3rd Marc Linn
Overall:
1st Dustin Siegfried
2nd Josh Smith (not pictured)
3rd Ryan Gerrish
That wraps event #4 up. What a weekend!! Great weather, good people and an awesome location, what more could we ask for? A huge thanks to the Oregon and Washington clubs for all their help, we couldn't have done it without you. Also Axial would like to thanks all the judges, volunteers and anyone else that helped this event along, we really appreciate all the help. See you in 2 weeks at Lake Amador, Ca.
