The first few years running Diesel World I spent just about every other weekend on the road. Hitting as many shows, shops, or races I could. The last couple years I spent a little more time at home concentrating on other things to help grow the brand. Well oddly enough, during this “pandemic”, I’ve gotten myself back to the normal travel schedule I had years ago. My status with Hilton and American Airlines are back. So far I’ve logged a little over 40,000 miles. I think it was the first two weeks of quarantine that pushed me to make things happen. Being forced to stay home makes you think about things and what’s important. People, family and friends. There’s a lot of people I haven’t seen for a long while.
Moving on, the last 30-days I’ve spent 19 on the road. I write this from seat 7A over somewhere in the Midwest, on my way to Jeremy Wagler’s again, this time for the Fall nationals. I love me some sled pulls. Missed them. This will be the first pull I get to see this year whereas last year I went to 10 or so. From here I head to Beans Diesel for the Blackout in the Country. Drags, pulls, dyno, and burnouts! Live feeds for both of those events can be seen on our Facebook page, as well as most diesel events in the future.
But a little over a week ago I was on another trip visiting the guys at Industrial Injection first, then at Edge Products’ Weekend on the Edge, and GDP after. For those of you that have seen the carnage (if you haven’t, well you have now and we’ll have more about it next month) from Shawn Baca’s attempt to break his own record, and the 3000 HP mark, that Saturday afternoon is one I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I was working on our live feed when Baca rolled onto the dyno. I stayed inside our little video village for his first hit, watched the hit from behind a warehouse door and immediately ran outside to congratulate Baca on breaking the record. Baca’s Master Shredder II put down 2920 hp and over 4k torque. Something we’ve never seen before. Not even close. It was all smiles around the dyno, heck I had goosebumps, Baca then jumped down from the dyno, went running towards his trailer yelling back at everyone “I’m getting more nitrous!!!” This wasn’t over, he was going for 3k, in true Shawn Baca fashion. So I went back inside to tend the live feed for a bit and came back out just to see the smoke clean up as the turbos spooled/ nitrous hit, then the largest most violent explosion I’ve ever seen on a dyno shook the whole place. The block split sending the tow half of the engine a foot above the cab. At first I thought that was going to be the last time I saw my friends Kody Pulliam and Shawn Baca, I froze in place, at that moment you can hear me say “Oh God no” on the video, I don’t even remember saying it. But then as I saw Kody’s head pop out the door I went running to help, albeit only a few yards as he (and Baca) both got out almost instantly. Both were ok, light burns and bruises but nothing more, this from an event that should have ended up so much worse. Watching everyone run towards the danger to pull the guys out to safety, I don’t think many people notice that in the videos, the response was instantaneous and perfectly done. Some really great people.