Through The Lens
- Updated: December 22, 2005
By Brad Phillips
Someone took “getting with the Scene” a little too far. Luckily, there were several photographers handy.
We have just released Carpe Diem 2, and are extremely proud of how it came out. From the response we’ve heard, so are you. But now we find ourselves thinking, what next? It has become almost second nature to start booking flights, grab the camera gear and begin traveling again; but first, a little celebrating! Before we could get down to the business of getting down to business we packed up and headed to Ft. Mitchell, KY for the GNC Awards Banquet. We started a ritual last year that we had to carry on this year; throwing the biggest and coolest after party in the hotel! Thankfully we weren’t on the hotel’s blacklist from the 2004 riot, so until we are, there will be a Premis Party each year. Anyway, back to the beginning of my story. We started the trip by driving from Iowa City to Indianapolis where we met up with Brock Lyons, Klint Anderson and Erin (a female friend of Klint’s that proved to be a good investment!). From there it was on to KY.
Skyler Stewart’s friend, Chad, jumps our fire pit on his fiddy.
Klint Anderson airing it out at Gordon’s Well.
We got to the hotel around 4pm, about an hour before the banquet started. We walked around for awhile, got checked in and started to set up the room for the after party. After that we went to Outback to get some grub. That’s where the typical shenanigans started. As we left Outback, Brock started to harass Erin, which led to Klint chasing Brock around the parking lot. As they were chasing each other I got in the truck, Klint jumped in the back and Brock was going for the front seat as I was creeping forward in the truck. Right as he jumped up to get in the truck I hit the brakes, I never saw anyone hit the dash so hard in my life, I thought we might be going to the hospital, but he was okay.
For the first time I didn’t’t actually attend much of the banquet, I was busy getting everything else ready. Around 9pm Klint and I went to a local store to buy some “supplies” (over $300 worth). When we got back to the hotel and filled the bathtub with our newest purchases. It was the perfect place for storing our new surplus of supplies. After that we officially started the party. I spent most of my time walking around the hotel in and out of the banquet and back and forth from my room.
Here’s a sand rail with a Corevette LS1engine with twin turbos. Sick!
I’m not sure who this is, but she is hot so here she is.
As the banquet wrapped up our hotel room started to fill. Everyone who was anyone was there for at least a little bit. The list included John Natalie, the Hetricks, Dunk, Cody Anderson, the Scene crew, Cale Downen, Jeremy Lawson, and several others. We had Carpe Diem 2 playing on the TV, Klint was behind the bar doing dj and bar keep duties and Brock was lost most of the time (we still don’t know where he went). At some point in the night a stack of Scene stickers came out and that’s when things got really interesting. This is where Erin really earned her keep by providing an entertaining photo op. Someone carefully turned a sticker into a bra, then all of the sudden we had several photographers shooting away like she was Tara Reid with an exposed boob on the red carpet. I watched in enjoyment and even joined the paparazzi myself with my video camera. It was around 5am when we got the yearly knock on the door by the Kentucky State Patrol, they decided the party was over so we quickly broke it up for good. After a quick nap we were back on the road again. As I drove home from the banquet I got a call from Skyler Stewart who was MIA at the Awards Banquet. Skyler informed me of a must attend outing at Glamis for Thanksgiving Weekend. I agreed on his terms, there was no way I would miss this! So I quickly booked plane tickets as I was driving home to fly out to Phoenix for Thanksgiving.
A look at the sand drags. There was over a quarter of a million people at Glamis on this day!
Giving Thanks to Glamis
My plane touched down in Phoenix around noon, November 22nd. I got my rental car and drove about two miles to meet Skyler for lunch. As I pulled into the Quiznos parking lot I began the proper “rental car break-in process” with a quick E-brake (the first of many), almost hitting a tree much to Skyler’s amusement. After lunch I met up with Brock and Klint (they drove down after the banquet). The rest of that day and the next one were pretty boring for our standards. We just sat around and got machines ready for the dunes. Finally, on the 24th we loaded up and headed for Glamis in Brock’s bad-to-the-bone hauler and trailer.
We were about 30 minutes from Glamis when a crazy man in a truck flew by us on the shoulder. As he pulled up next to Skyler something was thrown out of Skyler’s rig and into the truck. We later found out the crazy man in the truck was Darrel Patton and he was apparently thirsty from his long drive. The closer we got to the dunes the more excited I got. I couldn’t’t believe the number of people (and the amount of money) that were just hanging out in the dunes. There had to be at least 250,000 people there over the weekend! Once we pulled into our spot in the middle of the desert we unloaded all of the toys and began to play. Before I could even unload my camera gear they had built a fire and were jumping it on the 50’s. The rest of the night went pretty much the same.
Here the short bus comes to pick up Skyler for school.
Sand Highway at Gordon’s Well.
The next morning we got the race bikes and sand rails out to go look for some jumps to film. We found some pretty good hits but weren’t able to do as much filming as I would have liked. The day quickly turned into another screw-off day. We have way too many of those if you haven’t noticed. At night the usual activities commenced, with one exception, someone screwed up and gave Skyler the keys to a Yamaha Rhino. Brock, deciding not to let his buddy go off into the desert alone and got in with Skyler. You see, you have now taken some explosives (Skyler) and mixed it with an igniter (Brock), — the moral of the warning – bad things were bound to happen! About two hours after they left, we started to get worried, about an hour later we started to get really worried. Should we look for them in the mass over populated sand dunes or wait? We waited. An hour later they finally came back…with a broken foot. Skyler apparently tried to hit a sand berm at 45 MPH. The Rhino rolled, Brock got his foot caught under the roll cage, which ended his fun at Glamis and my ability to film much more riding. So we continued to have fun other ways with the realization that we would have to come back to Glamis later in the year to finish shooting. After a tiring four days in the desert we took it easy for the next couple of days until I had to fly out on Tuesday.
I am now back in the office finalizing my plans to go back down to Phoenix to film more for Carpe Diem 3. We had plans to put together a video from the 2006 Pro Quad Stadium Series, but since they were unexpectedly cancelled, we are just going to concentrate on Carpe Diem 3. We are planning on going back to Glamis to finish the riding part of the shoot and then head over to Ocotillo Wells, then on to Texas. You can check out that trip in future columns. See ya later.
