Demolition Derby... then and now!

Demolition Derbys.

I don't think I had ever heard of them until we moved to Idaho. The summer after we got married we found that our county sponsored a Demolition Derby. It was in support of the firefighters and police and so Phil and I went. What an interesting experience. The first three photos are from that first Demo Derby.

For those of you who haven't watched one of these it's a crazy experience. Basically the idea is that people take their old beater cars, soup them up by adding harnesses for the driver, taking out all the glass, putting a big engine in it and then taking it into an arena and destroy it by smashing it into other cars who have done the same thing. You tend to see a LOT of smoke, sometimes fires, cars leaking fluids and general mahem. The various cars are normally sponsored by someone, like the police dept will have a car, and Joe's automotive will, so that people are not spending all of their money. It's crazy to see how very into in the fans get. People yell and scream and of course pick their favorites.

Needless to say Phil was VERY excited when we found that Colorado Springs was sponsoring a little county fair with a demolition derby. Phil's parents came down for the weekend and we got Ivy into her overalls for some Demo fun. Here's more pics of us with Phil's dad and Ivy in front of the cars. I think she liked the sounds! There's something primal about watching cars get smashed up.

We also found a list of rules when we went on the website for the fair. We could have entered, but unfortunatley we need our beater cars! Some that we found the most interesting were cars cannot hit head on, they can't go over 35 mph or 3rd gear. If they catch fire, the lose. They have two minutes to get their cars working, or they lose.

Maybe someday.