Our driver, Bryan, idled in the McDonald’s parking lot at dawn, freshly awake, sipping from a styrofoam cup and scrolling his iPod to some godforsaken punk group from the early Aughts who broke up when their bull-dyke singer got pregnant. I was sleepless, sailing through the wee hours on ginkgo biloba and Red Bull and vodka. The slender silver energy drink cans claimed they were sugar free. No sense in increasing the risk of stiff joints and blood clots out here.
We were forty minutes southwest of Las Vegas in a stateline acid-nightmare called Primm, stomping grounds of Whiskey Pete, Buffalo Bill and Terrible Herbst. Bryan, chatting spiritedly about the new bass guitar he picked up last night, pointed his ’97 Rodeo down back-roads and straight through the security gate without bothering to stop. Naturally the return of the Mint 400 after a twenty year hiatus demanded Total Coverage, but we had yet to secure the proper credentials.
At Pit B the trailers, RVs, trucks, tires, jacks, flags, barrels, radio antennas, coolers and camp stools formed two neat lines on either side of the course. This was the halfway point of the 96-mile loop that started and ended in Jean, through which two-dozen classes of buggies, trucks and nattering, slow-humping Stock Bugs that should be stomped out of existence would pass long into the afternoon.
No menacing vibes here. This was a well organized, focused set, the top crews blowing upward of three quarters of a million to compete for maybe four or six grand … All about endurance and the bragging rights. Even the onlookers were civil, mostly meek creatures. The four ZZ Top rejects hunkered down in truck bed lawn-chairs a couple yards over peered through binoculars, silently lipped their Skoal and respectfully kept their comments to themselves.
Where were the lowlifes and leeches, the maniacs and hustlers? The times, Dylan said, are a-changin’. Hell, motorcycles were dropped from the Great American Desert Race back in 1977. Binion’s Horseshoe swallowed up the Mint Hotel nearly twenty years ago. The Mint Gun Club was now an upstanding, pro-youth, Anti Alcohol Impaired operation called the Las Vegas Gun Club. The Hacienda, Dunes and Silver Slipper existed only in photographs and refurbished Neon Museum pieces. How long, oh lord, until the Corporate Vultures reduced the Circus Circus to rubble and broken dreams?
Heavy stuff on this bright desert morning. Instead of the Fashion Outlets and a yellow roller coaster rising in the background, what we needed was stiff drink. But the race kicked off a half hour ago, and the black helicopter tracking the leader was banking toward us. No time for frivolities. Action was afoot.
Around seven thirty Collins Motorsports’ No. 12 Mopar Dodge Ram 1500 ripped through the chute. Then nothing. Several minutes later another, lesser financed buggy galloped by. Nothing. One neon orange emblazoned with the word “Lucky” and a grinning sperm. Ye gods. There were women present, seven of them vehicle operators themselves. A black number done up in the dark spiderwebs of the evil Venom. Green and white and baby blue mechanical warthogs with their tapered noses in the air, coiled shocks pointing upward in the front and plump behinds sputtering behind. Five and a half hours remained, and few needed to pull over for servicing at this stage of the game. Even the anemic clouds of dirt settled lethargically. It seemed imperative to Press On, but the only real action was riding shotgun in Cameron Steel’s No. 16 Trophy Truck as it hit the jumps and the suspension dropped out. Or perhaps lying down in the middle of the asphalt at the few strategic road crossings where the maniacs caught significant air.
Even the absolute cream of the sporting press was clear across the country at Martinsville Speedway, their Blackberry shorthand frothing over NASCAR Christ-Figure Jeff Gordon and rest of the new breed of Adrenaline Junkies, owned and operated by the most heartless of conglomerates. Blue collar bloodlust financed by oil-barons and forty three hundred dead bodies in Iraq. The Mint crowd, meanwhile, flipped burgers on their portable grills and reminisced about when Robby Gordon was an off-road Wunderkind, sponsored before he was twenty, and pretty much won every class he raced in by a sizable margin. Super gnarled, the locals said.
Nearing noon, the thrill was gone. Bryan broke out string cheese and Rice Krispie Treats, but with no explosions, no Fiery Carnage of a ten car pileup, I was fading fast. Not even stories of one pit crew tossing a bag of dog shit in to keep their driver company could turn the tide. The legend, as it had so many times before, simply overshadowed the reality. I needed to return to my room, take a shower and regroup. It was nothing more than forty years of history settled upon me, and that ancient dust would soon be circling the drain.
Julie Seabaugh is a local gonzo journalist.
Illustration by Rick Sealock