Trail Mom, Barbara Rainey, executive director for the Off-Road Hall of Fame on Episode 48

The most positive woman in off-road, Trail Mom, Barbara Rainey joins us for Episode 48. This episode is long on story, from Reno Rock to the Off-Road Hall of Fame.  Innovation and grit at its finest. Barbara’s interview tells a bigger story, though, we all have to get involved in preserving our stories.  The Off-Road Hall of Fame is a great place to start. Get involved with a partnership, a membership or a donation today. www.ORMHOF.org 

April is nomination month at ORMHOF, it's time to get started on your packets and nominations.

2:59 – I just wanted to go to the Races!  

4:32 – David got the girl, but not the Jeep

6:33–  having a list and a roll of quarters

10:57 – innovators and instigators, aggravators and agitators

14:29 – special place in heaven for race promoters

20:56 – the strongest link then is the weakest link now

23:07– the importance of Tread Lightly

27:09 – Reno Rocks is born, and the lessons there 

43:34 – testing the ramps in my rental car

49:32 – when I get stuck, I ask two questions

52:66 – the history of the Offroad Motorsports Hall of Fame

1:00:15 – everyone’s got a story

1:08:19 – the loss of the home of the vehicle collection

1:15:05 – it’s not the off-road Racing hall of Fame, it’s the off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame

We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.

www.maxxis.com

www.4lowmagazine.com 

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

All Automotive with Matt Clawson
Automotive related topics. Anything from owning an repair facility to racing. Anything...

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Transcript

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[00:00:01.080] 

Welcome to the Big Rich show, this podcast will focus on conversations with friends and acquaintances within the four wheel drive industry. Many of the people that I will be interviewing, you may know the name, you may know some of the history, but let's get in depth with these people and find out what truly makes them a four wheel drive enthusiast. So now's the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation. Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of MOAB or hauling your toys to the trail Maxxis has the tires, you can trust for performance and durability.

 [00:00:37.950] 
Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires is the choice of champions, because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires delivers choose Maxxis tread victoriously.

[00:00:56.040] 
Why should you read 4Low magazine, because 4Low magazine is about your lifestyle, the Four-Wheel Drive adventure lifestyle that we all enjoy, rock crawling, trail riding, event coverage, vehicle builds, and do it yourself tech all in a beautifully presented package. You won't find 4Low on a newsstand rack.

[00:01:16.510] 

So subscribe today and have it delivered to you.

[00:01:20.190] - Big Rich Klein

On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Barbara Rainey.

 [00:01:25.170] 

Barbara has been well, she's been around offroad a long time. We got acquainted doing the Reno Rock's event and we will discuss that.

 [00:01:36.510] 
We'll discuss being the managing partner, office manager, the Offroad Hall of Fame and Barbara's significant impact there. So, Barbara, let's go ahead and get started in. Where did you grow up?

[00:01:52.610] - Barbara Rainey

Well, hi, Rich, and everybody, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with you. Yes, I've been around a long time, as Dave Cole likes to say, since Barbara's been around offroad since before, since wheels were square. So I am a Southern California beach girl, grew up there in the 70s. And probably the thing that defines me the most is just I like wide open spaces. I want to see what's over the next horizon, always leaning in, pushing ahead, wanting to see what's next.

[00:02:27.650] 

Grew up riding horses through the hills, body surfing at the beach. And pretty much everybody says, well, you must have been rich to live there. No, it was just a good time to be in Southern California in the 60s and 70s and Orange County and Laguna San Juan area. And it was just magical. And I lived near Orange County Raceway, couldn't explain why I wasn't from a car family. My dad drove a Corvair and was an aerospace engineer, but I just wanted to go to the races.

[00:02:59.570] 

So I showed up at Orange County Raceway one day in my teens, wound up working in the souvenir stand. And so that's how I got my start in racing. Was at Orange County International Raceway in the 70s?

[00:03:12.470] - Big Rich Klein

Wow, that's pretty interesting. I knew that you were you got involved in racing, but didn't realize it was from the souvenir stand.

 [00:03:22.770] - Barbara Rainey

Well, you know, that's a great place to start in the marketing, and then I worked in working in the timing tower and ran the telewriter. If you're a drag, you know, you work at a drag strip and the cars go down the quarter mile, somebody has to write down the times and the speeds and then this fancy little old antiquated machine would mimic that what I wrote up in the tower and take it down to the other end and the guys would pick up their timing slips at the other end from the booth.

 [00:03:48.180] 

So got to do a lot there and really got my boots on the ground. Education in marketing learned from some of the greats. I worked for Charlie Allen and Bill Donner and my friend Lynn Rose. We worked side by side at the raceway and put on events like the Buggins and the Fox hunts and the 64 funny cars and manufacturers' championships and anything anybody that grew up in Southern California in the 60s, 70s, 80s, that was that place to be and those were the events to be at.

 [00:04:17.550] 

And so I got a real education on operations and marketing from my experience there. And that's where I met my husband to have kind of fun.

 [00:04:28.800] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. And your husband is David, right?

 [00:04:32.670] - Barbara Rainey

You can't talk about trail mom without talking about recovery. Dave, my husband was stationed at the USMC El Toro, which was right next to OCIR. And actually we met over a Jeep pickup truck, which is kind of funny. One of the companies I work for had a pickup truck for sale, a Jeep truck in the 70s, and my our chief starter, Smitty, Ron Smith told David he was a, Smitty was a, he was a gunnery sergeant at the Marine base. And then he worked over at the track and he told David there was this girl that had a pickup for sale and flash forward. Forty two years and we're still together and still at the races.

[00:05:14.670] - Big Rich Klein

So not only did he pick up the truck, but he picked up you.

[00:05:19.210] - Barbara Rainey

You know, he didn't he didn't buy the truck, but he got the girl, so I don't know if these wonders if that was a good, good decision or not. You might be wish that he had that Old J-10 back.

[00:05:33.250] - Big Rich Klein

That's awesome. How long were you there at the Orange County Raceway?

[00:05:38.890] - Barbara Rainey

Yeah, I was there. You know, we were there five or six years. You know, unfortunately, one of the hallmarks of any kind of racing and it's a thread through everything we do is land use issues. And, you know, it just got too expensive to keep the track going. So the track closed in eighty three. We did world finals there and before the track closed, I kind of went and looked for some other things to do, answered a blind ad in the Orange County Register.

[00:06:04.630] 

And everybody remembers going to the classified ads to find your jobs. And it turned out to be stadium motorsports and stadium motorsports, were the producers of the Super Cross and that was Mike Goodwin and that was in Laguna Beach. So that took me on my next journey around the country, putting on Supercross. And I'm still friends with my boss, John Bradley to this day. Doing television back in the early 80s was kind of hysterical to try to do things.

[00:06:33.670] 

You know, character generation was just coming in. We didn't have computers. We just barely got computers. And we had all kinds of crazy ways to try to communicate and put on events across the country. And then through that, I worked and had the privilege and the honor of working for Mickey and Trudy Thompson in the Grand National Sport Truck series, Mickey Thompson's Stadium Truck series. And we would go around the country and put on those events. One of the people today, I mean, it's just hard to even comprehend how you would put on an event and we'd get to a city, Rich, and you get your hotel room and in your hotel room was a list of things you needed to do.

[00:07:16.030] 

Remember, there's no computers, there's no no cell phones, nothing. So you'd have a list. And to me, it was kind of like a scavenger hunt and you'd have a list and a roll of freakin quarters for the payphone and you couldn't spend any money. The trick back then was you had this massive stadium that seated 80000 people. We knew you weren't going to sell 80000 seats. So you'd have to go out and find what you needed, but you would trade VIP tickets.

[00:07:44.110] 

Your list might say find cars for King Kong, the monster truck to crush. So you got to go to a junkyard and, you know, drive around in your rental car with your roll of quarters and you find cars and you trade the guy at the car salvage company some tickets and then you have to find carpet to put the cars on in the stadium because they won't let you put the cars on their concrete. So then you got to go to a carpet company and find some carpet and trade them some tickets and so on and on and on.

[00:08:16.060] 

And the mechanics of putting on these events kind of in the dark ages. But boy, it was fun and it was an adventure.

[00:08:23.950] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty cool. I, I didn't know how. How that all worked back then, and it's intriguing because putting on events now, it's a lot easier when we can just look everything up on the computer or on a cell phone and then make the calls.

[00:08:42.060] 

I mean, everybody complains about Google knowing everything, but with without Google knowing everything. It would make my job a lot harder.

[00:08:50.890] - Barbara Rainey

Right now, it's now the challenge to me is editing things out, you have access to anything and everything, and so how do you refine that into something that is succinct and makes sense and tells you your message? And then it's also a challenge for all the businesses to, you know, how do you cut through all the noise?

[00:09:13.240] 

And then when you establish something, things are a moving target a lot faster now, you know, just a time by the time you get the hang of frickin'  Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, then here comes you TikTok and all these other platforms. So and then do you chase them or do you know when is the timing? Right. So the challenges are different. But there are people in our industry, which is the thing I love about our industry is the people, you know, they're certainly up to the challenge.

[00:09:47.120] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. And I think a lot of us have picked or Chosen this industry because of the people, the relationships, you know, that one of the recurring themes in all of these podcasts that I've done so far is that everybody talks about, you know, the the people they get to hang out with. And it is so true from our side of it, dealing with the racer's, dealing with our marketing partners and advertisers and dealing with the spectators and the property owners and the manufacturers and everything.

[00:10:23.410] 

It's just absolutely a phenomenal business to be in or an industry to be in if you can create it into a lifestyle.

[00:10:31.810] 

Yes. You know, the people in off road. And again, that's what draws me to it. You know, after I worked for Mickey and Trudy and and we we moved to Reno, Nevada, for my husband's work. And we're still here. And I'm so I kind of step back a little bit and we got more into recreational Off-Road. You know, we're blessed to be right here by the Rubicon and the Black Rock Desert and Fordyce

[00:10:57.220] 

And I mean, we can you know, I can go out the back door and there's there's a wild horse eating right outside my house right now. So the kind of that don't fence me in the spirit of the West, you know, but people of off road are I always like to say they're innovators and instigators. They're aggravators and agitators. You know, they're that to me, it's the spirit that settled this country and won World Wars.

[00:11:24.910] 

And, you know, sometimes the best of us is the worst of us. And obviously, there are situations where that rears its head. But in general, you know, these are people who are pushing forward and trying to make something happen. One of my favorite stories when I took over the Hall of Fame is we have the yellow class, 8 Chevy of Parnelli Jones and Walker Evans. And that truck won everything back in the day and they actually moved it up a class because they couldn't they just couldn't believe that it was unbeatable.

[00:11:58.960] 

And, you know, somebody sent me, of course, usually you're your dissenters send you anonymous messages, you know, they don't have the guts to tell you in person. But I had somebody send me a note and say, you know, that's a cheater truck.

[00:12:17.830] 

And so I looked into it and researched it. And, you know, you can look at it one of two ways. If it's your truck, it's innovation. You're pushing the envelope. And that's another hallmark of off roaders. They're always pushing the frickin envelope, you know, and sometimes that gets annoying. So this truck. Yes, that pushed the envelope and it was an innovative truck. If it's your truck, you know, if it's beating you all the time.

[00:12:41.410] 

Yeah, it's a cheater because you haven't figured out how to you haven't figured out how to innovate around it. And that's you know, you look at rock crawling and off road and even recreational wheeling every day there's somebody looking at a jeep or or, you know, a taco or a Toyota and saying, what can I do to make this better? Ultra4, look at Ultra4, my goodness. You know, just since 2007 when it was a bunch of, you know, a few homebuilt buggies and a few jeeps and and look at where it's gone and the innovation, and then that provides thousands of jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs.

[00:13:22.120] 

It fuels our economy, you know. So all these innovations and these innovators, yeah, there's some failures. And, yeah, people have fun with, you know, calling them overlanders and snorkels and light bars and whatever. But you know what? The there are so many positives that outweigh any of the negatives. That's what I choose to look at and to applaud and to highlight. We don't need any more critics.

[00:13:47.320] - Big Rich Klein

True, you have to be one of the most positive, upbeat and love every one person that I know.

[00:13:57.050] - Barbara Rainey

Well, I've never like that

[00:13:59.610] - Big Rich Klein

I've never heard you talk ill about anybody in the in our industry, it's it always amazes me. You have so many friends and everybody really does look up to you that has ever met you and is amazed. But you're you're just so kind and having to deal with everybody that you deal with.

[00:14:23.690] 

I have to give you like the biggest gold star ever

[00:14:29.640] - Barbara Rainey

Ill pin it right to my Strait-Jacket here in the sanitarium at the Offroad Hall of Fame. No, so here's how I feel about that. And we have talked about that in the past. There is a special place in heaven for race promoters.

[00:14:46.440] 

Unfortunately, most of the time it looks like hell because until you have been in those shoes and seen what people have done, you know, anybody that's out there in the world trying to do something positive, if you're not going to get in there and help them, the least you can do is get out of the way, you know. Right. And maybe it's because I'm an old person now. But, you know, I've my youthful exuberance took me to a lot of wonderful things and places and all that energy.

[00:15:19.850] 

And I also made some epic mistakes, too, you know, and but you don't have the success without the failure. You know, you go back to the old baseball batting average. You know, even if you're even if you're the, you know, the home run king, you still struck out 50 percent of the time. So I look at the people who are willing to stick their neck out there to do things for us so that we can enjoy what we love to do.

[00:15:46.820] 

Like look what Dave's gone through with King of the Hammers right now, just trying to put on an event, look at all the stuff you and Shelley do and did for your love of rock, crawling with traveling the country for WE Rock. You know, people see the podiums and they see the exciting part. They don't see you guys at the truck stops in the middle of the night or after all, the spectators leave and there's 50 frickin course flags up on that hill that need to come down and be carted down to the truck and packed up.

[00:16:16.760] 

And, you know, there are a lot of people who want the glory, but there are not many people who are willing to put in the work. And usually the people who are putting in the work aren't really doing it to seek the glory. They're doing it because of the love of what they do. And they just almost you almost can't help yourself. You know, and I kind of look at the Hall of Fame that way. And I hope we can talk more about the Hall of Fame than about me, because, you know, that's far more interesting.

[00:16:44.210] - Barbara Rainey

Oh, the Hall of Fame. We'll get into the Hall of Fame deeply. But, you know, your background is substantial. The like I said, the number of people that you know. Even before you started in the offroad Hall of Fame was just absolutely incredible and the impact that you've made to people's lives, everybody that I know that has met you would would would say it. You know, it's been phenomenal. So.

[00:17:13.800] - Barbara Rainey

Wow. I don't know if this is your life, Barbara Rainey, That's very kind of you to say thank you.

[00:17:20.670] - Big Rich Klein

No worries. But it's it's all comes from the heart. It really does. Right. Right.

[00:17:26.190] - Barbara Rainey

So. Well, you kind of start looking back and you see, you know, like when I when I stop working for for the event business, I made a conscious decision to stay home and raise my kids. We've always been recreational off roaders always since we met. And my husband, we still have our 1970 CJ6. We still have our 1942 flat fender that we would take the family through the Rubicon in in the 80s. We look kind of like the Clampett going to Beverly Hills because we'd have a family of four in the fully aired flat fender on 31s, you know, with the tent on the top and the kids in the car seats.

[00:18:05.910] 

And so I've spent over 40 years, you know, on the trails loving the American West and off road is the way that we get out there. And we were able to enjoy it.

[00:18:21.630] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. So true. And that and with that, when was the first time that you ran the Rubicon?

[00:18:29.850] - Barbara Rainey

Maybe nineteen eighty six.

[00:18:34.210] 

OK, you know, that was that was a century ago it seems like.

[00:18:41.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. I started running that area in 83, so. Yeah.

[00:18:46.440] - Barbara Rainey

And I'd always heard so much about it. I thought it was life threatening. It's actually just rig threatening, you know, if you're not dumb. You know, my husband did have to rip the door off the outhouse once back in the 80s to make a backboard for a guy whose rig had backed off a Little Sluice or something and gone down a hill. But, you know, the Rubicon is an amazing experience. But it's again, it's the people you meet.

[00:19:15.030] 

It's being on the trail. It's that self-reliance and independence and that spirit of being able to fix it. Our friend Tim Albaniano, we met him in there in the I think in the late 80s, we saw Tim welding a drive shaft for a guy with two batteries in line wearing two pairs of sunglasses. Unless you're of a certain age, you can't appreciate the that was like seeing the Holy Grail. You just couldn't believe that somebody could do that.

[00:19:50.710] 

Absolutely correct. You know, now you just pop the hood, you get your portable welder, you put on your shield and down the road you go. But, you know, there are new challenges and things that are of a different kind. They're they're more on the side of, you know, loving places to death and taking, you know, what to do with human waste and overuse and those types of things, because the technology now allows people to get out in greater numbers and do all the things that in the old days were pretty unheard of.

[00:20:25.090] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, you can buy a vehicle right now for the first time as a newbie and have all the things that you had to build up to. And that's one thing the manufacturers and the aftermarket has done really well, as has looked at. At the end user, whether it's a racer or an extreme wheeler, what they've done to their vehicle to make it so capable and now the manufacturers are doing that from the factory.

[00:20:56.960] - Barbara Rainey

Right. Well, it's kind of come down to the point that these days, in the old days, the the strongest link was the the resourceful guy behind the wheel who had to know where to place the tires, how to maintain your vehicle, what you know, what you could do with what you had.

[00:21:15.440] 

And now it's almost like I'm probably going to make some enemies. But I think the weakest link is the person behind the wheel almost anymore because the vehicles are so capable and, you know, they can they can get people in more trouble and they can get people into places they shouldn't be. And, you know, we really need to educate people on on proper ways to do things. And I'm thinking the recreational side because we don't want more places shut down.

[00:21:49.850] 

That's the last thing we need. And that's been the trend for the first 50 years of the sport. And so we kind of are dedicating ourselves to that kind of education as well.

[00:22:03.710] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. I think that even the proliferation of UTVs has it's been great for the off road market, but it's also been detrimental. Without the without the manufacturers having some kind of a program in place to teach the new enthusiasts trail etiquette and environmental concerns that we all share, that creates chaos in a lot of areas.

[00:22:34.940] 

And I'm just hoping that somehow we can get manufacturers involved in in looking at the the end use of their vehicles a little bit more than than just as soon as they somebody writes that check that and they get handed the keys that they're no longer, you know, under the care or guidance of the manufacturers.

[00:22:58.760] - Barbara Rainey

Correct, and, you know, with the side by sides, then you have all the trailers in the tow rig, so let's say 30 of your friends are going to go on a side by side run.

[00:23:07.700] 

You have to have a place to park 30 trucks and trailers. I mean, so there's all kinds of, you know, blessings that and challenges that come with this new innovation, the Hall of Fame. We believe so strongly in this that I don't know when this is airing, but probably not before the Hammer's next week. We're actually partnering with Tread Lightly as one of their partners. And then we're going to give them, you know, last year.2020, Holy mackerel was with not a lot of fun here at the Hall of Fame, but we did it anyway and we went through it and we're tough and we're going to get through it. But we were not able to have our induction ceremony. And I want to talk about that with you. But we felt strongly that we wanted to continue our support and do some of our other things. So every year we give a land use award, we take a percentage of our partnerships and we award those to a land use organization.

[00:24:10.070] 

And in the past, last year it was given to the Red Rock Four Wheelers, their multiple-use defense fund, as you know, Red Rock Four Wheelers, they run MOAB Easter Jeep and they have a great multiple use defense fund where they go out and fix trails and make sure they're safe. The year before, we gave it to the friends of Oceano Dunes who are fighting the battle to keep the dunes open. In twenty seventeen we gave it to CORVA and the San Diego Off Road Coalition in 2016.

[00:24:45.350] 

We gave that award to Blue Ribbon, and then this year for 2020 we'll be presenting that at King of the Hammers. To Tread Lightly we'll be giving them our land use  donation and give them a big check.

[00:24:58.790] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, that's awesome to hear. Great. So let's go ahead and get started to 2010, when 2009 was nine, oh, my lord, nine nine.

[00:25:13.460] 

OK, let's go back to that.

[00:25:15.920] 

Oh my gosh.

[00:25:17.120] 

So you see, I'm getting too old for this stuff and I didn't keep good notes and all the most of the history that I had that was destroyed, so.

[00:25:28.780] 

All right, let's go let's go into 2009 and talk about how it all came about to have a rock crawling event downtown or really close to downtown Reno.

[00:25:44.510] 

So I kind of melded two things. One, I got when we moved to Reno and I got out of working in the actual industry in 1983, I started working at the Sands Hotel Casino in Reno and did advertising marketing events. And we had a Reno Sparks special events committee that came up with things like the air races, balloon races, Rib Cookoff, Chili Cookoff, Hot August nights. So we had this great series of citywide events and the concept was all of the casinos and the convention authority we all had and the city of Reno, we all had a stakeholder and we would meet and we would cooperate to put on these great events and the city would cooperate on the permit side and the Convention and Visitors Authority would throw their marketing dollars and promotion behind it.

[00:26:39.080] 

And all the casinos would put up prizes and rooms. And, you know, it was a day of it was a great day of cooperation. You could really see what happen when people work together. And there's a little lesson there for my wish for the Off-Road community, too. So we came up with all these great events and then I was on a trail run in 2008. I was at the Hi-lo's Poker Run, one of the longest running events out here in the West on the Deer Valley trail.

[00:27:09.590] 

And I'm bouncing up the trail and the C.J six with the T111 transfer case. So it's kind of like a four wheel drive tractor. And I'm thinking and I'm thinking maybe we could do a rock crawl in Reno. And I thought, wow, we could put rocks down Virginia Street under the Reno Arch. We could have Southern Rock band playing in Harris Plaza. We could have rock light parades up the street and then we could build a rock crawling course in the Sands parking lot.

[00:27:41.720] 

And then we would do that through this Reno Sparks Special Events Committee and it would start a new citywide event. And so I thought that would be great. So I pitched it to the owners, but the general manager at the time didn't want to share it. Lesson number one, didn't want he didn't want to give it to anybody else or have anybody else help us. So he said, yeah, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it the way you wanted to do it.

[00:28:07.910] 

I want you to do it. And I don't want to do with any support from anybody else in the community or any of the other, you know. And so he basically said, sure, you can do it and then took away my tool kit. So I said, OK, now what do I do? So we had worked with some fabulous people. And I have to tell you that working with like Bob and Stacey Frank from over in Oroville and all the people, if anybody is listening to this, that help with Reno rocks, you all know who you are.

[00:28:42.620] 

And so that was the name I came up with was Reno Rocks. And again, I played around with a lot of names, and that's the one that I settled on. And so we came and then I knew of WE Rock. And so I approached you and I actually drove down to Placerville to see you and Rich in 2008, end of the year. It was a tough time for you and your family. And you were very gracious to me despite all you were going through.

[00:29:13.640] 

And we decided, yeah, we'll do it. And so then we had to come up to speed on how the heck do you do this? So we decided on hay bales and shotcrete.

[00:29:25.410] 

Yeah, there you go.

[00:29:26.700] 

And everybody else is laughing at your laugh, too. But we did it, you know, and we partnered with Pirate four by four. Mind you, this is before really you had social media. Facebook was kind of brand new, but nobody knew how to use it yet. So forums were still the thing. So we pushed it out through pirate four by four. And again, another innovation. You can appreciate how hard it was back then, looking at how it's still hard now.

[00:29:54.890] 

It's just they make it look easy to to stream something. So we decided to stream it live. Camo and. Lance was still a pirate. I think it was Camo that told me he would do the event live if I gave him the penthouse and a life size Captain Morgan statue.

[00:30:20.120] 

So I'm like, OK. Luckily, I have a friend who has a liquor distributor. Thank you. Scary Gary. You know who you are. He came up with the I went over to his place, took a picture of a Life-Size Captain Morgan statue and said, game on to Lance and Camo. And then we had some other great video partners and we streamed Reno Rocks live around the world. We had the guys from Japan came over, Jeff Mello won with Dave Cole spotting for him.

[00:30:56.960] 

And it was Jeff Mello's 100th win, Dustin Webster was there, Shannon Campbell was there. And what I thought was great about Reno Rocks is it really embraced the lifestyle. You know, to that point, most events are kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Well, we had the infamous we had pool parties.

[00:31:17.900] 

We had bikini contests. After seeing what camo was doing with those dollar bills, I immediately stopped sending my kids to school with ones for lunch money.

[00:31:34.150] 

And this is great. You know, we premiered the second King of the Hammers movie, The Second Crusade. I didn't know Jeff and Dave at that point, but I called them up and said, hey, we're doing this event and I want to do your premiere, your movie. And so we premiered the Second Crusade in the ballroom on four big screens and we had the bars across the hall. The biggest mistake I made was not enough bartenders.

[00:32:04.610] 

I had no idea what kind of booze. Oh, my God. Well, I don't think we would have had enough booze if we'd had enough bartenders. We just couldn't push it out fast enough. And then, of course, we all remember the penthouse parties after the parties.

[00:32:22.940] 

How do we asked Kevin Carey, Lance Clifford and Camo, taking over the stage with the live band and their impromptu version of Highway to Hell? Yeah, there were some great memories. There were some rough patches along the way, you know, getting rid of all that stuff from Reno Rocks, the trucking company broke the hay bales apart, you know, and make stuff up. Yes. And so they charged me by the truckload to get rid of that stuff.

[00:32:58.340] 

And they made sure it was as fluffy as possible. So and then we had the hydro barriers, the water barriers, which and Mickey Thompson invented those. I have some great Mickey Thompson stories, too. So when the event was over, somebody well, after we got Dustin Webster off the course because the insurance guy was hyperventilating, so they were playing around afterwards.

[00:33:22.700] 

Anyway, somebody pulled the plug on all of the hydro barriers all at the same time. And we basically flooded Second Street. It ran all the water, went, you know, across out the parking lot and off the other side. So, you know, when you put on an event, people think of the fun side. But, you know, it really boils. It's insurance companies fighting over who's going to be listed first. It's permit's you know, it's trash.

[00:33:48.800] 

It's toilets. You know, my success formula for a successful event is you can do anything if you have trash and toilets and boobs and beer. And it doesn't matter what the event is after doing this for 40 plus years. So but that's yeah. Reno Rocks was I just think everybody that participated. And but what happened was because we because the general manager made that cornerstone decision to have us for at ourselves, we we lost a significant amount of money on the event because there were no other partners and no other support.

[00:34:31.430] 

And while they were really delighted with the outcome and there was a lot of positives about that time, the effects of the economic crash in like 2008, you know, kind of yeah, the wave rolled over the Sands and we had actually been purchased by the Herbst family. Their bank pulled their line of credit and said, no, you're not going to be doing anything anywhere. And then the Sands actually went back to the banks that owned it.

[00:35:07.280] 

So that kind of kind of put a stop to that. And, you know, it's funny, you have a vision for something and it doesn't turn out anything like your vision, but it still turns out pretty cool. And I think. Anybody that wants to do something like that has to look at that and things kind of have a life of their own, you know, if you feel called to do something, you know, my goodness, go, go give it a shot.

[00:35:31.690] 

It's better to try it and go down in flames than to wonder your whole life. What if, you know, I have a little saying on my desk that says the little engine that coulda, shoulda, woulda, you know. Right. And, you know, you don't get very far that way. So you got to be willing to get out there and fight for what you believe in and support the things that you believe in and and then get out of the way of the people whose dreams are different than yours.

[00:36:05.860] - Big Rich Klein

Very true. So you mentioned, by the way, that that event is probably the one event. And it's not just because of the Rock crawl, but because of the show and shine, and the pool party and the the the bar parties and the after after after parties and everything that.

[00:36:28.280] 

That was involved with that weekend. Was makes it the one event that will always stand out in my memory as being the top.

[00:36:39.880] - Barbara Rainey

Thank you. Yeah, we all did it together again, it goes back to that thing about working together and everybody having a shared love for something, you know, you don't always agree. You don't always get your way. But in the end, when you're doing something because you love it and you have a passion for it, it'll turn out OK.

[00:37:03.610] - Big Rich Klein

I agree with you 100 percent. And one thing I can say is I'm I was absolutely shocked that we didn't get closed down Saturday night by the SWAT teams or local law enforcement somehow because that that casino hotel was the stories that everybody could tell from that night would fill volumes of books that nobody should ever read.

[00:37:34.390] - Barbara Rainey

And, you know, so here's a little behind the scenes thing. You know, we had there's noise permits. You got to be done by 10:00. It's like, OK, we'll be done by 10:00. So you're trying to get a bunch of these guys to stop being making noise by 10:00. And there was that apartment building on Arlington that looked down a big tall apartment building. And there was a guy in one of those apartments. Lots of people watched it from there.

[00:38:00.940] 

But there was a guy that lived there and he didn't like the noise. And so he had my cell number. And at 10:01, he would call the cops and then he would call me. And, yeah, all the kind of fun things that you get to go through. But it's worth it now. It's worth it. Back then, I was curled up in the fetal position, you know, just trying to - Where's Barbara? she's behind the bleachers breathing into a paper bag.

[00:38:29.860] 

Yeah. Because, you know, there's herding cats and then there's herding rock crawlers or off roaders, and they are a whole different breed of cat. Let me tell you.

[00:38:41.620] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, because it's basically a bunch of cats that are in heat.

[00:38:45.970] - Barbara Rainey

Right? Well, you know, I started with race car drivers and rodeo riders and truck drivers. I, you know, off Road to me, it's my family and I and I love them all differently. So they're just I don't know, like we like we talk about Reno Rocks was one for the record books. I'm sorry we didn't get to do it again. If anybody, you know, goes out there and looks around, there's videos on YouTube and lots of pictures online and thank heavens lots of pictures that aren't online, hopefully a lot of a lot of photographs.

[00:39:23.140] 

The memory cards or or phones have been destroyed. Right.

[00:39:28.420] 

Something about ripping sleeves off of shirts and arm wrestling competitions on overturned tables in a hotel suites and and all the plants and furniture that were in those little entry rooms that you'd step out of the elevator and there was always, you know, a table with the plants or something on it.

[00:39:49.960] 

And then like a couple of chairs or a couch, all of those got changed and disappeared. Right. I think the funniest part of that was the bikers that were on the same floor as the rock crawlers. Yeah.

[00:40:03.490] 

They didn't know what to do with that. And any of you who are in the hospitality industry who are listening, we have mellowed considerably.

[00:40:10.810] 

Yes, yes. Yes. Most of can't even stay up till that 10 o'clock curfew.

[00:40:19.300] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, that's so true. That's so true. So like time. Yes. So let's talk let's let's do talk about Mickey Thompson.

[00:40:29.500] - Barbara Rainey

Well, I got to know Mickey and Trudy through, like I said, working. So I was lucky enough to be on the road crew, I didn't work in the office, but I would fly out to cities a week in advance and I would do the advance work and do things like set up the office in the stadium office and do promotion and make sure all of the boots on the ground thing were done.

[00:40:58.000] 

Like I mentioned, we had to find, you know, your list would say find cars for King Kong to crash, find someone to sing the Canadian national anthem. That was fun because we had a Canadian driver. And mind you, you don't have a computer, you don't have a cell phone. You have a roll of quarters and a telephone. So I found someone who could sing, but I nobody knew the words to Oh Canada or how to sing it.

[00:41:24.940] 

And you can't just go to YouTube where you can't go to Spotify or Pandora and listen to the Canadian national anthem. So the only thing I could think of was calling the Canadian consulate to get the words. And find somebody to sing it to me. I have this guy who was going to sing it listen, but the person I was talking to was French Canadian and their primary language was French, so their English was poor. And my English isn't good on a good day.

[00:41:53.520] 

So I remember spending quite a bit of time trying to get the words to Canada and we pulled it off how we did it, but we sang the Canadian national anthem and Mickey Thompson. Mickey Thompson was a dreamer. He was an innovator. He was kind of like that home run hitter. You know, he struck out a lot and he had a lot of spectacular successes. He was such an innovator. If you look back at the vehicles that he built, Rory Ward, one of our board members, has the challenger for the yellow one and then even back to his son, Danny Thompson, in the the speed records.

[00:42:34.410] 

So here are people who are always innovating, always thinking we're lucky enough. At the Hall of Fame. We just got donated to us. Mickey Thompson's course marking Buggie. So we need to go out to mark courses. This is a little buggy he would take out to mark the courses. It's not worth a lot as far as, you know, value as far as itself as a vehicle. But the provenance behind it, that it's actually Mickey Thompson's vehicle and it's got, you know, his history behind it.

[00:43:05.400] 

Dick Landfield, one of the most amazing people ever in the sport of Off-Road that I could talk about for hours and hours is one of our board members and he just donated it to us. So Mickey was a great guy. He innovated lots of things like the water barricades, which I think at some point got him in trouble with the construction concrete mafia people I'm not sure of. Matter of fact, I don't even want to speak about that because I don't know for sure.

[00:43:34.290] 

But regardless, he was always trying to innovate things. And so when we first started doing the events in the football stadiums and put the water barricades out, the racing wasn't very good because if you got the hole shot and you got the inside line, I was kind of a done deal. It was it. So he came up with the series of metal ramps. Now, this is before. This is before they I don't know why he tried to do it without putting dirt in the stadiums like we did for Supercross and like what they did at the Coliseum, you know, he did it in the in the Coliseum.

[00:44:08.590] 

He did it on dirt. But maybe he was trying to find a less expensive way to do it or a more efficient way. So he would just leave the stadium floor as the concrete and put the hydra barriers up. And then he thought, OK, I'm going to make a series of ramps and metal ramps. So if you have the inside line, you have the highest jump. So you're off the ground the longest and you lose traction and you slow down.

[00:44:31.600] 

And then there's there's a middle ramp that's a little less high. And then there's a lower ramp on the outside. And then on the far outside, it was just down to the concrete. So you could take the far outside line and not have to do a jump. But you were on the outside and his goal was to make the racing more competitive and more interesting. So he put these metal ramps on the floor and then the drivers would try, you know, test them.

[00:44:58.270] 

Well, the ramps slid on the asphalt or the concrete. They wouldn't stay in place. So then he had to rig a series of cables to hold the ramps down. And I think he tied them to the hydrant barriers or something. But anyway, then he had to test the new system with the ramps, with the cables. And mind you, I'm hanging banners and I digress for a second. The suckiest job ever was being Banner Girl for or Supercross or Mickey Thompson Stadium series, because you didn't just go out and get a print or banner banner printed.

[00:45:37.240] 

They were frickin hand painted and they were expensive and everybody wanted their banner back. And it was also before kill seats. So the first thing people would do after the races, they'd pull the banners over the sides as souvenirs. And I'm trying to run around a football stadium, getting the banners back before the people steal them. So anyway, so I'm hanging banners around the stadium doing something and I hear this God awful squealing of tires. And I look up and here comes Mickey Thompson in a Lincoln Town car.

[00:46:12.230] 

Running the course through the stadium to test those cables to see if they'll break, figured if the Towncar wouldn't break them, then for sure, above your stadium, you a little Toyoda's wouldn't break them. So Mickey is wheelin this town car through the stadium course and doing the jumps and sparks are flying. And I mean, everybody stopped and had their mouth open. I know I did. And it was just like I think it's to this day my favorite off-road moment until he was done and the ramps held in happy ending, except the tailpipe on the town car was completely smashed.

[00:46:53.120] 

And then I looked at that car a little closer. I realized it was my rental car.

[00:46:59.320] 

And so after the race, that's the car I had to take back and boy, man, let me tell you, I dropped that thing off and I was out of there in a hurry. But Mickey and Trudy were always very generous to us. You know, one of the problems with passion is, you know, it can can be a great motivator, but it can also lead to hurt feelings and hard times and poor decisions. And so, you know, I don't nobody really, truly knows what happened with Mickey and Trudy.

[00:47:28.990] 

I just know that it was a terrible tragedy. And for anybody that doesn't know, they were gunned down in their driveway in the 80s. And so that that was a sad end to a remarkable chapter. And I just know that they were always good to me. And he really cared about the racers. Right. I remember him really caring about the people and, you know, putting on a good show. And like I said, there's that goes back to that deep respect for anybody who attempts to do anything on that scale.

[00:48:07.930] 

You, Dave Cole, Jeff Knoll, Sal Fish, Roger Norman, all the people, whoever sticks their neck out there to to put something on so that the rest of us can experience that either as a competitor or a participant or a or a spectator. You know, there is no reason to do that from a financial standpoint, from a sanity standpoint. And that truly goes back to a special place in heaven that that most of the time, unfortunately, feels like hell.

[00:48:42.520] 

So much respect to all of you who who do that. And thank you.

[00:48:50.200] - Big Rich Klein

You're welcome. And everybody else, all of us that do these kind of events and and like you say, risk, it will probably all end up in bench racing somewhere up in the clouds and then telling all of our own stories on what happened. And even though the players will be different in the situations, might be a little different, you know, happening in in Mexico or L.A. or Reno, that it will there'll be a lot of things that happened because of the people that we put ourselves around.

[00:49:27.850] 

And it's it's but it's those people that why we do it.

[00:49:32.050] - Barbara Rainey

So and you're one of those thank you and everybody can participate. You know, if when I get stuck, I ask myself when I don't know what to do, I say, well, what can I do? And I don't know. I say, well, what do I know? And, you know, one of the one of my things that sticks out in my mind and I'll tell you this, just these small acts of kindness and these small things that make a difference.

[00:49:56.110] 

I remember after a big race at Prairie City, were we at Prairie City? Anyway, a big Ultra4 at Prairie City. I was walking through the pits and I was walking past Loren Healy's pit. And Loren Healy himself is out picking up trash. And it probably wasn't even trash from his team or his pit, but he was cleaning up the area and picking up the trash himself personally to just because it's the right thing to do. You know, those small acts of kindness.

[00:50:28.540] 

When I'm on the trail, my husband gets kind of tired of it, I'm sure. But I'm always hopping out to pick up trash, you know, and take it back with me or in my kayak. I have a grabby thingy that I pick stuff up out of the water or, you know, don't I don't want anybody to ever underestimate their ability to make a difference, you know, might they might not be interviewed by you or make, you know, be someone who's perceived as a leader in the industry, but everybody's a leader in the industry.

[00:50:58.780] 

You just have to do what you can do. What can I do and what do I know? And so, you know, say something. Somebody driving in the sagebrush. Tell them about tread lightly and stay the trail at the gates openly, that's open the gates closed, close the gate, you know, pick up the trash. We had a big discussion on human waste the other day on line because people just didn't get that. The Rubicon is made of granite and you put 500 rigs through there in a month with a thousand people.

[00:51:30.610] 

And that stuff's not going anywhere. And, you know, you need to pack it all in and pack it all out. And if we want to continue to enjoy to love the places we love and do the things we do, those of us who can do it need to do it and be good examples and try to do our best. Yeah, there's you know, there's circumstances and times when things are different, but it's if most of the people do the right thing most of the time, then we will really be able to be proud of ourselves and our community.

[00:52:06.190] 

True. So true. So let's let's now jump in with both feet into the offroad Motorsports Hall of Fame. How about that? Yes, what an honor. Absolutely. So when did you when did you get started and tell us the history behind the organization? Sure. So the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame was started by Ed Pearlman, one of the early, early innovators of offroad, and he is Mike Pearlman of NORRA dad, another guy, Mike Pearlman, who I want to give a shout out as a as a promoter.Ed

[00:52:55.670] 

 Pearlman thought that any good organization or any healthy sport needed a Hall of Fame. And so he came up with the concept and then he passed the baton to Rod Hall, who picked up literally one box of stuff that was Ed had passed away. And Rod picked that up and brought it to Reno and had a dream of putting together a Hall of Fame and establishing a museum. And Rod did an exceptional job with that and a lot of great people helped along the way, his daughter, Shelby, Bob Bower, was one of the early directors.

[00:53:35.250] 

And so Mark McMillan is our current chairman. Mark is a remarkable human being on many levels. He's a successful businessperson. He's a philanthropist. He's a funny guy. Do you ever get an invitation to one of his parties? He's generous, sort of most generous people I've ever met. He also happens to be a five time Baja one thousand champion. His dad, Corky McMillan, is in the Hall of Fame. And Mark is actually one of the two father and sons in the Hall of Fame.

[00:54:13.620] 

Mark is the son. Corky is his dad. And then the other father and son set that we have in the Hall of Fame is Bob Gordon and then Robby Gordon. So those are the two father and sons. I started with the Hall of Fame in five years ago. Apparently, they were having a meeting in Reno and Shelby was ready to go off and do other things and they needed somebody to be the administrator. And apparently the board was in this meeting and Dave Cole said, well, Barbara lives in Reno, let's call her.

[00:54:48.900] 

And most of them didn't know me. But of course, I had known Dave from Reno, Rocks and King of the Hammers. And and Dave actually called me previously and asked me to work for him in 2010 and asked me to come work for King of the Hammers and Hammer King. And I said no, because, again, I. I still had children that were in school and I felt like running off to join the circus. I had I had committed to saying I didn't have kids till I was older.

[00:55:22.140] 

And I said, if I'm going to have them, I'm going to raise them. And and I just didn't feel like I could go off and join the circus. And I remember with you know, nobody knows when I said nobody knows, they asked and nobody knows that I said no. And nobody was in the room when I had the big crocodile tears streaming down my face to have missed that opportunity. But again, there are there are the right thing will come along.

[00:55:49.980] 

And so there I was a few years later and I got this call from Dave Cole. He says, hey, I'm here with the Hall of Fame and. We want to interview you and I'm like, I don't know if I need a job and when, and he said, well, right now, when can you get here?

[00:56:10.170] 

I said, Okay, I'll be right there. So I went to the auto museum and there was this incredible group of Off-Road Heroes, Rod Hall and Dick Landfield and Dave Cole and Mark McMillan. And, you know, we talked and. And one of them even said, I don't think she has time to do this and but I said, you know what, I believe in this and I'd like to give it a chance. So I am a very Part-Time executive administrator.

[00:56:43.940] 

We have a fabulous board of 15, incredibly successful, powerful offroad. People in the industry who love this sport, how the Hall of Fame works is we generally have an annual induction and awards ceremony. Anyone can nominate someone for the Hall of Fame. The only guideline is that the person must have been involved in the sport for 15 years. April is a nomination month so people can go online and fill out the nomination form. And then we have a committee of industry people from all over rock sports advocates racing all sections.

[00:57:29.180] 

And it used to be easier to get in the Hall of Fame because we didn't promote it and nobody really knew. So we would maybe have 10 or 12 nominations. Last year we had 54 wow. Our bylaws used to say we could have between three and five people inducted per year. We did a bylaw change to reflect that. So now we can have between three and seven inducted, but they still have to get votes from two thirds of the committee, you know, Hall of Fame are a narrow gate.

[00:58:02.750] 

And it's not everybody gets a trophy. I just saw that the Baseball Hall of Fame will be inducted No. One this year because no one got enough votes. So we're committed to we have a process where we can have between three and seven. The committee meets. They discuss in person.

[00:58:20.900] 

Yeah, it's a very serious process.

[00:58:23.120] 

You know, we lock these people in a room for a day and then they do a blind vote and then they keep refining that as much as necessary. And then they come up with the slate of proposed inductees for the year. And then that slate is reviewed and ratified by our board of directors. And I can tell you that at times it looks like sausage being made, you know, because of all of the fabulous people who are nominated. Everybody has a story to tell and they are amazing people.

[00:58:59.300] 

And just the way it works out, not everybody gets in. And sometimes that's hard. But you look at our class of twenty 20 that I want to recognize that hopefully, hopefully here's your inside scoop. If SEMA happens, we will be having our twenty, twenty and twenty twenty one combined induction ceremony on the Saturday before SEMA, which would be October 30th. And we would be inducting Bob Bower and Dean Bulloch, who we all know as the Iceman, from rock crawling Danny Fadila, fabricator, the great Jack Johnson motorcycle racer Roger Mears.

[00:59:45.570] 

Of course, the great Roger Mears, Cal Wells III, the man behind the Toyota program, and a legacy inductee, Tom Tom White. Who did so much for our sport, so our class of 2020 will hopefully get inducted in Las Vegas before SEMA on October 30th and we'll have the class of twenty twenty one as well. So if anybody knows somebody that they like to nominate, don't hesitate to put in a packet. You can start now.

[01:00:15.500] 

We don't want a big long story. Bullet points are better. We need to know why this person should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Just a little short bio and why them and why this year. And one of the things we've been looking at is when we induct seven people out of 54. To me, that doesn't decrease the contribution that those other people made. They just didn't quite get in. And so we're working on a program to build a registry to recognize everybody who's been involved in the sport and archive that at a major West Coast university in perpetuity so anybody could document their history in the sport.

[01:01:03.080] 

And then that will be someone's job to caretake that forever. I believe that the guy who's down at Mike Sky Ranch in Baja at two o'clock in the morning holding the gas cans for a motorcycle rider that never shows up. You know, everybody has a Hall of Fame story, and I believe everybody deserves to tell it. So we're working on that program. We also have a great series of awards for called Our Impact Awards. That's where we look at the people who are doing great things now, the current generation who's out there, and then our voting members of the Hall of Fame, which anybody can be a voting member of the Hall of Fame.

[01:01:47.410] 

It's twenty five dollars a year. You get to vote and decide who the people, the voters choice is. And so, for example, we didn't get to do our 2020 awards because of, you know, Mr. COVID. But in twenty nineteen we had we have desert was Andy McMillan short course with Kyle LeDuc, Rock Sports was Loren Healy, one of our favorites, Moto ATV, UTV with Phil Burton Industry actually was Dave Cole, advocate with Amy Granat.

[01:02:20.320] 

And so we give those award our every year and have people for those and then we do our land use donation. We have a never give up award. We have a volunteer award. So our our goal is the Hall of Fame is to be sure to tell the story of the people, places, events, businesses and organizations who've been around and whose stories are worth telling and preserving.

[01:02:45.910] 

That's awesome. And if covid this year does not screw up SEMA, Shelley and I will definitely be at the awards ceremony. We've enjoyed that over the last. Oh God, it's been eight years. I think that we've participated in the. And it's been really cool, really down. It's an amazing event and thankfully the last two years are amazing. Hostess Charlene Bower has streamed the cocktail party on Facebook live and people can see what goes on there. We usually have about 600 people in attendance.

[01:03:22.990] 

We do a silent live auction and live auction that people can donate and bid on online. You know, that's our major fundraiser for the year, is our auction and the induction ceremony. And so did not have that last year. You know, we we have built the organization to a point with Mark's leadership and the board of directors and my tight purse strings that we are very financially sound. But we have big plans and we need to be able to execute those.

[01:03:57.660] 

You know, the nonprofit world is kind of interesting. We're a nonprofit, but we're not a charity. And so it's very difficult. You know, people you can rely on volunteers for some things. But let's face it, everybody is busy. And so we really need to be able to pay for the expertize that we need. For example, we have 100 boxes of material that were donated to us by Judy Smith. The history of the sport is in those boxes.

[01:04:25.660] 

But we need someone who has archival experience and archivist, and it's a tedious job. So you need to pay someone to go through and catalog that material and to do the digitizing on it. And that costs a lot of money. And so we are looking to the people who love the sport in the industry and the enthusiasts and the business community to support the Hall of Fame so that we have the financial resources to do the jobs that we need to do properly and not rely on volunteers.

[01:04:57.520] 

We have a program. We're starting with heritage clubs and events. We will be going out and recognizing any club or business that is part of the heritage of the sport. We're kind of looking at the Hall of Fame in two segments. We're looking at the first 50 years as our first calling that Rod Hall left us and tasked with documenting the history of the sport. And that requires a lot of digitizing of photos, materials, programs and, you know, digging into the history and making sure the the the history of the sport is documented.

[01:05:37.300] 

But then looking ahead to the next 50 years and beyond and building a sustainable program where every year the history of the sport kind of writes itself through whatever processes we put in place. And then that's documented and archived at the university and that just builds and builds and builds in perpetuity. You know, for example, what were the hot trends in offroad this year? You know, what what vehicles? What were the standout vehicles? And that would be participation across the board.

[01:06:07.420] 

We'll do surveys and and, you know, do stuff on social media and asked people, you know, what was the what was your top headline in Off Road this year? Was it electric vehicles? Well, you know, what was the standout thing in twenty twenty one was twenty twenty. Was it, you know, Lucas Oil, you know you know, the end of that great campaign, what what things happened in the sport in any year that we all think we'll remember.

[01:06:33.280] 

And then you and I can't even remember what year we did something. Ten years ago.

[01:06:36.970] 

Eleven years ago. Exactly how.

[01:06:39.790] 

So we have this two prong approach to taking the path and making sure we get that done. I have a pressing just feeling that we have got to get more interviews like you're doing with me, with the greats of that first generation of our sport before they're gone, before they can't tell their story the way they want it told. So you should be talking to somebody twenty years older than me next week.

[01:07:07.060] 

OK, seriously, that's got to do.

[01:07:11.530] 

We got to grab that stuff where we can get it. We want people when they're cleaning out their dad's garage in Long Beach and they come across a bunch of old pictures, don't throw them out, send them to the Hall of Fame, you know, make a donation so that we can make sure that they're preserved and archived and that your loved ones and your friends are always remembered. Tribute pages on our we're we're starting a tribute section where you can remember people, because what I see with the Hall of Fame, too, is some people will nominate someone for the Hall of Fame.

[01:07:44.650] 

And they're amazing person and a great human being and a great racer or a recreation person. Are they a hall of Famer? They are to me and to the family member, but they don't meet the parameters. But yet their story is still important and should be recognized. In their contributions honored so through these tribute pages will be able to have everyone recognized and archived. We're kind of going to make Wikipedia meets the Yellow Pages, you know, where where everybody can tell their story.

[01:08:16.670] 

So other than that, I don't have any plans.

[01:08:19.380] 

That's great and good. I'm glad to hear that. That's the thing, that that's that's a goal. And I plan to happen. Yes, and the other thing we had happened last year, that was quite another thing that was quite a blow as we our vehicle collection at TERRIBLE'S in Nevada was very popular and was building and quite a nice attraction. And the but, you know, the pandemic closed the casino and it was closed for three months. And then they informed us that they weren't going to reopen it.

[01:08:58.240] 

So we had to dismantle our collection of vehicles, which was just one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, because again, you have a dream and you build something and then they have to take it apart and then be determined to rebuild it again. So we had all of the people who had their vehicles on loan come and pick their vehicles up. I'm very proud that all of the vehicles were safely returned to their owners that were owned by outside vehicles.

[01:09:25.690] 

The Hall of Fame owns a few really cool vehicles and we had left those in the facility to try to figure out where to put them next. And in the meantime, they had a water leak in the ceiling, collapsed on top of our Herrman Billy Buggy.

[01:09:42.670] 

And and so then, mind you, it's 116 degrees in Vegas in the summertime. And now you're in a casino that the ceiling is falling down because the water pipe broke. So the floors are covered with water. It's no there's no lights. It's 90 some degrees inside. And we had to wait for in the shower, the ceiling up so we could go get our other vehicles out. And then then they were able to determine it was safe and they were able to extricate the buggy.

[01:10:16.570] 

And so the buggy. Thank you to Gary Holly. Amazingly, it was repaired and didn't sustain too much damage. It looked pretty disastrous, but it turned out OK. And none of the other vehicles were damaged. But we had to find homes for all of our vehicles. So we have the Walker Evans, Parnell, Lee Jones truck is at the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and Daytona Speedway in Florida. We have Schoop vessels, Class eight truck and the start.

[01:10:49.440] 

Norton Nova, which I adore, adore them all there at the Peterson Museum in Los Angeles. We were just gifted the gift of a lifetime. I literally cried. I cried a lot. Cameron Thieriot donated us to The BFG Broncho. We have not picked that vehicle up yet. We don't have a winner. We don't have a new location. We have the fasting Class eight truck. Mark Westing and his wife generously donated that vehicle to us. We have Rod Hall's flag Hummer, which will be going into the National Automobile Museum in Reno.

[01:11:27.580] 

And we have Mickey Thompson, of course, marking buggy. And then the Herman Billy buggy after it was restored is now on display at a sand shop in Arizona. So all of the things you thought you'd be doing in twenty twenty, you are basically doing your damnedest just to, you know, kind of real things in and make sure that the assets are taken care of and respected because people have entrusted us with this these pieces of Off-Road history. And with that privilege of having these vehicles now, there becomes an additional responsibility to the Hall of Fame, which is expensive to maintain all of these vehicles.

[01:12:13.690] 

Some of them run, some of them don't. Some of the ones that do, we need to make sure that they're maintained properly so that all costs money. And so, you know, we're looking to the business community and to individuals to help us support these vehicles and sponsor the vehicles in their care. And so we'll be looking ahead to that. And we're looking for a new location and hopefully the Las Vegas area. And we will rebuild and we will be back because we heard loud and clear that that's an important part of the Hall of Fame.

[01:12:47.680] 

If people get a chance, they can go to our YouTube channel ORMHOF YouTube channel and you can watch some of the the videos that we shot at the museum. There's a great story of inductee Larry Miner talking about the Billy Buggy. There's a great video from the Siege five of Pat and Lauren Upton, who went around the world, and the Guinness Book of World Records setting around the world in a five. And there's a video there about that.

[01:13:18.340] 

So those are the types of things that the Hall of Fame believes are important. And we hope the other people who believe they're important will support the Hall of Fame, either join partner, donate all the informations on the website, ORMHOF or I believe in the organization.

[01:13:40.060] 

And I hope that all of our listeners do as well.

[01:13:44.740] 

I'd really like to see more. Rock sports involved and more of the the people that have made the history in rock sports or, you know, have have worked in Off Road the rock crawling Four-Wheel Drive end of off road to give us our history, be active in it, because the more that are active, the more that the more of the people that.

[01:14:16.690] 

That were active and have made the history will be recognized in the Hall of Fame, and so we really hope, you know, that there's there's a bunch of us that that want to see that side grow. And I'm hoping that we get all these young guys that are that are in the off road, four wheel drive side of it, involved with ORMHOF. So that so the legacy in the in the rock sports, I mean, we're only 22, 23 years old with the rock sports and the competitive side as opposed to the off road racing with over 50 years of of history.

[01:14:54.510] 

That, you know, we can we can build our side of the of the sport's history as well, so everybody listen to this, get involved with the warm up somehow, somehow.

[01:15:05.910] 

And like Rod Hall said, you know, it's not the off road racing hall of Fame. It's the off road motor Sports Hall of Fame. And he believed in that inclusivity. And, you know, for those of us that have been around the rock crawling rock sports side, it's kind of funny to not funny, but it's it's interesting to watch the maturity of the sport, I guess, to the point that we're even talking about Hall of Famers.

[01:15:35.910] 

You know, Shannon Campbell was the first rock sports person to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. And then we will be honoring Dean Bullock this year, hopefully. And by the way, tickets will be available if once we know we're going to be a go right now in Vegas, you can even have a group of more than 50 people. So once we know where to go, the tickets are available. But one of the great things is it's open to anybody to come.

[01:16:04.440] 

So they could come to. But rock sports, I'll never forget. I was sitting at a show and I was across from Jesse Haines in his booth and he was playing the old videotapes. What were the what were the early B, the the seeds of the rock crawling events like you rock and all of those Haulin’and crawlin’.

[01:16:25.800] 

Yeah. Haulin’ and Crawlin’. So he's got those Haulin’ and Crawlin tapes on and he's like voice over them, you know, he's talking about. Oh yeah. And that vehicle in this vehicle and that's Tiny and John Nelson and this and that. And I thought man that's something we need to do is go back to those old, old, old. They're brand new compared to things in a timeline. But we need to go back and capture all of that.

[01:16:53.190] 

And like we say, everybody thinks will always remember and we don't. So those are the types of things that a Hall of Fame, a a healthy and and properly funded Hall of Fame can have resources to do. And we hope to be doing a lot more of that. So. Well, I want to encourage everybody, all of our listeners and anybody that's involved in in offroad and rock crawling in four wheel drive. And overlanding and anything to do with getting off the pavement to get involved with arm of the Off-Road Motor Sports Hall of Fame, and even if it's just becoming a voting member, if it's buying some, you know, a hat or some stickers or whatever is available, you know, helping out somehow with the organization to to capture that history, because in another 50 years, none of us are going to remember what happened yesterday.

[01:17:52.980] 

So, Barbara, I want to thank you so very much for coming on board and discussing your life and your history and how people can get involved with our ORMHOF and the the history of of our motor sports off road. And it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. But more than that. For having known you, even though it's a short period of time, it seems like it's been forever and I just wanted to say thank you.

[01:18:25.900] 

Well, thank you, Rich. And what you and Shelley do, as you know, we're we're friends and we're comrades. And you know that we are always there for you. David's always up on the hill with the CJ5 and the winch, ready to go and I'll do anything you need to help make what you do successful. And we're looking ahead to a successful future for the Hall of Fame to ask everyone to help contribute and do their part in whatever way they feel makes a difference in their heart for the sport of offroad 100 percent.

[01:19:03.420] 

Again, thank you. All right. My pleasure. OK, we'll talk to you later. Bye bye bye. If you enjoy these podcasts, please give us a rating, share some feedback with us via Facebook or Instagram and share our link among your friends who might be like minded. Well, that brings this episode to an end. OK, you enjoyed it. We'll catch you next week with conversations with Big Rich. Thank you very much.