It's hard to believe we just returned from our annual State 2 State Cruise to Phoenix. This is the second cruise we commenced this year with the help of all our sister publications, including Sport Truck, Mini Truckin', Custom Classic Trucks, Truckin's SUV, OFF-ROAD, and 4 Wheel Drive & Sport Utility magazines. Our first event of the summer was kicked off in Las Vegas and was highlighted in our Nov. '03 issue. That event drew an estimated 200 trucks and SUVs who all made the trek from Orange County, California.
Our second cruise to Phoenix was our main destination after a culmination of a weekend's worth of show festivities at Firebird Raceway in Chandler, Arizona. This being the second event of the summer, we were right in not expecting it to be as large as the first event. Instead of 200 trucks and SUVs, we had roughly 80 to 100, which didn't make a noticeable difference in the overall look and feel of the event, and made the management of the show vehicles a lot easier. Cruising together and swapping war stories at the various stops with various packs of trucks in the four to eight vehicle range was a fun event. Overall, the smaller trek to Arizona was an even more enjoyable experience than in June with the 200 trucks in attendance.
Part of cruising to an event is just that, cruising. Simply put, there is nothing better than hitting the road in one outrageous-looking vehicle with your buddies who are sitting pretty in equally impressive trucks. It is almost a matter of pride to hit the highway and pull into truck stops or rest stops and watch people literally stop in their tracks to take notice of the trucks everyone rolls up in. Then, the next 15 to 20 minutes of questions about the trucks themselves is also equally fun. Trust me, it never gets old. I, like the rest of my staff, love standing next to our trucks discussing how things were accomplished on the given subject matter. We always like to hear tales of accomplishment or woe, because, trust me, we have all experienced them. In our case, most of the tales of woe came from ill-fitting parts or wrongly shipped parts which were the single solidifying piece we needed to finish the truck project, and then had to make due with the wrong pieces.
Such is the life of building neverending project trucks whose accomplishments are often tied to being seen at various Truckin'-themed events we have promised manufacturers will be shown. We often do not have the luxury of building the trucks over time to make sure every last little detail is followed through. Once complete, the trucks will be finished correctly, but usually they have a last-minute thrash to accomplish our task at hand.
Speaking of last minute thrashes, by now everyone has heard of this industry's annual SEMA Show, put on by the Specialty Equipment Manufactures Association. As of this article, we are exactly one week from attending this annual event held in Las Vegas. While we as a staff opted out of building anything really cool for the event this year, we will be there with our latest Dodge Ram 2500 sporting a 10-inch lift with a custom-matching AfterShock Powerboat which we debuted at the Vegas Nationals. The boat has already been seen in some technical articles. Our sister publication Sport Truck Magazine promises something pretty wild in the form of a tubbed-out Pro Street-themed Dodge Ram running a Hillborn-injected 426 Chrysler Hemi. That should be fun to see.
Can you imagine a truck cruise with the literally hundreds of one-off customs that will be sure to make their debuts during SEMA? Now that would be a cruise. As it is, there will be a lot of truck owners hitting the highways very soon as we make the trek to Vegas once again. Hope to see you all there, and if not, we will report everything you missed. We would also love to see as many readers as possible make it to our annual State 2 State Cruises. Maybe next year we can plan one for the East Coast so everyone can attend?