Dread Scott on television!

[Scott Williams <sfwilliams@home.com>]

Shawn C Meze wrote:

> So what happened dude? Its been way more than 12 hours!

Okay, gents. Yesterday was a real blast. Anchorman, Howard Thompson (WPIX,
New York City), came down with a film crew to check the Warpiggy and me
out. Here's Howard's info: http://www.wpix.com/news/helpme.htm

Anyway, they pulled up to my house at about 12:30pm in a white Chevy
Caprice. Heh, I thought that I was about to get arrested or something, but
that kind of fun would have to wait 'till later. :^) After the
introductions and some preliminary discussion about how the shoot was
finished, we headed over to a little stretch of gravel road on the other
side of my neighborhood. The camera man was totally bent out of shape about
the nasty weather, but I was pretty stoked about it! Slippery -wet gravel
-woo hoo!

We unpacked the cameras and mic'd up. Howard interviewed me for about three
minutes with questions about what kind of marketing help my team effort can
help sponsoring busineses with, what rally racing is all about, etc.  The
camera guy then took some faked shots of me shifting, "steering", heel and
toeing, etc. Once that was all done I suited up in the OMP nomex suit and
buckled myself and Howard into the five-point harnesses. The plan was to
drive up the road a little bit and then come back around a hot corner for
the camera. Well.... in my "I'm a big tv star" exuberance, I dimwittedly
drove around the first corner, understeered the car, and planted us
directly into a deep silt-filled ditch! SPLAT! :^( ...dumb, stupid, dumb,
stupid, dumb...

The powerslide into it felt pretty cool but the hour and fifteen minute
wait for AAA to show up wasn't nearly as much fun! :^) Well, there was no
harm done to the car or the passengers -excepting my bruised ego... Howard
thought it was hilarious which definitely made things easier to deal with.
Anyway, after our extrication we set up again and performed some pretty
nice slides for the camera. Even with a 200lb television reporter in the
passenger's seat, the Warpig's acceleration was pretty decent -enough to
impress the guy, anyway. "Let's do some tarmac!", he said. Right on...

So, off we went across a couple of towns to a paved section that rivals in
the Manx Rally with it's tight twists and hills. Last winter's NJ Scirocco
cruise covered some of these same roads so y'all that attended should have
a good idea of what we were driving on. This time however it was raining
hard and wet leaves were all over the place. Heh heh... The Pig was shod
with Dunlop SP8000s the whole time, so it felt more in it's element on the
pavement and the show I put on was at a decidely higher caliber.

We filmed the car rushing steeply downhill towards the camera at 75+mph,
down shifting from 5th down to 2nd -bwaANahh... bwaNahh.., -setting up for
the corner, rotating slightly, apexing into a big puddle of water -SPLASH!
- and then accelerating out with the wheels spinning madly, clawing for
traction that wasn't there on the wet leaves
-screeegrraaAANNHHHscreeraANHHH..!!! An in car camera was mounted between
the two of us on the roll cage, too. It mainly caught the action inside the
cockpit and the horizon disappearing from view when we caught air a couple
of times. Yeeehah!!!

Anywho, we did about ten takes of the car hurtling around various corners
until the brakes were glowing a very dull red and the clutch was stinking
like hell. Man, tarmac roads are just soooo much harder on the car than
dirt and gravel. By that point we felt that we and the car had taken enough
abuse so we called it a day. Wow, what a bunch of fun!

The segment will air on the 10 o'clock news in about two weeks so, I'll let
everyone know the exact details later. Check this out, though. Howard wants
to produce a regular program on rallying and guess who might be his roving
field reporter! That's right, moi'. :^)

Heh, yesterday worked out pretty well!
--
Scott F. Williams
NJ Scirocco nut
SCCA ProRally driver
Hotrod Rabbit GTi


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