The first, the pillar episode of the Big Rich podcast is live! In this episode Shelley interviews Big Rich about the beginning of rock crawling for him. It’s a perseverance story, a succeed at all costs, a bootstrapping, I want this so bad, I’ll do whatever it takes. Almost twenty years later, WE Rock is still strong. Come along for the journey, see where it all began.
Season 1, Episode 1 with Big Rich Klein
7:20 Who yells “What’s the name of your club?” to guys he’s never met before?
16:56 Cease and desist ordered delivered at his very first rock crawl
24:32 You want how much money? How a county judge helped us out.
30:13 Why we needed a 'Noise Study' at a gun range
33:39 The penalty for being trashy
42:32 The birth of WE Rock, but not without some controversy
52:31 No sleeves allowed! Reno Rocks is off the hook
54:31 Debacle in Farmington 2009
64:39 The Taj Mahauler lives
74:36 Dirt Riot is born
82:44 2020 begins, here's what it looks like
85:34 How 4Low Magazine comes with 20 years of plans
92:14 The history of off-road and why it matters
Be sure to visit www.bigrichklein.com for a full transcript of the show.
Subscribe now on your favorite podcast channel
The first, the pillar episode of the Big Rich podcast is live! In this episode Shelley interviews Big Rich about the beginning of rock crawling for him. It’s a perseverance story, a succeed at all costs, a bootstrapping, I want this so bad, I’ll do whatever it takes. Almost twenty years later, WE Rock is still strong. Come along for the journey, see where it all began.
Season 1, Episode 1 with Big Rich Klein
7:20 Who yells “What’s the name of your club?” to guys he’s never met before?
16:56 Cease and desist ordered delivered at his very first rock crawl
24:32 You want how much money? How a county judge helped us out.
30:13 Why we needed a 'Noise Study' at a gun range
33:39 The penalty for being trashy
42:32 The birth of WE Rock, but not without some controversy
52:31 No sleeves allowed! Reno Rocks is off the hook
54:31 Debacle in Farmington 2009
64:39 The Taj Mahauler lives
74:36 Dirt Riot is born
82:44 2020 begins, here's what it looks like
85:34 How 4Low Magazine comes with 20 years of plans
92:14 The history of off-road and why it matters
Be sure to visit www.bigrichklein.com for a full transcript of the show.
Subscribe now on your favorite podcast channel
Big Rich Klein: 0:01
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 is the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation.
Big Rich Klein: 0:29
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. Four wheels or two. Maxxis tires are the choice of champions
because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis
tires deliver, choose Maxxis tread victoriously
Big Rich Klein: 0:56
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank 4Low Magazine
for contributing to the success of this podcast. 4Low Magazine an enthusiasts
magazine for the 4x4 off-road community. Okay. I thought we would start off the
conversations with Big Rich, with a conversation with Big Rich, so none other
than Shelley Krehbiel, my wife and partner in life, and crime is going to
interview me to give you listeners an idea about who I am.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:29
One of the things that we realize is, that it's so hard to
just talk about yourself and, where do you start? What do you remember? That kind
of thing. So, we thought, well, this is a good opportunity for me to continue
practicing my interview skills. And I get to ask about some of my favorite
stories because when rock crawling started, I was not part of the conversation.
I got in about mid way through from what the career has been so far. So there's
a lot of stories that I just really enjoy. So I'm going to start by asking him
some questions. Rich, when, when you saw your first rock crawl, where were you?
What was that about ?
Big Rich Klein: 2:15
Well, myself, my son and a buddy of mine, Dave Burling, we
were living in Cedar City. We had heard that there was going to be this rock
crawling event called the Warn Nationals down in Johnson Valley Means Dry Lake.
We took off on a Friday night. This was, I want to say it was 98 is when it
was, I'm not particular sure on which date, but we'll say 98. We drove down in
the middle of the night. We got from Cedar City up in Big Bear, California,
realized that we were in the wrong place. Went back down the Hill, got into
Johnson Valley but into the Bessemer mine area and out to what, there's some
rock formations out there, a couple of miles out, camped there overnight, got
up early the next morning, realized that we were in the wrong area or confirmed
that we were in the wrong area. We thought we were that night. And so we packed
up and headed another 10 miles or so down the road to the Means Dry Lake
entrance. And we went in there, found a bunch of people camped out
there. When I say a bunch of people, there was like maybe 50, 60 camps. And so
we camped out on the Lake bed and we found where they were doing the rock crawl
and I think it was Wrecking Ball I think as the the area that they used. But
I'm not sure it was my first trip down that way. I wasn't driving, but we went
down there, we watched the rock crawling event. It was super windy that
weekend. There was all sorts of people to talk to and to see and getting into
the rock crawling, figuring it out. Like I said, we were living in Cedar City.
We had an area up there called Three Peaks and Three Peaks wasn't really, it
was just part of the County and BLM land wasn't a park at the time. It
was just open area. And we used to use it for rock crawling. The equestrian
people would use it for riding horses and mountain bikers and all sorts of
people would use the area. But it was, it was really trashed. And we as a club
adopted the area and started cleaning it up. And it was around that same time
that we were introduced to Ranch Pratt, who started ARCA, the American Rock Crawlers
Association. We, we're in the process of trying to get that rock crawl to come
to Cedar City to use that area. So we went down, saw the first event, which
was, like I said, it was a, a Warn National. It became later on became Pro
Rock, but it was the first event that we went to. It was pretty exciting.
Shelley Krehbiel: 5:08
Before that you had obviously been in the wheeling scene. So it's not like you randomly said, Oh, they're doing cars on rocks. I should go do that. What had you been doing before then?
Big Rich Klein: 5:20
My first trip going wheeling was with Dan Hartwig, who was my first
father-in-law and we went into Barrett Lake, which is in the same area as the
Rubicon, Northern California in the Sierras. And I had no, no clue what rock
crawling or that kind of off-road was. I went for a trail ride with him and a
buddy of his and the buddy's son. So it was the two vehicles, four of us. And
we went into Barrett Lake, had lunch and turned around and came back out. What
was interesting about that trip was first of all when we drove up to the gate
and there's just a bunch of rocks right on the other side of the gate, I'm
like, so where are we going? He goes we're going to go right up that. And I'm
like, yeah, right. Well, okay, we did. We went in there just as we were getting
started. A
bunch of guys in Toyotas came up behind us, Dan and Buck said hello to them.
And we loaded up and we took off and they were obviously, I dunno how many
minutes behind us, but they were airing down and getting ready. Well, we took
off, we went in, uneventful, had lunch, kicked it back for an hour or so,
turned around and started on the way back. And we came across these guys, the
same group of Toyotas in an area called, what is it It's like Rock Pile or
something like that. And these guys were broken in various degrees. I mean,
transfer cases, axles, I dunno, transmissions, who knows But they had, they had
parts everywhere and they carried enough parts to rebuild their cars. And by
then I probably had a couple too many beers.
Shelley Krehbiel: 7:04
Oh, no
Big Rich Klein: 7:05
I wasn't driving. I was asked, I was told by Dan that the
name of their club was Toys on the Rocks and I was kind of a smart Alec back then. And
I asked one of the guys, I said, so what's the name of your club And he goes,
we're the Toys on the Rocks And I looked at him and I said, you mean toys all
over the rocks And I started to give him shit, you know, going, Oh this is my
first trip. I'm never going to buy a Toyota cause we just drove in with two
Jeeps and we had no, absolutely no problems. And you know, the only reason
we're held up is waiting for you guys to clear the trail. And I don't think I
made a lot of friends that day. In fact, Dan was like, Rich, just be quiet.
Just be quiet. These guys are friends, you know, be quiet, be quiet. Well that
was the way I was back then. And we, later became friends and wheel some with
those guys. But, yeah, it was my, my first experience was Barrett Lake on that
trip. And then, we made a couple of trips into the Rubicon as well. And I have
to say that I was hooked.
Shelley Krehbiel: 8:14
So for those of you listening, we generally refer to those
years as his BS years, for lots of reasons, but we like to call them
"Before Shelley." So, because now he's the kinder, gentler, Rich, but
not so much back in the day as some of you would have experienced and including
those guys that were Toys on the Rocks. so that's how you started wheeling. You
ended up in Cedar City. What did you do in Cedar that was related to wheeling?
Big Rich Klein: 8:45
Well, first of all, I went there chasing a job, working for
a tire store or a couple. I was like manager of two tire stores, one in St.
George, one in Cedar. And the whole idea behind going there was the company
hired me because they were going to expand. They wanted to do 11 or 12 stores
throughout what we call the Tristate area there. That's a Mesquite, Nevada, St.
George, Cedar City and like, Page and Flagstaff and maybe Kingman kind of area
in Arizona and when I went there, went to work for the, for this tire company.
A lot of people came in, made friends with a couple of guys and Dave Burling
was the first guy that I really made friends with and he owned a company called
Auto Trim Design and it was an aftermarket parts installation and sales and he
did spray in bed liners. He did a truck steps and window tinting and all the
bolt on Chrome-y stuff and he had a Bronco and we'd go wheeling and then we
got, I got involved with the club there, the Color Country four wheel drive
club. Eventually I became president of the Color Country four wheel drive club.
Got into that, that period of time where we were trying to get ARCA to come in
to put on the event. When we went to Johnson Valley to watch that, that event
down there, we had no idea that there was a, that it was not that ARCA, that it
was somebody else and it was Bob Hazel, which became Pro Rock putting on the
Warn Nationals. He did a couple of single events under the name Warn Nationals
and then Ranch when he started ARCA. he did the first series of events and that
first year we went to, after that, that trip to Johnson Valley, we ended up in
Phoenix in that area. Florence Junction for what would have been, I believe,
ARCA's second event of the year. I think they started off in Farmington and
then did Upper and Lower Woodpecker is the trail systems that they used.
Shelley Krehbiel: 10:58
Okay, so following that, obviously your relationship with Ranch began because you guys actually hosted or helped to host one of those ARCA events in Cedar. Correct.
Big Rich Klein: 11:12
Correct.
We, we did what we could to help Ranch get through, the jump through the
hurdles of BLM processing and, and we cleaned up the area. did, a lot of
advertising or helped with guerrilla marketing for him when it came around time
for getting judges. I called on our club, Color Country four wheel drive. There
was two clubs down in, in the St. George area. One was, the Rebel four wheel
drive club. And then there was a, I don't even remember what the name of the
other club was, but it was like Milt Thompson from Dixie Four Wheel Drive and
some of the, some of his friends and guys. And even though the two clubs that
are mixed quite a bit, the, the Rebels
were, there was more Big pickup trucks and different types of vehicles where
Milts group was more Jeep orientated. But we got everybody together up in Cedar
city at Dave's shop and we did a training session that Ranch came into and, and
provided training on how to, how to judge one of these rock crawl events. I had
already read through the book that his rule book and pretty much understood and
nobody else in the group did. Ranch was trying to explain things and I would
pop up as saying, well, I think what he means is this, you know, I helped him
out even though he probably won't remember it. But that's the first, my first
interaction with, real heavy interaction with Ranch was during that judges
training. And, of course that first event
Shelley Krehbiel: 12:48
of course we hate it when guys do that for in our judging events, he might've
as well
Big Rich Klein: 12:57
yeah, probably, didn't matter to me, my guys were looking,
they're dumbfounded. Like they were looking into a blank wall.
Shelley Krehbiel: 13:02
Oh,
how it happens
Big Rich Klein: 13:03
Okay,
here, let me, let me help explain this. You know what I mean It's just the way
I am.
Shelley Krehbiel: 13:07
So that, so that event came off. Were there any others after
that that you were involved in before you got to your own thing?
Big Rich Klein: 13:17
No.
we went, we went to events, both Dave and I, but I never worked as a judge for
any events. I was just observing. I'm trying to learn what, what the promoters
were doing then. And of course that was Bob Hazel and Ranch. I just, I just
wanted to see how things were run. I've always been one of those kind of people
that just organizes things. My idea was, you know, I'm not going to stay in
Cedar City forever. When I go back to California, I'm going to try to find a
piece of property and I'm going to put on an event in California. That was my
plan. ARCA at the time was pretty much concentrated in that, you know, Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico market. Pro Rock was, I'm not even sure it was Pro Rock at
that point. They were still just doing, I think they'd started doing the events
in, in Johnson Valley and they were doing some events in the Midwest and I was
like, you know, nothing's going on in Northern California. And that's where I
wanted, you know, where I was from. So I wanted to get back to with, with that.
At that first event, I met a guy named Randy Burleson and Randy and I were
talking, he was from Northern California, Sacramento area, and he said he knew
of a place that might want to host a rock crawl event and he would talk to the
people. So when I moved to California, I started talking to Randy. We hooked
up, we found property owners that were down there at Lake Amador in Amador
County outside of Jackson, California. And we made plans and we put on our
first CalRocs event in November of 2001 I had moved back to California December
of 2000 just before Christmas. Yeah. We spent the next year getting ready to
try to put on a rock crawl event.
Shelley Krehbiel: 15:13
Okay. So this story needs to be told. This is what I've
heard a number of times, but, I think it goes so well in showing your
perseverance. So here we are. It's December, November, 2001 Lake Amador in
Amador County. and it is the Friday of the, of your very first rock crawl. What
happens?
Big Rich Klein: 15:41
leading up to to that Friday on like Monday I received a
call from a guy who said he was a potential spectator. He worked for, he made
mention during the conversation he worked for the Amador County Sheriff's
department and he wanted to know about what this rock crawl event was. And so I
told him, Oh, you know, we're, it's four wheel drive event trials type
competition and it's going to be really cool. You know, we're going to have
wild action to watch. And he goes, well how many people do you think are going
to be there And I said, well, you know, I've got like 42 teams signed up and
you know, I don't know how many people are going to be there, but there was an
event in Utah that there was 10,000 people that showed up. And that was that
first Cedar City event. At least that's what everybody was saying was there. All I know is, is the most people I'd ever
seen in Cedar City up in Three Peaks. So it could have easily been 10,000
people. Well, this guy was obviously fishing for information because we get out
to the event site, we're setting up and Friday morning at like 10 o'clock in
the morning, a sheriff officer shows up, serves me and the property owner with
cease and desist orders, a court date that day at five o'clock Friday in court
fight, you know, so that we could fight the cease and desist order. And so of
course I started to freak out a little bit.
Shelley Krehbiel: 17:14
I'm assuming you're not the only one on site. I mean, Fridays
Big Rich Klein: 17:19
no,
no, we had all the teams were already there. We had most, I would say probably
almost all of our judges were there. You know, everybody that was working
staff, the toilets were already there. Everything for the event was underway. I
mean it was Friday. Okay. So at five o'clock Friday I needed to be in court
fighting the County over a cease and desist order because we did not have a
mass gathering permit. Well, the, when I first got there in the conversations
with the people that owned Lake Amador or lease the property, one of the things
I asked him was, you know, Hey, am I going to have to get any kind of permits
or anything And that guy assured me, no, you won't need any permits. We've had
concerts here, we've had drag boat races here. We've had thousands of people
out here on site and we've never needed a permit because we're zoned
recreation. And I said, okay, great. So I took his word for it Friday morning
at 10 o'clock when the Sheriff's handed me the citation. I'm like, okay, you
know, this isn't good. Bob Roggy was helping me at the time. I looked at Bob
said, what do you think And he goes, well I think we need to call a lawyer. And
I said, yeah, I think you're right. So we called the lawyer that that and he
knew the lawyer called a civil engineer that he knew. We met out on site. We
started looking over everything that we had done before the civil engineer got
there. He had pulled up the what the County required for a mass gathering
permit, you know, how many toilets per a hundred people, all this kind of
thing. We had far exceeded everything that they would have wanted for a mass
gathering permit except we didn't have a permit. We never applied for a permit,
which was like 200 bucks or some ridiculously low number, which would have been
a ridiculously low number if we did know well we go to court, we make a plan,
we go to court, we hear the County and I mean we're talking the County
attorney's there, permit department is there, the sheriff is there. I mean
we're fighting everybody in Amador County and it's just, I think it was just
me, the lawyer, the civil engineer. So we're, we're sitting there, we go through
the proceedings, everybody you know, testifies and then I get called up and the
judge has already heard from the County that, you know, we don't have a permit
and that we're not ready because we haven't met the permit. I circled it. Civil
engineer gets up there and says, well, here's what the County says is required.
Here is what Rich has already done. We far exceed what what is required. We
just don't have a piece of paper signed by them saying that we have a permit
and the threshold is a thousand people to get a a permit. So if you only have
900 people, you don't have to have a permit. So we were basing our card show
the cards at that for that. The judge asked me, so how many people do you
expect? You know this The sheriff officers says that you told him there could
be 10,000 people that far exceeds the permit. And I said, well let me put it
this way. I have no idea how many people are going to show up. So this is the
first time an event like this has ever happened in California. It's only like
the fourth time or fifth time that an event like this has ever been put on
anywhere that I know of and we have no idea how many are going to show up. Plus,
you know, I'm a promoter. I said, you know, think about it. If I was a florist
and you called me up and said I need a dozen roses and I look over in my Rose
Case and I only have two, well I'm going to tell you I have a dozen roses come
on in and then I'm going to scramble like hell to make sure I got the other 10
that's a being a promoter, a salesman. You know when I worked for the tire
stores, if somebody said, Hey, I need this size tire. Yeah, come on in. They
may want the cheapest $2 tire we have or you know, $20 tire, but I'm going to
try to sell them the 40 or $60 tire by showing them the benefits. I said I was,
I'm doing the same thing. A guy calls me up, says he's going to be a spectator,
wants to know how cool is it that is going to be, well hell, I'm going to tell
him it's the greatest thing in the world. People don't want to go out there.
They're going to be the only one there. So I, I told him, you know, Hey,
there's been events like this across the country that have 10,000 people, never
told him we were going to have 10,000 people. So the judge looked at me and said,
well, Mr. Klein, you know, what do you think we should do about this And I
said, well, I'll tell you what I'd like to be able to put the event on.
Obviously we already have people there. We're going through tech and
registration, you know, we're ready to put this event on tomorrow morning at
eight o'clock in the morning. I said, I'd like to do the event. And he goes,
what happens is you get 10,000 people. And I said, we're going to be slammed
packed and I'm gonna have a smile on my face. And he goes, but then you would
have to have a permit and the Sheriff's could shut you down because you don't
have a permit. And I said, well, I'll
tell you what, we'll do a head count as people come in and I'll limit it to 999
people on site, not including your sheriff. And as soon as we hit that 999,
I'll shut the doors and when two people leave, I'll let two more in and the
judge looks at me and goes, you're going to go, you do that. And I said, yeah,
I've got to put this event on cause I, there's no way I can cancel right now.
And since the threshold is a thousand, I'll stand on a thousand. The judge
banged his gavel and said, that sounds good to me. You can put your event on.
Just don't go over a thousand people. So we beat the County. The County was,
when I looked over at their table, they were pretty upset. I don't think they
understood what a rock crawl was. They, my understanding is a couple of weeks
before that at Comanche reservoir, some people showed up and put a rave on. And
so they figured rock crawling, rock and roll. They thought it was another
concert. And so they just wanted to shut us down. And that wasn't, you know,
obviously that's not the case.
Shelley Krehbiel: 23:25
all right, So the next day Gates open. What happened?
Big Rich Klein: 23:32
We
had a line of cars that went on forever. I mean, there's the driveway in, the
access road in off of the highway is probably, well, it's a couple miles long I
think, and I think they were backed up almost to the highway trying to get in.
Once we hit a thousand which was like by eight o'clock in the morning we
turned, we started turning people away. Some people waited in line, others left
and we did what we said we were going to do. The Sheriff's did make one arrest
that weekend. They arrested a guy or wrote a citation for guy for selling a
single marijuana joint.
Shelley Krehbiel: 24:13
Well, this was in 2001 yet that wasn't legal yet. Yeah,
Big Rich Klein: 24:18
That wasn't legal yet. Yeah. Nobody under an ounce under an
ounce was only a hundred dollar fine in California. Okay. The guy got got a a
hundred dollar fine for that. I got a bill like a month later from the
Sheriff's department for $5,000 for overtime for the sheriffs to be at our
event. I wrote the sheriffs a letter back saying, well that's all fine and
dandy, but I'm not paying the $5,000 because you weren't under contract to be
there. I didn't, it wasn't part of the mass. I didn't have to have a mass
gathering permit. You were never hired to be there so you can take your $5,000
and file it. Well, they, they took me to court over that $5,000 and it took me
over two years to beat that $5,000 ticket.
: 24:23
Shelley Krehbiel: 25:10
And what did that actually cost here?
Big Rich Klein: 25:11
It
costs me about $3,000 in, to not pay five but it was principal at that point. Of course, if I added up how many tickets I
got in Amador County, because I still had the CalRocs stickers on my vehicles.
Anybody, my understanding was anybody that, that they saw with a CalRocs
sticker on their vehicle would get pulled over for some bogus ass ticket. Yeah.
We ended up beating it. The, the judge that we first saw told the County that it
was ridiculous and to make it go away. And then every time we would show up
into court again when they get rescheduled, that judge wasn't there. So
there'll always be a judge, judge pro tem and the judge pro tem would always
go, well, you know, I'm not gonna touch this one. We'll wait until the judge is
here, reschedule. Well, this went on like once a quarter for two years. And so
I was paying my lawyer to show up each time we'd get a judge pro tem. And then
finally at that two, two and a half year mark where whatever it was, the
original judge showed up and he was not happy. And he looked at the, at the
district attorney and he said, you know, whatever the guy's name was and you
know, this is, this is ridiculous, you need to make this go away. And the guy
said, well, you know, we, we tried to, we're trying to negotiate with Mr.
Klein, but he will not budge. And the judge said, no, you don't understand. You
make this go away. Drop this or I will. And the guy, the district attorney
says, well, you know, he just won't budge. And the judge said, hit his gavel
and said, case dismissed Mr. Klein, you don't owe the Sheriff's department a
dime. And I brought in all my tickets that I had gotten and paid for and I
said, I'd like to have this stop as well. And so he looked at the, the the
district attorney and said, yeah, you need to make sure that Mr. Klein is not
harassed as he drives through our County anymore. So two years later, after a
couple of seasons of putting on CalRocs, we finally got that one off our back.
But I guess the moral of the story is, is that you just don't give up.
: 25:16
Shelley Krehbiel: 27:28
Yeah.
You can't. Cause if you give up, you'd never get started. So that certainly
has, has been the case in our career. So it started in 2001 first event. It was
a onetime event. What happened after that? What came next?
Big Rich Klein: 27:44
Well,
I'd already planned on doing an event or an event series, made arrangements for
a place in Apple Valley, California called Deadman's Point that was privately
owned, had some really cool rocks on it and the guy was a real estate agent
that owned the property. I go in about a month before, before our, our event
was supposed to happen in February meeting with this guy and he's asking me all
these questions like, well, I need the contact information for your drivers. I
need who your marketing partners are. I need your your food vendors. I want to
know, you know, all the information on how you got your insurance, all these
things. And I'm like, you know, those aren't the kind of, that's not the kind
of information that I'm going to give a property partner. And he goes, well,
maybe I don't want to be just a property partner. And I said, well then you can start your own
fricking event series. And I grabbed all my stuff up and I said, you know,
we're not coming at all. And I walked out the door. Of course I probably wasn't
as nice as that when I walked out the door. So Bob and I are, Bob Roggy and I
go to the Hammers for new years and I meet John James who is with the Tin
Benders. And we started talking about needing a location. you know, we're going
to do this rock crawl cause it was brought up, you know, Hey, you guys are
going to still do this. And was like, no, you know, I got to find a new
location. John James goes, well, you know, I could, I think we could probably
make something work with my dad in the Lion's Club on the Lions Pride Park. It's a shooting range in Lucerne Valley that
they own and it's got a clubhouse and a Big parking and all this other stuff.
And you know, why don't you talk to my dad and see if we can arrange something
to be done there. So it was probably Monday or Tuesday after new year's, couple
of days after that, I met his dad. We had initial conversation. The next thing
I know we're, I'm down in San Bernardino at the County building filing a permit
and a mass gathering permit. I learned my lesson counties and government
agencies are ridiculous. Here we are out in the middle of the desert in a very
small community at a gun range where there are large loud noises going off all
the time. There's one neighbor or two houses there. One neighbor, the one
neighbor was already contracted for the parking for spectators, so he was all
for the event.
Shelley Krehbiel: 30:24
Right.
Big Rich Klein: 30:25
The other residence, nobody even lived in it. It was like a
second home to them and I had no way to get in touch with the people. I tried
calling, you know, found the records through the re, you know, title and all
that kind of stuff. The County required us to have a noise study done, like
we're got dragsters or something, you know, cause they were saying, Oh well you
know it, if it's a motorized event then it's going to be loud. We have to do a
noise study. And I'm like okay, what's that going to cost me Well, it's going
to take six weeks and it's going to be $500 and I'm like, well first of all, I
don't have six weeks and $500 for a noise permit out in the middle of the
desert. And I laid it all out and I said, well, it has to be done. I said, well, you need to kick this up faster.
They go, well, you know, it's these people that do it and they say it's gotta
be six weeks. And I said, all right, who's the guy ahead of that department So
they gave me the phone number, I called the guy and I said, Hey, I'm trying to
put this event on. I just found out that I got to have this noise permit. I've
got to pay you guys 500 bucks to do this noise study. It's, this is the
location and it's a gun range, you know, I mean, we're going to, the normal
operating hours of the gun range is when we're going to be doing our event,
which is in the daytime, not at night, not early, early in the morning. And the
only person that lives nearby is part of the event. So the guy said, okay, well
that'll be fine. Just pay me the 500 bucks. I wrote him a $500 check and he
gave me the permit. So I was able to finish the permit. I mean he didn't even
go out and look. So then I had to contact the highway patrol because the access
road at Rabbit Springs road is also the Highway 18 or whatever it is. It goes
from Apple Valley, Victorville, to Lucerne Valley and down to Yucca. So I have
to have a highway patrol at that intersection. It's not like he's doing out
there with white gloves, you know, directing traffic. He's just sitting there.
So I go in and they said, okay, well here's the hours, you know, here's the
hours I need them because there's not going to be any traffic in the, in, in
the middle. It's going to be all at the front and at the back of the event. So
they said, okay, great. They said, well, we'll, we'll send you an estimate once
we figure it again. You know, I'm, I'm playing here with weeks because I had a
place and now I'm trying to change my second event. I get this thing from the
highway patrol and they're like, it's going to cost $2,500 for the weekend to
have this highway patrolman there. And I'm like, what the hell are you guys
talking about Well, you know, he's going to have the time that he's sitting
there, it's $50 an hour and then he's going to have mileage and he's going to
have to be on his route. And I'm like, Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm not
paying for his route time. I'm not paying for his mileage on the route time. I
shouldn't even have to pay that because he goes up and down that road anyway.
He's just going to sit at our place for two hours every morning, two hours in
the afternoon, you know. And they said, well, he needs to be there more than
that. And I said, I find we ended up getting him for 50 bucks an hour and it
costs me like, I dunno, 500 bucks or something like that for 10 hours. Okay.
Shelley Krehbiel: 33:34
So who knew that $50 an hour was not a bad deal, right?
Big Rich Klein: 33:40
Yeah.
Yeah. Later on we found out from BLM that was cheap. So we, we do that and
that, that highway patrolmen had to do, he only had to do one thing that whole
weekend besides sit, sit on his ass. And that was, we had a, a spectator that
was there that was pretty obnoxious, pretty drunk. He was going to leave his
trash and some of the spectators that were there was yelling at him, Hey, you
know, pick up your trash, you idiot, that kind of thing. And he got
belligerent. I got a phone call from my medical guy going, Hey, we're almost
got a fight going on over here. And I said, just let him go. Tell everybody to
shut up, let him go. I said, what does he look like And so I went down to the
front gate as him and his wife left. They walked out and got into this red
Buick like called that cop that was sitting at the corner and I said, Hey,
there's going to be a red Buick coming by you here by you in a couple of
minutes. When he does, you need to pull him over for drunk driving and this is
what happened. And he goes, yeah. Oh cool. Thanks. Well he ended up getting
arrested. They impounded his car. I'm not sure if she got arrested or not, but
there's little littering out there and being belligerent cost him, probably
quite a bit of money.
Shelley Krehbiel: 34:54
You know that snitches get stitches, right?
Big Rich Klein: 34:57
You know what
Shelley Krehbiel: 34:58
Okay, so now we've started. Do we have a series yet or are we still just doing one-offs?
Big Rich Klein: 35:10
First event of the series. We also had a couple of other
locations lined out for that year. Donner ski ranch.
: 35:15
Shelley Krehbiel: 35:20
It's
okay. I got a list somewhere
Big Rich Klein: 35:23
It might've been Moon Rocks. I was working on doing, getting
Moon Rocks done, but we also did an event fourth of July in 2002 and that was
called Carnage for the Con. It was a
club event and there was four or five clubs involved and it was a rock crawl
club against club. All the proceeds after the cost of the event were donated to
Friends of the Rubicon and it was the first, the second rock crawl in Northern
California. But we held it at Donner Ski Ranch. We didn't have to have permits,
that `or I ignored the fact that we should have permits but we, we had this
event up there and it was, it was pretty much off the hook. Anybody that was
there will tell you that it was, a great time was had by all.
Shelley Krehbiel: 36:11
That's awesome. Yeah,
Big Rich Klein: 36:13
I think that, I want to say that, that the Pirates of the
Rubicon, won that event, Tin Benders came in second, but it may have been the
Tin Benders came in first and that's why it ended up going to Southern
California for the event.
Shelley Krehbiel: 36:30
Well, if you got it wrong, no doubt somebody's going to correct you.
Big Rich Klein: 36:35
somebody has a better memory than me that didn't flush their's away in a beer bottle.
Shelley Krehbiel: 36:40
I don't know that that's the problem. I just know that
your memory's a little shaky. So I think we're doing well getting that. Okay.
So now we've begun, there are other rock crawling series that are going, I want
to say, I know that you are now friends, with other series promoters at the
time, but there was a time in which there was quite a conflict.
Big Rich Klein: 42:32
Yes,
when I left, when I went, when I was club president in Cedar City, Utah, we
used to wheel with the Delta crawlers or I don't remember the name of their
club Canyon crawlers or something like that. Anyway, that that club, the
president was Craig Stump. Dave Burling and I were talking about putting on a
rock crawl in Cedar City because we'd been approached by the Utah Summer Games
to bring in extreme motor sports and put on a rock crawl during, during the,
the summer games. By then. I, you know, we, we'd started conversations, I moved
back to California. Dave and Craig Stump went to an event together where Dave
was actually spotting for Craig, I think. And they started talking about it and
after that event that they had gone to, which I believe was an ARCA event, Dave
calls me up and says, Hey, we're going to start a rock crawling series called
UROC. And it was the, you know, Utah rock crawlers association or something
like that. And I was our Utah rock crawling and off road challenge. And I was
in the process of getting everything started for CalRocs. We started both UROC
and CalRocs at about the same time. ARCA was a, was a national series. I was
more than happy to stay with CalRocs as a regional series. I don't know what,
what UROC plans were at that time, but Dave and Craig Stump started. That was,
it was actually Craig's deal. But Dave was helping him out. Their first event,
I believe first UROC event was in St. George Snow Canyon area and I actually
sponsored Bob Roggy and Mike Shaffer at that event. So I went down there for
the event with them. I looked at the courses and I was like, Holy shit, these
things are insane and I remember Craig Stump coming up to me and going, so
Rich, what do you think of the courses? And I said, these courses are retarded.
And he goes, what do you mean? I said, you're going to break almost everyone
and you're going to very few finishing any of these, these obstacles is my
opinion. And he goes, yeah, I can't wait until I can set up an event where
nobody finishes any of the courses. And I just thought, wow, that's, that's
kind of fucked up. You know, it's not, I want people to have a competition.
It's not, they're not in competition with, with, with the rock crawling
promoter, they're in competition with each other on how well they can drive the
terrain. But that's the difference between, between how people are, you know,
that some people you know, want to do things their own way and that's great.
You know, or everybody wants to do things their own way. So you know, if we
were all the same it would be a boring world. Right, right. So I ended up
working with, with Ranch Pratt. After that I was doing regional series and
doing them all over the place. I had a, we had talked and I had said, you know
what, I don't want to be, I don't want to be the national event promoter. I
just want to put on series events, I want to take, I want to, I want to take my
trailer with all my stuff and I want to go put events on in different places
and go to the drivers instead of the drivers all having to come to me. I said,
I think we can build the sport up by getting more people involved. Well, we had
already, our first season we'd started off with three classes of vehicles right
away I saw that, that I believe that was a Big need. So we had a mod, we had a
mod stock, a pro, a pro mod and unlimited. And so we took that on the road
after the first year and we started, I still had CalRocs, but we did events
outside of Northern California and Nevada under the name of NARRCA, which was
North American Regional Rock Crawlers Association that went on until UROC and
ARCA combined. Craig Stump took some partners. Those partners exited Craig
cause they teamed up with Ranch. Then it became UROC and they were trying, UROC
was going around. They got EROC and all these other organizations that were
putting on rock crawls at that time. They got them all together under the UROC
banner and they kept trying to get me and Little Rich to come under their
banner as CalRocs and I kept saying, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope. Wasn't
interested. I was running Valley Off Road Racing Association, VORRA at that
point as well and I had no, no desire to become part of something that was
Bigger. I didn't mind working with them, but I didn't want to work for them.
That's, that's a whole nother story that doesn't need to become public. Some
people know it, you find it all the old records on, on Pirate, you can, you can
probably see a lot of the conversations that happened, but we never really saw
eye to eye. Everybody was, it was more of a contentious relationship. Even though
I'm friends with Ranch Pratt now or consider us friends cause we're no longer
in competition with each other. There was some contentious times that at times
through rock crawling history,
Shelley Krehbiel: 0:00
so they had all come together under the UROC names. So
instead of Utah, they were thinking of it as United, correct
Big Rich Klein: 42:32
That is correct. So in 2005, we were trying to figure out
how to keep doing what we were doing. Of course, we couldn't use NARRCA anymore
because it just didn't make sense. UROC were really actively going after
everybody. And I said, well let, let's let them have the United States. Let's
contact, you know, people in other countries and see if we can make deals with
them too. Well, they'll run under the WE Rock banner. So we did that and we had
Australia with Sam Overton and we had a Naosumi Tsuda in Japan and we had a guy
in Chile and Brazil and Russia and they never ended up putting on events, but
they were, they were if they did, they were going to use the name. We went up to
Canada and put on a couple of events up in Canada under WE Rock. And I ended up
giving, using the name up there, get calm with the promoter up there that, that
never did anything more than with his off road shows, which was, which were
great. So that's the way we went until, until UROC decided to not do any rock
crawling anymore.
Shelley Krehbiel: 43:53
Okay.
So WE Rock is World Extreme Rock Crawling or depending on the day, sometimes it
feels like weather extreme.
Big Rich Klein: 44:02
Yeah, it was, it was, it was meant to be the World Extreme
Rock Crawling Championship Series. it was actually, I think Dean Bulloch that
coined the term weather extreme as we rock instead of a world extreme.
Shelley Krehbiel: 44:19
But that goes with any outdoor events. I mean, let's face
it, if we were concerned that much about the weather, we'd find an indoor arena
to do stuff in. So world WE Rock has now begun. CalRocs has been shelved. we're
in the 2005, 2006 era. Is that correct It's very, it's very strong. there's a
lot of competitors. Tell me about Goldendale.
Big Rich Klein: 44:47
Goldendale Washington. The first year we were going to go to
Goldendale Washington. It was under the CalRocs banner. What I did is I looked
where they were guys were putting on motorcycle trials and I contacted the
property owners to do the same thing, putting on a rock crawls where the trials
riders were at, well, we got up to Goldendale Washington. I went up there to
look at the rocks and realize that the, the rocks and the photos with the
motorcycles on them looked a lot different than with a car on them. Or when I
was standing there looking at him and I was like, these things are pebbles.
They weren't rock. I canceled that event. Well, the internet was not as
effective back then as it is now. So the did the weekend that we had scheduled
to have that rock crawl in Goldendale. Of course we didn't have it and people
were showing up to the Chamber of Commerce and going, Hey, where's the rock
crawl And the lady that was running the chamber at the time, Glenn Mosbacher,
she goes, Oh, what rock crawl I don't know anything about it. So finally she
got the information, you know, she said there was like 200-250 people that
showed up over that Friday, Saturday looking for the rock crawl. She calls me
on that Monday and said, okay, what is a rock crawl and why were you supposed
to be here and why weren't you? I told her, you know, we, the location wasn't
as good as I thought it was going to be. We had to cancel. I put it out on the
internet. I tried to get, you know, over Pirate 4x4 on, tried to get it out
there to all the word out as I could. And even with like the Pacific Northwest
rock crawlers up there and everybody I could think of, but people still showed
up. So she goes, well, I want to have
this event here. And I said, well, I can't unless I can find rocks. And she
goes, what if I find you rocks? I said, okay, fine. She goes, well, you need to
come up here and take a look at my rocks. So I think by like Wednesday I was on
my way up to Goldendale and she showed me rocks on the side of the County
fairgrounds, which was this steep hill that had these rock formations on it.
And we camped out at the fairgrounds, went through the fence and out onto this
hillside. And it was great except that the cars, it wasn't a lot of rock there.
And so we couldn't, we didn't have enough room really. And when the cars would
roll over, they had a tendency to keep rolling over. So instead of rolling over
once or twice, they could, you know, they might roll over four or five, six
times until they got you to the bottom of the hill. That was a little crazy. He
ended up going over to, I think we did it. That event is a one day there at the
fairgrounds and then another day over what is now called Broken Boulder Farms,
Mark and Rody Shilling's property. So they have this nice Canyon, lots of
rocks, and we put on an event over there. well the next year when we did it, that was
with, again, very little notice, but we put it on, I don't know how many teams
we got. I don't remember the next year. We put it on well in advance. All on
Rody's property. We had, I think it was 82 teams, I want to say 14 courses set
up or something crazy like that. Well we had A, B and C courses, so we may have
had even more than that. Cause I think at that time we were running like seven
courses a day, which was way too many. Wow. Yeah. You've been that to that,
that park or that, that place. I don't know how we set up that many courses. Yeah,
where are we did. I think Little Rich at the time was doing the, the had
started doing the course designing and he did a phenomenal job up there making
it work, having all those courses. It was absolutely crazy. I think we had
close to 3,500 spectators. The city was behind us full blast. We had the
downtown park, Ekone Park. We had it set up with a beer garden, at night
showing off road videos on a Big screen, a band playing the park was packed. A
lot of hangovers every morning and it, it was pretty crazy.
: 48:23
Shelley Krehbiel: 49:08
I'm always a little bit jealous when you guys talk about
that event because that's Bigger than anything that we've seen in my tenure,
but this is 2006, 2007 before the housing bust.
Big Rich Klein: 49:23
Yeah.
Actually that the Biggest events we had were, even before that, they were still
under the CalRocs days when we were, before we even became WE Rock and that was
Nevada moon rocks. We did, you know, the Goldendale and Donner were huge
events. Even the ones that we did down in Cougar Buttes were huge. Probably a
Cougar Buttes ones are probably the smallest and they were closer to what we
see nowadays. Yeah. The before the housing, the housing market crashed in '08,
'07 whenever that started, whenever, you know. Yes, we were, the events were
larger.
Shelley Krehbiel: 50:02
So
why do you think that had such an impact on the, recreational rock crawling the
competitive rock crawling?
Big Rich Klein: 50:14
Big Rich Klein: 0:00
Well, for one thing, most of our competitive people that
were competing in our events were contractors or had off road shops. And a lot
of their businesses, their business was from guys building cars or buying cars,
buying parts that were contractors, people in the housing industry. I mean,
everything, everything was blowing up. They were building houses everywhere,
right on top of each other. I mean, out in the middle of nowhere. You know,
you'd drive 20 minutes out of a town on some two lane back road and all of a
sudden there'd be, you know, 500 houses out there that, you know, somebody was
building selling them. Well, they, you know, everybody was overextended.
Everybody had three or four mortgages, it seemed like and had boats and cars.
And when the housing market took a dump, everybody started losing everything
and all those contractors were out of work and that, that it's not a trickle
down. It's like turn off the faucet. So a lot of different industries got hurt
really bad. No, the strong in off roads survived, you know, or the stupid. You
know, sometimes I've, I put myself in that category. Not the strong, but the
stupid that, you know, we, we loved what we were doing, so we tried to make it
work.
Big Rich Klein: 0:00
Well,
for one thing, most of our competitive people that were competing in our events
were contractors or had off road shops. And a lot of their businesses, their
business was from guys building cars or buying cars, buying parts that were
contractors, people in the housing industry. I mean, everything, everything was
blowing up. They were building houses everywhere, right on top of each other. I
mean, out in the middle of nowhere. You know, you'd drive 20 minutes out of a
town on some two lane back road and all of a sudden there'd be, you know, 500
houses out there that, you know, somebody was building selling them. Well,
they, you know, everybody was overextended. Everybody had three or four
mortgages, it seemed like and had boats and cars. And when the housing market
took a dump, everybody started losing everything and all those contractors were
out of work and that, that it's not a trickle down. It's like turn off the
faucet. So a lot of different industries got hurt really bad. No, the strong in
off roads survived, you know, or the stupid.
Shelley Krehbiel: 0:00
So I came along first part of 10 and my first few events,
well they were okay size, but they started to trickle and. Got pretty small.
Big Rich Klein: 51:42
Yeah. 2009 was the first event you came to was a,
Shelley Krehbiel: 51:47
okay, right.
Big Rich Klein: 51:48
The
Reno rocks. I want to say that that was probably the last Big event
Shelley Krehbiel: 51:53
and it was, but that was, I mean, there are a lot of people
that deserve credit for that one. Yeah. Barbara Rainey in particular, but there
were a lot of folks involved in making that one Big, the boys from Pirate
helped and yeah, it was, it was quite a good time. It was a good introduction
for me into the community. I saw, I saw things I never expected to see in my
lifetime. Yeah. I, I'd never heard of us. I have a party in which you had to
rip your sleeves off to get in the door. I mean, just never seen anything like
that. and it was, but that was, I mean, there are a lot of people
that deserve credit for that one. Yeah. Barbara Rainey in particular, but there
were a lot of folks involved in making that one Big, the boys from Pirate
helped and yeah, it was, it was quite a good time. It was a good introduction
for me into the community. I saw, I saw things I never expected to see in my
lifetime. Yeah. I, I'd never heard of us. I have a party in which you had to
rip your sleeves off to get in the door. I mean, just never seen anything like
that.
: 52:16
Big Rich Klein: 52:30
Yeah, that was, that was quite a night when the, those
bikers, we had the whole upper floor to the casino hotel and it's where all the
suites were at. The Big suites. Rich was in one the rest of some staff in one
across from us. And then we had one and rich decided to throw a party. All that
whole upper floor was, was ours except for one room. And that one other suite
was a bunch of bikers. I don't know what club they were or whatever, but they
came to the down to Rich's room and there's 50, 60, a hundred off roaders in
that room. They walked in there like they were, you know, they were going to
take over the party or whatever. And as soon as they walked in, people are
ripping their sleeves off of these bikers t-shirts. So I guess things got a
little contentious at, at one point. And then I think the bikers looked around
and said, you know, we might bad asses, but there's a shit ton of these guys.
So it ended up just becoming a party.
Shelley Krehbiel: 53:31
I'd
like to believe they just went, Oh, these guys are cool.
Big Rich Klein: 53:36
But you know, they came down, I think they came down there,
you know, look into, look into kick some ass and take some names. Not
everybody. I mean, not everybody is stupid.
Shelley Krehbiel: 53:45
Right. That's right. Okay, so you're right. So that was
2009. It was pretty Big event. but as we progressed , they start to get a
little thin. So where, where were you, where mentally, where were you with that
Knowing that it's hard to make some money doing what we're doing.
Big Rich Klein: 54:07
Like I said, 2009 that event was Big. The rest of them were,
were struggles. I was looking at retiring, closing the doors on WE Rock in 2009
being the last season. I hadn't made any commitments to marketing partners at
the time. We finished the season in 2009 down in Farmington.
Shelley Krehbiel: 54:28
Oh, there's a story.
Big Rich Klein: 54:30
Yeah,
Shelley Krehbiel: 54:31
tell that one.
Big Rich Klein: 54:32
Yeah. Yeah, that one. That one was rough. The the community
down there, the four wheel drive community, Rick Jenkins and that, that whole
group of Cliffhangers and and all the other clubs, Chokecherry Canyon crawlers,
505 crawlers or whatever they call themselves. Those guys were phenomenal. They
were really behind us. We made the deal with the Farmington BLM office to be
down there at Brown spring. It was a brand new office manager or department
manager, whatever you want to call field manager. And I think most of the staff
there was new, hadn't been there when any events had gone on previously and
they had just not just instituted, but it was like the first rock crawl event
like that that they were going to do cost recovery on and cost recovery is this
thing that BLM does to screw over small businesses, promoters.
: 54:44
Shelley Krehbiel: 55:27
I'm certain that's not their intention. It's just might feel like it,
Big Rich Klein: 55:33
it,
it's, it's their intent. If they don't have to put on events, then they don't,
you know, they don't have to associate with events then they don't have to work
and they still get paid the same amount of money. So, you know, it's easy for
them to go, okay, you know, this is going to cost you $25-$30,000 to put on a
two day event. So you know, that's what it's going to cost. Cost recovery that
chases everybody off. Well that event we were looking at like a 30 a $3,000
bill, $3,100 $3,200 bill or something like that. And then post recovery comes
around because you pay that cost recovery upfront. So for that event, I think I
had written him a check for like $3,100 or something. They come back and say,
okay, well here's the part that we didn't know and this is all of our staff
time beyond the permit. And so they hit me up with law enforcement and some
other people walking around out there with BLM shirts on. Law enforcement, they
billed me for $107 and $105 an hour as their benefit rate, what it costs me per
hour for the cops, for the Leos to be out there, law enforcement officers. And
then the law enforcement officers decided it was probably a good time to get
know vacation pay. So they would be there at six in the morning til seven eight
nine o'clock at night. Even though our event was only nine to three or four,
they charged me for all that other time. And by the time everything was said
and done for the law enforcement and the permit and everything else that they
added on, we were at like $8200, $8,300 and that event with it was, it was cold
first weekend in October, it was miserable, it was miserable. And we, we did like $8,300 or $8,200 at the
gate. So my whole bill just to BLM, not including toilets, hotel rooms or
staff, everything that that we used to cover and all my other expenses was
paid. Every, every dollar I made on that event went to BLM for cost recovery
and I freaking lost it. I told the clubs down there and the chamber and
everybody, we're never coming back, you know, we love you guys, but BLM office
is out the door. And I, at that point I said I'd never worked with BLM again. I
had already said that after dealing with the moon rocks debacle, everything
that happened up there with Carson city office. But when we went to Farmington
and I got, well I always call it prison raped, cause that's what it felt like.
I was never going to go back to BLM land. So you know, since then we've always
done everything on private property and then it was what, a five years ago.
: 57:22
Shelley Krehbiel: 58:29
Yeah, but just you're skipping ahead. Needless to say what
we need to say here, it's just that we love the Farmington BLM office now, but
every
: 58:39
Big Rich Klein: 58:40
Why We love them now.
Shelley Krehbiel: 58:41
Exactly. Everything has changed. Okay, so you, you stuck it
out 2009 so this happens. You're now out of money. It's the end of the season.
What happens
Big Rich Klein: 58:52
We didn't go to Off-Road Expo. I didn't go to SEMA. I was
ready to hang it up. I had moved in with you up in Idaho. I was being a really
good housemate.
Shelley Krehbiel: 59:03
House
husband Yes, we were married yet. But yeah, you were really good at that
Big Rich Klein: 59:09
I did dishes. I did laundry, I cleaned the house. It was my
off season and I was broke so I wasn't going anywhere. I talked about quitting.
You'd said, well, let me help you. And I was like, I don't know.
: 59:16
Shelley Krehbiel: 59:26
said, no. Yeah, He said, no
Big Rich Klein: 59:28
no. And because I didn't want you to get involved with, with
something that was so financially screwed up at that point. It was just, just a
nightmare. Everything was a mess and I was burned out.
Shelley Krehbiel: 59:40
Yeah. The other thing that you told me often was, no, you have a full time job. Don't worry about this. And you're like, let me help you. Let me help. And you finally did say that. And then finally I insisted. It's like, no, we're going to be partners. I'm going to help. But I had my own motive because I was ready to retire from my job and I didn't know what came next. And I thought, well you know, I had been looking for some adventure. This sounded adventurous, let's go do this. So you finally let me help.
Big Rich Klein: 1:0:17
Yep.
You started helping and you saved rock crawlingYep.
You started helping and you saved rock crawling
Shelley Krehbiel: 0:00
I love that. That gives me a whole lot of credit. I appreciate it. But I'm pretty sure
: 1:0:22
Big Rich Klein: 1:0:27
Everybody
that was around then knows it. Okay. They understand
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:0:32
well
and there were some pretty thin crowds. So we got to know people really well
cause there wasn't a lot of people to talk to. We were trying to save that
Big Rich Klein: 1:0:39
people jumped out of, out of rock crawling. some of them
went racing and started going to a King of the Hammers races. they were still,
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:0:39
cause
that had just begun.
Big Rich Klein: 1:0:52
XRRA was still going on but their numbers was starting to grow smaller. Dave
with, with King of the Hammers, it was pre-Ultra4, you know, the numbers there
were growing. But I mean first couple of races, first couple of years, you
know, there wasn't, it wasn't like it is now by any means, you know, I mean one
class and if they had 40 cars, 50 cars, it was phenomenal. I had helped Dave,
King of the hammers by helping them with insurance and tech and registraton,
tech, not registration. Yeah. That came later. And then, put on the first UTV
race at KOH when, they decided no, this might, you know, this might be popular.
So they started doing them after that. We had some lean times, some of the
events, well we have like six competitors
: 1:1:27
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:1:47
and
a whole show to do. Yep, absolutely. And it got thinner on the East coast then
on the West coast or should I, maybe the better way to say it as the West coast
came back faster.
Big Rich Klein: 0:00
Yes,
let's West Coast came back.
Shelley Krehbiel: 0:00
So, okay, so now we're into, you've made the choice that I'm
retiring. We decided that WE Rock is still going to hang around and King of the
Hammers is just getting started. So there is a need. There are race cars being
built all over the country. What happens then?
Big Rich Klein: 1:2:18
Yeah. Cars being built around the country and then XRRA
decided to hang a hang it up and not go any longer. So Mike and Jody Weaver
stopped putting on events. I said, you know, here's a perfect opportunity to do
something for those racers that want to go race, but we can, we can spend more
time on the road doing events instead of coming back home because it's always
really expensive to go out and then come back and then go out and come back.
And we discussed it and we decided let's, let's try to make it work. Traveling
full time. So we started, we did a our first Dirt Riot race, I want to say in
2011 or 12 and we did two races. We did three races that season. We did two
races at Copper Mines and then we did in Oklahoma, Altus, Oklahoma. And then we
did one race at Ram Off Road Park in Colorado Springs.
: 1:3:01
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:3:16
Right.
Because XRRA had always traditionally had an event, on Father's Day weekend.
And so we wanted to capitalize on the people being the crowd, the spectators
being used to coming out to do that. I remember. Yup. So, but in the meantime,
we had bought what is now the Taj Mahauler
Big Rich Klein: 1:3:40
correct. And we looked at, you know, using pickup trucks or
Topkick and trailers, which was what we had been doing before, going on full
time. And it was just, wasn't going to be enough room for everything. Didn't
think it was going to be as, as comfortable. You know, we started off with a,
like a race trailer that we had started to build. We picked it up like somebody
had started building it out as a toy hauler. We had done, I had done some work
to it to try to make it, you know, finish it off and make it better. And we
were running with pickup trucks and everything was just, it was just a
nightmare, you know, using older equipment and everything breaking down. We
were gonna do this full time. So we looked at, you know, do we get an expediter
type box truck, semi-truck or do we get, you know, a semi truck and a trailer.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:4:28
We looked at work-n-plays but they seemed a little too fancy
for what we were going for. And then you saw this one for sale
Big Rich Klein: 1:4:38
Yeah. Rick Dermo had had this semi-truck that he had picked
up semi-truck and trailer and he had built it out as a weekend warrior. The
price was pretty good and he had, so I called him up and he wanted, I really
wanted it but I didn't want to spend that much money cause we didn't have any
money. So we were looking at an expediter trying to just put, you know, a small
living quarters in it. And instead, I remember I woke up one morning going,
okay, I made a decision. I said, this is what we're going to do. And she, and
you said, no, I made a decision and this is what we're going to do. So I called
Rick and I said, Hey, I want the truck, semi truck and trailer that he built
out. And he goes, well, you know, there's this, these other guys want it. One
of them was Randy Rodd, you know, they've told me they're gonna they want to
buy it. And I said, okay, yeah, but I got money in hand right now. I can be
down there in two days and we will take and we will hand you the cash and we
will, we'll drive away. So he called me back and nobody else that wanted it
could come up with the cash that quick. So we ended up with the truck. We drove
down there. I hadn't driven a truck of any size since I was like 19 we went and
picked it up. We dropped off, he took in trade, that race trailer/toy hauler
that I was building. We unhitched the truck from the trailer and Rick and I
drove from Dove Creek out West toward the state line, which was only like 15
miles or something like that. 20 miles turned around and drove back and he
taught me in that time frame how to drive, you know, reintroduced me to driving
a large truck with multiple gears without using a clutch. So everything's speed
shifting. So I thought, okay, this is fine. You know, we get hooked up. You
jump in the car or no, you were following me.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:6:34
No, I got into cab. I got into cab. I remember that. I have
no idea. I don't remember man. You know what I think we met, I left the truck
and because we hauled the trailer down and then we picked the truck up on the
way back because I know I was in the cab with you.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:6:52
Yeah, that's right. That's what we did. Cause then we went
down to Arizona. Oh we were getting ready to go to Baja or something I think.
: 1:6:58
Big Rich Klein: 1:7:20
Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. Luckily there wasn't a lot of
traffic and you know, the couple of times that I didn't make really smooth
starts or shifts and had to stop and start over again. It was an interesting
drive. We got to a Flagstaff cutting across the nations and then we're down. I
think we ended up down in Gilbert and we parked at Campbell's at Campbell shop
while we went on to, to Mexico.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:7:47
I think so, yeah. I don't remember how we did all that,
but I don't remember. It was a while ago, but that's okay. So the Taj Mahauler
now is very different than what it was when we picked it up.
Big Rich Klein: 1:8:01
Yeah. Rick had, like I said, Rick had built it out as a
weekend warrior. So the foundation of the vehicle, the trailer was there and it
had a bathroom, a nice bathroom. It had countertops, kind of a, a wall unit.
And then another piece, it came out almost like an Island
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:8:18
A peninsula. Yeah,
Big Rich Klein: 1:8:19
a penisula, Yeah. And it had the bedroom, but everything in
it was, was 110 volt. So it had like a little six gallon apartment sized water
heater. It had a 110 refrigerator. It had a, I think it was a 7,500 watt Honda
generator on the back of the, of the truck. All the lights were 110 power
outlets and everything else. And no heat. The heat, he had all plug in heaters.
So the first couple of days that we had that,
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:8:48
don't forget the air conditioning.
: 1:8:51
Big Rich Klein: 0:00
Oh
yeah. The air conditioning was a window unit that was stuck in the loft, in the
bedroom, in the wall between the garage and the bedroom. So that was, that
wasn't even heat. That was just AC, it wasn't real efficient to say the least.
So you would always freeze or you'd always get too hot. So we had that for a
while. Then we took it the next winter for that first year we used it like it
was then. I think it was the first, first year we went up to Idaho and Andrew
Paulson in Pocatello. He did most of the work
Big Rich Klein: 1:9:27
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:9:27
So that would have been not until the end of 2012 so we ran
it for two years cause we picked it up in 10 or 11 so we ran it for a couple of
years just like it was 11 was just, WE Rock plus those three additional.
because I was still working. So at the end of 11, we still were in the house.
So it was, we ran it the full next season like it was, and it was the end of 12
that we went back to Idaho. And it was cold.
Big Rich Klein: 1:10:00
yeah, there was snow on the ground. It was frozen and we put
the, we did a dual hot water heater. So you had ran off a propane or electric.
We had, we put in a propane forced air heater. So you would heat the one vent
into the bathroom, one vent into the bedroom and one vent into the living area.
The office kitchen slash we changed it from an Island or I did that when I was
down at the hammers, like cut that thing up and moved it around and God,it was
a cluster. We may and when we put some, some low voltage in there, lighting did
a bunch of stuff to make it more livable. We moved the AC from inside the bulk,
inside that area to the bulkhead of the trailer so that it was outside. And
then inside though that it was taking the cold air like a wind, like a window
unit should. And so we ran that and it was, I think we replaced that one a year
or two later and then it died again at the end of the year before. And we said,
okay, you know, before the season starts we've got to get a new got to go with
an AC system.
: 1:10:57
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:11:12
: So it's been through a lot of transformations now. So the
bathroom remarkably is still the same. Yeah. But that's about the only thing
the bedroom's been remodeled. You added an additional level of floor, put us on
a egg crate type system for the bed so that there's space for baskets. Because
the one thing we don't have as a ton of storage, right, so fix that. We put a
mini split in, so we've got good air conditioning, the bathroom's the same, but
the kitchen, the kitchen is my favorite and that's all. Thanks to Ken Goodall
out of Phoenix and the work that he, that Goodall Cabinetry did. Ken came to me
at a race, one of our Dirt Riot racers, obviously he's an Ultra4 racer as well,
and he walks up and he pokes his head in, he looks around and of course Rich's
idea of keeping track of cabinets and keeping them in good shape is when they
start to fall apart. You put in that glue shit and you glue them together and
the yellow stuff pokes out and you just leave it. It's good. And you know what
I was fine with that. Well, but they
started with those. Yeah. So Ken kind of looks in and he looks both ways to my
kitchen and he goes, Shelley, can I put new cabinets in here and I said,Ken,
cabinets are not in my budget, so thank you. And he looks again and he goes, I
didn't say anything about your budget. Can I put new cabinets in here And I
said, can I hug you And I gave him a Big hug and at the end of the season, I
might've even taken us two seasons. We finally got it worked out and he put in
these fantastic cabinets a year ago and they're absolutely beautiful and
they're everything that I wanted. We did carbon fiber finish because it's a
race trailer. I mean that's what we've got, but everything now has a space and
when we'd left it there, it of course, like any contractor, he took a little
bit longer than I wanted, but you know, I'm a woman. That's what we expect.
Right When we finally got it back, we're looking at it and we're, because we're
looking at the kitchen cabinets and I'm like, Oh my God, that's so nice. She
goes, look at the floor. And I looked at the floor and went, they did the floor
too. No way. And then we started to actually stop and look, and they didn't
just do the floor. They gave me a desk. They built all my cubbies in everything
that had been there. We didn't anticipate them doing it, any of that. it, we
thought the deal was just for cabinets. Say it was fantastic. So I hats off to
Ken Goodall. Thank you so much for that. I'm, I'm still loving that, that I
love the trailer. It's, it's a, it's tiny house living and before it was cool.
Yeah, it is because home is wherever we're parked. Yeah. That's cool. Okay, so
it's, now let's fast forward a little bit. It is now 2020. We have survived the
downfall of the, of the market. You know, let's start at the beginning. You
survived your first events where you began rock as a rock crawling promoter.
You survived the flux of the housing market in which everybody stopped working.
You survived starting Dirt Riot. Tell us a little bit more about what Dirt
Riot, was about and Why you did that
: 1:12:20
Big Rich Klein: 1:14:35
We, we looked at, at the racing back then and like I said,
the XRRA had done, had closed their doors. I thought that there needed to be a
way for racers to learn how to race and other places for them to race than just
the desert races. Like Best in the Desert or SCORE or any, you know, SNORE or
any of those others. Ultra4 was just becoming a thing where it was more than
just one race where they were trying to put together a series. We jumped on and
said, let's, let's do a series where we could help the teams learn how to race.
You know, rock crawlers and trail rigs are not necessarily built to go fast for
long periods of time. A King of the Hammers race was, you know, an eight to 14
hour race. Even back when it was only 120 or 130 miles long, the cars were not
built to hold together. The teams, you
know, most of them had never desert raced or even understood what, what they
needed to do for pit support. How to, you know, how to have enough fuel to do
that. We wanted to teach them how to go faster and how to be successful. The
best way we thought for that was to put togeth
Big Rich Klein: 1:17:11
er races where they did multiple
laps on a set period of time and where the courses were never more than four to
eight miles, nine miles is what I wanted, you know, run for two or three hours
and they could get in plenty of time. First race we we wanted to do was four
hours. I remember Derek West calling me up and saying, Rich, you're crazy.
There's no way we can race for four hours if we're going to do nine mile laps.
I was like, yeah, you can come on. I
think that first race we did, I think we did that race at three hours, but we
that was the only class of vehicles. We didn't have everybody else that first
year. So then we, by two hours, I think three quarters of the cars were broken
out. A lot of recoveries to do. Guys were like, you know, this is crazy. I'm
getting seasick out there going around and around around in circles. I still
felt it was the best way for people to learn because if it becomes repetitious
where you're seeing the same corner, you get to practice that corner for the
whole race. You learn how to, you know, you go into like the first time you're
rough, you know, you figure it out. The next time you race somewhere else and
you see a corner that's like that. Now you know how to set the car up to get
through that corner. Whether you've ever made that corner or not. It's
something that may be familiar. I felt that it was a really good way for people
to learn how to drive their cars fast. Plus we never had anything to where the
guys like dry Lake beds where the guys were going to do 130-120 miles an hour.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:17:11
Unless you're Bill Baird.
Big Rich Klein: 1:17:16
Big Rich Klein: 1:18:25
Big Rich Klein: 1:18:25
Yeah, so we had the shorter courses, the repetitious driving and repetitious, I
mean by doing multiple laps and we finally figured it out that two hour 4400
race and a one hour race for all the other classes were probably the best
scenario. The race courses started getting a little shorter because some of the
parks that we went to, we just couldn't find nine, seven or nine mile laps. We
would go shorter races on courses that were shorter so that guys wouldn't just
beat themselves up going over and over and over. And a lot of turns because
there were times where guys were coming in after an hour and a half race going,
Oh my God, I can't even lift my arms, you know, the steering, you know, and of
course, everything's much more refined nowadays. You know, the steering
components are better. The, the teams understand what they're doing better.
Building the cars. We, we built our, our racing around that teaching people how
to race when, when Dave Cole first got wind that we were putting on races, I
can remember a phone call from him where he was slightly agitated. I think I
ended up hanging up on him.
Big Rich Klein: 1:18:27
we had our conversation had part of it. He didn't want
competition. I was trying to convince him we're not competition. We ended up
deciding that we should, after about three or four tries having a conversation
on the phone, when we finally decided we had to have a conversation in person,
you and I drove down to Big Bear where Dave and Lujan lived and we had our
conversation and we struck a deal that was kind of bizarre. We were, we were
structured in the way that we would always be regional series grassroots. We
would feed Ultra4, we also went to work for Dave during KOH where you would
help, you would help or run registration and I would help where needed plus run
the trail that that is Chocolate Thunder, which was a high exposure area. It
was a, it was a spot where previously somebody had rolled over, created a Big
traffic jam. Everybody trying to get around them and make things really
dangerous. So Dave felt that they needed somebody there, a strong personality
that the drivers would listen to to kind of keep things under control in that
area. And I think at about the same time my son was working over on Backdoor
basically doing the same thing.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:20:04
Yeah, you started first. We'd done that for one or two years
before Little came in, took over the other one
Big Rich Klein: 1:20:04
and then yeah, so Rich was working back and on recoveries.
It didn't have this spectator problem there as bad because of the way the
Canyon was shaped. And then, you know, over the years, this thing got, things
got crazier out there and the race went from one day to 200 days or however
long the race is now.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:20:24
It's just how long it feels, right?
Big Rich Klein: 1:20:26
Yeah. Two weeks on that lake bed Feels like 200 days.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:20:29
Uh, it's a lot like the self quarantine. Yeah. Yeah.
Big Rich Klein: 1:20:35
So, you know, we ended up doing a, working for him for a few years, but still
working together on Ultra4 being, you know, the professional series, a Dirt
Riot being the grassroots series. And then we, this last year we decided to
hang it up with Dirt Riot for the simple fact that it was physically becoming
impossible to do 20 events a year between 10 rock crawls and 10 Dirt Riot races
to have enough time to do it and not do too many weeks in a row back to back
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:21:10
Right. Cause this season's just never been long enough. The
weather doesn't cooperate soon enough and, and we have to finish too soon. So
that was a tough emotional decision though because what we've always said is
that this is not just how we make our living, this is our lifestyle, this is,
this is what we do, these are the people we do it with. And so it's been really
hard to let go of that family and know that it's okay that we all do our own
thing. But here we are. It's 2020 we are doing, we are now 492 days into self
quarantine. Maybe not that long, but it feels like it. Can you imagine what we
would be doing if, if we had to, cause we've already had to reschedule now two
WE Rock events. What if we had half a dozen more events
Big Rich Klein: 1:22:02
Well yeah we would have had to Dirt Riots as well by this
time and we would have, you know, so we'd have been four events either cancel
or postpone, reschedule. And right now we have the weekends available to us. We
haven't had to cancel anything. All we've done is postpone them and reschedule
and we still have room to reschedule those rockcrawls and still get all the
season in pending on how much longer the the recovery takes. with all of this
bullshit.
: 1:22:07
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:22:34
But
we've done some other things besides that. So while WE Rock has come up and
it's growing. Tell us about the first event in 2020 when did that look like
Big Rich Klein: 1:22:44
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:24:04
because they're always flaky, no matter what you doing. Yeah,
Big Rich Klein: 1:24:07
Yeah.
Unfortunately they always say they want to come back and then for some reason
they don't. I think the food vendor we had this year, will be back.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:24:16
He did Awesome.
Big Rich Klein: 1:24:17
He did phenomenal and still talking to him over Facebook and
stuff. And you know, he's been even more successful because most of our, most
of our clientele there for that event is people from Arizona. So there was a
lot of people that came in from the Prescott area, Prescott Valley area, and to
the event since it's only 40 minute drive or so that's where his business is
at, so he's been really popular and his business has been doing really well. So
I think, I think it will be back, if not, we'll find other food vendors, but we
had a phenomenal start to the season and then it all came to a screeching halt.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:24:57
Right.
But it's not just our business.
Big Rich Klein: 1:25:03
It's the whole U. S economy.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:25:04
Yeah. I think it's the world economy, but yeah, it is. So,
so here we are. We're just waiting it out. we're filling in our time doing
those things that we can get done and preparing for the, our season because we
believe it to be still a full season available. that may prove to be different,
but right now we're good, but we don't just do WE Rock. You're not just the
head of that. What else tell, tell them about 4Low
Big Rich Klein: 1:25:34
4low
is a magazine that was started by a guy named Ty June. We took over the
magazine. Issue 18 was our, was our first wholly owned issue. We did kind of a
split issue with issue 17. I think it went first, started in print with issue
12 or 13. I'm not sure when Ty put it up for sale. I mean I'd always wanted to
be, I always wanted to do a magazine, my degree and my college education in
photography, product advertising. I worked for an ad agency in the San
Francisco Bay area for about a year and then started my own business up in the
Sierra Nevada. Foothills. Did some work all through up mining towns all along
there helping small businesses with their photography needs and brochures and
things like that. And did some work in the San Francisco Bay area for some
smaller companies. And one I got married back in 81 82 whenever it was, I got
married 82 it was, I realized that being a photographer was great when you're
single because you could make a bunch of money one month and if you didn't work
for a month or two, no Big deal, but being married and then all of a sudden
kids, it was like, all right, you know you got to have a regular income. Plus that was about the time when things
started going all digital and I had a lot of money invested in film cameras and
I didn't want to reinvest, especially with a family. It would have digital
cameras at that point were really expensive just like everything was is when
they come out brand new and I had no interest. I just kind of burned out on it,
decided to go to work for somebody else and I did all sorts of odd jobs and
landscape contractor, you know, the California license and you know, worked for
Sears as an automotive manager and did all that kind of stuff. But when I got
into rock crawling, that's when I realized that's what I wanted to do, going to
be my life profession. I was going to do it till the day I die. Well I was
going to need to because I'd have no retirement. Right. So I figured, you know,
I was going to be out on the rocks sometime and you know, fall over dead and
they just, you know, the kids would bury me out there somewhere. That would be
that, that first year that we did CalRocs 2002 I really wanted to put together
a magazine. There was, there was nothing out there that was like super extreme.
All, all the magazines out there, four wheel drive magazines or off-road
magazines. There was a lot of desert stuff. There was a lot of Big trucks with
Chrome on them. You know, there was a, like the fall guy truck is what I want
to, you know, Chrome shocks on them, that kind of thing. And it was like, you
know, we need to have a magazine for rock crawling enthusiasts. So put together
an idea, talk to some people. We kind of laid out how the magazine should look.
And then I got a call from a guy named
Dave Fiola and he said, Hey, I understand you're doing a magazine. And I said,
well, I wrote something up, but I'm not going to do it because I just don't
have the time. And doing the events full time was enough. So we talked, I gave
him my ideas and I said, why don't I just send you over all the stuff I have
email wise and you know, you run with it and if you decide to do a magazine,
just give us some love. Well, they did that. And then that magazine was XOM
extreme off-road magazine. There's a whole Big story behind that. And then it
changed names and that's a different world. But I still wanted to always do a
magazine. So Ty had coming out to our events as a freelance photographer. He
was doing an online magazine, decided to go to print. I remember having that
conversation with him. I think it was, it was either at Rausch or
: 1:27:36
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:29:12
It wasn't Rausch. You know where, where was it was at chaos.
Big Rich Klein: 1:29:19
: Then he said that he wanted to go into print. We were
shaking our heads like, no Ty. You know you're going to need advertisers to
afford that know. And he went for it anyway and I think he got burned out on
the whole thing trying to work as well, you know, a full time job and then do
that. So he put it up for sale. I jumped on it. I talked to you and I said,
Hey, I want to buy this. We talked about it, you said, yeah, go ahead. We bought
the magazine. You had a really sharp learning curve to learn how to put
together a magazine and I sat back and took credit for it.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:29:57
Thank goodness this has been recorded it,
Big Rich Klein: 1:30:02
But I couldn't erase that if I need to
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:30:04
Yeah, no, no
Big Rich Klein: 1:30:07
You have done? You've done all the work or at least 99% of the work.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:30:11
: It's only because that's the side of the business that I
do. Not very many. Married couples have a really distinct separation of duties
when they're working full time, living together full time. I mean we don't
have, we are have our time in which we go away to go to work. We are together.
And because of that we've had to distinguish who does what because otherwise I
was always getting mad at him because he was stepping on my toes and infringing
on my work. And I don't like that. I want to know that if I've been given
responsibility for something, it's mine. I own it. I don't have to worry about
anything else. There are times in which that doesn't work out so well for me,
but for the most part I like that. So 4Low though, is really about community.
It's about, it's the same community because it's all about rock sports,
anything with four wheel drive, it's the same community that we serve with. WE
Rock. Would you agree?
Big Rich Klein: 1:31:16
: Absolutely. WE Rock, Dirt Riot, you know, all the events
that we go to throughout the year, it's all the same people, you know, whether
it's Easter Jeep Safari, Jeepers Jamboree, Terra Del Sol, KOH, Trail Hero, you
know the total land cruiser runs. Those are all the people, same people or the
same. They all, we all have the same love of this sport of off-road, this
segment of off road four wheel drive and rock sports. It's a, I mean it's a
great place to live is in that community. You know the, the magazine is just an
extension of everything else that we do and now this podcast hopefully brings
all that together and we bring in more of our, our marketing partners and
advertisers and bring back some of the history, knows the new people that are,
that are in the, in the enthusiasts market in off road. The people that have
come over since Jeep put out the JK are completely different than most of the
people that started a long time ago. I mean it's a, it's a, it's a completely
different mindset. It's a, they don't know the history of the sport. Like the
guys that were driving the CJ's and the, and the YJ's and the, even the XJ's
and the T J's. I mean it's these, the people that are, that are first time,
jeepers, that come out in a JK or JL don't, don't know the history behind the
sport. How did it, you know, how did it come about How, why, why are there
lockers available on us, on a vehicle from the factory Why are they, you know,
do they have piggyback shocks Why are we, you know, why is their link
suspension, you know, why is all this cool stuff that are, that's on these
vehicles now even from the factory. How did that happen
: 1:32:22
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:33:08
Well,
and isn't it because competition drove the technology and the change Absolutely
Big Rich Klein: 1:33:14
Absolutely.
Because the guys competing when we first started putting on rock crawls, 37
inch tires, 35 inch tires were huge. You know, in the 90s nobody, I mean there
was people running Swampers but most of them, those, those guys were mud.
Whompers you know, our guys bouncing off the trees in the East coast and that
was the only tire that, that was available in anything Bigger than a 35 and
then Goodyear stepped up and made some forties and then BFG. And some of the
other manufacturers got in. But no, none of them did a competition compound
except for BFG. And then Goodyear and then eventually Maxxis and then then pro
comp got into it or, or Cooper was making the pro comp tires and you know, and
it just evolved. And the guys that were trail wheeling, we're watching in the
magazines and the videos, what was happening in the rock crawl events. And then
they'd come out to the rock crawl events and they were seeing guys with Jeeps
that looked like theirs. But with all this really cool stuff on them and Bigger
tires and linked suspensions and the things that were happening to make the
cars more capable for competition were starting to trickle down into the trail.
Guys, the trail guys used to be, you know, you'd drive to the trail, you'd
drive the trail and then you'd drive home and only except a few really hardcore
guys would take the really gnarly lines, you know, a certain clubs around the
country clubs that most of the people know. At least you're on the West coast.
well you know, like pirates of the Rubicon and the Tin Benders, and there's,
there's, there's a bunch of them that are out there that did the same thing
where they were doing the extreme stuff. They brought their vehicles, even if it was a
Jeep or a Toyota pickup truck, they were so low geared, Big tires, whatever.
They'd cut them up so much it couldn't drive them on the streets anymore or
they expected to break them. So they'd bring a trailer so they could get them
home. It was, you know, it started off with, you know, guys like Jeepers
Jamboree and Jeep Jamboree USA and some of these organized trail rides or like
no, no we don't want tire anybody with tires over 35 inches. And then it became,
we don't want buggies cause guys started putting 37's on and then 39's and 44's
because of the Swampers. And you know, it was one of those things where the
organizations were like, okay we have to start allowing these people cause
that's the way the market is going. It was kind of a, a copycat thing. The guys that were trail wheeling wanted all
the cool stuff that the competitors were building and designing and companies
in the aftermarket were starting to make for us so they could compete at a
higher level. The guys that were trail wheeling started buying that stuff. It
just brought the whole market along and created just a, a huge spider web of
businesses that cater to the aftermarket for four wheel drive and especially
Jeeps and Toyotas and samurais. Those are the three, three Big names and the
Ford Broncos, but it's been great watching the development over the last 20
years or 24 years with with rock crawling where it's gone from that very first
event that that I can think of, which was Las Cruces. I mean that event they
didn't even have, they had the courses set up in a trail. You started on course
one and everybody went through one, then to two, then to three and eventually
people were spread out where they were doing. Course four and guys were still down here
doing course one. Wow. Well, you get a couple of broken cars in that trail
system and you're still trying to get spectators and the rest of the
competitors up there, it becomes a nightmare. We, I never looked at an event
site with anything in mind ever have a trail system. There was always like, no,
we have to have an area, we can get vehicles in and out and, and there might be
some areas that we wanted to use within those areas that were like, this is
really cool. Look at this, this obstacle, but how are we going to do the
recovery Yeah. I always have to look at it with how do we get them out, right.
We had, we had an event down in Johnson Valley one time where we had an a
Unimog that came out to compete and he broke and we couldn't move him. We ended up like, I think we scrapped that
course. We didn't finish that night. We had to finish the first day on Sunday
morning. I believe that basically it was that vehicle was like part, it was
taken apart or you know, we, they swapped out a whole axle assembly or I don't
even remember. I let everybody else deal with that while I dealt with the rest
of the event. From then on it was like, okay, we know we need, we always have
to look at how we can do a recovery on when we build a course. Are we going to
get to that guy when he rolls over in that crack That's led to some really cool
recoveries and some really good footage. Yeah. It's everybody learns.
: 1:37:30
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:38:17
Absolutely. So we've got WE Rock, which continues on, we
have 4Low magazine. Tell us about the podcast. What's your goal?
Big Rich Klein: 1:38:25
The,
the podcast. My goal is to bring back the history of rock sports. Where we all
started How competition started, how people businesses got started in rock
sports. There was no such thing is rock sports until the rock crawling
competitions and then the racing and then the term rock sports was coined and
or 4x4 off road competitions. You know, over the last 20-24 years, there's a
Big history there that's already lost. we've lost a lot of the original drivers
and teams, guys like Harold Off, Jack McCullen, just a ton of guys aren't with
us any longer and some that may not be with us much longer. You know, there's,
there's guys that are up there in their their eighties already. What I want to
do with this podcast is bring back those memories for posterity and to give the
new people in this sport a base of history of how the sport, how the lifestyle
started, you know, and, and even beyond the competition scenes. I want to go back into those early days of the
clubs, you know, of jeepers, Jamboree of Mark Smith and, and Jeep Jamboree USA
and TDS and Red Rock four wheelers Moab Easter Jeep Safari. I mean there's,
there's so much out there that, that these, that people show up to, to, to
enjoy as part of their lifestyle, off-road lifestyle, but they have no idea
where it got started or how it got started, who the people were behind the
scenes that pushed it to where it is right now. And my goal is to bring all
that together
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:40:06
: Okay. And, and with that, because it takes, you know, one
guy's version of it may not be the, may not be what anyone else remembers
because that's the best part about oral history is that, we get to tell it from
our perspective. So you've been in the middle of it all. So that gives us a
unique perspective, not only to here, but also to know So many of these people
that have been there. So I'm going to tell a little story. When, when rich and
I first got together, we were consenting adults. We'll go with that. So our
first weekend together, when we were in a hotel room in, in Boise, we had met
on eHarmony. so we didn't know other, we didn't have mutual friends. And Sunday
morning, he turns on the television and he's sitting there and he's watching
then and it is a race out of Baja and he's like, Oh look, there's Sal Fish,
there's And he just kept throwing out all these names and as soon as he would
say it, then it would pop on this screen and it would tell me who it was. And I
was like, huh, I guess this guy knows people. I didn't come into the, into this
relationship from this industry. So it was, it was all new to me who the people
are. I've been fortunate, so, so fortunate to meet them all. Now this truly has
become our lifestyle and I used to ask Rich if he would share some stories so I
could write them for our grandchildren. Then it turns out that all the stories
he could tell involved alcohol or you know, stuff that maybe we shouldn't be
recording for our non adult grandchildren. There's maybe a whole section they
could read what's there 18 but this gives us a way to, to talk a little bit, to
meet our friends, to have a conversation with him, to be able to, because he
has history and remembers things that the rest of us who weren't there never
will. So I'm really excited. I think the podcast is going to be fun.
Big Rich Klein: 1:42:18
Well, and what's nice is with some of the interviews that
we've already sort of already done and recorded is that they're bringing up
things that maybe I forgot. Right. You know, or some of the things that I
didn't know that happened. Even during events. I'm at one end of the event
doing something and they're at another end of the event as a competitor and
dealing with things. So I'm getting stories now that, that I didn't know.
: 1:42:29
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:42:44
Yeah, it looks different to them. It looks different to
every one of us at every event. So I know even the ones that were there
together, you're doing your job. I'm doing mine. And when we get done, we start
to tell a story, Hey, so did you hear about this And we both look at each other
going, no, I never heard that. So I think, I think that'll be a great
perspective to hear what people remember. Yeah, it looks different to them. It looks different to
every one of us at every event. So I know even the ones that were there
together, you're doing your job. I'm doing mine. And when we get done, we start
to tell a story, Hey, so did you hear about this And we both look at each other
going, no, I never heard that. So I think, I think that'll be a great
perspective to hear what people remember.
Big Rich Klein: 1:43:08
Yup. I mean it's amazing how many people were at that very
first event put up or shut up in Lake Amador and had no clue that at five
o'clock that night during tech and registration, I was in court fighting for
the life of that event to go on
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:43:22
: now you were fighting for the life of WE Rock. We wouldn't
be here today had you not had you not been successful there. So that's very
cool. So we would like to encourage everyone to subscribe to 4Low to the
magazine because it comes out bi-monthly. It's 20 bucks for the year. It's
awesome. The writers are great. My job is to edit it and put it together.
Rich's the one who talks to everybody and make sure that all that content is
coming our way. But I can tell you as of today I'm really happy that we didn't
intend for that to be a comp magazine because a competition magazine in today's
market would be really difficult to feel content with.
Big Rich Klein: 1:44:03
We're not doing any events,
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:44:04
that's
everything's been postponed. So we try to talk about absolutely everything
under the sun that has to, that is four wheel drive related and I think that's
good for everyone. So yeah, that'd be neat. Okay. Any other words since this
was your introduction to your podcast audience Anything else that you wanted to
share with them
Big Rich Klein: 1:44:23
No, not that I can actually think of at the moment. I know
that as I discuss things with the guests on the show that things will come to
light. I'll have, you know, stories to add to what the drivers say. I think my
goal with the, with the, with the interviews is to let the guests tell their
story. I'll ask questions to get them started. I'll try to fill in some gaps.
I'll try to, to add a little bit of, you know, some color or flavor to a
particular story that they're talking about or, or an angle on which they're
discussing. The interviews are going to be more hands off than hands on. It's not
going to be, you know, like here's 40 questions. It's like, okay, tell me how
you got started. Where did you grow up What did you do as a kid You know, what
was your first car And then boom, they're just rolling with it. And that's
going to be, that's the game plan. We'll see how that all works out over, over
the next, I think I got 70 some people on my list right now, so if we can get
to them all. No, not that I can actually think of at the moment. I know
that as I discuss things with the guests on the show that things will come to
light. I'll have, you know, stories to add to what the drivers say. I think my
goal with the, with the, with the interviews is to let the guests tell their
story. I'll ask questions to get them started. I'll try to fill in some gaps.
I'll try to, to add a little bit of, you know, some color or flavor to a
particular story that they're talking about or, or an angle on which they're
discussing. The interviews are going to be more hands off than hands on. It's not
going to be, you know, like here's 40 questions. It's like, okay, tell me how
you got started. Where did you grow up What did you do as a kid You know, what
was your first car And then boom, they're just rolling with it. And that's
going to be, that's the game plan. We'll see how that all works out over, over
the next, I think I got 70 some people on my list right now, so if we can get
to them all.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:45:30
Wow. I hope that we do it would be a great oral history of
the sport of rock crawling and so, and why we do what we do in the community
that we love.
Big Rich Klein: 1:45:43
Exactly. A lot of business owners, a lot of people that were
business owners, the story of pirate four by four story of all pro off road of,
of red bull in North America. Things like that. You know those, those are the
stories that people just don't know and we hope to share that with everybody.
: 1:45:43
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:46:00
Excellent. Well, thank you. This is fun, I hope you think so
Big Rich Klein: 1:46:04
I think we should do, I think she, we should do this maybe
every once in awhile like this. Yup.
Shelley Krehbiel: 1:46:10
I think so, too. Alrighty, signing off.
Big Rich Klein: 1:46:13
Okay. I'll see you in the hallway. Bye. Well, that brings
this episode to an end book. You enjoyed it. We'll catch you next week with
Conversations with Big Rich. Thank you very much.