GCM Adventure Series Event Recap

Recap of the May 14th GCM Adventure Series event

I arrived at the event site at around 8am, and the day didn't start out looking like particularly good weather for tiny trucks – it was 2 degrees Celsius, raining & windy. Nonetheless, people came by for sign-up in ones and twos, and by 10AM or so, there were nearly 40 trucks ready to go!

First up was a "show and shine", and everyone got a card to vote for the truck number of their choice in a variety of categories - best overall, best interior, best weathering, best scale item, etc. The scores from this actually applied to our driving scores later on; if someone got 3 votes for, say, best paint, they would get 3 more points on their score. Made for an interesting balance of building a great performing truck that also performed; not just one or the other.

The actual driving started around 11:30am or so, and, other than a break for lunch (homemade fries, aw yeah), continued on until the late afternoon. With three courses and 500 total gates (not including bonus gates and optional sections!), this made for a LOT of driving. The driving itself was typical Adventure Series - fun trails with some challenging sections, but passable by even the smallest-tired trucks. Some people had breakdowns during the course of the day (myself included, as I was driving an untested truck that I'd finished the day before haha), but everyone was able to pool spare parts and screws to get people going again.

I got back to the trailhead at about 5:30, as one of the last 3 trucks on the course. After some tallying of scores, the various winners were announced a while later - first the different categories of the show-and-shine, and then the "best in show" (Matt/imthatguy got that one with his amazing Mercades). Lastly was the first place prize for the driving portion, which I was VERY surprised to find that I was the winner of! It was an extremely close-run thing though; apparently the 2nd place finisher was only two points behind. One missed gate on my behalf and we'd have been tied!

After everything, a number of us went on a night run (just for fun), going through the swampy course 2 again. Despite some more breakdowns, we all made it through intact, finishing up at close to midnight.

I really like this new event format for the Adventure Series, and can't wait for the next one! Despite the heavy beating they received, all of my ScalerFab bits held up nicely, with only a few new scratches, and are ready for the next beating they'll undoubtedly receive soon!