Rock Crawling With GetNutsLab
If you're passionate about cars and you happen to get invited to go rock crawling, if you're anything like me, you will get giddy like a little kid on Christmas inside. Now, if you happen to get invited to go rock crawling with Formula Drift driver Forrest Wang of GetNutsLab, in addition to getting giddy like a little kid on Christmas inside, you also will clear your schedule and jump out of bed to go and pick up the person who invited you just 4 hours earlier when walking around the Las Vegas strip. That's right, that's exactly what I did. I got very little sleep on top of the 2.5 hours of sleep the night before, and after being out in the sun all day watching rwd cars slide around burning rubber.
I met Scott just the day before at the Southwest Drift ProAm Rd 1, who my friend Christian knows, and we all ended up hanging out that night where the mentioned invite was extended. Fast forward a few hours and I am now picking him up behind the Bellagio. I get some directions from him and in a few short minutes we are pulling up outside of the recently relocated GetNutsLab, where I meet Forrest Wang and their friend Michael for the first time. So now, I am going rock crawling with three people who 24 hours ago I had never met in person. One thing I generally love about the automotive culture is that people are typically down to meet new people and go on new adventures.
I peaked around the shop for a minute while Forrest was finishing up some final touches on one of his two heavily modified Suzuki Samurai's before climbing it up onto the trailer. The shop was definitely overflowing with personality. Every lift was occupied by a variety of projects, there were stands holding unfinished engines, shelves overflowing with 'I might need this someday' car parts, posters and signs hanging all around, and enough trophies to line the left side wall. I was enjoying the few minutes I had to explore.
Once the toys were strapped down we headed out of the city and towards rocks that were red in color. The boys unloaded the Samurai's as I believe I posted a snapchat. (lol) Michael was driving one of the Samurai's with Scott passenger which left me passenger with Forrest driving the other.
We started with playing on the red rocks, which blew my mind how grippy they were. It was crazy how vertical they could get the Samurai's. It kind of just felt like you were on a conveyer belt, It's not even a problem for them.
After the red rocks we stopped for some lunch(ables) and continued on exploring throughout the afternoon. I'm so used to being low in a car that when we were going over and straddling some of those massive rocks, I kept thinking we would bottom out. I believe we only hit the side bar once in our Samurai. There was only one time it got a tad bit sketch for a moment when both of the Samurai's three wheeled hard coming down a ledge. However, it wasn't until later when we were backing out of a narrow valley that the other Samurai ended up laying on it's side.
Overall, rock crawling in Las Vegas was a crazy experience that I am glad I got to have. Furthermore, Forrest has some insane reflexes that seem to come so naturally to him, even when he's only been crawling for about a year, so it was definitely awesome to see that as well. I can't even imagine riding passenger in his drift car!
Having to work on Monday and this activity having taken up most of Sunday, I still had to make the 6 hour drive back home. I picked up my stuff from my grandma's, grabbed some In'N'Out and left town around 6:30pm. On a total of six hours of sleep from the weekend, my contacts were now a bit fuzzy, and I didn't think I would make it the whole way home. Thankfully, I ended up behind an Acura that was going about my speed and I was able to concentrate on his taillights and ended up arriving back in Salt Lake around 12:30am.
It was definitely a weekend for the books, and I'm planning a few more trips that hopefully can compare for this summer :)
