The Legend of the Socko Rocket Car...

At the time we made the trip to Reno in 1987, this Budweiser rocket car, the first land vehicle to go supersonic, was the kind of thing people imagined, when you said "rocket car." 

After a few months starting at the American Freestyle Association in 1987, under AFA owner Bob Morales, I got the job of driving the AFA van, pulling our new, 30 foot box trailer, up to Reno, Nevada.  There was a bike industry trade show up there for a few days, and Bob bought a booth to promote the AFA, and one of his side businesses with Todd Huffman, Mor Distributing, also had a booth.  The best, and most importantly, the cheapest, way of getting the booths to Reno, was to have me drive them up in the new box trailer. 

Bob had just bought the old 30 foot trailer from Gary Turner, the founder, and the "G.T." in GT Bikes.  Gary got into dragsters a few years earlier, when money started rolling in from GT.  He had started in his garage in the late 1970's, welding a BMX racing bike for his son.  Other people wanted bikes welded too, and GT Bikes was born.  The company grew, with business guy Rich Long handling that business side of things, while Gary led the shop and crew. 

When the company took off, Gary put money into drag racing, buying a top fuel dragster, I believe, like the ones you see at 15:40 in this clip.  Gary hired a driver, and bought a really stock looking, 30 foot long box trailer, to haul his car to the races.  After about three years, it was time to upgrade to a better trailer.  Gary asked around the BMX world, and Bob Morales was looking for a trailer to haul the AFA ramps and sound system to local contests at the time.  So we got Gary's old trailer for a good price.

That same year, 1987, Bob went looking for a larger sponsor for the AFA Masters series of national BMX freestyle contests.  Freestyle was growing in leaps and bounds, though there was little in the way of TV coverage then, there were six BMX racing and BMX freestyle magazines on newsstands nationwide.  That was 8 years before ESPN jumped on the action sports bandwagon with the X-Games. 

Somewhere, Bob ran into a couple of marketing guys looking to upgrade the name and image of a Gatorade-like sports drink called Super Socco.  It was marketed to little kids in soccer and traditional sports, and wasn't selling all that well.  They wanted find people to make Super Socco hip and cool, and popular.  But somehow they found the AFA and us freestylers instead.  Over a steak dinner at the exclusive Maxwell's restaurant at the Huntington Beach Pier, the two marketing guys, Bob, and me, threw potential new names for the drink around.  Somehow the name Socko got picked, and the drink was rebranded, and reformulated a bit.  I think it was all supposed to be incredibly cool, like this commercial for alcohol. 

Instead we got cases and cases of quart bottles of Socko, in three flavors, and my cute roommate (and manager of Bob and his mom's tanning salon) Jill, and her hotter friend Christine, became the Socko Girls, and handed out cups to anyone and everyone at AFA events all year.  Jill wound up in a phone sex ad in the back of Hustler magazine, buck naked and spread eagle, a few years later.  But that's another story. 

Anyhow, Bob had these huge Socko logo stickers made somewhere, 3 foot high by 4 feet wide, and we expertly applied them to the sides of the non-descript box trailer.  I had never towed a trailer for any distance before, but I learned quick, manning the classic, white AFA Ford van with the big trailer behind. I pulled that long trailer around Orange, L.A., and San Deigo counties, picking up ramps, taking them to get the Socko paint job, and driving to a couple local contests. 

For the trip up to Reno, Bob said he'd pay for a motel room, and a small food per diem, for me and whoever I wanted to go along to help drive.  The cool part was, we didn't really have anything to do all week, just wait, ride our bikes around Reno, and then drive the rig and trade show booths back. 

I got my riding buddy, and H.B. pier local, Mike Sarrail, and fellow freestyler Scott Robinson, to go on the trip.  They showed up one afternoon, and we got ready to load the trailer, and head out.   But in typical AFA fashion, Bob was busy doing something at the last minute, and we left Huntington Beach at about 4 pm.  We drove out, heading through L.A., right into rush hour traffic.  We drove into evening, got through the grapevine, and finally got moving at a decent pace.  The big trailer made the back end of the van sway back and forth.  I was really nervous driving it, but then I was really nervous doing just about everything back then.

We headed up the 395, through Sacramento, and up the 80 into the Sierra Nevada mountains.  It was just about dusk when I pulled off in the city of Auburn to get gas.  By that time, I was pretty used to pulling the big trailer.  But the gas station was packed with cars.  So I was trying to get the van close to the pump, without hitting anyone or anything with the trailer.  Some redneck in a big black pick-up cut in front of us, and I was pissed off.  I told Mike to jump in the driver's seat, and pull up the last ten feet- carefully- and I'd go pay for the gas inside.  The redneck gave me a dirty look as I walked in, because I had yelled something when he cut us off. 

I paid for the gas when I saw Mike pull the rig up to the pump, and I grabbed some drinks and snacks.  When I walked out a couple of minutes later, Mike was pumping gas, and the red neck had moved out of the way, around to the other side of the pump.  The same guy who mad-dogged me just minutes before, walked up and put his hand out.  "Hey man," he said, "I'm sorry about cutting you off,  I didn't know what you guys were hauling in there.  Good luck, man, I hope you guys break the record."  He jumped in his truck and took off.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.  I looked over at Mike, and he just smiled.  I set the drinks in the van, took over from Mike, and finished pumping the gas.  Scott came out with some more snacks, and hopped in, and I pulled the rig carefully out of the cramped gas station.

"What was that redneck guy talking about," I asked Mike, "he was like a whole different person when I walked out."  Mike smiled, "I told him that inside the trailer was the brand new Socko rocket car, and we were heading up to the Bonneville Salt Flats to try to break the world land speed record.  I also told him we had 750 gallons of jet fuel in drums, and if I hit his truck while trying to pull up, it might create a spark inside, ignite the jet fuel, and blow this whole gas station, and his pick-up, off the face of the Earth.  Suddenly he was cool as could be, and he pulled his truck around to the other pump."  Scott and I just started laughing. 

Good thinking on Mike's part.  For the next several months, every time I stopped for gas, someone always asked, "What you got in that big ol' trailer?"  The answer was the same, "I've got the Socko rocket car, and I'm heading up to Bonneville, where they're going to try and get that thing to 800 miles an hour."  I got into to some funny conversations, and I'm sure a few people checked the news later that week to see if we got the record.  The legend kept growing, and we added that the first car blew up, and this was the second (hand over my heart, "Rest in Peace Jim Bob for giving your life on that first attempt") and we kept adding to that story when hanging out and riding.  Old gas station owners would tell me they were going to say a prayer for Jim Bob, and stuff like, that as I walked out.  We had a whole long mythology of the history of the Socko rocket car by that fall. 

So that's the legend of the AFA box trailer and the Socko rocket car.  Now, as for Jill the Socko girl... she started hanging out with Tommy, the Huntington Beach coke dealer who lived near Beach and Ellis, and drove a black Corvette.  She started doing blow, partying too hard, "borrowing" a little money from the tanning salon, and...

I just started doing a blog for Marvin Davits, to help promote Marvin's dinghy davit business.  Check it out.

That time Ron Wilkerson kidnapped us

It was a dark and stormy night...  I'm not getting film noir on you, it really was a dark and stormy night, in Austin, Texas in 1987.  I was working for the American Freestyle Association with Bob Morales.  We had just flown in, the AFA crew for the AFA Masters BMX freestyle contest starting the next day. Bob got the the rental mini-van for the weekend, the sun had set, there was a Texas-sized thunderstorm all coming down all around us.  Bob Morales, founder of the AFA and all around BMX freestyle entrepreneur, was driving the minivan, his girlfriend at the time, Suzy Q, was sitting shotgun, and his sister Riki and me, both AFA staffers, were in the second row of seats.

Bob pulled up under the porte cochere, the little roof by the hotel entrance.  He told us to stay put, and he walked inside to check-in and get our room keys.  Then, out of nowhere, the driver's door opened again.  Ron Wilkerson appeared out of the storm, completely dry, and in jeans and a T-shirt, and slipped into the driver's seat.  "Hey guys," he said, as he put his seat belt on.  The three of us said, "Hi."  We all knew Ron, veteran Haro pro freestyler, and master of both high airs, vert lip tricks, and flatland.  Since we all worked the sign-in table at contests, and saw him at least every month or so, we knew Ron well.

Bob had left the van running, and Ron Wilkerson put it in gear and drove out into the storm.
"Ron, what are you doing?" Suzy Q asked, anxious to get into the room after a day at her real job, and then the flight to Austin, and also knowing how big of a practical joker Ron was.  As the hard Texas rain pelted the windows, and lightning flashed now and then, Ron gunned it down the two lane road.  The hotel was right next to a freeway, and on a little road by the off ramp.  Like many of those roads, it didn't go all that far, and there were several large businesses, closed by that hour, off to the right.  Ron hit about 60 in the rain, and Suzy Q got more agitated, telling Ron to take us back. Riki and me, in the the back, started laughing, it was just weird how Ron popped out of nowhere and hopped in and started driving.

Suzy started yelling at Ron to slow down, and he suddenly stomped on the brakes, nearly sliding to a stop, then turned right into the driveway of a large business.  There was a guard shack, with the light on inside, on the left, by the big warehouse building.  Ron drove in a circle, as if he was going to go back, but kept turning, and then headed straight towards the guard shack.  Suzy Q started yelling, she wanted no part of Ron's shenanigans.  Riki and I were both laughing out loud at this point, partly at the fact the Suzy was freaking out, and partly because Ron was so non-chalant about the whole thing.  Ron Wilkerson said nothing.

As Suzy told him not to, Ron pulled slowly up to the guard shack, next to his window.  There was no arm that blocked it, and the driveway continued a bit more, then seemed to go into a big parking area, which had another big building on the other side of it.  We could all see an old security guard inside that didn't look too happy.  Ron pulled right up to the open guard shack door, as the guard walk into sight.  Then Ron stomped on the accelerator and sped past the guard, gaining speed as we headed along side of the first building, and into the big, empty parking lot.  He got the van up to about 50 mph in the rain soaked parking lot.

Suzy Q completely lost it, and started screaming at Ron to take us back to the hotel.  That, of course, just made the whole surreal experience even funnier to Riki and me, and we were laughing our asses off.  That made Suzy Q even more mad.

Ron stomped on the brakes, skidded the minivan to a near stop, and then managed to get the back tires to break loose a little bit, and did a couple of donuts.  As we spun around, we could see the silhouette of the guard, leaning out the window of the guard shack, shaking his fist at us.  After two or three pretty good donuts, considering he was driving a minivan, Ron turned back towards the exit, and the very upset guard.  Riki and I were crying we were laughing so hard, as Suzy Q screamed at Ron.  He gunned the van, hitting 40 or 50 mph again, in the storming rain, towards the guard shack.  About 50 yards early, he stomped on the brakes, throwing us forward and slowing to an agonizing crawl.  The tension rose exponentially as he drove super slow towards the guard shack, where the pissed off old guard was now leaning out the doorway, and which was now on Suzy Q's side.

"No, no Ron, noooooo, DON'T!" Suzy Q screamed as Ron pulled up to the angry guard, stopped, then rolled down Suzy's window with the master switch.  The guard looked in right in front of Suzy Q, and started to say something like, "What the Hell are you..."  Ron cut him off with a smiling face asking some completely random question, something like "Do you know where there's a good steak place around here?"  The guard had that befuddled look, like the bad guy who just got unmasked at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode.  He looked at us crazy kids blankly for a moment, as Suzy Q went silent, nearly face to face with him.  Riki, one of the funniest women I've ever met, was on the verge of peeing herself, she was laughing so hard.  My stomach already hurt from laughing.

Unexpectedly, Ron gunned it, and we sped off from the confused guard, and Suzy Q rolled up her window, as the pelting rain pounded into the minivan.  Ron, again, hit about 60 mph on the little road, as the storm raged on, then hit the brakes hard, and pulled slowly under the porte cochere, right where the van had been parked.  Suzy Q was so livid, she just glared at him, her face all red.  Riki and I were laughing so hard we just made weird little breathing noises, we could barely breathe at all.

Ron Wilkerson put the minivan in park, unbuckled his seat belt, opened the driver's side door, got out, turned to look in and said, "See you guys tomorrow," and shut the door.  Then he disappeared into the the thunderstorm just the way he had suddenly appeared.

Not 30 seconds later, Bob Morales opened the door, room keys in hand.  Suzy was still glaring, and Riki and I were holding our stomachs, barely able to breathe.  Bob got this really puzzled look on his face.  He hadn't seen Ron, he'd only been inside a few minutes, and now, suddenly, Suzy Q looked like she was ready to kill somebody.  It just got silent.  Nobody had any idea how to explain it.  Bob put the minivan in gear, and drove across the parking lot, to where our rooms were.  I don't think any of us ever told him what happened.

I've got a new blog going, it's about building an art or creative business, or any small business.  You can check it out here:
WPOS Kreative Ideas

Happy Birthday Bob Morales!

Happy birthday to Bob Morales.  Not only did he turn BMX freestyle into a sport by founding the ASPA and then the AFA, but he added the word "gription" to the English language.