Looking for bone-crushing excitement? Edge-of-your-seat thrills? An awesome display of raw testosterone?
If so, the Monster Truck Rally at the Greensboro Coliseum is probably not the best choice.
Though certainly highly testosterone-charged, it was by no means an awesome display, and not really worth the exorbitant $18 entrance fee. However, it was an experience I don’t altogether regret.
“It’s the thirst for blood that makes people go to monster truck rallies, drink down a six-pack of beer, and watch big trucks mercilessly crush small cars,” says first-year Nate Miller.
The small arena floor consisted of two tracks, each with a small jump and four beat-up cars to crush. For the race event, two cars faced off on the tracks and, after a buildup of engine revving and false starts, slammed the pedal down and bumped slowly over the line of cars. Each heat took approximately four seconds and four thousand decibels.
The freestyle competition was marginally more interesting. For this, one car drove out at a time and powered around in a circle, crushing cars and the occasional minivan. Unfortunately, probably because of the arena’s small size, there was very limited scope for the imagination. By the third car we had seen everything there was to offer.
Between events, they showed clips of other rallies on the giant T.V. screens above the arena. Watching these, it appeared that every other monster truck rally was far more exciting than the one we were watching. They showed cars flipping, rolling, and driving through mobile homes: all manner of things more daring and death-defying than the stunts we were watching. Far from pumping me up, seeing what could happen just made me that much more disappointed by what I was watching.
Ironically, my favorite part of the evening’s entertainment was when the smallest trucks took the stage. Four tiny remote controlled trucks drove out into the arena and proceeded to perform all the tricks that I had expected from the big trucks: jumping and rolling and running each other over. Far more exciting than the main event.
TranSaurus Rex, the transforming robot dinosaur, also put on an impressive display. Driving onto the floor, accompanied by a stirring but wacky background story of intrigue and adventure, he proceeded to unfold himself from the back of a truck and tear a Plymouth Horizon apart with his teeth and flaming nostrils.
“I liked the juxtaposition between the fire-spewing TranSaurus Rex and the 1980’s soft-rock chart-topper ‘Don’t you forget about me’ that immediately followed the beast’s appearance,” said first-year Erin Burns.
I probably will never attend a monster truck rally again. However, that doesn’t mean that I regret going, and I’d recommend it simply for the opportunity to say that you went.
If you are interested in attending a monster truck event, check out www.ushra.com. Though this particular event is over, rallies visit this area regularly throughout the year.
First-year Aaron DeMoss summarized the experience best when he said, “I liked it when they crushed things.