We used to not have a bathroom

Last week I sent you a quick note that I’d be writing a story a week about the last 10 years at The Rally Ranch. But technically, I lied.

Because our first class was a whole 3 years before we moved to The Ranch..

The year was two thousand and twelve. The Lumineers self-titled album was replacing the egregiously overplayed Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye as the most common sound to come out of a radio, Mitt Romney was aiming for The White House, and Rally Ready was teaching our first class in a gravel lot behind a Hyundai dealership in Kyle, Texas.

We had a rented water truck, 3 Honda Civics (and an Integra) without Spoon engines, and after one very hot May class, we purchased a $179 aluminum frame carport tent from Academy Sports.

But we didn’t exactly have a bathroom.

See, that parking lot that we’d turned into a makeshift rally training facility was in fact the overflow parking for Thunder Hill Raceway, the asphalt oval track that has since been leveled and paved into 500,000 sq ft of Tesla parts warehouses.

Thunder Hill was kind enough to rent us their parking lot for an astronomical sum that we didn’t see a way around. So there we were, 500’ from the building with bathrooms that we had occasional access to for classroom sessions, assuming they didn’t have something else going on.

It’s remarkable the things you don’t think about in your planning. To a man with a makeshift fleet of rally cars, everything looks like a classroom. And the questions of how do we feed people (from my mom’s Italian restaurant down the road), how do we get the cars back and forth to our shop (on a gooseneck trailer we cut in half and added 10 extra feet to so we could load 2 cars instead of 1), and where are we going to the bathroom (how ambitious are we feeling here?) are things that you learn to figure out.

If you’re anything like me, you might look back occasionally with a tinge of embarrassment of the things we did when we were young, how naive we were, and how much effort we put into things that in hindsight feel a bit silly. Our whole world was once something we don’t even think about now, and what we felt like we could never live without is often a distant memory.

But when I think back to that first class in 2012, the first time we tested this 4 lesson curriculum we’d sat around a table developing for 3 years, I’m blown away by how much effort it took, and I’m grateful for how much energy that team had back then. Because while we’re doing bigger, cooler, and wilder stuff now, it’s all on the back of those kids with endless energy and enthusiasm back in 2012.

So before we dive in 10 years of The Rally Ranch, here’s to Rob, Brianne, Kevin, Michael, Yuri, Scott, Chad B, Justin H, Jim, Merek, Gully, Shawn Dollars, and all of the other folks who stood there since actual day 1, holding in their pee so we could kick this thing off proper. 

With love always,

Dave

PS - Next week I’ll share how to buy a cattle ranch with $236!

PPS - Don’t forget to drink your 100% cranberry juice for optimal bladder health.

May 27, 2012

The aforementioned Hyundai Dealership in the background

You thought I was kidding about the gooseneck, didn’t you? Best part was the 2x12s used to load it.