So I got a funny story about last weekend’s trophy trucks race, which took place at the Lake Elsinore racetrack in California…I got kicked off the track for wearing shorts instead of pants!!! You see, they have certain “rules” in the Lucas Oil Off Road series, to be more specific, they pretty much tell you what you have to wear if you wanna be on the track, whether you are a photographer or a crew member! The rule is you can’t wear shorts, you HAVE to wear pants…110 degrees outside and they MAKE you wear pants.

I NEVER wear pants! I’m uncomfortable when I wear pants, especially jeans, and I sweat very easily – even when it’s -20 outside – so you won’t see me in pants very often. Anyways, I didn’t know that the rules say you can’t wear shorts, so I show up at the race on Saturday evening around 5:30, and I run into my first problem: I’m not on the media list even though I was supposed to be, and the girl I was dealing with was a real salope (it’s french, look it up…) and wasn’t very helpful at all! After running into an old friend of mine that hooked me up and got me in, I was finally on my way to the track! (turns out I was on the list after all, the salope I was dealing with was too lazy to look up my first name – last name wasn’t there for some reason).

Back to the main story…it’s now close to 6:15 and the sun is slowly falling behind the Lake Elsinore mountains, so I wasn’t able to get any “sunset” photos of the race trucks and buggies in action. Bummer 🙁 – at least I’m in and on the track, shooting for the rest of the night. I got to say hi to Carey Hart and hang out in the RockStar VIP section with Hart & Huntington team manager Kenny Watson (photos below). Overall a pretty cool night, I went home happy thinking about what I was gonna shoot on Sunday and who I was going to talk to – I really wanted to ask Brian Deegan a few questions and also talk to Hart a little more. Sunday was gonna be exciting!

Well, Sunday was anything but exciting! I decided to go to the Lake Elsinore track earlier to shoot a bunch of cool sunset photos of all the different truck and buggy classes, and to spend more time in the pits, mainly to have a little chat with Deegan about racing trucks and such, and to shoot more pics of the RockStar girls 🙂 I was also meeting my friend Mark Elliott, who was shooting the race as well. So the first thing I do once I get there is meet Mark on the track, he was shooting practices sessions. That’s when my day went south…one of the crew member is yelling at me and telling me to get off the track, by waving his arm and pointing towards the exit! At first I was like “oh crap I’m not supposed to walk through here while the trucks are racing around the track…” but then I quickly realized that he was kicking me off the track because I was wearing shorts instead of pants! So I tried to reason with him and explain that I didn’t know about this rule, and also that I was on the track all evening the day before and absolutely no one told me I wasn’t supposed to wear shorts. Well he couldn’t care less and had me “escorted” off the track in one of the utility vehicles – they didn’t even let me leave on foot!!!

I was so mad that I went straight home, didn’t stop on GO and didn’t collect $200…next time I’ll make sure I read ALL the rules! Actually, next time I’ll just stay home…at least I can wear whatever I want at home!

Here are a few teaser photos from the Lucas Oil Off Road race at Lake Elsinore below, look for more from this event on my photography site soon.

I will upload all my best shots from the event (around 200) on my photography site in the next few days.