In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I know that the pickle mansion had a fire and that the roof was missing. i've heard that my parents had bought in hope to fix it well enough for us to live in it. i can't remember if they sold it before or after he passed away though. i know that they owned many many houses around the fort but unfortunately my mom had to sell them all except for one after my dad passed away so she could afford to move us to a safer neighborhood.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:David S. Wallens said:In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Forgot about that award going on a one-way trip. Have a minute to tell the rest of the class about that award? :)
That's a story for tomorrow
Well, it's tomorrow so that means story time, kids!
in the pic above, I'm giving the evil alliance trophy to Jon and his band of merry men for the Forty-Niner.
The origins of that trophy date back to early 2003, when i found a corvair with an ancient V8 swap in the desert somewhere east of Los Angeles CA. At the time, the Challenge rules said that the costs of shipping a Challenge car or parts counted against the car's budget, but if you or a teammate picked it up there was no such budget hit. A convenient workaround, which has evolved into what we today refer to as the GRM Express, was to find someone near where the cheap part or car was located, who might be traveling in your general direction, and offer them a beer (or a tank of gas or whatever) to bring that item to you since they were already headed that way. So I reached out to forum member and Challenger "Dr Frankenstang", who lived in CO but had family in SoCal and in MI, to see if he could help. As luck (or perhaps something more nefarious muahahahaha) would have it, he was headed to Phoenix to drop off a trailer for a friend, then to LA to pick up another trailer to take back to CO before driving to MI to visit his Mom for New Years. "Wait, what, you're going to be in Los Angeles with a trailer, and you're driving to MI a week later? Any chance you'd like to drag a non-running Corvair up onto that trailer in CA and drag it to MI for me? Yes? berkeley yes!" So Dr Frankenstang and i formed a team, which we decided to call "The Evil Alliance", and he delivered the car from CA to MI at zero budget hit. Shady? Perhaps. But legal by the letter of the rules.
I posted this to the old forum and I guess the GRM staff found it amusing, because they created and presented The Evil Alliance Trophy to us at the 2003 Challenge (iirc, could have been 2004). Dr Frankenstang took it home the first year, then he and i decided to pass it along each year to a competitor whose challenge build and/or approach to the event, for lack of better words, "spoke to us".
I don't remember how many years we actually got the trophy back in time to pass along, and i don't remember every car we awarded it to. Jon and the Forty-Niner were the last recipients, because Jon flat out refused to return it to me! The trophy was given a spot on the mantel behind the bar at the Fort Sanders Yacht Club, Jon's barcade in Knoxville. I saw the trophy above the bar in all its glory the last time I saw Jon, which was somewhere in the 2011 timeframe, a couple years before he passed away. Man, that's hardcore commitment, dying of cancer just to avoid returning a trophy.
RIP Jon. You are a GRM legend.
Nobody else has a jhaas memory or story to share? I feel like I'm hogging up the thread.
y'all see that Knoxville Skatepark shirt Jon's wearing? I can't swear to it 100%, but I'm pretty sure Jon gave me this never-been-stuck sticker that's been in my toolbox for several years now.
it is entirely possible that this sticker came to me in a GRM NYG box though. I honestly don't recall.
either way, I'd like to send it to ihaas but there's no way I'm asking a minor for a mailing address. @DSW, could you middle-man the delivery?
EDIT: if Knoxville Skatepark still exists and these stickers are still available, then I guess it's not as special, but the offer still stands.
I'm loving all these stories. I'm pretty sure I never met jhaas BUT his builds, especially the 49'er, were THE motivation I needed to go to my first Challenge. Reading about it's build, and some of his other projects, insured that this WAS the sort of craziness I needed in my life. I was right.
Thank you, jhaas for all the passion with which you lived your life.
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