Crash Crop Mechanized Free-For-All Combines Best Of Tractor Pulls And Rodeo Bull Rides

When the wheat starts getting tall in this neck of Adams County, folks start tinkering with the combines in earnest.

Then they run ‘em over to the rodeo grounds, rev ‘em up and pitch them headlong into one another until only one is left running.

More than 1,000 people drove out here Friday night to see such fun, forking over $6 ($3 for kids) for the eighth annual combine demolition derby, a mechanized free-for-all that stands to rival tractor pulls and rodeo bull rides.

Just ask Bill Loomis, creator of the event and no stranger to a good wreck.

Loomis, 63, broke his back in several places crashing a helicopter last month near Lamont, but he pushed to get out of the hospital just in time to make Friday’s derby.

“Isn’t this crazy?” he gushed, as four combines smashed into each other like five-ton bumper cars in the first of the evening’s three semi-finals.

Loomis was this derby’s guest of honor, with his employees honoring his presence by decorating a bright blue combine with helicopter rotors and the name “Bill’s Blue Thunder.”

The T-16 Ranch - a local potato and cattle operation - put a Ronald McDonald look-a-like on Ronald’s Flyin’ Fryin’ Machine. The combine sported oversized spuds in the header and french fries atop the bulk tank. It was vying to be called the best-decorated combine.

“Potatoes go in, french fries come out,” said Bill Vienhage, the ranch’s shop supervisor.

Decorations aside, the chief aim of the event is to gun for the competition’s weak parts: drive belts, oil and hydraulic lines, steering bars and tires.

“You attempt to surgically dismember them, if you can call a headon surgical,” said Mike Estes, driver of the Loomis combine.

Towards the end of a round, combines begin to look like tank-sized spiders with half their legs off lurching from rut to rut, often with their smaller rear tires completely sheared off.

Pit crews play a major role, since rigs are allowed back in the ring for the final $750 round if they can be reassembled in time after the semifinals.

With the fervor of a mechanic in the peak of harvest, the Rooster’s Nest crew managed to weld a header bar back into position and replace a steering rod, a spring on a drive belt and a flat tire.

To be sure, these aren’t modernday $200,000 machines suffering such abuse. After decades in the field, they are worth only about $500 each and are of little use for anything but joy riding.

It makes for big thrills, too, like a car race where the only point is to watch the wrecks. In this contest, no one can go fast enough to actually get hurt.

“It’s a guy thing, I guess,” said Grant Shipley, a Gonzaga University engineering student who came with four boys, including his two sons.

Well, not entirely a guy thing.

Dawn Lobe, a Spokane medical secretary living in Lind, did just fine in her first-round driving Fumin’ and Bloomin’, the all-female GOLDEN GRAIN CAFE entry that also won best of show for its outhouse and flowers motif.

After growing up harvesting wheat on her family ranch, Lobe takes a special thrill in doing serious damage with a farm’s major piece of equipment.

“You couldn’t do that on dad’s farm,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo