It Was SUPER LOUD At The West Side Checkpoint!
My ears are still ringing! Holy smokes was it loud at the Gregory Home Team stop referred to as the West Side Checkpoint for the annual Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce event Cut the Gut! If you have been living under a rock for the last two years, and let's be honest that is totally possible then you may have missed the comeback tour of the OG event Cut the Gut.
Last year at the start of summer we were all looking for ways to socialize without actually socializing. Wes Collins, Karla Hogan, and Melody Reese came together and brought back an event that hadn't taken place on the streets of Sweet Home for years, decades even. The premise is you buy your tickets, get your hot rod and cruise up and down the Main Street drag, and stop at participating businesses to get your passport stamped. At each stop, there is usually something fun to do and at the end, you have a serious chance to win like 20 different prizes.
The hot stops the last two years have been Coffee Hut, Sunshine Espresso O & M Point S Tire, and of course the West Side Checkpoint! Last year we had somewhere around 75 participants, this year was closer to 200 plus or minus a few. So the growth has been substantial and it's been a freaking blast!
With O & M doing a burnout competition, which attracted tons of people, including our co-sponsor last year Shawn Anderson who was and still is the current Burnout King of Sweet Home. We wanted to have our own competition to boost the event, you know take it up a notch or 11. So we decided to host the first annual Loudest Exhaust Competition.
When I say it got loud, that is probably the biggest understatement of the year! We set up a decibel reader meant for industrial equipment. It maxes out at 130 dB. To put that into perspective a JET ENGINE roughly creates 130 dB at the height of its power. Police sirens are around 120dB and standard conversation is around 60 dB.
Our winner of the competition was Chris Bayne with his '77 Camaro at 128 dB. Yeah, it was that loud! We had a tie for second with Rick Autry with his '74 Camaro and James Bond with his '67 Camaro, both at 127 dB. Needless to say, ear protection is on the list for next year.
All in All it was a great event, we saw a ton of amazing rides, we had a blast watching everything from a Mazda Miata to a straight piped Nitro Circus bus slam the peddle through the floor and blow some stacks!