Picture it, if you will... There we were in spring of this year, the desert flowers blooming, the cool air gently blowing, the desert calling to us for some dirt therapy time, and a group of adult men whining and crying (mostly being done by Adam) because the Clean-Dezert crew had collectively agreed that we would NOT be doing our mid-summer Hodge Road clean-up again (insert sad noises here). We narrowed it down to a few key reasons: One, it was too much work back-to-back with our fall event and it didn’t leave us enough time to comfortably get the kinks worked out for said bigger fall event. Two, last year the heat almost killed us for the 4 days we were onsite. We had our trailers AC running full-bore all day and the best if could do was a nice, crisp, delightfully steamy 88 degrees. If you’ve seen the majority of the Clean Dezert crew, we’re more of a “cold weather friendly” group. Third, after everyone left last years Hodge event, we stayed out there keeping an eye on the dumpsters until Monday. What we noticed on Sunday was that most of the people that came to shoot for the day left behind large messes in the freshly cleaned desert that we all cleaned the night before. A month later we stopped by and you couldn’t even tell the area had been cleaned up. We’re pretty frustrated at this point and not sure how to fix Hodge Road.
Fast-forward a couple of months and while chatting with our new friends over at San Diego Offroad Coalition, they asked if we would be interested in helping with a summer fundraising event. Clean-Dezert has created some exposure with our large raffles and sponsors with our annual clean-ups, and SDORC figured we would be a great ally in rallying companies for this new event. We were asked to help manage the vendors and the raffle, and next thing we knew, we were waist-deep in creating a new event for San Diego! It was so exciting to be working side by side with new friends and doing something that wasn’t all that familiar to us, and all for a great cause, as SDORC was fundraising to hire a lobbyist to keep our deserts open.
Now, San Diego is Southern California’s mecca for off roading culture. From Tough Trucks down at the del mar fairgrounds, to Fox raceway in Pala, to having Ocotillo Wells and Ocotillo in our backyard, off roading is in this city’s blood. The one thing San Diego does not have however, is an “Offroad Expo” of sorts. This is what SDORC and Clean-Dezert set out to create. We knew this was going to be a learning curve for both of us, but we figured why not, we have the support of the off-road community behind us!
The date was set for June 24th with the location being the Lakeside Rodeo Grounds (if you’re not familiar with Lakeside, it’s a small community in East San Diego where you either ride dirt bikes, or horses), and we were off to the races! The really neat thing about the event was seeing all of the companies that wanted to be involved and give back. Ferns BBQ agreed to donate his time and energy cooking amazing bbq for all of vendors and patrons who signed up for that delicious meal. El Cajon Hobbies set up a couple of courses in the middle of the arena for kids and adults to take their turn running the course for the fastest vehicle. SDORC brought 3 breweries on board to keep everyone hydrated for the event (Pacific Island Brewery, BNS Brewery and 3 Frogs Brewery), just in case the temps got a little too warm.
Clean-Dezert set out to bring in vendors for the event as well as some beautiful display vehicles. With a few phone calls and enough emails to make our fingers go numb, we had a list of 64 vendors and 54 display vehicles. Unfortunately, we had to turn away another 12-20 vendors (and we apologize to those that were turned away) because there was only so much room at the venue. We’re fortunate to have so many great companies backing us from all over southern California that came out to show support. Our first phone calls were to Schoonys Side by Side in SD and the Gravel Kings, as they both came on as title Sponsors for the event. Our friends at Mint400/Dirtco supported us again as a presenting sponsor for the event as well.
We spent most of the day Wednesday setting up and chalking all the vendors parking/booth areas (next time someone double-check Adams measurements. Hes the guy that reads the tape measure in “10 and 7 lines”), and another day bringing in all the large vendors. By the end of the day Friday, we had about ½ the vendors set up. This also meant that Saturday morning was going to be busy with having to bring in the other ½ of the vendors in just about 3 hours. Saturday morning came quickly, and we already had vendors lining up on the street, it was going to be an awesome day. We managed to get all vendors and display vehicles in by 10am and noticed lines starting to grow at the gates that were scheduled to open at 11am. The influx of people coming in at 11 was a great sign and by this time we were on cruise control. We got to talk to TONS of people who were super enthusiastic about a new event in their back yard.
After we all ate our weight in BBQ and had a few cold brews, it was time for the raffle. We had so many great prizes from our vendors, everything from jeep bumpers, to winches, to tvs, and rc cars. The raffle itself was so big, it took over an hour and a half to complete. We hope everyone was able to walk away with something.
All in all, we are super appreciative of SDORC for bringing us along. They were able to meet ½ of the goal they set for fundraising which is an amazing feat considering we’re all new to this. We have so many great takeaways and we’re hoping that next year will be bigger and better for sure.
I want to give a huge “thank you” to Audrey and to her whole team for involving us and for helping put on this event, these guys and gals are dedicated to our public lands. Our staff also did a great job moving everyone, setting everything up, and working our booth too (shameless pat on the back).
Title Sponsors
Schoonys Side by Side – Gravel Kings
Presenting Sponsor
