Teams

Arcadians

Garage Headquarters: Littleton, CO

Driver: Josh Westphal

Mechanics: Nick "Fish" Blunden, Steve "Spam" Westphal, Ben "Benji" Garrison, Chris "Whittey" White

Nuts and Bolts:

The Arcadians are “Soapbox virgins,” but that doesn’t mean they’re unaccomplished. Nick Blunden, Ben Garrison, Josh Westphal, Steve Westphal, and Chris White are masters of…stacking picnic tables? “Yep, we have the record for the most picnic tables stacked on top of each other: nineteen,” Josh beams. Evidently, this is the kind of thing that happens when you’ve been camping in the same place with the same guys for a dozen years. Josh, the entry’s driver, muses, “It’s possible that we’re stranger than any other team.”

These Littleton lads, who are all in the neighborhood of thirty years old, make the best of every situation. If the campsite is getting boring, stack picnic tables. As for their racer design, Josh explains, “We had an arcade system that didn’t work, and we weren’t smart enough to make it work; but slap wheels on it and race it down Red Rocks – now that we can do!” Steve remembers watching his brother take their initial prototype down a test track: “The steering was great and the brakes worked…until the wood gave way and Josh flipped it three times and it split into quarters,” he recounts. One long night at the emergency room and two brisk weeks in the garage later, they’d rebuilt the whole thing, only better. A bruised Josh adds wryly, “The fatal flaw had been 30-year-old wood and nails. Who knew?”