Danny Breaks Land Speed Record
"On the same day that America elected its new President, November 4, 2008, Danny Way and Rob Dyrdek headed out to a small airfield in California City, California, to try to break the land speed record on a skateboard. Danny and Rob were assisted by the "Professor" Paul Schmitt, Neil Piper, Jake Doomey and others who helped develop the deck and technical plan for the event. Everyone arrived early in the day to find 50 mile an hour winds howling across the desert. Maybe the huge wind farms visible in the distance at Tehachapi should have been a clue, but it just isn't that easy to find miles of flat smooth clean blacktop just sitting around waiting for Danny and Rob to roll up and hang out all day.

As you can see from the photos the plan was for Rob to drive his three wheel Predator with Danny hanging on the side. The original plan was to try to hit 100mph but with the tumble weeds doing almost that for much of the day there wasn't the time available to test and build up to that. As we all discovered the other issue isn't about going that fast. It is about having enough room to slow down and stop safely while you still have runway. - Nothing like hitting the dirt to ruin your day.

Finally around 2.30pm the wind started to drop enough that Danny and Rob could start the test runs to figure out best body position, acceleration and braking techniques and what board set up worked best. By the time things were really hotting up on the track almost everyone else on the airfield was wind chiiled down to just above freezing. Danny kept warm on one run by coming off his board, hanging onto the Predator he managed to wear a hole clean through his Astrostars MX boots (wear pad and all) and give everyone a fright as all we saw was a smoking Danny Way go down the track. At last, as the sun was setting (or was it just blown over the horizon?) Danny and Rob hit 74.5mph and Guinness certified a new world record.

Danny is pretty sure that with a full day and cooperation from the wind he can get near to or exceed 100mph ........but that is to be left for another day.

Danny wants to thank Rob, Paul Schmitt,Neil, Jake, the MTV production team, and everyone else that worked with us at California City airfield.

Check out the action on Rob Dyrdek's "Fantasy Factory" show on MTV

Although it probably doesn't need saying we will say it anyway. Please don't try this at home. In addition to Danny's skill and experience we had a bunch of other top people in their various fields that worked with us and made sure that this went well and no one got hurt. If you try to skateboard hanging off a car with your buddies you will likely die and they will go to jail."


Posted: Thursday, Mar 26, 2009