The SEMA Shuffle
November 3rd, 2009
by Jim McIlvaine of ESPN Milwaukee Blogs
This was the scene after lunch at the SEMA show in Las Vegas. The guy with the patch on his eye just happened to radomly stroll into the picture, but what I was really trying to capture was the group of people sitting on the floor in one of the many hallways at SEMA. Why are these people sitting on the floor? They are dead-tired after just the first half day.
It’s difficult to describe the size and scope of the SEMA show, but simply describing it as “massive” doesn’t do it justice. If they held a foot race in this joint and all the competitors had to run up and down all the aisles inside and out of all the buildings, a world-class runner would probably struggle to finish in under an hour. That says a lot, considering the attendance at this event is down signficantly from past years. It’s still a huge deal and the elevation in Vegas (2000 feet above sea level) combined with the endless display halls will exhaust anyone who attempts to see even a fraction of this show and isn’t in reasonably decent shape.
What kind of stuff is here? In a word- everything. Check out these vehicles as examples of the variety out here:
This Ford F650 claims to be the world’s fastest street-legal jet truck. In addition to the diesel engine under the hood, the owner strapped a 7000 horsepower GE J85 jet engine to the bed, which can propel the truck to speeds of up to 200 mph, although I’m not confident the tires currently on this truck can handle 200 mph.