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Thursday, 01/19/2017 1:34:14 AM

Thursday, January 19, 2017 1:34:14 AM

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‘All’s Fair in Love and Outhouse Racing’: Chronicle Takes Number Two at Conconully Outhouse Races
Pete Caster / pcaster@chronline.com


Conconully Outhouse Races






If putting butts in seats is the best measure of success for a community sporting event, then the Conconully Outhouse Races are the undisputed champion.
Each January for the past 34 years, the tiny town of Conconully has used the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend as an opportunity to turn the main street of their far-flung burg into a big, stinky speedway of sorts.
The races happen on Main Street with the town’s two watering holes, The Red Rock Saloon and The Sit ‘N Bull, serving as the respective starting and finishing lines.
The event is so popular that over the weekend the races are held, the normally sleepy town nestled in the isolated foothills of the east Cascade Mountains in north central Washington watches with glee as its population of just 208 residents swells to the point of no vacancy.
Some years, the races have drawn as many as 2,000 people to the middle of nowhere.
Now, a reasonable person might be wondering what exactly an outhouse race is. Here’s how it works — teams of three people, which include two pushers and one sitter/navigator (who has no real means of navigating or steering other than futily hollering directions), are tasked with maneuvering an outhouse outfitted on skis down the Main Street course, which is lined with hay bales for safety and thronged with spectators waiting for inevitable wipeouts.
The outhouses must have at least three sides, a full roof and measure at least 5 feet in height. They are also required to be equipped with a toilet seat and a roll of toilet paper. Beyond that, imaginations and subsequent decorations are free to exuberantly go straight for the toilet.
Once certified by an official inspector, the outhouse teams are broken down by category for the races. The men’s division is home to the steamiest competition, while there are also divisions for women, families, kids, teens and commercially-sponsored teams.
Additionally, there are bucket races, where each team’s pushers are outfitted with 5-gallon buckets on their heads so they cannot see, and an extreme obstacle race where the teams have to navigate over and around hay bales that are arranged haphazardly on the course. On Saturday, there were 19 outhouses entered in the races, which is a fairly typical number in recent years.

This year, in order to get a firsthand feel for what the outhouse races are all about, The Chronicle entered its own team in the competition. Racing a repurposed outhouse we lovingly christened as The Stinky Ink Pot, me and a pair of hired guns from Okanogan managed a fair first time showing at the races.
Although, like a replacement roll of toilet paper under the sink, a championship ultimately evaded our reach.
The all-black outhouse had been used once by a local Okanogan area business and then abandoned for reasons that would become abundantly obvious to us later. Abandoned in a barn and wedged full of hay, our local ringers, Tanner Niels and Clay Wylie, managed to get their hands on the outhouse on skis only a day before the races.
A heat lamp struggled mightily against nighttime temperatures that bottomed out around zero and barely managed to melt any of the ice from the interior. On the morning’s light on the day of the race, we flipped the shack on its back in order to get a good look underneath.
Surprisingly, the underside of the crap shack was not a pretty sight to see. First of all, the skis on which our championship hopes were set to ride were covered in thick chunks of ice and scabs of rust.
Using an ice scraper, a metal barbecue burger flipper and a hand sander, Niels was able to grind away the superfluous gunk, but the other protruding problem quickly revealed why the outhouse had been used only once and then given away.
Actually, there were four unfixable problems on the underside of the outhouse. At each spot where the skis had been attached to the frame of the outhouse, the original builders had used heavy duty bolts with rounded butt ends that stuck out a solid half inch below the surface of the skis.
With time and ideas quickly running short, we were forced to ignore the obvious impediment to success and instead attempted to overcome the constant grind of friction through sheer force and delusional determination.

The outhouse races are such a big deal that the Omak Stampede rodeo queen comes to watch every year. In 2013, a Japanese reality TV show brought over a team, constructed an outhouse on site and competed against the locals. And last year, Sports Illustrated sent a photographer to shoot the races, which were later included in their list of the World’s Wackiest Sports.
Of course, folks from The Chronicle’s coverage area are a staple at the event as well.
In 2015, Brian Orr and Ella Orr, both of Centralia, were part of the winning team in the kids division while Kelly Jensen, Danika Jensen and Ryan Jensen, all of Centralia, combined to take home the family title.
That same year, Kelly Jensen and Shane Holmes, of Centralia, and Coe Johnson, of Olympia, combined to win the senior division, and Mike Miller, Shane Holmes and Alan Thomas, all of Centralia, placed second in the men’s division.
Last year was another good showing for the local sled pushers. Kelly Jensen, Coe Johnson and Dean Chamberlain, of Tenino, teamed up to win the senior division. Jensen and fellow Centralians David Orr and Rob Orr brought home the Clydesdale title, in which all contestants must weigh over 200 pounds, and DJ’s Plumbing brought home the commercial title thanks to the efforts of Olympia’s Johnson and the Hub City’s Thomas and Miller.
The Orr family that keeps popping up in the championship history is the same clan that owns and operates Goebel Septic. The Orrs started attending the outhouse races in 2012 but, as is typical in their line of work, it wasn’t all roses right from the get-go.
Pam Orr, owner of Goebel Septic, called the first couple of years a “learning experience.”
“The first year we built a real outhouse because we were so green we didn't know it should be light,” explained Orr, who noted the original behemoth even included a hulking elk horn door handle.
Last year, the family put together a Santa Claus-themed outhouse for the kids to use in the family and youth races, but Orr said the success really started flowing downhill once they teamed up with DJ’s Plumbing. The cooperation allowed both teams to best utilize their strengths and save their finite energy for their best races.





Despite those recent successes, it’s one of their failures that sticks out in the minds of many who were there to watch. As the story goes, one year during the bucket race, where the two pushers have to push blindly with a 5-gallon bucket placed over their heads, the team veered so far off course that they wound up plowing through a crowded beer garden at the Sit ‘N Bull.
An alternate version of the story has the septic team ramrodding directly into a parked car. One version says the pushers were just out of whack and another claims that their opponents purposefully directed them off course. The truth was impossible to pin down since the story changed somewhat depending on who told it. Memories of the beer sud-soaked event are understandably hazy.
“It’s so much fun though. It’s a hoot,” said Rebecca Orr.

Indeed, the all-for-fun races have a special way of getting ultra-competitive. Teams that bust out to an early lead are typically able to box out their opponents by veering in front of their path, and it is not uncommon for teams trying to make a pass to wind up getting channelled off line and into a direct collision course with one of the many hay bales that line the edges of the Main Street.
To whit, Team Skid Mark, from Whatcom County, wound up sideways and upside down on numerous occasions on Saturday. The first time they hit the deck, team Skid Mark roundly laughed it off.
“It was a bit of a sticky situation out there,” joked Dean Crosswhite, of Ferndale, the Skid Mark’s helpless navigator who took the brunt of the blowout.
Crosswhite owns a vacation cabin in Conconully and has been attending the races for about 15 years. He said that he did not suspect malice to be the cause of his team’s wreck and simply chalked the happening up to the unpredictable nature of the event.
Later on in the Clydesdale races, the Skid Mark team again bit the big one, this time toppling end over end with Crosswhite crashing through the roof of the outhouse and onto icy Main Street. Peeling himself off of the street, he retained his cheery disposition and flashed a double thumbs up to the delight of the raucous crowd that braved a midday low temperature of 9 degrees.
Instead of squabbling over the results or filing a protest, team Skid Mark simply collected the broken bits of their busted jalopy and pushed it to the side of the road where it remained until the final racer had skipped town.
Crosswhite was not alone in his belief that all’s fair in love and outhouse racing. From the wiliest veteran to the greenest greenhorn, nobody could recall a time where on course competition took on a sustained sour note. The losers simply ice their bumps and bruises with the roadside snow and wash the pain away with cold draft beers at the hopping saloons and nearby residences that host the official and unofficial after parties.

For The Chronicle’s Stinky Ink Pot, the results were a mixed bed pan. After winning our first two races, one with ease and the other by putting our opponents headlong into a hay bale, we had earned a reputation as “The Dirty Team.”
In the men’s semifinal race, we faced a tough opponent known as Daisy Deuces. In a hot and heavy competition, we found ourselves neck and neck nearly half way down the track when the Deuces veered into our path and forced us to swap a little paint.
Niels, our inside pusher, attempted to edge ahead of our opponent, but wound up pinned between our two-by-four pushing bar and theirs. With nowhere to go, the mounting pressure pulled Niels under and he was promptly run over by both outhouses and discarded out the back end like so much roadkill. I managed to push the outhouse across the finish line alone but the race was already lost.
Luckily, Niels was uninjured and ready for another shot at glory. In the commercial division, we again shot out to a set of early round wins and this time made it to the championship. Unfortunately, the officials placed us on the left hand side of the course for the first and only time of the day, and our rhythm was thrown completely out of whack.
On our first push, we went catawampus, and the secondary adjustment push only moved us farther off track to solidify our disappointing second-place finish.
The Bucket Race was our last hope for a vaunted outhouse trophy. Through literal blind luck, we were poised to claim that title after a pair of ugly duckling early round wins that saw us veer off course and into the facade of the Sit ‘N Bull in addition to numerous full speed wipeouts over those hay bales.
Our championship run was actually our best run of the entire Bucket Race event since we managed to only get high centered on a hay bale once and then expertly reversed off of and around it, but our opponents were even luckier and managed to finish 10 feet in front of us. As a reporter, I admit that this fact was relayed to me by word of mouth since I had an obfuscating 5-gallon bucket over my head for the duration.
Team Stinky Inky Pot from The Chronicle released the following statement regarding the number two finishes:
“We are greatly disappointed in our runner-up finishes at the Conconully Outhouse Races. We apologize to our fans and our publisher, who both rightfully deserve nothing but top notch performances from our team. We hope to return to Conconully in 2018 with newfound experience and additional pushing reinforcements in order to claim the outhouse race greatness that our newspaper deserves.”

Still, considering those pesky bolts on the underside of our outhouse skis that cut a half inch crevasse in the snow everywhere we went, the first time results were nothing to turn one’s nose up at.
In hopes of gleaning some championship level insight in the pursuit of future success, I sought out one of the original outhouse race champions. Larry Gibson, of Omak, was on the first men’s grand champion team in 1982. He said the key to winning is strong-bodied and strong-willed pushers.
Gibson coached wrestling at Omak High School for 30 years and also coached for USA wrestling. He is in the national wrestling hall of fame as a coach and the George Washington University hall of fame as a student-athlete. He also has just one leg since being hit by a drunk driver prior to starting high school.
“I only have one leg, or one and half, so I figured I should ride. Track was not my sport!” joked Gibson, who both wrestled and played football in high school and college.
He said that his championship team came together through “magnetism” once he put out feelers for the most qualified pushers he could find. One of those pushers was Lindsey Fulton, a former University of Washington football lineman, and the other was Dave Palmer, a local who pulled green chain at the mill.
“I’ve never been afraid of new sorts of things. And if it sounds like fun I usually do it,” said Gibson, who has traveled all around the world in his career of coaching wrestling. “It’s just one more thing that I had to do was be a racer in the outhouse race.”
Gibson added, “We just did it. Life is kind of that way. Sometimes we are presented with opportunities but we don’t take advantage of those opportunities. … I’m a little unusual, but for me, that’s just what I do.”

Nobody I could find in Conconully, including Gibson, could remember exactly how the races started.
“I know they have outhouse races in Anchorage, Alaska, as well,” said Gibson. “As far as I know, we may have been the first ones to do it.”
Janette Walker, president of the Conconully Chamber of Commerce, probably came the closest with her guess when she surmised that the genesis of the idea came after a few good ol’ boys drank a certain number of cold beverages around a warm fire.
“There was nothing to do here so they said, ‘Well why don’t we have an outhouse race?’” said Walker.
Walker noted that the Butt Hut racing group has participated in the races since the inaugural year. In the interim they’ve missed only one year and now boast at least three generations of outhouse racers in their family that show up each year.
Taking stock of the 2017 outhouse races Walker considered it a bare buns success.
“I’ll tell you, I thought it was amazing how many of those outhouses went end over end,” said Walker, who heads the 30-person volunteer crew that makes the outhouse races go. The races are a fundraiser for the Chamber of Commerce.
Walker agreed with everyone else I spoke with that things have never gotten out of hand between contestants during the outhouse races. For whatever reason the type of yahoos who think it’s a good idea to push outhouses around on skis in single digit weather have a knack for self-regulating.
“I think the whole point of it is to just come out and have a great time on Martin Luther King weekend,” said Walker.
Additional information on the Conconully Outhouse Races can be found online at www.conconully.com.

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