MONSTER GARAGE in South Lake Tahoe

in SOUTH LAKE TAHOE

Febuarary 1st 2005

Jesse James lights up South Lake Tahoe Monster Garage style.

While at the store gathering lunch consumables, a friend of mine mentioned that Jesse James was going to be in town taping a segment of Discovery Channel's Monster Garage. Sure enough, an article with photo in the local Tahoe Daily Tribune covering a previous taping with information on the segment to be taped at Tahoe Pizza Company. I rushed home after work to grab my camera and got back just after Jesse started splitting wood with a car. Here are the resulting photos taken with a Kodak DX-4530 5 mega pixel digital camera. It doesn't shoot well in the distant dark even with a flash. All images have been lightened. Sorry, I'm not a professional photographer. I did manage to get within 5 feet of Jesse while he shot a flare gun into the wood pile.

Jesse and Lake Tahoe firefighters splitting wood in the parking lot of Tahoe Pizza Company.

Jesse shuts down the Monster Splitter and backs it up to a parking spot.

Jesse dumps what looks to be oil on the pile of wood.

Back a safe? distance, Jesse discharges a flare gun at the wood pile.

The flares take a wild bounce off the wood into the crowd!

After three failed attempts to ignite the wood pile with a flare gun, Jesse uses a road flare.

Still no burning wood. He eventually convinces the fire department to douse the pile with gasoline finally getting it to light. This is where my camera started to run low on memory, so I didn't get pictures the bonfire. You'll just have to watch the episode on TV.

After Jesse and crew went into the restaurant the crowd got to get up close to the Monster Wood Splitting Mobile.