After having spent the first 13 weekends of 2009 calling the action at live Monster Jam events all over North America, and then spending weekend #14 in Chicago working on the CBS Sports Spectacular broadcast of Monster Jam, you’d think that I’d be ready for a break from the road. But I have to tell you, two weeks off of the Monster Jam Tour and I’m already pacing the floor, ready to get back onto the microphone at an awesome Monster Jam event. Fortunately for me, I have a pair of events coming up these next two weekends that over the past few years have been a blast: our annual spring trips to Florida, which begin with this weekend’s return to Naples, followed the next weekend by action in Ocala.

The fans in Florida are really amazing. I mean over the last few months Monster Jam has been selling out huge Sunshine State stadiums in Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Miami, and of course tons of Florida fans were in Las Vegas for NGK Spark Plugs World Finals 10, then here we are a few weeks later and the fans will be packing in to a couple of racing venues for even more live action. Appropriately, the line-ups for our annual trips to Naples and Ocala are outstanding, and will include the newly crowned World Racing Champion. That’s right, 8-time World Champion Tom Meents will be heading to Florida these next two weeks, driving his Maximum Destruction into battle against a stellar line-up that will include Randy Brown’s Grave Digger and World Finals veterans Steve Sims in Stone Crusher and Florida’s own Scott Hartsock in Gunslinger.  They’ll be joined by other Monster Jam stars for seven events over these next two weekends.

These two venues really represent the grass roots of the sport. Even though the highest profile Monster Jams are contested in the big domes and stadiums, there are still a number of smaller race tracks and motor sports facilities, fairgrounds, arenas, and so on, all over the country that continue traditions in the sport that date back to the original days of monster trucks actually competing, first in racing events, then in both races and freestyles. One of the aspects I’ve always enjoyed about these spring and summer ventures is that every one of these facilities that hosts Monster Jam seems to have its own unique nuances, its own personality, from the popular west coast fairgrounds circuit to the tradition rich midsummer action at places like Lebanon Valley Speedway in New York to this weekends trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast at the Florida Sports Park, a swamp buggy race place that has become the Naples home for Monster Jam. With all the water drained from the swamp buggy race track the racing course here is long and fast, a straight line course that is a throwback to the early days of the sport before turning courses became so prevalent. Last year’s course design started the trucks headed toward the first jump right off the bat, then into a valley we’ve called no man’s land, where the drivers have to hammer the throttle to try and get the win while staying under control to hit the final crush car jump square and fly across the finish line looking for the win. I’ve seen some great photo finishes on this course the last two years and I expect we’ll see plenty more this weekend.

For freestyle the open layout of the Florida Sports Park gives the Monster Jam officials plenty of leeway in designing and placing the obstacles, and each driver has more options than you might normally expect would be available in a non-stadium setting. We’ve watched some phenomenal freestyles here in the past, and again, with a line-up than includes the likes of Meents, Brown, Sims, Hartsock and the others in this field there’s just no doubt freestyle will be rocking all weekend long.

As I noted at the beginning of this article there are so many things that make these next couple of weeks exciting, first of all just getting to see more live Monster Jam action, and of course enjoying the tremendous support this sport receives from the fans in Florida. By the way, if you are someone who went to one (or more) of the big stadium shows earlier this year, let me encourage you to come join us in Naples and Ocala. The action is just as intense and exciting, and even though the stands will be packed, there will still be less fans in attendance than, say our record setting crowd in Jacksonville, so you have an even better chance of getting each and every autograph from your favorite superstars at these upcoming events.

One final note. For those of you who check this column out weekly here’s a little heads up. While in Naples this weekend I’m hoping to be able to spend some time with Meents and be able to interview him in depth about the amazing back flip that he hit in Las Vegas, and also to have a chance to talk with one of the sport’s great innovators about what else he has up his sleeve for fans to enjoy in the future. If all goes as planned I’ll have that interview for you in this space next week, so be sure to check back for it here, exclusively, at Monster Jam Online.