About the Driver...
About the Driver...

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My name is Travis Ogden. I currently live in Hillsboro, Oregon. I have been racing Rally Cross for three years and Performance Club Rally for one.

I got my drivers permit in Homer Alaska but didn't really learn how to drive until I moved to Fairbanks Alaska. Years later my friends would joke (once I moved to the lower 48) that I was better driving on snow and ice then I was road. They were probably right since I had become used to driving on snow and ice nine months out of the year.

Those years driving in Fairbanks were filled with me going FAR to fast on the back logging roads I used to get home in my modified 1979 Chevy Luv truck - after all - our house was on the side of a mountain, it's not like there was any traffic.

The Chevy Luv was actually more of a Rally car then I had previously known - I'm no stranger to bending metal and wedging in motors to big or brakes far to beefy. My Luv had a 1950's Nascar motor installed (I worked two full summers for that motor installation!). Those high speeds were easy to come by and no one expected them from such a crappy truck.

As a gift my mother sent me to a "high performance driving school", the only one of it's kind in Fairbanks apparently. Well, it turned out to be a playground for adults and very modified vehicles more then it was a driving school and it only lasted a week. These guys were totally crazy - sliding sideways in Dodge Darts that had roll cages and external bumper frames that wrapped the entire car and doing it at high speeds. Doing cookie contests to see who would get dizzy and quit first - you name it. THAT'S where I learned to drive and my room mates will tell you that to this day they enjoy the benefits of those teachings and lessons - one easy way to tell is by their white knuckles, very wide eyes and lips which are distended to finish the ensemble of fright on their faces...

For a living I am a professional geek/Engineer at Sun Microsystems in Hillsboro (just a 15 minute drive from work! YAY!). For fun I race my car, work on my car or work on my old drag race car and may even be seen snowboarding, paintballing, rock climbing, mountain biking, shooting old computer hardware (muahaha), playing with my computers, camping, hiking, swimming etc etc.

I have had my fifteen minutes of fame, unfortunately it didn't involve Rally but maybe I'll get lucky and have fifteen minutes more that actually have something to do with Rally!

Anyway... I really really like Rally (when I can't do it for real I do it on my Playstation) - Rally Cross has really just an experiment platform for me to test out driving techniques (at low speed) and adjustements to my car while I prepared it for Club Rally.

We (my Codriver, Tony Kic and I) successfully completed the Oregon Trail Pro Rally (Oregon Trail Club Rally and Trails End ClubRally). We completed day one of Mt Hood ClubRally but unfortunately rolled the car on Sunday. So, looks like I have some serious work ahead of me for this Winter!

Watch for us at a Rally and say hi :). Or catch us on SpeedVision on cable!

Travis Ogden
traviso@RallyRabbit.com