Crawler Canyon Presents the CABS Invitational '26: Episode 0, Prologue

[00:00:00]Welcome back, everybody.

[00:00:04]Welcome back to the canyon.

[00:00:05]Welcome back to the initiation of another thing where Okay, here's Here's how it works. The canyon is in the desert. We live in the desert. Um there's this time of year the the one that people would regard as being in the middle, the summer. The summer is the time that I always try to do things like this. This is the primer installment to get you ready for the 2026 Cabs Invitational, which should pretty much take Yeah, this this will take up the summer.

[00:00:40]Uh as I stand and record this, summer hasn't started yet, but I think by the time you're watching this, summer will have started. So, it's summer 2026 Cabs Invitational. What is that, you ask?

[00:00:52]Well, it's generally head-to-head competition. We pick a group of rigs and they compete against one another for scores, and we've done We've done competition among uh the canyon fleet previously. We pick But But I do it at best with a notebook or a binder with some sheets of paper, and I scribble things in and we say, "Okay, this one versus this one, this one versus this one." Or uh in one year, I went to Wheel of Names, the Google Wheel of Names, uh entered the names of the rigs, spun it, and then gridded them like that.

[00:01:33]This year for the Cabs Invitational, I thought, "Well, what if there's a better way?"

[00:01:40]And what we're going to find out over the next number of weeks is, did I find a better way?

[00:01:46]Because this year for initiating for the Cabs Invitational we're we're opting for technology, a double application of technology. Let me Let me grab two semi-randoms.

[00:02:02]This is Cherry Bomb. Cherry Bomb is a mullet hot 6 wizard.

[00:02:08]This is Eskie. And Eskie is sporty kind of camper axles, ruptures on inserts to take his tires down to 475.

[00:02:19]Um dig box, Fusion SE, Fusion Elite, right? These are the kind of cabs is basically our kind of catch all competition for class two competitors.

[00:02:33]These are two that I chose. I went around and indeed with my little baby whiteboard, and I picked out 16 rigs.

[00:02:40]And then I went on the internet and I said, is there some kind of a bracket generator that I can use to like build a competition so that it takes that workload off my shoulders? And there indeed is. I found a website called challonge.com, and it will build you brackets. And we are going to use that all the way through. And I went and I loaded up and it said, "Well, what kind of bracket do you want?" And I said, "Well, how many kinds are there?" There's a whole bunch.

[00:03:06]And I opted for double elimination because we have a field of 16. I picked out 16 competitors, and sidebar note here, there there's no there's no such thing really. What What these What these types of events are, no one comes out unscathed. And I don't mean that rigs get damaged during the process. I mean, if we do some This is This is round two.

[00:03:33]This is bracket two right here. Are these two up against each other? Bracket one is the KKV1 versus our man Toothless.

[00:03:42]Uh and on and on and on. Eight brackets in the main, and then there's the losers round. And here's how we're going to do it. Here's what we're going to do.

[00:03:50]There'll be four rigs per episode. That's the goal.

[00:03:57]Right? So, in episode 1, it'll be brackets 1 and 2. KKV 1 versus Toothless and the Cherry Bomb versus Eskie. The winner of those go up against each other in the second round.

[00:04:11]Right? So, how do we do that? So, the first So, the first two brackets will run.

[00:04:17]Those move on to the second round. So, we'll take four and turn that into two, four turn that into two. And then there will be the losers round. And the beauty of this is it's not a whiteboard, it's not sheets of paper. I don't have to remember as much stuff.

[00:04:33]Right?

[00:04:34]Round 1 is green line. They're going to compete against each other in green line. Green line is straight canyon through the gates scoring. 10 points for hand to god, 7 points for gate strike, 2 points for reverse, 4 points for the floor is lava. If you're unfamiliar with that scoring, we can talk about it when we get out there. And I have no idea because we are very early on in this and many of these rigs, I don't think any of these rigs have competed against each other directly. Maybe one or two.

[00:05:06]Right? We've got some old heads here.

[00:05:08]Jake is here. LoLo is here. Rain Bird is here. But many of them are new. Well, the Muzzard is here. The All Vanquish {slash} Zoku Mullet who won uh Crawlympics narrowly edging out Jake the Snake. So, in the first round, there are going to be There's the Challonge uh bracket generator picked some abso- what have to be blood baths.

[00:05:39]Like, there are a couple brackets in round 1.

[00:05:43]The Muzzard up against the Punk Anarchist should be ridiculous.

[00:05:49]Um Jake against Bluebird, Lolo against Madam Mim the wizard that Some of these are going to be tough.

[00:05:59]This one like this one good on you shall lounge. I would never have anticipated this match up. Right?

[00:06:09]But he but but here we are and we'll see who moves on into the second round and who uh goes into the losers bracket. And the beauty is I just I've got it up on a screen right here. I just I just type it in. I don't have to remember nothing. I just look up at it and I already know who I need to run. This is so good. And and and and I said double application of technology.

[00:06:31]Trying to embrace technology a little bit more primarily for trailing applications. I have recently acquired an Insta 360 X4 air like little thing.

[00:06:40]Cameras on both sides of it.

[00:06:42]Uh K&F Concepts happens to make a little a little grippy guy that goes into these little tabs on the bottom. It's fantastic. It's what I use on the roofs of the rigs for trailing.

[00:06:52]Uh it comes with the little invisible selfie stick which I've added a little adapter to.

[00:06:57]Let me check the the camera.

[00:07:00]Clack it on like that. I have crudely uh for yes could is this [clears throat] something that could be 3D printed?

[00:07:08]Sure. Is it also something that I could make out of pine? Absolutely.

[00:07:13]Because everyone here uses the same type of radio. This just slides over like that and then there we go.

[00:07:20]I shoot it first and I frame it later.

[00:07:23]So the note the idea here is take the mental load off he for whom which mental load cannot be managed.

[00:07:33]Basically.

[00:07:35]That's what it comes down to basically.

[00:07:37]Uh uh I shoot it all. So the goal here is spend a minimum amount of time figuring out what rigs, getting them placed. The bracket generator's right there. It says get these four ready.

[00:07:51]They all run the same radios. So, your camera is just going to slap right on.

[00:07:57]Spend minimal time filming. A run for these should be 3 to 4 minutes. Although, I don't know.

[00:08:06]Because what do I have to do? I have to record, move the tripod transition, record move the tripod transition, record move the tripod transition. So, these guys, the group of 16 that's going in the Cabs Invitational are the first time since the runs at Deadline, where I had a camera person, where I can actually do a run one and done.

[00:08:36]And literally, I will just be able to hot swap.

[00:08:40]So, Cherry Bomb runs and I even know the running order. He goes before him.

[00:08:46]He'll run.

[00:08:47]I'll pull the thing off there, slap it into the other radio, and off we go on the next one.

[00:08:53]What What could be better than that?

[00:08:56]Streamlined. And then, the editing, because it's 360 editing, takes five times as long.

[00:09:04]But, I get to do that inside, sitting in a chair in the climate control. This is a perfect This is a perfect perfect, if it works out. And as I said, I have no idea if there will be any kind of handicaps, penalties, anything like that. Does he get a points bump? Does he get a like a one pump point bump because he's got a full body and others are just running cab only? I don't know.

[00:09:31]What about servo and axle versus chassis mounted steering?

[00:09:34]I don't know.

[00:09:35]Uh what about portals versus straights?

[00:09:38]So, for at the very least for the first round the points are straight up for this, you know? And I think based on the recording schedule this will take place over the summer or maybe a little bit less.

[00:09:55]I don't have the filming all I I'm going in cold. I know how I ordinarily do it and I know how the time is spent and consumed that way but I've not done it this way. So, the 2026 Cab's Invitational, this is how it's going to break down. Round of 16, 16 competitors uh, I think it's 29 rounds to 29 brackets. I got to get the numbers right in my head because this is round one then round two, round three. Okay.

[00:10:25]29 brackets including the losers bracket.

[00:10:31]But, I shoot at least two at a time. So, this should be And when we get down to the bottom right? When we get near the end, uh, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th round uh, I can record them all at once. So, like we'll be we'll be finishing out that bracket and that bracket. So, what Here's the All right. It's all tentative aside from the scoring and the rigs and the shooting apparatus and the filming days. That that's pretty much finalized.

[00:11:00]But um, we're going to go through and we're going to do the first round and then is it four? Yes. And then we will do the losers bracket first So, we'll do round one all the way down and then we'll do round two all the way down round three round four.

[00:11:22]Green line is round one guaranteed.

[00:11:24]Round two we'll we'll play it by ear. Is it going to be back nine? Is it going to be front nine? Are we going to go over to the course at Sultan's? Will we have the black course laid out before it's done?

[00:11:40]I don't know. All I know is green line is the go-to. That's the default starter and it is just that level of difficulty high enough that someone in this someone of this 16, we should see some zeros.

[00:11:54]Somebody should do a zero score and not touch anything.

[00:11:58]Uh as I've laid out before on green line, uh a good score is I would say 14 to 18. So, let's just call it under 20 is a is a pretty good score. If you're over 40, you're not doing well.

[00:12:14]Uh if you're under 10, if you're doing a single digit score like you had a lava or 11 and a gate straight down at 11, that's quite good. I don't imagine that everyone can do perfect scores because it's the same pair of hands operating all of them and the quick shifting is honestly difficult. If you've never tried it for yourself, I do recommend it. Take two rigs that are like this, reasonably close, I assume, in performance and run one and then with no just set a radio down, pick the other one up, and go again and you will find out that there are many instances that we will see through the the the duration of this campaign that there are rigs that are very similar and drive wildly differently.

[00:13:08]These two would be pretty fine to go one after the other and they will because there's a fusion in there and there's a fusion in there and they're set up the same and they have reasonably competitive tires. He's full portal.

[00:13:19]He's a mullet. I don't think this one will be too bad. Some of these will be jarring in the way that like there's a couple guys here that are brushed.

[00:13:31]And if you drive a brushed one and then an outrunner right after it, so it was chosen by the machine, it fully randomized.

[00:13:42]And we're just going to we're just we're just going to go with it. We're going to see how it goes. We're going to see if penalties need to go.

[00:13:47]I'd like to run them and as I mentioned right at the initiation, nobody comes out unscathed. No I think Krulympics, which was a 9-month long event, and we're going to try to keep this one down to about a third of that. I'm hoping for two installments per week. Uh probably tentatively Tuesdays and Saturdays will be the installments of cabs.

[00:14:18]And it's a good way to help fill out my calendar is what it is because we can't review things every day.

[00:14:25]When aren't we kind of still reviewing things now? Aren't a little bit?

[00:14:31]So, come along with me on this fantastical journey as we find out Oh, I don't I don't want to say it. I love all my babies, but there is always a little bit of an element of who lives and who dies.

[00:14:49]You know, in the 9 months of Krulympics, I think we lost half a dozen. Well, there was 40 plus competitors in that. It was way too much. It was overly ambitious.

[00:15:03]This, I hope, is a distillation of that.

[00:15:08]A group of 16 is about the most I think I should be trying to manage.

[00:15:14]So, I'll get them I'll get them everybody prepped and I'll meet you out there. And this like I said is the intro, All right, so this one will go up first. Immediately following this one will be the the first episode. So this is the this is the prologue. This is the prologue. I said always I wanted to say prelude. This is the prologue.

[00:15:37]And I'll meet you out on the course in episode 1 of Cab's Invitational 2026.

[00:15:44]And hope I honestly genuinely I hope everybody lives.

[00:15:51]I hope everybody lives, but as I look at the bracket now out of the corner of my eye yeah, there's there's one or two or three that are at risk.

[00:16:03]So they might end up getting swirled into something new. 16 rigs enter.

[00:16:10]Over the course of this competition we will find out how many rigs leave.

[00:16:14]Uh thank you so much. I look forward to Anybody have any ideas? If you have any concerns with the way the bracketing might be laid out, any of that stuff, um let me know. And in future events like we can definitely do a Crawl Canyon Class 1.5 event. I have enough to build a small bracket out of that. That one would be like a three-weeker and out, you know.

[00:16:40]Hopefully like this is untested. Like how how good will this do today? And I hope it will do well. I hope you join us for all of it. I hope you pick your favorites or you already have a favorite and you're rooting for them.

[00:16:54]And I'll see you out on the course as we set out to do this.

[00:16:58]Cab's Invitational 2026.

[00:17:02]What could go wrong?