Olmstead County Fair and Demolition Derby – Rochester, MN

Here’s how this whole thing started: Derby Dan and his wife went to watch roller derby last year and of course fell in love with roller derby (which is nice because then Dan doesn’t have to change his fake first name). Derby Dan got laid off of work after that and decided he needed to focus his road rage onto a legal track and thought he should build a car for the demolition derby. He also thought it would be a good idea to paint the demo car the colors of The Atomic Bombshells – the league champions for the Minnesota Rollergirls in 2010.

Since D.Rough is the captain of the Atomic Bombshells, she got a message from Dan asking if the Bombshells were cool with that and maybe he’d paint their logo on the side of his car and maybe a few skaters would like to come and watch the demolition derby. D.Rough got some people on board and made it all happen. Derby Dan got some serious schwwag from the Atomic Bombshells including all the necessary permissions to paint the car orange and camo and smash it into things – it’s scary how similar roller derby and demolition derby is…

Dan invited all Atomic Bombshells in attendance to come to his family’s place in Rochester and have a pre-derby celebration/lunch. So, D.Rough, Boom, Skully, SOB, Marcus, and myself piled into two cars and headed down with some coolers full of adult beverages and Atomic Bombshell uniforms/T-shirts. Dan’s family fed us well and we hung out for a bit. Dan had some car trouble on the drive down from the Twin Cities, so he missed the family’s party all-together (which meant it was alright that I ate his portion of his family’s food – I’m sure he didn’t mind).


We headed to the county fair and walked around for a bit. It was 800 degrees outside, so nothing seemed good except shaved ice – which we had plenty of to stay hydrated.
I saw a couple of food trucks that seemed magical but frankly, it was too hot to consider eating anything of substance. There was Ice Cream Spaghetti, and the greatest idea in the entire world, Eli’s Donut Burgers – yes, a burger on a sliced donut instead of a bun with bacon and cheese. Since it was so hot outside and we were miserable, I decided I’d come back midway through the demolition derby when the sun had set a little and get one then.

We went into the pits and checked out Dan’s finished product – pre-smashing. It looked great, honestly. He did a ton of work on this and put in countless hours making it awesome. We took lots of photos with it.


Then, we sat in the grandstand with Dan’s family. All of us wearing orange and supporting Derby Dan. We were covered in mud from the other cars flinging mud into the stands. Classic white trash fun – you have to love it!

This was Dan’s first demolition derby, but he had gotten some great advice on welding together a car and making it battle-worthy. After all his car trouble and the heat and just being exhausted, Dan ended up winning his division!!!! Absolutely amazing!!! It was down to two super beat up cars, but he did it. It’s hard NOT to be a champion when you’re supporting the Atomic Bombshells (yes, I’m biased).

The best part is, we all got to be trophy girls!!!
I was handed the 5th place trophy so when I took it out onto the track to the 5th-from-the-last-car-to-die, I told the guy, “You got fifth place, so you got stuck with the ugliest of our bunch, sorry.” He replied back, “You want a kiss anyway??” Hilarious. We handed out trophies and headed back to our seats to do more sweating.




Then I headed back to Eli’s Donut Burgers only to find out they were closed up for the night. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....................!!!!!!!! I was super upset and couldn’t be consoled. It ruined my night. Just kidding, it was unexpected though. The owner told me he’d be at the Steele County Free Fair in Owatonna in two weeks. I put it in my phone calendar and told him I’d be there. … I was.

Too many awesome things happened, so I can’t put together a top 5, but I’m sure the number one thing would be Derby Dan’s Atomic Bombshell car winning the event!!!!!