ARC MAGAZINE

Hell on Wheels

From the passenger seat, Chris Hrabik felt the country road slide out from under him. Loose gravel had gotten the best of his girlfriend as she learned to shift gears in his truck.

It was almost no big deal.

Had it happened 20 seconds before or after, that memory from 2004 would barely register now.

But context is everything. The shoulder was steep, and the truck took a lazy sideways roll down an embankment, breaking Chris’s neck in the process.

He was 18 and he wouldn’t walk again.

Fourteen years later, I’m looking for Apple Creek Metal Works — the welding and fabrication shop Chris owns in rural Missouri. It’s not easy for a Google mapper like me to find, but as the saying goes, “you’ll know it when you see it.”

In the grass between the road and the shop, a rusty oversized fish is hooked to a 25-foot rod and-reel sculpture. Across the driveway I see a steel dragonfly — graceful wings welded to a
massive auger bit.

There’s also a nearly full-size metal palm tree rusting happily against a wall.

Oh, and livestock. I count three goats in a pen studying me as I pull up to the garage.

What I don’t see is anything that even pretends to accommodate the owner’s disability. Artwork aside, Apple Creek Metal Works appears to be as “hard-labor” as it gets — rugged acreage punctuated by stacks of heavy material, scrap, agricultural implements and works in progress wherever space allows.

Someone stays very busy here. But it’s hard to imagine how a wheelchair gets around the place.

It’s harder still to picture which Chris Hrabik will greet me at the door. Tough, blue-collar welder? Mild-mannered artist-type? Wisecracking fabricator?

It’s fair to say Chris is all of the above. But at his core, who is he really?

Throughout my visit, I watch Chris do one thing after another that, honestly, makes me feel like a complete wimp. It’s next to impossible not to question my own ability to do what he does were I in his situation.

But I also feel like I’m buying into a cliché for framing my observations in the context of a wheelchair.

The fact that Chris is paralyzed is certainly part of his story, but that context seems less and less relevant as I get to know him. He has plenty of workarounds for the physical obstacles. It’s impressive but it doesn’t define him. So we talk about what’s in his head.

Chris can get pretty deep into the specifics of fabricating and repairing heavy equipment. He’s proud of his work ethic and has sharp opinions about companies that cut corners or engineer obsolescence into their products.

He’s a smart guy, and he seems wise beyond his 33 years. He’ll get fired up over politics and society’s wastefulness. He’ll talk at length about diversification as a tactic for weathering the slow times.

But if you want to know where Chris’s true passion lies, ask him about the battle-scarred Subaru in the driveway.

He lights up, and his true identity is revealed. My host is most definitely Chris Hrabik, Race Car Driver.

There’s uncertainty every day about his business, but not about what motivates him to do it.

“I got into welding because I wanted to build and race rally cars. That’s why I have this shop.

“Purely selfish reasons,” he grins.

Rally racing dates back pretty much to the invention of the automobile, and has existed in its current white-knuckle, high flying form since the 1970s. Feisty compact cars — filthy and battered — twist one at a time through serpentine roads in harsh conditions.

The speeds are extreme and demand that the drivers and their navigators be equal parts technician and daredevil.

Courses in Europe are often lined with frenzied fans who congregate dangerously close to the biggest jumps and fastest turns. Crashes are common and tend to be spectacular.

Extreme sports heroes like Travis Pastrana and Ken Block have brought attention to rallying in recent years, but the discipline is still relatively underappreciated in the States. That is to say, it attracts uncommon spectators — and uncommon drivers.

“Rallying is the purest form of motorsport in my opinion. You have street legal cars, real roads, unpredictable conditions. You have no pit crew. No ambulance nearby.”

Chris lists the perils of rally racing like someone somehow in need of more challenges in his life.

“It’s man, machine — and that’s it. There’s no, ’Oh, it’s raining, let’s pit and cover our cars up and get into our tents.’ As long as there’s not a tornado,” he shrugs, “we’re racing.”

After a few Introductions that include Chris’s parents Bob and Linda, his friends Robbie and Nelson and his pet dachshund Porkchop, we migrate out front to the race car he built with help from his buddies.

To the uninitiated, it’s nothing too noteworthy. It’s not flashy or covered in sponsor decals. It’s missing its front bumper cover and some other parts. The trunk lid is held shut with a bungee cord.

But if you know what you’re looking at, it’s impressive.

The little two-door has full racing seats and harnesses, with an intricate roll cage meant to withstand a major impact. It has top-of-the-line competition rally tires that you can’t get just anywhere.

And most interestingly, it has a clever set of hand controls that enable Chris to drive despite his limitations. And not just the “point-A-to-point-B” kind of driving, either. More like the sliding sideways, rooster-tailed, nausea-inducing kind. It’s what the sport requires.

Later on, watching Chris let loose behind the wheel — blasting through the gravel piles at a nearby rock quarry — it’s easy to see what he gets out of it.

I’m watching a man making up for lost time.

After his accident, Chris was left without the use of his legs and only partial use of his hands. Yet as he lay in a hospital bed, his biggest regret was having not taken more risks in his life.

“Back then, I just wanted to fish and work,” he laughs. “I had a friend who would do backflips on his dirt bike on homemade jumps. And I loved going to watch him, but you could never pay me enough money to get on that bike. My viewpoint at the time was, ‘Oh, that kind of thing is too dangerous.’˙

“But after my injury, I looked back and said, ‘I’m not doing that anymore.’”