3/26/2011:
North Dakotans across the state tuned in to The Learning Channel’s Junkyard Wars on this date in 2003, hoping to catch former Governor Ed Schafer competing in the television show’s fifth season. Schafer served as captain of the ‘High Flyers’ team, also composed of his brother-in-law Rolf Sletten, and friend and airplane rebuilder Bob Odegaard. The show, a popular American spin-off to the British series Scrapheap Challenge, pits teams against one another in competitions in which they use scrap materials to build machines capable of an assigned task. The first challenge facing Schafer’s High Flyers was to build a bulldozer. They won the competition, and competed in the season finale. The North Dakotan team walked away with second place; not bad, considering producers were surprised to have a former governor apply, “…much less watch [the] program.”
Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job
Sources:
The Bismarck Tribune. Tuesday, April 29, 2003. (http://www.bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/article_5843ef10-420e-5c0c-b288-ab77f0019798.html)
http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26476
http://epguides.com/JunkyardWars/
http://www.tv.com/junkyard-wars/car-dozer/episode/264845/summary.html