714: Protecting Pismo: Keeping California’s Only Drive-On Beach Open

714: Protecting Pismo: Keeping California’s Only Drive-On Beach Open Snail Trail 4x4 Offroad Podcast · Jun 8, 2026

Annotations will appear as you listen

0:00

93:21

Brand

Four wheel underground

Four Wheel Underground makes off-road upgrade parts, especially for suspension. Here they’re changing their ordering so you can buy single parts instead of only a full package.

Concept

all a cart

“All a cart” means you can order parts individually instead of only buying a full kit. It’s like picking just the pieces you want for your suspension.

Term

upper frame bracket

An upper frame bracket is a metal mounting piece that attaches to the truck’s frame. It’s where suspension parts connect so the system can be installed and adjusted correctly.

Term

lower link bracket

A lower link bracket is the part that holds the lower suspension links in place. It can also include a built-in bump stop to help protect the suspension when the truck bottoms out.

Term

integrated bump stop

An integrated bump stop is a built-in cushion/stop that limits how far the suspension can move downward. It helps keep the truck from slamming into hard parts when you hit big bumps.

Term

cartridge joints

Cartridge joints are the heavy-duty connection points used in suspension linkages. They’re designed to handle rough off-road movement and can often be serviced or replaced if they wear out.

Term

Johnny joints are special suspension connection parts that let the suspension move through its travel more freely. They help the system stay smooth and aligned when the truck flexes over rough terrain.

Term

himes

“Himes” likely means Heim joints, which are spherical joint ends used in suspension links. They let the suspension move and pivot smoothly while still being strong for off-road use.

Term

offsets

Offsets are parts that move a mounting point slightly to change how the suspension sits and moves. They’re used to fine-tune the truck’s setup.

Term

Aluminum links

Aluminum links are suspension arms made from aluminum. They can help reduce weight and resist rust, while still doing the job of controlling how the wheels move.

Term

link suspension kit

A link suspension kit is an upgrade to a truck/SUV’s suspension. It uses extra “links” and arms to help the wheels move more smoothly over bumps and rough ground. Off-roaders use it to get better traction and more wheel travel on trails.

Brand

on X Off-Road

on X Off-Road is a mobile/off-road navigation and community app used by off-roaders to plan routes and connect with trail information. In this segment, it’s positioned as more than software because the brand also supports community programs and partnerships. The hosts mention discounts through partner networks tied to the app.

Term

trail revival program

A trail revival program is an organized effort to restore and maintain off-road trails that have been neglected, damaged, or restricted. These programs often involve community volunteers, land managers, and partner organizations working on upkeep and access. The intent is to keep trails usable and sustainable for future riders.

Car

Wrangler Rubicon

The Wrangler is an off-road SUV made for driving on trails and rough terrain. People often use it for places like the Rubicon Trail, and the podcast mentions doing maintenance related to that kind of driving. It’s popular because it’s designed to be worked on and upgraded.

Place

Rubicon Trail

The Rubicon Trail is a well-known off-road trail in California. It’s famous for being tough, with rocky sections and rough terrain. People often talk about it like a major challenge or a dream trail to ride.

Term

maintenance

Maintenance just means taking care of the vehicle so it keeps working well. Off-roading can wear parts out faster, so people check things and fix small issues early. That helps avoid breakdowns while you’re out on trails.

Term

elite partnership

An elite partnership is a special kind of agreement between companies. In this case, it’s being used to explain that the app has partner businesses that offer better perks—like discounts—to users. It’s like a rewards network tied to the app.

Term

compressors

A fridge compressor is the part that “moves” the cooling fluid around so the fridge can get cold. If the compressor can’t work correctly when the fridge is tilted, the fridge won’t cool well. The point here is that IceCo’s design is meant to keep cooling even when the vehicle is angled off-road.

Brand

IceCo

IceCo makes portable fridges meant for off-road and overland use. The host is saying IceCo’s cooling system is built to keep working even when the fridge isn’t perfectly level, like when your vehicle is on uneven terrain.

Term

10 to 15 degrees of vertical

Many portable fridges only work well if they’re fairly level—within a small tilt range. If you mount them in a way that tilts too much, the cooling can stop working properly. The host is saying IceCo can handle a lot more tilt than that typical limit.

Term

refrigerant

Refrigerant is the special liquid/gas that carries the heat out of the fridge. The compressor helps move it through the cooling system. If the compressor doesn’t work right when the fridge is tilted, the refrigerant can’t do its job well, so the fridge won’t cool properly.

Term

45 to 50 degrees off canter

The host is saying IceCo’s fridge can still cool even when it’s tilted a lot—around 45 to 50 degrees off level. That’s important for off-road driving because the vehicle (and the fridge mounted inside) can be angled sharply. Most fridges can’t handle that much tilt.

Brand

Dometic

Dometic makes popular camping and RV fridges, including compressor-style units. In this discussion, they’re used as the “higher tier” comparison for how much electricity the fridge uses.

Brand

ARB

ARB is a well-known off-road brand that makes gear like compressor fridges. Here, they’re being compared to other fridge brands to see which one uses less power.

Term

watts

Watts tell you how much electricity a device uses. Lower watts usually means the fridge can run longer on the same battery.

Concept

battery pack

A battery pack is the portable battery you use to power things off-grid. If your fridge uses more watts, it will drain the battery faster—so battery size matters.

Car

Toyota Land

The Toyota Land Cruiser is a large SUV built for tough driving, including off-road trails. The podcast mentions it having a built-in fridge in the center area, which is useful for keeping food and drinks cold on long trips. It’s the kind of vehicle people use when they want both comfort and capability.

Car

Land Range Rovers

The Range Rover is a luxury SUV that’s designed to drive comfortably but still handle rough roads. The podcast mentions some versions having a built-in fridge, which helps keep food and drinks cold during trips. It’s being discussed as an example of a convenient feature in a capable SUV.

Term

four-link

A four-link suspension uses four arms to hold the axle in place. It helps the truck stay controlled and keep traction when the wheels move a lot off-road.

Term

three-link

A three-link suspension is a way of mounting the axle with three arms. The goal is to keep the truck stable and control how the wheels move over bumps.

Term

triangulated suspension kits

Triangulated suspension kits use a “triangle” shape with the suspension links. That helps the axle move in a controlled way so the truck handles better off-road.

Term

parallel

In suspension context, “parallel” refers to a link geometry where the control arms are arranged to move in a more parallel relationship as the suspension cycles. That geometry affects how the axle rotates and how the truck behaves during bumps and climbs.

Term

coilover mounts

Coilover mounts are the brackets that hold the coilover shocks to the truck. Strong, correctly placed mounts help the suspension work properly and survive off-road abuse.

Term

custom-tuned coilovers

Custom-tuned coilovers are shocks set up specifically for a particular truck and driving style. The goal is to make the suspension feel right and handle bumps better.

Term

air pumps

Air pumps provide compressed air for suspension parts that use air. That can help the truck adjust ride height or how the suspension behaves.

Term

trailing arms

Trailing arms are suspension parts that help guide how the wheels move. They pivot as the suspension travels so the truck stays controlled over bumps.

Term

cantilevers

A cantilever is a suspension lever that helps transfer wheel movement to the shock in a controlled way. It’s used to tune how the truck rides and handles off-road.

Term

skid plates

Skid plates are protective panels under the truck. They help prevent damage from hitting rocks or getting scraped on rough trails.

Term

shock towers

Shock towers are reinforced points where the shocks mount. They need to be strong because the suspension pushes and pulls hard over bumps.

Term

subframes

A subframe is an extra frame section that supports key parts of the car. It can make suspension upgrades stronger and easier to install.

Term

frame stiffeners

Frame stiffeners are added reinforcements that make the truck’s frame less flexible. That helps the suspension stay aligned when you’re hitting rough terrain.

Car

Ford Torino

The Ford Torino is an older Ford performance car that became known for racing. The podcast brings it up because it was used in or associated with well-known race events. It’s mentioned as part of the car history behind motorsport and off-road competition.

Concept

education

They’re saying the best way to keep off-road areas open is to teach people how to do it safely and follow the rules. If training is easier to get, more people will do it the right way.

Term

OHV certification

OHV certification is a kind of permission you get to drive off-road vehicles in approved places. It usually involves learning safety rules and how to operate responsibly so people don’t get hurt and the areas stay open.

Term

credit card

They’re basically saying people can buy expensive off-road toys easily, like with a credit card, without learning how to use them safely. The risk is that they don’t know what they’re doing and someone can get hurt.

Term

wakeboarding boat

A wakeboarding boat is a boat used to pull someone on a wakeboard. Even if the boat is made for it, you still need to know how to drive it safely and at the right speed.

Term

digital app

They’re talking about using a phone or website app to handle parts of the certification. The idea is to make it easier to complete so more people can do it.

Brand

Polaris

Polaris makes off-road vehicles like ATVs and side-by-sides. Here, they’re being praised for putting money into a grant program to help maintain off-road areas.

Term

grant program

A grant program is like a pot of money that organizations can apply to in order to fund a specific project. Here, it’s meant to pay for maintaining off-road areas.

Concept

litigation fights

“Litigation fights” means legal battles in court. In recreation areas, those lawsuits can affect whether places stay open to off-road vehicles or get closed.

Concept

adopt a trail work

“Adopt-a-trail” is when volunteers choose a trail area and help maintain it. That can include things like cleanup days and simple upkeep to help the trail stay usable.

Concept

OHV registered vehicle

OHV means “off-highway vehicle,” like vehicles that are meant for trails and off-road areas. “Registered” means the state has them on record for legal off-road use.

Concept

blue ribbon coalition

Blue Ribbon Coalition is a group that advocates for keeping off-road recreation areas open. In this segment, it’s the organization the speaker is talking about funding.

LIVE

Four wheel underground is making some big changes.

They really are.

What's really cool about what they're doing right now is they're kind of changing the

way the business is set in the sense that you get to now buy things all a cart.

Absolutely.

So if you want the upper frame bracket, you can just buy that.

Yeah.

If you want the lower link bracket because it has the integrated bump stop and it's super

stout and it looks really good too, you can get just those before you would have to buy

the whole kit.

Now you're going to be like, that's the bracket I want.

He's also brought joints in-house.

So now you can buy those all a cart from cartridge joints or a buildable Johnny joints, himes,

offsets, all sorts of different ones.

Do you know what else he brought in-house?

Aluminum links.

That's pretty rad.

He found a way to source aluminum links so that there's no extra charge on the suspension

kits.

They now all come standard with aluminum links.

I know.

I'm totally jealous.

And thanks to the all a cart system, you can also order aluminum links if that's all

you want.

So if you want to move your Toyota from Lee Springs to a link suspension kit, check out

four wheel underground.

We want to check with you guys today about on X Off-Road.

Definitely one of our favorite apps for off-roading.

Yeah.

What's better is not only their software, but they also are doing a lot to be a part

of the off-roading community here in the country from the trail revival program, which

I actually got to be a part of and use to do some maintenance on the Rubicon Trail too.

They have an elite partnership.

So if you are an on X Off-Road user, you can go to any of their 40 plus partners on there

and you get discounts with any of those partners.

So from bringing the people to the brands to the listeners to everybody involved, it

sounds like they really want to be a part of our community.

So let's be a part of theirs.

Go download on X Off-Road from your favorite app store.

Welcome one, welcome all to the Snail Trail four by four podcast.

If you like going off-roading in Toyotas, wrenching on Toyotas, camping in Toyotas and

maybe even poking a little bit of fun in Toyotas and of course, hearing about how fabulous

and fantastic beach riding on in Toyotas is, then this is the podcast for you.

That's right, ladies and germs.

My name is Tyler and joining me for another episode of the Snail Trail four by four podcast

is Jimmy.

That guy, how are you doing man?

Good.

I'm doing very well.

Just pulling the sand out of my hair.

You know, sand gets in everywhere.

It definitely does.

Yeah.

Which hair were you pulling out of?

Don't worry about that.

It's just checking.

There are bathrooms out there.

You don't need a bathroom out there.

Number two you do.

I guess if you're number two anyway, I was thinking of like to remove the sand from

different orifices.

Yeah, yeah, definitely not.

I'll use my crocodile wipes.

Anyway, yeah, they're they're fantastic.

Did you get the outdoor ones?

Of course.

Cool.

That was really all of them.

You got all the different ones.

One of each kind.

I want to be flavor.

I didn't get the barbecue ones.

That's true.

I actually, yeah, I didn't get any.

I haven't I haven't been interested in the barbecue ones because I have a different

barbecue brush to be aggressive.

I just married a vegetarian wife and I don't we always don't barbecue anymore.

I mean, so I don't even own a barbecue actually.

So, OK, I didn't need those.

I got you.

Yeah, I do.

So that was one of the big eye openers from King of the Hammers for me.

Going to talk into them is that you can kind of think of their product line up as

their normal solution, their aggressive solution.

And then regular cloths and biodegradable cloths.

And then they've got essentially four different types, plus a couple other categories of everything else.

Yeah.

So like their scrub ones, I'm really interested in.

I've never tried their scrub ones yet.

Yeah, I haven't either.

And so I really want to try some of those for like the the the grimy garage stuff, right?

But the outdoor ones, which are biodegradable solution, their normal solution,

which is is food safe and environmental friendly with the biodegradable cloths,

which is a pretty cool combo that makes it so if you if you forget to throw it away when you're done using it

or the wind carries it off or something or you to throw it in the fire to burn,

it's going to be completely safe for everything.

So yeah, I just ordered a bunch of those.

I'm excited to use them this year.

Nice. Yeah.

Well, besides that, we have a few other things going on

before we get to our main campfire discussion today, besides our love of crop crocodile wives.

Let's see, what should we talk about?

We talked about the fire extinguisher giveaway on Thursday.

Yep.

So we've got that going.

I'm not sure if their discount code is still going or not.

But if you want to try to get in, I believe it was Rousseau crawlers to get 25% off.

I'm not sure how long that's going to last.

So you should get in as soon as you can if it has not ended already.

Yeah.

But we have a new giveaway to talk about.

We do.

And since I'm not too familiar with everything that is particular on this, why don't you take over?

Essentially, we're doing a giveaway this month.

The partner, the vendor that stepped up that we were I've been chatting with for a little bit here.

I ran into them down at Overland Expo SoCal and got to chat with them about what they do as a company.

Did you meet them at KOH?

No, I didn't.

Oh, I thought that's when you guys met.

No, the KOH thing was just interesting because I was in big talks with PRP down at KOH and their

fridge was stolen.

Yes.

Their co-branded fridge was stolen with IceCo.

And so it was just a kind of coincidence that the head marketing guy was at the IceCo booth

at Overland Expo after hours when we were kind of having a chance to walk around before the show

started.

Okay.

It was like on the setup day, but it was late in the day.

So like a lot of the vendors had already left their booths were set up and they were gone, right?

And he was just chilling, hanging out in the booth and walked by and I was like, hey, nice to meet you.

His name is David.

And we started chatting about what IceCo does and how their fridges work and the very specific

compressors that they put in their fridges and that they can work and operate at weird angles,

because that's a big issue with fridges is that the compressors, the AC compressors in them,

have to stay like within 10 to 15 degrees of vertical.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

As soon as they start getting off canter, then the AC and the refrigerant and the compressor

doesn't work properly.

Sure.

And so the specific compressors that they make and design and have in all their stuff

can go upwards of like almost 45 to 50 degrees off canter.

Dang.

That's impressive.

So really impressive for a refrigerator AC compressors and which makes a lot of sense

for off-road vehicles too, right?

And so chatting with them about the technology they have in their fridges and then I've always like

in my head mentally, we've talked a little bit about this.

I've always put IceCo as like third tier, second or third tier in terms of fridges.

Sure.

In the overlanding off-road market, the motorized recreation market.

Because of their price point, they have a, they're higher than, you know, Chinese knockoff

Amazon fridges stuff, but they're not as high tier priced as like the ARB and some of the

Dometics, right?

Sure.

And so I brought that up with them and I was like, how do your compressors and technology

work compared to ARB and Dometic?

And he goes, they're actually pretty good, really good.

We definitely compete our compressors.

We've found that they work more efficiently than ARB.

And so ARB actually is Dometic compressors in their fridges.

How do they really?

So he was like, our compressors work more efficiently by almost 30 to 40%.

Dang.

So like a 60 liter, 60 quart of ARB fridge or Dometic fridge will pull roughly 55 to 60 watts

of power when the compressor is running.

Yeah, which is a lot.

That's quite a bit, right?

It depends on your battery pack.

But compared to IceCo's compressors, their compressors will pull 25 to 30 watts,

almost half of what a Dometic compressor for the same size fridge will be pulling.

So when it's pulling half, is it doing half the work?

Nope.

It's doing the same amount of work.

The same amount of work, just pulling half the power.

So they found a way to make the compressors more efficient.

That's awesome.

And that's one of the big leading factors as to why they have so many OEM contracts

for refrigerator compressors built into vehicles.

So like there's what?

There's high, like the Toyota Land Cruiser right now has a fridge in its center console.

Okay.

Of course it does.

I don't know if IceCo has that contract, but he said that all like overseas Range Rovers

that have fridges built into the car somewhere, those are all IceCo fridges.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So they, their main market, their main money maker is OEM contracts.

Right.

That makes more sense.

That's where they're making all the profits on.

Yeah.

They're like, the off-road industry isn't a huge profit maker for us compared to our OEM contracts.

And so we're able to drop the price on the off-road market.

And so we're able to compete a lot better in the off-road space compared to Dometics and

ARB and some of the higher quote unquote high tiered fridges.

Interesting.

And so I've always thought that their prices were lower because they were a tiny bit lower quality.

That's definitely not the case.

The, because they're lower is because the off-road market is not their main source of income.

Yeah.

That's great.

So, so, yeah.

So we got something from IceCo.

They have a few different kind of big releases this year.

Yeah.

We've talked a little bit about the fridge backpack.

Yes.

Which I'm really hoping they do one of those for us for the giveaway this month.

But the fridge backpack, they have another one that has a three-way door system

on it to access the fridge.

Really?

Yeah.

So the lid itself opens from both sides.

Okay.

Which has been a staple in like all their lids for a very long time.

Yeah.

I really like that.

But they, they made one now.

So once the lid is open, the front of the fridge opens up.

Oh, wow.

So if you have.

They have like shelves.

You can have shelves in there and access everything to the front of the fridge.

I may be wrong about once the lid is open because they designed it so that you could put it up high

in a vehicle and have the roof, the roof of the vehicle is blocking the lid opening.

You can still access the fridge on like a slide out or something or in the vehicle just by going

through the front of the fridge.

That's cool.

Yeah.

So it's a new three-way door system in their fridges that they just announced to you.

I don't know when that's being launched.

If it has already launched.

We're going to have David here on the show this month to talk all about IceCo and some of the

really cool stuff that they're doing and innovating with fridges.

So I'm sure we'll learn more about that.

Yeah.

When he's on here for the interview.

So IceCo, we're doing some cool stuff with IceCo this month.

Yes.

So the giveaway this month will be with IceCo.

We're just not sure exactly what the item is going to be yet.

There we were in talks with the marketing team about a few different items and what would serve

the best purpose for the listeners.

So but super excited to have them on learn a little bit more about IceCo history.

The cool stuff that they do.

How involved they are with other brands and the community in off-roading.

The technologies behind their fridges.

So that should be a really cool, I think, interview coming up this month with them.

Yeah.

I'm excited to chat with them for sure.

And like we've always said, we look for that win, win, win.

You know, a win for the listeners, a win for the company, a win for everybody involved.

And so that's pretty much what we're finalizing.

But they are in.

We are doing a giveaway with IceCo.

Not entirely sure if it's going to be a fridge or the backpack or a discount of some sort.

But we will let you guys know probably in the interview are around that time period,

which will probably be in a week's time.

So yeah, so super excited for that.

Super excited to work with IceCo.

So that'll be a lot of fun.

Let's see what else we got going on.

We always have reviews happening on the podcast.

It's probably the number one cheapest, easiest way for you to help promote the podcast,

help work with the podcast and get it into more ear holes besides telling a friend.

This one, you just need to log on to Apple Podcasts to leave a review.

And that gets you automatically entered for some giveaways that we do.

We're probably getting right up there near that 800 mark,

which is our next giveaway when we're doing the Onyx Elite membership.

We're also doing an Onyx Elite membership at 850.

And then when we get to 900 reviews, we're giving away $900 of more flight gear swag

and everything that is awesome for more flight.

Yep.

Yes.

Yep.

And we'll have the latest product launch will be happening, I think,

before next Thursday, before next week, something like that.

So we'll tell you guys about that.

Exciting.

And by the end of this month for sure.

So awesome.

Very cool.

That's a cool stuff.

Anything else to go over?

Just, you know, don't forget about the Discord.

It's been a lot of fun chatting with people hanging out there.

I also like to throw out that the Discord is probably the easiest place for you to go and get

the tokens, the token locations, the token folder, and all that stuff is on Onyx off-road.

So you can see there's a whole like circle here, you know, working with Onyx.

We actually just for everybody that cares or doesn't care.

We just re-upped our subscription with them or working with them.

So we got another year of working with Onyx and giving away some more cool stuff.

But all those tokens are available on Onyx.

So go download that folder, go out, go exploring, go have some fun.

And the first person that gets to all 13 letters, S-N-A-I-L, T-R-A-I-L,

4X4, Snail Trail 4x4 wins a GearWrench Master Mechanics tool set.

Yep. And Trevor's getting pretty close.

No, Trevor.

Trevor is two letters away, as what he told me.

I'm not going to tell anybody what letters they are, but yeah, he's getting pretty close.

He did go out last weekend, well, two weekends ago now, and said that he found some stuff,

but they weren't letters he needed.

If you need any letters, try to figure out how to get in contact with Trevor.

Maybe you guys can do some bargaining.

That's funny.

All right, cool.

Then I guess without further ado, we're going to take a quick break here.

And we'll be right on back.

There's been some more activity going on over at Oceano Dunes, S-V-R-A, so Pismo,

the dunes out of Pismo.

And we've covered them extensively in the past.

We've talked a lot about snowy plover stuff.

We've talked a lot about the dust issues, quote unquote, out there during COVID,

and how that essentially eventually got all debunked here.

And one of the main, absolute main driving forces behind all of that has been friends

of Oceano Dunes, and one of the founding guys there, Jim Sooty.

So we were able to nail down Jim for an interview to talk about Oceano Dunes,

friends of Oceano Dunes, what's been happening out there, what the organization does.

So this is a really important one, and it'll be no surprise.

It comes along our same kind of mantra of support the organizations that are doing

some really cool stuff for your trails out there.

And this one is definitely no exception.

So hopefully you guys all enjoy.

Go grab your favorite drinks, snack,

and we'll be right on back with a fun little sit down interview with Jim Sooty

from Friends of Oceano Dunes.

At Four Wheel Underground, we have something for everyone's 79-04 Toyota vehicle.

Whether you've got a Chevy Dana 60, 05 and up Super Duty, fabricated, FJ80, or

many truck axles, we've got you covered.

Three-link, four-link, parallel, and triangulated suspension kits, we've got you covered.

Underbed coilover mounts, through-bed coilover mounts,

trailing arms, cantilevers, custom-tuned coilovers, and air pumps, we've got you covered.

Frame stiffeners, subframes, skid plates, shock towers, and more to come.

Make sure to use coupon code SnailTrail at fourwheelunderground.com because we've got you covered.

Well, welcome back, ladies and germs to today's interview discussion sitting around

our proverbial campfire online here.

We have in the house, live in the online recording studio,

Mr. Jim Sooty, who is with Friends of Oceano Dunes and has some amazing information,

I think, for everybody out there regarding Oceano Dunes and the new fun things going

on with the dunes here. How the hell are you, Jim?

I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here with you guys for our discussion.

Yeah, absolutely. We've been on the podcast here.

We've been covering stuff, the ongoing issues with the dunes for a while, pretty much since

we started the podcast before COVID. I think it was around 2018-19 when the whole dust

particle issue started coming up at the dunes and then the Coastal Commission was getting

very involved with it all. And so it's been really neat to follow along with everything

that you and Friends of Oceano Dunes has been doing to really protect and debunk a lot of the

all honesty bullshit that's been coming out about science and the impact of sciences on

the surrounding areas that surrounds Oceano Dunes. And so it's been really eye-opening to watch

because we talk about all the time stuff that happens in California with shutting down OHV

public access ends up getting a set as a precedence and used in other areas of the country.

And we saw it happen firsthand with Oceano Dunes and the whole dust issue. And then they used the

exact same argument, the exact same measurement methods to shut down a bunch of the qualifying

races for some Vora series. I think it was the Vegas Torino or the Mint 400. One of those two

races, they shut down everything using the exact same processes that they used to quote,

unquote, shut down the dunes right around COVID. So it's always fascinating to see

how much of what happens here in California translate to the rest of different parts of

the country. We've seen it happen with the Rubicon Trail a lot. And then see what the local

community like Friends of Oceano Dunes, Rubicon Trail Foundation, Friends of Rubicon,

you know, a bunch of the Cal Four clubs that have adopted trails throughout the Forest Service

in California, what they're doing the local communities do in order to quote unquote mitigate

those problems and help the areas the OHV access stay open. And so we have a new issue that has

arisen with Oceano Dunes. After all the years of fighting snowy plover and dust mitigation and

all these other things going on that get claimed against the dunes, we're here yet again to talk

about another fun story with the dunes. And you have a very unique perspective to be able to help

tell this story. Do you want to talk a little bit about your background and what you do with Friends

of Oceano Dunes and how you're involved with all of this? Sure. For those who don't know me,

let me give a little background. So I'm a nice, long off-roader, my family, both mom and dad,

raised sheep's out of Pismo, the ocean of dunes, and the sixties. So I've grown up off-road my

entire life. I own three off-road vehicles currently. So I'm a diehard. My professional

background is I've worked in the aerospace and defense industry. I did 10 years at Lockheed doing

satellites, 20 years of working from a new propulsion power generation. And when I was here

before I retired, I worked at Lockheed and wore an ash of that. So dealing with data,

facts, something I gravitate to. Yeah, that's cool. I didn't know that about your background. I always

thought you were involved with law somehow based on what you've been doing with Friends. So,

yeah, that's really cool. My old son's lawyer. I started Friends of Oceano Dunes in 2001

with Ed Walheim, who was then the president of the Corps of Us. So we're celebrating 25 years of

fighting to project the ocean of dunes. And for those 25 years, we've been battling everything

from coast permission and overranging environmental abuses to safety and health issues,

dust within your species. It just doesn't stop. They just keep throwing mud against the wall and

stick. One thing we fight is they will make an argument and it takes us years to undo it.

Yeah, for sure. And so you play a big role in fighting that mud that's getting thrown up on

the wall to see what sticks. And you've been there since a very long time, 25 years, doing all this

work and fighting all the fights. So you've worked through all these different issues.

Explain in just really high level detail real quick what was going on with snowy plover and

endangered species issues. So the ocean of dunes is two main species of veteran danger. That's the

western snowy plover, which is a threatened species. And then you have the California

creature. But the most recent issue is both in terms of the western snowy plover. So the western

snowy plover is not only federally threatened, but it's also on the California species that

concern this. And it's also identified in the migratory bird triad. Because there's a lot of

top layer of things you have to deal with. In California specifically, if you want to live

and make an argument, when a Andrew's found out, you have two ways of doing it. It's political

and then it's legal. In California, the local environment is so difficult. You know, when they're

trying to outlaw the geostomy in them, or, you know, a lot more, I believe it's more about

being innocent. It's really don't support offering beers. And so the one that worked for the

political angle has not been fruitful. So this forces us to do the legal maneuver. And we've

been very successful. Over the past 45 years, our wind rates have never calculated it, but I would

guess it's in the high 90% wind rate. But they do things so much faster, closing, doing things,

it's very hard for us to compete with them. So getting back to the most recent issue,

the Center for Biological Diversity, CBV, all the loss against California State Parks,

because California State Parks failed to get what's known as a habitat conservation plan.

Any land manager has to have the habitat conservation plan completed. When they get that

completed, it gives them a permit, as well as the incidental state permit, or an ITP. You have to

have that ITP in order for an endangered species like the snowy flubber to be harmed, or killed,

or threatened, all the different categories associated. So State Parks did not have this permit,

and CBV filed a lawsuit. One, the State Parks have been working this HTTP for 25 years.

Very frustrating process to take so long. My wife used to argue with the OSU commission

that animal ground, and I think seven years, State Parks couldn't get a document on the 25.

Geez. Wow. So State Parks was this reason why CBV, with the fire under them,

you get the HTTP done, they had to go through a process, and get released by the United States

if law-like, U.S. control-like. The judge decided to close the park through an injunction and close

the park while this was finalized. So the park was closed for eight weeks until the

HTTP and its intake permit was released, and the park was open. Okay. So was that the

incidental take permit? So an incidental take permit, I just want to clarify for everybody

out there, all the listeners, that's essentially an endangered species that is harmed or killed

due to the act of whatever is happening under the travel management plan of that land, right?

That's correct. Okay. So that's an incidental kind of thing, and then you need to make sure

that you are doing, as a land manager, they have to be making sure that they're doing whatever

they can to mitigate that ITP as two acceptable levels so that the species can still be sustained

as a species. That's correct. As I mentioned earlier, there's all these different layers. You

have federal, you have the state, all of a sudden there's other migratory words for you.

Incidental take permit is federal for the endangered species that doesn't necessarily

offer the state protection. So just because we got the OK and there's one animal, we might not

have it as other one because there's all these different layers. All right. Now, with all these

different layers, is it typical that if you, like, let's just take like emissions regulations.

The California Air Resource Board has much higher emissions regulations than the federal level

does, right? So if you built the ITP or the plan for this endangered species, according to the most

strict levels, would you be covered for the other things as well or do those levels also conflict?

So you always are in a lose-lose situation. So it's not so much levels, it's not that they

honor each other. So if you get the federal permit for driving, you might not be able to use that

in California because California might require such a permit for a lower size load. It's different

levels. Gotcha. The incidental take permit, is that essentially one of the arguments for what's

going on in WEMO right now too? Are you aware very much of the background of WEMO? Because I know

that the Desert Tortoise was one of the big cited concerns of the WEMO closures. Is that

essentially the similar incidental take permit on it? I'll be honest. I've been following the WEMO

at a very high level. Ben Burr and B.R. Sears have done a good job. So I'd rather do it than

okay. I was curious because like we said earlier, once CBD coastal commission, etc finds one hole

in, they use that and replicate it in multiple places. I know the CBD is one of the big things

behind the WEMO closures right now too. So I was curious if they found this incidental take

permit and then did a big study to figure out how many land managers haven't figured out their ITPs

yet and just bombarded a bunch of them. I'm trying to look at a big picture here.

As much as I don't like government enforcing things on the little people, I'm looking at it as

on the state level, we have the national parks or state parks. It has so many state parks in the

state and then it's worried about like one, what is it? What's the oceanadoons? Well, oceanadoons

has one bird that it has to ride a regulatory thing for and it has all these other parks

that it has to worry about. It probably slipped their mind or they didn't care about it at that

point in time. I'm not trying to make excuses up for them. I'm just saying that they probably have

bigger fish to fry and this was a low hanging fruit for them. But what it comes down to it is

it really impacts the people that are going to these state parks and so therefore they should

put it higher on their priority list because it's either going to get it shut down or they're not

going to make any money, which either way, I guess they're not going to make any money for it.

One of the things we struggled with over the years is, so I've been doing this for 25 years.

I'm a single focus. I've had to deal with countless state parks changes in personnel.

Sure. Every election cycle, every change. So the people that agreed to decision five years ago

are in office today. The people working at the state park level and oceanadoons are good people.

The people that caused the bays, problems, issues are sacrament. So sacrament was the problem.

There's a lot of people that's making them do things that's not for the best of the users,

users of the park. Yeah. That's what we found a lot. I mean, we work pretty closely with El Dorado

National Forest, El Dorado County when it comes to Rubicon, Barrett Lake, Tahoe National Forest

with Fort Ice, and the people at the actual land managers are actually really good people.

They want to see recreation happening. They want those recreational opportunities open. The OHV

trails open. They want to see it all open, but they're being forced to close them temporarily,

permanently, whatever the issue is by legal judges, political action, political policy,

politics in general, political pressure, state water board. It always seems to be these outside

influences that are forcing the land managers to act and shut down OHV access places. I don't want

to say that all of the actions and the pressure to the land managers are false. I think a lot of

them are false, but not all of them. But I feel, so in your experience dealing with Oceania Dunes

and the SVRA in particular there, the land managers, do you find that it's more of,

like Jimmy said, an oversight? It was just a lower priority, so they never got it done,

or is it that they don't have the funding to have the correct amount of labor force to make sure

that everything gets done? Was somebody there and just been like, ah, fuck this bird. I don't

really care about it. We're not going to do it. Why aren't these things getting done

within regard to SVRA?

So the state parks is giving excuses. So the COVID was a problem related. The

coast mission voted to close the parks. They said, let's not proceed until we wrap the

parks and stay open. Fair. We won that battle. It's open. So there's one excuse after another

for why they can't get the ACP done. We have documented things. You've gone back all 25 years,

pushing them to get it done. I actually have scheduled some state park that we'd have it done

back in like 2006.

Wow. So just kind of things keep popping up and they're like, well,

now we've got to deal with this closure. We've got to deal with this bigger problem. So it just,

it kind of kept getting pushed off because it was treated as a lower priority.

I believe so. I've asked leadership on Sacramento, why don't you have a schedule

and drive to get things done? What I do in business is you've got to have a schedule,

timeline, get things done, make sure they're being successful. I get blanks there. It's very

frustrating. It's all reactionary. Everything that they're doing is a reaction to something

that happened. So it's like something happened up in the federal level and it got pushed down to

them and now they're having to react and do whatever it is. And they can't move forward on

any one individual thing because they're always having to react to cover their ass or whatever

is coming down the line. Well, I agree with you. I always say that Steve Parks likes to put in the

victim. Oh, the CCC made us do something. They're pushed to control. Friend's motion to do as soon

as all those CPPs, they don't leave. They just play victim. Right. Yeah. That's definitely,

I think that a lot of the case up with the National Forest too that we work with,

very reactionary, very much like, oh, we're just going to do business as usual until somebody

complains and forces us to do something different. And so it's really, it's really a shame that

they choose to operate that way. And I don't know if I know that one of the big issues in

the National Forest level is like you mentioned, the turnover. People don't seem to stay in the

leadership positions long enough to really establish a good workflow and a good process

for stuff and maintain those relationships with the community, the local communities.

Do you think that's part of that problem as well? Or is it beyond that?

No, absolutely. 15 years ago, they had relationships with them and we could get things down to be a

dialogue. Friends would ask me to do that. I'd get phone calls and I'll give this as an example.

Yeah, as long as your patrols won't go to bees. Jim, can you help us buy distributors for the

trucks for these volunteers? Right. Because they cost, you have the money, but they have this very

long process. And I forget how much money it is, buy a brand or whatever it was. Absolutely,

because that goes to the users, the safety, the public. So we could do something very

quick or very bureaucratic and other stuff. Got it. Yeah, that's big. So can I, I want to

clarify something for us and the listener out there. The snowy plover was an issue back in

like 2001, probably when you got it started, right? And then, so, and the mitigation for my

understanding was that there was a speed limit put on the beach because the snowy, and correct me

if I'm wrong here, but this is just what I've been told is because the snowy plover can only run

about 15 miles an hour. I think before it has to take flight or something like that. So that's

why the speed limit on the beach is 15 miles an hour. No, that's not right. Okay.

All right. So the documentation, I have a ton of data, the documentation for the speed limit

goes back to the city. And the public was basically complaining that throughout their sunbathing or

running our forms, whatever, and people just flying by the old water punctures and everything.

They put the speed limit in place for public safety along the beach, not the plovers. Okay.

The plover is actually a unique creature because it usually doesn't run or fly away.

It hunkers down and uses natural camouflage to be avoided. Interesting. When I was a part of

the technical review team for the park for 18 years, I spent a great deal of time with US Fish

Wildlife. Now, I'll never forget when the US Fish Wildlife guy said that the western snowy

plover is like the hell people hopper on the plover. It's the first to go because they don't run the

So, and my also correct being with this one is that they primarily are on the beach. They're not

further back in the dunes. That is correct. Okay. So the western snowy plover forages

are heat along the rapids. And I can see what it is, the little plugs. They're in a nasty area of

roughly on the water's edge, quarter mile inland. That's it. Okay. So just a little past the first

area. So they do not go into the dunes at all. Got it. Okay. And so a lot of that mitigation or

there was a big mitigation in around 2001 for the snowy plover. So are we and then there was

the dust issue around 2020. 2020. So are we right back at the beginning with the snowy plover again?

Is that what it sounds like? No, actually, I believe getting the incident

permit is going to benefit the park and the users. Okay. So I am, I just did a public

records accident last week for everything from state parks in these institutes. Come back to

Daniel because one of the things we are looking at potential lawsuits for what they are making

is part of the ACP and it's going to take. That's about all I know. Gotcha. Understood.

That's an interesting take there is something that you just said is that getting the ACP done,

getting the incident will take permit is going to be a good thing for the users.

We, Jimmy and I have argued this a long time and we're seeing a lot of, you know, there's a big

article that just came out from the New York Times. It's been kind of making its way around

social media that and it makes it seem as though off-roaders don't care about the environment,

that we don't care about places we go off-roading and we enjoy in the mountains that we're just

there to destroy everything and go wherever we want and run over everything with our vehicles.

That's the caricature that gets put on our community. It's really fascinating because

we sit here, we're like, no, we love the views. We want to stay on trails so that everything

around us does say sustainable and everything around us does stay this amazing environment

that we get to go play in. Being able to have and do the right things like making sure that a

snowy plover is still there to enjoy and laugh at and point out at the beach and have this kind

of entertainment on the beach too because they are kind of goofy and funny to watch.

I don't think that the other side understands that part of the community.

When stuff like this happens, is there a way for off-roaders in the OHV community

to the motorized access outdoor recreation community, is there a way that we can be more

offensive to keep closures from happening or find these issues like incidental take permits not

being done and force a schedule like you were talking about to create a process to make sure

that the stuff does get done and the other side doesn't get to it first and shut everything

down because of it. Is there a way to force the lane managers through lawsuits or litigation to

create a schedule and a process to make sure important stuff is taken care of? Is there an

avenue for that? Sadly, I think what we've been finding is you have to do the lawsuits to force

action. This whole victim mentality, oh, I can't do it because of this or that. If I get a judge

ordered since that she will do this, it helps. Getting back to the users, the problem that we

in our hobby and our recreation is that bad actors are ruined in all of us. I can't tell you

how madly it is when I'm walking through the physical or ocean and I see some knucklehead

going cold on the streets and dusting out other people. That reflects on all of them.

We, friends of convenience, we have Santa Claus on the beach during December. We take pictures

and we have people rolling cold on Santa Claus. That's crazy.

So we can have a million people out there doing a wonderful job.

But we've got two knuckleheads that are ruined in all of us and that's the part we struggle with.

How do we educate these knuckleheads? I always say I wish we could have a

test of the entrance to the park to see if people have some sanity or common sense.

That would be funny. You have to pass this IQ test

to be able to drive somewhere. I think that should be on the road as well.

Well, we're getting to that point with AI and social media and everything. Pretty soon,

all of us are going to have a social score that's going to be tied to our government IDs,

right? And we're going to be allowed to do certain things based on our social scores.

So we're almost there, Jim. I often argue that I'm a more superior driver than everybody else

on the road. Therefore, I should be able to drive faster than everybody else on the road.

Only up to the speed limit, of course. Let's ask your transmissions how they feel about that.

So anyways, yeah, I forgot what I was going to go on about that more.

It's an interesting situation. I agree. Working with the land managers, I think that

we as communities... Oh, I know where I was going before this.

The other side, so those two knuckleheads you're talking about, that's a people problem.

I don't think that's explicit to our community. I think every community out there

has those two knuckleheads that ruins it for everybody. So how does the other side

keep those knuckleheads in line or at least keep publicity from happening from those

knuckleheads? Because there was a big push a few years back with people on hiking trails

going and veering off of the little hiking path. And all of a sudden, now you created this new

hiking path, which then compacts soil and then vegetation doesn't grow in that hike path as

more and more people veer off the path and start taking that new hiking path. And then you start

ending up with the spider web of paths through a beautiful meadow, through somewhere, right?

And pretty soon, now all of a sudden, the meadow starts dying because the soil gets all compacted

because people are not just staying on the original hiking path. That's a hiking thing

that's not explicit to off-roading, but we don't see a lot of anger and resentment

out of the hiking community for their knuckleheads. I mean, why is this,

these two knuckleheads an explicit problem for the OHV community? Why is that coming back so hard

and harsh on the OHV community compared to other communities out there?

So I agree with you. The ocean of dunes is always a poster child from the environmental

community. They want to win this battle. There's historical documentation going back to the

late 50s and early 60s, dealing with the same compromise of people against the

our form of recreation, riding out on the dunes of recreation. To your point, I agree,

whether it's mountain hikers, hikers, doggers, whatever it is, there's people that will

take a different path, different route, try to lead a more challenging route, whatever it is,

and it will offer us to combat. Yeah, we had an awesome hike and swimming place up here outside

of Georgetown called University Falls, and there would just be a ton of people. I mean,

that's not OHV access. You park on the side of the road and hike in for a mile, mile and a half

to these beautiful falls, watersides area that were on private property, and the landowner

kept it open because it was a really cool place for the community to go. But people going out

there just absolutely trashed to the place. They left beer cans everywhere. They left their lunches

out. People were getting really injured and not acting responsibly out there. And finally,

the landowner was like, dude, we can't have this anymore. And so they shut it all down.

So these bad apples are not exclusive to the OHV community, but we always seem to get targeted

for them. Yeah. The other thing I battle all the time is these knuckleheads love to take

their camera and bring all their stupid stuff. And then I have to go before city council or

whatever it is. Yeah. What's going on here? It's frustrating. I wish I had the answer for that.

Yeah, I don't. I wish I did too. I'm trying to like crowdsource ideas for that answer, right?

One of the things we've tried doing, and I don't think we've been very successful,

when we have our larger jets, we're talking to hundreds of people, I encourage people,

you're in camp, walk over, talk to the other people, talk to them, introduce yourself. The only

importance of getting involved with your friends or some of the club or organization, if they're

doing something bad, be a friend and try to forewarn them the consequences of their action.

We have to be more inclusive as the organizations and the clubs and get them better educated.

Instead of beating them over the head with a bat, oh, that could be fun.

It could be fun. I've found that beating people over the heads with bats,

it's fun at the time, but it very rarely ends in solutions.

So where are we at today? What's the battle in front of us? I'm not trying to bring this to

an end, but how can people get involved? How do we move everything, continue to move everything

forward in the best light for the OHV community? So friends and organizations

always work, and even though we're not always out there talking about what we're doing,

as I mentioned, I just did here last week, which is going to be a report or something.

I've talked to a lawyer about two other potential lawsuits. We're currently in

four or five lawsuits in various stages. So we're always looking to see how we can

improve the opportunities apart and grow the recreational space. And that has been something

challenging and difficult because the Sacramento folks are getting influenced

politically by those that hate our sport. So if you imagine you're a young person

who wants a career path in state parks or local governments, if you try to side with the users

of the park that might go against your party or affiliation for growth and prevention down the

road, that's why the lawsuits force it to make change happen. We've had to, I'll give you an

example. State parks purchased a beach trip years ago. Look at how much money it was. Quite a bit

of money from this large beach rate. We pick up all the trash from the beach, towed by the

tram, the coast commission stuff, parks for users, except for years. We had a

in litigation and negotiation to get that to be used again.

To pick up trash on the beach. Pick up trash on the beach. What the fuck? What was the coastal?

I'm curious. What was the coastal commission's argument for saying that should not be allowed

to pick up trash on the beach? Western snow. It's going to ruin and rake up the snow plovers

nesting sites. It's going to room sites. It's going to cool the nutrients from the sand.

It's one after together. That wasn't it. Maybe it's going to be dust. Yeah. That rakes up more

dust. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Each one of these arguments to prove it's not an issue before you

can do it. Wow. State parks has been doing it now and has picked up tons, tons of debris,

glass, nails, wood, charcoal. It's getting that crap off the beach. I want kids to be able to

play out there, not be worried about the other debris. Wow. I mean, there is a good little PSA

there. Please don't burn pallets with wood, with nails and everything out there because

you are allowed to have campfires out onto the beach, which is one of the fun things about

that area. Just be cognizant of what you're burning. Don't leave a hot pit of ash covered

by a little bit of sand because somebody might step in it. If somebody is going to step in it,

you don't want them to step into some nails as well. Just if you are out in that area or

anywhere, really, just be aware of what you are burning. And it gets back to the common sense.

Yes. How do we get people to be smarter? Yeah. I mean, we've all done dumb things until we

learned to do it better. I will be the first one to admit I have burnt pallets on a beach before.

I'm probably not the last one to do it, but now that I understand the

replications and the issues that are there, I'm never going to do that again.

And fortunately, I live in an area where I can cut down one of my own trees and carry it off to

somewhere to go burn it if I want to. So it's just learning. We go down these rabbit holes

of education all the time. It's just about teaching people to do the right thing and

teaching them how to do it. But the biggest problem is the person that doesn't listen

and doesn't understand. So one of the things that you just said, I grew up in this home.

And so a very young age, I grew up in all the different states. The hard part we are seeing

is Joe Schmoe, who put a credit card down and go buy a 200 horsepower side by side money

and go out and take the race. Just do whatever. There's no training,

showing the rules and what to do.

Have you been involved with the big side-by-side training that's been going on? Corva has been

heading it up quite a bit and this other kind of coalition of vested interests.

Have you been involved with all that? I could imagine that that's a huge deal

out of Oceania Dunes with side-by-sides.

It is a huge deal. It's a difficult subject. Jared McLeod, our vice president, was working

with them. They wanted to go with them and so they kind of excluded us. That's one thing you'll

learn about the out-of-world world is their politics. And that's one of the things friends

have always done, it's home thing. We'll support and help, but we're not going to do something

that we don't want to do. I personally own a side-by-side. I also own a drag beat. I also own

a little Suzuki's camera. I got a girlfriend. I grew up on the sports. I think I know what

to do, but I don't want to blame side-by-sides because I've seen problems in the overall

nation and other things going on as well. It's a mentality. I don't like adding more

taxes to anybody in California. I think we pay too much. And I would like to have seen more of

endorsement on your business. I'll give you an example. I have a non-commercial class

saying that I can build big trailers. You have a 48-foot fifth wheel and I had to get

it. I had to study, take the tabs, then get the certification on my license, and then review it

every next year. But I don't have a form. I didn't pay any additional fees, taxes, to have you.

The biggest problem we have is the people that are doing the bad stuff are going to go buy a new

used side-by-side trailer, whatever it is, still skip the process. It's a very tough

job. We've got to serve somewhere and we've got to work it.

That's an interesting thought. I never thought of creating it as another classification on your

license, right? Just like a Class A, Class B, whatever it is. That would be a really fascinating,

I think, fix to it. If you could take, when you're going in to renew your license every five years,

you go in, take the test, and you're also like, oh, by the way, I also want to test for a Class A,

OHV, motorcycle, whatever it is, all these different classifications. That way it's all on one

license and it'd be very easy, streamlined, it's the same process. So you're not having

a ton of extra work on the backend to process everything. I didn't realize that Class A,

you didn't have to necessarily pay for it all. I think that's pretty interesting that it's all

worked into the license application process fee stuff. So yeah, that would be, that seems like

a way more streamlined and more effective way to do it, right? If you have a cost to something,

that's going to create a barrier to entry just no matter what it is. So the easier you can

grease the gears to make sure something happens, the more likely people are going to go and do it.

And if the main goal is education here, which I've heard cited as the main purpose behind

this OHV certification that's happening in California right now, if the main purpose is

education, then you would think that they would want to make it as easily accessible as humanly

possible so that people are more likely to go and do it. I hate reinventing the wheel.

Yeah, for sure.

So if you leverage something, there's motor boats out of boat guys, but they do have motor boat

safety courses. You leverage that. You want to get your pilot's license, you don't get that.

There's other things out there that we could leverage moving forward.

Yeah, I was actually going to bring up boating. And I'm not a boater very much as, I mean, I don't

have a boat or anything, but I know I have a friend of mine who bought a boat recently,

and he had to go take a boating course, which makes sense. But I mean, I think you get the flip

side of it is, well, why is everybody making me do all these things? I know how to do this.

I don't need to follow or I don't need to understand it more. But the thing is,

You don't know what you don't know.

But you do. Yeah, exactly. You do need to understand it more. You need to understand

some lakes. You need to understand if they're going clockwise or counterclockwise. If you don't

want to turn around in the wrong spot. I'm trying to pull things out of my rear end about boating,

but there's a lot of stuff that people just don't understand. And a lot of people can just

throw it on their credit card by a super expensive wakeboarding boat and not understand how to drive

it properly or what speeds you should be doing it at. And people can get hurt. And it's the same

in OHV and everything. So I endorse it. I just, I think it needs to be a simple way. I think it

needs to be accessible to all money. I mean, there might be a marginal fee just to cover

some of the basic costs of like, you have to run a test and you have to pay for the paper,

you know, or whatever it is or the digital app, you know, website being made, but it shouldn't

be that much. But yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think it's actually a really good idea.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we talked a little bit with Mike McGarity about that. And then I just saw the

emails that came out from Corva saying that it's moving forward. It has passed

the kind of the first stages of legislation and is moving forward in the next stages. So

that was curious on how that was kind of impacting you guys out at Oceania Dunes.

Cause I would, I would imagine, I mean, Oceania Dunes is all OHV once you get out of the dunes.

So, so when you would go hypothetically speaking, cause none of this is in place or anything. So

would the Rangers at the entrance of the dunes be looking for like an OHV card or

some sort of OHV certification if it came to that? No, the best I know is no. The ability

of the ocean I'm doing is overly cumbersome as it is to ask people what, and that is due to the

counts that they have to have on the community. There's a post commission about so many vehicles

at the entrance. Sure. And it's, it's still infuriating to this day that we're about

to see the venues being pulled, but they don't keep track of how many vehicles live.

They don't keep track of what? Sorry. How many vehicles live? Oh, yeah. So it's not a college,

the people that go down Pure Avenue and drive down the beach and go up Grand

to the circle. Street legal vehicles. Right. So if drive on and drive off,

your count is one that went in, you don't count the ones that laugh. Yeah, that's, that seems

backwards. Yeah. So the system is very arcade and very frustrating to try to get them to change.

We've shown them, so I, as I mentioned, I'm an out off road. I'm in Nevada,

be a limper gas. I was just at the same time a couple of weeks ago. I'll be in Oregon and

travel around. I look at all these different land managers and how they manage tickets and

the reservations and again, try to share to see if there's a better product. And I even

a simple example of a state park. If you pull into a parking lot somewhere in the city,

they might say 20 spots available on this floor and this floor. That's one. It's a simple counter.

It's getting vehicles in and out. We can't get them to implement that. It's just one excuse after

enough. Very frustrating. Yeah. That sound, that's sad because there are a lot of people that will

just drive in at the first kind of main entrance and like scoot out at the one a little further down

because they just want to cruise the beach. Even though that first, the, was it peer entrance,

did you call it? I don't remember what the names were. Yeah. The peer avenues in the

I think it's the peer avenue. Right as you drop down that sand right there is the softest sand

in like the whole beach. I don't know why. So it's like cars always get stuck right there.

And then it smooths out once you get a little closer to the water. But yeah, that little,

a lot of people will just cruise with their cars to get on to the beach with a standard sort of

sedan. As long as they can make it through that little sandy spot and then they'll pop out and

then there's the OHV people that are want to go a little farther down and want to get further back

into the dunes and, you know, have a little fun or take their motorcycles out there and, you know,

have a little bit of fun. So that's interesting that they're not counting the people leaving

because that's limiting the amount of people that can go want to go in for OHV fun because

I've been down there numerous times when the beach has been closed. There's too many,

too many people enter the beach. Like, but there's all these people like, you know, you're at the

at the kiosk and there's people leaving. You're like, okay, well, five people just left. Can't

I go in now? There's five, you know, that means there's room for five more. But yeah, I did not

know they're not doing that. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've talked with a quite a bit

with Ben Burr from Blue Ribbon Coalition and he, he's an advocate for people stepping up and

helping land managers maintain and, and help sustain your areas that you like going to rec

rating in, but he's a massive believer in using litigation to force change and force impact and

force action. And it sounds like you guys are along that same lines now. And I think that's

really cool. And I think that I also kind of agree with that notion that just because I've,

I've done quite a bit of work with land managers up here in the NorCal area and

they are, they're very reactionary. They just, they want to be left alone. They don't want to

have to change processes. It's such a massive undertaking to change processes that they're

not going to take new action or do things differently just for the sake of improving

infrastructure or making things more efficient. They don't, they don't really care about that. I

really applaud organizations in the off-road industry that are stepping up to, to force

more change and force more action through litigation, because I think that that is,

like you said, it's going to be the most effective way to get these areas that, that really need to

be done for sustainability and need to be maintained properly and infrastructure improved

so that we can continue enjoying them into the future. I think that's the only way to

kind of stay ahead of the other side, quote unquote, because they're doing the same thing,

but they figured this out years and years ago, 20, 30, 40 years ago. And it's just now taking

the OHV community till 2010, 2020 to figure out that, hey, litigation is really how you force

land managers to take change and to take action on stuff. It's unfortunate and it sucks that we

have to do that, but it really is the most effective way. And I think that if you can't go out and help

with the trail maintenance, help with an adopted trail, help with a cleanup at Oceana Dunes, help

with whatever it is that you should be donating some money. If you are, if you go and use an area

like Oceana Dunes, you, and you, you have as no, even if you're not an OHV, you're just driving

around making the loop on the beach that day, you should be paying 20 bucks a year minimum.

Like that's such an easy, low-cost thing to friends of Oceana Dunes that are fighting to keep

that open for you. At Oceana Dunes as an example, we get a million and a half to 2000000

visitors per year. Wow. If we could get one dollar per term, we would be able to do so much more.

We, I can't get into the specifics, but we are going to be ending the loss that we started

due to funding concerns. And those double friends of Oceana Dunes are 100%

vulnerable to organization, paying no salaries. Yep. And you can look up our non-project,

any non-project on websites like Giant Star or not, and then you can look at the details of the

funding that's coming in, how it's being spent, whether it's legal, political, salaries, whatever

it is. I encourage you to go check out friends of Oceana Dunes, and compare us to any other

non-project. As I mentioned earlier, we have two ways to fight any fights,

political and legal. And legal has been the most fruitful, but it is the slowest, most expensive

in the type of thing. And so, if they do a political action to close 58, it could take us

five years to do that. But once it's done, it's then you got the book record, the legal record.

Open to make some announcements here in the near future about some of those actions we put

20 years ago that's come to fruition. Wow. And excited to find the experience.

That'd be really cool. Well, you guys did the, you headed up a lot of the

fight, again, on the dust, right? And when it was finally came out then, the studies were done

during COVID that people on the dunes were not causing dust particulate issues in Oceano.

This wasn't there a ruling that you guys fought for to make the Coastal Commission payback

all the money. And how much money was that? And how much, where does that stand?

So a couple things there, the dust issues are all controlled by the air pollution control district.

Coastal commission is just separate issues. Okay. So in talking about dust and COVID,

the windy season of the Oceans is April, May, June, July. Typical highway. If you go look at

May during COVID, when it was closed down, there was more dust without people there.

If you listen to the APCD and their scientists, they will say, well, if you look at these nine

months, and you throw this month at them, then it was the best year ever. So you get dueling

scientists and dueling ways of looking at the data. That's the part that gives so incredibly

trust. Data and facts are data and facts. But when you skew and alter and modify

meet your needs, that's the problem. The Scripps Institution, Dr. Lynn Russell,

not a new each week person, very far left on the local spectrum. Not somebody who normally

support our activity said the data does not support the claims. She's got all these

accreditations really, maybe, but they went after her to say how what she did was wrong,

and the way she looked at the data is wrong. So she has PhDs, very high acrimonial, and we've got

these other people that don't have her credentials. I mean, her did it wrong because her data

didn't support their inclusion. Her data said 14% of the stuff that's being measured down

where the ocean is, is mineral gas. APCD assumes 100% of that being measured down when

that's the ocean. And we point out time and time again, let's do a picture by you.

See this big ass thing is called an ocean. The ocean contribution is huge.

One of the biggest things they measure out there is salt. Well, the dunes don't make salt.

Where does the salt come from?

Yeah. So by having that and trying and getting that kind of proven and getting that science

and data done, you guys were able to fight in court and go through the litigation process

to do all that. And there was a ruling by the courts that stated, yeah, the APCD was wrong,

and there was all this money spent during the stay to try and mitigate dust pollution, etc.,

and all that money had to go back. And that was a direct action and implementation and effect

that you guys were able to have on the area and make sure that the money is not being misused,

that it's going back towards our recreational purposes rather than frivolous bullshit to help,

to try and, I think that's another strategy the other side does, is they try and force all these

frivolous, mostly frivolous lawsuits in order to defund the land managers that have to spend all

this money fighting the lawsuits rather than actually using it on maintenance projects.

And so for you guys to be able to have that sort of an impact on your annual budgets,

I think is a pretty cool thing. And I've argued that $20 to OHV organizations that are fighting

litigation will go much, much further than $20 towards organizations that are just going out

to do an adopted trial work, right? Adopted trial work is good. We need it. We still need that done.

But if you have a choice to be able to spend $20 towards one or the other

and you can't support both of them, I would argue that $20 is going to go much further

and be more valuable to you by going to organizations that are fighting litigation.

No, I absolutely agree. One of the things the off-road industry has failed to do

in is to get industry more supportive. Yeah, for sure.

I don't know why Ford, Chevy, Dodge, K&E still need a truck each year to be raffled on off-road.

Clarice, K&M, Yamaha, all these manufacturers. Years ago, let's say 20 years ago, I flew to L.A.

to the S.D.I., especially the Equal Institute of the Order, which is a part of the

M.I.C. motorcycle industry household. And I was going to talk about the issues in the ocean.

I sat there and listened to these manufacturers talk about their huge profit. Others in sales

are just growing. Yeah. That's what we call this in case I am done. Whether they're talking

about the profits and everything else, they'll say, I need money. Yeah. It just doesn't work.

A lot of the profits for these off-shore manufacturers and all the value go overseas,

and they don't want to get that up for us. Every person like us, every non-profit,

it's done with their handgun. And it's very difficult to get our piece. So something's

going to change. And I have a question. I think Blue Ribbon Coalition model is looking very good.

They had some changes over the years, but I really like them. Ben and the team were

able to keep it up. Yeah. I agree. And that was one of the main things behind that New

York Times article. The main story of it was Polaris finally. And this is something I've

been touting for years. One of the reasons why I started Morflate was to help spend profits back

into non-profit trail advocacy organizations. And I'm like, the industry needs to get on board with

this. There's so much money in motorized recreation that we're not utilizing to maintain

areas for motorized recreation. It's just asinine to me. But Polaris just finally,

after all these years, they finally stepped up and said they're going to put together

$350,000 into a grant program. And I forget the organization that is kind of housing the

grant program, but they're going to match it. So there's now going to be an extra pool of $700,000

for people to apply for grants for maintenance projects. The work that was just done at Moonrocks

came out of that grant. And so it's really cool to see Polaris stepping up finally to do that.

BFG has a big grant program that they use for their stuff, for things as well.

So I think that we're, I think enough news is starting to get out that we're starting to see a

lot of really big, really cool changes for motorized recreation. And I really hope that

the awareness continues to get out to industry companies. Toyota North America is doing a big

grant project with ONX Off-Road for trail maintenance projects. So I think that it's

starting to change. It's starting to get around. We need to keep pushing the awareness

at bare minimum and make sure that people are fully aware of what's going on. And then hopefully

we can do enough persuasion for people to be able to take action at these industry mega companies,

these corporations that have record-breaking profits thanks to COVID to be able to put some of

those profits back into the infrastructure that allows them to exist as a company.

Years ago, there was a, it's called the action program. If you ever look at some of the old

week in order trailers, you'll see this little black or old sticker that says the action program.

And so Mark Wormuck was the owner of week in order at the time, started this program.

And I forget the number, I always say that I ran off of every trailer one into this club.

Wow. And then it was, organizations like us could then commission to get donations from that.

That was really good, unfortunately. So hearing of these other organizations that was great.

We reach out to new grants, new different companies, organizations each and every year.

That's why we all are operating costs covered. So 100% of donations that we receive goes to the

fight. And when the people don't fully appreciate, we've had people say, well, you guys need to be

a good show and a bad show on this show and make people aware. Well, we're all volunteers.

For people that travel to all these different distances, this is trying to money and everything

else. It is very helpful and very difficult. Yeah. Well, that's one of the goals that we have here

on the podcast is to help raise that awareness and spread the awareness. And hopefully it makes

it into the right years. And we see impact from it at these organizations like Friends of Oceania

Dunes, like Blue Ribbon Coalation, like Corva, like Cal4, like Rubicon Trail Foundation,

United Ford Drive Association, TreadLightly, all these really cool organizations that are doing

a lot of really good work around the country. Our challenge is to listeners, find something that

what's your carrot? What do you really want to see done with your recreation areas? Is it

signs put up at trailheads? Is it info signs? Is it litigation fights? Is it cleanups and

adopt a trail work? What is it that you want to see at your area? And find an organization

that's working on that, whatever your carrot is, and support the hell out of those organizations.

And so we hope that we can help influence that. And hopefully we see some impact here

as we grow in the future. I think we're at a really cool turning point right now. There's a lot of

really neat litigation stuff going on countrywide at the moment. And I want us to keep on the throttle

and keep everything moving in the direction it's going right now.

I agree that we often would call people spark plugs. If someone wants to step up and be that

person, that front person to do something, you got to take them and try to support and do whatever

you can do to help them. Because if you discourage them, they stay away. You got to build these people

up. At the Ocean of Dunes, one of the struggles we have is we can win much illegal battles,

but all they see is more fences and closure. And so it's extremely difficult for them to see

the benefit, not recognizing the park would have been closed 20 years ago. Friends of Ocean of Dunes

is not happy with status quo. We want to grow acreage and grow visitation, expand the park.

I'd love to see RV campgrounds per meter around the park with direct do and ask. That's

somewhere in Oregon. That'd be cool. There's a lot of things that we've been wanting to do.

The portion just takes time and money. Yeah. Everything is time and money, man.

Absolutely. Well, cool. Hopefully our listeners step up and can make a donation to you,

even if it's just $1. I think there's a really cool statistic that Ben Burr told us about Utah,

the state of Utah. If every OHV registered vehicle in the state of Utah gave $5 then

to blue ribbon coalition, blue ribbon coalition would outfund Suwa within a month and a half

annually. I'm like, that is such a crazy number. And for you guys, one and a half to two and a

half million people per year. If they just gave a quarter 25 cents, you would have $500 to $750,000

operating budget. That's how much could you do if everybody just gave you a quarter 25 cents?

Right. A lot of people when we are in our legal battle mode, we are spending $20 to $30,000 a

month. So that's $4,360,000 a year. It's in those hours. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of money,

but I think that a lot of people underestimate the power of scalability and the power of scale

that we have in the offered industry and how many people are actually

really involved with motorized recreation. And if we all just banded together,

like another great, great statistic is the top five outdoor recreation

markets per market cap in the outdoor recreation industry, the top five are all motorized.

And those top five combined are a bigger market cap than every other category of outdoor recreation

combined. And we're not seeing that money come back into our infrastructure and our trails.

And I think that people really underestimate the power of scale and how much money, how many people

are really out here in motorized recreation. And if we all just did a tiny, tiny little bit,

the power of numbers scales very rapidly and we could get some really fucking cool stuff done.

If everybody just gave a dollar, five dollars, whatever it is, to the correct organizations.

So that's always something I try and preach about. And another thing that we try and bring

awareness to. If you think about it, the main one question from maybe the sports

of motorized recreation. Does SEMA have one? Do they? Why don't we know about it? They do.

That's a good question. Yeah. That's a great question.

So there's a lot more that needs to be done.

OHV Super PAC 2026. Here we go, Jim.

Here we go. I've got some ideas. We can talk about fun.

All right. We'll have to do that. Well, cool. If people wanted to make a donation,

learn more about Friends of Oceania Dunes, all the really cool stuff you guys are doing down there.

Where can they learn more? Where can they find you guys at? Where can they make a donation to

all that good stuff? So folks, our website is oceanodunes.org.

And you can see very high level information. There's a building button. You can donate online.

You can join us at one of our events. We are building an annual bin called,

um, man, now I just lost it. A desert town, excuse me, out at Johnson Valley, a laser town.

People say, oh, you're on a channel. Why are you going to Johnson Valley? Why are you going to

desert your laser town? And the simple reason is we're trying to give you the advantage of

cleaning and we're staying in generosity of the laser town and go to Wagner to do a

there where we can do a four or five day event and raise the phones necessary to be our party.

Instead of doing 34 or five events throughout the year, which is

mostly burdensome in the ball of cheer base. Yeah. That and the park only allow so many vehicles

in per day. So you can't, you can't, right? Right. Um, we also have a very active, uh,

Instagram and friend, uh, Facebook accounts. If you want to get real time information,

uh, you're always welcome to reach out to me if you have questions or ideas. If you want to learn

about the nonprofit side where the money is, go to guidestart.med. If you look at the cost

or any nonprofit to see how the money is being spent in years and that might drive

ideas. Yeah, that's, I highly encourage you. If you guys, if anybody's out there really interested

into how far a dollar actually goes with organizations that are fighting litigation,

um, I go look at the operating budget for blue ribbon coalition, look at the operating budget

for friends of Oceana dunes, look at the operating budget for Rubicon trail foundation.

It really is impressive when you think about how big of an impact and change these organizations

are having on the operating budgets that they're, that they're running on. It's very,

it's very impressive. So, um, yeah, I'd highly encourage if anybody's interested that it's a,

it's just, it helps you wrap your brain around how effective and how far a dollar can actually go

at organizations that are focusing on this kind of thing. So,

and I'd also say, you know, you've been extremely generous to us and the other day

thank you for that. If there's businesses listening, they can donate product, we can run through off

and out. If you have a business that does printing and graphics and you want to donate

some of that, instead of us paying somebody, if you can help, you know, and my church,

they always talk about tying our treasures. So, if you can offer any one of those,

you're talking your talents and what you can do with a treasure for financial contributions.

We're always looking for volunteers who want to get involved and our organization

will get involved in any of them. Yeah, that's cool. Um, well, awesome. We'll put all those

links down in the show notes for people, uh, the social media, the information on desert fast.

I think that's going to be a really cool event. Um, the website to reach you guys and donate.

Um, we'll have all that in the show notes for everybody. Uh, thank you so much, Jim, for taking

almost an hour to have out of your day here to chat with us about, um, what's been going on at

OD SVRA. Um, it's obviously it's semi-local to us. It's, it's a near and dear to Jimmy, um,

kind of being down in that area for a while. I grew up down near that area. Um, and so it's,

it's very, hopefully it's very impactful to have you on the show and, and get some more

really neat stories about what's been going on, the work that friends has been putting into everything

and hopefully listeners out there can do something with it. So, um, yeah, man, thank you so much.

Hey, thank you guys. I've really enjoyed spending time with you guys and

we're here in a Tyler, Jason, slowly plummeted to 15 miles an hour and

yeah. Um, hope to see people out on the trails and the dunes.

Very cool. Um, final words to wrap up the show. Uh, anything, it could be anything. It could

be what you have planned for lunch. It could be something that we talked about. What do you

want to leave for everybody that this sport is something that we don't do a good job of

promoting. Let me give an example. My family, it's been weeks in the garage, getting our equipment

ready for the weekend. And then after the weekend, it's weeks fixing or repairing or doing other things.

That quality time of families and the garage and your dogs and friends and everything else

does so much for the family. I've told this to many people. I've done camping where my

toilet is broken. I just show up and sit around the campfire and socializing. Talk about the events.

It's, it's not just the behind the wheel stuff. It's the whole scope of this recreation that builds

bonds of family as well as friends. And it's so valuable to be in this day and age

where we need to promote that and make the forces do everything we can.

Yeah. That's a, that's a really, really good take. And we agree. We name, so you're going to be,

this will be airing on a Monday episode. And we call this kind of segment on Monday is the campfire

discussion. Um, because there's no better way to socialize and hang out with people than sitting,

going out camping, going out, hanging on a beach or on a campfire and just getting to socialize

and learn people's stories and talk with them and figure out what's going on and what are,

what are interesting things to talk about amongst your group of people, right? Um, and the, yeah,

we're, we're huge on the socialization aspect of outdoor recreation for sure.

I tell you, a swar, a bergen, we can talk more about it.

Yeah. Now you're talking Jimmy's style here. Jimmy, what do you want to leave everybody

off with today here? Well, first off, Jim, I want to say thank you for over 25 years of service

helping on, on everything from friends of Fort Ice and everything that you guys have been doing

down there. That's amazing. And I didn't even, I've been going to Pismo. Well, I haven't been

going to Pismo as long as you've been working on everything going on down there. So that's,

that's outstanding. So thank you very much for that. That's awesome. I just want to leave everybody

with like, this is to my knowledge, the only spot in California that you can legally drive on the

beach. Uh, you, it's a state park in on sand dunes right on the beach. The only spot in California

that you can do it. And if we don't continue to support this and continue to have it available

to us and our children, there's nothing ever going to be like this in California again. So

we got to continue to support it. We got to continue to help out in whatever ways we can so that

I have, I mean, I have so many fond memories of going down there as a, in my college era

and having a great time down there. And I just want other people to be able to go out there and

skills, you know, whatever you can, we've got to figure out a way to keep this going.

Yeah, I really like that. I think I'm going to use that more often. Time talent and treasures.

If you guys, if you guys have one of those three things that you can put towards a non-profit

trail advocacy organization out there, find one that you like, one that has your carrot that's

working on your carrot and put together your time talent or treasures form. It's a, it's a big thing

and it goes very far in ensuring that we get to have stuff like this in the future. So yeah,

thanks again, Jim. Love chatting with you. We'll do it again soon sometime, huh?

Always glad to come back and give you any updates, greatly enjoy what you do. So thank you guys.

Awesome. Thanks, Jim. And don't forget everybody out there. Keep growling.

I got one for you. Okay. What is, are you sure? Maybe. Okay. I did just pee. So we're good. I

don't have to worry about the risk of peeing myself. Oh yeah. From how funny your jokes are. I know.

You'd laugh so hard. Yeah. Okay. Especially on this one. So it was a good thing. You went to the

bathroom. Okay. I'm ready. What is a butterfly's favorite subject in school?

Butterfly. Yeah. Butterfly. A butterfly swimming. Because that's a butterfly. That would be a good

one. So that's not a pee. Yeah. Pee swimming. I like that answer. Yeah. Better than the actual

conclusion of the joke. All right. Because it's mothomatics. Oh yeah. It's dumb. A moth is not

a butterfly. No. Pee. Come on. That was good.

About this episode

Pismo’s drive-on beach access takes center stage as the hosts and guest break down why legal pressure, consistent permitting, and community behavior matter. They connect California OHV shutdowns to broader precedents, explain incidental take permits and injunctions, and discuss how enforcement and vehicle counting can frustrate access. Along the way, they also cover off-road tech and gear talk—like IceCo fridge compressors and access designs—plus multiple giveaways and ways to support trail advocacy through donations, reviews, and community tokens.

10 to 15 degrees of vertical adopt a trail work air pumps all a cart Aluminum links ARB battery pack cantilevers cartridge joints coilover mounts

Ford Torino Jeep Wrangler Land Rover Range Rover Toyota Land Cruiser

Original notes

Oceana Dunes at Pismo Beach is the only place in California where you can legally drive on the beach. For over 25 years, Jim Suty and Friends of Oceana Dunes have been fighting to keep it that way. Jimmy and Tyler sit down with Jim to talk about what’s happening now — and what’s been happening for a long time.

This one covers a lot of ground. Jim walks through the history of the snowy plover fight that started around 2001, the dust pollution battle that took center stage around 2019–2020, and the new issue that’s surfaced after all of that: SVR (the State Vehicular Recreation Area that manages the dunes) never completed the Incidental Take Permit for the snowy plover that should have been finalized as part of the original mitigation. The ITP is the document that allows recreation to continue in habitat where an endangered species is present, provided land managers mitigate impact to acceptable levels. Without it, the dunes are exposed. And because SVR was always reacting to the next crisis — the next budget cut, the next complaint from the Coastal Commission, the next thing coming down from the state level — the ITP kept getting pushed down the priority list until it didn’t get done.

Jimmy and Tyler dig into why this keeps happening — turnover in land manager leadership, no consistent long-term relationships with the local OHV community, a reactive management culture that never gets ahead of anything. The parallels to what Jimmy and Tyler see with El Dorado National Forest, Tahoe National Forest, and the Rubicon are everywhere.

The dust fight is a good-news story worth hearing in full. During COVID, when the dunes were closed and no OHVs were running, Friends of Oceana Dunes commissioned studies that showed the dust particulate in the town of Oceano was not being caused by OHV activity on the dunes. The science that the APCD and the Coastal Commission had been using to justify closures and restrictions was wrong. Friends of Oceana Dunes fought it in court, won, and the APCD was ruled to have been incorrect — with money that had been spent on dust mitigation going back toward recreational purposes. Tyler and Jimmy hold this up as exactly what litigation looks like when it works.

On where the money needs to come from: Tyler makes the argument that $20 to a litigation organization like Friends of Oceana Dunes or Blue Ribbon Coalition does more long-term work than $20 to a trail maintenance volunteer fund. Both matter. But if you can only pick one, he argues the scale is in favor of litigation. The numbers are striking — Jim mentions that 1.5 to 2.5 million people visit Oceana Dunes per year. If every one of them gave a quarter, Friends of Oceana Dunes would have a $500K–$750K operating budget. That’s how underfunded these organizations are relative to the scale of the impact they’re having.

Also in this episode: the new California OHV certification bill being pushed by KORVA (which has passed its first stages of legislation), the “two knuckleheads” problem and why bad actors in OHV get more press than bad actors in every other outdoor recreation category, why the Coastal Commission tried to stop Friends of Oceana Dunes from picking up trash on the beach, the OHV super PAC joke that maybe wasn’t entirely a joke, and Jimmy’s personal note about his college memories at Pismo.

Closing call to action: time, talent, or treasures. Find your carrot, find the organization working on it, and put something toward it.

**Find Friends of Oceana Dunes:**

Website: https://www.oceanodunes.org/
Donate Today: https://www.paypal.com/donate?token=XpwAwnzV8dxTRn3lCzpU2W8PtfcpioHxik3tAvbkFMfOIHbNvXjXH22QILbpr6ixt8Xs15fStatskAR3
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/friendsofoceanodunes/
Desert Fest: https://www.oceanodunes.org/2025/09/24/march-2026-dezertfest/

SnailTrail4x4 Discord: https://discord.gg/yFyFFkQbuy
Come hang out with us on the SnailTrail4x4 Discord — it’s the easiest way to connect with Tyler and Jimmy directly, chat with fellow offroad enthusiasts, and get first access to Group Buys and Treasure Hunt token drops.

MORRFlate Giveaway at 900 Reviews on Apple Podcast. But our next giveaway is when we reach 800 reviews; we are giving away an OnX Elite Membership. We will also give away an OnX Elite membership when we get to 850. However, when we reach 900 Reviews, we are teaming up with MORRFlate for a $1000 MF Product Giveaway. Go over to Apple Podcasts to leave your review now and become eligible to win. Congratulations to A13XMONT, who won a set of tires from Yokohama Tire!

Call us and leave us a VOICEMAIL!!!

We want to hear from you even more!!! You can call and say whatever you like! Ask a question, leave feedback, correct some information about welding, say how much you hate your Jeep, and wish you had a Toyota! We will air them all, live, on the podcast! +01-916-345-4744. If you have any negative feedback, you can call our negative feedback hotline, 408-800-5169.

4Wheel Underground has all the suspension parts you need to take your off-road rig from leaf springs to a performance suspension system. We just ordered our kits for Kermit and Samantha and are looking forward to getting them. The ordering process was quite simple, and after answering the questionnaire, we ensured we got the correct and best-fitting kits for our vehicles. If you want to level up your suspension game, check out 4Wheel Underground.

SnailTrail4x4 Podcast is brought to you by all of our peeps over at irate4x4! Make sure to stop by and see all of the great perks you get for supporting SnailTrail4x4! Discount Codes, Monthly Give-Always, Gift Boxes, the SnailTrail4x4 Community, and the ST4x4 Treasure Hunt! Thank you to all of those who support us! We couldn’t do it without you guys (and gals!)!

SnailSquad Monthly Giveaway

This month’s giveaway is with Iceco Freezers. We are excited to work with and share their exciting new releases. One lucky winner has a chance to win. Big thanks to Iceco for sponsoring this month’s giveaway. If you want a chance to win, sign up for the Giveaway Tier on Irate4x4

Congrats to Johnny Freskie you won the Rusoh Fire Extinguishers. We have one of their 2.5-pound extinguishers to give away to a lucky winner. This extinguisher has an 18-year shelf life and is the best fire extinguisher for any off-road vehicle. To learn more, check out Rusoh.com. If you want a chance to win, sign up for the Giveaway Tier on Irate4x4

Listener Discount Codes:

SnailTrail4x4 –SnailTrail15 for 15% off SnailTrail4x4 Merch
MORRFlate – snailtraill4x4 to get 10% off MORRFlate Multi Tire Inflation Deflation™ Kits
4WheelUnderground – snailtrail 10% off
Ironman 4×4 – snailtrail20 to get 20% off all Ironman 4×4 branded equipment!
Sidetracked Offroad – snailtrail4x4 (lowercase) to get 15% off lights and recovery gear
Spartan Rope – snailtrail4x4 to get 10% off sitewide
Shock Surplus – SNAILTRAIL4x4 to get $25 off any order!
Mob Armor – SNAILTRAIL4X4 for 15% off
SummerShine Supply – ST4x4 for 10% off
Backpacker’s Pantry – Affiliate Link
Laminx Protective Films – Use the Link to get 20% off all products (Affiliate Link)

Show Music:

Midroll Music – ComaStudio
Outroll Music – Meizong Kumbang

Snail Trail 4x4 Offroad Podcast

Tyler and Jimmy: Off-Road Enthusiasts

View classic page →

0:00

93:21