715: Tyler Takes Reid Wheeling & Jimmy’s High School Camping Reunion

715: Tyler Takes Reid Wheeling & Jimmy’s High School Camping Reunion Snail Trail 4x4 Offroad Podcast · Jun 11, 2026

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Concept

a la carte system

It means you can buy suspension parts one-by-one instead of only buying a full package. So if you only need a specific bracket or joint, you can get just that.

Part

The upper frame bracket is a mounting point on the vehicle’s frame where suspension links attach. On link-style off-road setups, the bracket’s position and strength directly affect how the suspension articulates over bumps and how securely it holds alignment under load.

Part

lower link bracket

This is the mount on the frame for the lower suspension link. If it has an integrated bump stop, it also helps limit how far the suspension can travel during big hits.

Term

integrated bump stop

A bump stop is like a safety cushion for the suspension. When the suspension compresses too far, it hits the bump stop to prevent damage and harsh metal contact.

Part

cartridge joints

Cartridge joints are the connection points inside your suspension links. They’re designed to be durable and, in many setups, rebuildable so you can service them instead of replacing the whole link.

Term

rebuildable Johnny joints

Johnny joints are special suspension link connections that let the suspension move through bumps. If they’re rebuildable, you can replace the worn parts later instead of replacing the whole joint.

Term

himes

“Himes” are probably Heim joints—small, strong link connections used in off-road suspensions. They help the suspension move while still handling heavy forces.

Term

offsets

Offsets are parts that shift the suspension geometry a little. That can help the truck sit right and move through suspension travel without binding.

Part

Aluminum links

Aluminum links are the suspension arms/links made from aluminum. They can be lighter than steel, which can help the suspension respond better over bumps.

Term

Lee Springs

“Lee Springs” sounds like the current spring setup on the truck. They’re talking about switching away from that setup to a link-based suspension.

Term

link suspension kit

A link suspension kit is an upgrade that changes how the wheels are controlled using link arms. It’s meant to help the truck move better over rough terrain.

Car

Wrangler Rubicon

The Jeep Wrangler is a small SUV designed for off-road driving. It’s popular with people who take their vehicles on trails and do maintenance for those trips. The specific off-road ability depends on the setup, but it’s built to handle rough terrain.

Car

Chevrolet Blazer

The Chevrolet Blazer is a midsize SUV made for regular driving, and some versions can handle rough roads. People bring it up in off-road discussions because it can be a practical vehicle for trips and trails. What it can do off-road depends on the specific model and drivetrain.

Car

Dodge Power Wagon

The Dodge Power Wagon is a tough off-road truck meant for hard work and rough terrain. It’s built to go where normal trucks struggle, especially for towing or hauling. People mention it because it’s specifically designed for off-road capability.

Car

4Runner Forerunner

The Toyota 4Runner is a midsize SUV built to handle rough roads better than many regular cars. People talk about it for off-road trips because it’s designed for durability. The podcast specifically mentions an older “first gen” version that some owners use for trail driving.

Term

airing up

“Airing up” means pumping your tires back to the proper pressure after you’ve lowered them for off-roading. It helps the tires handle correctly again for normal driving.

Term

airing down

“Airing down” means letting air out of your tires for off-roading. Lower pressure can help the tire grip better on uneven ground and feel less harsh.

Term

whitewater rafting

Whitewater rafting is riding in a raft through rough, fast river water. It’s an outdoor activity that can teach people teamwork and safety.

Term

rock climbing

Rock climbing is climbing up rock surfaces using your hands and feet. It’s usually done with safety equipment and instruction.

Term

ropes

They’re talking about using rope for outdoor jobs. Rope can be used to secure gear or help with tasks around camp.

Term

tie knots

They’re teaching kids how to tie rope knots. Those knots are useful for securing things and staying safe outdoors.

Term

chase light

A chase light is an auxiliary rear-facing light used in off-road driving so the vehicle behind can clearly see where the lead vehicle is braking or turning. It’s especially useful on trails where dust, distance, or uneven terrain can make standard brake lights harder to read.

Term

carbon fiber 3d print things

Carbon-fiber 3D printing makes parts out of a stronger, more heat-resistant plastic mix. The idea is that the custom housing won’t warp as easily as cheaper 3D-print materials when it gets hot.

Term

PLA or PETG

PLA and PETG are two common types of plastic used for 3D printing. They’re popular because they’re easy to print, but they can handle less heat than more specialized filaments.

Term

third brake light

The third brake light is the extra brake light mounted higher up at the back of the vehicle. It’s easier for drivers behind you to notice, and in this setup it’s being swapped out for a custom light-and-camera housing.

Term

Baja S2 pros brake light

“Baja S2 Pro” is an aftermarket brake-light product. The speaker is saying the custom chase-light housing holds two of those brake lights so the vehicle behind can see you braking more clearly.

Term

wolf box camera

A Wolfbox camera is a dash-cam type device that records what’s happening while you drive. In this build, it’s mounted in the same rear housing as the extra brake lights.

Term

tailgate

The tailgate is the rear door on many SUVs and trucks that swings open to access the cargo area. In this context, it’s part of the routing path for wiring and mounting decisions for rear lighting.

Term

Alpha Rex headlight

AlphaRex makes aftermarket lights. The speaker is describing how their specific light design has mounting flanges and openings, so you can route wiring through without breaking the light’s weather seal.

Term

wiring harness

A wiring harness is a pre-organized set of wires with connectors that makes the electrical connections cleaner and easier. They built one so the spoiler-mounted lights could plug in and work the way they wanted.

Term

new switch panel

A switch panel is a place where you mount switches for accessories. They’re using it so the extra lights can be turned on with one button.

Term

strobe

A strobe is a light that flashes very fast. It’s used to get attention quickly—like if you’re stuck on the side of the road and need other drivers to notice you.

Term

review mirror

A review mirror in this context is a camera display that replaces or supplements the normal rearview mirror. It shows what the dash camera(s) are recording, so the driver can monitor behind the vehicle without relying on the standard mirror view.

Term

dash mount

A dash mount is a bracket that holds a device on the dashboard. It keeps the camera/display positioned correctly and more securely.

Term

cord cover

A cord cover is a protective trim piece that hides and shields wiring. It helps keep an install looking clean while also reducing the chance of wires getting snagged or abraded.

Concept

hasty install

A “hasty install” refers to a rushed installation process where components may not be mounted or wired as neatly or as compatibly as they would be in a planned setup. In this segment, it led to wiring needing rerouting and mounting adjustments later.

Topic

Trail Hero X

Trail Hero X is an off-road event where they were working on installs under a tight time limit. That’s why they had to redo some of the setup afterward.

Term

OEM

OEM parts are made to fit like the original factory parts. In this case, it means the company sells an install kit that mounts the camera/review mirror in a more factory-like way.

Term

ditch lights

Ditch lights are extra lights you add to the front of an off-road truck. They shine toward the sides of the road/trail, but because they’re mounted low, they can get in the way of what you can easily see around you.

Term

A pillar

The A-pillar is the vertical support at the front of the car near the windshield. It can block your view to the side, which is why someone might miss a car hidden there.

Car

Toyota Tacoma

The Toyota Tacoma is a popular off-road pickup truck. Here it’s mentioned because the truck’s hood height affects how well the driver can see the road and what’s around the front of the vehicle.

Car

Toyota 4Runner

The Toyota 4Runner is a rugged SUV that’s commonly used for off-roading. In this conversation, it’s mentioned because the hood height can change what the driver can see while driving.

Term

TRD package

TRD is Toyota’s performance/off-road brand. A “TRD package” usually means a set of upgrades or options, and here it’s mentioned because the speaker is weighing those upgrades against how the hood affects seeing the road.

Term

E locker

A locking differential helps your truck get traction when one tire starts slipping. “E locker” means it’s controlled electronically, so you can lock and unlock it when you need extra grip.

Term

hood scoop

A hood scoop is an opening on the hood that helps bring air into the engine. On a trail, it can also block your view because it sits up higher than the hood.

Term

Lance water tank

A Lance water tank is where your fresh water is stored for camping. Flushing it out means rinsing/cleaning it so the water system is fresh and not full of gunk.

Term

valve body

On an automatic transmission, the valve body is like the control panel that directs transmission fluid to make the gears/clutches work. Changing it can make the transmission shift and behave more predictably when you’re crawling over obstacles.

Term

torque converter

A torque converter is what lets an automatic transmission connect the engine to the wheels using fluid. When you’re going down steep terrain or crawling, it can sometimes make the car feel like it’s not controlling the descent the way you expect.

Term

drivetrain

The drivetrain is the set of components that deliver power from the engine to the wheels, including the transmission and transfer case. In off-road crawling, unexpected drivetrain behavior—like shifting to neutral or changing torque delivery—can break traction and upset control over descents.

Term

dual cases

In 4x4 setups, “cases” usually refers to transfer case(s), which split power between front and rear axles. “Dual cases” implies a configuration with two transfer cases (often for extra gearing or redundancy), which can be used in extreme off-road builds.

Term

rear case

A “rear case” refers to the transfer case assigned to the rear axle(s) in a multi-case 4x4 arrangement. In builds with more than one transfer case, each case can provide different gearing or range selection for crawling.

Term

front case

The front case is the transfer case that helps send power to the front wheels. If you’re building a multi-case 4x4, adding the front case is what completes the setup.

Term

frame stiffeners

Frame stiffeners are reinforcement parts added to the truck’s frame. They help the frame stay strong and give you solid places to mount important off-road hardware.

Term

power steering box

The power steering box is the part that helps your steering wheel turn the wheels. Where it mounts on the frame can change how everything fits and how well the steering works.

Term

drag link

The drag link is a steering rod that connects the steering system to the front wheels. If it’s not positioned correctly, it can cause steering problems or clearance issues when the suspension moves.

Term

clearances

Clearances are the space between parts so they don’t hit each other. When you lift or rework suspension and steering, parts can move more than stock, so you have to check that everything still has room.

Term

shock hoops

Shock hoops are the brackets/structures that hold the shocks in place. If they’re in the wrong spot, the shocks can interfere with other parts or limit suspension movement.

Term

shock eyelet

The shock eyelet is the metal loop on the shock where it bolts to the truck. Where that bolt point sits affects how the suspension moves.

Term

drive shaft

The drive shaft is the rotating shaft that sends power from the drivetrain to the axles. If something feels shaky or out of balance, the drive shaft is often where you look first.

Term

shocks

Shocks are what control how the suspension moves up and down. If they’re set up in a way that limits travel, the suspension can’t move as far as it needs to on rough trails.

Term

piggybacks

Piggyback shocks have a reservoir mounted on top of the shock body, which can help with heat management during repeated bumps. That can improve consistency on long off-road runs where shocks get hot.

Brand

Metal Cloak

Metal Cloak is a company that makes aftermarket suspension parts for off-road vehicles. In this segment, they’re talking about shock options from Metal Cloak.

Term

travel

Travel is how far the suspension can move up and down. More usable travel usually means the tires can stay in contact with the ground better over rocks and ruts.

Term

articulate

Articulation is how much the suspension can twist and move when one wheel goes over a bump and the other doesn’t. It helps keep tires on the ground.

Term

six packs

“Six packs” usually means a leaf-spring pack with six leaves. Changing the leaf pack can change how the vehicle rides and how it handles when you’re off-road.

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, rebuildable 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 a la carte 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.

Oh, 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, maybe even

poking a little bit of fun at Toyotas.

And of course, hearing about how fantastic your work is in Toyotas, then this is the

podcast for you.

That's right, ladies and germs.

My name is Tyler and joining me for another episode of snail trail four by four podcast

episode 715

Jimmy J.

Sure lost track once he stopped editing.

I am doing well.

Thanks.

How are you?

Pretty good.

Yeah, I'm doing pretty good.

It's a nice afternoon here.

Yeah, not too hot yet.

Not too hot yet.

It was actually really nice over the weekend.

Yes, it rained at my house a couple of times.

It rained at my house yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, yesterday.

I guess that wasn't the weekend, but it kind of was.

He was still on holiday.

I was still on holiday.

Yeah, it rained at my house.

I was fascinating.

I was like, wait a minute, what is going on right now?

Yeah.

Yeah, I walked out earlier that day and I was kind of like, huh, I had that aromatic

smell of rain, you know, and I was just like, that's weird.

Moist smell.

Yeah, I guess it's just fresh or I don't know.

There's a term for that.

I really think.

Yeah, I forgot what it's called.

Is it a turkey?

No, it's not a turkey.

But there's, yeah, there's a name for it, but it's and so I walked out and I was

like, it smells like it's going to rain, but it's like the middle June.

Yeah, it's June, so that's weird.

Yeah, so I was like, I kind of brushed it off.

But then yeah, so I went to go pick up the mini assistant and I'm like

messaged the assistant and I was like, it's raining.

Yeah, it's weird.

It's weird.

I also, so I found out a little thing about my tree, my front yard.

Oh, OK, yeah.

Dave McKinney, our buddy from Rubicon Trail Adventures, said that he also has

a tree in his front yard that grows little plums with cherry pits in them.

OK, and he goes, he said, they're called cherry plums.

Oh, I was like, well, there you go.

OK, so yeah, I'm pretty sure I have a cherry plum tree for anybody who knows

or cares about that.

I don't really care what it's called.

All I know is that it is a delicious.

Yeah.

Well, our plum tree has blossomed, fruited and done.

All right.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we had a battle with the birds.

Oh, geez.

And I think we came out ahead.

Nice.

Yeah, my battle is usually with the squirrels.

Those two.

Yeah, there's no winning with those.

No.

Pedeck, pedeck, pedeck rickr, pedeck rickr.

Bless you.

How do you say that?

Petricker.

The scientific article, Petricker.

Does it mean scent of rain?

Smell of rain, Petricker.

Yeah, OK, Petricker.

Petricker.

There's a word that means that.

There you go.

Smell of rain.

Your word of the day.

Hold on, I got one for that.

Perfect.

Yeah.

You haven't used that in a while.

I have not.

Definitely haven't.

But yeah, so weekend was good.

We'll jump into that in a little bit.

We have some updates to say.

We did officially get the information or the item

that we are giving away for our snail squad member giveaway tier.

And that is an Isco APL 20 refrigerator.

So that's one of their like OG fridges.

It's a really cool.

It's like a tank is described to us.

A very robust, very beefy, very energy efficient.

We get to learn a little bit about

Isco and some of the technology and stuff that they use,

hopefully here on Monday with you guys.

But yeah, an APL 50.

So metal sided metal shell, 20 liter refrigerator,

single zone, but super efficient, super robust and awesome thing

for off-roading because it can take the abuse that we put all of our

gear under really.

So I'm super excited to have that.

It's around the $500 mark in value, $559.

There you go.

559.

That's my old area code where I grew up at.

And so $559 retail value this month for you guys from Isco.

So we've got all month long, all the way until June 30th for you guys

to get in for that giveaway.

If you want a chance at winning an APL 20.

And then we're going to have an interview with Isco here on Monday

to talk all about what Isco does as a company,

some of the technologies and features behind their products,

some really cool stuff they're doing within the industry

and get to learn a little bit about DJ Dave.

Nice.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun talking to him already.

And you guys will enjoy that.

Yeah, on Monday.

So if you want to get in for the Isco APL 20 giveaway,

Tyler said he was going to get the PayPal subscription stuff

on to Discord by the end of the week.

And if you don't want to wait that long, then you go over to Irate

4x4 and you go down to the Watchlist and Discussion section,

click on the Snail Trail 4x4 tier.

And then all the sign up options are there.

Make sure to sign up for that giveaway tier and you will automatically

be entered to win the APL 20 from Isco.

Yeah, yeah.

So it should be really cool.

We'll have that running through the end of the month here.

So you guys have until June 30th to get signed up.

If you want a chance at winning that right now,

your odds of signing up are about 1 in 95, 96, something like that.

So pretty decent odds.

Let's see what else do we got going on?

We've got a giveaway going on for reviews.

We should be approaching 800 reviews here pretty damn quickly.

I would want to say the last count we did, we had eight or nine spots left.

Sounds about right.

Something like that.

And that was a couple of weeks ago.

So we may already be over 800.

I'm not sure.

We'll probably do a check and do some reviews next week.

But make sure you guys get signed up for that.

At 800 reviews, we're giving away an Onyx Elite membership,

which if you already have an Onyx subscription, all you got to do is add it

and it just gets added on to your current subscription.

So whenever that is due and up, it'll renew for another year.

So we have that as well as a cool little swag pack from Snail Trail,

Snail Armor, Morphlate, and a couple other companies

that we've got to do some fun things with over the years.

So we'll get that swag pack out to a lucky winner.

Once we reach 800 reviews, we'll pull a winner from those 800 reviews.

So which means if you want to increase your odds of winning,

you just leave more reviews and you automatically get entered

for all the reviews we do.

Like at 850, we'll do another Onyx Elite subscription as well as a swag pack.

And then at 900 reviews, we're doing a gift pack from Morphlate worth $900 or more.

So that's going to have a couple of things in it, a couple of new products,

a pretty big assortment of current products for you guys.

And if we end up reaching 900 reviews before the really big ticket item gets

announced and launched, then you'll automatically get one of those for the pre-order.

I think that does it for reviews.

Make sure you go to Apple Podcast and do that over there.

Sounds good. Yeah, we've got the Discord ever going.

I haven't been able to jump on it since the weekend,

but I'm planning on catching up today.

There's a lot of talk going on right now about EDC knives.

Okay. I had to sift through 30, 40 messages yesterday on one of the channels.

I was like, wow, that's actually pretty cool.

Well, we each have an EDC that we carry with us.

I think it's the same one.

I think so. Mine is the little, I was going to say gear wrench,

but it's the Crescent Tools one.

Crescent, little Crescent Tool one.

It was a gift from Wallace Corey back in the day.

And I had a plastic version and the metal version.

The metal version is heavier, but it's thinner.

So that's the reason I went with it.

I've also downgraded, maybe downgraded is the wrong word.

I've reduced my pocket knife size, the size of the blade.

I've been getting smaller and smaller.

It's just, you know, I don't need a really big blade in my pocket.

So I've just been shrinking the blade size down.

Yeah. My big issue is I wear athletic shorts everywhere.

I don't, I don't really wear like normal people shorts.

And so having any kind of blade with a weight to it is really annoying for me.

So I really like this blade because it is,

it's a little heavier than a couple other blades I have,

but it is just, it's a very nice small package.

I'm like, I usually I'm just opening up cardboard with it or something.

So I'm like, I don't need a big, big old heavy duty hunting knife or something like that.

So, yeah.

So if you want to join in on the EDC knives talk,

there's a great talk going on right now.

Go over to the discord, sign up for that.

Another thing you can do once you get there is that's the location of all the tokens.

So you can go and find the token stuff.

I believe I've posted three in the last week that I've been up there.

Some in Northern Nevada and some in middle of, middle West Nevada.

Okay, moon rock.

So two of them in moon rocks area.

Thanks to our good buddy Horton.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Blue Smurphy Horton with a hood.

Yeah, then one way up north, way up, way up north.

Yep.

So yeah, if you're interested in going on a hunt,

go over to the discord and there's a whole section there for tokens.

And you can download the folder for all those tokens to your Onyx off-road.

And then they'll be there whenever you're traveling around or looking at a places to go.

You can search out a token.

There you go.

Cool.

Yeah, I've got a couple of tokens I need to hide on my next trip out.

Yeah, I'm excited for that.

We'll get some there.

We'll let you guys know where that is next time I'm out.

I might need to get some more for me though.

That way I just have a little stash to throw in Fiona for when I'm going on my random day

trips this summer.

So yeah, we can do that.

I should probably need to make more.

I think I have a few left in my stash and then so, but I have more rounds.

So we don't need to order more rounds yet, but we need to, I just need to make more.

So yep.

Cool.

And then we're getting pretty close.

Trevor is getting pretty close to the ones there, but he's not, he's not going to win until,

you know, somebody, whoever collects 13, all 13 letters of snail trail four by four is going to win

the Gearwrench master mechanics tool set that we have.

And then I think we have some fun plans for the next item already.

So that's a, it's in the works because, because Trevor's getting close.

So yeah, so that'll be fun.

So go discord it, chat with us, go check out the tokens, leave us a review and sign up for that

giveaway tier to win some, win a really, really nice refrigerator, portable, outdoorsy refrigerator.

Yep.

Uh, let's see.

Anything else going on, man, for getting into June here?

No, I think that's good.

We have some, we still have some winners that have not gotten back to me.

So I need to get back in contact with them to make sure that we're sending out the right gift boxes

and correct addresses to the people.

Okay.

Cool.

So, uh, what, do you remember who those were?

Or not off hand.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll have, I'll message you guys.

I know that one of our gift box winners got to us, but the other one hasn't.

Yeah.

One of the items do want to talk about gift boxes.

I don't think we've gone through yet.

We can talk about the gift boxes.

Yeah.

We haven't gone through it and every, most everybody should have gotten them by now.

Should have, but none by now.

Even the guy up in Canada, I think has gotten his.

So what about those Australian guys?

They don't get them.

Oh, okay.

Aaron won one in a, as the giveaway.

Oh, that's what it was.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is one of the items here.

It's a snail trail four by four black on black embroidered hat.

Yep.

It's kind of a trucker hat design.

I really like this hat.

It's super comfy.

It's one of the, like the Richardson style hats.

So they breathe really well.

But the ST four by four, like sticks out just enough where you notice something's

going on with the hat and it makes you really focus in on it.

When you're like, wait, what is going on with that hat?

So it's a, I really like the way that these are done.

Yeah.

I think they came out great.

I was, when I went to order them, I was talking to the lady that I do the custom

embroidery work with that also embroiderers are ST four by 45 year gifts.

Oh yeah.

Same, same lady.

And she was like, these, this black on black is super popular right now.

I'm like, oh, cool.

I just wanted something stealthy and something that didn't stand out too much.

And I like, well, I don't really ever wear hats, but I've heard the trucker hat style is

somewhat back in style.

A lot of people, I know like those flex fit ones, but the problem with the flex sits is

then I have to get people's head sizes.

Yeah, I don't like that.

And we already screwed up enough with the t-shirts.

So yeah.

And they breathe a lot better because they're mesh all around.

So yeah.

So we got a Richardson's.

What's the number on the top?

112, original.

Yeah.

And I had an option of doing that or like a cheap version of that.

And I was just, wasn't that big of a price difference.

So I was like, let's do the good stuff.

Yeah.

Let's do the good hats for our snail squad members.

And I think they came out looking really good.

I know that everybody here at the warehouse that has seen it has been like, that's awesome.

So yeah, a few of them have gotten them as well.

So yeah, a black hat in there and hats go for like 35 to 40 bucks.

Hats are expensive now that it's man.

So that right there was like half of the gift box price.

So that that was pretty wild.

Let's see.

What was else was in the gift box?

We had a t-shirt.

Yeah.

Yeah, we did.

Now we got everybody's sizes on as a cool design.

Did we have one of them in there or the t-shirts in there?

No, there's none in there because I didn't know the people's sizes.

That one.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's a fairly basic version.

It has, I think it says snail trail four by four across the chest.

And then it has the little snail trail logo centered smaller.

It's kind of pocket sized, but center back top.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so it's a, I have sort of the same shirt, but reversed.

Where you have the logo on the pocket.

Yep.

And then it has snail trail across the back.

And I was wearing it around the other day and I was like, nobody, like,

nobody knows or sees what's going on and you're like sort of talking to them.

So we did, uh, we did a flip of that.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so, um, and those are also like a dark Heather kind of charcoal-y color with black

ink on it.

So it's also sort of stealthy a little, like you wouldn't really, from a distance,

you wouldn't notice that it was, you would think it's just a dark charcoal shirt.

When you get a little closer, you notice there's something going on.

Yeah.

So that was, uh, I thought that was good.

Kind of sticking with that stealthy theme in a way.

That worked out.

Let's see what there was.

There was something else in there.

I can think of one other thing, but I thought there was more than that.

I had four items in it this time.

Me too.

But I don't remember we got one here.

The other, well, hold on.

Let's see.

What else we got?

Maybe not.

Maybe it was just those three.

Oh, there it is.

Yeah.

It's the coaster.

That's what it was.

So yeah, we did, um, some slate coasters for everybody.

This is something Tyler's been doing, um, and having a fun time with.

It's so cool.

I love the contrast that comes out when you laser slate.

Yeah.

It looks good.

It's just a snail trail and it says keep crawling on it.

And, um, these are unfinished.

Unlackered.

Unfinished.

Yeah.

So if you, um, if you want, just rub them down with some olive oil.

Kind of stain it, seal it in a little bit.

Yeah.

I use a spray lacquer on any of the ones I want to seal.

Yeah.

Okay.

Kind of thing.

Slate does really well with, with water and moisture.

It doesn't, doesn't deteriorate.

It handles moisture just fine.

But they are, it will absorb like a, um, sugary stickier liquids kind of thing.

So, um, it'll permanently become sticky and it's hard to get that cleaned off

unless you put a layer of lacquer on it first.

Got it.

Yeah.

So that's, uh, that was the other thing in there was just the little coaster.

So let's see the t-shirt or the hat was 35, 40.

The t-shirts 25 to 30.

The coasters probably five bucks.

57 something like that.

And then the last thing that is in there was it's a key.

An EDC key.

An EDC like that you would have on your key ring,

but it actually has a little hidden feature to it,

which is a little knif.

So not only are you carrying a knife around in your pocket,

but you could have a knife on your key chain as well.

Just a little guy, 11 and a quarter inches.

That's a one and a half, maybe one and a half.

Just a little hidden thing, uh, something we weren't allowed to send to, uh, to Canada.

Yeah.

You're not allowed to send apparently weapons that disguise as something else.

So I thought that was kind of funny.

You can only send weapons that are actual weapons, Jimmy.

Yeah.

I mean, I could send them a knife and say it's a knife,

but I can't send them a key that's disguised as a knife or knife.

Can you tell him it was a knife disguised as a key?

Maybe.

Key disguised as a knife.

That's what I meant.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

But, uh, yeah, this guy retails for about eight dollars.

Nice.

So yeah.

Is this a like a plated aluminum?

Yeah, I think so.

So it's either powder coated or anodized.

I think it's anodized.

I think it's anodized too.

Yeah.

I had motivation to putting ST four by four on all of them.

Like the hats and, uh, but I had time got it.

Well, time a little bit got away from me, but then I was like,

you got a snail trail hat.

You got a snail trail shirt.

You got a snail trail coaster.

Like maybe something shouldn't have our name on it.

I don't know.

No way.

Oh, laser Tyler on every one of them.

There you go.

That's not what you would put.

It's true.

Well, make all this noise right next to the mic.

I need two hands.

Yeah.

Those were the gift boxes.

Yeah.

So I hope that everybody enjoyed those.

Um, some fun stuff that you can use in your everyday life.

And your snail trail lifestyle package.

Um, I think that does it then.

Sure.

Should we take quick break and get into our weekends?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right.

Good.

Grab your favorite drinks, everybody.

I'm going to, I finished my drink.

I might need to go.

Oh, no, I got some water here.

Nice.

I got some chips too.

Jimmy's jealous with actual salsa instead of shrimp cocktail.

And, uh, grab your favorite snacks and we'll be right back with, uh,

kind of what we've been up to over the weekend.

Butter and honey.

Are you stuck inside?

Are you not sure where you want to go to explore?

We'll open the on X off road app.

It shows you all the trails around you and it tells you their difficulty.

Now you can quickly search out your next adventure or plan your next trip.

Download on X off road from the app store on X off road built for the adventure.

Hey, Jimmy.

Hey, Tyler.

Where do bees like to keep their stingers?

In their honey, in their honey.

Welcome back everybody.

Uh, uh, Jimmy just talked about peanut butter and honey and it made me think of one of Jason

Green's jokes.

Um, so we're back here today, Thursday's episode with, uh, kind of what we've been

up to where this is kind of like the fun part of the show where you guys get to live vicariously

through our poor decisions.

And, uh, we could tell you all about them.

It's great.

It works out well.

Uh, I, let's see, I went to the Rubicon.

Okay.

I took the little man.

Yeah.

Uh, what, what did I, what do we have for him?

Uh, the crotch goblin is one of his new nicknames.

Um, so he's, uh, took him out there.

Let's see.

I did, I got, uh, some install, a couple of installs done on Fiona.

Uh, I worked on the camper.

Okay.

And then clean Fiona.

So I got a couple of cool little stories.

Okay.

Yeah.

We went, uh, I went, I left the assistant, um, on her last day of school, uh, which I'm

not sure she was too happy about.

Um, but I left her and I went and got, went camping with some of my high school friends

that we all got together.

This is really the first time like we've all gone camping or a bunch of us went camping

in a long time.

So it's fun to get together.

So is your, I assume your high school friends and your college friends are two different

groups, right?

Yes.

Okay.

I just, I, for some reason that just occurred to me that your high school friends and your

college friends are two different groups because I've always just been like your college

buddies, right?

All my college friends.

Yeah.

And my college, I don't think I've heard you ever talk too much about your high school

friends.

Yeah.

No, I don't, I don't really talk to them that much.

Um, we don't as much, I'm finding out that they actually all live still kind of in the

area or most of them, uh, one of them lives in Georgia and some live kind of far away.

Um, one lives in Arkansas, um, Kansas or Kansas.

Yeah.

But the one from Georgia came out here to go on the camping trip and then there's some

other ones that live, uh, pretty close to me.

So, uh, maybe I'll be saying them more often.

Husman is one of my college or high school friends.

Okay.

That actually is knows all of my college friends as well.

Okay.

Uh, so that's kind of fun.

But, um, unfortunately, husband wasn't able to make it.

He had one of his dogs went to the ER and so he had a babysit, um, all weekend and poor

baby.

It's not, not last I heard it still wasn't doing that great.

So unfortunately, yeah.

So, uh, it was a bummer missing him.

Um, but yeah, let's see.

We had seven people there, uh, one of them was a friend of a friend.

Okay.

And so there was really six, including me, five other, five other guys from high school

there.

Um, and all four of them were my grade.

One of them was a younger brother that we also hung out with who was actually my younger

brother's grade.

So I knew him through my brother and through my friend, um, right?

Who's was the younger brother, but he always hung out with us too.

We were like, we were a good group of friends.

I didn't really become great friends with them until kind of junior year of high school.

Okay.

Um, and hung out with them then a lot and they were my off-roading guys.

They were the, they were the ones that we all had like out of Toyota, husband out of Toyota.

Um, one of them had a blazer.

One of them had a Jeep.

One of them had a power wagon.

You know, like we were all over the place and off-roading and we just all went and

had fun and went off-roading, went camping and man, all the like old school camping stories of

silly times back in the day all came out.

It was a lot of fun hanging out with them.

Those are great.

Yeah.

It was all, it was great reminiscing.

Um, so that was, it was a blast.

We went to, uh, we did some dispersed camping off of, um, Blinken on the area right now,

like Spalding Lake, um,

Pierce HV area, Bowman, Bowman, more Bowman side.

It was Bowman road out towards Spalding Lake.

Okay.

Uh, but we didn't get that far, um, because eventually that road turns into dirt and we,

I turned off before it even got to dirt.

Um, but we turned off a fire road, headed down to a little dispersed camping area that

one of the friends knew Brandon knew and he posted that up and we're like, yeah, let's just go there.

It was cool.

I drove up there.

Uh, my goal was to drive up there on Thursday to kind of reserve the spot,

make sure that nobody else could come in and claim it without us because it's,

you know, dispersed camping first come first serve.

Um, so I went up there, uh, and my goal was to leave like three and most of the other guys

were like kind of that same time zone.

So I started driving out at three and then I got a message saying, oh, I haven't left yet or

hey, I haven't gotten food yet or, you know, like, oh, I gotta go do these other things before I leave.

So I was already up almost all the way to highway 20 and I was like, well,

and this was, I was like five o'clock at this point.

Like I even left late and I was like, well, it doesn't sound like dinner is going to be here

anytime soon.

Cause I wasn't in charge of any food.

Like one of the guys just went and bought everything.

And so I drove up to a Cisco Grove and went to the subway and went

and got a subway and then I drove down to the campsite and found it fine.

It wasn't, it wasn't very difficult on X helped me out a bunch.

You know, I just plotted the point and mapped it and it worked out great.

Nice.

Uh, the only problem was it was the turn.

It didn't know the turnoff.

Like I was, I was down a dirt road and I had to take another dirt road to get down to the campsite

where it just told me to park on the road and then walk down to the campsite.

So I had to back up a little bit to get to the road that headed down.

But yeah.

So I got there.

I was like, sweet.

Well, I'm just going to pull out my chair and eat my subway and grab a beer and just

wait until the guys show up and not unpack really anything.

Cause I'm not quite sure that this is like, there's four or five spots.

I'm like, I don't know what spot we want or, you know, which,

if this is even the right spot, you know what, but man, I hopped out and the mosquitoes were

all over me.

Yeah.

It was bad.

But they don't even like me.

You typically, I know.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So if they don't like me normally, normally mosquitoes don't care for me.

Yeah.

I mean, can it would have been horrible for anybody else.

So I spent a good like half of that, three quarters of that in Bobcat.

I drove Bobcat up windows up, everything sort of shut and then killed all the mosquitoes

that made it inside.

Okay.

And I ate my subway and played Stardew Valley up there, waited for everybody to show up.

They showed up eventually and we, I was in the right spot and we made camp and I was parked

where they liked to shoot.

So I was like, well, I don't want you shooting my truck.

So I'll just back up.

So I backed up at the rooftop tent.

So I made the rooftop tent.

I had my, the Ironman fridge and my wagon tech batteries and a whole, all my camping

gear and everything.

And yeah, and made camp and we just sort of hung out and sat around the fire and just

relaxed and just bullshitted for the night.

The next day was really relaxed again, just slow morning.

Like my buddy Brandon made breakfast burritos in the morning.

We just sort of sat around.

We talked about when do we think the rest of the group was going to show up because

they're all coming in another car.

And one of the guys pulled out his 10, 22 little rifle and we sort of sited that in.

And so we all kind of did 10 rounds or I think they might have done more than 10.

They were shooting a little bit and I'll sit in a hammock and then they're like,

Hey, you want to shoot?

And I was like, sure.

So I came over and they like cited the gun in already.

And so I shot and they're like, dang, you're pretty good.

Like, like, I'm not not bad.

And so we went and got the like we were shooting at the NRA national approved 50 meter paper

sign thing and we stepped it off and stuff.

And I got a bullseye.

Nice.

Yeah.

So either they did a fantastic job in that the sights or I got them with the metal sites or

we were using, um, yeah, the iron sights off the gun.

Nice.

Yeah.

Or the rifle.

And so, but the thing was that we wanted to cite that in because that branded my buddy made

little like tokens or little like medallions for a bunch of different things over the weekend.

And one of them was the best like sharpshooter or something like that.

And so, um, yeah.

Yeah.

So the next day going forward here, we did a whole competition of and shooting.

And, um, yeah.

So, uh, the guys showed up like around three, uh, and they were pretty much it was like,

okay, set, set the tents up and relax.

And, and that was the day.

I mean, that was pretty much it.

I think, yeah, I think we went on a hiking trip, a small little hike around the area and

just checked out some of the sites.

And otherwise it was sitting around drinking, bullshitting, hanging by the fire.

I mean, it was super chilled.

The whole entire trip was super chill.

Um, the next day we played some botchy ball forest, botchy, which is fun in the forest.

Cause man, like on normal botchy courts, you know, it's like perfectly flat and smooth

and easy to do.

But like you roll a botchy ball out in the forest and it hits a rock and it goes the

90 degrees from the way it should go.

So a lot of it's kind of lobbying it and not lobbying it too far so that it just bounces

past everything, but not lobbying it into the rocks.

Cause it just might bounce a funny way.

So yeah, it was a lot of fun.

And we like crossed the creek and went up the hill and like went all over the place.

So it was a wild game.

And then, um, I think we sat down and they started, they were playing with their handguns

and shooting their handguns and stuff.

I think that was the third, this was Saturday.

And, um, yeah.

And there was a ricochet off of something.

They don't, they don't know what, and two people were like, ow, at the same time.

And that first they were like, oh, it was brass, like hot brass got thrown.

But one guy got hit in the shoulder and one guy got hit in the shin.

And they were both like the guy that got hit in the shin just, it was a little bit,

but the guy that got hit in the shoulder had like a pretty, he was a bleeder.

Wow.

Yeah.

So something happened.

I was over, um, I was in the hammock again.

I don't have, I didn't bring a gun.

I don't have a gun.

Um, and I don't like, I felt bad like ammo is expensive now.

Like, I don't want to be like, Hey, let me shoot this.

It's like a dollar shot.

You know, like, let me shoot 10 rounds, 10 bucks.

Like, I'm just like, I'm good.

Like, um, and so I, these, I was listening to some music.

I was sitting there relaxing and, um, and I, well, I had a earplugs in is actually what it was.

Um, and so I started hearing these guys come up and I go, like, oh, why aren't you guys shooting?

And one of the guy, Michael, the guy I didn't know, it's like, I got shot.

I'm like, yeah, funny.

What happened really?

He's like, no, really, I got shot.

Oh my God.

What?

So like hop out.

I pull out my first aid kit.

My other buddy pulls out his first aid kit.

It wasn't, it was just a fragment of something, right?

Like it either like shot a rock out at him or like the metal bounced off of something.

And, um, yeah.

And so it didn't even go into his skin really.

It like went, it's the, his t-shirt stopped it.

Okay.

But it punctured a big enough, like it punctured his skin still to make him bleed and make him

bleed.

So they were like, they, everybody stopped.

They reevaluated like, how did this happen?

What did, like, cause we, they knew the guy that was shooting.

They knew where he was shooting and, um,

They knew where the two guys were standing.

They knew where, yeah.

And so they like were, and they think the spinner didn't spin.

And so it like deflected it, like bounced it backwards and off or something.

So yeah.

So that was, you know, um, kind of a scary moment.

Yeah.

And everybody was wearing protection.

Everybody had eyeglasses on.

Everybody had the, you know, either the headphone things, you know,

their ears or, or ear plugs in, you know, and, you know, they're all standing

in appropriate distance.

They're all not professionals, but they're all skilled and, you know, smart about their gun

tactics, you know, and one person shooting sort of at a time.

And, you know, they're standing back and, you know, they're all being smart about it.

Yeah.

Just with this weird small fluke thing.

So yeah.

And then at that point they're like, well, okay, shall we do the shooting

competition?

So we're like, everybody's like, okay.

So we did 50 yards at the prone position and out of a back of a truck.

Okay.

Because we needed to be elevated because there was a little like hill down to where the target was.

Then we did 50 yards at a bench and then we did 20 to 25 yards standing.

Okay.

And we scored by the score sheet on the shooting target.

Out of my first shots, I missed, well, first of all, there's seven of us shooting.

We shot 10 rounds at each station, each person.

Every single one of us hit the paper every single time.

Nice.

Yeah.

I thought that was, I personally was like, damn, that's like good.

You know, for 50 yards, either we're prone or sitting and you're at minimum hitting the paper

every single time, every single person, like we were, I think they were like, it's 210 shots.

And we went 210 for 210 on the paper.

Nice.

Like I was like, that's good.

Like that's really good.

My first one, I had to fly off of the bullseye, but still on the paper area.

And then I had three around the bullseye.

Okay.

Like just being, being, being, and then there was some more scattered in between.

And that was on the prone position.

And then I got worse from there, but I still outshot.

Like I think I got fourth or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I've always been a really good shot.

Just never guns really haven't ever been a thing in my life.

Yeah.

And so it was fun.

We did good.

My buddy Jason ended up winning the shooting award.

He shot, he shot really bad the first round.

And then he just went really great the rest of the time.

And so he's not going to be prone.

Yeah.

I guess he just wasn't warmed up or didn't know the gun or something.

I don't know.

Yeah.

So he did really good.

And then yeah, a lot of the guys did really good.

And then some of them just, they just were so spread out.

They didn't like couldn't get anything really a great score because it was just spread out.

So that was pretty cool.

I won the rip snorter award, which is a thing they,

one of my friends called a fire one time because like you'll hear,

like when a fire is hot, you'll hear it kind of like snarling.

Okay.

And he, I don't know why, but he called it a rip snorter.

And so that's sort of been a joke for our friend group.

And I was the fire taker caretaker this weekend.

So I won the rip snorter award.

Did you use a flamethrower?

I didn't bring it.

Bummer.

I didn't need it.

So yeah, it was, yeah, there was a, we brought up wood and we,

there was some wood to scavenge and scavenge scavenge scavenge scavenge.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was good.

I mean, it was a good fun time.

Food was great.

It was great to hang out with old friends reminisce about old times,

talk about new things going on.

The one guy Michael that I didn't know who was a friend of a friend was really into whiskey.

And so I brought up four bottles of whiskey.

He ended up bringing four bottles of whiskey.

We never talked about it.

And him and I talked for hours about whiskey and trading off sips of each other's,

you know, we brought the bottles up to share and possibly die.

And, and yeah, we were just sipping the bottles of whiskey and hanging out and just

bullshitting.

He was a really nice, he was the one that got shot.

Really good guy.

It sounds so bad when you say that.

Yeah.

So he got a flesh wound.

Yeah.

But yeah.

So it was, it was a great time.

It was very low key.

I drank quite a bit, but it wasn't like I drank quite a bit

over a very long period of time.

So like I was never like blackout drunk or having, you know,

throwing up or having a tough time or whatever like the assistant likes to do.

But you didn't go home and throw up all over the bathroom.

That's good.

I did not throw up in the tent.

My buddy Joey, the one that came over from Atlanta, Georgia kind of area,

he had a bunch of backpacking gear, but he didn't, because he's flat coming over here.

So he brought all of his backpacking gear.

And I guess he brought two like thermo rests, like backpacking thermo rest.

And he kept going like, they're so slippery on top of each other.

Anytime I'm moving around, yeah.

So you wanted to like double them up, right?

And he put more time together or something.

So after the first night's sleep up there, you know, I was just like,

how'd you guys sleep?

And he was like, man, I slept like shit.

You know, like I would move in the thermo rest or sliding and like I couldn't,

like I had to sleep in a very awkward position just to hold them kind of in place.

But so I'm like conscious of holding them and not really sleeping.

And I was like, you want one of, I have two pads up in the rooftop tent.

You want like it's like, you know, it makes like a full, but I can take one of them out.

And it's like a skinny twin.

It's a long skinny twin.

You want it?

And he's like, serious?

And so I was like, yeah.

And so we went out, I pulled out the deep sleep for him and gave it to him.

And he, um, he ended up sleeping.

I'm like, how'd you sleep the next night?

He's like, that thing is so nice.

I was like, I forgot to tell you if it's too stiff.

There's like a button on the bottom, a bleeder valve.

Like you can just, you know, bring it down to your, whatever pressure you want.

He's like, no, it's perfect.

It's like, so nice.

He's like, I was so warm and you know, it was so comfortable.

It's, you know, I'm like, I really like it.

Yeah.

And so I slept on the other one up in the rooftop and yeah.

The only problem the entire weekend was where I parked.

It was perfectly in line with the wind coming from the fire.

So smoke just at your tent the entire time.

And Joey is on East coast time.

So he wakes up suit.

He was waking up at like six or something in the morning.

Right.

And then he would get out because he's awake and he would come like

start a fire and the fire and I had my side window open.

Oh no.

And it would just like go right to that window.

And I first night I'm like, I'm just zipping everything up,

like trying to keep the smoke out and stuff.

The next, the like the last night I just, I'm like, I'm closing all the windows.

Like I'm fully shutting, you know, they were up by their little stakes or whatever

and I'm closing it all down.

The last night I did, I wasn't smoked out in the morning.

That was it.

And so that was the only major bummer on my end for the whole trip.

So, but it was good.

It was great to hang out with everybody.

Great to see him.

You know, every time I see some of these guys, I'm like,

I got to hang out with you guys more often.

You're fun.

You're a good group of guys.

We have some good history, you know, so like Jason Moody,

him and I played soccer together, like growing up and, you know, it's just,

there's a lot of, a lot of reminiscing, good times that we've had as,

you know, when we were young, it's just fun to get the family together in a way,

you know, to get back together and have a good time again.

So it sounds like it's going to be an annual thing.

Like we're going to try.

We, this is the same group of guys that on Thanksgiving,

I tried to go play mud football with.

So we, we were doing mud football in high school and we continued it forever.

And we've gone from like tackle football and breaking people's wrists and ribs and like having

showing up at home, like completely drenched in muddy to now we're doing flag football because

we're old and evil and barely can run, but it's that same group of guys.

45 year olds and 25 year olds or and 45 year old bodies.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So, but every Thanksgiving I usually go to Santa Rosa.

So I don't, sometimes I'll like be able to go show up and say hi to people and then I'm leaving.

But lately we go over a day or so early.

So I haven't seen them in a while.

But so it was really good to, yeah, go on a camping trip and be able to spend

days with these guys.

So it was fun.

And I would, if you guys have a group of friends out there that, you know, like back

in the day friends, I would highly encourage you to round the herd again and, you know,

go out and have some fun.

So it was a blast.

Nice. Yeah.

That sounds like a fun weekend.

Yeah, it was.

It was a good time.

And then yeah, I came home and the assistant said that she was out with the secretary

watching a scary movie.

And I was like, okay, I guess I'm unloading the truck by myself.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was funny.

She, I guess the assistant texted her like the night before, day before, something like

that.

And she goes, oh, the assistant just texted me.

She wants to know if I want to go to the movie theaters.

And I was like, thanks for the invite.

Geez.

And she goes, no, she wants to go see a scary movie.

I was like, I'll stay home.

That works.

I can work on the car.

Yeah.

I can play with the cars.

You get out of here.

Go ahead.

Go, go.

Yeah.

So yeah, they got to go and watch a scary movie together.

Well, I stayed home and the kid just napped during that time pretty much.

But it was fun.

I had a, we, I took a read out to the Rubicon on Friday.

This last weekend was the Mad Hatter's annual all the way through Rubicon trip.

Okay.

So they start at Loon Lake and then go to the Springs in one day.

Oh wow.

On Friday and then hang out in the Springs all day Saturday and then head out Cadillac,

typically a Sunday morning.

Right.

And so I didn't want to necessarily go out because I was supposed to be going

out camping this weekend.

I was camping the weekend before and then I'm camping the following weekend with Lassen

and then I'm camping the following weekend with Rubathon.

Got it.

Yeah.

So I might as well be five weekends in a row or something like that.

Pretty much there.

Yeah.

So I was like, I'm just going to pass on this weekend.

I need to stay home and get some stuff done.

But if they're going in Friday, I'd love to just pull read out of daycare and

go play hooky for a day and go in with them as a day trip.

Well, don't you give your employees like mountain time?

I do.

Well, kind of the most of all the employees now salaried.

Okay.

So they get a vehicle savings account instead of mountain time.

Okay.

Cool.

Because I don't really pay them for their time anymore.

Right.

Yeah.

Sure.

So if they're hourly though, they get a small allotment every month.

Every eight hours a month to disappear and go up to the mountains.

Yeah.

But I pay them.

You give them a day to go play.

So you took your day.

I guess I took my day.

And so got up there, met up with Mad Hatter's at Lune.

I was one of the last people to pull in.

They like to meet up at seven.

And leave by 11.

No, they meet up at seven, try and leave like seven 30.

Okay.

Chevron Fresh Pond, it does not open until six.

Oh.

So I've done this multiple times now where I'm like, okay, cool.

Yeah, I'll just get breakfast and gas up at the Fresh Pond

and then head up the hill by a house and meet you guys at seven.

Yeah.

I can't do that because they don't open until six.

So I got to wait for them to open to get breakfast and coffee.

And then it's about an hour and 15, hour and 20 maybe to get up there.

So I'm usually getting up to Lune seven 30, seven 35 on this trip.

Sure.

And I always forget that.

And so no, I drove up in the Fiona.

Okay.

Yeah.

What time does Georgetown's market open?

I want to say they're a little err.

No, I think they're about the same time.

Six or six 30.

Okay.

That's still about an hour.

It's still, it's about the same time either way,

whichever way I go.

Right at that point in Sacramento where it's,

I think it's a difference of like five minutes.

Well, it doesn't matter from Sacramento.

What it matters from is the foods and gas.

That is true.

It doesn't matter when you leave your house,

but from a Fresh Pond Chevron or Georgetown's market,

the Wharton, it's about an hour to an hour and 15 to get to the spillway.

Yep.

And so they're timing it.

Their timing doesn't work for your food stop.

Yeah, exactly.

My coffee run in the mornings.

But so I got there.

I was almost the last person to arrive and got aired down

and everybody started going in and they're like,

Hey, Tyler, do you mind running caboose for the trip today?

And we had, I didn't count how many cars,

but it had to have been close to 20.

Oh wow.

Vehicles.

And so there, I was like, ah, normally, yeah,

I didn't bring a radio though.

They're like, really?

Radio Tyler?

I was like, yeah, I know it's embarrassing.

But he goes, well, I have a radio you can, you can borrow.

And I was like, okay, I'd be fine.

He goes, that way, you know, when you need to turn around

and leave for the day, you can just,

you're at the back of the line and turn around and go.

I was like, yeah, no problem.

I can catch up to somebody and give them the radio

and take off kind of thing.

So that's what we did.

And it was a great day.

Beautiful weather.

Absolutely gorgeous outside to go up and run that day.

It was super sunny.

It was a great weekend.

Yeah.

Super sunny, not a cloud in the sky,

which typically at higher elevations, that just,

that hurts me more into the direct sunlight like that

at higher elevations.

But usually I found, I came to realization on this trip.

Oh, I'm ready.

Usually on these trips, I'm, I'm having a good time

because every time we're stopped and having to, you know,

spot people through gatekeeper or up the steps

or up whale bones or whatever it is.

I'm usually out chatting with people, right?

Chatting with people or helping them get through

so we can keep the line moving kind of thing.

But this time I had a kid with me and a toddler who I can't just

like let jump in and out of the car super quickly and easily.

And when he's out of the car, I have to be,

keep a close eye on him.

Cause I don't know if he knows stay off the trail

and be aware of his surroundings or he doesn't have,

he still doesn't know what a snake looks like.

Looks like good bear food.

Yeah. So every time we stopped, I just stayed in the car.

Sure.

And we'd be stopped for 20, 15, 20 minutes at a time sometimes.

And Reed was starting to get pretty impatient whenever we stopped.

Like as long as we were moving, he was pretty more,

pretty much cool with everything.

But when we stopped for 15, 20 minutes,

he would get pretty antsy in the seat.

And so by the time we got to soup bowl,

and we were pretty spread out throughout the trail too.

Like I think when I was at Nobby's Rock,

coming through Nobby's Rock,

which is that tight squeeze right before soup bowl,

the front of our line was pretty much at little sleuths.

Wow.

We were very spread out.

There wasn't a whole lot of traffic on the trail that day.

So it wasn't like we were causing any traffic issues,

and we were letting people buy as they needed,

and they were letting us buy.

It was all the traffic stuff was great that day.

But things were just kind of taking so long

that by the time we got to soup bowl,

we had been on the trail for about three hours.

Whoa.

Yeah.

So it was, we got on the trail about 730, 740,

and I hit soup bowl about 1030, 1040.

Okay.

So by that time, we were kind of sitting in the back waiting

for traffic to get through that little rocky section

before soup bowl, and Reed was starting to flip out

and get really uneasy.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm good here, guys.

We're just going to pull over at that little camp spot

on the right hand side right before soup.

So I pulled into there, set everybody by.

We were going to hang out there for a couple hours,

have lunch, and hang out,

and then turn our head back out on our own.

Yeah.

So I handed off the radio, said bye to everybody,

and then started setting up lunch and had a great time

just hanging out in that little camp area with Reed

for about two hours.

Okay, cool.

We did walk up to soup bowl because there was a group

that had come in after the Mad Hatters

and were playing on soup bowl for a while.

So I took Reed up there and there was a mini truck

trying to get up there, first gen mini truck pickup,

trying to get up soup bowl and just Toyota pickups

seemed to have a hard time because they're so narrow.

Yeah.

A lot of what pulls you up soup bowl

is getting that passenger side sidewall down on the rock, right?

And just Toyota axles are so narrow that it can be difficult

for Toyota axled vehicles to get up soup bowl.

And this guy was having that problem.

And so he started getting impatient to the point

where he was making the truck hop on soup bowl

and just throwing stuff out of his bed.

Yeah.

And Reed is just standing there.

He starts pointing at everything going, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.

And everybody started laughing around.

It was pretty funny, super cute.

So we hung out there for about half an hour

and the guy that we watched for that half hour

didn't make it up as far as I know.

We went back to our little camp spot, had a couple more snacks,

got some water and then packed up everything and went out.

Okay.

On the way out, I took his car seat from the back seat

and put it in the front seat.

So that I could interact with him, right?

And we could play around while we're just cruising out on our own.

And it was really funny because on the way in,

every time the air compressor cycled to charge the rear locker,

I'd be like, Reed, are you tooting?

Yeah.

Tooting.

And so on the way out, every time it came on and cycled,

he'd look over me and go, dad, dad, tooting.

I was like, dude, you're adorable.

So there was that.

And then on the way in as well,

and I got him starting to do it kind of towards

as we were getting to Soup Bowl.

But I'd be like, Reed, do you want to go vroom vroom?

And he'd be like, vroom vroom.

And it's like super gargly voice too.

So every time he did that, I would flip the throttle a couple of times.

And so on the way out, he would kind of look over me and go, dad, dad, vroom, vroom.

And be like, all right.

We'll have his window rolled down and vroom, vroom.

And you got a big kick out of that too.

That's awesome.

He ended up falling asleep on the way out for about 45 minutes.

And that's about how long it took me to get from Soup Bowl to the top of the bowl.

And I was going at a pretty slow pace because he was asleep and like,

I hit one bump pretty hard before he fell asleep.

And I was like, oh, that was a hard hit.

And he just kind of laughed and went bumpy.

I was like, yep, bumpies, dude.

And then he kept going more bumpy, more bumpy.

So I figured he was okay with the bumpies just fine.

And he fell asleep.

And when we pulled up to the top of the bowl, there was a few people coming up over

through Gatekeeper that I knew.

So there was a few people from RTF, Greg Castro, and a couple other guys.

They were heading into the trail because they were going to do maintenance on old Sleuths.

What are they doing down there?

I don't know.

Just I didn't ask them maintenance.

Yeah, I just figured general maintenance.

But then after like they left, I started thinking about, I was like,

that's like the one part of the trail that never gets maintenance,

that they're like intentionally leaving to be as difficult or anything as you want.

Because there's not really a whole lot of like water drainage to destroy.

It's in this like really narrow loose rock canyon, I don't even know crevice almost.

But they've done a lot of work there in the past.

Well, the whole corner with all the rocks added.

At the bottom of big Sleuths.

Old Sleuths.

Oh, old Sleuths.

Never mind.

Back up.

I cancel.

I was trained.

Yeah, I never mind.

Yeah.

Okay.

So they were going to do something in.

They're doing some kind of maintenance in old Sleuths.

I was like, okay, cool, whatever.

And then following them or just in front of them was Keith, one of the El Dorado Sheriff.

Oh, yeah.

So, Keith, Keith, and then his partner for the day was Chris,

and sat there and chatted with them for almost 30 minutes.

Oh, yeah.

And chatted with them about a few different things.

And we started talking about the Explorer program that El Dorado Sheriff County,

El Dorado County Sheriff does.

Okay.

And it's a kids program.

It's a community outreach kids program.

And it's a few of the El Dorado County Sheriff go and do kids outreach.

They meet every Wednesday evening and kids come out and learn something about the outdoors.

And it's kind of all taught and run by El Dorado County Sheriff.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

And so they have a first gen forerunner that they tick the kids wheeling on the Rubicon

and other trails once a month in, and they didn't have any gear for airing up and airing down.

Oh.

So I was like, yeah, I'll donate some gear to that.

Hell yeah, in the end.

So then I was asking, you know, what other kind of stuff do you do?

They're like, we take them whitewater rafting, we take them rock climbing, we take them scrambling,

we take them hiking, wheeling, all sorts of different things.

Camping, so they understand how to make fires responsibly and how to tie knots with ropes

and use rope to do work and all, and how to make use of different outdoor tools and resources.

And I was like, that's super cool.

And he goes, yeah, we really try and target kind of like at-risk youth.

Sure.

So I can at-risk youth program for El Dorado County.

And I'm like, that's super cool, dude.

So got to donate some gear to them.

They came by the shop on Monday, came down here to Sacramento.

So got to see them and again on Monday and get them some gear and talk a little bit

more about the program.

So good deal.

Yeah. Made it out of the trail, just fine, no issues.

And I was out of the trail, 115, 130, something like that.

I aired up down by the smud campground rather than in the spillway, because there was a

bunch of trucks and trailers parked in all the shade spots.

So I was like, I'm just going to keep going until I find shade.

And I found a bunch of shade right there next to the smud campground, north campground there.

Aired up and then went back home and I was home before 4pm.

So that's a good day.

I left the house pretty much at 430 a.m. and got home before 4pm, 11 hours, 11 and a half

hours and got a fun day trip.

And Reed got to be out on the trail and play in Dad's truck and go wheeling and get all

the rooms and the tootings in and he had a really good time and I really enjoyed it.

I think we would have had a better time if we had just been like solo and just like drove

into Buck and then back out for the day or drove into spider and then back out for the day,

something like that.

Because once we were on the move, on the way out, you had no issues, right?

But it was just like all that, the long stoppage and waiting on the way in that he was

having issues with.

So that's the mini assistant had that problem when we did that once no run.

And it was like everybody was getting stuck.

There's just a lot of problems.

And you know, it's like she every time we stopped, she wanted to hop out and play in

the snow, but I was like, you can't.

I don't know how long we're going to be here.

Like we're probably going to move soon, you know, and then we start moving and go like

five feet.

And I was like, okay, but yeah, it's the waiting that's the hardest part.

And even the assistant will say that, right?

And that's what the secretary always said, right?

And it never really dawned on me until just then that this trip, how much the waiting

around sucks, because I'm typically like getting out of the car and doing something

with the time waiting.

All right.

Yeah.

So yeah, it was a fun trip.

I'm looking to do more.

So with him, so he had a good time.

I had a good time.

It wasn't really that difficult per se to deal with the toddler, the two and a half

year old out on a trail for the day and get him up in the morning and get him in the car

and everything.

So it was fun.

I'm looking forward to doing more now.

Perfect.

Sounds great.

Yeah.

So that was Friday.

And then Saturday and Sunday, I pretty much just kind of worked on the vehicle, stayed at home.

We were supposed to be getting our camera system upgraded at home for the security system.

Yeah.

And so they gave us an appointment time scheduled like 8am to noon.

And then I got a phone call, a phone text at like 9am that said,

hey, I'm on my way over for your appointment.

And I was like, cool.

See you soon at 9.03.

I got another text that said, hey, I'm not sure what happened, but you're no longer on

the schedule.

Sorry.

Have a good day.

And I'm like, what?

Excuse me.

So I was like, are you still coming?

What's going on?

Like I cleared my schedule to be home all day for this.

And I don't have anything else going on specifically so we can make sure this gets done.

And he goes, yeah, I don't know.

You're not on schedule anymore.

So I can't come out there.

And I'm like, can you talk to your boss, please?

Or can I talk to your boss?

Do I need to call customer service?

Somebody needs to come out here today.

I've been waiting for two weeks for this.

Yeah.

And he was like, oh, I'm talking to my boss about it, blah, blah.

I was like, all right.

So I gave him till about 11am before I called customer service to be like, what is going on?

Why, why is this happening?

Why am I not on the schedule and get me back on as a schedule, please?

And so they, the guy, the installer, the tech told me, yeah, sorry, we're not

going to be able to come out and see you today.

Tough luck, essentially.

Yeah.

And then customer service said, yeah, I'm not sure what happened.

It doesn't have any record of you being on a schedule.

And I was like, I was absolutely on a schedule.

I've got email to prove it and I've got text messages to prove that I confirmed the appointment.

I have a test text message at nine saying he's on his way and then one at three saying it's not.

Yep.

I mean, they're like, sorry, I don't know what happened.

You're on the schedule.

We made a plan for this coming up Friday.

So the, what is that the 19th tomorrow from when this episode airs?

I'm like, all right.

Thanks for wasting my time guys and having to figure this all out on my own and all this

other stuff.

Like, can I get a bill credit or something as an apology for all this?

And they're like, no, I was like, what the fuck?

So I had to call my sales rep that had set up everything.

And I was like, Hey, Carlos, I don't know if you know, but here's the shenanigans

that had been going on this morning.

He goes, wow, I'm so sorry about that.

Can I give you a bill credit or something to make it up to you?

Like, I'm so sorry for wasting your time and all this.

I was like, that'd be awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So he did it after I was like, wow.

And so I was like, whatever, put the kid down around noon.

And then went to start working on my chase light for Fiona.

Yeah.

And about two o'clock, one 32 o'clock, a random tech showed up at my house.

I was like, yeah, I'm here for your install appointment.

I'm like, what is going on right now?

I was like, whatever, get it done.

Now you're here, you're here, get it done.

So anyways, they got the cameras swapped out.

The tech was super confused about what I was talking about, what was going on.

And I was like, you don't know, you're too low on the totem pole.

Like just thank you for coming out.

I'm super glad you guys are getting it done before next Friday.

So we don't have to worry about it anymore.

It's all done.

I'm home all day today to make sure that this got done.

So you're here.

Let's get it done.

And that was, that was that story.

It was just, I was amazed as to, I don't want to say the incompetence,

but just the lack of knowing what's going on within a company.

I'm just, I'm amazed at how that works within other companies.

That's crazy.

So anyways, let's start working on the chase light.

I found our buddy on Instagram, his kids used to help out with more flight stuff.

The, the Yuba city guys, Clint, he has a fourth gen four runner.

And so he sent me an Instagram account and a link to some items for a fourth gen four

runners. Cause he knew that I was looking for some rear lighting options.

Right. So I think you talked about this, the lumberjack engineering

is this dude's Instagram account and he 3d prints a carbon, I believe carbon filter,

carbon fiber 3d print things for fourth gen four runners.

They're carbon fiber.

That's, that's a carbon fiber filament, type filament.

It's, it's a much higher heat rated than a PLA or PETG, which are kind of your,

your more common 3d print filaments.

So they can withstand a lot higher heat, more abuse than the common types of filaments.

And so he's essentially like the Lee limb for fourth gen four runners.

Right. So he just has a ton of stuff, a 3d printer for fourth gen four runners that

incorporates different lighting stuff. And so he has a chase light that you take out

the third brake light from the fourth gen four runner and replace it with this whole housing

that houses two Baja S2 pros brake light and a wolf box camera.

Oh yeah. Perfect.

So I was like, that's freaking sweet. And it looks like it's a pretty clean install.

You don't really need to cut any holes into the third brake light, the spoiler, the tailgate.

You can run the wiring through the stock things.

You just have to figure out how to get the wiring from the chassis into your cab.

Yeah. However you want to do that.

And so I didn't want to pull all the interior panels off and bring the wiring through the

firewall and then run it to the back of the vehicle. So I ran it along the frame rail

and then came up and punched a hole through the Alpha Rex headlight on the back of the tail light

on the backside of it because the fourth gen four runner tail lights have three different

light bulbs in it. Right. So there's three different holes in that rear corner.

The Alpha Rex only utilizes one of those holes, but it has like a flange to go in the other

two holes so that it's kind of sealed. Yeah, centers. It's centers and seals in there. So I

just drilled a hole through the flange mating surface and pumps the hole, the wiring in through

that way. Okay. Worked out pretty good. It didn't interfere or open up the Alpha Rex

tail light at all because I didn't go into the housing. I just went through the flange

surface part of it. So I got the wiring up into the corner, ran it up through the ceiling real

quick and up out through the tailgate wiring. And I had to pull the spoiler off and then

create my own wiring harness to go from a plug at the spoiler end to the lights up in the center

of the spoiler and then connect all that together and have it run the way I wanted to run. So I did

all the wiring and essentially ran most of the wiring and everything on Saturday. And then on

Sunday, I installed the whole housing into the third break, bolted that down, connected the

wires to the plugs that I created and reinstalled the spoiler and closed up all the panels and

everything. And it turned out great. Okay. I'm very impressed with it for making use of a stock

third brake light location and being able to now have chase lights, a mount for the wolf box

camera and brake lights still. It turned out really good. I'm pretty happy with it. So

I ran it all into the new switch panel. So I have the chase lights on one of the buttons

now on the switch panel. And if it's like, I don't know if I need to have it be a strobe,

the cool thing about that switch panel is I can set that one button to strobe and have it be a

strobe for if there's an emergency situation, I need to use Fiona as an emergency alert on

side of road or something. So super happy with how that turned out. While I was running all that,

I had to rerun the wolf box camera wiring. Yeah, sure. So I cleaned all that up and ordered

one of Lee's mounts. Yeah. For the wolf box, it's the dash mount for the wolf box,

the review mirror, the display of it. And then he also has like a cord cover

for it that covers all the cords that go into the top of the, the review display.

And at first I was like, I don't really care about that. I don't really mind seeing the cords

but like now that I have it on there, I was like, actually it looks really clean and pretty good.

Yeah. Covering the cords that makes it look clean. Yeah. It was, it was impressive. The

amount of difference I was not expecting just to have this simple little cord cover

for the cords on the wolf box. So, but I got all that up and running.

And yeah, the wolf box wiring got cleaned up a little bit from our hasty install at Tech at

Trail Hero X. Exactly. Yeah. That at Trail Hero X, they gave us like an hour to install

three cameras and the, the review mirror set up and, and the biggest problem I think was that

didn't work exactly with our setup. Well, yeah.

Our review, they wanted us just to strap it over the mirror, the existing mirror that's in place

and Fiona's mirror is flaccid. Fiona's mirror barely held up the mirror as is, not alone

this electronic screen. And so we had to be creative with how to mount it. So that took

a lot of time. Yeah. And to wolf boxes credit, they do sell a full replacement OEM thing. So

they make a full replacement thing that you can pull your review mirror off and put

a bracket to go on that metal plate that's on your windshield, right? They make one of those, but

I hate the Lexus's video review mirror. Yeah. But I really like the wolf box down on the dash

for some reason and I don't. And the only thing I could think of is that because I'm taller,

like my eyesight, my vision is in line with the up high on the windshield video camera.

And the video camera is it's a, I don't know if it's a brighter display or what, but it bugs me

being right there in my vision. Whereas if I put it down on the dash, it doesn't bug me at all.

Yeah. But you driving Fiona, you're like, yeah, it bugs me on the dash. It does.

So I wonder if it's the same thing. It's now in your eye, your eyesight vision right there.

I don't, I really dislike things that obscure my vision. Yeah. Okay. Right. And so like the,

the ditch lights, like I'd never run ditch lights. I hate ditch lights because they obscure your

vision. They do. They just don't let you see things that are happening around you. I even get

bugged out by my stupid damn A pillar. Cut this off. You know, it's like sometimes there's

been times when I'm like, gonna go out and like pull out into traffic or something. And there

was a car hidden by the A pillar, you know, so it's like all these things that obscure my vision.

I'm like, no, I wouldn't do that. Right. And for me, I'm not as tall as you are.

You know, so putting things on the dash, it makes it so that I can't, you know,

I don't see beyond the hood as easily and up high, it's not necessary. I'm never looking

up to at the road. If I am, I'm in a bad spot. So that's, that's my thing is I'm,

I'm trying to look down at the road, but when things are blocking the view of the road,

then I don't want them there. Yeah. I have noticed in, in driving Fiona versus driving

Kermit, Fiona has way less vision than Kermit does. And I've noticed that Fiona's hood is

up a lot higher than Kermit's. Kermit's just, it seems like it looks down. It just dives right

off. Right. I mean, it's the same. It's almost Bobcat to Charlotte as, as Kermit is to Fiona,

right? You know, we're talking, I mean, there, there are a few years, Fiona, the fourth Gen

forerunner and Charlotte, my third Gen Tacoma are a few years apart, but I mean, it's the same,

more or less the same thing. You know, so yeah, going from Bobcat to Charlotte, like I'm,

it's the hood's higher. I didn't, I specifically, I didn't want, well, I wanted the TRD package,

first of all, but I didn't want this hood sport because of, well, one of the main reasons was

it didn't have an E locker. The second thing is I didn't want the hood scoop because it

comes up, it raises up, it blocks more of my view. So I was like, no.

Yeah. And I definitely, there were times on Friday, rolling through the,

I think this is the first time I've been through the Rubicon on that section of trail with Fiona.

No, it's not. We drove it, we drove it with the,

You did the more flavor. Yeah. But there was definitely times where I was like,

I know there's a rock here. Where is it? Where, I know it's coming up. I can't see it,

but I know it's here because my experience on this trail. And then I would hit it. And I was

like, there it is. And so it's like, I don't think that I would like Fiona for exploration

on trails, but for going through the Rubicon, since then trails I'm familiar with,

it's fine, but I definitely miss the amount of sight. You just need to learn to read further

ahead, right? It's now another learning curve where you have to start, you know, at some point,

you're, you're looking at the one rock, the one next rock that you have to be at, but then

in the, once you start understanding your vehicle and your sight range and how to drive,

you start being able to go to the second rock or the third rock, or like I'm five or six rocks

now ahead. And I know where I need to put my tires by the time I'm getting to these.

You just need to be further ahead with Fiona than you are with Kermit.

Yep. So, and that's just a comfort level thing. That's just an or an experience with

an experience level and comfort level. And surprisingly, I haven't noticed that the Wolfbox

review display, the screen on the dash has really like hindered more of my view than what the hood

does. Sure. And that's kind of makes sense because I'm up, I'm up higher than it looking down,

right? So as long as you can see the end of the hood, as long as your end of your hood is not

being obscured by something, then I'm fine with it. Yeah. So anyways, I was happy with the Wolfbox

all day, Friday, kind of cleaned up the wiring and finished up the chase lights and the lighting

on the back on Sunday. Saturday, I also flushed out the Lance water tank, the fresh water tank.

Okay. And I cleaned it out. So I need to... Denshers? Yep. No, I got an actual RV fresh water

tank cleaner thing. Okay. So the water tank has a little bit of water in it right now, but I just

need to completely drain it and then refill it at this point. Let's see. I did all that and then

I washed Fiona on Monday, I think it was, and Reid got to help with that. So it was fun. Had a

good weekend. Yeah, sounds like it. I do still really, really, really want to redo the valve body

on Fiona. Okay. I do not like automatic transmissions for rock-crawling, man. There's so

many times when I would be either going downhill or something and all of a sudden torque converter is

like, oh, not enough torque in the system. I'm going to go to neutral and it's like, no, no, no,

you need to be controlling the descent of the vehicle right now. What do you do? Even if you

were in like first gear? In first gear, it wasn't do it as bad. There were still a couple situations,

but like if there's no rocks to be crawling over, I don't want to be in first gear to go down this

long descent. Yeah. So I'd rather be in like second or third gear and have the vehicle engine

control the descent down the descent. And there was a bunch of other times, even in first gear,

coming up and over, cresting over some rocks, I'd kind of get up and it'd be kind of bound up,

bound up, get over the rocks and then, you know, get to the top and it'd just go right down off

the other side of the rock. And I'm like, stop disconnecting the fucking drivetrain on me, man.

Yeah. So I'm very much, I think after I finish unfucking Fiona and fixing the things to make it

where it should really be as a adventuring or rock crawling vehicle, the valve body swap

with the manual lockup torque converter is going to be, I think, my first upgrade for it.

Okay. So nice. Yeah. I'll just got to finish the other stuff first. Yeah.

Yeah. Any updates on Kermit?

No, I dropped off the, I thought I had dual cases. I could have sworn I had dual cases.

Apparently I just have a rear case. So I dropped off the rear case with Jason, my spare,

and then Ryan has enough spare parts that we can build a front case for it. Sure. And so Jason's

going to put all that together kind of once he gets back from his vacation. Okay. And once he

gets back, he's allowed to go on vacation. I don't know the dude. I complained against it.

I wrote him up to his boss, complained to his company. And he's still doing it anyway. Someone

listened to him. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, once he gets back from the vacation, he'll start working

on setting up the spare dual cases that way I can swap him out and Kermit. And then he's also

going to do the rear ring, opinion and gears for Fiona. Okay. Let's get back. So I just need

them to last until he's back. It shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't, but we all might just have

Rubathon really is the only thing between by the time when he gets back, I'll be using Fiona for.

So yeah, Kermit doesn't really need to get used until last weekend of August. So I kind of,

that's kind of the next trip that he's planned for. Okay. So we have until then to fix the dual

cases and fix the drivetrain. And then Fiona has a quite a few trips, I think planned for the

throughout the summer. Okay. Yeah. Sweet. Yep. Sounds like a good weekend. Yeah. Next up, I think

this weekend I'm going to get the knuckle lights set up on Fiona. Yeah. I'm taking Fiona to Brad

tomorrow to unfuck the rear swing out. So we'll get that hopefully all done. And I, I think Brad

will do an awesome job. We've been talking about a couple different things for it. So

and how to, how to fix it. So I think I'm gonna drop off Fiona there. I'm, I don't know. I don't

have the plan is for me to hang out and help with it, which I've kind of cleared my schedule

tomorrow to do that. Or if you just want me to drop it off and be like, get the fuck out of

my way. I'm going to let me would do this. Are you toning it up there? I hadn't, I wasn't not

planning on towing it up there, but I should probably talk to Brad and be like, are you

wanting me to drop it off or do you want me to hang out? So we'll see. I need to talk to Brad

about it. So you're going to get a ride back here with from one of your coworkers. I was going to

Uber if I needed to. That's funny. I was like, I know one of the, like, well, I know somebody

that lives up in that area that works down here. Yeah, but he's usually here like six

30 in the mornings. Yeah. So the next, the project for Fiona this week is the rear swing

out and maybe the knuckle lights, maybe rock lights as well. We'll see. Just depends on

the rear swing out how quickly that gets done. Okay. Yes. Samantha is, I've got some work ahead

of her on her. I dug through a lot of the parts that I've already ordered for Samantha and I

couldn't find a power steering box frame mount. Okay. So I went on the frame stiffeners. Yeah.

So I went on to Yoda, Yoda masters. Okay. And I purchased a FOTR or FO front. What is it the

front range off road? Okay. One from them and I ordered it like, and then within hours it said

your packages is getting is being shipped or something like that. So fingers crossed it gets

here before today, Thursday. And then hustle nuts and I could start really setting up the

steering side of things because the steering is our next step. Okay. And once we get the steering

box in place and figure it out where that's going to go. And then I can set up the steering and

what one is that I always mix all these up, but not the drag link. Okay. I can set up the drag

link and everything. And then I think I need to put the body back on. Nice. And start checking

clearances there. Checking clearances. Well, definitely going to have some tires. Well,

not tires. Just I'm going to have issues with the power steering box because I'm pushing it

far forward. Yep. Pretty far forward. And then I'm going to have issues with the shock hoops and

try to figure out that situation. And I really need the body on to see how things are going to lay

out and where they, where's everything going to go. I did get a lot of great feedback from

everybody in regards to the shocks and the shock locations. It really sounds like I need to try

to lower it on the axle is the first step because I just have the shock eyelet attaches more or less

to some things that I tacked on to the top of the axle housing. So I need anything I can do to lower

if I can lower that one to two inches, that should be, that should solve all the problems.

Nice. Yeah. One to two inches usually solves life problems. I agree. An extra one to two, I should

say. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So we'll see how that kind of what happens there. And yeah. And then I can

give an update on Samantha. I do really want to try and pick Bobcat after driving Bobcat. I have

a few gripes about it. And mainly it's something's out of balance. Whether it's the drive shaft or

the tires. It's probably a drive shaft again. And I think it's the drive shaft too. So I want to

put the, I want to put the two piece drive shaft back in. I don't have it. the original

one. I need to get one and get the joint for the middle. Why can't that joint skip to my mind too?

Carbon joint? What's the name of it? The double carton? No. Well, it doesn't really.

It'll need a double. There's a different name for that specific joint. It's escaping me too right

now. Everybody's screaming at their radio at the moment. Yeah. So it'll separate the drive shaft

that comes out of the T-case, goes to this joint, and then the joint will go down to my axle. So I

really want to do that because that's going to lift my drive shaft up and it will hopefully

strike less on rocks. So I also want to, I've been talking to Metal Cloak a little bit about

their piggybacks and their shocks. And so I want to take the shocks off a bobcat and articulate it

up and stretch it out and see what the max... See how much travel you actually get when you're not

limited by your shocks? Yeah. Max and Min's. And then I can talk to Will over at Metal Cloak and

talk to him about their six packs and see what might work for bobcat.

You need to get the new six pack blacks just because it's black. It's black. Yeah. Sure. I'll

work on that. Okay. Cool. So yeah. So that's the bobcat stuff. Bobcat's up and running. I mean,

I drove it all the way up to Bowman Lake Road and down on Bowman Lake Road and drove it all around.

And it did great. It did fine. So it just has some little things that need to get tweaked and

to make it a little more comfortable of a drive. And I think it'll be good. Cool. I did do one other

thing that I did this week. I did one more thing that I did this weekend. We got a shotgun seat

for Reed for a bicycle. Oh, yeah. So I picked up a new bike. I think I talked about that already.

And then we picked up one of the seats where the kid sits in front of you.

And then a separate set of handlebars that goes on your handlebars that he holds onto you.

Okay. And has like foot pegs, bike seat and handlebars. So when you turn, does it turn his

handlebars? Oh, cool. And so we took him out on that Sunday morning and he was very hesitant at

first. And so it's kind of like waddled on the bike with him there and held got

him used to it. And then once we started actually like pedaling and going, he was so into it. Nice.

He had a really good time with it. He loved it. So I'd highly recommend if you have a kid that

likes the outdoors or is interested in bicycles at all, get one of these kids, this toddler

shotgun seats. You can find the cheap knockoff versions on Amazon for like 40 to 50 bucks.

Yeah. And it looks like it's the exact same thing as what I got. I got one of the name

brands though, cause I wanted the warranty and service, blah, blah, blah. So, uh, but it's

highly for how much fun he had. I'm like, this is going to be cool. We're going to,

we're going to go do this a lot more often now. So yeah. Yeah. I saw there was a seat in there

cause I think last time you were complaining how you needed a new seat.

I'll do that. The seat on my bike sucks. It hurts so bad. So I got a new seat now.

Do you have to ride funny? Cause he's kind of between your legs.

I thought that it was going to be awkward riding, but it's really not bad.

My knees don't really come up as far into him. Like they kind of come up to just underneath his

butt. So I kind of rub the side of his legs a little bit, but it's really not awkward at all

like I thought it was going to be. Yeah. I was very, I'm very impressed with how easy it was to ride

the bike rather than pulling him in a trailer behind me and how much more fun he had up there

because we can interact while we're, while we're riding around and he can point stuff out.

And he kept saying the whole time, uh, dad, a big old bike over and again,

big old bike, big old boy. And then we'd go over the speed bumps. So we called those bumpies as well.

Yeah. And more bumpies, more. So we had to go hunt down all the speed bumps in the neighborhood.

Nice. But yeah, he really enjoyed it. I'd highly recommend it. If you guys have a toddler that's

interested in bicycles or roaming around the outdoors. It was a very fun way to do it. And

I'm excited to do more of it. So yeah, I know in the mini assistant was like 678 years

old somewhere in there, um, probably more 78 Uh, she, we had the trailer thing on the

bicycle. And then when we got older, maybe around 10, we still were using that, but she was still

kind of, she would ride her own bike. But if we went on long bike rides, she kind of, ah, maybe

not that old, but somewhere around, let's say around eight, she was still on the trailer.

But the thing was the assistant was like, actually, she really helps.

She really pedals. And I can feel it helping me move along, you know, like, cause when they would

come to a hill, you know, they go, okay, mini assistant, you got a pedal and get us up this

hill. You know, they'd both would crank up the little hill or whatever. And I was like, oh,

okay, interesting. Nice. So there could be an advantage to the trailer. Cause then you get

the kid pedaling. Our trailer didn't have a pedals on that. So it was just a lounge

hangout inside of a trailer and eat your snacks. Oh, it was the kind of covers or whatever. Oh,

this one was like a bicycle, just no front forks. Like the front forks were attached to the seat

post or something. So yeah. And then it had pedals and everything, but they had its own

coast too. So it didn't like, wasn't constant pedal. Okay. It was, if they didn't want a pedal,

it was just freewheeling. Yeah. So, um, yeah, that worked out really well for the assistant

because it helped push her up the hills. Yeah. Cool. There you go. That's the shenanigans

we've been up to. Um, hopefully everybody enjoyed it. Uh, if you guys have any feedback for us,

you can give us a call, shoot us a message on Instagram, shoot us an email, get in touch with

us on discord. Um, lots of different ways to reach out and interact. Um, give us a call over at

916-345-4744 is that voicemail phone number and let us know what you've been up to. Uh,

we'll go over that on a Friday's episodes, which is snail mail and, uh, get to talk with you guys

and see what you've been up to and hear your voices on the podcast for once. So, uh, anything

else, man? Sweet. Uh, any final words then to wrap up the show for today? I got the assistant to

finally ride the, or use the riding mower on the yard and she loved it. So I'm, so she's doing all

the mowing now. She might be. Yeah. She was out there with her big old sombrero hat and, uh,

like a sippy cup with a truly in it and, uh, cruising on the riding mower and music on or

listening to podcasts or something. The riding mower is too loud for a podcast. Like you just

can't hear it, but music is like, you don't need to listen to the music enough to, you know, know

what's going on. But yeah. So, um, hoping fingers crossed that this might be a thing that's taken

off of my to-do list and now on hers. So yeah, we'll see. Then you get to work on souping up

the lawn mower. Right? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got enough work around the yards that I don't,

I had the free time of souping up a lawn mower is low on the totem pole. But yeah, all bummer.

Oh, no, I got more final words. Oh, okay. We had a bat in our house. In the house? In the house.

How did the cats do with that? The cat caught it. Really? Yeah. That's how it concluded.

Yeah. I was funny little story. Final words going long here. It was

Thursday, not Wednesday night, Thursday morning. I was laying in bed and I heard the cat was sleeping

at the end of our bed. One of the cats, it like stood up, you know, and I've heard it like jump

off the ground and sitting there. And I was like, huh, like what's it doing? You know, and I'm half

asleep. And then I hear the cat jump into the air and land. I was like, there must be a bug or

something. And then I hear it do again. I'm like, okay, didn't catch it the first time, whatever.

And then over my head, I hear this. And I'm like, that's a big fucking bug. And then I hear the

cat jump again. And then I hear over my head. I'm like, all right, I gotta, I gotta see what's

the fuck this is. So I, the assistant's like, she's almost out or out, right? And I grab my

flashlight or my phone and I turn the flashlight on and I see this bat like doing circles in the

bedroom. And I'm like, what the hell? And so I was like, okay. And I tell the assistant, I said,

don't just, just don't look. Just stay there. She's like, what are you doing?

And I'm like, just, just, just stay laying down. She's like, what? And then she's like,

what is that? Like, I told you, like, I'm like, it's a bat. She's like, why there is,

why it's a bat in our house? Why is there a bat in our bedroom? We're like, I,

your guess is as good as mine. So I, it was flying around the bedroom. So my first thought was,

I've got to isolate it, right? And so I was like, it's flying around the bedroom. It's not in any

of the other rooms down the hallway. So I went down the hallway. So I closed the mini assistant's

room. I closed the guest room. I closed the mini assistant's bathroom. I closed my office.

And then I was coming back into the bedroom and then I heard our other cat jump. And then I heard

it. And I was like, what? And I like scan down and I was like, Skyler, did you catch it? And Skyler

walks right past me, goes downstairs. And I'm like, uh, uh, I started following the cat,

right? She walks all the way downstairs, around the couch, all the way to the back door.

And I was like, wait, wait, I'll let you out the back door. And she walked all the way back upstairs,

back into my office. I guess I didn't close my office door at that time. And then, um,

as soon as she walked in my office, I shut the door behind her because I could, all right.

It's in the office. She sets it down like right in front of my desk. And it's just sitting there

on the ground. And so I was like, cool, grab Skyler, took her out of the room. And then I went and

got a tissue and I went to go grab the bat. Still alive. Still alive. And I grabbed it and it jumped

and flew away. But it flew like onto my cabinets or something like shelving. Took me a little bit

of time to try to find it. So then I grabbed it again and like, I had it good this time,

but then it's like little bat wing hands started climbing out of the tissue. And it's like,

and it was making this like chirping noise, you know, a super high-pitched chirping noise.

And it was like barking like right at my hand. I'm like, this fucking thing's going to bite me.

And I'm going to get rabies and die. And I was like, no. So I like punched out the screen of my

office window and threw the bat outside. And then I looked for it and I didn't see it. So I think

it flew away. And then I tried to like close the screen and threw through the tissue away,

washed my hands, went back to bed. And the assistant's like, what just happened?

We're laying there. We're like, how did a bat get in? And the only way we could think of is like

through the attic or something because the cats were in like all day. So it wasn't,

it wasn't like, they didn't bring it in during the day. And the only thing we could think of

was that there was or one of our attic entrances is cracked, like the drywall that seals it off

as cracks. I went and looked in the closet and there is a chunk taken out of one of the corners.

So it's like, if there's bats in the attic, it could have gotten through that crack in that hole.

And they're small enough that they could crawl through anything in regards to the doors on a

closet. So now I've got the job of sealing that up. So yeah, so that was crazy.

That's a fun awakening at night. Yeah, right. So I was gone and then I was gone all that weekend,

right? And no cell reception anywhere we went. And I get back to cell service and I get a message

from the assistant. And Thursday night, she caught a mouse in the house and took it outside.

So I think we're back at this battle again of random creatures entering the house.

Yay. So those are my final words.

Nice. I like it without my friends. Keep crawling.

I got one for you. Another one. Another one. I'm surprised they haven't ran out yet.

No way. Too many good jokes to tell. That's debatable. Okay.

What does a bowler and a guest at Thanksgiving dinner have in common?

I don't know if I want to hear your answer.

They both stick their fingers in their holes?

Maybe. I mean, that's not the answer I was looking for. But I mean, that is a very thumbs

in their holes. Yeah, they both grabbed the bone. No, I don't think a bowler does.

I don't know. What? They both want turkey.

I don't get the bowler part. I'm not okay. You're going to ask me to explain a bowling

thing that I'm not a completely familiar with either. There's a point. I don't know if it's

two strikes or I mean two. Yeah, I think strikes or three or I think a strike. Man,

I'm showing my bowling air against him. When you knock down all the pins, isn't that strike? Yeah.

So either at two or three in a row is called a turkey. Oh, okay. Why is it called a turkey?

That's a question for another day. Okay. Do they gobble at all if they hit a turkey?

I hope so. I need to start watching some bowling competitions and see what happens.

About this episode

Tyler and the crew mix off-road stories with community updates: Four Wheel Underground’s shift to “buy things all a cart,” plus On-X Off-Road trail planning and partner discounts. The show also runs through multiple giveaways (including an Isco APL 20 fridge) and Snail Trail merch/gift-box details. Later, Tyler arrives late to a nearly 20-vehicle wheeling run, runs “caboose,” and helps coordinate the convoy—then the group tackles obstacles like “soup bowl,” with plenty of camping reunion and safety talk in between.

airing down airing up a la carte system Alpha Rex headlight Aluminum links A pillar articulate Baja S2 pros brake light carbon fiber 3d print things cartridge joints

Chevrolet Blazer Dodge Power Wagon Jeep Wrangler Toyota 4Runner Toyota Tacoma

Original notes

Jimmy and Tyler are back from very different weekends that somehow both ended the same way: hanging out with people you don’t see enough, doing stuff you love, and getting home before dark.

Tyler took his toddler, Reid, out on the Rubicon for the first time, joining the Mad Hatters’ annual run at Loon. The trip came with an unexpected education: when you normally run sweep, you get out at every stop and help people. When you’re strapped to the car with a two-year-old, you’re sitting in the driver’s seat watching everyone else work for 15-minute stretches while your kid starts losing patience. By the time the group reached Spider Bowl around 10:30 am, Tyler pulled off at a campsite, radioed a goodbye, had lunch, and watched a Toyota pickup spend 30 minutes trying and failing to get up Super Bowl while Reid stood in the bed pointing at things and making everyone laugh. Two hours there, then out solo with Reid in the front seat, the air compressor cycling the rear locker, and Reid looking over every time to announce “dad tooting.” Home before 4 pm. Left at 5 am. Not a bad day.

Jimmy left the assistant on her last day of school and drove up to dispersed camping near Bowman Road off Highway 20 — a trip organized around a group of high school friends he doesn’t see nearly enough, some of whom he hasn’t camped with in years. They came with trucks, a rooftop tent, a box of whiskey, handguns, a .22 rifle, Brandon’s breakfast burritos, and a set of homemade medallion awards for the weekend’s various competitions. The competitions included a shooting match (7 shooters, 10 rounds apiece at three stations — 210 shots hit paper across the board, which Jimmy found genuinely impressive), forest bocce (where bocce balls bounce off rocks and go 90 degrees), and a campfire tending category. Jimmy got fourth in the shooting competition, first in fire. He also got shot, sort of — a ricochet fragment hit one of the guys in the shoulder and another in the shin, both minor, first aid kits came out, everyone reevaluated, then they ran the formal shooting competition anyway. The guy who got hit (Michael — friend of a friend, first time meeting) turned out to be a serious whiskey person. Jimmy is also a serious whiskey person. Neither of them knew the other was bringing four bottles. They spent hours trading sips and talking. It was a great trip. They’re making it annual.

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!

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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 an ALP20 Fridge. 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

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Show Music:

Midroll Music – ComaStudio
Outroll Music – Meizong Kumbang

Snail Trail 4x4 Offroad Podcast

Tyler and Jimmy: Off-Road Enthusiasts

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