Off the Rails with GSMJI

SFJ 4x4 Studios presents, in my oversized four-wheel drive Jeep.

A Jeep podcast starring industry experts, curminosity, with mad scientist Scott Brown, our host, Neil

Simpson.

Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever, however, you are joining us.

This is the iSpeak Jeep podcast presented by SFJ4x4.com.

You sure?

Very sure.

Very certain.

My name is Neil, with SFJ4x4 Simpson Family Jeeps, and I am in Grandma's couch studio on

this lovely Monday morning, joined by a fine gentleman, Jeff Sramani, the Italian stallion.

Are you sure?

No.

I'm not.

You're weirdo.

And you are?

You asking anybody?

Who are you?

Wait, wait, wait.

Hold up.

We've got Nate saying no audio and Daddy Jeep saying no audio.

And now we can pretty much just resume.

We are resuming without a live audience at this point, because our audio is not streaming.

But we're back for those that are listening to us on...

Pivot!

Yeah, I see you're too worried now.

Did your production...

Pivot!

You got all hyped up from...

Pivot!

Yep.

So you got all hyped up.

You're stressed out over here.

Jeff's feeling away.

Yeah, Jeff is feeling...

This is like when Gregor Scott are frustrated about something not going their way on the

service floor.

He's feeling similar.

He's all panties are all wadded up.

Perfect!

Yep.

You know what?

Good, dude.

I'm adapting over time.

You know what?

Honestly, if this is the worst issue I have to deal with this week, I'm okay with

that.

Right.

Because I got a lot going on this week and we're going to talk about that at

the end.

So hang tight.

Absolutely.

And as always, always.

You want to hear about our personal lives?

Hang through the outro credits.

But instead, today, we're going to talk about the business and what you got

to do with the business this past week.

Yeah.

How fun and exciting that is.

How fun and exciting and the interesting nature that was our pursuit to the

Smoky Mountains.

Right?

And so hopefully people will find that interesting.

I certainly know that, kind of first and foremost, a huge thank you to all of the

people who listened to this podcast, who came, who made it a point to stop by and

say hi and, you know, share stories with me and introduce themselves and, you know,

say like, you know, honestly, you know, I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying

to make your head all big, but you're like our favorite podcast or you're my

favorite podcast.

And that's cool.

I'm genuinely excited, you know, that you enjoy listening to us and I can't

believe how many people I met who do not jump onto our live weekly, who are

dedicated listeners.

So thank you so much to those of you who made it a priority to come and say,

hello.

I love talking to people.

I try to hook people up with stickers or swag in some capacity.

If you didn't get something from me, you know, at the next show, you know, maybe I

know a couple of people on Thursday showed up.

I did not have my giveaway goodies with me.

They were parked in the truck on the other side of the parking lot.

Well, if they really want swag, then they just need to go on and leave us

a review and get a chance to get the most useful strap they'll ever have

in their hands.

That is absolutely a piece of garbage, worthless three foot strap.

And you're going to have to hear at the end how I used one because we can use it

for everything.

I did not use the strap this weekend, but I do have a winching story.

So we'll talk.

Oh man, sounds like you guys had a lot of good stuff yourselves.

So I don't know if I say it was good, but you know, stuff happened.

Right.

Stuff happened.

Well, you know, a big thank you to our listeners.

And, you know, if you can take a moment to leave a review on your

favorite streaming platform, you know, specifically iTunes.

It will help other people find us.

It will also help the metric of the of the how the the programs are

weighted and then suggested to other people, but also take a moment to

share on your favorite social media that you like listening.

I gave out a bunch of stickers and and rep the podcast and shirts and

actually have a number of guests who expressed interest in

remoting in in the near future.

And so while it will maybe not fit perfectly into our live series,

I think there is an opportunity to have some of those individuals

join us for, you know, for conversations for our listeners as a whole.

And so that was really beneficial.

But in general, Smoky Mountain was an event

much harkening back to the glory days of truck nationals.

And then what HRJA's Jeep Fest grew into in its last years.

And you get for the ones out there that maybe they're over in

Washington State or that kind of stuff.

Where was this show?

Yeah, good question.

So this particular show is in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

And it has become the largest Jeep specific show in the country at this point.

Hands down.

It is if a if you it was the love child of if you took Las Vegas,

Coastal Carolinas and a country song.

And they had a threesome and made a child.

And that is Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

You just called out all the people in Florida right now with Jeep each.

I did because I heard on Go To Corde from multiple people that Jeep each

was not what it once was.

I heard the same.

And that and that that Smoky Mountain continues to be the crown has moved.

The crown has moved now.

And that's all I've set up was that truck nationals from truck

nationals when H.R.J. is Jeep Fest from Jeep Fest, it went to Bannum.

Bannum, it went to PA Allbreeds.

Allbreeds, it went to Jeep each Jeep each scene went to Pigeon Forge.

And I just from a from a professional standpoint, who's attended

the myriad of those events, I will just simply share with you that.

You know, that's just that the crowd, the crowd and the crown moves.

It's it's what's trendy for a three to five year period.

And, you know, and that's what a number of vendors and like people

like they were asking me like, oh, like, hey, you have a great time.

And I was. But I was kind of like, but I've been going to shows.

I went to truck nationals somewhere between 10 and 12 years old.

That has me authentically attending market relevant industry events

for almost 30 years.

I I still love what I do, just like you.

We actually go home and we still comb over automotive stuff

and read articles and and, you know, watch automotive inspired content.

Yeah. But, uh, you know, I know the vendors.

I know the product.

I like to say when you go back and you look at it like my closet

and I have shirts going way back to like ninety four or ninety five.

Yeah. For events.

I'm like, hmm, yeah, you know what I mean?

So a really, really interesting kind of experience in that sense.

But for our listeners at home, I want to set the stage

and then we're going to circle back to that story just because,

you know, the challenge that I share with people,

both of both are kind of both are advantage and disadvantage

is the fact that we are authentically us, right?

And the short is the stories that we share on this particular program

is just reality, right?

The characters that we are or who we are.

And that's why we talk about our personal lives at the end there.

No stage names, no personas.

Right. And you get the real deal.

Sorry about that. Yeah.

That's just who we are.

Take it or leave it.

But what makes us specifically unique is that we are

among the podcasts specifically.

Again, trending in that top three to five podcast.

We are the only ones who fall in that category

who are actually a professional build shop, right?

So there are there are individuals who are in the podcast industry

as a business model.

And their their attempt is as kind of as journalism and communication.

There are people who are in the podcasting realm

and kind of those successful podcasts who are enthusiasts

and who are just, you know, got great personalities for

you know, for on air programming and faces only a mother can love.

And what's that? That's what we're going to face for radio.

Yeah. That's what we're doing today.

Well, that's true.

But the internet was like, no, we don't want to see your faces today.

They just shut us off.

That's why we're we're only recording audio that they could see us.

You just couldn't hear us.

So as we don't have voices, voices that killed us.

Well, and that's, you know, I had to, you know, keep sharing with people

like, well, if you you actually like listening to me talk that much.

I know I don't. But, you know, are you sure?

Wow.

Scott's got dad jokes.

So, you know, so we actually

and we have this we fill this really unique void in the fact that

our our personality types are really just us.

And we also know the business inside and out

because we are both enthusiasts

and we've professionally been building jeeps.

Is it like the farmers insurance?

We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two.

It's exactly what it is, right?

Something.

But a number of people kind of kept resonating like,

do you really get into that many like odd situations?

Do you really have that many problems with your trailer or your truck or,

you know, whatever it's not without trying not to.

So I literally made the statement this week

and I can't go to Erie without something crazy happening.

So, yes, that really is something that just happens to us.

Correct. Correct. Right.

So, Scott, I called you.

Yeah, Saturday night.

As the the event was on was was was ending.

I was in a crowd of people of enough, you know,

I was in a group of people.

He was testing me.

And I said, this will really send Scott over the edge.

But I was reserved.

I didn't didn't yell.

And Scott, in true fashion, he just sighs a lot.

Was it just silence?

It gets quiet.

Yeah, he gets quiet.

That's how you know you've upset him.

And he sighs.

So what did I call you?

And what did I say?

You asked how you could hotwire a hashtag, not a restoration.

The swamp donkey.

And my very first thought was it has Jeep AMC keys.

It really would make me sad for those not to exist anymore.

So that's where my brain went first.

Mm hmm.

And then I was like, oh, he's going to have to go to a parts store

and get tools because he doesn't have tools.

Did not have sufficient tools.

But he definitely knows how to do this.

And I was like, yeah, Neal's got this, whatever.

Yeah.

So it's 5 30 or so on Saturday night.

Yep.

Trying to ruin my dinner time.

Totally didn't stew all the way through dinner or nothing.

And I never called you back.

You never did.

I never called you back.

Thankfully, I have friends with feet on the ground and I'm texting

with them because I'm fired up and they're like, oh, Neal just went by

with all three Jeeps on there.

I was like, oh, oh, did he?

Last I knew the cream one wasn't moving.

It's like, that's that's cool story, bro.

I was like, I was in this, I was in this group of people and you go,

you want to see Scott go over the edge?

You know, I had a one speaker phone and everything and he just gets quiet.

And so so what I hear is that you absolutely just pranked him.

I didn't, I didn't.

But then I knew that it was going to get too good.

And I was a little consumed with I was fueled by Vermont.

For those of our listeners who go back a couple of years who remember

when my wife booked us a excursion to hike Vermont

with no training, with no great expectation.

It was just basically one day I was sitting at my desk the next day.

I'm supposed to be hiking from top to bottom at a diagonal across from Mont.

Just miles, just miles.

And I was just fueled by hate and caffeine and, you know, and don't forget

they're competitive, so it wasn't just hiking with your spouse in Vermont.

It was, I will kick your heini up this hill to become a competitive

and I will go within an inch of passing out because I don't know how to stop.

So I had reached Vermont by Saturday night

just based on the sheer volume of people at

interactions and, you know, at the Jeep show and my own busy schedule.

And the fact that I had authentically lost the keys to

was a stagnant restoration.

You know, who wasn't surprised that you probably did lose the keys?

This guy.

Yeah.

So I was like, were they in your pocket?

We'll get to that here.

I want I want our listeners to hang in there with us.

Yeah, but because I know that that is your typical MO.

I is my typical MO, right?

And I.

You know, I'm going to tell you folks, right?

And I'm going to own this, right?

Because you can't see me.

And I want, you know, people at home to understand, you know,

Scott's got on the classic 90s dad cargo pants that, you know,

screen functionality.

Jeff and I are a rock and regular, you know, regular jeans.

I am wearing my signature I.O.

shirt as a shout out to Iron Rock Off-Road out of Mini Sota,

who allowed me to display Johnny Five in their booth.

Hashtag not a restoration was displayed.

Situated to kick you out for using the Minnesota accent.

I specifically said my intention is not

necessarily to offend you.

I understand that I might, but my own weirdness

has me unable not to share with you and say it that way.

See, I would figure they were just on the offer

you some Minnesotian salads that aren't salads.

Anything with mayonnaise or cool whip in it.

I would say cool whip seems to be a staple.

Yes. In Mini Sota salads.

And Jeff's wearing his I Speak Jeep.

I built the sign shirt, which I saw at the event,

which is very cool, thanks to the people who wore that

and wrapped at Smoky Mountain.

But but those of you who are on my personal social media

and I'm happy to be friends with you.

So if you are interested, find me on Facebook.

I post more on Facebook than I do Insta.

But I, you know, where I'm the opposite.

I'm on Insta. If you want to follow me on there,

I let some people through on Facebook,

but I'm not.

Everyone makes it through.

Nothing personal.

Use Instagram, but Facebook. Sure.

Yeah. So I mean, and I appreciate and I am happy to to jump on

and for you to be part of my my big extended family.

So feel free to do that in a number of people have.

And that's cool.

You will know that early in the summer,

I posted about my Huchi Daddy shorts because I'm here for it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I authentically have had more stuff fall out of my pockets,

because, of course, the pockets are not deep

nor constructed in such a way that makes sense.

That's why there's girl pockets girl pockets.

I got girl pockets because of my Huchi Daddy shorts.

Mm hmm.

That's just what it is.

So I'm just going to let that be part of the conversation later.

That's how he lost the keys to the hashtag.

Maybe I genuinely believe that.

OK, because I'm looking at this

comment if I didn't like my Huchi Daddy shorts so much

and you know what, OK, you're going to look at my my my my my

extravagant man thighs because it just feels good.

It's breezy.

It was hot at Smoky Mountain.

Yeah, I heard you were about ready to pass out.

I heard it was that you were getting yorked on.

Was authentically getting yorked on.

But you know, let's me let me I digress

because here's the thing.

I was going to leave at eight o'clock

come heck or high water.

P.M. P.M.

Eight o'clock P.M. Tuesday night.

I had which family events to attend to because family comes first.

I just genuinely believe that.

But I was not going to I was going to kill myself

to be in all the places and all the things and do the stuff. OK.

That is the Simpson way. It is.

I'm going to leave at eight p.m.

My wife can't be anywhere on time.

So that's fine. That puts me at eight thirty.

You know who comes rolling into the parking lot?

No, Savage.

Savage comes rolling in at eight thirty

a little after eight thirty eight forty five.

We're in there. I go, What?

You didn't trust I was supposed to be gone.

He's like, I knew you weren't going to be gone.

Ha. So he says to me, I knew you weren't going to be gone.

Factual statement.

So he's like, Hey, I got I got you some extra swag, some shirts to wear.

You know, you want some, some, you know, some new shirts.

I got you some that I got you this and he was he was

he was appropriately mothering me before I left.

I have to jump in at this point

because we talked after you got down there

and you were literally sweating through a shirt from the heat.

That you ended up with the IRO short shirt.

Correct. I have this shirt on because it because of that.

So I had told Davey that you had to switch into that.

And he goes, I sent him with five extra shirts

so he wouldn't have that problem.

Yeah, I heard that you were sweating from places you shouldn't sweat from.

OK, that is true.

And I said, and I said, that's one of the many reasons I don't want to go.

And they were like, yep, we're in the AC at this point.

Neil's not smart enough to do that or something like that.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

You were really creepy on me the whole time.

Dang, he had the inside.

Dang, he did.

He did. You had you had you had boots on the ground, eyes in the stands.

So so here's the thing.

So so now it's it's eight forty five, nine o'clock.

Davey and I are processing some stuff.

I am, as usual, overly enthusiastic that I'm going to do some of the

videography, I'm going to do this.

OK, I didn't, you know, spoiler alert.

So but he took some pictures, I did take the pictures.

I'm capable of that.

But actually shooting the video content and do the audio stuff.

Not not my strongest suit anymore.

First doing it personally.

That's why he's not a blogger.

That's why we have the Jeffs and the Davies, right?

We need good people like that to pull off the media stuff.

That's why we have Davey. Let's be honest. No doubt. No doubt.

So but it's it's it's now nine o'clock.

It's now nine o'clock.

And I'm like, I have got to get on the road, right?

And Savage and I do our piece.

It starts to sprinkle just a little bit.

I knew that I had a weather related situation happening.

Yeah, a weather incident, a weather incident.

I had hashtag not a restoration has one of my Jeep covers on it,

but it's one of the loose fit Jeep covers.

It cannot go down the highway.

Yeah. Right. It's a CJ five.

They just don't top well.

Correct. So but that's that's fine.

I'm trying to keep the rain out of it.

I need to fuel up the truck.

OK. And the truck and trailer,

despite my best efforts to have it loaded and prepared and ready to go,

is facing the wrong direction in our parking lot.

I need to spin it around.

And I had already mentioned that, oh, you're a goose.

So you should be able to move that thing around like crazy.

Move it around like perfect.

And we have a big parking lot.

Chuck, you know, some eyes get in and out with no with no issue.

So here I am.

I have the foreshadow for a few minutes.

We had gone through and we had completely its entirety

with great expense and time.

Rewired the whole back of the truck.

Yes. So that we would not have issues with the light

connectors early on in the business.

We spent most of our time prepping for the show under the back

of a red ram trying to try to make lights work.

And kind of having a trauma response to our computer

not behaving today, we literally one of the fixes was taking the battery

off the truck, swearing at it and putting the battery back on.

And we suddenly had lights and we're like, it's possessed.

I don't understand. That's right.

So now you can now continue.

We are at a point in our life, right?

We have at our disposal a beautiful crew cab medium

duty international 4900 series.

I mean, I'm driving a big rig, right?

We have the wedge, the full three car hauler.

We are safe. We have brakes.

We are wired.

We might even have license plates.

We have legal tags.

We are trying desperately to do the right things.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, how many shows that I famously I tell people there was

a show where we were out east and I used tap lights.

My mom went to the dollar store, bought tap lights, wrapped them in red

tablecloth, you know, the clear plastic tablecloth, and I tapped those lights

on the back of my enclosed trailer because I had no lights function

on the enclosed trailer, and that's how I drove home in the middle of the night.

And that was after we with great time expense, not money at that time.

No time trying to make the truck behave.

And then the trailer probably was like, no, no, right?

So we're at a point in life.

That's we have different trailer, different truck,

whole shooting match.

We have spent time so that I should be able to get in the truck

and I worry about the logistics of the show and not necessarily

and the unexpected things.

So anyways, I back the truck up.

It's starting to rain a little bit harder.

OK, I go to spin the truck around.

And as I I'm not even a full jackknife.

I have been in such more precarious positions, jackknife in the truck.

And as I turn around, I also want to go on record saying

when I went to rewire all this, I was like, hey, Neil,

is this OK for this spot, this place?

Because I have no idea of never hauled a fifth wheel in my life.

He's like, oh, yeah, it should be fine.

Should be great.

Should be now that we have distinguished where blame should be placed.

Oh, wow.

He was he was in that bus, getting that key ready to go.

It was. Yeah, he was.

He did. He like set me up on the gap.

Yeah, it was. I was good.

I was rubbing that bus up a little bit.

We were four planning.

Everything was great.

And then it was like, oh, OK.

Hey, why don't you just stand right there for me?

Yeah, that's exactly.

Why don't you kick me in the sack while you're at it, Scott?

So because because, folks, as I spin the truck and trail around,

all of a sudden, all the lights go out on the truck or on the trailer.

Boom, lights are gone.

What the heck?

Rain starts to go a little bit more.

Are you kidding me?

So now I am in flippy floppies, hooch daddy shorts and a tank top, right?

Because I just wanted to get into the truck.

Flip flops or crocs?

Because I feel like flops.

I did not take my crocs.

OK, I I took so much crap at the the event

because people wanted to see me in the crocs.

Well, they wanted the fun socks and crocs.

And I was like, yo, my crocs were getting.

I got one pair of crocs, which I got as a gag gift.

And then I fell in love with them.

And I actually know on pretty good accord

that a manufacturer has bought me crocs at this point.

And so I'm waiting to receive them as a present.

Sidebar, but because they were like,

why didn't you wear crocs?

And I was like, well, mine are getting a little long in the tooth.

And they're not the worst.

But I was like, I, you know, I was going to wear flippy floppies

and then my actual like tennis shoes and whatnot.

And then I was going to run Wal-Mart and buy crocs.

I didn't because the traffic is outrageous down there.

So well, you've got a croc.

You got a brand name croc.

You can't go with the Wal-Mart crocs.

I know.

So anyways, here I go.

I get out of the truck and I'm like, what is going on?

Next thing I know, and I'm still kind of sitting in Caddywampus

with the truck and trailer kind of, you know, semi-jackknife, but not.

And the cord of the lights for the truck

is solidly wedged underneath the gooseneck.

It had actually the goose had pulled the cord and popped it out of the socket,

broke part of the socket and drug it so that it was disconnected.

And now it was wholly pinched underneath

the entirety of the trailer.

The weight of the gooseneck is basically riding on the two and five sixteenths ball.

And under that, the coupler is pinching the cord.

So I'm like, did I did I pinch through the cord?

Did I break it?

Is it now nine 20 at night?

And I'm going to be attempting to rewire the plug at this point,

despite the fact that we had just done that, you know, a couple months before.

Like I'm going to be doing buck connectors and I'm thinking, holy crap,

and now I'm in the rain and I'm like, this is just horrible.

But I can't get it out from underneath there.

So I'm like, OK, I'm going to put the landing gear down on the trailer.

And I mean, meanwhile, we have three Jeeps on the trailer.

We have Cookie Monster on the foremost position.

We have hashtag, not a restoration, also known as swamp donkey.

And then Johnny five.

Yeah, I take out the back taken up the back half.

So to say that it's heavy is an understatement.

Well, again, I'm trying to shortcut things.

So I grab one of my cribbing blocks and I throw it just under one side

because I have not one but two ten thousand pound landing gear on the trailer.

So I'm like, we're again trying to do things right.

We're trying to do things right because the trailer had Jack when we got it.

Correct. And a ten thousand pound Jack can or should lift the whole trailer.

I've got dose now, but I throw it just under one side, the closest side.

And I was like, I'm going to start cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking, cranking.

And I get to the point where I cannot I'm like, I cannot crank it any further.

I'm like, I'm going to break something.

So I have to let it down, readjust things, put the other landing gear,

crib up the other landing gear and I crank it till the landing gear is completely

maxed out. The goose has not unseated itself.

The truck airbags actually every time I lift, they just kept coming up.

They just keep coming up.

So the truck airbags are just keep coming up as I lift the trailer.

Now I need to dump the air.

Do we have a dump valve?

No, we don't.

It takes like six hours for the bags to release

because they're actually sealed up pretty well.

Because, again, we're trying to do things well.

That's why all the YouTuber big rig guys I watch have dump valves.

That's why Greg keeps saying he wants to put a dump valve on there.

I would have had a dump valve.

This would have made a problem.

Instead, I don't have a dump valve.

So I got to shut the truck off because all I was doing was just

as I put the landing gear down in the rain, pop, pop, pop, pop,

kept going up.

So here I am.

I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

So what do I do?

I go into the shop and he's looking for anything that can help.

I first find Excalibur, the official longest breaker bar,

spud bar that we have in the shop.

Yes. To which I attempt to wedge it in there

into the the gooseneck kind of the area.

And I'm prying the heck out of it to which it says meh.

I it slips off.

My hand goes flying up.

I smash my finger to the point where it's,

you know, does the black and blue under your fingernail.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So now my finger is not working.

Right. Right.

Yep. Now it's all numb, tingly.

Now it's numb, tingly, fat.

And this is the hand that I got a row gears on.

This is my primary working hand.

Yep.

I'm like, you've got to be strong hand, strong hand.

So so I I'm like, you got to be freaking kidding me.

I go back into the shop at this point.

I'm not messing around.

I take the bottle jack out of a twenty ton shop press.

I take the bottle jack out there.

I find more cribbing wood.

I put it between the bed of the truck

and the wedge of the the the nose of the trailer.

And I start bottle jacking the truck

and the trailer separate from each other,

which, of course, is just full full of a myriad of

of comical errors where I just I'm not in the right place.

So the cribbing is falling out

because it's just not tight right away.

Chains keep falling into where I'm trying

to check on the the coupler for the the gooseneck.

The whole shooting match.

Long story short, I do finally get the truck and trailer separated.

And lo and behold, this is awesome.

It's not damaged and I literally can just plug it back in and.

Everything works.

I was like, you have got to be freaking kidding me.

Like I am so I'm I'm on cloud freaking nine at that point.

What I did do was what what needs to happen is

I I gave us enough length on the plug itself.

And then I zip tied it up off the gooseneck itself

so that it has the full swing.

The problem is it was down in below

and it would eventually work its way to friction

underneath the the tongue itself.

Whereas I haven't zip tied up out of the way right now.

I should be able to jackknife this thing pretty significantly.

The worst part is I knew better.

I know better and I did not actually fully jackknife the trailer.

This this should have been a comfortable swing

much like you're swinging around a gas station or something else.

This was not that tight of a turn.

Whereas I had mentally prepared myself

before going to this event that if I had to do that

because I knew I was going to a mountainous area

that I would in fact unplug it

before I swung the trailer around in a jackknife capacity.

This was not that.

So did I leave at eight? No.

I left at 10 o'clock.

And as I leave out of town,

I discover that I have no turn signals.

Of course, this doesn't stop me.

I apologize for any of you who encounter a person

like me on the road and upset you.

But I have my eye on the prize,

but I need to get fuel first.

It's important to note that my car cover is still on

hashtag not a restoration

because I don't want it filling with water

while I'm doing all of this.

Of course, as I head down Route Seven,

which is a highway inspired.

The car cover doesn't stay.

A car cover decides to become a sail.

Yep.

And now I am driving this rig with a sail

15 feet in the air.

Fortunately, it is hooked onto the the the Jeep

in such a way that it is bound up.

But I'm just dragging a sail through the road.

I have, you know, traffic swerving around me

and flashing lights and all that kind of good stuff.

Meh, right?

Get to the gas station.

It now starts to downpour.

I'm just going to leave it at that.

Sorry, Ryan.

So he's won a Bell C.J.

Five, so without a top on it, right?

Absolutely.

So we're going to need to do better

if that gets hauled anywhere else

because that was challenging.

I did eventually on the road.

I drove largely through the night.

I had a great experience, honest to Pete.

Everything was good from there.

It's about five turns and all of a sudden you go from

coastal Ohio and all of a sudden you get transported

to this magical land of Pigeon Forge.

I carried you not.

It's like five turns.

It's literally, you just get on the road

and you start driving.

I went down through Cincinnati, drove through the night.

It was a beautiful drive.

Everything was great.

And then all of a sudden it's like

you literally are transported.

You know those like Hollywood or cartoon?

I don't care if it's Indiana Jones

or some of the Lost Land Dino commercials

where they are cartoons where you walk through a cave

and then all of a sudden you're in this like

beautiful garden of Eden environment.

That was it.

I was driving and it was pretty much

like the same Ohio terrain.

And then all of a sudden I'm in Pigeon Forge

and I'm in this Las Vegas mountain, right?

It's super weird.

I can't understand how to contextualize it otherwise.

The event itself was so wholly overwhelming.

There is nothing I can do to sum it up

because quite frankly going to Las Vegas is easier

and less stimulating than being at Pigeon Forge.

Interesting.

SEMA feels manageable in comparison.

That's saying something.

Isn't that something?

I'm just gonna keep adding to my list

why I don't wanna go to this.

And that's a challenge, right?

And I have to explain to people

that Scott and Greg are homebodies, right?

And that is not particularly their interest.

Very people-y.

Yes, it's very people-y, you know?

And here's the thing.

If there is a color-coordinated picture,

if there is a CJ's-only off-road run,

if there is a, hey, you have speakers

over the size of eight inches gathering,

I don't know, you're gonna find it.

Like the most special interest groupings

exist at this event for some reason.

It is the most peculiar thing.

The offshoot, Facebook notifications

and groups that get together

that specifically organize for this event.

I saw the blue Jeep crew picture, that was-

Right, holy cow.

250 Jeeps.

Just blue.

Yeah, oh, there was yellow Jeeps.

There was a green Jeep.

Just green Jeeps.

Oh no, it was just Mejito.

Oh, just a Mejito gathering.

Yes, they were all green.

Just that specific green.

I mean, it was fascinating.

And then there's offshoot shows,

which is fascinating because,

obviously I get to communicate with a lot of people

and they have events every weekend around here.

You could go to an event

and if 20 to 50 Jeeps show up at it,

you're like, that was great.

There was a ton of Jeeps

and we know from just hosting our parades

how much goes into organizing

and coordinating all these people.

You get over 25 Jeeps and that's something.

Correct.

That's just like an offshoot show.

That's like, oh, hey, we're having this gathering

at this restaurant, this hotel, this parking lot.

I mean, and there are tons of those offshoot shows.

If you wanted to attend any special interest group

or a little after hours party or anything like that,

that was everywhere.

That was probably one of the most fascinating things to me.

I'm not a bit surprised

because in the classic car community,

Pigeon Forge has had shows for ever

and that's what's pretty routine for that scene.

Five, 6,000 cars is nothing.

And that's exactly what this is.

Pigeon Forge has positioned themselves as a community

and a resource provider from Airbnb rentals

to authentic hotels to convention centers

to provide this environment to automotive enthusiasts.

And so whether it is motorcycles,

or whether it's the rod run with the hot rods,

whether it's the Bronco invasion or the Jeep invasion,

this is just what they do.

I could not imagine being a,

I'm gonna air quotes, a civilian,

somebody who's not into any of those vehicles.

Yeah, we should put that up, we're sorry.

That they just went there for this weekend

to be their weekend.

Except for people do.

Except for people do and they do it intentionally.

And that's weird to me.

That's weird.

I mean, I love the concept of Disneyland

or I love the concept of Las Vegas or whatever,

but I'm okay, I kinda wanna go to those places

when it's not saturated with special interest groups

and the population has quadrupled overnight.

I kinda wanna just go and enjoy the resources.

No, but people are there in just their Jim Bob cars

trying to go about life.

Fascinating, fascinating.

So the thing, just beginning,

again, I'm from the classic car scene originally,

I'm interested to see,

because it started a pigeon forage

and then it went to Louisville, Kentucky

for the classic cars.

Do we gonna see that transition with Jeeps?

Well, I mean, already we see there was actually a,

I use the word competing,

but there is an event happening simultaneously

in an area called Townsend.

And it was as equally a buzzword.

They were going up to Townsend.

I'm going over to Townsend.

I'm doing Townsend.

And I still don't actually know what that's about.

Maybe one of our listeners will shout out to us

and send us an email or something about that,

but I know a number of people

who were participating in that.

They have two different show areas.

So there is a, when I say show areas,

I mean a vendor gathering space.

So think of potentially one of the biggest

indoor convention centers that hosts automobile activities

other than say like the SEMA convention centers

because those are just absolutely mammoth.

They have an indoor convention center

with a air quotes show grounds,

which was just absolutely shoulder-to-shoulder.

And then they have an outdoor area as well.

And either of these areas are as big as anything else

that exists in the Jeep automotive industry, right?

I'm assuming the convention center was so large,

just big rigs were in there parked.

Oh, absolutely. Set up, yeah.

And then outside as well, you know what I mean?

And so yes, you have, you know,

semis that you don't actually know are semis, right?

Goes back to the story when we had that acquaintance,

we were picking the product and they were like,

hey, there's a bulldozer in this building.

Can you find it?

It's like a semi is in there and people walk right by it

and they don't know that they're walking

past the semi truck, right?

And it's indoors.

Just unbelievable.

They have two shows, which again,

if you were at any other event,

you would be happy to have one of those vendor spaces,

but this one had dose of those vendor spaces.

That was insane-o, right?

And there's these beautiful babbling brooks

and creeks and streams all throughout the area and the strip.

But if you're not, I mean, and they're gorgeous,

but if you're not being conscientious about them,

you would not know that they're there.

That's what's so fascinating to me is that,

I mean, Jeffrey, you've been to Las Vegas.

It's like taking that and putting it

with babbling brooks and streams and creeks.

That sounds awesome.

With, and then there's nice mountains of sorts

in the Las Vegas Daviser, but-

But yeah, there's a difference.

There's a difference and what's fascinating.

Now, here's the piece and I'm gonna put it out there.

There is a weird, horrible smell that happens.

So it is like Vegas.

Correct.

And I was talking, we were like,

there's a whole bunch of vendors

that were like, that's so weird.

Like, what is that?

And I was like, man, that reminds me of like

sewer system exhaust gases.

I went and looked it up.

The smoking mountains periodically release sulfur.

And depending on the-

Wind.

Wind, it pushes that sulfur smell through the area.

And you catch a whiff of it.

That's fascinating.

Grown up at the base of garbage mountain.

Wow, that's easy there, trailer park.

I get it, man.

That's what it is.

I know, it's super normal for you.

I know, it would be perfectly fine.

That was one of the most interesting pieces.

It was like, oh, God, there's that smell again.

That's so weird, you know?

What's real fun is, you know,

we're on the foothills of Appalachia.

Yes.

And there's some in our groups, our town,

we're like, we're in Appalachia.

No.

No, by comparison.

You were in Appalachia down there.

Yes.

Now, I do have to make fun of the sense

that everybody uses the vernacular of on the mountain, right?

And so we were at the show,

so the outdoor event is on top of the mountain

and the La Conte Center is on the bottom of the mountain.

I gotta be honest with you guys,

it's not the most impressive.

I'm ready for the hate mail in that regard.

But this is just a big hill, right, where these are.

Maybe they cut the mountain down or something.

Maybe they flattened out.

I don't know.

But like, if you're just kind of the hills of Pennsylvania,

it would be the same,

but the vernacular is the bottom mountain,

the top of the mountain.

And they were like, oh yeah,

it's gonna be on the top of the mountain.

Now from my hotel room, I could actually see both.

And I mean, the rise in elevation

is really not that extreme,

nor that elaborate, right?

So it's kind of funny.

I mean, honestly, Western PA mountainous regions

are just as,

now, the aesthetic, the layers,

the depths of mountains with this smoky appeal.

Pigeon Forge is kind of this valley.

The strip kind of goes down the center of it.

That is, that was stunning, right?

That was uncharacteristic of things

that I've seen kind of local to our geography.

I think that's a good way to clarify and contextualize.

Contextualize, right.

These steps, the rise in elevation

was not that interesting, right?

Now there was an acceptance that these were mountains

as opposed to hills, right?

Oftentimes you talk about the hills of Pittsburgh.

Vernacular says mountains,

but then, like I said, it was like layer upon layer

upon layer and you could see them all

from your vantage point.

That's cool.

And that was really cool.

Yeah, that would be impressive.

And give off that smoky.

Now it's not smoke.

It is actually the plants releasing

kind of a high moisture content.

I looked it all up because I was so fascinated with the area.

Which gives this cloud cover experience.

Now, because of this mountain region,

it gets its own little weather systems.

So, back to me sweating in places

that I should never have sweat from.

I sweat so bad by noon, by one o'clock.

My shirt was saturated

and I was like, I gotta change.

You know what I mean?

And at that point in time, the masses,

it was like I was at a NASCAR race

or a pro football game.

They had just gone without shirts.

They were just these big beer bellies

and tanned up bodies.

These guys were just embracing it.

They're just embracing it.

They know where they're at in life.

They've got no excuses for anybody.

We've got two, some are inside with the big rigs

because they're embracing the AC life,

which is where I would be.

And then there's the other ones

that do want a tailgate.

Right, well, and that's just,

that's because it's the outdoor show, right?

The people on the indoor show was like,

oh, has the weather out there?

And I'm like,

They know it's hot in the heck.

They're just rubbing it in at that point.

Correct, they're just rubbing it in, you know?

But I sweat so bad.

I mean, it was so uncomfortable.

We had fans running

and we were getting yorked on like crazy

out in the weather.

And let's bring this back into the weather systems

of the mountainous area.

So I checked the weather.

I'm not a big weather guy.

I'm a swinging rock weather guy internally,

but I'm trying to channel my inner Jeff and Greg.

I'm trying to check the weather,

see what it's gonna be like tomorrow.

And it says it's gonna be seven degrees,

cool, it's gonna be 79 degrees,

small chance of thunderstorm.

I was like, that's what's up.

Cool it off a little bit, right?

No, no, it's probably like here

where rain means humid.

Wake up the next morning.

All of a sudden it was like,

85 degrees is the low

and it's gonna be hot and sunny.

Are you kidding me?

I was like, you know what?

I'm not even going out the hotel room.

We had enough work by 7.15 this was Friday morning.

I had enough correspondence between emails

and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Jeff and I spent some time on the phone.

We were doing some remote work here at the shop.

I actually just worked until 11 o'clock.

I was like, I'm over it.

You know what I mean?

Again, shout out to IRO and Crown Automotive

and Painless Harnesses.

They were showcasing the jeeps, right?

And they were appreciative

that we had these awesome vehicles there

that they could show off their product and talk about.

And they recognized that objectively I was there

to create content and talk with people

but I was not necessarily bound to a booth space

like I am at other events, you know?

So it was cool.

It all worked out.

Everything was good.

People stopped by the booth.

I'm sorry if I missed you because of that.

Again, Saturday morning was very similar, but fortunately.

I got text message from one of our distributors

even saying, I know these guys with a picture

of J5 and the sign.

Yeah, right.

And that was very cool.

And then we had people stopping by.

Saturday morning I went because Friday afternoon

I tried to get into the convention center

and it was shoulder to shoulder.

It was very uncomfortable.

So Saturday morning I started my morning

in the convention center,

talking with folks at Rock Jock,

folks at Rock Hard 4x4, 7 slot collectibles,

JKS, I made sure to make my rounds.

Now I know that people stopped by the booth,

inquired, took pictures with the Jeep.

That was one of the coolest things

was how many people took pictures with Johnny 5.

Just because it's a super cool looking rig.

And so in as a inconspicuous way possible

I kept taking pictures of people taking pictures

with the Jeep and I kept sending it to the owner.

Because people were posing with it

and people were like making faces

and having a great time.

So that was a lot of fun.

I guess as I kind of try to bring this

to a bit of a close,

it went exceptionally well.

I would recommend to people that if you're going

to add this to your list of national Jeep shows

to attend, do your homework about where your location is.

I gotta tell you, our hotel was fantastic.

I would stay there again in a heartbeat.

A lot of people stay at the Airbnb's

because it's such a resort town

that a lot of these Airbnb's people were responding back

and they've got waterfalls at their Airbnb.

They've got jacuzzi's and indoor pools.

And this is just like a home, you know what I mean?

That's been converted to house five, six people at a time.

It's kind of that resorty nature of coastal Carolinas

mixed with this cabin and playful,

hey I'm there to party, campfire, swim,

tube, go tubing, it is super wild resort feel to it.

But this strip has this woodward dream cruise

kind of feel to it where traffic is just outrageous.

It's impassable in some manners.

So going out to eat, you're gonna spend a ton of time

traveling to and from, going to restock on supplies.

Things like that.

Getting in and out of your hotel in our situation,

our hotel's only entrance and egress for a vehicle

is out onto the strip.

That's very challenging when the strip is moving

at one mile per hour, you know?

So interesting stuff to that effect.

I definitely, if we did it again,

I would want to participate

in some of the off-site events.

We got a special invite to a CJ-only's ride,

which seemed really cool.

It kicked off.

Again, if you had this many people show up

to just your own little, like hey,

I'm just gonna do like a coffee,

like a Java and Jeeps meetup,

you would have been elated,

let alone 150 CJs showed up to do a meet and greet

for two hours, a rival and meet and greet for two hours.

And then they went on a two to three hour trail ride

where they went, I think he said like 35 miles out

and 35 miles back or something like a loop

or something, you know what I mean?

I was trying to, we got this invite to it.

I was like, that is so cool.

But of course, objectively,

our Jeep was there to be represented

in these manufacturers' booths

and be beneficial to both of us as businesses.

And it couldn't have worked out any better.

A huge shout out to Bestop.

Bestop made it a priority to do a special interest piece

on hashtag not a restoration

and we were able to shoot that on Saturday.

Saturday was a much more mild day until the rain came.

And I'm gonna tell you who absolutely won the weekend.

They won the show.

As far as I'm concerned,

it was the coolest, best thing that could ever happen.

A monsoon popped up

and this is the whole nature of the weather

because basically weather systems

were getting trapped between mountains.

Right, yeah.

And a monsoon, despite the fact that it was, you know,

a slight chance pops up in our space.

And those of us who had the capacity

to hunker down under tents had to hunker down

and ensure that they didn't collapse, Jeffrey

and destroy the tents in the process.

Don't worry, I talked a lot about you and Savage

destroying our good tent a couple of years ago.

And so we had to, you know,

push the tent to get the water out of it

because it's monsooning.

Of course, the guys with the big rigs and trailers

were buttering up the general attendees

because they were like,

come into our air conditioning inside our big rig.

And you have to, you know, sip tea with us

while we, you know, sit in the air conditioning

and ride out this storm.

Meanwhile, you know, we're under a tent

and we're feeling pretty good

because there's people in ponchos,

you know, hunkering under, you know,

whatever cover they could find.

And we're poking at the, you know,

poking at the canvas trying to keep it from collapsing.

And all of a sudden,

the Seymour coatings and cleaning supplies, folks,

they go into their trailer,

which had a beautiful outfit trailer,

not the biggest, but beautiful.

And next thing you know,

they had a complete playlist

dedicated to rain and inclement weather.

And they're blasting out their weather-resistant radios.

An entire playlist of thunderstruck,

a thunder rolls, it's Raining Men.

A country song about happens in the rain.

I'm trying to Gary Allen.

It's the first one they played was the Gary Allen

Songs About Rain.

They started with Songs About Rain.

And then it just, and then it just went from there.

So they were locked and loaded ready for this.

Dude, it was epic.

And we're talking hundreds of people

taking shelter in and around.

And I was just like, after it cleared out,

because it monsooned between about one and about 245,

as it cleared out, I was like,

I made sure to go over to the Seymour guys

and be like, you made that tolerable?

Like you won the event.

I don't care.

You guys are the goat because that was so cool.

But did they play raindrops on my head?

Ah, they did.

Awesome.

They did.

I'm telling you, they played rain music

for almost two solid hours.

Awesome.

It was awesome.

They planned for that.

And now they're like, it's gonna rain some point.

We're gonna have a playlist ready.

They must have done this before.

And because I'm with Josh, one of the owners of IRO.

And he's like, yeah, but you could go to AI these days

and you could generate a playlist

and it would be that easy.

And I'm like, we didn't have enough signal

up on the mountain.

Like it wasn't that reliable.

There was no way.

This was a playlist that they were locked and loaded.

They've been to an event

where they've had to do this before.

Yes.

It was epic.

I mean, that's the little stuff.

Like I could sit here

and I could talk about all the cool Jeeps.

I could talk about the different mods.

I could talk about, you know, the stereo's this

or the suspension that, but honest to Pete,

it's kind of that the lifestyle piece

that goes with the event.

And I'm gonna tell you folks

that as cool as the Jeeps were

that were contained within the vendor areas

and the show and shine,

the Jeeps that just randomly showed up

and parked along the street

and just the multitude of Jeeps

that were parked everywhere.

Because the Jeeps can park off-road, right?

So I mean, they're parked vertical on these hillsides.

It was just so cool.

You, as an enthusiast,

that was worth its weight in absolute gold.

So the last piece here is we're breaking down

on Saturday

and I'm trying to get out of people's way.

We're trying to deconstruct our site

and I needed to get our Jeeps,

you know, kind of moved out of our booth

and whatnot.

So I go ahead and I take J5

and of course that is just such a amazing functional Jeep

and it's aired down

because I actually pulled out the up-down air kit

and had it hooked up for the weekend.

If I had just up-down air kits,

we could have retired, right?

Because they weren't represented at the event

and that was like the coolest thing.

People wanted to buy it right there on site.

And so the Jeep was aired down.

It was beautiful and so it's really soft supple.

The suspension is just awesome.

And so I drive J5 out from where it was at,

get it out of the booth, drive it down the aisle

and all this oncoming traffic and whatnot.

And there's this median, which is an eight inch curb

and then it drops off about 10 to 12 inches

into some rock bed and then it goes up a curve

and that kind of stuff.

I was just like, you know what I mean?

Like just run the truck over that whole thing

and I left it in there, right?

It's part way in, part way out

and that way it's out of everybody's way.

And I'm kind of tucked into

somebody had already broken down, got out of the way.

I then go down to the Crown Automotive booth

and I get not a restoration.

When I fire up around a restoration and I come up

and I tuck it into J5 in such a way

that now the footprint of those two Jeeps

basically takes up two painted line parking spots in total,

right now, but that they're so tightened,

tucked out of the way that it's not gonna interfere

with anybody else loading, unloading their trailers

because I'm really concerned about their aesthetics

and getting, you know, there's forklifts running around

and there's Jeeps moving and there's crates

and stuff getting unpacked.

So at this point in time, I've driven through the night

once, I've done the hotel, I've fought with the traffic,

I've done all the things, right?

And it's time to go home and I'm,

everybody has been so courteous, right?

They've tried to invite me to dinner,

they're trying to invite me to do this, that and the third,

like, and I was like telling people all day Saturday,

I've not eaten solid foods, I'm fueled by caffeine,

I've strategically planned my energy drinks.

I'm good, right?

I'm trying to be lean and mean and not have bubble guts

and I just wanna get on the road and drive.

And I'm like, I'm ready to go.

And but because I've left the Jeeps in a precarious position,

I make sure I grab their keys out of them, okay?

And I start to walk down, air quotes, down the mountain.

I get about a quarter to a third of the way

and I'm on the phone with my wife

and I realize I do not have the truck keys

because now I'm going down the mountain

to get the truck from the hotel parking lot.

And I was like, I don't have my truck keys.

So I gotta go back up the mountain

because they're in Johnny Five, okay?

So I go back up the mountain

and I open up Johnny Five, I have the key fob,

open it up, grab my truck keys.

Okay, at that point in time,

I have checked my Hoochie Daddy pocket shorts

and I know that I've got an auto restoration keys.

I have got J5 keys and I've got the truck keys.

Touch my shorts.

I'm good to go, okay?

Semi neurodivergent brain

has all of my habitual things,

pockets, I know things, I feeling things.

You did the dad pat down.

I did the pat down.

Yep, okay?

Should have just put everything in J5 and locked it.

Oh, oh, you know, that would have made too much sense, right?

Instead, I go down said mountain,

I head down to the hotel.

I go into the hotel, I get my e-frigerator.

They had stored it for me.

Thanks out, big shout out to Holiday Inn.

Bring it out, throw it in the truck,

fire up the truck, ready to rock and roll.

Hit the truck, boom, come up the mountain,

fight with traffic.

I head out of town.

I cannot begin to articulate to you

where they want you to keep your trailers, okay?

I cannot begin to tell you the switchback,

curvy, rurvy, little goofy road that you have to drive.

And this is what everybody warned me about

and it's true.

I had no problem getting there.

I had problems getting back.

Just leave it at that.

May or may not have taken out a guardrail.

Not only am I wanted in the Great Commonwealth

of Pennsylvania, but now maybe Tennessee.

Nah!

Um, at least I didn't hit anybody else in the process.

Get the truck and trailer back.

I'm now air quotes up on the mountain,

fight traffic all the way through,

ready to load.

Load Cookie Monster, shout out to Genie and Jeff

for being there.

It helped me, you know, because it's RHD,

it's a little peculiar.

They helped me load the Jeep.

I go to get not a restoration.

No keys.

Mm-hmm.

Now, I want you to know that when I went to go get the trailer

from the reserve trailer parking space,

I have never in my whole entire life

and owning this particular truck and trailer combination

hooked up a trailer so fast in my whole life.

I pulled into the parking area.

I spun the truck around.

I literally hit the goose neck ball on one shot.

One shot backed up, dead nut centered.

I was too, maybe I was too back up a little bit

so I moved forward just a smidgy bit,

a little too far back up one time, right?

I'm in and out of the truck twice on that.

I am dead center.

I dropped the jacks.

I pulled the cribbing.

I jump up onto the trailer.

I pull myself up.

I'm kind of vertical.

I roll in onto the flatbed so that I can

hasp down the goose neck, latch, hook up the wiring,

hook up the safety chains, the breakaway cable,

so on and so forth.

I was in and out under 15 minutes.

So the key is sitting on the flatbed.

Key could be on the flatbed.

Key could be in that field.

Yep.

Could be in the international.

It could be that a drop down in the goose neck tray.

Could be in the goose neck tray.

Yeah.

Could have been up and down the mountain.

Up and down the mountain.

Yep.

Could be in the hotel bathroom, right?

I know exactly where I've been.

I've been, I've not the kid from the family circus, right?

I did not spend hours running all around town

but I'm also not particularly close

and the weather is out and the traffic

is outrageous at this point.

And I'm in panic mode, right?

Because I'm angry because I just want to be done.

I had planned to get home.

My child was playing piano for church.

I wanted to see this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah.

OK.

And everybody is super cool, super courteous.

You know, again, wanting to, you know, offering meals

or showers or whatever.

You know, hey, do you want to cool down?

No, I want the key, you know?

So at this point in time, I start calling the hotel.

I jump in Minion, which is a right-hand drive

and Jeannie courteously offers to drive me back to where the,

back to where the grounds are because I'm convinced

that the key has fallen out there, right?

And she drives me.

And of course, we are in, for those who are unaware,

a two-door JK, bright yellow, says Minion on it.

But not just that, she has, like, a whole hood cover

that makes, it's like a hood bra, but, like, fully covering

the hood that looks like the overalls of a Minion.

Made out of, like, she's made this.

She's sewn this.

It looks like a jean, you know, out of jean material

or denim material.

It's flapping.

She has giant, you know, two-foot hands for Minion

off the, you know, off the mirrors, which Jeannie loves

to wave at people, right?

She waves them at people.

And there are no short of thousands of vehicles on the road

and everybody's like, the Minion, yeah, Minion.

And they're, you know, they want to be throwing docks,

but she's, you know, she's focused.

And it's a right-hand drive and I am a control person,

right, if you didn't know that.

And I'm wanting to step on the brake on my side

of the vehicle because I'm not used to driving.

I'm not a passenger.

I can drive a right-hand drive.

Driven to right-hand drive quite extensively

because of Jeeps.

I've never ridden shotgun.

So now I am in the appropriate position to drive, to drive.

But you can't drive.

And you want to talk about cognitive dissonance.

I am wanting to gas.

I am wanting to brake.

I am like losing my mind.

And Jeannie is just cool as a cucumber

because of course she was a, you know,

shout out to our postal carrier.

She's driven professionally these Jeeps for her life,

you know, so she is in, and she is in her happy place

because of the minion, right, and she's waving.

I kid you not, well, let me just say,

we got to the, where the grounds were,

the key is not there.

We extensively searched the area.

We can see where the jackpads have been sitting

for the last four days.

The key is not to be found.

We leave.

I kid you not, we're sitting in traffic.

People, it's like when I drive the limousine,

they're like, oh, let the minion through, you know,

like they give a crap.

And we're like, oh, thank you.

You know, that kind of stuff.

We pull up next to a beautiful diesel pick-em-up truck.

And that guy sitting in his truck,

he's a truck guy, right?

Classic, you can tell he's a truck guy.

He's sitting in his truck and he looks over

and Jeannie looks at him

and she wiggles the hand just a little bit.

Would you know this guy reaches out

and like waves back and wiggles it back at her.

Like, he's there for it.

He is a hundred percent committed

and he is like a child smiling back at her.

And then all of a sudden he realizes

that it's a right-hand drive, she's driving.

And he's like, oh my God,

I've never seen a right-hand drive Jeep before.

So now we have this classically one ton built

diesel pick-em-up truck guy who is a child.

He has melted and Jeannie is just in her space, right?

Okay, at this point in time, Josh from IRO has called

and he's like, we're talking and he's like,

how are things going?

And I'm like, awful, I've lost the keys

because this is why we can't have nice things.

Josh has the keys, doesn't he?

No, he doesn't have the keys.

He doesn't have the keys.

He's like, oh man, that's no good.

Like, could they be on the ground at the event?

I was like, I don't know.

So Josh leaves his hotel room, okay?

And he starts to head over to the grounds.

And while I'm on the phone with him, he is walking over

and you can hear him having a conversation

with security to get into the grounds.

And at that point in time, you can hear him ask them.

He's like, yeah, I'm sorry, hey, I'm actually a vendor

but I don't have my vendor tag.

But somebody lost a set of keys.

And like, oh, it's like Charlie Brown's mom.

And next thing you know, he was like, yeah.

No, he's like, does it have a tag on it?

It says, but did you die?

And I was like, yes.

I was like, it's blue and leather.

He's like, yes.

I was like, yeah, there's two keys.

There's no key fobs or anything.

It's like, it's an old school GM call and stuff.

And he's like, dude, they've got them at the security desk.

And I was like, what are you?

And he was like, I was like, where did they find him?

He's like, I don't know.

They said they found him on Main Street.

What?

Now, I don't know if that means the strip.

I don't know if that means the walkway.

I don't know if that means that the main aisle

or the midway of the vendor grounds where we were at.

I don't know.

But miraculously, the keys show up at the security station

that Josh just happens to go through, not one

that I had been going through at all.

I had asked some other security people.

They didn't know.

It was just like, the Jesus himself

had transported the keys to the security station.

You're just supposed to ride in a hand-drive jeep.

Dude, and then this is the problem.

We can't make this stuff up.

And so I ended up getting loaded.

Everybody was super cool and helpful.

We had a nice crowd of people just being talking

and telling stories and sharing.

And it was great, you know?

Of course, it's an important event.

If there was a content creator out there,

they were at the show.

It was nice seeing all those people.

I wish them best of luck on whatever they captured

or whatever it was their priority.

I saw a lot of cool off-road runs happening at the same time.

So I hope people enjoy that.

So that brings us full circle and just the general shenanigans

that I find myself in at the event.

We had a great experience.

Again, look for Bestop to have a special interest story

on Not a Restoration.

I loved meeting and greeting all the people who

tuned into the podcast or our YouTube page.

So thank you for that.

And I look forward to meeting you again

if you didn't take the time.

Because I think there were people who maybe recognized

but didn't want to intrude.

Feel free to come up and say hi.

It doesn't have to be awkward.

We're putting ourselves out there

but you have a fun time.

It's great to hear that.

And I'm probably going to make it weird

but not in that kind of way.

Just the nihilism.

Totally, totally.

So what a great event overall.

But one that as I look forward, figuring out

how we do it in the future is definitely challenging.

Because of course, it required a large personal sacrifice

on my behalf with some of the commitments I have at home.

And of course, you guys and your schedules

and being very people-y for you and Greg,

I do think Greg would love it, though.

Once you got him there, he probably would.

Correct, correct.

He would love it.

He's the one I'm probably most excited about getting there

because I think that he would really embrace it.

But then at a business level, how do we

benefit from it as opposed to just he goes to SEMA

and he does great.

He is very in tune with latest and greatest product

and communication direct with manufacturers

because that's the manufacturer-only show.

This is not that per se.

So definitely some interesting, how

do we approach this in the future?

Conversations need to be had.

But again, thank you to the people who stopped by.

I took pictures, shared stories, said hello,

talked about the impact of the podcast or YouTube.

That kind of stuff is very cool.

Look for some of our content briefly

that will come out because of it and or that Bestop special.

And we'll see how or if this helped

the notoriety of these Jeeps and our team as builders

to go to some other events.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Cool.

Yeah, for sure.

We have, if you're interested, stay

tuned through the outro music.

And we'll talk a little bit about our weekend updates

as needed.

But until next time, jeep on.

Jeep on, jeep on.

So that was fun.

The timer on that was 111.01.

That was fun.

So we talk about how the great usage of a purple strap

is, and I'll get to that.

So I now have 24 wells around my building property.

Oh, did you?

Congratulations.

They all have water in them.

A lot of water.

Did you hit water in the process or just because it rained?

No, no, they hit water on everyone.

I didn't even want to go look this morning

after the big rain.

How do you keep it from collapsing?

I don't know, Neil.

Because all of mine collapsed back in,

because that's how I understand what our soil does.

I don't know.

I have holes-ish in the ground.

It's waiting for an inspector to come and inspect holes

so we can put concrete in holes.

Yep.

And I don't think we have to put any water in the holes

to concrete.

We're just dumping the mix in.

That makes sense to me personally.

It is what it is.

So Sunday, did normal, family, clean house.

My wife had to open.

So as she's coming home, I back the 36 out.

I'm like, I need to snug up the front bearings.

Old car maintenance stuff.

So sitting on a chair mat in the driveway with the kid,

showing what I'm doing, that kind of stuff.

And we're like, things are winding down around us.

We basically have a couple weekends or a weekend.

And things are just going to be like winter.

So we're like, we should go to the special food places.

We should go to Putt Putt.

We should do these things that we've

been intending to do all summer long.

But summer is extremely busy.

And we just don't get those done.

Yes.

This was a weird summer.

I think we can all agree between extreme heat.

It was a late winter.

Then there was extreme heat.

I mean, we can all agree it was just a weird summer.

This was not a temperature most summer

that I wanted to go stand anywhere outside for any period of time.

So we're like, we're going to go to Putt Putt.

Let's take the 36.

Why not?

Let's make it fun.

So we get all the way out there.

And one time on the way out there,

the car kind of went coughed.

Well, that's weird.

Whatever.

Continue on.

Going down the strip.

Things going great.

And this car goes to back out.

And for some reason, it was like going to the falls.

It was all old people and foreigners on the strip.

And it was packed.

But anyway, I was like, OK, they're not back out.

That's a perfect spot for me.

Yes.

For those that have been on Geneva on the lake,

it was right by Eddie's Grill.

I was like, perfect.

Easy peasy.

As he's doing old man things and then appropriately

taking forever, the car dies.

Oh.

On the strip.

You're sitting on the strip.

I'm sitting on the strip.

Yep.

And it won't restart.

But it's kind of rolling.

So I've used in the starter, in the clutch, and everything.

I get over in the parking spot.

Smart.

And not my first rodeo.

No.

For sure, it sure isn't.

So I get it fired back up in the parking spot.

And I'm like, OK, I'm going to go out.

I'm going to try to figure this out.

And of course, everybody, it's packed.

So they're like, oh, this cool car.

Absolutely.

One guy comes up, it does a 350.

Nope.

Sure isn't.

So I'm checking things.

I'm like, maybe it's a loose wire.

Maybe something's not right.

Definitely felt ignition to me.

So I'm checking things.

I'm touching things.

I go to grab the wire on the coil.

And the coil scalds my hand.

No joke.

Could have fried an egg on it.

And I was like, that's not right.

I don't think that's right.

Oil filled or?

That's poxy.

Because this is the second coil.

The first one I bought was oil.

We talked about this.

It started leaking before I ever drove the car.

We had a whole conversation about this.

So car dies.

And I told Amy, I said, just shut the switch off.

I'm checking stuff.

I'm touching it.

I'm like, man, that's really hot.

So I go, you know what?

I'm going to do my best, Scott, to just woo saw and walk around.

Obviously, the car's too hot.

We can't do a whole lot right now anyway.

So we go and do putt putt.

We wander the strip.

We go back and we're trying to decide, do we eat here?

Do we not eat here?

It's very peepily.

So let's go see how hot the car is.

I can put my hand on the coil now.

I'm like, OK.

They wanted ice cream.

Let's go to the ice cream spot at the end of the strip.

And they'll give me an idea of how fast this heats up.

We get to the ice cream place hotter than all Hades.

Can't touch it again.

This is not boating well.

Cannot go through the strip again.

To stop and go.

So we let it cool down.

I joke about putting ice cream on the coil.

You went west just for those following along.

You went away from your home to get ice cream.

Which was the direction I was going.

So instead of trying to turn around.

Trying to try to turn around on the strip.

You went to the ice cream joint that was west of the strip.

Which implies that you either have

to go out to the highway, which is a really long way out

of your way to get back home.

Or you got to go back down the strip.

Or because I grew up out there, I know back roads.

So I back road my way after the ice cream.

We let it cool off as much as we can.

But we also, it's Sunday.

And the kids are back in school.

And they have bedtimes, and showers, and clothing,

and all this other stuff.

And we're trying our desperately

to not let this impact all that.

So I go up.

We hit a side street.

And I'm just trying not to let it keep it moving.

It's up on the coils on the firewall.

I'm trying to keep air going past it.

And I get up to Route 20.

And we're just green light.

Yeah.

We're just every green light.

Come on, green light.

This is on your side.

And we pretty much made it all the way to our road.

And I'm like, OK, we're home free at this point.

We turn the corner.

As I turn the corner, it dies.

Oh, my gosh.

Won't restart.

It says I'm done.

I've done everything.

I've given you all I can.

Got you to your road, at least.

So I coast it, starter, over into the side of the road.

And we hoof it all the way down to our house

from the end of the road.

Send kids in to get ready for bed.

Absolutely.

Get the truck.

Go and find my purple strap.

Throw that in the bed.

Take Celeste down, turn around, put it in front of that.

Wrap the strap around the front bumper.

Hook it on the tow hook.

Thank goodness it's a Rubicon.

And I'm steering the car down the road while Amy's driving.

And I'm thinking the whole time.

That truck is very close to the front of this car.

It's a 12 inch strap.

And you wrapped it around the bumper.

So it's as long as it can be.

It's as long as it possibly can be.

And the whole time, I don't want to smash the grill in the same.

The moment that the brake lights come on,

you better be like a drag racer with a light change.

You better be applying that brake.

The moment you see a brake lights, come on.

Oh, stop, stop.

I was like, we're going to find out how good drum brakes are.

Because when we get up to the house,

I'm slowing the truck down before she even thinks about it.

Nice.

Right, you have to.

So we turn the corner, and I go out and I look at it again.

And she's like, no, I'm just pushing in the garage.

It's done for tonight.

Yep.

Yep, cool.

So we did that.

Then we finally moved the rest of the siding

onto the car trailer, which I forgot that part.

I had Sunday morning started putting siding

onto the car trailer.

So even if I had needed to go tow a home,

I couldn't, because of course, cobbed up the trailer.

Yes.

Why do we have these trailers?

I don't know.

Why do we have them?

And I'm plus, I'm like, you're in Pigeon Forge or wherever.

Jeff's doing.

Jeff things.

My other go-tos are down in Pigeon Forge as well.

I'm like, I don't know who would I really call for this.

Prepare to self-rescue.

So whatever.

So as I was eating ice cream, I'm ordering a coil

and a ballast resistor on my phone.

The main consensus is that it should have a ballast resistor.

I don't understand why it went a year and a half without,

and it was perfectly fine.

Yes.

But whatever.

I personally am wanted not to get too sidetracked.

Honestly, maybe we should do some research and a podcast

on that vintage, especially as we break into rewiring the FC

and everything.

Yep.

The concept of a ballast resistor,

because that's one of the things on the renex aerogieps,

that people eliminated.

Yep.

For the fuel pump.

Yep.

And how fascinating is that there

is a reason it's engineered to be there.

Yep.

So 100%.

I have a bunch of research I need

to do about three ohm and versus 1.5 ohm and 1.6 ohm.

Yeah.

There's something that folks at Petronics really

understand.

Even another layer yet, but yet we'll definitely

have to do a podcast on that once I understand the matrix.

Right.

I was going to say, I've only scratched

the surface with my Petronics conversions I've

done in the past.

And then we know that the whole ballast resistor on the renex

stuff was kind of critical or not critical.

Yep.

But that's fascinating.

Thank goodness for purple straps.

They should be about two feet longer.

Love it.

I love that it came through when you absolutely needed it.

Yeah.

And Jeffrey, it's go time for you.

It's crunch time.

So just to lay out the craziness of things

that we deal with in life.

Obviously, I go out to Erie to start prepping for the event.

We have a security staff meeting

to plan out some of the details for security.

And that was on Sunday at noon in Waterford.

And then from there, I'm going to Voodoo Brewing.

So we go down to Voodoo Brewing for the actual volunteer

meeting.

So we do all our training there, had a great time,

hashed out a lot of things with the volunteers

that came to that meeting.

We have two more on Wednesday.

So we're planning all that.

Then I take a few moments, go over to my grandmother's

house, fix some stuff at her house for her

while killing time to go to it.

Because Jeff, the builder just cannot build.

So must be building.

Must be building.

So then.

I actually talked about that this weekend.

Of course you did.

I said, I got to get Jeff to my.

Do you remember the time I told Jeff to stop buying tools?

I was this weekend.

I was like, I got to get Jeff to stop buying parts.

Like, he's can't be purchasing parts for us.

That's fair.

I keep refining Jeff into like his.

But I did the same with Greg.

Greg went to all the shows with me.

You know what I mean?

And thank God he did.

I couldn't have gone to where I was at without Greg

and going to shows.

But Greg, that was in his strength, you know?

But it's the same with Jeff.

I need Jeff, the builder.

I need Jeff, the customer service guy.

I need Jeff, the reports guy.

I need a purchaser, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yes.

But anyways.

So anyways, we're killing time waiting for this open mic

night to start at 6 PM.

So we decide we're going to go over to Giant Eagle

and get the kids some food from Giant Eagle,

save some money, and not get by dinner at the bar.

100%.

So we just pull into Giant Eagle Park a lot

across from the Mall in Erie.

If you're not familiar with that Giant Eagle,

the parking lot has grass medians

in between the aisles of parking.

But their medians are like little ravines.

They dip down quite a bit.

So we're sitting on one side of the parking lot.

That's exactly what I was explaining with the gravel,

where I go up at the curve and drop down a little bit.

I get it, man.

I get it.

So we're sitting in the parking lot.

We just pull in, and I'm checking a couple things

on my phone before we get out of the vehicle.

And all of a sudden, you hear this loud crash sound.

And my wife, the explicatives, so I look up,

and there's this white pickup truck

that is up over the curve into the medium with the front

tires.

Does not have Johnny 5 suspension.

Yeah, back tires are still on the ground.

And I'm like, oh, that's a problem.

So then she promptly tries to reverse the truck.

And the tire's just spinning.

Sure.

And the first responder, Jeff, comes out.

So I just get out of the truck.

I'm like, all right, well, let's go see what we can do.

So I walk over.

It was two rows ahead of us.

So I just walk across to the truck, and I stop her.

She's all shooken up.

Sure.

She's got kids in the back.

It's a classic situation where you

can just assume, I thought it was in reverse, hit it in drive,

panicked, hit the pedal, so it went up over the curve.

That's exactly how it sounded.

That's what it looked like.

Her reaction and how panicked she was said that's what happened.

Hey, do you have four-wheel drive?

I know that the truck has four-wheel drive.

I can see the truck.

Yep, you're doing your duty.

Do you have four-wheel drive?

I think so.

This isn't what I normally drive.

And I'm like, OK, take a moment.

Calm down.

Put it in four-wheel drive.

Once you have it in four-wheel drive,

just nice and easy on the gas, slowly reverse it.

She fidgets with everything in there for a minute.

So she's got an four-wheel drive, goes to put it in reverse.

The back tires just start spinning immediately.

I'm like, OK, let me just go get my truck.

I'm going to get you pulled out of here.

So I drive around, block the parking lot, of course,

draw the winch line out, hook up to that, and.

What do you hook to on this truck?

I ended up just hooking to the tow hitch.

So I walk back up to the safety chain part of it.

She didn't actually have a hitch hitch.

So I walk over to.

So you're actually just hooked into the loops

of the safety chain.

Wow, OK.

I've seen those break, but I mean, you're thinking that, right?

I literally looked at it.

This is an ideal, but it's just front tires

over a little curb at this point.

So I'm like, so I walk up to her.

So I walk over to her window and I'm like,

I need you to put this in neutral and leave it in neutral.

Just don't do anything else.

Yeah, because she puts it in reverse

and hits once she actually gets traction,

she's coming into you.

Correct.

So she put it in neutral.

I verified that it was in neutral before I

walked back to the truck.

Couple seconds, popped it right over the curb.

I immediately released the winch line, walked over,

said, please leave it in neutral.

I got to disconnect everything.

And let me check your front tires, make sure you didn't

blow a tire.

She promptly puts it in reverse and just sits in reverse.

I'm sorry.

So this is what we do when we try to help people.

So my wife appropriately was sitting

in the Jeep holding the breakdown while I was doing this.

So she just pulled it into the spot next to this truck.

And the kids hopped out.

I'm like, guys, just stay over there.

Oh, gosh.

Like, just stay over there for the moment.

Because she was in reverse the whole time

and she just sat there.

I'm like, are you OK to drive?

Do I need to call someone for you?

She's like, no, no, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

She sat there the entire time that I

got the kids resituated, got the winch put away,

put all the controllers and everything

back in the bed of the truck.

And I started to walk.

And I'm like, all right, guys, let's walk out

wide around the truck because I don't know what she's doing.

And we were basically into the grocery store

before she finally started to actually move again.

Weird.

So I think she was just really shook up from the situation.

Oh, yeah, right.

And it sounds like maybe it's not her vehicle.

It's definitely not her vehicle.

She said she doesn't normally drive that.

Right.

But yeah.

So again, crazy stuff just happens around us.

Just happens.

I'm glad you were there to help that person.

You wouldn't have to hook it to the safety cable

if you would have a purple strap.

You could have ran a hitch pin through.

And I've towed off the hitch pin a lot.

I actually had the purple strap.

But I could have done that.

I didn't even think about it.

Miss opportunity.

But there was also a lot of vehicles parked there.

So there wasn't a lot of room for pulling.

Sure.

Yeah.

Whereas winching, you just park and drag.

Right.

Well, you could have winched off the purple strap.

Could have.

You know?

Could have looped it around off the hitch pin and double

looped it.

Safety note for our listeners.

That's how you would actually appropriately

do this versus the sketch area that I have to.

The sketch stuff.

And there's even somebody.

I mean, while it's double sheer and that is rated for

pulling, it's still not exactly recovery rated.

Right.

You know, there's the conversation.

I mean, obviously I have all the credit to our good

recovery people, right?

People who actually do tow recovery.

But sometimes you just got to get the job done.

You know?

Yeah.

That was fun.

I actually had something to share with you guys from my

weekend update.

But I don't remember what it was.

We've gone long enough.

So until next time.

Jeep on.

Toyota Crown

Ford Excursion

Chevrolet Spin

Ford Bronco

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