Soon to be trail and humor story section.
If anyone has humorous stories (true ones please!), send them to me.
A little story of mine about group comradery and the reasons why not to mix alcohol and froadin.
In other words, how my friends left me when I was drunk in the middle of no where with problems.
We were all having fun around a camp fire, relaxing, and drinking. And after deciding that getting back before the
sun came up would probably be a good idea. We all got into three different vehicles and took off. I took off
first and had a decent head start. Not that I had far to go, but I still mananged to miss the turn. By the time I
had found room to turn around and start heading back, I could hear my buddies taking the correct trail out.
Then it happened. All I heard was a quick little zip noise, then the WHOOSH of air. I knew what happened before
getting out of the Jeep, I blew a tire. Upon taking a closer look, a rock had cut a slice about 5 inches in my sidewall.
The air was out of the tire in about 3 seconds flat.
And of course we were not out doing any REAL froadin at the time, so I didn't have anything useful with me. After taking inventory, we
had a spare, a tire iron, and NO JACK. The hi-lift was sitting in the back of my buddy's blazer, and they were gone by now.
It seems that they figured that I was driving fast, and left them behind. So they just kept going.
So we are now in the middle of nowhere, no jack, and there were three of us. None of witch were very sober at this point. We didn't think that it was worth worrying
about being sober earlier, it was an easy drive back, and there was NO ONE out there to worry about. Which made our problem worse, the only people who could help, had just driven off.
So we started by taking off the lug nuts to remove the tire. And be some luck, and a LOT of searching, we finally found a small log, large stick, that we jambed under the axle, and I drove up onto it.
This was enough to get the flat off, but the spare would not go on. It was just too low. After much thinking, which is wuite difficult after way too much Everclear,
I figured out that if I took the flat tire, and put it against the front spring, I could drive forward and roll the srping on the flat tire.
Not the best way, but we were not sober, and really didn't have much of a choice. This actually worked, to our supreme relief, and we preceded on.
After returning to the others. They had arrived back without incident, and just thought that we had taken off for something else.
So besides being totally sober, the sun coming up, have a trashed tire, we were not to happy about being left. They didn't even stop at the bottom of that trail to make
sure that everyone came out. NOT good froadin practice! If you go in somewhere as a group, you come out as a group. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Here is a quick little humorous, but true story from a buddy.
Geoff's story:
....We were trailing through some grassy fields and small inclines in
South/Central Texas just north west of San Antonio, enjoying the fun of
the CJ while looking for a cave which is supposed to be a popular climbing
spot (rock climbing that is). We were clearly in the wrong area, but we
were trailing all through some great land, so we just had fun with it.
Approaching a small hill, I was, of course, expecting no problems. As we
began to go up the incline, the Jeep backfired and stalled. It surprised
me, but I was not too concerned, until it wouldn't start back up. This
was unusual, but still not too out of character. The carb. was very ill,
as usual, and I didn't believe in an air cleaner just mto make matters
worse. I stopped cranking and pumping the pedal thinking perhaps it may
have flooded - or had maybe just developed a new dissorder. Then I
noticed thick smoke beginning to pour out from under the hood. My buddy,
Ben, having no faith in my trusty CJ bailed out of his seat like it was
about to explode.
I chuckled at this, humored by him thinking that my
jeep was on fire, when I realized, that my Jeep was probably indeed on
fire. That wouldn't be out of character either. Knowing the engine bay
was coated in oil, I began to imagine the possibilities. I ran to the
hood latches and lifted the lid. Horror! It seemed as though everything
from the carb, where it started, to the radiator, to the oil soaked
battery and fuel lines and even the underside of the hood, was all
emitting flames. Thanks to quick reactions, I stood there like a deer in
headlights. Then, I quickly panicked. We had a bottle of watter with us,
which was immediately dumped on the carb by my friend, who was thinking
much quicker than me. That extinguished most of the flames on the inside
of the carb, but of course all the oil on the outside was still burning.
As we realized all of our water was now gone (most of it sitting in the
carb.) the flames were not going away. I was still in panick mode,
reaching down on the ground to grab a handfull of dirt and dry sand. I
looked up and Ben had already pulled a towel out of the back and was
handing it to me. I looked at it and admired what a much better choice it
was over my handful of sand. I took it and began to dive into the flames
with it. The fire had gotten pretty big, so Ben was backing himself away
to safety, knowing that I would probably die with my Jeep.
The only real
thoughts that kept going through my head were the vision of a huge grass
fire with a burning Jeep right in the center and a bunch of "authorities"
asking all the typical question like "who are you?" and "what were you
doing on Farmer Joe's property" and "where did you hide the drugs?" etc...
The other thought was that of the expressions that must have been on the
faces of the people in a house that sat on a hill overlooking us about
800yds away. I kept smothering the flames and to much relief was having
success. I was expecting a huge explosion every second, but was relieved
that it never came. All of the fire was out, except an oily rag down
between the radiator and the grill which was taken care of by a few hand
fulls of muddy water from a puddle nearby. Upon examining the engine bay,
it was decided that maybe everything was okay. All the hoses were badly
blistered, especially the fuel line, but we hoped they would hold. We
soaked up the water out of the carb and cranked her right up. It made it
all the way back to Austin, and I drove it for a week on those sad charred
hoses until our faithful Webmaster, and my mentor, felt sympathy and gave
me new hoses.
I suppose the moral of the story could be - don't tresspass
on stranger's property, hours away from home, looking for something that may
not even exist, with a jeep that could burst into flames at any moment -
but that is NOT the moral. The moral is to go ahead and do that, because
whatever happens, it sure will make a great story to tell when you get home.