David's Life

2026-04-23

Zoe needed a pillow

So she grabbed the baby hippo’s baby hippo 🤪

Nothing to see here, just a little welding going on to get me back home. Turns out it welded up so nice that it was stronger than before it broke. I made it all the way home without any issues. I even made it by 11:30p so it was still the same day, haha. That leaves me 20% of segment one to go back to before I hit segment two of the GOAT.

My grandpa and dad would have loved THIS

The guys worked at this family sawmill and that’s where the welder was. They use that loader/snort grab these huge tree trunks for loading into the saw.

Well this is going to be interesting…

A random nice guy along the route offered to weld my track bar frame end steering bracket back onto my frame. But, first we needed to pick up the welder (literally) and get it to his house where my jeep was. I can’t believe the effort his dad and he went to in order to help me out. I guess it pays to be a prepared and helpful person. I’ve helped plenty of folks myself and this time I needed to be on the receiving end! Quite the “forklift”!

One of a couple creek crossings on the GOAT

Segment one, 80% complete.

2026-04-22

However, the view from the top was great.

I could have spent a lot of time running back and forth as far as the eye could see along the power lines 🤪

My steering has been compromised…

The one thing I haven’t really properly replaced are the ends of the front track bar. They were re-welded when I bought the Jeep. I noticed that the frame end was coming loose, so I did my best to reinforce it to get me back down to the road. The looseness caused the steering stabilizer bolt to shake out too. So I put a substitute bolt in, but it was a smaller diameter and too long. So I used some electrical tape to keep it in place. Spoiler alert, the ratchet strap barely held long enough to get off the power line trail. The electrical tape made it all the way home at least, haha!