Happiness is a warm puppy!

Breakfast coneys!

Who would have thought they would be so good.  Sausage instead of a hotdog, and laid on an egg in the bun.  Yum!  

As a bonus, John and Savannah treated me to a surprise dinner at Elsa's too!  They all know the way to my heart for sure.  I love my family. ❤️ It's nice to see they love me too.  

What a great idea Andy had for breakfast!

As a bonus, Skyline's coffee was great too.  They said they're serving Graeter's coffee.  I need to check THAT out… :) Funny that Andy happened to be wearing that hat!

Early Father’s Day breakfast trip

I was even chauffeured by Andy❣️

Andy was driving so I captured my shadow.

That's a little too hard to do when you're in the driver seat. ;)

My mom got me the perfect Father’s Day card and gift!

How could she know I would use shop towels…?! Hahahaha.  She bought me a set of foot pegs too! But you won't see those for a couple days.

Zoe likes Brutus too!

It's fun to run around town with her in right there with me.

Say hello to my little friends… :)

All lined up and ready to go for a full day of show and tell. I had to tap at least three different sources to find all these!

An early day at the range

A beautiful day too, perfect for an open air ride to class. 

I got Zac’s lights all mounted and working!

I like the look, placement and how clean they look right there.  I'll use them for trail lights.  Some people use them to ward off tailgaters…

I also started working on beefing up my fenders and corners.  You can see the before and after in the bottom left then right. 

Julie’s snail jammed himself up.

She couldn't find him in the terrarium and then noticed he was all the way up in the lid checking it out.

Beautiful sunset scene on the way home from an errand.

It's fun to do errands in my open air vehicle.  Makes me wanna go out. ;)

Zoe, king of all she sees.

Zoe was hanging with me while I worked on my Jeep fenders.  At one point, I found her out there sitting in a sunbeam and just surveying her kingdom.  She's become very content to just be around me.  She's accustomed to all the noises and seems to really enjoy it when we're out there.  

Oh my, so many options…

I thought this interface for the light controller on my Jeep was pretty crazy looking.  Maybe I need some lighted antennas too?! Hahaha.

Tinkering with Brutus my Jeep

Zac gave me some pod lights for Christmas.  I never had a chance to put them in Daisy, but now I did with Brutus.  Even better, there was a spare switch on the console it came with.  First I got them wired in and proved the concept to myself.  Now I just need to route them and mount them up.  It's fun to play around with what I want to do instead of spending all my time and money on fixing what broke… ;)

Cool vibe in Slim’s

Breakfast with John and a step back in time.

It's always fun to stop in Spring Valley.  Just a quiet little town.  Slim's is one of the couple of businesses and something different for breakfast and hanging with my kids.  I liked the old truck too!

I figured out how to work my lights…

Turns out, there's an app for that! With a little research, I figured out how to connect to the controllers for the rock lights and make them something other than purple.  On the one hand, they're just silly and made to look cool.  On the other other hand, they're very practical if you're trying to navigate some obstacle or close clearance in low light.  

Angles around the house…

I can stay on my property and still get 30º front to back and roughly 15º side to side when testing things out on our berm.  It's good practice for how to crawl off-road.  This was just a little joyride and John and Savannah.

New sticker and patch field

I had to start over with my sticker spots with the new Jeep.  The good news is it meant I got to use some that I didn't have room for anywhere else.  I also had the bright idea to get some Velcro so I could bring most of my patches out of hiding (I didn't really have many Velcro field spots for them).  So here's the current version.  Lots of fun memories and gear I've made and used over the years.  I already added some more since I took this pic.  Black Moiuntain, Coffee and Bacon, etc. :)

The final load out

Freedom flaps, fluids, jack, straps, fire extinguisher, med kit, tools and inflator.  All nicely tucked away so they don't bounce around off-road.  I'm thinking about swapping the farm high lift jack for a bottle jack?  Or maybe having both is a better idea.  They each have their advantages and disadvantages.  

Just a minor septic rebuild across the street…

 

Sunset at the lake in a Jeep

Apparently, we drove straight into the water!?

We put our tires in Caesar's Creek, just for fun.  Savannah decided it was worth a pic. ;)

The kids want to joyride in the new beast…

…So we took everything off of it and headed out!

Andy found a great plan for Father’s Day for us!

 I was really looking forward to it!  They're running a special test menu at this one store.  He called me up and said "I don't care what your plans were, but THIS is what you're doing!"  Fun!

Cheap, easy, nicer looking, and more functional seats.

The dust and water just wipes off these seat covers and I can preserve the nicer seats underneath and not worry about the roughness of all the in and out on the trails. :)

They fit great and look original.

I don’t know why I like these Apple summary graphics so much…

It's a nice way to see the features in the new OS releases I think.

Cool little place to put my doors.

It folds up to fit in the Jeep, lets you roll it around for storage or even into your hotel room, and even doubles as a luggage cart.  Pretty ingenious actually…

You can see Julie’s snail, Gary, enjoying a little snack

Fun brother moments to get to “see”…

Savanah captured Andy teaching John to drive a manual stick shift.

The time has come…

I guess you have to start somewhere and work your way up.  At the moment, Daisy is sitting in the front yard while Brutus worries someone's gonna take her away.  I am gonna miss her.  A different kind of fun and adventure.  Less creature comforts, a little more frightening, less likely to make it home, but fun nonetheless. It has been really fun fixing her up, learning along the way, and being amazed at what the little girl can do.  I just drive her around the block a couple times last night and enjoyed every minute again.

After Waffa breakfast, Andy was kind enough to help me out.

We measured for, shopped, then installed some organization in the trunk of Brutus.  Spare fluids on one side, tools and "what if" supplies on the right.  Perfect!  He even made a great Spoklesmodel for it… hahahahaha 🤣

Now Andy’s getting into the hobby car game…

 He’s been wanting a “stick shift beater car” to play around with ever since I first got my original Jeep a year ago.  His co-worker has this one for sale and Andy’s been trying it out. It’s got a lot of issues, but is also fun to zoom around town.  They may be coming to mutually agreeable terms on it.  Stay tuned.  Between my Jeeps and longer term test-driving this one, he’s become pretty comfortable with manual transmissions.

Kinda cool lookin’ from the ditch.

I was checking the mail.  When I turned around and walked through the ditch, I noticed a perspective you don't usually get.  Anyhow, I am sure you don't want to see more pictures of my Jeep, but I can't help myself.  It is fun to have something to play with.  Julie and my kids all encouraged me to make a little more free time for myself.  I guess I'm testing how seriously they meant it. So far, so good.  We're all enjoying it one way or another. ;)

Enjoy a long off-road trip…

I know it’s long at 50 minutes, but I thought you might enjoy seeing some crazy off-road fun with Brutus, my new Jeep. I left in some of the bits where we try several times and then end up winching or pulling ourselves to get out or over it. At one point I was getting winched in TWO directions. At another point, I was winching myself over and had a tow strap connected to the guy behind me so he could get unstuck. Learning a lot and having fun all around! The only bad thing, is the go-pro really flattens out the look of the obstacles. You’ll just have to believe me, it’s way worse than it looks, hahahaha!

 

Packing up to head back home.

 You have to air back up the tires, figure out where you want to store your doors or put them back on, reconnect your sway bar, and stow any parts that fell off… I had a fender that was already barely hanging on, it isn’t anymore, you can see it laying behind the Jeep. The good news is, I already had the replacements on order, it was just a piece of plastic, no harm, no foul ;-)

The replacement ones are made to just bounce off rocks and trees and just keep going. I plan to test that theory in a week or two. ;)

What is wrong with this picture?!

 How about the baby seat in the passenger compartment!! that is one way to bring them up!

Got him dirty, a little.

 It was actually a perfect day. Interestingly, my tires are covered in mud, but the rest of the jeep really isn’t. The weather made it so that there was just enough humidity in the air that the dust wasn’t too bad. The mud we went through was a slow and easy part of the trail so it didn’t get flung everywhere. Pretty funny to see the tire so muddy but the rest of it still relatively clean. The keyword being relatively…;-)

Ok, that’s better…

…I can roll with these guys.  They're more at the same level as my rig more or less.  The good news is they divided the group of 50 up into four or five groups depending on your rig, what kind of trouble you wanted to get in to, and your skill/comfort level.  I picked the bottom one.  It used to be called the pink group.  This year they changed it to black to make us feel better, hahahaha. I went with a friend of mine from work.  The group was the Stillwell Stompers.  Twice a year they are given access to a huge plot of private land that's a working forest.  He's into off-roading and he has made it AWESOME!

Uh-oh… I might be in the wrong place…!

 These buggies are SERIOUS.  All trailered in, all HEAVILY built. NEVER any doors or tops, and not street legal…

I may be in a thrashing…?!

It’s going to be a good day when…

…You start with a sunrise and letting most of the air out of your tires.  Gotta keep them nice and soft for grip, puncture resist, and ride quality.

Ok, so I’m heading out for a big wheelin’ trip

It will put Brutus to the test for sure!  A good first step will be returning home in one piece.  

Regardless, I enjoy the adventure and the views.  This one was no exception.  The sun welcomed me as I headed off towards North East Ohio for some tough stuff.

My Harbor Freight winch fits :)

Barely!

But it's ready to go.  If it's good enough for Matt's Off-road recovery, it's good enough for me. :)

The good news is I put it to the test a couple days later and it proved itself worthy.

Light up the night?

Showing off the trail and rock lights that came on Brutus.  I am going to have to figure out how to change the color I think.  Purple just doesn't do it justice.  But, wow, the light bar is BRIGHT!

Red themed tools

My packout kind of gets scattered all over the garage when I have a project.  I sure do appreciate the modularity and convenience this organization system brings!  This was after I put most things back in their respective boxes.  Imagine what it was like in the middle of the project. ;)  Now I can tuck everything back up under my workbench and fit two full-size vehicles back in there. :)

It’s not a Jeep project unless an angle grinder is involved…

The winch that came with Brutus wasn't working right, so I needed a new one before I could hit the trails.  Trouble is new winches are centered, but old winches are offset.  Sooooo, I needed to make room for the new one. Nothing a little spray paint can't fix.  Good news, it wasn't anything structural… I put it to the test that weekend for sure!

Sometimes, driving a Jeep be like…

I saw this add on FB Marketplace and just had to laugh.  I think they were intending to show that their project Jeep came with a spare differential.  But I don't think FB showed the right picture as the thumbnail for the ad hahaha.

Always good to see the energy of VBS

The church goes all out with decoration and dedication to spreading the Gospel to the neighborhood kids at VBS.  It's fund to share in that each year with our safety team contribution.  This year's jungle adventure theme was no exception.  I loved the bee hives, glow in the dark mushrooms and scorpions, and the chance to walk on a rope bridge… ;) Meanwhile, they studied the seven C's of the Bible.  Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consumation. 

This DOG❣️

Meet Gary!

Julie couldn't resist adding a snail to her critter collection after our Hawaii trip.  She made a great little terrarium for him, and he seems right at home!  He's enjoying some of her fresh transplants from our yard. His shell is somewhere between the size of a Walnut and a golf ball.  It's fun to watch him "run" around his world.

Just walking through the front yard…

Imagine my surprise the other day.  I was on the phone with Andy about septic tank problems John was having.  I looked out the picture window to see this little guy just meandering through the yard.  We went out and said hello.  He didn't seem to be in distress and just went on down the driveway to the woods in the back of our place.  John and Savannah had seen him walk from the back to the front of their place too just a little earlier that day.