Lets just start this off with the slideshow, because these pictures are worth more than any amount of words I can type. We headed out on thurs night to Squaw Lake, which is just north of Yuma , but still on the CA side of the CA/AZ border. I got off work around 5, and picked up the truck from AAMCO where I had taken it in to get the transmission checked before towing the boat 250 miles.
Side note: We got fucked on that truck. Still not a bad deal, but Craigslist karma finally caught up with us. On a truck that was seemingly in good condition, we spent the following:
New brake rotors and pads (All 4 were warped to shit, worse than I have ever seen, and I’ve done a lot of brakes): $500
4 new tires, since the ones on it were actually passenger tires, not Light Truck tires, and were completely worn out. They weren’t even rated to handle the weight of the truck, let alone anything in the bed or being towed: $815
Oil Change, Fuel injector cleaner: $30
Transmission Service @ AAMCO - the guy we got the truck from said it was rebuilt 10k miles ago. However nothing else he said turned out to be true, so I wanted it checked. Turned out this was true, but differential oil had never been changed, so I had that done as well: $210
Finally, there was a current 2008 registration sticker on the truck, so I thought we just needed to xfer the title. Upon going to AAA, turns out the sticker was stolen, and the truck hadn’t been registered since 2006. Had 2 years of backfees on it: $820 (no wonder he conveniently “forgot” the registration card”
Insurance: $126 for 6 months liability
The fact that both of our trucks broke down in Carlsbad on him and he had to have them towed to Ventura, didn’t get in the 5am the next morning (He was warned this might happen, we disclosed everything):
Priceless
Anyway, I pick up the truck, and head home to load everything up. Dani, Evan, Anderson, Kid Nickles and I all hit the road around 8 and jumped on the freeway. 200 miles and $200 in gas later, we pulled in to thecamp site and set up shop, cracked open a few beers, and got a couple hours of sleep.
I woke up around 6:30 and Dani and I loaded up the boat. The rest of the day consisted of arguing, drinking, blasting music, and wakeboarding, and was pretty damn good overall. Got back around dark and pulled the boat out of the water, ate and crashed out.
Somehow made it up Saturday morning and got the boat ready again with Dani. (See the pattern here: 3 other lazy asses!) We were expecting Kjo to make it up around 10am or so, since he was supposed to be heading up after getting off work around 5am, with his new Sanger wakeboard boat (More about that in a minute). We cruised over to hidden shores to fill up on some gas, and then went out for some more wakeboarding. Lots more people were out on the river on Saturday as opposed to friday, Sandbars were packed with boats and drunk people.
Beer was flowing like water, and the wakeboarding was awesome. We chilled over near the cliffs and jumped
off them for a while, anchored the boat and just laid around blasting some tunes, drinking, eating lunch, talking shit, and waiting for Kjo. He finally called around 4, and said his new boat wouldn’t start and he needed help, so we headed back over to the Squaw Lake campground. He had made it about 100 yards off the boat ramp before the engine cut out on him. We tied up next to him and Evan and I took a look at it.
Upon starting the engine you would just hear a clunk sound, and then grinding. I have heard that before: a telltale sign that your starter has chipped or sheared a tooth on the fly wheel. It was a pretty grim diagnoses, and it looked like he was going to be out of commission for the rest of the trip. Shitty thing was that he had just bought the boat that week, and had rushed to get a loan through in time so he could bring it out to the river. He called the lady he bought it from, who had just had an $800 service performed on it (its an ‘06 with only 45 hours on it). Sounds like she agreed to pay to fix it once hes back in town.
We still had daylight left, and couldn’t let the party die, so we hitched up his boat to ours and towed him quite a ways back over to the cliffs so we could get some last minute partying in. This was pretty awesome, and at least we got him out on the water to enjoy a few beers on his $30,000 floating ice chest. (He got ripped on pretty bad for this mishap…not his fault, but thats the kind of people we are).
Headed back around dark, killed some more beers, then passed out to get up at 7 to pack up and drive home. Overall, an awesome trip, and definitely worth the 3.5 hour drive to get out there and do some camping. I have a feeling we will def be back multiple times this summer, not to mention the Havasu trip planned for end of June!
I have to warn everyone about this danger in the Congo. Apparentlly,
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
So, beware for magic penis sorcerers who may shrink your tackle and box for passing you in a taxi-carriage.
I read blogs of a lot of my friends every day, since a lot of us spread out after college. It’s interesting to see what all of us are accomplishing after school, but sometimes it makes me think of what I am actually accomplishing in my own life. At times I feel pretty damn successful, at others I feel like a complete waste of time. I know its not a contest, but some people are in other countries, traveling the world, volunteering, living in Hollywood, Alabama…all sorts of places.
Ragsdale is in Alabama, partying in New Orleans at ever chance
Brett is still playing with our band from SB, The Riot Before, and Touring the US
Jason, Baingo and Johnny are in Hollywood still having the crazy nights we used to have
Tracy is in New York making the same mistakes
Sometimes it just seems like I’m not doing anything that great. Your life gets into a rut sometimes and you have to spin the tires to get out of it. I have been working for ESET for nearly a year and a half. Its a great job, but the same thing every day really begins to get monotonous. I suppose some of it is just that I dream of doing big things, but can’t figure out a way to get there. That and maybe that I haven’t really taken any time off since I started working here (I Have 91 hours of vacation time saved up!).
When things start to blend together into one constant stream, what do you do to differentiate one day to the next? Weeks tend to blur by, Monday turns into Friday, turns into a quick weekend where I try to accomplish everything I didn’t have time to do during the week, and the loop starts over. My roomate Adam recently said - "What would you do if you didn’t have some project to accomplish on the weekends". True, I always am working on something - fixing a motorcycle, a truck, the boat. When do I have time to just sit back and enjoy the shit I worked my ass off to get? My brother and I do web site and graphic design as a side business, and most nights we come home from work only to turn on our computers at home and work on another project until nearly midnite.
I have made some sacrifices, or concessions in order to, what I thought would, improve my life. I have quit smoking, (going on almost 5 months), don’t drink much (maybe one night a week, if that - a big cut from my college/SB self), joined a gym that I hit during lunch a couple times a week, take vitamins, try to eat healthier…but what has it given me. I’m still the same person, who misses partying, less responsibility, hell I just miss sitting on the porch and smoking a cigarette. In those days I knew where my life was going - somewhere successful in general, although nothing specific. In my head then I was headed up and up, just had to finish my education and get to that good job. Those were easy dreams to have when you thought they would never come true (College took me 5.5 years - it seemed like time was frozen in place back then). Well now those dreams have come true, I have that job, although I’m just working my way up the corporate ladder. Success for a 25 year old I suppose, but nothing special - I still have a lot to learn and achieve.
But god damn it sometimes I just want a cigarette, and to have the conversations I used to have with the people I used to have them with. Maybe its just changes that come with age and maturity, but life used to seem a lot more passionate. Things used to be bright and colorful when you didn’t know where you were headed. Not that anything is bad now by any means, but it just seems to flow from one day to the next seamlessly, when it used to be clear, concise days of achievement and down time, where things could be accomplished at any time of the day or night. Now my life is blocked out from 8-5 monday through friday, rushed from 5-10, and hectic on weekends. This can’t be the way it was meant to be enjoyed? I’m not complaining by any means, and my tastes are way too rich to be enjoyed as a bum just living on the beach, but god damn it I have to figure out the way to live my life in a manner that keeps my fire burning, because I am quickly realizing that this is not it.
And, an afterthought: this is not a complaint about anything in my life. I know how fortunate I am, and some of has been given to me, some of it I have worked for myself. I love my life…this is just speculation as to how I can live it in a better way for myself.
Evan, the creator of www.DezertDimes.com, a S10/Sonoma pre runner truck online forum, is trying to sell his truck to the guys that joined his forum for his support! What a hypocrite. No wonder they shred him to pieces as soon as they read his post.
Then someone asks why he doesn’t ride his motorcycle more. He initially writes “I hurt my foot”, then edits it and says hell start riding it during summer. So I had to throw in my $.02, so I posted following his:
nyone who knows my brother and I knows about our little side business. We have been buying and selling cars, trucks, and motorcycles off of craigslist for the past couple years, fixing them up, and reselling for normally double our money. It has actually been pretty lucrative…I picked up my ‘97 Honda XR400 dual sport (Green stickered and plated) for $1750 cash, and it was in flawless shape. Used it for a year, and then just sold it for $3000. Thats over $1200 profit! We’ve engineered quite a few deals of this nature, but just finally pulled off the best one yet. Not that there is anything underhanded or shady about what we’re doing, its just that a lot of people have a motorcycle that "has an unfixable electrical problem" that we pick up for $100 and it turns out to be a dead battery, replace it, and sell for $700. A lot of people are ignorant and don’t want to do work themselves, and therefore can’t fix simple problems. This is where we come in and make some serious bank off of them.
Our dad always taught us to fix things ourselves, buying us our first car at 16, a 1966 Ford Mustang. Before we were even allowed to drive it, he made us build working models of V8 engines so we understood everything about them. Then we pulled the car apart and went through it completely. It was an awesome father/sons project, and made me appreciate the knowledge of knowing how to do all this myself.
Back from that tangent, we had recently acquired a couple of older trucks after selling our 1959 Ford Fairlane Galaxie 500 . We had a 1977 Dodge Ramcharger with a 318 V8 to tow our boat, which we picked up for $3000 from a local guy.
We used that beast all of last summer to tow the boat the 2 miles from our house to the bay and back. Next, we picked up a 1967 For F250 Camper Special, only because a lady was forced to sell it and we got it for $900. It had a fully built 352 long block, and hauled ass. Anyway, this was just an investment, intended to be used for a bigger deal down the line. All in all we had about $4500 invested in these two trucks after repairs, but we wanted something reliable to tow the boat long distances (Havasu) this summer.
WIth these two beasts sitting out front of our house, it looked like a trailer park, and we started looking for something better for towing. A guy up in Ventura contacts us a couple days ago about his 2004 F150 with the 5.4l V8, fully loaded. He inherited the truck and wants to trade it for both. 90,000 miles, rebuilt trans. It was a work truck, but is still in great shape. He came down yesterday, and we swapped straight up. She needs a few minor things, putting on new rotors this weekend, and prob shocks too, and I’m on the lookout for a set of tires…but trading $4500 worth of Old iron for $10,000 worth of F150 is a hell of a deal no matter how you put it!
River Trip = Insane
camp site and set up shop, cracked open a few beers, and got a couple hours of sleep.
