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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. This is Overland Weekly, episode number 31. If you are new here, you have found the show that explores the people, places, and events that make up the off-road and Overland community. As we are recording this, it is the week before Thanksgiving. I am back home here in middle Tennessee, and it has been heavy wheeling and camping and all things outdoor season here. The weather's just really been great for us these last couple of months in this part of the country. We've had a few events since the last episode. We had Cruisers on the Rocks out at Wind Rock. That's Lee's event for the 100, 200, 300 series Land Cruisers. This was the fifth year for that, and that was a really good time. It's always a good event. But Lee, and really his wife, Joy, if you don't know, his wife is really the driving force behind the success of these events, did a great job of pulling that off, and it was good to see old friends and make a few new ones as well. Our club was back at Coalmont, which is beautiful this time of year. It's beautiful all But we had our annual ride and meeting there. I got hung up with some work stuff, wasn't able to get over there, so I literally had to FaceTime into the meeting. One of the guys zoomed me in from his phone at the campfire. Sometimes technology works to your benefit, even when you're out in the woods. Then two weeks ago, we were back at a Hawk Pride in Tuscumbia, Alabama, for the Veterans Day run, put on by our friends at Heart of the South Cruisers. I'm not going to call it an event because they don't like to call it an event. It's a gathering, it's a large camp out of friends, if you will, that has grown over the years. It's always on Veterans Day weekend. This year, great group of folks, and also extra special because our friends from Operation tackle box were able to come up from Florida, Jacob and Jeff Watkins, and join us. You've heard me talk about Operation Tacklebox in the past. We've raised money for them with G-Smitter, but this is a charity that Jacob founded that takes combat veterans that have PTSD, suicidal thoughts, other mental issues, and works to get them the help and assistance they need. He started that by taking these guys and gals out on fishing charters, healing through reeling, and now it's evolved into Operation Trail Therapy, healing through wheeling, and getting them out in the woods for some healing in the outdoors that way. It was really good to see those folks and also raise some more money for Operation tackle box. Personally, that park, I just really like wheeling at Hawk Pride, especially time of year. It wasn't too wet, but it was a little wetter than it was a couple of months ago. That's some good technical wheeling. It's one of those places that I find myself trying to keep up with the solid axel guys. That's always a challenge. I enjoy it. But there was at one point, I think we were out on a night ride and I looked back and it was just a row of '80s and '40s and buggies behind me. Here's the 200 series on IFS trying to keep up. Anyhow, it was a good time. Really, really enjoyed that park and the wheeling there. Speaking of the IFS versus solid-axle wheeling, our guest tonight, who I'm going to bring in here, is now versed in both forms. His latest vehicle, he went a new direction. Some folks may say that's a step forward or step back, depending on how you want to look at it. But folks, let me bring Justin Wages in. Justin is joining us from Grass Valley, California. Is that correct, Justin? That's correct. All right. Yeah, thank you, brother, for agreeing to come on and have this conversation. For folks that don't know, we'll get into all his rigs and run down. But Justin's evolved through the off-road and overland scene for a vehicle-wise. He was real heavy in a Nissan there for a bit, and still is. But you finally added a Land Cruiser to the fleet, right? I did. First, let me say thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I've seen your past lineup. I've seen some of the past shows. Yeah, I'm honored. Awesome. You're welcome. But yeah, I did mix it up a a little bit, but my Nissan friends are understanding. They didn't quite kick me out of the club. Well, that's funny because you may have seen our episode where I had some of the Nissan guys from this part of the country on. It's always we give each other a hard time, but around here, the Toyota club and the Nissan guys have always been a close relationship. There's never been enough Nissan guys to go form their own club club or events, so we just always take them in like a little lost sheep to come hang out at the event. It all works out. Yeah, that's the same over here. But Justin, before we dive into your rigs and into overlanding and everything, currently, I want to back up because I've read through some of your past and Realize that your passion and your love for the outdoors goes way beyond and way before vehicles. It's tied to your life, it's tied to your health, it's tied through some difficult chapters of life. If you're comfortable, let's start at the beginning and let you tell your own story. When you look back at your early and your upbringing, eventually the cancer diagnosis, where does the story begin and where does your love for nature and the outdoors fit into that? Well, I mean, pretty much from the very beginning, my first conscious memories, if you will. I grew up mostly with my grandparents on a 10 acre ranch, and we had creeks running through the property, and salmon used to run through there, or at least steelhead by the time I was bored. So I was always in ditches, catching crop ads, and running through the fields, trying to hunt down pheasants with sticks, and random things like that. But I was always in the outdoors. I was always into fishing. My grandparents would always take us out fishing, different lakes and different rivers, that thing. And I had the greatest childhood with different parents and that thing. Pretty common for people growing up in the '80s, I guess, our age group. And so I always just found solace in nature. It was the one thing where or one place that I could go where I wasn't being yelled at or the bad thing. There were sure much only good things happening there. So yeah, I just always loved it, especially in the fishing. That was Anytime I can go fishing, I was hopping fences and getting in trouble with other ranchers for fishing in the past and forth, and that thing. See, all that stuff was so much easier to get away with in the '80s. Well, they weren't cameras. No cell phones. Yeah, you can do whatever. But they did have rock salt back then. So that's not fun. And the electric fences. Oh, yeah. So that's where it already. Yeah. And then I ended up living with my dad for a little while. My mom and dad had separated when I was probably two, I think. And around sixth grade, I went to live with my dad for a while in Eastern Oregon. He lived in Ontario, and he was really into, I guess, overlanding. They didn't call it overlanding back then, but he would just take off in his scout, and we'd just roam around the desert, camp out, throw some seed brush on the ground as a mattress, and just camp out. Coming from Fairfield in the Bay Area, California here, I had no idea what was going on. I'm used to the outdoors. I see. But this was like rugged outdoor. I was like, Wait a minute. We don't have a tent or anything. We're just going to sleep on the ground here. He was a rugged guy. That's where I ended up learning how to drive because he had a problem, and he would buy a big 24 case or whatever of beer and then get so drunk that I'd end up having to drive home. And how old were you here? God, what are you in sixth grade? You're like 12? 12? Yeah. Probably. Yeah. So technically, my first drive was in an international scout. So I always thought we were just poor and you had these crappy vehicles. But fast forward to now, and I'm like, damn, that was cool. Yeah, for sure. You got rid of that and got a Jeepster. I'm just like, Oh, man, if I could have had these things now. I know. It was just always in the outdoors. That was my place. I just didn't really care for cities too much. I read something that they asked you, or you said that one time back in the fourth grade, you had a career day or question or something, and you announced that you wanted to be a forest ranger in the fourth grade. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. That was the only thing I could see myself being was... I didn't really know exactly what a forest ranger was in fourth grade and what their duties entail, but I knew they weren't in charge of making sure the forest was protected and people were doing the right thing. That was what I wanted to do. Got you. You went through your first taste of driving and overlanding and camping and all that. Then how did that evolve over your teenage years? It's weird. This was in the late '80s, I guess, if you will. Funny enough, because I remember that same fourth grade class, they asked me or asked the class what vehicle they want to own when they grow up. Everybody had their Mercedes, Lamborghini, all that. I had my... It was a 1986 Nissan King Cap 4x4 SEV6. Okay. That's exactly what I wanted. It was the opposite of the 1985, back to the future. Everybody wanted that Toyota. Not I wanted that Nissan, that hard body 4x4. You were loyal from the early days? Well, yeah, as much as you can be without really talking about cars. But yeah, that was my car that I wanted. Just growing up, I had a small inheritance from my grandparents, and I got really into cars. But back then, it was more street trucks was the thing. That was real big. People were getting Chevy full size and dropping and lowering those, doing custom paint and all that stuff. So were you doing the full size thing or were you like a mini truck guy? No, full size. Okay, good. Yeah, full size. And then did car shows and things like that. But then, so the truck that I had bought that I was was fully doing up was a 1990 Chevy 454 SS. Okay, nice. Yeah. I love that truck other than the garnet red interior. But hey, beggers can't be choosers. But I fell in love with the torque because technically they didn't have horsepower. I was talking just in the intro there about my friend Lee Sumner, who does Cruisers on the Rocks. We had a conversation because his teenage truck was a 454 SS as well. Oh, that's interesting. We were just talking about that a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Lee's a great guy. I'm going to have to bring that up at next time I see. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. We'll share a picture. But yeah, so I did the whole street truck thing with it, and then I took it to a drag race just to see what it would do. And then got the bug for drag racing. And then back then, street racing was starting to become a real big thing. It's just prior to Fast and Furious era. I went out and bought a a Foxbody Mustang. Because that's what you did. For the younger viewers, that's what you did then. Yeah, you bought a Foxbody. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Until the LT1 Camaro came out, you weren't going to buy. It was a third-gen back then. You didn't want that. Oh, no. You bought a Foxbody Mustang and you decked that thing out. And that was my street race machine. I went through superchargers and just doing up the engine. I had a buddy that had an LT1 Camaro on nitrous, and so we would always just talk smack to each other, but then go out to the street races and just think we were kings. Sure. The coolest thing. You run from the cops, all this stuff you should not be doing nowadays. But there weren't cameras back then. No. Were you actually running at the tracks over there, too, or was it all on the street? No, it was at the tracks as well. Do you guys have, in California at that time, did they have a quarter mile tracks, or were they all at eighth miles? No, no. The Sacramento Raceway has always been a quarter mile for as long as I can remember. And then we also had, I think it's called Infineon Raceway now. It used to be Sears Point, but it's a little bit further outside of Malayo, California. There, it's a quarter mile track, but it's also where they run NASCAR. Nice. Okay. So Sacramento Raceway was more of the close by. Everybody goes and hangs out and does that once or twice a week. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So yeah, just got full on into drag racing, built up the Mustang, dropped in a 351 Winsor, Voretec Supercharger, just built it all up to the point where it didn't run anymore. Because you know how that goes. So what did I do? This is like a Sears 1998, I think it was. So I bought Pontiac Transam. Oh, Sure you did. Yeah, because LS1, right? Right. Was this a WS6 or a base transam? I had a base. I couldn't get into the WS6. I wish, but yeah, good you know that. Those were hot, hot, hot back then. Oh, yeah. Anyway, I bought that as my daily driver, and you can imagine what happened then. I was staying just sat in the backyard, the dogs chewing on the bumper, and I ended up building up The Transam. See, again, because that's what happens to Mustangs. They all go sit in the yard. They go sit in the yard, yeah. Especially because I was into automatics. And the automatic Mustangs were the worst because the automatic tranny blows up all the time. So it was worse than the 4L60E, for those of you out there who know what that trading is. So, yeah, I started building up the Transam. I was back in California. I forgot to mention that, but at this point. And, yeah, got into an LS1 club, Norcal LS1. We just had Camaro's, Corvettes, Transam. We had a couple of Viper weirdos who were in the club as well. And they eventually became president of the club. We would put together big races against the local Mustang clubs and stuff like that, do big cruises, toy drives, all that. It was for sure a really good time for probably, what, years, something like that. Now, were you going to school as well during this time? Were you already employed? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I just had manager of a pet co, thing. Nothing big. And then, I'm going to say it was when the transam started to break and was sitting in the garage, I also had What do you call it? 2001 Steer Z71 pickup, extended 4 by 4, 5. 3 liter. So naturally, now that I'm driving it everywhere, you got all these people that are trying to race you from a stoplight. Those things were dog spit slow back then. It stopped. It would run like a 16 point something quarter mile. Even with the LS motor in it, it worked fast. The only saving grace was if you got one that came with the 410s from the you get a little bit more off the line with the 410s. The 6 liter was actually a sleeper. I had no idea, but in the regular half ton truck, you couldn't get the 6 liter back then until later in the 2000. The 5. 3 was all you got. It was like 250 or 260 horsepower, if I remember correct. But coming from that 180 horsepower throttle body the generation before it, it felt amazing. Yeah, it did. But the cool thing, and what we were learning back then was that a lot of the internals from the 5. 7 liter LS motors were transferable. So when I had taken the cam out of the transam, it was like, Oh, I can put that cam in the truck, or I can take six liter heads and put it on there, drop compression, and now I can put a turbo. So around that time, there was a company called STS Turbo that came out with a rear mount turbo. It was mount in the rear of the car. I don't know if you remember that. No. Super weird. But yeah, you would mount it back by the rear axial, run all your normal intercooler piping and all that, you run the piping back, and it worked. There's lag, but it still worked. I was doing testing and playing around with that. Next thing you know, I got a small stall converter in the truck. I'm strapping down on the front portion bar so it won't lift when I launch and launching it in four-wheel drive. I even got some videos on YouTube of screwing around with that where I think I ran like a low 12 at 111 miles an hour. Oh, man. In this big a half ton pickup back then. Yeah. Well, I'm going to have to go pull those videos up because it's taking me back. I had a '95 Chevrolet three quarter ton. In the early 2000s, 2002, 2003, we put an LS1 in that out of a vet at the time. No forced induction or anything, just all motor. But that LS1 with that MV4 4,500, five-speed in the three-quarter ton. I mean, you'd hit third gear, and they were still just white smoke. It was such a blast to drive. You've gained 200 horsepower. Oh, it was just It was stupid. Yeah. So, yeah, I ended up just racing the truck and ended up selling the Transam, and I sold the Mustang. Couldn't ever get the Mustang running right. And my goal for it was to be able to run like 10s easy, maybe 9s. And yeah, I ended up selling it. And then the guy that bought it from me knew what he was doing, did something. I can't remember what it was, but there's something different between the 302 in the Mustang and the 351 Winsor that had to do with the timing. And so at part throttle, the thing would just blow up the tires and just smoke them as far as you want to go, even with a stool in the rear. But as soon as you went past half throttle, it would go and just die. Okay. I could never figure it out back then. Anyway, sold it to a guy, and then he ran it in the eighth mile, and it would have been good for... I think he was thinking it was like a nine, eight or something like that if he would have kept going. Anyway, yeah, I'll cry over that one later. But then all of that changed because I lost my job. This is before the dot com thing. But anyway, I lost my job, started selling my cars. I wanted to go back to school. All of my friends in the club that had all the money and the really cool cars were IT people. Sure. I thought, because this is what, 2002-ish? I thought, Well, heck, they'll get me a job, and I can make good money that way. I ended up going to Heald College, which is a tech college we had around here for a while. Because I didn't want to have to go to a regular college for whatever year. Sure. For IT, because why bother? Anyway, I went to that for a couple of years. I actually had a car crash into our classroom, which was interesting. He flew off the freeway trying to pass somebody and basically tagged someone's front end, and it caused him to veer off, hit the guard rail, shoot across. He jumped over a six-foot chain link fence and a little access road and landed in our freaking window. I can show you that one, too. There's actual pictures on the internet of that one. Was the dude all right? Yeah, he was fine. I actually rode in the ambulance with him because we were in computer class there. When he shot through the wall, all the glass broke. Back then, we had big CRT monitors. Right. They exploded. Sure they would. Yeah. In my head or whatever. I I went back in the ambulance with him to the hospital. So that was a pretty wild ride. Wow. Yeah. So anyway, that ended up paying for my school, which was great because of Yeah, the yield paying that out. But then all of a sudden, everybody lost their jobs. All my IT friends, the IT industry as a whole, that whole dot-com bus thing just threw everybody for a loop. And now I had no more hookups. Yeah, especially probably in your part of the country, even more so than it affected us over here. Yeah. Yeah. Because here, like Sacramento area, I mean, we're a thrown throw from Silicon Valley. Yeah. So I had no more hookup. And at that point, I decided that I need to go back to regular school. So, yeah, long story short, ended up going to just a local college, I tried to get all my general education stuff out of the way. I had a lot of friends that went to Davis back in the day, and so I spent time hanging out down there, and they all said the same thing. They were like, If I had to do it over again, I would start and get my general at a community college and then go to university and save all that money because the first three years or so, you're just paying out the bills for basic edit. I still tell kids that today. Yeah, absolutely. It hasn't gotten any cheaper. No, it's crazy. I got a 20-year-old son now, so I'm like, Oh, wait, this is expensive. Anyway, I decided to go back to school and go almost full circle. And what do you want to do now? Do what makes you happy, not what's going to make you money. I was going to try to do IT to make money, but in the long run, I know I wouldn't have been happy. So I went back to school and just started taking all my GE with the idea of transferring to UC Davis to study ecology. So I'm studying of natural systems. It was right in my ballpark in fisheries. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I started doing. And then was two years into that, got into the Environmental Club, started learning about all those things. This is where I'll probably lose a lot of our listeners. But just learning about the impact on the world. Sure. And the data that actually supports a lot of the stuff that you hear. So I'm thinking, Man, I shouldn't have buried my oil in the backyard way back in the day. That was probably the bad thing. But I didn't know any better back then. None of us did. None of us did, kids. We were learning. Yeah. So, yeah, I did that. And then two years into, I think two, two and a half, something like that, this is getting closer to 2008, 2009. I was super tired and it didn't feel well. Couldn't figure out why I was so tired. I started an internship at Placer Land Trust, and they basically protect natural habitat and agricultural lands. They're a nonprofit. I was interning Then I started working part-time there, but I kept getting sick and couldn't figure out what it was for probably a good year. Then when I started seeing a lot of blood when I was going to the bathroom, knew something was really wrong. They were all... So they were great. They ended up making me full-time so I could get the health stipend. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, because here in California, I was going to school, had an internship, I couldn't get health coverage. And that was where I started to really question our system when the crackhead next to me at the clinic is getting full service. I can't get anything yet. I'm going to... I'm trying to make something myself on to school and the internship, whatever. And the kicker was because I had sold all of those cool cars and I bought a Prius. Don't disconnect me yet, but I bought a Prius. Well, folks, this has been a It's a good episode. Okay, so I love technology, and I thought it was the coolest thing, and I wanted to save money. And so when I did the math, driving that Sierra around, I thought, okay, if I drive this for 150,000 miles, the car will more than pay for itself in the cost that I'm going to spend in gas with that Sierra. So I sold it to a buddy, bought a Prius. And interestingly enough, even though it was poor as could be, I I didn't get the health coverage from the state because the Prius was worth more than$2,000, and that was one of their stipulations. So basically, I'm just bleeding out of my butt, sick as hell, and I can't get any help because I drove a car worth more than $2,000. So it makes you wonder, Okay, so should I just sell the car and ride a bike everywhere? This is ridiculous. So the land trust made me full-time. I immediately went into Kaiser. I don't know if you have those over there, but we have Kaiser Permanente is one of the big hospital chains. Okay. And they took me in, and we did the basic tests and a colonoscopy, and immediately found that I'd have a tumor. And then that started basically my whole cancer tour of duty, if you will. That went on until about late 2012. So that was three or four year run? Yeah. So it was stage three plus. They didn't know for sure until they did more testing. They did find it in lymph nodes as well. So that was colorectal cancer. It wasn't genetic because they can do that testing as well. And basically, the only thing they could think of at the time was that I'm just a product of the good old diet, not really eating veggies or green things. There's lots of barbecue food, fast food, that thing. I think I was 31 at the time, which is really odd because usually it's considered an old person's disease, or at least- Sure. Justin, if I remember reading correctly, you lost part of your liver in that, but the liver regrows, rebuilds itself. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. That part was actually probably the fun part because I do so many CT scans and X-rays and everything throughout this four years. You get to see it actually getting larger and growing back, which was cool. So the liver's just wonderful that way. Unfortunately, I did lose a lot of my lower intestines and rectal tissue, so that really screws you up. I an ileostomy bag. That's where they disconnect your intestines and put a port inside your belly, to where basically, as soon as it comes out of your stomach, the waste products, that is, it'll go into a bag and you eliminate it that way. I had that for about nine months, which was really interesting, too, because when you have that, you can eat all the hot food that your mouth can stand, and you don't get a stomach ache or the other bathroom effects. It was really cool. Okay. You You're always finding the light in these things. That's it. It was horrible. You can't really date when you got this big bag stuck to you or whatever. But I was like, Hey, now I don't have to worry about eating taco Bell in the back room. I don't I'm going to send it, though. Keep your bowels working. Yeah. So I had chemo the whole time. They took the pouch out after nine months, reconnected me. It takes a long time for your system to learn how to Then ate properly again after that. It's never the same, which I'll get into later. But yeah, they took part of my liver out. It regrew, but then it spread to my lung, my left lung. And at that point, the only way to get rid of it was to take a whole lobe out. So on your left lung, you have two lobes. On your right lung, you got three. So my upper lobe ended up having a metastasis. And so they actually just took the whole lobe out. I see. Which was pretty interesting. And so a bunch more chemo and radiation. Well, radiation was in the beginning, but a bunch more chemo after that. And then I think it was late 2012-ish, I was considered no evidence of disease or net, as they would say. And then, yeah, you're out on your own, and it's like, Hey, you've lived through that so-called survival rate, but then what do you do now? I'm sure you can identify with this, but it changes you. Yes. In the cardiac world, after you come out, They have cardiac rehabilitation programs in these steps you go through. What was it like? What were the doctors telling you or prescribing for you to do from a cancer patient perspective? Or was there anything except take these meds and good luck? That was it. Kaiser, they were great. Now that I'm not at Kaiser, I'm seeing how other hospitals where I really miss Kaiser. I see. They have a really good system in place. However, there's not good after care in the fact that if I go and complain about something, I can get the care that I need. But They don't know what the long term effects of the chemotherapy drugs are and the different removal of body organs are. I don't know. They don't have a good grasp on that. There's not a good handbook to say, Hey, if you do survive, here's how you're going to live the rest of your life. And that was where I really struggled because we go to the bathroom 20 times a day, no joke, if not more. And you don't have a lot of notice. So I can't be far from a bathroom. With one lung, or at least the majority of the one lung missing, I really get really short of breath. I was having problems with fainting and just basal vagal responses, just bending over, getting up, and almost lacking out, things like that. And it got really tough because at that point, I'm a land manager at the land trust. I'm managing these nature preserves. I go out- Yeah. I'm assuming you're out hiking and physical effort is part of the job description. Yeah, I'm out there doing biological surveys. Each property, you have to hike them and take updated photos. I'm doing restoration projects, planting trees, all kinds of stuff like that. This is my dream job now. I'm like, Man, I'm really getting to take care of things out here and protect things. But as time went by, it just became more and more difficult. And then I start falling behind at work. And I focus so much on the outdoor hard stuff that it's really difficult to sit at a computer and do the paperwork side. And so, yeah, depression kicks in. I can't do my job the way that I've been training to do. And the land trust is so amazing, and they put all this into you to make you the best you can be. I can't match that anymore. So I ended up... I quit working there. Right about that time, depression is horrible, but now I'm not outdoors every day because I was doing it for my job. And I really attribute that to how well I did with all the cancer treatments because even with my chemo bag slung on me or a port stuck in my jugular here to pump the chemo in, I was still out there mending fences or doing whatever I could outdoors. I just didn't... I think back now that if I had been sitting in a house in the city and just locked in my room, I don't know if I would have stayed as healthy as I did. Sure. Anyway, I ended up trading in the Prius. I ended up with a Chevy Volt and yada, yada. I still like the technology, still like the fuel efficiency. It was cool, but I ended up with a GMC Canyon. Okay. It made a little bit more sense for work. Being a land manager and carrying a giant fence post and bailing wire and stuff in your Prius, you get a lot of looks when you roll up to the farm supply. They actually started calling it the King Ranch Edition Prius. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. I got the Canyon and ended up meeting, I don't know if you know him or not, but Mike Lee He's known as Iron Horse Overland on Instagram. Okay. And he was an ambassador for the Overland bound group. Okay, sure. He was familiar with them. And they wanted to start up a meeting area in Auburn, California, which is where I'm living or was living at the time. And he had a nice Gen 4 runner that's all built out. So I started hanging out with that guy and with my wife, or at the time, just before we had gotten married, we had gotten into mountain biking. I started realizing that hiking was just too taxing. Yeah, it's I'd seen you talk about that in the past, that you realized the hiking was too taxing. You tried running, that wasn't going to work with half a long. But for whatever reason, a biking became something you could do, and I believe that you're still very passionate about to this day. Yeah. During that time, I don't know, whatever, a few years after the surgery and stuff, I had made a lot of friends at Kaiser, and they had a group they called Thrive, which was made for employees of Kaiser, their loved ones, to get out and do things outdoor. They had a hiking group, a running group, all that stuff. So I was hanging out with them, and I, of course, was leading the hiking groups, or at least facilitating, because I knew everything. I could tell you every single plant and all that. So it was great. So they had me try the running and all that, and I was like, Yeah, that's not going to work. So fast forward, I met my future wife, and she was an ultra runner, and there's no way in hell I'm going to run. So to help support her and to try to get my exercise, I bought a mountain bike. I would ride along with her on these trails and be like her little pack mule, bring chips and water and stuff like that. And next thing you know, we rented a bike so her and her son and I could go riding, and the bug just infected us all. That's fascinating. It's fascinating because I was also an ultra runner, and so I identify with her in that I'd look at you guys on the bikes, and I'm like, That's crazy. I cannot fathom that. But the bikes are like, How are you guys on your feet for 30 miles? It's interesting. A hundred %. She didn't like bikes. I think her only experience, really, other than when you're a little girl, you're riding little bikes, was what we would call a 10-speed road ride. She hated that. But we rented bikes from a local bike shop. And next day I know she's trying to jump off little rocks. I was like, Wait, this is crazy. This is the first time you've ridden a bike. And that was it. She was hooked after that. Nice. Okay. Yeah. So we ended up riding bikes a ton. I ended up writing and doing articles for a company called MTBR, a mountain bike review. So the mountain bikers will know what it is. And then my wife was getting really frustrated when we were trying to buy gear for her because it was all men's stuff. And very few girls selections. There'd be 15 different kinds of men's shoes, but there'd be two women's shoes and both have pink or baby blue. She's not having that. She's not that girl. She runs around the house painting everything black, and she could. Okay. So she got so fed up with the the bro mentality of the mountain bike industry that she started a women's mountain biking group, which turned into women's mountain bike coaching and events, where she would have She would hire other coaches because they all got their certification for mountain bike coaching. They would try to get more women on bikes and teach them the skills they need to be safe and that thing, because if you're married you would know this, or a long-time girlfriend, but a woman doesn't want to listen to a man tell her how to do something, but she'll listen to another woman. Sometimes. Yeah. It worked out great. She became pretty famous in the mountain bike world. She ended up starting a race team for the Enduro races and doing downhill stuff, like flinging herself off of boulders. Oh, that's freaking awesome. Wow. Yeah, totally crazy. Doing these race events at Yeah, and got to the point where I wasn't riding as much. And like with anything, especially running or really any activity, the less you do it, the harder it is to maintain where you were. And I found that I was really working really hard to just be a normal mountain biker, let alone be good at it. And so I started to lose a little interest. It became because it starts getting more painful or it's just too much exertion. I didn't quite like it as much. Then E-bikes came out. Here we go. This is like the Prius in the vault now. You're back to the technology. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I was like, Huh, okay, it's not a battery. I still have to pedal, but now I don't have to put forth as much effort. You still put down a ton of effort. Bikes are super heavy, but climbing hills, which was my nemesis because I just didn't to have the lung capacity for it, became so much easier. While my wife was doing all the racing stuff with all the women's group, and she

still has her regular 9: 00 to 5: 43:38

00 job, by the way, this is just all stuff she does on the side. Sure. Yeah, I just ride my E-bike around, and then I started finding that getting to more and more of those places, I needed the truck. Put a 10-gate pad on, you get a bike on the back, or if takes a women's group out for a big ride somewhere. We have an area called Downeyville around here that you get dropped off and you ride 15 miles down mountain trails or whatever, back to town. But it's steep, it's fast, and it can be gnarly. If somebody gets hurt, you got to come get them. Sure. There was a couple of times where I'd have to drive full on rocky dirt trails or whatever, and I was like, This is cool. You're having flashbacks to Yeah, 12-year-old you driving the Scout. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Freaking out and by dad's super off camber. I'm like, We're going to roll into the lake, dad. And now I'm thinking, This is pretty awesome. So I met that guy, Mike, Ironsource Overland, and started doing some meetings with him, sure, overland bound, here in Auburn, California, where we were trying to connect and educate other people who were not new to the off-road scene. Okay. So tell them, give them the basics, where they can go with the rig that they have, what mots they could do or should do, and most importantly, trail at a kid. And things like that, where you got to stay on the trail. You don't make buy passes. You pick up your trash, you put out your fires, or even don't use fires when there's a bad, but a lot of trail etiquette stuff and safety. His wife was a paramedic EMT, so she would come in and do first aid classes. He was a former police officer. A lot of the Overland bow crew, I feel like a lot of them come from that background. Like first responder background. First responder background, yeah. I learned a lot through those guys. That's where the whole Overlanding thing really... I know it's such an overused word nowadays, but it fits. It's funny. I don't know if I've talked about this on here before, but when I chose the the name for this and I'd taken a 20-year hiatus from anything off-road and overlanding-related and found my way back into it. Now people were calling it overlanding instead of just camping in the truck or off-roading or mudding or wheeling or whatever. In my mind, off-roading or overlanding encompasses the vehicle, it encompasses the technology, it encompasses camping. It's this whole thing. I didn't know that there was this stigma to the word, like with the hardcore wheeling guys, that it could be a bad thing. But I'm claiming it, and I think it's a good thing, and it's a good description of the community and all the different facets of it. So, yeah, I'm with you on the overland. I agree 100 %. Sometimes I'm hesitant to use the word, but it's- In certain circles, you know the look you're going to get. Yeah. Oh, totally. 100 %. And where we live here in Grass Valley the Albert, Colfax area. We're right next to the Rubicon, Four Dice Trail, which is really gnarly. It's like 20 minutes from my house. We have some pretty gnarly trails. We're coming, by the way. Our club is coming in 2027. We're planning our Rubicon and Four Dice run for... We planned it two years out, September of 2027. So everybody's got time to save the money and get off work and do all those things. I'll be there, bro. So maybe we can meet up. All right. Yeah, yeah, guaranteed. But yeah, so this is a great area. We have so much off-road opportunities here. I mean, it's especially in Grass Valley, if I want to go snow wheeling in the winter, I just go 10 minutes off the road and I'm in deep snow. And then having trails like Rubicon or any of your basic overlanding trails, they're just in my backyard. So then it became, Man, I got to explore these places. And then the more people you meet, the more trips they're doing. And so then you get invited, and next thing you know, you're just all over the place. I met one fellow, a younger guy in Tacoma, because everybody has Tacomas around here. Well, sure. Yeah. It's either that or a fifth Gen 4runner. But we We put together a little overland trip, and it was going to be the first trip I could consider overlanding, where you're driving hundreds of miles on dirt, and you're camping, and you have these destinations in mind. And so, yeah, we started. They're mild trails. We were both on 33s, nothing crazy, rear walker. And I don't even think I had sliders. I think I had like, ghetto Amazon Tiger Star Arm or step sliders. That's my legacy. I'll go into that one later. But to make a long story short, we ended up doing this route, made it up to this lake, and it's at, I think that one's at 7,600 feet elevation, and it's in a little bit of a saddle. Beautiful. And you can park right on the lake, just the rocky shore and everything. And I remember thinking the geology part of me was going, I don't think this is a good place at night. Oh, yeah. It's going to get windy. It was dead still. But then we got sucked into, well, this is cool for the grand. This is what, 2015 or something like that. Right, right, right. Even we're like, Oh, you can get sick photos right here. You got the GMC and his taco. Had our rooftop tense. Back then, it was all soft shell tense. Thought we were the coolest things. Had us all set up. Perfect view, fire in the middle. You're out there with your iPhone 4. You thought that camera was awesome. Yeah, exactly. Those photos are still on my Instagram. They're way back in there. But yeah, and he's like, We should just camp right here tonight. And he's a lot younger than me. And then mature me is thinking, That's not a good idea because the wind starts to gust when you're in these passes. But I thought, Oh, well, this is cool for the grand. Let's do it. I threw my dog in the rooftop tent and crawled up there.

And around 11: 50:56

00, it just started shaking the tent. The wind was so bad that you could hear it, and then you would just feel it. And I remember him yelling at me from his tent And he's like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. And I'm like, We'll be good. It'll chill out after a little bit. It'll chill out. Yeah. And neither of us had strapped our softshell tents down. You have your air pulled open like that. Wind gust, boom, slandered it shut on me and my dog. Now we're freaking out. The fire restoked itself. So we're like, oh, my God, I got to get this fire out. We're going to start the whole Sierra Nevada on fire. We're going to be one of those guys. I go to try to get out of the tent, but I can't because when it slams shut like that, now the ladder's here. If you try to push it, the ladder's in position. You can't get out. So it was quite the debacle to get out, put the fire out, all that. It's 20 something degrees. It's just freezing cold. So we ended up moving into the trees in the sheltered area, and it was so much better other than cold. So living alert. So that was your first trip? Yeah. That was my first real landing trip. Started with a bang. So that's good. Yeah, I learned real quick. And I didn't know if my dog could die from the temperatures because she's a border collie pitbull mix with really short fur. And she was shivering so bad. I was careful for her, so I stuffed her in my sleeping bag. She's fifty-something pounds, and I can't get in the bag. So I'm sleeping half out like this. She's right here. So next stop was Kamela's, and I bought a little buddy heater to keep us going for that trip. Now I have a really big sleeping bag. It's good to negative 35, and it fits so she could just crawl right in, and we both sleep just fine. Yeah. And Back then, you couldn't just go on Amazon and have a diesel heater at your house the next day. Those weren't as available. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. That was like a good six, seven years later. Diesel heater started popping out. So you got a Mr. Buddy heater, and you dabbed a blaring in your face hoping... I mean, they're going to die in an inferno, or I'm going to freeze today or have carbon dioxide. I don't know. So interesting first trip, but learned a lot. So, yeah, that was... Once I I did that, I just started going everywhere in that Canyon. Taking it places it probably shouldn't go. There's a trail here called Slick Rock Trail, not to be confused with anything on Moab, but it's pretty rocky. I tell people, if you got Tacoma on 33s, it's probably a little much. Usually, I want 35s or more in full Arbor, that thing. Tried to take it through anyway, broke my drive shaft, found out their aluminum, and they got little thin wall and cardboard inside. Cardboard. It's cardboard. No joke, man. And it had to remove the drive shaft and then had to get scull drug out by my friend's Jeep, and she was dragging me over all rocks and just all kinds of mess. Slept in a auto parts parking lot in my rooftop tent because I needed more transmission fluid to be able to get home because it was leaking without the tail shaft in. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So So doing stuff that I shouldn't be doing with the Canyon, which I guess segues head of into the Nissan thing. I ended up crashing that. I was trying to dodge a fox on one of my commutes or my morning commute, and it zigged. I zag that it zigged again, and I ended up going down an embankment. I just I'd freak out with wildlife. I can't kill them. There's all kinds of pictures of me saving deer and foxes and stuff. So that ended up getting totaled, and I didn't want a car payment. That was the hardest thing is going out wheeling and scratching a vehicle that you're paying $500 a month on, which I guess it's cheap nowadays. But yeah, so we ended up... My son was turning 16, so I wanted something affordable, but that he could beat up on, that was easy to fix. And so when he goes to college and gets a better car, I could take it from him. I see. It would be my wheeling vehicle. So I learned about Xteros and Titan swapping, whereby you take the Titan full-size suspension from the front, stick it on the Xtera because it uses all the same bolt points. And now you have a mid long travel on an Xtera, which I thought was cool. And that would be the next upgrade because a lot of my friends were starting to do harder trails, like Recon, that thing. Yeah. I don't know, the new generation isn't as eager to get their driver's license and drive. I was when I was a kid. It seems to be a common theme. He was hemming and hawing and not really getting his license. I didn't have a vehicle, so I basically stole the Xtera from him and started driving that and drove it around stock for a little while, and then immediately just took the money that I was getting from the Canyon crash and just dumped it into the Xtera and did a full TitanSwap and all the armor and all that. Now, had you met Nissan folks that it turns you on to the Xtera platform in the TitanSwap, or did you just research and fall into this? Because it seems like that Nissan knowledge, and we touched on this a little bit, is maybe it's not as readily available as all the Toyota info because there's fewer Nissan enthusiasts and then the ones that are really willing to turn wrenches and push the limits on it. It seems like from my friends in that community that it's a pretty niche group of maybe even 20 or 30 guys across the country that are all talking about, Yeah, you can fit this transfer case or this front-end, and that thing. Yeah, full on. That's what it is. I really didn't like just being part of the popular group and getting whatever. Okay. You just wanted It's good to do different. Yeah. Yeah. Originally, I went to look at a Tacoma instead of the Canyon because that's where everybody has, and they say they're reliable.

But even at 6: 57:31

3, I didn't fit in them very well. And I sure as hell couldn't wear my cowboy hat with it either because I used to wear that a lot when I was doing my outdoor work. And I was like, how could you sit so low on the floor and still not have a headband? This is the weirdest thing to me. So I ended up with the Canyon and loved it. It It had its issues, but it was a good truck. And I was different because almost nobody was wheeling a Canyon in 2016 through 2018-ish time period. I like that. I wasn't like everybody else on the trail. That's really an interesting choice the more I think about it, Justin, because it's something that the Toyota guys and the Nissan guys and the Jeep guys, they don't hardly know what it is. Then the The EMC folks and the Chevrolet crew is still bitching that it's not an S10 anymore. It hasn't proved itself as a platform yet. It's definitely marching to your own drum choice to choose there. Yeah, 100%. I mean, occasionally you'd see a Colorado. But this is before the ZR2 came out. So even the Colorado didn't really have a name. Still, nobody really knew what it was. So yeah, it was just different. But yeah, when I started looking for something different, I realized, well, one, I don't really like sleeping in the rooftop tent. I'd rather sleep in a vehicle. I don't like having the extra weight up top, if at all possible. And I wanted something, obviously, more capable and smaller. Even at 128 inches, that was still quite a long wheelbase. Yeah, a canyon. So researching the cars that would work for my son as well as be something that I could take on decent trails and an overland with, if you will. The more I learned about them being reliable and cheap to fix. I started looking I did look at the GX 470, some of the Lexus type products, but they were almost double the price for a similar year, say a 2005 GX 470. Yeah. Just 17 plus grand, where I could get this Xtera with the same miles on it, say 150,000 miles, I can get it for seven grand. It's not as cool, not as luxurious, but it's cheap. And you have all the bonuses of I can take that TitanSwap stuff, put it on there. I can put the Titan front diff on it, which is a much bigger beefier diff. Oh, yeah. The rear diff in the Xtera and the front here, basically is a Dana 44. So you're already on good standing with that. So, yeah, just researched it, ended up buying it for the kid. He ended up not getting his license soon, so I started driving it. And then it got to the point where when he finally did, we bought him a Frontier that was used. And I just kept building up the Xtera, which I loved. Got you. So was there a Titan that came into the mix, too? Yeah. So Yeah, driving around the Xtera. I mean, that was my daily driver. It was my off-road ride, everything. I had all these grand plans for it. I planned on never selling it because it's a fun car to drive, except it is IFS. We'll get to that. You can change that. Yeah. Yeah, you can change it. But on the Xterras, it's really funky because I guess the way you have to do solid axel swap, it really lifts the body up super high. I don't know. I mean, you can do it. I just wasn't a big fan of what it was going to take to do it. Understood. But around that time, we weren't mountain biking as much. My wife got back into riding horse which she used to do in her team. She used to bear a race. So we got a horse, a horse trailer. Now we need something to tow it with. I see. She had her Honda CRV, which then she switched to a pilot. Exteria is not going to tow anything. So we ended up getting a 2021 Titan regular one, not the XD, and drove that for a couple of years. That thing towed great. And that's I really started to fall in love with that Nissan V8. I see. The BK 56, four-runter horse, about 4. 0 Tor, 4. 0 Tor, whatever. With the nine-speed transmission, I was like, This thing is nice. No weird shift patterns like I had with the GMC or like the Toyota where they hunt. I was like, Man, this is cool. And it was affordable. Originally, we went to go look at a GMC Sierra. We're talking gas trucks, not diesel, because I didn't need anything that big. Everything was like 8 to 11K, whatever, more expensive and not as nice. And so it was like, wow, this is really weird. Why are Nissan so cheap? And so we drove that. I think we had that probably like, let me say, 20,000 miles, something like that. Okay. No issues other than one little Audi panel thing by a window was flapping, but easy fix. No issues. But then we decided we needed more in and near overlandy type of... And I started really was watching a lot of the Aussie YouTube videos. You know where I'm going? I know where that influence comes from. Yeah. And then I started making friends with some of the guys down there, like a 101 perspective. His is mildly built, but he has exhaust on his Y62 Patrol. Oh, my God, I want one of those. And we thought it would be perfect because my wife could drive it. It's got all the luxury, got tons of power. It has the towing capability for the horse trailer and the single horse. The only drawback to it is it's independent rear suspension. We already have enough issues with IFS, but I go, The Aussies are doing it, so why can't we do it? I'm not trying to rock-crawl with this thing. So we trade in the Titan and came home with a 2023 Nissan Armada. It's basically a Y62 platform for Nissan and is in most respects identical to the Patrol, except that the diffs aren't as big. Okay. I believe the rear. The rear is really beefy diff, and it doesn't have the rear locker. Other than that, same engine, same body. We had actually the better interior than they did. I feel like I'm talking to my friend Ethan because I've had this same conversation with him. In the Toyota community, we've got those... It's basically a Land Cruiser stickers that our buddy Steve came up with. Yours is basically a patrol. Oh, yeah. You could hear it as I was building up, getting ready to just present it. It's the same. Anyway, we bought this, and then I have a friend who runs the 2Gen Armada Group on Facebook. He's also on Instagram as 2Gen Armada, and he's really into them. So he hooked me up with another friend of his who was going to start or wanted to start importing the Dash Off Road products from Australia for the Y62. Okay. Because we didn't really have any bumper options for the newer ones, especially. I think there was ARB, and that was basically it. And not everybody wants that giant ARB bullbar style. So it was like, Hey, do you want to do some R&D with us? Because there are slight differences because of crash testing and all that. They're very similar, but they didn't know if their bars could fit. So, yeah, I got to talking to Matt at Campsite 204, and he was going to work with Dash to get a bumper sent to me, and then I'm going to document the install process, see how the fitment goes, and then give all that feedback so they can make changes that were needed for the patrol products overseas to be sold here. So, yeah, next thing you know, the armada went from Looking like the software mom car to now looking like one of the Aussie patrols with 35s and nice fancy wheels and the bull bar with a winged inch and refract and all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So how did How did it work out as far as the fitment? Was it as close as they thought it would be? Well, I got sent the wrong bumper, so the fitment wasn't so much the issue as it was a different design bumper. It was made for a bigger bowl bar in the front. So it had a huge lip that stuck out. So instead of having the flat front grill that you have on the armada, it would come down and then came way out. 8 inches or something. I joked that it was like, bubba, with the big giant bottom lip, going to get caught on the trip wire thing. It was horrible. It looked cool from the front, but as soon as you look at from the side- Oh, I see. Yeah, I was like, I mean, it was on the rear, you could use it as a picnic table or something. But anyway, they ended up getting me the correct one. And there were some minor changes, like the armada doesn't have the little pop-out windshield wiper washers, like you would see on Mercedes or something. So delete those holes, that thing. Yeah, my 15-year-old Lexus has those, but I'm just saying. Do we want to start talking about when the Toyota got Apple car No, we do not. Okay. Gmc had it back in the day. Fair. We won't go there. I think Lexus was actually, I don't remember the model. I want to say it was the ES 350, this is a side note, Trivia, was the last model in North America sold with a cassette player because they had so many of the senior citizen demographic that was buying those ES cars, and so they held the cassette player forever. That's hilarious. I did not know that. Okay, cool. Good tech tip. Anyway, the Armana was great. We still have it. It doesn't have a locker, so it's a little more limited. The big selling point on it, because by this time, I'm already working at Descent Off-Road. If any of the listeners know Descent, it's mainly land and other little various Toyota products, and now at Grenadier, that thing. But it's a land cruiser shop. So I'm working there as the token Nissan boy, which Thankfully, they didn't make me park behind the shop. They'd still let me park outside. But I guess everybody's got to have one of those little token guys. But I really wanted to... At the time, sorry, let me backtrack. At Descent, Ben has different shop cars that were all done up, wrapped with all of our gear on them. I think it was like a 2015 200 Series. I think they were beautiful. It had an orange wrap on it with big Descent. I remember that truck. Okay, so you remember it? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful truck. And so I'd see this all the time, and I drive it when it needs to be taken around the block, whatever. And I'm like, This would be cool. And then I saw the price tag. So yeah, sticker shock even used was just mind boggling. And my wife wanted a new car. She didn't want to deal with used. And so, yeah, cross-shopping around, even like a Ford Expedition, 80 grand. It was insane because I needed to have at least 8,000 pound towing capacity. So that puts us in that range. Sequoia had just come out. Now, was the Sequoia still independent rear as well? Or this was- No. No, this is the new generation with the solid rear in. Okay. Ben got one of those, one of the first ones. Oh, yeah. Because I think he had it shipped from somewhere back east. I feel bad not remembering the dealer name, but Indiana or something. I'm going to guess that was Ed Martin, Toyota. It was Ed Martin. I should have known that because I was blanking out. But yes. Anyway, good call. So he got it from Ed Martin. All right, I'll let you keep talking, Justin. Folks, if you're listening to this, my audio is here, but my camera keeps disappearing, so he can't see me. I'm going to try to turn it off and back on here. Okay, so Ben had a shift. He picked it up in Reno during a snowstorm and got it back to the shop, and I thought, This is pretty cool. Maybe this will be our vehicle. He had a TRD Pro, and I thought, Yeah, it's 75K for a TRD Pro. But once I opened the hatch and saw how the layout was for the cargo area and the seating, it was instantly a no-go because I needed to have a fold flat back-end for us to be able to sleep in, my wife and I, and then maybe a dog or two. So it brought us back to Nissan again, which I wasn't trying to be a Nissan guy, but I was like, Well, the Patrol is pretty cool. And this car was 59K. It already had a six or seven K price reduction on it. And it was super nice. Full leather at the midnight package, and it was just really nice and good power. I just couldn't fathom spending the money on a 200 Series or even the Sequoia. And like I said, Even dipping into the Ford, I thought, Oh, that would be cheaper. No. You know how Yukons and all that are? They were all in the 70 to 90K range, which- Yeah, for brand new. There's nothing under that$60,000 mark in that size. No, not anymore. Anyway, we ended up with the Armada, and it was great. It towed the trailer. It had plenty of power. It didn't have the stability that we were looking for, that the Titan did. And now, remember, the Titan and the Armada share the same engine. Transmission is different in the Armada. They still have the old seven speed, whereas the Titan had the newer nine-speed speed. So the low end was a little bit better on the Titan because of the first and second gear range. But it wasn't that. It wasn't the power. It had plenty of power. It's just as you get up to speed, the shorter wheelbase, you could feel more movement in the trailer. I'm really surprised. I thought with that independent rear, it would drive really nice on the road. But you think it's the wheelbase that bit you? I think it's both, actually. Oh, okay. The independent rear, and this is something I found out later, especially talking to the Aussies, it's real finicky about alignment. And so when you start changing that alignment pattern, it can really do weird things with the car and driveability. So when you put that trailer on, now it's going to squat. And so even with the airbag suspension or airshops that it comes with, it wasn't enough to get it fully back where it's supposed to be. And then when it does squat, like you hit a bump, that's going to cause things to wheel about. And so that's my biggest gripe with the Armada. It's just that rear end. It's just so finicky. So my wife didn't feel comfortable driving it compared to the way she was able to with the Titan, all the way down to SoCal, 14 hour drive through Canyal Road with the horse in the back and had no problems. I see. The Armada. So it had the power and all that, the drivability with the trailer She just wasn't cutting it. And then come along, she decides she's going to get another horse because I guess that's what happens. It's like bikes. The perfect number of bikes, or in this case, we could say land cruisers or whatever, is N plus one, whereas N is the current number of whatever you own, right? And they continue to get more expensive as you go. Yeah. Yes. So she ends up, she gets another horse, and we end up selling her a smaller horse and getting a bigger, heavier horse trailer. And at that point, there's just- Theomardium, yeah. Yeah, it's just not safe. So enter truck shopping. But we're not going to replace a vehicle. This is going to be in addition to. So we were going to get an Uncle Jesse style old pickup that we could tow with, whatever. And then you start going out rabbit hole, which ones to buy? Because there's no perfect model or year or our engine configuration throughout time. If you look at it like, Okay, we can only afford X amount of dollars. That puts us into a 2000, say, four to 2007, full size 2,500 something. That puts us in there. But then there are certain years and models you don't want to buy in there because they had engine problems, oil leaks, whatever. Yeah, they've all been out long enough now that know something on it. Nothing hits all the boxes. Yeah, exactly. As you keep going through the years, it's like, Okay, well, what if we get something that's newer and used? Then I'm like, I really want the 6. 2 liter Chevy engine because that's pretty badass. I can't afford a diesel. That was always out. The 2,500 series with diesels were just too expensive still. I had a 6,2, and then I went back to a 6 liter, and I regreted it every Every day. Yeah. Yeah. So I got the horsepower thing going. I got to have some good power. So as you shop, you just start talking yourself into something more and more expensive, and newer and newer. And now it's going to be my daily driver because I keep breaking the Xtera. Because it's that theme with me, breaking stuff. That's how it works. Yeah. Yeah. Race cars are off-rate cars. So yeah, we keep shopping, and here we go again, back to the Titan, because then I had really realized or come to the realization they had the XD, which is like their heavy duty versions. It's not quite a 2,500 series, three quarter ton, but it's also not a half ton. It's a tweener. Hey, I tell you what, that's what Ian Johnson pulls with, and Ian swears by that truck. If he gives it his stamp of endorsement, that's pretty good. I saw when you picked that up, I I was like, Good choice. Yeah. Anyway, this vehicle had a longer wheelbase, which sucks from the overlanding perspective. I got to remember, this is a tow truck. This is supposed to be my tow truck. We start shopping around for him, and here we are. I can find 100,000-mile Titan XD, really good condition with a gas engine because you don't want the diesel. They had issues with that Cummins diesel, so it's not the greatest choice. And a Pro 4X, which for people who don't know, Nissan, Pro 4X means you get the rear locker, the rear electric locker. So, yeah, found this great 100,000-mile, super clean body. I couldn't even find scratches on it. Pro 4X Titan XD ended up being the toe rig. So that I have zero problems with. Toe's great. But the Nissan is still broken, and snow wheeling season is coming up because I broke in the locker in the Xtera. And what are you going to do? I can't roll around with little tiny 33s on this. This truck came with a three-inch lift. And the XD type is already three inches taller than the regular type. So now it looks like it's got a little skateboard wheel. Very much road dozer type. So And it's funny because you mentioned Zachary deal. So I knew that he was working with... I think he was working with Handcook at the time on something for Siemens. So I just hit him up. We're friends through descent and all that. I was like, Hey, If you happen to find any 35s or 37s for cheap, let me know. I got a new truck and I need something because this car has issues. It was rubbing real bad. He had a horrible offset wheel on, whatever. So Zack messaged me and hooks me up with Justin Friedmann, and it turned out they had some leftover stuff at Donut. Oh, nice. That they were using on their Blue Ranger project. Okay. I thought. They switched tire brands and whatnot, but they ended up having something there for me. And so during a contribution to Donut, I was able to walk away with some 37-inch Oklahomas. There you go. For the Titan. So slap on some new wheels, and here, now I got a Titan on 37. So why not go snow wheeling? So I spent all last year snow wheeling with Ben from Descent. And if you're familiar with last year, he was really mostly running the Lancreser 250 on portals with the 40-inch tires. So I did a lot of plowing behind him. So Those portals have a lot of experience. Yeah, they do. Yeah. So that's how I ended up. And the thing's never given me a problem. Even the Armada has, I think, 35,000 miles on it now. It's never been to the dealer. No recalls, no weird things that I've had issues with. It just goes, which was the other reason I wanted the Titan. It's got that tried and true 5. 6 liter V8 that's been around forever, like 2004, 2005. Oh, yeah. With long time. There's changes they do to it, but it's a damn reliable motor, and it makes excellent power. The field economy sucks, but that comes with the territory. Remember when other manufacturers used to do that, used to find a motor, a platform that works and stick with it for 10, 12, 15, 20 years, not have to change it every five years just to piss us off? Yeah, like the 100 Series with the Tundra with the 200. I mean, that was an excellent engine. That gets me to the 80 Series, which is where I'm at now. Justin, I'm not sure in the timeline, when did you start working at Descent? How did that evolve? Then did the Toyota bug start rubbing off on you, being around all those land cursures? That sounds dirty, isn't it? That sounds dirty, isn't it? I had to quit the land trust. I tried just being home for a while, but my wife works from home, and she doesn't want me around all day. So I needed daddy day care, basically, as she called it. And I had a wheeling group that we all talk on Slack and set up trips and stuff like that. And he worked at Descent in the marketing department. I said, Hey, you guys got anything I can do, a few hours a day or something like that? Because I have these issues where I can't be somewhere where I can't just go, Hey, I got to go to the bathroom, and just run and go. I can't sit at a computer for too long because I just end up with neck issues and stuff. And then part of the chemotherapy, the lung, whatever, affects That's basically how long I can stay awake. So somewhere around noon to one o'clock, I'm really diving off. I can't function anymore. I need a nap, which really screws up your ability to work normal job. So Phil brought me in. I talked to Ben, and they had a job assembling hardware kits and putting together swing arms, stuff like that, that I could do. For as long as I could be there for. It wasn't the super critical job, like welding and power coating, all that. I started working there. I don't think I remember when that was. 2020? I remember that. Maybe 2021. Time flies. When it does, yeah. I started working there. And, yeah, we did a lot of Toyo and stuff. I had to learn a lot about the Land Cruisers, which was cool because because then it made me more interested in the Nissan variant, which is the Patrol overseas, particularly the old ones, like a GQ or a GU Patrol, that thing. I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. But I couldn't afford a Toyota. They were all so expensive. And yet now here I am working part-part-time just to make ends meet. But they were really cool. And I started learning more about how the armor is made, especially the modular systems, which for some reason I thought that they were inferior back in the day. I didn't understand that modular can actually be so strong and have certain advantages. So yeah, I just started learning a ton there and driving my Extero and my Titan and my Armada going, Well, I guess we're never going to make Nissan Arbor, huh? And so, yeah, it got to a point where Ben bought, I think it's a '97. What was that? A '45th anniversary edition. Something like that.'80s series.'40th anniversary, yeah.'40th, yes. He had a black one, I should say. He had a black one that didn't have real running gear in it, but it had all of the armor. You actually can see it on the website because it was one of the original builds. I spent countless hours trying to correct the paint on that thing because it was horrible. There was just Bettina everywhere and in my mind, Patina's bad. Well, now I like Patina. But I started liking that car. I was like, This is cool. It looks like a GU Patrol. People are getting mad at me for that. Oh, yeah, they're already riled up. Yes, rolling of eyes. But whatever. It's a dead body plan or whatever. But then he bought that 40th, and with a three-inch lift, he slapped three-eights on it. It's already triple-locked. He had RCV axles on it, but a very minimal build. He started designing our Extreme Clarence series, front and rear bumpers, which are basically as minimal as you can get without being a tube style. No swing arms on the back, anything. And then I started going out on trips with him. About this time, I had taken over as the social media guy there, still doing the hardware kits, still doing assembly of parts, accessories, things that. But now I got to go out on trips and get footage. I'm going on Fordyce, Rubicon, Moab, all these places. And that's 80. It's just impressing me because it's simple. There's not much to it. I mean, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, yes, it has models, it has gears, some good axles and that and stuff. But it's not a crazy build. And this thing is just super capable. I'm telling you, I'm smiling because We have this conversation here all the time. I mean, the '80 is just special, man. I mean, if you want to keep it pretty, you can keep it pretty. If you're willing to cut a little on those fenders and shove the 37s under there, and you can get by with just doing the low gear in the transfer case, not touching the differentials, and rock and roll, it's ready to go. I just had I have no idea. It's durable for what it is. I mean, yeah, it's not a rock bouncer, but compared to anything IFS, it's way more durable. We try to treat them like rock bouncer over here, so they identify. You may have seen footage. Yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah, I see. It's not just the '80s that you guys do that. I see the 100th Series doing that. Patch is notorious. Lee, oh my God. I'm like, You guys, that's IFS, bro. You can't do that. So anyway, yeah, just driving around and going to different trails and things with that. Then snow wheeling was pretty incredible, too, because I snow wheel a lot. When I came at the GMC, that's how I learned to winch so much. I ended up teaching little workshops on how to winch properly and things because you spend so much time winching snow wheeling. You can learn in two seasons, which takes people 10 years to learn. Sure. Because you don't do it that often. So, yeah, I guess fast forward. My nephew was in high school, and he bought an old Frontier, used one, and he was driving it around. I'd send him little cheapy lights and stuff that he could put on it and things. And some old lady sites swiped it when it was parked on the road. And I made a joke with him, and he's like, Man, I can't find anything cool. Tacomas are expensive. I said, Well, are any of the GXs in his price range? No. And he couldn't find anything. I said, Well, if you come up with 10 grand, I'll sell you the X tarot. Now, market it, it was probably, I probably could have got 15 for it because of everything that was done. But he's my nephew. And I didn't think he was going to come up with 10K. So I felt it was a pretty safe thing, you know what I'm saying? And then he texted me five days later or something. He goes, You still want to sell it? And I was like, What? He goes, They gave me 10K for his little frontier. It was a 2003... Sorry, no one, but it wasn't a nice frontier. They gave them 10K for that thing. And I'm like, Now I'm stuck. I can't go back on my word. I can't do it. And it's staying in the family. So there's that. So I gave him the right of first refusal. There you go. Yeah, I knew. If you're going to sell it, I get to buy it back first. So yeah, in the process of selling it to him, he was going to graduate, so he needed to come down. He was up in Northern California. So in that time period, I'm now searching for '80s because that's the only thing I can just conceptually think of can do everything that I want to do. Because I'm hanging out with Ben and Dimitri from Stellerbill. Zachary now has an All these guys that have these capable rigs, the minimum tire size is 37. I'm like, I can't do that in an IFS rig. I mean, okay, yes, you can before people get mad. But as you know, it's much more likely to break or you have to have deep pockets for something like 74 while portals or whatever. So for me, best bang for buck and upgradeability in the future was an 80, just period. I love the 100 Series. Ben has a 100 Series that I drove around a lot, and I think it was on 34s for the longest time when I was driving it. And then he ended up cutting the fenders all up and put 38s on it, and it totally transformed that rig. And I really liked the 100. It was super comfortable. But it's IFS. It's IFS, and it's torsion bar IFS. And it's torsion bar, yeah. Sorry, Sorry, 100 guys. But they know. My buddy Caden will kill me for it because I always tell him, Don't get rid of your car. It's all going to be a Black Hills on me, but on Instagram, just the coolest kid. And he's got his on 37s now, and he's building it up. God, I love the 100. But yeah. Well, we've got a couple of guys, Alex and our buddy, Zack Burns over here now, that are doing the coil swap onto the 100 Series, basically taking 200 Series or Tundra coils and getting rid of the torsion bars on the hundreds. Yeah, that's super sweet. Then there's what that long travel kit that I think is. I've seen that floating around as well. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see because there's a lot of advantages to the 100 Series, namely the VA. I started searching for 80 Series, and there are people I don't want good money for those things. Sure. Thankfully, in my area, there are quite a few, and they're all rust-free for the most part. It's something you guys do. I got a friend in New Jersey right now that's been searching for the guy with the Armada. He actually wants an '80 series now. And he keeps sending me links, and it's like, Oh, my God, that thing looks... How is it even holding together? Yeah, we're generally okay in our part, but you get north of Kentucky, and those trucks that have made their way down, no, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not even worth it. I can't even imagine trying to take anything apart on those. So, yeah, before I even fully had gotten rid of the ex Terra, I already jumped, and started talking to a guy in Topo that had one. It was actually his grandma. She had lived in San Bernardino. Nice. It was the total fairytale story. Right. I had all the paperwork and all this stuff. Top half of the engine was rebuilt. Now, this is too good to be true. Talked to the guy quite a bit. There were some little things on it that weren't as nice as I was hoping, and I didn't quite have the asking price. But we worked out a deal and I got this car. I bought a 93'80 Series One FC because I wanted to avoid the anemic engine, so I only wanted the partially anemic engine. I would have liked to add a '95 plus to get the OBD 2, but this was the best deal I could find that was in my price range, and it was still super clean with zero rust. I got that home, took it to work the next day because you got to show it off, especially if you work at a Toyota place. As I was getting ready to... Ben looked it over, he's This is actually pretty clean. The paint's just good enough. It looks real good and it's shiny, but not enough to where you're going to worry about getting pinstripes. I was like, Yeah, that sounds about right, because it was still a shiny green. But that day, as I was leaving, I had my coffee mug, grabbed my flannel, and was heading out. At this point, Ben had sold his Black 80 to Zachary Diehl, and all the hardware that was on that black one was sitting on a pallet. And I wasn't thinking about it because I'm like, I can't really afford our armor. It's really nice stuff. And as I was leaving, Ben looked at the pallet and he was like, Do you want to put the bumper on? And I was like, The front bumper? Like that one? He goes, Yeah, I'm going to take it out. It's already put together because it's modular, but just un bolted it with the winch still in it and some lights and everything. And I'm like, You bet your ass I want that. In my mind, I was debating, Oh, do I get our extreme clearance one, which I love the design, or do I go the classic bowl bar style? And it's still minimalist, but it has the nice big bullbar. Right. Yeah. So anyway, needless to say, I text my wife, I'm going to be a little late, honey, because I'm getting a bumper right now. So literally not even 24 hours of ownership, and I had already ripped off the front. That's awesome. Bid for a bumper. Stuck this giant bullbar with the winch on it, and it still had factory springs and stuff. So now it's squatting. And I took it wheeling because- Sure. That's what you do. That's what you do. Yeah. And my buddy had an unfortunate incident. He had a Titan-swapped frontier, full V8 swap as well, big custom camera, all that. He had an incident at a water crossing, and it basically It took his car, so it was underwater. We needed to do a recovery. I brought Ben in the LC250 and another friend, and we went to go recover this vehicle from underwater. And all I have is now I got the 80. And the entrance is by Fort Ice Trail. So you got to go a little part of it or whatever. And here I am in this thing with stock running boards, 32-inch in this heavy bull bar, and I'm just scraping on stuff. But the articulation is just freaking me out because I feel like I'm leaning way more, but I'm going. I have traction. And this thing is not a triple lock version. It's just the center def lock. So it was just blowing my mind. Even on this, this was one of a hard trail by any means. But Bone Stock with very mild all terrain on it, I was just like, Oh, this car is sick. I guess just the coolest part was the fact I don't have to ask it for permission to do anything. Like Nate would say from Dirt Lifestyle, he would say, these new cars, you have to ask for permission and perform some to make it- Right. No, I just stick it neutral. I just grab the stick down there and I go, I want four low. Done. It was the coolest thing. At that point, I was hooked. We ended up recovering my friend. Going out, getting out of there. Aussie's call them Wombat holes. I don't even know what we call them, but when you have two holes that are offset and it just throws off the chassis. That was when I realized I didn't have a track. Yeah. No. I ran out of articulation on a stock suspension in small tires, and I got into that situation where both tires, front passenger, rear driver started spinning, and I just stayed in it because I was waiting because Nissan has their version of A-Trac, which is very good. Not quite as good as A-Trac, but pretty damn close. And normally, you could just stay in it, hold it about 2000 RPM, it'll catch. It just kept spinning. What the hell are you doing? You don't have A-Trac. You don't have lockers either. So, yeah, hence new came soon. That's a good story. But, yeah, that's the nature of the '80, right? It just- Yeah. I don't know how to explain. It's old, it's archaic, it's heavy, feeling anyway. My Xteria probably weight the same amount, but it's just a much heavier feel in vehicle, solid front of an axel. I took it on another trip. A Niagara rim trail up here, it's not a gnarly trail. It's fairly easy. Most people... There's only two lines that are rough if you have less than 33-inch tires, like say at Tacoma or something. But I followed all my friends through all the crazy stuff, and here I am in this still stock '80, and they would just go, Oh, my God, that thing's still going. Able to do all this stuff, and it's just low in my mind. I'm like, falling in love with this thing more and more. I did end up in a spot where I'd banged part of the lower body because I didn't have sliders yet. I was getting a little overzealous with the throttle, smoking the tires on an obstacle. And then, because I camp inside the vehicle, I discovered the split tailgate. And that was game-changing. Like the Xtera had the big hatch. I have my bed and everything. But the split tailgate for overlanding, camping, whatever, it's just amazing. I never understood why people were so upset that all the New Lincoln cruisiers don't have it. Furious, and still are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't say that I'm a Toyota congert, but I do have a much better appreciation for Toyota products, especially working at descent, because we're tearing apart 130,000 of dollars, brand new cars. It's just interesting to see the build quality compared to some of our other vehicles we have out here on the market. What's next for the '80? What's the next big thing? So the '80 came together quick. I bought it in May. Like you said, 24 hours later, it already had a bumper. Because Zachary wanted to use the extreme clearance stuff for his donut build, I end up, because I do all the social media and a lot of the marketing photos and content, it just made sense to grab the old stuff off the Ben's old date and slap it onto mine. Well, of course it did. Yeah. Perfect. It's already there. We don't have to offset any customers. I don't have to wait in line for anything because that's not fair either. So cool. Now I got bumpers. Just talking to more people. Hey, let's get suspension on it. I got to get some wheels and tires. Took a big gamble on the 5215 analog HD wheels that you saw on the page. Oh, those worked out really well. I was scared to death. I'm not usually into the big retro, moon eye, solid wheel. And then talking to the guys over there, they're like, It'll look good. Trust us. And yeah, totally love the wheels. I mean, it still not... Still don't have lockers other than the center diff lock, but I did slap 37s on it. And with the zero offset wheels, which I This isn't real common with 80 people. They tend to like more offset. At least that's the way it seems, negative 18, negative 20, something like that, which is cool for wheel poke. But a lot of the modern Toyotas, especially when we're working out with the set, anything that's like 20, 20 above is they're getting like positive 60 offset wheels from the factory. Oh, yeah. The 200s were plus 50, I believe. I mean, that's starting in 2008 at plus 35 plus 50, the 200, and the Tundra. So, yeah. Yeah. What we're having to deal with is a lot of these wheel manufacturers are used to selling wheels that are on the high side plus 20, but more commonly, it's zero or negative 20 or something like that. And that doesn't work on these new Toyotas because you'd have to cut so much of your fenders and wheel wells to fit a big tire. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah, I ran into the same thing when I switched this last goal around. I really, really wanted a set of beat locks, but go try to find a set of five on one 50 beat locks in a positive offset without having them custom made and paying $1,000 a piece. I ended up with the beat grips, and I've been thrilled with how those have performed. But yeah, there's all these bro-dose There's no user options out there, but there's nothing for guys that are actually going to use it. Right. When I bought my Titan XD, it had a negative 18 offset wheel, a 20-inch, and it had 33-inch tires, and it rubbing the hell out of the Fender wheel. I mean, and this is a vehicle that has a big Fender wheel to be in with. I thought, How the hell are you rubbing a 33 that bad? Which is partially why I got a discount on the truck. But took those wheels off, get a negative or positive 20 or a positive 25, and now I can fit a 37. Right. And this is something like Kai talks about, tinkers. That's exactly what I was thinking about. His Tundra, it's very similar story. Yeah. Yeah. And you can get a lot because lifts aren't for putting bigger tires, per se. They can help, but everybody thinks, Oh, I got to do a 10-inch lift to be able to put this. No, you don't. Not on IFS. Yeah, that's a whole class in itself. Exactly. Without getting too much into that, on the 80, I'm still new to that. I'm still new to solid Axel. I've never actually wheeled a solid Axel vehicle before. But knowing what I know with what we do at Ascent, all of these new cars, like the LX700H, the GX560, the LC250, we're not putting zero offset wheels on them. We're putting positive 35, positive 40 or 45 in some cases, to be able to fit in that big tire because you want the tire to fit in as close to you can to the flush to the wheel well, because you want it to be able to go inside. If you have the wheel sitting way out, now you got to cut a bunch of stuff. On that upper fender if you want to keep your travel. Believe it or not, those guys that are buying a $130,000 truck don't want to cut their fenders like we'll just take an angle grinder to it and be done with it. Fair enough. Even in my 80, it I was like, I paid nine grand for this thing. That's not an expensive car, but to me, it's expensive. And it's a nice car. I don't want to just take a jigsaw or angle grinder and just chop my fender out to fit a 37, which conventional wisdom would tell you you need it to And so I didn't. I got a wheel offset that would fit 37, 12 and a half, an aggressive one. It's a trail grappler, so it's got meaty thread on it. And it actually didn't rub at all. I took the running boards off, so that helps. And then I had the front bumper. But as far as the Fenderwell was concerned, I was driving around for a It had zero issues. It wasn't until I went out, took an overlanding, off-roading, and I was hitting bumps because I don't have extended bump stops yet. And then I started hitting the back of the wheel well. But other than that, it wasn't touching, and that's a 37. Normally, to fit a 37, even like a 100-series, you'd have to cut the hell out of those vendor wheels. Oh, yeah. Here I was with just a three-inch lift, and I was just golden. Well, Well, remember, there was that Orange '80 that Nate and Dirt Head Dave built that they fit 39s on. Yeah, and then they took it through four nights. Yeah, so it can be done. Yeah, it's crazy. Long story short, it just put the lift on it, the wheels and tires, and everywhere I'd gone with it, I haven't done any of the hard trails because I didn't have sliders yet. I didn't really want to wreck the body, but got pretty darn good clearance even without it. But everywhere I went and I was expecting to have to hit the locker like I would have in the Xterra on 35s, I was just articulating through stuff and just crawling with the creepy tires and the live axles. And every time I take it out now, it just boggles my mind. And now I have one of those Wolfbox cameras. The damn thing records all the audio. So anytime I do something that I think is cool, then I got to listen to myself going, Holy cow, that was rad. Or, Oh my other car, I couldn't do this. Or, Wow, maybe Landruisters are cool. So if you see any of those videos and there's music over it, it's because I'm not wanting to listen to myself being all flabbergasted about how cool an Ega is. I like it. All right, Justin, this has been really good, buddy. I appreciate you again coming on and sharing your journey. I think there's definitely pieces and facets that we can all identify with, and hopefully, folks can take some inspiration from in how you've battled through some real adversity and continue to do so, but you haven't let that prevent you from getting out there and enjoying these outdoors and this nature just like you were when you were 12 years old. It's a really cool story, man. I appreciate you sharing it. No, thank Thank you. And I appreciate being able to tell it because I know there's people out there like me or there's going to be people like me. You say that I continue to be able to get out there and do it, but I fundamentally think that the reason I'm still here is because I go out and do it. It's that nature healing. There you go. You got to have it. It doesn't matter whether you're rock crawling, overlanding, playing on fire roads or what. Just go get some dirt under your tires and soak up all the good vibes. I love it. Well, all right, we're going to run through these rapid fire questions before I let you go here. All right. All right, number one, favorite off-road trail snack? Chips, I guess. I don't really have a major trail snack. Well, if you're going, you When you hop at the convenience store, like you're about to hit the trailhead, what are you going to go in and grab? Pringles. Pringles, okay. They're not even my favorite chip, but for some reason it just works off-roading. Because the can, because it didn't get it. You can throw it in the back and it bounces around and it doesn't get crushed like a bag. I don't disagree. In the 80, it sits right in between where the handbrake is. There you go. It's perfect, and it's easy to feed one to my doll when she's riding shotgun. Nice. All right. If you could only listen to one artist or one album while you're out on the trail for a day. Hans Zimmer. Hans Zimmer? Yeah. That's a new take. I love movie scores. I mean, I listen to a variety of everything, country rap, whatever, South African, kweto, reggaeton, whatever. But if I had to pick one, that would probably be it. It's some type of a movie score. I just find those very uplifting and it's distracting when I'm off road. Sometimes it can be fun when you're conquering obstacles. That's what I was thinking. I may have to try that. I may have to queue this up. I've never thought about having movie score music to set the trail mood, but I like that idea. Yeah, and you can switch it up. It's just fun. You're doing cookey stuff and getting into trouble, and you put on Pirates of the Caribbean. You feel like a little swashbuckling hero as you make your way to the trail. So Goofy, but yeah, that'll be my jam. All right. Dewalt or Milwaukee? If I could Ford, either one, Milwaukee. All right, so you're a door number three. What was it? I got a garage full of. Okay, there you go. If I had to pick quality, then yes, I would pick the Milwaukee. Yeah. Okay. Cam. Remember, I'm a Nissan guy, bro. Oh, that's true. It all makes sense. It all makes sense. All right, this next question, I know the answer to because I remember you posting a funny reel about it at one time, and you may remember it as well. But manual or automatic for off-roading? Okay, I'll preface it with my choice. Automatic all the way, because the control and whether I'm doing it or anybody else is doing it. I hate watching manuals do this little back and forth movement, looking like one of those Snipes in the middle of the road where they're trying to get over. I'm like, Just do the damn obstacle. And automatic gives you all the control you need. I'm sure manual is probably more fun, but whatever. I'm going to pick automatic. But to be fair and to be 100 % honest, because my boys at Descent Off-Road are going to call me out on this, because any time we get a manual in the shop and they ask somebody to pull it out, it can't be me, because I can't drive a stick. Oh, oh. I owned a manual once, and after two weeks, they got rid of it. So I did drive it around. I can technically drive it, a manual, but not well. And I attribute that to all my years in drag racing, because manuals weren't the thing to have in drag racing, and then just never had a car with a manual after that. I know I'm going to take some heat for that. Quite a bit of heat, but at least I'm being honest. Hey, there you go. Man enough to admit it. That makes the fact that... Do you remember the reel I'm talking about where Harry Wagner had posted about the benefits of driving a manual? And then you called him out on it. That makes it even funnier now. Yeah. Yeah. And he knows as well that I can't drive. So then it's like, found one of those, Oh, it looks like I'm just talking smack. I'm like, Yeah, I am. But I am also a moron and can't drive one. So even my wife makes in front of me, but whatever, man. I'm honest to the public. There you go. All right. Last question, Justin. Being at Descent, you've talked about all these different rigs that either shop trucks or trucks that come through the shop. If there's only one rig that's come through that shop or has been built in that shop that you could steal for the weekend to hit the trail with, not worrying about what you break on it, which one are you choosing? See, you just threw that little part back in there. It's about not worrying what I break because you've got that 700H that's fully built up. That's a tough one. I would say the Teal LC 250. Okay. The 250 is not necessarily my favorite car. I just don't like the feel of the drivetrain. Same goes with the sixth Gen 4-runner. I like having a V8. But that thing has massive amounts of clearance. If you guys have seen it, it's on 40s, it has portals. The lift is minimal because you're getting all the lift from the portals. From the portal, yeah. But seeing what he can do with that thing, and especially now, because the first year or two, we were just running around doing basic stuff, I'd say basic stuff, four dice, Rubicon, and tons of snow wheeling in that thing. And because I'm the one following him, He's leaving mounds of snow behind him because the undercarriage has so much clearance that I'm on 37s of a Titan, or worse yet, in the X-Tera on the Revo. I'm just plowing this stuff. The clearance is amazing. We took it to Moab this past year, and if you saw that video, it did a flop. It had issues because it didn't have a front locker, whereby when you get that tall, especially with IFS, you tend to like to wave. When you have a front locker, it helps to maintain traction up front and grip into the ground and keep the front end down. At the time, there wasn't a locker available on the market for that ring and pinion, right? No, not at all. That's why he ran so long without it. And so for around here, it was amazing what it could do. Then when we got to Moab, because there's so much just steep, slabby stuff, the shortcoming came out from all that height. It was like, okay, well, maybe this isn't the greatest setup for a Moab-style trail. But the more we started looking at it, it was that front locker. He needed the front locker. And My dad's a Rubicon. You'll see the donut. You've probably seen the donut video where they took the Jeep Liberty out. Well, then he went out again now with the front locker, and it's not lifting. It's just clawing its way through stuff. It's not breaking. That's the incredible part. He had an issue one time with a rear axel that was supplied from 74 Weld. That was still their early design. Fixed that. It had taken out the rear locker your actuator. Toyota fixed that. But it doesn't break CVs. Tire rod ends. I've watched Zachary drive that car and bend the tire against a rock. Tire rod ends were fine, CVs were fine. It doesn't break anything. It's just amazing what that car could do. If I had to pick one, it would be the LC250. There you go. Surprising choice. I did not think that's what you'd say, but it's interesting. You validated it. Yeah, that's why. But man, the 700 would be nice. All right. Well, thanks again, Justin. This has been good. And folks, if you're not already following Justin on Instagram, both on the Decent account and on Justin's account, go over there and give him a follow for lots of good content. So thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And thank all of you. Yes, sir.