We have made it to the start of the school year and the next two and a half months will be very busy for us.  We only have 9 sessions left available and they are all in October.  So far, Jodi is keeping up well and we are fortunately not having to reschedule any sessions.

We went to the Missouri State Fair yesterday and it was the first time for both of us.  We only stayed a few hours but walked around quite a bit, had lunch and visited with a friend who had a booth there.  It was a fun drive there and back in the new car.  

The day before I was at SMORR for an event our club participated in.  We didn't fare too well due to a broken Jeep but it was a fun time.  I did not participate due to insurance reasons but I did get some wheeling in while there.  I also won the top two prizes in the raffle they had.  I won a Powertank setup and a set of Dirty Life wheels.  It was my lucky day.

My RC car collection is taking up some of my time as well.  I have a course in the backyard about 80% complete.  I need to go get some more rock to finish things up.  Cooler weather is upon us so that should help me get it done.  

We keep banging out sessions and Jodi is doing a great job at keeping up.  I hope that continues and we will have a great year that combines plenty of profit while having more free time overall.  

We had a great club meeting last night with about 130-140 present.  The food was great, the conversations were great and naturally, the meeting emcee was great too.  :)   We had a fun raffle at the end and gave away some cool stuff.  

This dang heat needs to go away.  I'll leave it at that.  Not much else exciting to report. 

Three sessions this week and it's going to be upper 90's.  Yee hah!  Oh well, gotta do what ya gotta do.  

I have a new hobby.  Yeah, I need a new hobby like I need a hole in my head but I do.  RC rock crawling.  I picked up a 1/24 Bronco and a 1/10 Jeep and now am modding them to flex like crazy.  You can pretty much do anything to them that you can to a real Jeep or Bronco.  I'm going to build a crawling course in my back yard when it cools down.  Jodi just rolls her eyes.  

 We are back to photographing the next class of high school seniors and will be busy for some time now.  It usually takes me a couple weeks to get back in the rhythm of things but I have had 4 great clients to work with to start off the season which has helped tremendously.  

I have been spending time in the garage getting it organized which was a long time coming.  I bought a 8'x8'x2' 5 shelf rack to help get everything off the floor and in a better place and it is nearly full.  I cleaned off the other two shelves that I already had and put things into some tubs to lessen the clutter look.  Home Depot probably appreciated my visit and purchases.  Had to get me a Milwaukee Packout while there.  

Speaking of Milwaukee, I think I may be a bit compulsive when it comes to buying their tools.  There's a few not shown here.  

While working in the garage the other evening, we had a great sunset which was worthy of a picture.  

With $2000 worth of ORI struts just laying around, I decided to case them up for ease of taking them with me when I go wheeling and protecting them from damage.  Yes, I'm obsessed.

I'll wrap up this post with a few recent images.  The first is a shot of the Liberty Memorial at the WWI Museum where we went to attend Taps at the Tower.  

And these two are from going wheeling at Tuttle a couple weekends ago.  The 43's were awesome that day so they are starting to get broken in a bit better.  Wound up in a good flex pose on a trail too.  

 I spent Saturday and Sunday at SMORR for our club's Memorial Day weekend annual event.  We had about 100 people go on the trip and had a great time.  I got to put the new 43's to the test.  They still need some break in time but I got up Cheap Trick's waterfall for the first time unassisted.  

We wound up having to recover a friend's rig after an electrical fire knocked out all his power.  Luckily I saw the smoke pretty quickly and a fire extinguisher saved his rig.  The problem then was he had no brakes or steering.  We had to winch him over the obstacle he was battling at the time of the fire, haul him up a hill and then down a steep hill to get back to the main road.  I strapped my Jeep to another Jeep and then the two of us attached to the disabled one to get him up the hill.  For the downhill section, we put another Jeep at the rear to act as the brakes going down.  It worked.  Good recovery practice for us.

Jodi was in St. Louis for a few days and we both pulled into the drive about the same time Sunday evening.  I offloaded the Jeep as soon as I pulled in and decided to take my trailer to my friend's place where I store it.  He was having a gathering and we wound up staying until 12:30am.  I was in bed by 1am and I actually slept 8 hours straight through for the first time in probably a year or more.  I wish that was every night.

On Memorial Day, we met up with a few others on a "Honoring the Fallen" event.  We drove to Concordia, MO where there is a new mural and we did a photo shoot with our vehicles there.  We then drove back to downtown KC and went to the World War I Memorial where the traveling Vietnam Wall was.  It was the last day for the exhibit and by the time we got there, they had already disassembled it and packed it away.  That was disappointing but we did get to see some pretty cool sites while there.  We finished the evening by going to dinner with our friends.  We beat the thunderstorms home by about an hour.  

Here are some pics from the weekend.

 We had our club's Go Topless Day event this past Saturday and had over 120 vehicles participate.  Following a half hour cruise to the lake pavilion we rented, we played corn hole, fixed hundreds of burgers and hot dogs and had a pretty awesome raffle.  We raised $6000 for St. Michael's Veteran's Center here in KC, which helps veterans with housing.

Memorial Day weekend I am heading to SMORR with the club while Jodi heads to St. Louis to hang with her family.  I am looking forward to trying out the new Mickey Thompson Baja Pro XS tires.  It may take a couple wheeling trips to break them in.  

 Business is slow right now due to May being a dead month for us so we will have about 5 weeks of free time before the craziness starts all over again.  I spend much of my time dealing with club related things.  There is always something to do it seems.

We had our Off Road Skills Day last weekend at 4 Wheel Parts and it was  great success.  We had a great turnout and the feedback was very good.  It was geared toward people who are newer to off roading and we had six stations setup where groups rotated through.  I taught the "Pre-trip inspection" segment while others covered airing down, disconnecting the sway bar, steering and suspension, safe jacking, etc...

We are going to Kansas Rocks for Adopt a Trail this Saturday to clean up our section of the park and get some wheeling in.  Later that evening we are going to a minor league baseball game with the club,