We had a great time at Hot Springs ORV a couple weekends ago.  We had about 30 vehicles from our club make the trip and we had two great days of offroading.  We did the tough trails and Jodi had to get out a few times to keep her anxiety in check and I managed to keep the rig in one piece while doing the "crazy stuff" as she calls it.

I just picked up a welder and am looking forward to building my 14 bolt axle this winter.  My long arm kit is here and I'll be ordering my Kingpin Elite 60 very soon.  Can't wait to get all of my winter projects completed.  

I'm running unopposed for President of our club for next year.  Elections are next month so I guess our 500+ members feel I am doing a good job since no one wanted to run against me.  

 The streak continued with a $900 win at the Blackjack table last night.  JD got to see me color up and cash out.  Yep, going back again tonight and will every night until the streak ends.  I had a hot streak last year prior to going to Vegas which gave me about $2500 for the trip.  Hope this one keeps going for awhile.  

Today I need to start trip prep so I'll be climbing under the rig and checking bolts for torque and inspection of parts.  We drove around in the cool Fall air yesterday and all seemed good.  Jodi was a little cold as it was 59 degrees but it felt great to me.  

We are into the first week of October with 20 photo sessions scheduled for the balance of the year.  If I want to get greedy, I could probably book two more but Jodi is behind as it is and we are keeping clients waiting longer than usual to see their images.  Plus, we leave for Hot Springs in just a few days and that's editing time she is losing.  She is doing well though and that's the best news of all.

My Rock Krawler long arm and three link kit arrived yesterday.  We are still looking for a 14 bolt axle to build but the parts are piling up for the newest version of Nemesis.  It's going to be a fun winter with all of the projects planned.

I've been really happy with the performance of my truck.  I wound up doing a 4" straight pipe all of the way back with a race resonator just to keep the drone out of it when towing.  My friend had that issue so I went ahead and took care of it prior to experiencing it.  I'll get a good idea as to what kind of mileage it is getting while towing on our upcoming trip.  

The last two nights I've been a little bored so I went to the casino that JD works at.  The first night I walked out with $285 and last night I walked out with $525.  I'm going to hopefully continue the streak tonight.  Going to ride it out as long as I'm hot.  

We've been staying busy with photo shoots and getting people in for their ordering appointments.  We are probably a few sessions overbooked but I'm not turning down people who want to hand over money to me.  We may even start doing some morning sessions to continue to meet demand.

The other day I did a delete and tune on my truck.  WOW!  What a difference that makes.  My MPG has gone from about 12 on the highway to 18!  That of course is on the milder tunes but when you want to raise holy hell, dial it up to the 250HP tune and you will be pinned back in the seat as you quickly hit 100mph.  It's no wonder the diesel trucks are eating Mustangs and Camaros for lunch.  

I had a new logo made for my offroad brand and am really happy with it.  Looking forward to getting some tshirts made up.  I had 100 hats made with the name on them and have started selling those.

 Jodi is doing well and her followup appointment with the doctor was good. She goes back later this week for some followup tests but she has made significant improvement.

The struggle for us right now is her getting caught up on all of our sessions.  We are about 7 sessions behind right now and shooting 4 more this week.  We have brought in our former intern who is working about 4 hours per day to help Jodi in that regard.  Hopefully we can get her caught up soon.  

I'm leading a trip to Tuttle to go wheeling on Sunday with my club.  We will have about 20 people going and it should be a fun day of rock crawling on the ledges.  Our Hot Springs trip is coming up in just a few weeks and I am really looking forward to going back and wheeling there.  That will be out last big trip of the year.  I'm thinking about heading to Scottsdale/Sedona this winter for a couple weeks to play in the red rock and desert a bit.

I'm close to ordering my new Fusion Kingpin 60.  Current lead time is around 6 weeks and I could get thew 14 bolt built in that time.  I'm also considering doing a full Genright cage with a B pillar chop and a Motobilt backhalf kit so I can outboard the ORI struts I want to get.  The long arm and three link is in the works right now.  

 Jodi seems to be doing much better and has a followup doctor appointment tomorrow.  We will see if they make any changes to her meds or recommend anything else.

We spent this past weekend at SMORR in the Sprigfield area.  Jodi stayed at camp most of the time, only venturing out on an easy trail with a lady friend of ours.  I led a couple groups around, went up the waterfall, lost all my power steering fluid when a hydraulic line on my ram came loose during a tough battle on a hill and trailered home a club member whose transmission shot craps.  Fun times.

Our next wheeling trip is to Tuttle on the 20th followed by a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas for a wheeling trip the second weekend in October.   

I bought a set of Spyderlock beadlocks for a one ton build while in Tennessee.  It was too good of a deal to pass up, nearly half price.  That made me go buy another set of Mickey Thompson Baja Boss tires to put on them so I can roll out on new meats next year.  Mickey's are on a national backorder, at least in 40's, so when a shop here got a small shipment in, I snagged them.  Looking to start a shaved 14 bolt build in the next couple months.

Jayson had a baseball game yesterday and I got to see his first walkoff game winning RBI.  It's funny watching JD watch Jayson play.  Jayson is so much like he was when small.  I kept mentioning to JD, "You did the same when you were his age".  

 

 Trail 16 wound up being a crazy adventure.  It didn't take long to have a "situation".  AFter being unable to go through a deeply rutted section of the trail due to my long wheel base, I chose to try to go around it.  That was a bad idea as the trail was muddy and we started to slide off the trail, which was on a hillside.  While attempting to back up, we continued to slide off the trail and we were now in a pretty precarious position on the hillside.  At that point, we had no choice but to get out of the vehicle before it rolled down the hill.  I quickly attached my winch line to a tree and assessed the situation.  I was about to try to just floor it backwards to see if I could get back up on the trail but in hindsight, that probably would have been a bad idea.  The good news is, I probably wouldn't have gone down the hill very far with the winch line attached.  LOL  Luckily, a few Cherokees showed up and one of them wound up using his winch and a snatchblock to work with me and my winch to get me back on the trail.