Welcome to Batches Off-Road.
Join us as we talk about everything from gear reviews to trail stories, tent camping to
rock landing, and all things to do with the outdoors.
Today we have the full crew and we're going to do a little 30 minute mini stowed on being
a dummy.
Everybody's a dummy.
Yes.
But specifically what makes you a dummy if you don't have it in your over landing setup,
your rig, your vehicle, whatever.
And of course this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide, but this is stuff that we feel like
if you don't have this as a beginner or if you don't have this intermediate or as someone
who's out there doing it pretty regularly, then come on.
Like you should.
So I'll start off.
Let's see, anything to do with like first aid kits.
You don't have a first aid kit in your vehicle for you, your family or someone else or like
a tourniquet, not like one of those cheap Walmart ones that you can get that are like
four inches by four inches and have like three band-aids and alcohol pad and some aspirin.
Mark looks like he's looking up like, fuck, I got one of those in my car.
No, I got nothing in my truck.
I got nothing.
I need to do it.
I have electrical tape.
Yeah, see I firmly, and I will stand by this.
I firmly believe that you need to have some kind of medical kit with you when you're out
doing it.
I've had a couple of times, I actually gashed my finger last year so bad that I would have
needed some kind of stitch.
Thankfully I filleted it, but I was bleeding so fucking bad that no, there was something
there, gauze and stuff might have held it.
It was good.
I ended up using super glue.
I would say in that situation, you super glue.
Yeah, I ended up using super glue and thankfully the filleted finger was okay for most of the
trip, but I super good at waiting for that to dry.
I put a band-aid over it to the corners would still bleed a little bit, but I filleted that
bitch pretty good and we were out in the middle of nowhere.
And shit can happen.
The botches yearly off-road trip.
We almost had the Toyota fall down on Mark's leg or someone's leg while we were working
on it.
Now let's say that that crushes his leg and created a large open wound.
We would need some kind of tourniquet to-
Yeah, T-shirt is-
Shut up, shut up.
To slow the bleeding.
But that's the same thing though, is you would need something to help plug the wound.
You would need something to help treat the pain.
And I didn't mean shut up as a like, can you use that?
Yes.
We have boots.
It can work infinitely better.
Yes.
So that's, so like having a, and it's just responsible for you, especially if you have
like you and your loved one with you or a family, if it came down, you'd never forgive
yourself if it came down to you needing something out of that med kit, you didn't have it.
Yep.
So you'd never forgive yourself.
So that's my first thing that I would say, and it doesn't mean you're a dummy dummy,
but it means that you need to get your shit together and think about making your first
aid kit.
If you don't have a first aid kit and no knowledge on how to fix things without a first aid kit,
then you're a dummy.
Dummy.
Then you're a dummy.
Straight dummy.
But if you at least can make a tourniquet or know how to stop bleeding or have any general,
I'm going to say field medical background with quotations around it guys.
I know this isn't video, so if you don't have any type of knowledge at all on how to treat
a wound, then you're a dummy.
If you don't have any kind of medicine with you, and this would be following the first
aid kit, and I only want to expand on this because of my son, I have had to go home and
or go to the doctor because my son was having a fever during his teething phase while we
were out camping one time, and his fever got to about 102, and that's where you don't want
it to be for an infant.
So it got into a danger zone, and regrettably, after we had looked through our checklist
and found out that we did not bring any kind of Tylenol or anything to help reduce the
fever, we had to leave, and we had to get him somewhere where he could get treated real
quick.
So that, I mean, not that this would have helped Derek's kid any, but Derek had an emergency
medical situation during Labor Day that if it was something else, as far out as he was
from a hospital, it could have been bad.
Thankfully, that was something much different, but it's still the fact that he was about
45 minutes away from a nearest medical facility, and if it was something else that had happened
physically, like a cut or some kind of wound, then it would have been very much different,
you know, a very different story than if nobody had anything.
So med kits and medical supplies.
If you have a kid, make sure you have the medical supplies needed for them specifically,
like Jordans, Tylenol, so on.
What about you, Alex?
Anything else?
What do you think?
I think you said tire in the last episode.
I mean, yeah, spare tire or a way to patch a tire is pretty important.
Yeah.
So I'll amend my prior statement in the last episode just for you, since you don't have
a spare tire, that if you don't have a spare tire and you don't have a way to patch a tire,
then you're a dummy.
Or at least wheel with somebody who has a spare tire.
You're a dummy if you rely on everybody else for everything.
I mean, look, it's...
Sorry.
No, go ahead, buddy.
When you look at the MST group, was it Drummond that all of them slashed all their tires at
the same time?
I don't think any of them actually had a spare on them.
Yeah, that's not great, guys.
Just run run flats.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, once this really goes, I'll do that.
No, I mean, like I said, I run about 50-50 solo to group camps, so not having someone
to patch my tire up or having a spare makes zero sense.
And you do not want to be an overlander with all your cool little overlanding kit.
Be stuck on the side of the road because you have a fucking spare tire or a patch kit.
That's embarrassing.
So yeah, dummy.
What about you, Mark?
Anything you could think of that maybe is just so common sense?
Spare parts, spare fluids.
What do you think?
And honestly, spare fluids.
Because like I unintentionally removed the giant jug of power steering fluid I had on
our camping trip, thinking that the sealant I bought would fix that, which it didn't.
So I had to go out and buy another big jug of power steering fluid.
So now I got two big jugs of power steering fluid at home.
Yeah.
I would say having replacement fluids, like a quart of the more important ones.
Or even half a quart if you could.
Oil?
I would do a full gallon.
Because...
Yeah, I would do, like for me, I would do like a couple quarts if I could, space-wise.
The only reason I say to do a full gallon for oil, let's say, depending on how your
vehicle is set up, let's say you somehow get some kind of oil leak.
Don't notice it until your low oil light comes on.
Well now you're going to need almost a gallon to be able to run that truck.
Yeah.
That's a valid point.
You should always have pepper so you could dump it in your radiator.
That's a half joke, half truth.
I was supposed to say, what is that?
Pepper, if you have a hole in your radiator or a hole in your hose, old farmer's trick
is to dump pepper down there and that pepper will actually clog the hole.
It's obviously a last-ditch effort and you don't want to throw that through your engine
unless you actually have to.
So that was a joke.
J-O-K-E.
Okay.
That's why I said it like that.
When I was in high school, I had a little Chevy 1500 V6, it was an 88 I think.
We were out wheeling and we were out in the prairie.
Did you get to go in the prairie before they bulldozed everything?
I did.
I did not wheel it, but I was out to see it.
I knew all of that.
Do you know where the whoops were where it was just like whoop, whoop, whoop?
I was going over those at like 65 in this little Chevy and the horn bracket punched
through my radiator.
We put a gallon of water in it, drove it to the gas station on M82, bought some bubble
gum, chewed the bubble gum until it was soft, touched the radiator and drove it all the
way to my dad's house on McClellan.
I think the old farm trick is it's bubble gum and pepper in the radiator, but you're
never using that radiator again.
If you ever do that, your best bet is to change out your radiator, your pump, your hoses,
and then still hope that it didn't get any clogs in any of your other system.
That is a joke, but if you are stranded in the middle of nowhere and you need to get
out, that is something you can do.
In that case, Mark's phone number is 231-635-5309.
I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, is that the song phone number?
No, it's part of it.
Part of it's in there.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, so yeah, definitely spare fluids, I would say is pretty good to have.
Especially water.
I would say if you're overlanding, having rations for at least a day, two days would
be smart.
I don't know if you're ready to make.
Yeah.
I would say it makes you a dummy if you don't have them, as long as that you have a way
of providing it for yourself or your family.
Especially, you know, this is country wide, 90% of overlanding in the United States, you've
got a gas station, you've got a fast food place, you've got something within five miles.
Maybe 10 miles.
Yeah.
So I wouldn't say that it makes you a dummy, but I will say that if you end up in a precarious
situation, your car breaks down.
Vehicle broke, yeah, about to say car breaks down, you can't turn it back on.
Yeah, you can't get out.
And maybe, and I'm just theoretically here, like, you know, something happens to where
you can't walk your way back.
It's, you know, 15, 20 miles.
That's not doable for you.
Chances are, like, let's say it's in the UP, it's 15 miles.
And that 15 miles isn't horribly unbelievable, I would say.
If you take some trails, I think 15 miles would be, yeah, we'll just say that.
15 miles to the nearest town and you broke down.
The chances of you coming across someone in the middle of the summer is not the worst,
fall or spring, maybe a little different.
So winter's yeah, winter.
If you're out there and you get stranded in the middle of the winter, you're in a much
different situation.
You better have food.
It don't matter how close the gas station that would make you a dummy.
That would make you a dummy.
There is a sign at Chris Point about in the UP about two girls that got stranded in an
SUV and survived off of Girl Scout cookies and hot Cheetos or Cheetos.
And that was like back in 2015 or something like that.
So there's a lesson to be learned.
They tried to go out to Chris Point in spring, I think it was, while there was snow.
They got stuck for multiple days.
And so having food.
Yeah, I mean, it's just smart.
If you do those, if you do not the like army MREs, but if you do like those MREs, like
what you do, are they blue mountain or something like that?
Yeah, I have mountain house.
I have peak mountain house for about 10 bucks a piece.
And if you just don't get McDonald's once a week, you can afford two mountain houses
and they're, they're small, but not small as in quantity, but they pack small.
They pack small, you could fit three or four days worth in a pretty small space.
And what's nice about these is that if you portion correctly how you are supposed to
with these, each one of those packs has two servings in it.
Yep.
So if you have four packs, you have eight days, you know, so between one person for
one person, four days for two people.
I mean, obviously we're not going to start splitting hairs with how small you can get
it.
But so yeah, I mean, having some kind of Russian, especially depending on your situation is
a smart move.
What about you and Alex, anything else you think?
Recovery.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
If you don't have, if you don't have at least a toe strap, you should not be going out on
the trail.
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
If you don't have a toe strap, if you don't have a winch and then you don't have any way
to self recover, a dummy.
Dummy if you're wheeling alone.
Yes.
Not dummy.
If you're really, I would say that in these situations I'm talking solo.
So yeah, if you have no way to self recover, you're a dummy.
Yeah.
And I'm going to say this and Alex will disagree with me, but that's why we're a great team
here.
If you don't have, if you don't have a winch and you don't have a pair of at least max
tracks type traction boards to help you, then I would say that makes you dumbier.
I agree.
I mean, I have seen multiple occasions where they do help people who are on the brink of
sinking in sand.
I have seen people now multiple times throughout some of my videos that I've watched who have
gotten them out of pretty sticky situations.
I how much are max tracks?
Max tracks, the brand are like two to $300.
How much for your?
I have a middle of the road.
I have X bowl and there are a hundred dollars.
So if you, let's say you don't buy those, you're a third of the way to a semi decent
winch.
Yeah.
Like I'm not including your, not including your, uh, your plate or anything else.
Just just your right.
Right.
Yeah.
But I mean, just in general, if I were to be in a situation where I had to decide where
my money was best spent, I would completely bypass getting the tracks and going to a winch.
Yeah.
Because yes, for sure.
I'm not saying max tracks to winch and you don't pick a winch.
You're dumb.
I'm not going to say that max tracks are useless, right?
But nine times out of 10 max tracks are pretty freaking useless.
Yeah.
They have a place and I will say that if you are stuck to your frame rails in mud, well,
I would say sand's different.
I tried to use them in sand.
They are if you're, you should be able to dig the sand away from your tires enough to
create a ramp with the man.
Then they just shoot the max track out behind the truck.
Yep.
That's not how you use them.
You put them on his tire, right?
You're not supposed to put them flat.
You're supposed to put them at an angle.
Right.
And then the tire picks them up and throws them behind it.
So, yeah, so we had a screen here.
Yes, I see your screen.
Put them into the hole.
You have this.
Yep.
Like this.
Put them in like this.
Yep.
And then your wheel goes in.
It should not be dislodging them and then throwing them out.
So then what happens is when the tire starts to climb it, they pull underneath the tire
and then shoot out behind it.
We did this.
We did this on Duncan's truck.
What three or four times before we said, screw this and winched him out.
Yep.
I am going to go on a limb here and say that Duncan's truck might have been a little different
situation because of parties involved.
Alex, this is a really common situation.
A lot of people have this problem.
Now the next tangent to this is that if you're using Max Trax, you have to have locked diffs.
They do not work on open diffs.
Yep.
Oh, which is what his problem was.
He was on open diffs.
So as soon as his tire broke traction, it just grabbed the Max Trax and ripped it out
of there.
Okay, so that's not necessarily Max Trax fault as much as it is just a fault of the truck
in situation.
Yeah.
You have to have a locked diff.
To make them useful nine times out of 10, you have to have a locked diff.
I want to say that there was a way to get around that by doing diagonally front to rear
or rear to front across from each other.
So like driver side, front passenger side, rear.
If your transfer case is open, that doesn't matter.
If you're open, open, that doesn't matter because only one tire will have to spin.
It was just supposed to be a more direct way to be able to get out.
So having your right rear passenger tire on a Max Trax and your front driver's side on
Max Trax, I think that's what the recovery people I was watching at least.
If you're open, open, which most Toyota's are open, open, then when you do that, only
one tire is going to spin and that is the one that could spin the easiest.
If you're not locked, Max Trax cannot help you.
Let me also say, and so this is why I said this earlier, which is Alex and I have different,
typically when we talk about Max Trax, we have a different, like I find that you should
have them because I think for the price point of a cheap set of them, they do more good
than harm having them.
But I will say that if you use Max Trax, there's a lot of prep that goes into making sure that
you get out.
And then if you don't prep correctly, then you're not going anywhere.
If you don't dig out in front of your tires, you don't give yourself the best chance to
succeed the first time, then you are going to fail the first time.
And every time after, but yeah, I mean, like I said, there are certain issues, times where
Max Trax don't help.
I will, I can, I can agree to that for sure.
I would definitely say if you're in a mud pit, then don't even bring them out.
Yeah, no point.
If you're sunk, you're sunk.
Call someone.
But I know that you can use a farm jack to help self recover.
I don't have a farm jack and so my thing is, is I'm not going to put myself in that situation
with my family where I need to self recover like that.
Back in the day when I was too poor for a winch, when I was a poor boy, I carried a
farm jack and a chain to be able to get myself out.
Yeah.
It works.
It's scary.
It's really hard, but it does work.
Yeah.
So not having any kind of recovery equipment is dumb.
And it's almost worse when you have someone come and go, Hey, you need help?
Well, I don't have a strap because obviously this guy's not, you know, driving around to
recover people in your, in your rig doesn't have a recovery strap to get them out, get
yourself out that you're a dummy for doing it.
But yeah, I would say, yeah, what are we covered?
You got, I would say parts too, right?
Having spare parts.
If you don't have, uh, most commonly failed spare parts with you, Toyota's like Alex said
in the previous episode, it would be like alternator, knuckle, CV axle, CV axle, CV
axle.
Um, and then I think I said tie rod.
Now I agree with alternator.
A lot of carrying knuckles, carrying knuckles is a little excessive at the very least.
You should have one spare CV and one spear spare alternator.
Are CVs, um, specific left to right or drivers to passenger?
Some cars, some cars, they shouldn't be mine.
Isn't it?
Mine's the same on both sides.
Okay.
Yep.
Is I couldn't remember.
I know that they are for some cars.
I just can't remember if our Toyotas are like that, but if, if they are not, and if you
could use them for the left or the right, there should be no reason why you wouldn't
have one then at that point.
And because I really have like carrying around two CV shafts or CV axles be kind of stupid,
like not stupid, but very space.
I'm, uh, what I'm going to do is underneath my back.
Cause you know, I have all that space from where I cut all that crap out.
So I'm going to weld carriers along each frame rail underneath my cargo space to put my CV
axles.
Yeah.
So I'm going to put either outside of the truck, out of my storage space, put a big
old boot on the front of them so they don't rust a bunch or crew, a bunch of dirt and
shit.
Yeah.
I mean something like that.
Yep.
So, so what do we got?
We got, uh, tires or a way to plug them or spare wheel or where to plug them.
We have spare parts.
We have fluids.
Uh, we have spare rations or food.
The this goes without saying, but if you don't have water or spare, you know, if you don't
have water in general, then you need to bring water in.
Ooh, I got one more.
Some kind of air compressor.
Yeah.
I don't care.
There's a lot of old dudes that don't carry air compressors.
And I'm like, what are you doing?
I don't care if it's a cheap little one that plugs into your cigarette lighter.
One way to air up a tire is important to have.
Yeah.
Even if you're not deflating, you need to at least help with the patching.
Yeah.
I would say that for sure.
Uh, or maybe even if you don't have a way to jack up your vehicle to any, any of that,
like if you don't have a way to take your own tire off, damn it.
I think on Mark's, we used his, uh, factory jack, didn't we?
Or did we have one?
We, we, oh, we had that in the bottle, right?
Oh yeah.
We had it.
Fuck.
I didn't even remember.
I carry a spare check.
I got a, I have a four jack that I keep on the roof and I forgot that I even had that.
Oops.
Unfortunately for that trip, our jack we usually have on hand was underneath the project forerunner.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So that, that's how it doesn't bother getting another jack stand yet.
They're expensive.
They're like 25 bucks, dude.
You know what I can do with 25 bucks?
Like a blowy and some, uh, blow.
That's like one blowy and some blow.
I was going to say, I could get like three taquitos and four monsters with that.
That doesn't get you high.
Why would you want that?
It gets me high and gets me off.
I don't know what you're into, but I really like taquitos and I drink a lot of monsters.
So cream filled taquitos, right?
Yeah.
The jalapeno cream cheese ones.
Love that cream.
What else?
I know that there was, oh yes, here we go.
Uh, navigation.
You don't have some form of navigation, whether even Google maps, even Google maps, if you
don't have some kind of navigation, you're a dummy.
I think that's one of the biggest dummy.
It's downloaded navigation, not navigation that you could access with phone service.
I mean downloaded and readily accessible.
And if you don't have a way to download it, um, let's say you're looking at Google maps,
let's pretend that you're a noob and you're looking at Google maps and you're like, I
don't have any fucking way to download this screenshot at dummy.
Well, what do you mean?
Google maps has a button where you can download all of Michigan.
Oh, I.
Yeah, but you get so much space.
You gotta get exactly where you're going to be at where you want the most of it.
Screenshot it, man.
Screenshot it.
Move up forward.
I mean, it's, I'm just saying like, if you don't know how to do it, don't make stupid
excuses on why you don't have it.
Just screenshot it.
Everybody knows how to do that.
Offline maps are the best.
If you have Onyx, download the offline maps.
If you are passing any visitor stations, you have to take a piss anyway, pick up a map.
Grab their paper map.
I mean, if you don't have any kind of way to get yourself out, I tell you what, if you
don't even know how to follow the sun, if you, if you can't get out of your car and
tell me which way north, south, east and west is your dummy and you shouldn't be overlaid.
Hey, I feel about because half the time I don't know the sun sets on the west and that's
the best time to do it.
If the sun rises on the east, sets on the west and you could tell everything else from
that.
I could not because I would get north and south mixed up, but that doesn't matter.
I make sure to have your hands out.
Hold your hands out.
West is always on the left.
East is always on the right.
So east is on the left.
I know Alex is smart enough.
He knows that he was in the military.
He knows.
Hey, I always had a fricking a watchman digger, a compass.
So yeah, that one, my compass is installed on my dash.
So I got to really be stupid not to follow that.
I got my GPS.
We're good to go.
My internal company's compass is pretty accurate.
So if you don't have a way to figure out, if you see railroad tracks, follow railroad
tracks, if you see a body of water, like a river go upstream, I believe is the correct
term, follow the upstream.
If you don't have a way in general to find your way back, you have an issue.
Onyx has downloadable maps.
Like I said, you can screenshot, you could do paper maps if you're not tracking your
area and you don't have a way to communicate while you're out.
Dummy.
So I think what do you guys think?
Anything else?
No, that's it.
All right.
That's our that's our mini episode of what makes you a dummy.
So thanks, Mark.
Thanks, Alex.
Thanks.
Fun little episode.
We'll talk to you guys next time.
Later.
Thanks for watching.