Hi, Peace.
Welcome to Botches 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 got a little 30 minute episode here with the boys, Alex and Mark.
And I think we're going to do some radio chatter.
What do you guys think?
Yeah.
I figure we can get a couple of cards.
So, yeah.
So I guess let's start out with Alex.
I think you got the cards, right?
Yeah.
I'm shuffling them now and I've got a method so that I'm surprised by whatever I draw because
so the after the dark cards, they've got this back.
Sure.
A little campfire.
And then the standard ones have the vehicle radio.
So I can't even look at the backs to be surprised.
So I'm going to shuffle them and then I'm going to close my eyes and draw the four off the
bottom or just draw four.
And then you guys will pick a number between one and four.
And that's how we'll be surprised.
Sure.
Sounds very complicated.
Alex has got his eyes closed right now.
Look of concentration.
He looks like Kratos is like nerdy cousin from Man.
All right.
I got four cards.
Pick a number between one and four.
You got to agree on it though.
Two.
That's the two.
All right.
So card number two.
What piece of gear has worked better than expected?
My Max tracks.
They only work as a platform.
They work every time.
No, that's kind of a that's kind of a hard one.
Because what piece of gear has worked better than expected?
I don't have a lot of trust in air compressors nowadays.
And my my my was that the Thor's the Thor's lightning air compressor has been kicking
ass lately and taking names and it's been airing up everybody's tires and having no
issues whatsoever.
So that would probably be mine that having that Anderson connector on the front of my
truck so I don't have to pop my foot every second just plugging that thing in and going
has been really nice.
So I would probably say the Thor's lightning air compressor for me.
Mark what's yours?
I think.
Well, I got mine ready to go.
Our hundred dollar Walmart tents.
Oh, yeah.
Yep, that's fair.
That's their one big their quick.
I mean for a large ground tent there, what like 14 by 10 or something like that.
So all right for a tent that large, it takes us under five minutes to set one up like that's
that's great for a hundred bucks.
Mm hmm.
Oh, OK.
We let you mark.
What do you think?
Oh, hmm.
Trying to think because that was a good one until I forgot about that.
What else can I think of?
Can't say compressor combined.
Yeah, it's it's been out one screw and ran it through a piston.
So I still Gavin's old compressor and rebuilt it.
And then the other side, the exact same thing.
Mm hmm.
Have you tested out your deflators yet?
I have not yet.
I don't have a compressor to refill.
So how about your lighting?
You know, you're you at that dual that dual beam lighting or whatever.
That's what the dual beam lighting that came out pretty good.
I'm quite glad it was not.
I'm glad the price is perfect for it because it was like a hundred forty something.
Like some of those go up to like five hundred depending what brand you went through.
Was it the whole headlight assembly or just a ball?
No, just a bulb.
And what does that do?
So it's you plug into.
Ironically, mine was a fog light ball, so it was quite finicky finding out about that
one with Bob.
I actually needed.
So I went with what was recommended based off of what bulb type it was.
I do is plug and play you.
Take so there's you got a little snap ring.
You got to take it off the ball first, put it in the socket and then you put the ball
bin and twist it locks in place.
Now make sure the light panel is facing nine and three.
Get locked in and then it just a matter of toggling all the way on and then toggling
back at least once.
Actually, you don't have to toggle all the way back like it says to do.
You just flip through what setting you want.
You know, or clear.
Hmm.
Yeah, that's pretty nice to be able to run daylight yellows or daylight clear daylight
whites or whatever.
It's pretty cool.
So let me let me ask this then.
Can you guys reread that card if you have it still up?
Do you have it?
Yeah, I do.
What piece of gear has worked better than expected?
OK, so let me just be a negative Nancy and prompt that what piece of gear worked way
worse than expected for us.
And I think I'm going to start with this one too.
My jet boil for cooking food did way worse than I was expecting because it's got such
a pointed flame and heat source that let's say if I'm cooking a steak, the middle of
that steak is burnt to a crisp.
The outside of it is not so good.
So I would hold up.
Hold up.
Don't be inventing cards.
That's already a card that we will read it.
Well, I was just curious, I didn't know that that would be a that would be a card.
You know, I've never done the radio chatter.
So I was kind of curious to see what everybody's worst things that you know, the worst things
that they purchased and how, you know, did I'll say it now and I'll say it again in the
future.
The all top air compressor.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's both of their answers because that really kind of.
Well, that's one of them, but for me, it's my Amazon bumper swing out.
Yeah.
We just had our other episode of that thing.
So but you didn't buy that.
So no, I didn't buy it.
But still, yeah, the thing, the thing, it took a beating when he got stuck and we tried
pulling him out and.
Oh, not that one.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
You're swinging out.
Let's just say you're a beating, too.
So yeah.
All right.
I'll draw four more cards.
Alex, you picked the or I'm sorry, Mark, you picked this one.
All right.
Number between one and four.
Let's do four.
All right.
So number four.
Oh, hey, this one doesn't have playing card on the front.
So this is a dirty card.
What is something you can say?
Well, on the trails and in the bedroom.
Hey, you see that dirt road over there?
I'm going on it.
Or I'm going down it.
That wasn't so hard, was it?
No.
It didn't look as rough as I thought it was going to be.
Yeah, that was rough for that.
I thought it was to be.
Maybe we don't try that position ever again.
I don't really like going off camber.
Yeah.
That looked a little deeper than I thought it was going to be.
Yeah, right.
That wasn't as deep as I expected.
Yeah.
Wow.
That was quick.
There's so many, man.
Yes.
I think Cole's been road a little too hard.
Hey, man, I think you sprung a leak.
Yeah, that one.
There's a lot we could say on that.
That's just a great card.
Yeah, I figure we can kind of work through these.
I'd like to go through the whole deck and then we can give a really good review to the
radio chatter, guys.
But we're at we got time for another one.
Oh, yeah.
I'm trying to draw them from different parts of the deck since I can't really shuffle,
so I don't know what they are or how they are.
All right, I got four.
Pick one through four.
What is the longest road trip you've ever taken?
That would be for me relatively newer for us.
But when C and I took our maiden voyage with the FJ to do the waterfalls in the UP, we
did probably 3000 combined or something like that miles.
We went up from we started in Grant.
Went up across the bridge and traveled almost the whole coast of Superior, starting from
St. Ignace to Newberry up to Pine Stump Junction all the way up through the top part of Superior.
Did Munising and Manistee and then kind of went south and took the bottom coast all the
way back.
We made it to I think Leance being like the farthest I think we ended up going with the
time that we had.
And yeah, dude, that was long.
We did.
Jasper is still pretty young.
So that was kind of a really it was like throwing the gauntlet.
But absolutely, you know, the most fun that we've had in a long time.
We loved it.
Can't wait to do that again.
But that was probably 3000 combined.
Probably mine would have been Sierra Vista, Arizona, to Grant, Michigan.
I don't know how many miles that is, but it's easy to find out.
Yep.
But I did that in about like 35 hours straight through.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's only 1900 miles, but that is a.
You got me double checking now because 3000 miles seems like not a real thing now because
I thought it was three.
Yeah.
Let me double check.
Mark, why don't you go real quick?
I got to fact check myself.
Mine would be a while ago.
I think it was back in seventh grade.
Yeah, because I just got off my crutches from twisting both my ankles.
I went out to relative's wedding out in Vermont.
Round total was like 1800 miles.
Damn.
Yep.
Yeah, I did see your visit to Grant and then two weeks later did grant to Sierra Vista,
both of them straight through.
That's alone.
Mind you.
Oh, I had a dog that counts.
And I was in an 800 horsepower, a Ram 1500 on race fuel at $10 a gallon.
That wasn't the best choice, I guess.
Right.
No, that's a damn.
It's a lot.
I think.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let me let me resend what I said earlier about 3000.
It's closer.
My first part of the vacation stretch was 500 miles.
My second one was 400 miles.
So that's at 900.
And the third part of the stretch, which didn't record all the way was another 400 miles.
So definitely not 3000 miles.
I am sorry.
It's close to like that long.
Yeah, it definitely felt like a long time.
But that was so that's what more like 1300 1500 miles.
So that's a yeah, that that definitely felt like a long time.
But let's let's do one more.
Let's do one more.
Oh, we got time for a couple more.
Yeah, cool.
All right.
Pick one through four.
What's on your mark?
Three.
What is your favorite camp meal?
Oh, that's a good one.
I really like those tacos.
I was just gonna say those tacos that Mark made.
Yeah, those are good, dude.
I don't know, I like hobo meals a lot.
They just take a long time to make.
Yes, they do.
Hobo meals are great.
I will say your hobo meal and my hobo meal is very different.
I didn't know that's what I when I say hobo meal, I'm thinking hobo pie makers.
So a lot of people have that thought.
Yeah, hobo hobo pizzas.
Oh, man, they're fucking great.
And then followed off with a hobo cherry pie.
Whereas mine are more hobo packets with a bunch of different meats and butter and they
make like the best roast that you've ever had.
They're better with venison.
But yeah, I think the one thing we needed more was hot sauce in those 100%.
But the girls, well, my wife is a wimp when it comes to hot sauce.
Oh, yeah.
So we have to add that later.
Yeah, no, those are good.
Yeah, my favorite is hobo packets as well.
Yeah, I I love a good steak and potato.
You know, you do like you do a nice, nice steak on the pan because I contrary to some
popular to belief, I I like pan steaks and a cast iron pan will be better than fire.
But I like pan seared steaks and then I might throw them on a grill to get grill lines and
that's it.
Yeah.
But I'll do I'll do, yeah, steaks and then I'll make some like fried mushrooms and onions
and the juices that I cook the steak in in the pan.
And then we'll follow it off with like, like for me, my perfect.
Yeah, my yeah, that.
But my perfect one is yeah, is a steak.
Then you have the fried vegetables like that.
The mushroom onion, a couple of slices of feta cheese and a fried egg still runny.
And that's like that's my heaven right there.
You do some real nice nice sea salt on top of that.
Maybe a couple of fresh cherry tomatoes.
Oh, eat like kings, man.
And it's really not all that expensive.
The steaks you could do cheap.
Just beat the shit out of them to tenderize them.
All right, one through four.
Two.
How do you keep everything organized?
This this might finish us off.
Yeah, I'll start off because I might probably not.
The might probably the worst as far as organization goes.
I have a shelf built in the back of my FJ currently out of wood.
I have a cheap like four or five drawer plastic.
Like, I don't know what you call them.
Those plastic dollar store drawers is ten bucks.
I just threw that in the back for putting all like my coffee and my other stuff in there.
And then I have a fridge and stuff for keeping things organized in the future.
That's going to change.
But that's kind of where I'm at at this point.
Packouts so many pack.
I will say my packout cooler, it's the most expensive cooler I've ever bought, but it's
by far the best cooler I've ever bought.
Yeah, I have to put up pictures of how loaded up my truck was when we went to drumming that
second time.
Oh, yeah, dude, that was terrible.
Two great crates.
You know, technically that first one was not even useful at all because just random stuff
we had.
I had in the bed of the truck and then the big cooler just strapped on top of all of
it.
I am so glad we're doing the pack out.
We're getting rid of that.
That's the whole much cleaner.
Beyond that is just dropping my back seat down and you have that giant layout for a
storage right there when I don't need anyone in the back.
Yeah, that's nice.
Yeah, it's eventually, man, I can't wait to see what mine kind of turns out into.
I'm going to build my whole back end out of wood to try to maximize every inch.
We'll see.
I really like the pack out idea, but I really just leading back to just maximizing every
inch I got by doing it with like custom wood.
I think you can max it out, especially you mount a pack out to the back wall in your
seats.
You have that seat folded down.
He's going to put the fridge there.
No, the fridge is probably going to end up staying for now.
I can't do any seats folded down currently.
Well, when you move your kid, we mean.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, when my kid moves, shoot, a lot of things will change.
But like if he goes into a booster seat, that affects how my seats will actually be able
to move and how much space it takes.
So being able to put Jackson on the side is so nice because I can just pack whatever I
want in that other seat.
Yeah, because what would happen is I have like a two person bench style seat and then
I have a single which is behind me.
But Jasper cannot sit behind me with the car seat.
How bad, how far back I have mine that's comfortably.
That one, when I put that down, it doesn't really give that much more.
I mean, it gives a comparatively to like what it's if I was to move the fridge to that side,
it would help a little bit.
But the door also opens on that side.
So I'm pulling the fridge right into the door.
Yeah, but that's about packouts in there.
Oh, OK.
I might do like a packout accessible by the suicide door there.
That might be something I do that way.
Or maybe a couple of different packouts, and I think if I do that, it's going to be like
spare parts or something like that.
Like I could I definitely see a use for packouts for me for like tools.
Hey, I need electrical stuff that I grab my whole packout drawer for electrical or whatever.
I also think that if you did packouts in the back that you would end up with a lot more
stores than you're expecting because you could shove things like blankets and stuff in between
the packouts.
Yeah, that's hopefully my blankets will be all situated and stuff up top.
I am like I said, I might end up going to packouts eventually.
But in my head, the way that I want to do it specifically for what I have is looking
like it makes more sense, you know, to build a custom.
But it might change very well.
Like I said, I'm not I'm not closed off to the idea.
I just want to try doing it that way first.
Yeah.
And seeing if I can do it.
I know the one thing that's going to have to change is my fridge slide.
And because it's just it's too long for the fridge I have.
And it starts it hits the back of the seat because of that.
So we should we should build you one that's got like a two stage.
So you pull it out and you can have like a table.
But then you pull it out farther to get the fridge out.
Yeah.
I the one that I'm looking at, it's like two hundred dollars.
And it's like it's got like a hundred pound capacity.
It's got a cutting board that slides out underneath it.
And it's the exact size of my fridge.
So it's almost it's almost perfect for for that setup.
But we'll see when we get there.
Bison the way that bison bison gear, I think, is the place I'm looking at it.
It's it's actually enclosed.
So there's a metal grade above it and it also can till.
So it'd be interesting to see.
I might do something like that.
We'll see.
All right.
We got time for one more card.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
You pick it this time, Alex.
Just pick it blind.
We're going to go with three.
Would you rather have a scenic journey or a scenic destination?
Journey.
OK, so it depends.
Does the journey have challenging obstacles and scenic because then journey.
But if the journey is just going to be pretty side roads that I'd rather have a nice destination
to camp at.
I think it's all.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I'm going to say in agreements with you there, Alex.
I I'm going to pick journey still.
I think I'm going to use, for example, too hard.
Like nothing hard to get to too hard at campground.
But the the forest roads, the little two tracks that you take to get there are just gorgeous
and scenic.
And I enjoy going on that at a good 20 to 30 mile an hour and just kind of chugging
away at that.
Just is the campground pretty too?
Yeah, yeah.
Too hard is gorgeous.
So what I'm saying is, you know, in the context of the question, they say, what would you
rather have?
So would you rather have?
Oh, you are.
So you're saying that the OK, I see what you're saying, that the destination is not necessarily
as good.
Right.
OK.
Yeah.
Shit, I almost think I think my answer would stay the same.
I think that I've found we've had really good days of just travel and gorgeous days, beautiful
trails and then us having to kind of take it less than optimal camp area to just have
a place to be.
And it's not super gorgeous.
It's just tucked away in the woods.
It's kind of meh.
I think I think I'm still OK with that.
I think I'm still OK with the day of the let's say we travel five to six, seven hours a day
being great and then just having kind of a meh.
I mean, we're just staying there for a night anyway.
So now it's what's funny about you saying that is you always tell me that to you it's
not about the journey.
It's about the destination.
I do.
Yes, you have.
You say that pretty that's why you don't care about hard trails because you just care about
getting somewhere pretty.
No.
Well, that's that's kind of an in-between.
I don't care about hard trails because the trails aren't what I'm looking at as far as
difficulty like the difficulty thing isn't what gets me going.
It's the scenic the scenic stuff on the way like like the cliff sides and stuff that we
were seeing going up to or passing the bridge and stuff, seeing that stuff and the journey
to that is I love that.
It's it's the it's the crazy off camber, the stuff that makes you sweat a little bit that
could ruin your rig and destroy your weekend or your week.
That stuff for me, that's not what I enjoy.
So that's kind of what I meant by that.
Like like I love the journey.
I don't love when we get to those spots.
Those are those are scary spots for me because they take out my rig.
They take out my the plan.
You know, I like I like overcoming adversity.
So when something goes wrong, as bad as this sounds like I don't try to make things happen
on the trail.
No, you don't.
But the ingenuity, the ingenuity that we have when something happens, I really enjoy that
part of wheeling.
Yeah, I could see that's definitely a plus for sure.
Like like let's say for our poker run when when Mark's tire defeated, the ingenuity that
we all had to get everything done and to get your wheel on us working together as a team
in hindsight for me, that was great.
That was such a cool moment in hindsight as I was doing it.
I was like this fucking blow.
Like I don't see it like that.
But I after I do.
So my two favorite moments on a trail.
One of them was just outside of Phoenix.
We were wheeling with a couple of buddies and one of their buddies and their buddy was
driving a Jeep, an XJ.
I think it was like a 97 or something.
And his driver's side wheel, the entire axle just decided to snap and slide out.
So we strapped a log to his wheel and just skied his truck down the mountain to get it
to a recovery point.
Which is fun hindsight.
But I imagine if you're that guy, it was it was so fun at the time.
I like for like me if that was to happen.
All I can think about and we've talked about me being more of the cynical, you know, the
safety officer being more the glass half empty.
But I'm looking at it as up.
Now I have to fix this.
Now I can't do that.
Now I can't finish my trip because we have to do this.
This is this.
I mean, to me, that's an hindrance.
Whereas me taking a set of trails on on X that I've never been on before.
It's all new.
It's all beautiful.
I don't necessarily care about how crazy they are, like what they're rated at.
Of course, finding a couple of spots here and there that are like, ooh, this is, you
know, this is gnarly or this is cool.
Let's just get past it and go.
That's cool.
But when you start getting into, like, let's say if I was alone and I did those ever trails.
Oh, man, dude, I would have been white knuckling and not having a great day if that was if
that was a larger portion of an adventure than I was having with my family.
I'd be like, yeah, don't have a winch set up.
Don't have proper.
I do have proper recovery, but only when I'm traveling with other people.
Right.
So it's like this is like, yeah, though, this is not fun to me.
The destination, though.
Yeah.
The second time we were with my buddy who had a Suzuki Samurai.
And I mean, we were on like normal, like Arizona forest roads.
So, you know, they're kind of whoopie and have mountains and stuff.
But he came up over this hill at like probably 65 and he just launched that little samurai.
Just he was good.
Eight foot off the ground, dude.
And this motherfucker came down and bounce and landed like on his passenger side roof
corner and then rolled onto his roof.
And getting him out of that situation was so frickin fun.
And then once we had it, once we had it rolled back over onto its wheels, we checked the
oil oil was fine.
So we started it up and drove it back to you know what?
You know what?
I can identify with this feeling that you can feel.
But for me, that happens in shitty weather.
So like, I always tell people I'm like a drama queen when it comes to like shitty weather.
Like when they're like, dude, there's going to be like 12 inches of snow, everything's
closed.
Like people are boxed in their houses, can't get out.
There's powers outage.
That's when I'm like, yeah, this is this I'm having a bot like figuring that out, the ingenuity
helping other people out.
That's like my fun, my fun.
But like, when it when it directly directly will either impact me or the family as far
as like the the trip keeping going.
Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm good on that.
But yeah, man, that was fun that these red these radio chatter.
I've never done this before.
This is pretty fun.
Yeah.
Like I said, I'd like to work our way through the deck.
I figured that gives us lots of 30 minute episodes and I think they're fun.
It answers a lot of questions.
So any listeners that really need it, it'll be there for them to get to.
Yeah.
So on that, man, we appreciate you guys for listening on this little 30 minute of radio
chatter and we'll see you next time.
Later.
Thank you.