Welcome to Botches Off -Road. Join us as we talk
about everything from gear reviews to trail stories,
tank camping to rock landing, and all things
to do with the outdoors. I am really quiet. It
doesn't sound like it. It doesn't sound like
it. Sounds like you're very normal. Well, I have
to say... Wendy's in Noyago, please go fuck yourself.
I just got over some massive food poisoning that
I almost died from, I swear to God. You still
sounded rough there, pal. Yeah. Coming out both
sides, I haven't had a solid number two in...
It must be before last Wednesday. Jesus. That
was when I got it. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
just absolutely horrible. And he's been as grumpy
as you could expect from someone who's that sick.
I've just been super tired, super grumpy, doing
drywall in my house. So that's fun. On top of
that, I get, like, really bad dust allergies,
if that makes sense, so. And doing drywall ain't
great for that. No. No. Plus my asthma, so. Definitely
been running around the house in a bandana because
respirators are for babies. You're at least wetting
the bandana first, right? Fuck, huh? Oh. Yeah,
I. Wet bandana over me. I have the worst food
poison I've ever had actually came from Wendy's.
We'll do a quick flashback, right? Not flashback.
Yeah, flashback, I guess, is the term. So it's
freshman year of high school, right? Getting
ready to perform at one of the largest band competitions
in the Midwest. We go to Wendy's beforehand.
This is regionals, Mark, not state, by the way.
Yeah, I was about to say, is this Indianapolis?
No, that would be nationals, but no, this is
regionals. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. We never
did regionals, so I have no idea where that's
at, or was that. Was it the Silverdome? At this
point, it's at the Pontiac Silverdome. And so
anyways, we get Wendy's. Didn't that tear down?
I thought it was torn down a while ago. Yeah,
like 2012. Oh, I thought it was way before that.
No, not even then. You're getting my story off
track, but now I'm curious. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Well, keep going while he's typing. They demolished
it in 2016. Hmm. Yeah. I thought it was way before
we went to high school, but anyways. So anyways,
we're performing at the Silverdome. And I start
feeling sick as we're doing our practice run
outside. And I'm like, ah, you know, I'll push
through it. We march into the stadium. The minute
that we start performing Godzilla, because this
was Godzilla. What a great show. The minute we
start performing, I start throwing up like I'm
on the field, throwing up in my mouth, swallowing
it. I didn't play once through the entire performance,
but I marched that entire fucking performance.
I marched. All the way off the field, and the
second that we stepped into the tunnel, I started
projectile vomiting, and I was puking for a good
four and a half, five hours straight. Jesus.
Yeah, and probably until they tore the building
down, there were some really big stains in the
lion's old locker room where I definitely, definitely
put them there. Jesus. Yeah, terrible experience.
Yeah, that sounds like a horrible experience.
And I didn't eat Wendy's for like eight years
after that. Oh yeah, dude, I'm done. Yeah. We
ain't doing that. What's really funny is you
told me that you were sick from Wendy's and that
night we went to Wendy's. Well, I'm not guaranteeing
that Wendy's don't come after me, but like I
didn't eat anything that day. Only thing I ate
was Wendy's. and all of a sudden I'm dog off.
I mean, just dead to the world sick. That's an
indicator for me. I don't know about anyone else.
And I was out of my famed diarrhea stopper, as
they call it. Amodium? Amodium, yeah. Amodium?
Amonium, is that what you call it? Amodium? Yeah.
Imbulbalizer? Yeah. Gut stopper? Gut stopper.
Yeah, that's what they call it. Same thing you
put into your engine. It's a stop leak, basically.
But I always take it when I camp, so I go through
it a lot more than the typical person. And it
always helps when I camp. I don't know why, but
it's a proven method. Proven method. Can confirm.
As someone who has to poop a fuck ton, I started
taking it when I camped too, and it helps a lot.
It saves money, dude. You don't go through as
many trash bags, as many baby wipes. Yep. You
don't accidentally wipe yourself with a Clorox
wipe. You don't get your truck stuck and then
have the nervous shits real bad and have to run
off into the woods and be a real bad person and
leave a fucking white flower. Yep. Don't have
to use so many mint scented trash bags. Oh my
God. Whatever. Listeners, if there's one thing
you can take away from this shitty, literally
shitty episode, do not use mint scented trash
bags. Oh my God. Yeah. So Alex has that run in.
I had one where a couple of camp trips ago, I
thought I grabbed my baby wipes. And I grabbed
my little Clorox to go with it and wiped my ass
with those. Got my nice lemony bleach burning
sensation. And I mean, I didn't realize it. Like
when you're camping and you go to your little
port -a -potty, it's dark. You know, I try not
to throw my flashlight around all that much because
I like to have night vision. And I just didn't
realize, man. I just peeled it off. I wiped and
I was like, huh, why? huh, that really burns.
And then like trying to figure out why I wipe
again. I'm like, maybe, you know, maybe I got
a cut or something, you know, everyone gets those,
whatever. And, uh, especially Gavin. No, not
that much. Not especially me, but so I checked
the thing and it was this Clorox and I'm like,
that's why. So that burning sensation lasted
for about 15 minutes and now it was hell. I was
sweating. Have you had Sienna inspect to see
if your butthole is now a lighter color? No,
no, no. You know, you'd think with it never seeing
the light of day, it'd be pretty light, but I
can probably put money on it that it is not that.
So, but yeah, no, don't use Clorox wipes. And
apparently this isn't a universal experience
for a lot of campers because. I posted that as,
like, an Instagram reel, and that fucking blew
up, dude. Dude, I got, like, I think 200 -some
thousand views on that and a shit ton of comments
of other people either telling me to nut up,
rip a sleeve of my shirt off. Yeah, I saw that.
They've had a similar experience in some other
way, shape, or form. I tag dude wipes because
the... It's funny enough, the post before it,
which inspired me, was Dude Wipes had pumpkin
spice flavored Dude Wipes. And I was like, you
know what? I like to eat food, and your butthole
can taste. So I wonder what it would be like
to try pumpkin spice without actually eating
it. You know what I mean? It's a study that they
say nuts can sense flavor. Like umami flavors?
I've never done it, but just saying. All right,
this will be kind of a fun one then. What is
your least popular Instagram reel? Probably anything
that actually has my family in it, oddly enough.
Like, my family ones don't do as much as I'd
like to be family -oriented in mine. I just,
I don't have the follower count, and people don't
really give a shit about it at this point. Right.
As far as what my content does. Least popular.
I have, okay, I'm going to give my worst two.
Okay, worst three, because one of them is kind
of funny. So my worst three, number one, and
this is my third worst one. A while ago, I jokingly
made a reel trying to make the Mule, which is
my daily. It's a Kawasaki Mule. And it only got,
like, four likes. Like, it was really bad. Ooh.
And then, I mean, it's almost as bad as the most
wanted ones that you did. Those only got, like,
six. But my next worst one. On yours, they only
got six? Yeah, the one that. Yeah, the one you
tagged me in. Damn. Yeah. So then the next worst
one, a long time ago. This is like one of my
first reels I made on this Instagram. I took
a glamour shots of a trash can here on the farm.
And it was like just taking glamour shots of
my friend's JK. It only got six likes and three
comments. And the three comments are, I love
my JK. And then the absolute worst one I've ever
done, I took a picture of a Meshtastic node when
I first put it up. It got two likes. And one
of them is Mark, so it doesn't even count. Damn.
To be honest, I've been doing this kind of for
a while, and I have a lot of stuff on my page,
so it's kind of hard for me to find one that
doesn't have under, like, a couple hundred likes.
But... I can say confidently that if it has an
article of my clothing for merch, or has my son
in it in one of my dopey posts about how much
I sometimes like him, yeah, that doesn't do well
at all. It's like, product reviews do pretty
well. Anything to do with Overlanding as a joke,
like a lot of mine are kind of... A lot of my
content on my Instagram right now is fillers
to kind of fill in while I'm not doing anything
or can't afford to go do anything. Oh, you have
a few with no likes. Do I? How do you look at
that? I go to your thing and then hover my mouse
over it and it tells me how many likes. Most
of yours are around 10. You got quite a few that
bump up to a couple hundred, but it's like 10
to 20 or... a couple hundred and then a couple
that are none oh which oh yeah okay i see it
now if you have none that means that i didn't
see it because i like all your posts as a default
yes oh yeah so like my uh my clothing ones have
zero yeah i love them so which is fine it's not
like i'm trying to like i don't make any money
really off of it so i don't really care but i
mean the merch is just The merch is just fun
to make, man. Like, we got some cool stuff. Wow,
we had no topic, but this is actually a fun topic,
just talking about people and Instagram and stuff.
I don't even know what merch we have on our store
right now. I feel like I just added stuff, but...
Yeah, I just added stuff onto mine, too. I have
to go through my stuff. So we use Printful. That's
what botches use. That's what I use for Huckleberry's
outdoor adventures. And Alex kind of turned me
on to it, and I've seen the light. It's really
cool. I wish they had some more, maybe some different
printing techniques for, like, cups and stuff.
But other than that, they're pretty decent. And
you can kind of mark your clothing up and stuff
however you really want to. Um, we typically
like Alex doesn't mark his up almost at all.
I keep mine at like a very, very small, probably
the same or less on, on a lot of my stuff. And
then I kind of also gauge it by like the more
I think people will buy it, the lower I'll make
it. Yeah. So like sweatshirts and stuff like
that are much cheaper typically. Um, just because
I want them to have more access to that. Yeah,
I mark up by like a couple dollars, unless it's
something that's already expensive. Like the
Hawaiian shirt, that's like at price. People
said they wanted it. Yeah, kind of to that point,
if I know that it's going to be expensive out
the door, I'll usually put it at the absolute
lowest it can go. Yep, exactly. So that I make
like one penny on it, basically. But for some
of it, I have a lot that I've added recently,
like a lot. So I've been kind of just going with
the recommended like, what is it, like 10 or
15 % markup or whatever it is, which is only
like after Printful takes its money away for
the processing and everything that they do because
it's basically all done on Printful. You don't
have to order any clothing. You don't have to
put any money into Printful. You just make the
product or you design it somewhere else. You
make it, you know, put it on the clothing and
then you can add it to your catalog, sell it.
And then they give you a cut and then they take,
what is it? They take a certain percentage. They
take tax shipping and, you know, whatever cut
they get. And you get whatever's left over based
on the percentage of markup you did. And it's
usually like $1. Yep. If that. So, yeah, it's
not the best. I mean, am I going to be able to
do it cheaper somewhere else? I don't know. Have
you seen the Christmas stickers that I just made
live? I haven't. I'll have to take a look at
them. I haven't done one for the FJ yet, but
I have a 4Runner and Tacoma with a Christmas
tree on the roof. They're pretty sick. I'm going
to do some Halloween ones actually coming up.
hell yeah drop on my stuff i i've got some i
mean we've got more stuff on the botches internal
store uh because the way that botches do it we
have uh botches internal store when i make a
new product we put it there until someone can
afford to buy it and test it because the last
thing i want to do is put a shitty product on
the store yeah yeah uh in mine i don't um But
I will reimburse someone if they do get a shitty
product and they genuinely just, like, hate it.
I will give you your money back, whatever you
spent. Yeah. Hopefully you don't get one because
I can't really afford to give you back, like,
$300. But honestly, from what I've seen, as long
as we design it okay, our graphic, the DPI is
high enough in our graphic, they typically turn
out well enough that people like them. Yeah.
They're not, um, I haven't seen anything. The
only thing that I think Printful doesn't, I wouldn't
say doesn't have the capability of, but they
do, um, is like the, the stitching, um, embroidering.
That can be tricky because you really don't know
what it's going to turn out like. If your design
is too complicated or uses a lot of colors or
your shading is complicated, it could make your
stitching and stuff pretty rough. The majority
of what I do is embroidered because embroidery
doesn't wear the way a printed shirt does, which
is most of why we... We buy it first, just to
test the embroidery. Yeah, speaking of which,
did you get contact back for that jacket? Yeah,
we're waiting for it to get here. Yeah, you're
talking about Kalen's? The bee that was messed
up? Oh, I didn't even worry about it. It's barely
messed up. Okay. What was that? uh so we ordered
those jean jackets a while ago um yeah and kaylin's
the b is kind of off um it's nothing major you
can tell it's a b and then i also accidentally
ordered oh i figured out how i did that mark
so yeah because the jean jackets uh they were
getting um discontinued anyway we just wanted
to get an order in for us before it happened
By the way, those are $90 jackets. So like nothing
I would ever put on the customer facing store.
No, no. Um, so I, I made a template and then
change the name to Kaylin added her, uh, large
jacket to the, uh, to the, the cart. Then I changed
the template to Mark. and ordered a 3XL. Well,
no, I did that backwards. I did Mark first and
then changed it for Kaylin. Well, when I changed
the template, it changed what was in the cart
too. So it screwed up. I screwed up and I ordered
two jackets with Kaylin's name on them. One is
a 3XL, one is an XL. So then I had to go back
quickly, order one for Mark that was a 3XL. And
then I just put a piece of Velcro over the name
on hers and I'm wearing it as a chore jacket.
Yep. So. It works. Yep. I did rip that today,
but, you know, it happens. It's your work jacket,
so. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, those usually
fit super small, so I would have paid you if
I thought it would fit me, but I really doubt
it. The 3XL fits me and Mark pretty well. It's
a little. Like, if Alan wanted to button it up,
he is squeezing himself. Yeah. But he is a little
bit more rounder than us, and he's also tall,
too. Yeah. So I don't think the 3XL would have
fit you. And sadly, 3XL was the largest size
they had. Mm -hmm. That's a me problem. That's
all good. That being said, that jacket is probably
one of the nicest jackets I've ever bought. It's
shirt -beligned. Yeah. denim usually not really
stiff i'm about to say not really stiff denim
at all so usually denim's kind of stiff this
one came out just perfect like i'm actually really
disappointed that they're discontinuing it because
it's really a nice product well judging by how
much you had to pay for it said and done i don't
really uh disagree with their choice i mean to
have it on is probably more expensive really
yeah how many people were actually going to buy
it. Exactly. Yeah, I don't, I mean, that being
said, a custom jean jacket like that, you're
going to spend somewhere between $100 and $150.
So it was priced right. It just, it's not a product
that's going to sell a lot. I would say you could
probably do it. like a half of the price if you
just ironed on a patch but it doesn't look as
good exactly i think most i must say i think
most of the price is the sherpa lining yeah if
i did just a denim jacket i could do that for
like 50 bucks but yeah these ones have that sherpa
lining and they're it's nice man like i put that
on in the mornings and i'm sweating when it's
like 40 out yeah that's good I know, so, like,
the embroidery is, they do a good job. I mean,
I don't know what machine they use for it, but
I've had, like, my, I had, like, a bear. I have,
like, an embroidered beanie that I bought for
Sienna that I got her, and it's just basically
the emblem of us, the three little bears or whatever.
That was too complicated for it because there
was some shading and stuff in it. So they asked
if they could do like a simplified file of it,
which turned out to be just as good, if not better.
So Printful is pretty good about it. I really
don't have any complaints with them. I mean,
I think that they're pretty reasonably priced.
And if you subscribe to... There's like a Printful
Premium. You get even deeper of a discount. I
just don't think it's worth it for the amount
of orders that I get. Yeah, I don't have Printful
Premium. I think I just got one other order from
someone for $51 for a hoodie, and that's the
only other order other than myself, Mark, Duncan,
and Alex. Yeah, I think I've had two people other
than us, no, one person other than us order.
Yeah. Definitely not upset about it by any means.
I'm glad other people are buying it or liking
it enough. Yeah, that being said, listeners,
go check out our store. The link is in the show
notes. And for Gavin's store, you got to go to
his podcast, and I'm sure his link is in his
show notes too. Yeah. It's also on my Instagram.
He'll have that on there. You can just go to
my Instagram link. Yeah. Whoops. Oh, you know
what? I do have something. Since we're talking
about our socials a little bit, I do kind of
have a gripe and I kind of wanted to voice it
a little bit. And it comes from like when we're
trying to grow our pages and stuff, we're always
pretty careful to find companies that. we like
that we agree with that we kind of resonate with
um and then it's even harder to see if they'll
work with us and i was kind of scrolling through
and found this company that i thought would have
been a good fit a lighting company and uh you
know i reached out filled out their sponsorship
form for a for a sponsorship which when you hear
that it's typically They pay you or they send
you product and you test it out, you do reviews.
That's typically what a sponsorship is, is they
either pay you or they pay you with products.
And I heard back, had an interview for them and
was going to do that interview. Decided to do
some research on this company to see if this
is actually going to be a good fit for me because
I don't want to. preach that this company has
good products when they really don't yeah and
and then of course i lose all credibility as
far as whatever i'm trying to build so i did
some look up on it and overwhelmingly horrible
reports on them um so to start um this is a fck
lighting is the company um wow he name dropped
and everything Oh, I mean, the reports are horrible.
They have a ton of followers, which I'm 100 %
sure that they're paid for. And I think it's
like 120 ,000 followers, which is crazy for a
lighting company. I guarantee it's paid for because
their posts get like almost zero likes. And then
when you look at Better Business Bureau. They're
at like 1 .5 stars. Jesus. They have horrible
reviews. So most of them are sponsorship reviews
too. So basically what they do is they select
you and then they get you into the sponsorship,
but you have to actually pay for the sponsorship.
So it's like $600 to do the sponsorship. Jesus.
And what they do is like heavily discount with
air quotations around that products. They'll
send some extra goodies with your product, but
they, they tell you, you have to buy something
to, to get into the sponsorship. So you buy a
light bar from them. They send you a flag, some
patches, some stickers. And of course you have
to do your video and you have to do your, you
know, whatever you have to do typically for them.
And then not only did you pay probably, I don't
know, it'd be close to $600 because their lighting
is not cheap. You then get it. The shipping is
absolutely horrible. There's tons of people saying
that it took them forever to get it. And then
when they finally did, the product was like shitty.
I'm looking at their lights right now. Dude,
this shit looks like. Almost cheap Amazon level
stuff, and they're selling it for like $600.
That's what I'm saying. It's horrible. I genuinely
think it's a scam. They're based out of, I think,
California, but they're supposedly U .S. designed,
U .S. this and that, and I don't think any of
it's true. I mean, genuinely, I don't know what
they're saying or what they're quoting, but we
looked into it. uh a lot and i was like holy
shit people are getting scammed left and right
here so yeah not quite sure um i'm not quite
sure what they thought they were gonna do but
a lot of people are saying that like after they
got their product they ended up needing a whole
other like um What is it? Like an adapter. Oh,
you have to buy that separate. What the fuck?
So and then people's light bars are dying out.
This and that. They try to return it. They don't
hear anything back. They get ghosted. They can't
return it. They make you pay a restocking fee
when they finally do let you return it. And it's
like every step of the way, it's an absolute
fuck. So I do want to point out. Buyer and sponsor
beware if you're trying to get into an influencer,
an influencer, I guess, what would you call this?
Job. It's not a job, but, you know, passion,
whatever. Then you need to look into who you're
actually looking to sponsor with. Just kind of
a quick fires note, beware. It's not... Sorry,
I have really bad ADHD, and it's typing as you're
talking. It is fucking... I keep losing my train
of thought every time I hear a click, every time
I see a new message. But... But, I mean, you're
going to hear an alarm in the background. Don't
be alarmed. Everyone's alive. It's not a slot
machine. Yeah. And this is just the end of the
story. But, basically, I was scheduled for a
call, and I was going to call him and grill him
about it, record the call, and then have that
to kind of let other people know, honestly. And
I didn't even get a fucking call. It was scheduled
for Saturday at 3 p .m., and I was like, cool.
They didn't fucking get a hold of me until like
8 p .m. Oh, 3 p .m. their time, 8 p .m. your
time, probably. No, no, it was 10 a .m. their
time, 3 p .m. my time. Oh, okay. Because they
were on California time or some shit. So they
didn't call me until like 7 or 8 p .m. And at
that point, I'm pissed. I'm like, dude, I had
someone watch my kid for a couple hours just
so that I could have a quiet area to talk to
them. No call. So on top of that unprofessional
circumstance that I had, I mean, the reviews
are absolutely horrible. Beware, dude. Beware
when you're trying to grow your platforms and
stuff that you don't jump into products that
aren't going to be good for your customer and
scams that are eventually just going to screw
you over because that is like a signed contract.
Yeah. So that's hard to get out of. People can't
just get out of that once they realize you pay
that money, you sign that contract, you have
to abide by it. So yeah, it definitely sucks.
I really like reading companies' terms of service.
Like, call me a nerd, whatever, but privacy is
important to me, so I always do it. Section...
Oh, where's it at? Section 3 of their terms of
service. We are not responsible if information
made available on the site is not accurate, complete,
or current. What the fuck? Like... Literally,
you would be responsible for that, but because
they have that in their terms of service. That's
horrible. Section four, prices for our products
are subject to change without notice and may
be higher than on the website. Again, what the
fuck is that? Like, see, this is why you have
to be careful, because people lie, and they lie
through the companies, too. That's why you always
want to make sure. I did get some good news from
someone I used to work with in Gerber. She was
an intern there, and she started working with
Coleman, the camping company. Yep. And she does
product testing. And she asked, hey, you know,
we do product testing and stuff through Coleman,
and all the stuff that we get done testing, it's
usually completely fine. It works. She goes,
but we don't really have anything to do with
it. We pretty much just throw it away. Would
you be interested in it? And I'm like, absolutely.
Yeah. So as she gets new products and stuff that
she gets to test, whether that be sleeping systems,
tents, lights, anything that Coleman, the parent
company, is making, then, yeah. So she's going
to send that over to me. Hopefully I get to try
some new product out. So that's pretty cool.
It's just a connection that I made a while back
that I never thought I'd hear from her again.
And she's out here hooking me up. So Coleman,
I don't work with Coleman. I won't be affiliated
with them in any way, but it's still cool to
get product and try it out in the field and actually
see how it works. I don't typically buy Coleman
stuff. I can't say that Coleman's quality has
been stellar lately. I mean, didn't they get
bought out like six or seven years ago? Yeah,
I don't know. I could tell you that the one thing
that they do and do pretty damn well is their
stoves. They've always had good stoves. They've
always had good gas lanterns. But that was kind
of their stuff that they had. I don't know. They
had a while back. It's always been stuff that
they were very well tested. They know what they're
doing. They're tense. They're budget tense. They're
decent, but they're nothing special. But I'd
be interested to see. Honestly, I haven't looked
at Coleman in general in a long time. I know
that I don't trust their UTVs and stuff to save
my life. And that's from experience, but they
got some cool thing. They got like stranger things,
addition, like, uh, coolers and bags. It's kind
of cool. Never really seen those before, but
you know, well, it's just a cool thing that I've
ran into. It's, it's been a week since I really
talked to either of you. I mean, I guess I talked
to Mark a little bit this weekend, but it was
a busy weekend. So yeah. You guys bought any
new fancy gear or done anything off -roady at
all? Oh, I took advantage of the deals going
on and bought a new winch. Yeah? Really? That'll
be in tomorrow, so that'll be a thing to get
hooked up to this weekend. Nice. And I also bought
a new sleeping pad because I got tired of the
pad that's not doing crap for me. Did you get
it on deals? Yes. And you didn't share it when
you know that my sleeping pad magically has a
hole from you? It was before me. I never had
a problem with it until the night you borrowed
it. The only thing is that it's going to be a
little bulky for your liking. But I went for
comfort over compact. I mean, as long as you
have the space for it. As long as it fits in
my pack, I don't give a shit. It won't fit in
the pack out. Oh, yeah. No, fuck that. It ruins
the whole point of the pack out. Yeah, so the
new winch is pretty cool. You got the X -Bowl
XPV 10K. Yep. That's a pretty good buy. And you
got a good deal. You paid the same as I did for
my non -XPV, so. Yep. Can't beat that. No. I,
so on, was it Sunday? And Sunday or Monday, I
went to Never Enough to see if they had any,
like, just beat to shit 37s that I could use
for test fitting on the 4Runner. And they didn't.
And then he goes, I think the closest we have
is a set of 35 takeoffs that look brand new.
And so we go and look at them. And sure enough,
I mean, I don't even know what the brand is.
It's some weird brand I'd never heard of. But
went and looked at them, and they're a nice set
of ATs. basically brand new almost no miles on
them and i was like well how much you want for
him he's like i don't know 200 bucks so 200 bucks
i got a set of four 35s they're decent enough
uh i'll get those mounted on friday um yeah i'm
pretty excited about that that's definitely gonna
one i've been borrowing tires for the last like
six months so being on my own tires will be fucking
nice and then yeah Two, I've been wanting to
go, I wanted to go 37s, but I'll settle on 35s.
Yeah, so Forerunner's going to be on 35 soon,
and we'll see if I need to re -gear or not. Then
I also, I feel like I bought a lot of shit, but
I don't even remember what all I bought. I know
you bought SD Car Reader. Yeah, but no one wants
to hear about my... really expensive sd card
yeah i'm just i know i'm just trying to um oh
with the amazon prime day deals i bought a portable
hdmi monitor and a mount and a mount for in the
forerunner so when we're so my off -road rig
which by the way i don't really do the overland
thing it's just off -road i now will have a tv
in the back of my truck Let's see if that's a
few overland. Get real overland. Now, what's
really funny is the only reason I did that is
because sometimes F1 races land on rigs and coffee
trips, and I want to be able to watch the F1
race while at rigs and coffee. Coffee. You realize
that rigs and coffee, there's only one of those
left. We still have quarters and calf, and...
Are we doing that throughout the winter? We're
skipping November because we're really busy in
November, but I do plan on picking it up in December.
Yeah. Cool. Actually, I'm going to talk to our
local pizza place and see if she wants to host
us for December. Probably December and January,
I'll look for businesses to work with. But come
February. Wait, you mean like parking lot host
or you mean like food? Parking lot. Hell, man,
come on. I want to do some snow wheeling. Oh,
I'm not saying we won't, but I'm thinking like,
you know, give us a parking lot to park in and
then obviously we'll go inside and enjoy some
food in the warmth. Fire, big fire, snow wheel
fire. Snow wheel two big fire. Come February,
we'll probably. look at maybe january or no come
february january is before february don't listen
to me come february we'll probably get back to
doing like out in the middle of the wood strips
um i do i want to shake it up for next year a
little bit where for the first six months so
uh february march april may june july That's
six months, I think, somewhere in there. Each
of us from botches will take a month and we'll
find the location. And we'll draw cards for who
gets what month. Mm -hmm. Cool with that. Yeah.
I am down with that, too. I do really like the
idea of bringing a bunch of hot pizza to a big
winter bonfire and having our little propane
heaters. That sounds like a blast. So, I do have,
on heaters, I do have a diesel heater in my cart
right now for $100 because I plan on, not even
for overlanding, I'm going to put a heater on
my mule so that I can heat it and clear the windshield.
That's it. Yep. Well, make it so it can separate
from it and then you can use it for camping.
Yeah. Maybe. I'm going to build a back wall because,
you know, the back just has a gate pretty much.
Not a gate, but like a screen. So I'm going to
build a plywood wall and then mount the diesel
heater in there. I'll plumb the diesel pickup
down into the diesel tank on the mule because
the mule is diesel anyway. And then the one I'm
looking at, you can program it to turn on at
certain times. So I think I'm just going to have
it turn on at like, I don't know, 6 in the morning,
6 .30 in the morning. It doesn't even need that
much time, maybe 7 in the morning, and then have
it run pretty much all day until about noon,
and then I can turn it on if I need it after
that. Yep. So it'll be. Make it. Solely the reason
for doing this is that the windshield on the
mule fogs up, and then you have to hang your
head out in the cold snow to be able to go anywhere.
Yeah, that sucks. I think if you're going to
get one anyway, make it so that you can quickly
disconnect and use it for camping. Yeah, but
then if I go camping then, anyone else who needs
to use the mule won't be able to clear the windshield.
Well, you know what? They can just get used to
it. Live the life like Alex for a few days. Darn.
You know? Yeah. What's more important? Unify
two of them? Honestly, probably. Yeah. I know
I have one. I'm waiting for my next check whenever
that tends to come in, and I'll probably get
it then because we do have some fall camping.
For a while, I was kind of thinking that maybe
we were just done. Uh, we do have a few events
coming up, but it was just getting to the point
to like, we're starting to focus on other things.
We got to get wood pallets. We have to make sure
we have heaters because we have like a, it's,
I don't know. It's like a, it's a trailer and
the woods, the wood pallet stove heater does
good at radiating heat, but radiant heat doesn't
do great at circulating throughout the house.
So you have all these other closed rooms, like
the kid's room. our room, dad's room, the bathroom,
that do not get any heat at all, and they tend
to get quite cold, so we have electric heaters
that we run as well. It would be a lot more cost
-effective to put door fans in. You're a door
fan. I'll see if I can find some for you. They're
usually only like $20, and then you just cut
a hole in the top of the door and mount it in
the door. Oh, okay. Not my house. I don't think
I can do that. But it's a really effective way
to make that work. When we lived in Big Rapids,
that's what we did because the cost of electric,
dude, electric heaters are like five times as
expensive as running anything else. Yeah. Well,
I'm sure our AC was fun this year. We didn't
run it a whole lot, just typically when we went
to bed. I just turned mine off like a couple
hours ago. The good thing about it is that we
only have the electric heaters and rooms that
we're in, like actually in at the moment. So
it usually takes 15, 20 minutes to heat up our
room, and then we turn it off. Yeah. And it's
usually good for most of the night with our body
heat and everything. Um, dad's room's a little
harder because it's cool, like two times bigger
than ours. But, um, but yeah, no, it's, you know,
still going good. Dad, uh, dad, this is, uh,
Sienna's dad, by the way, we live with him. He's,
uh, we're, we're doing a bunch of like renovation
of the house soon. So we're getting it all prepped.
I've been doing that drywall. We have to cut
out some floor and, uh, put some new stuff in.
So. We, uh, we're going to do some improvements.
We're going to insulate some more walls because
the walls, the insulation in the walls are like
horrible. So going to upgrade that as we go,
put some more drywall up, put some more paint
up, be good winter projects. Yeah. So that'll
be fun. Yeah. Sounds fun. Yeah. I, uh, I don't
know. I don't like running electric heat because
it just, God, dude. The first time we did, the
cost of electric, because we ran it in Big Rapids
for like a month, and our electric bill was like
$500, and that house is tiny. Yeah. No, I mean,
I know it is. I get it. I miss my one -bedroom
house that I rented, supposed to go under land
contract and buy before COVID hit, and they sold
it out from under me, them cocksuckers. But anyway,
they heated with natural gas. And that was $30
a month for me to heat the house with natural
gas. Ours is like... That was so nice. We have
natural gas. Ours is a four bedroom. And I think
it costs me like $130 to heat the house every
month. So it's not bad. It's not bad. Yeah. No.
I definitely used to be one of those like wood
boiler, wood heats all the way. But as I get
older and lazier, I really don't want to go and
chop wood. And like... You know, a lot of people
want to go in homestead and do the, like, cut
wood every year. That takes a huge chunk out
of your fucking life. Like, when you're cutting.
Because, basically, once spring comes, you're
cutting wood pretty much throughout the summer.
Yep. And into the fall, just to have maybe a
month or two. Yep. And then you have all of winter
that you're not cutting wood. Maybe. Maybe. As
soon as the next spring comes, you're back at
it. And that's, like, it's literally your life,
man. Like, you get out of work, that's what you
go do. My cousin, that's how they heat their
house. And literally from, like, the time that
the snow melts to the time that the snow falls,
all of his free time is cutting wood. Yeah, and
I don't like it that much anymore. Like, I did
logging for a few years. I did logging with a
school for a couple years. And we did 270 face
cord a winter to heat the whole campus because
they had an outdoor wood boiler that pushed out
to like six or eight cabins. So after doing that
and then doing a few more years of just doing
it at home and then doing it as like a business,
yeah, I'm good. Honestly, pellets are the way
to go. It's cheaper than most gas. It's cheaper
than natural gas. Oh, now you're cheaper because
$150 a month, where we're at, it would be almost
$280 a month. If you have a good wood pellet
stove and you have it set up to heat properly.
Way cheaper than natural gas. Well, yeah. I mean,
if you have all the right things. Yeah. If you
sat down and set it up right, it's like easily
you could heat a house the size of mine for like
80 bucks. A month? A month. Yep. I don't know.
I don't know. Have pellets gotten that much more
expensive? They're almost $8 a bag. Oh, no, they
have not. At least. They're a dollar more. I
mean, you go through at least one a day. Depends.
If you're setting your house at like 80, yeah.
And if you have one that doesn't auto shut off
and auto turn on, yes. You are going to spend
a lot. I don't know. I mean, I'm using them now,
and we definitely go through a lot more than
that, and we're not even heating the whole house.
Is yours? It's radiant heat. Is yours one that,
does it have a pilot and starts itself, or does
it just burn nonstop? It has a pilot, starts
itself, has auto shut off, everything. Huh. Yeah,
I don't know. It's just, I mean, I'm sure it's,
you know, it was a $2 ,800 stove, so it was a
little bit more than the cheapest usually, but
no. super we've got a friend who's got like a
15 bedroom mansion things fucking massive and
they spend a little over 130 a month heating
the whole thing with pellets well yeah he's probably
got it all plumbed into registers and stuff too
oh yeah that's setting it up right yeah that's
how his is yeah most most homes don't have it
plumbed into registers that's what i'm saying
every home that i've been in if you mean If you
spend the money and do it right, that can be
a much more cost -effective option. But on average,
I'm not going to spend $20 ,000 to get a pellet
stove set up. Yeah, that's kind of the thing
is nobody has that. Right. A lot of people, like
I went from wood heat to basically pellet heat,
and the last three or four of my houses excluding
the renter's house, which was pellet heat. Not
the renter's house, but the other ones that have
been pellet heat. None of them have been set
up with air quotations the right way. Yeah. You
know, they've been set up how pellet stoves typically
run, which is usually. You slap it in a room
and let it radiate. Yeah. I mean, which, like
I said, it works. I mean, if you have good circulation,
you have fans and stuff that can push it, it
definitely helps. But when your house is also.
super thin and we're losing heat everywhere out
of this basically trail. Of course, that's the
other thing. That's a huge thing. Your house
has to be insulated really well. I'd say properly
because the insulation standards have changed
in the last four years. Yeah. So if you're up
to code with modern insulation standards, honestly,
you could almost heat your house with a fucking
candle. Yeah. No, this house is absolutely horrible.
I mean, it's the typical 80s, you know, double
-edged. Yeah, I mean, it's paper thin, everything.
So, I mean, we do well for what it is. Yeah.
And you know what? They do have a really good
tax credit for pellet stoves, so we got a good
chunk of change for buying it because we bought
the pellet stove for that. So we got a good chunk
of change back come tax season. That was a big
tax relief on us. We would have had to pay in
if not for that. Yeah. Yay. But now that we've
done 25 minutes of heat your house in the winter
talk, we're at an hour. A couple more minutes.
Yeah, no, a couple more minutes though. Saran
wrap your windows. That actually helps a lot.
I don't do it, but I know it does. Yeah, window
plastic helps a lot, especially if you only have
like single or double pane. Yeah. Or you have
old windows like farm windows. Definitely helps
a lot. And surprisingly enough, a lot of people
with double wides will actually put straw around
their house and pile snow because snow is actually
a really good insulator. So food for thought
for anybody. With double wides specifically,
the underneath of them, generally that crawl
space area, if you can insulate that, same thing,
straw, snow, whatever, that makes a massive difference
in heat retention. Yeah. Yeah. Because the underside
of these are basically, you know what? I don't
think they're insulated at all. No. Underneath.
Yeah. Nope. They're just sitting on blocks. Yep.
You lose a lot of heat through the bottom, so.
Yep. Food for thought. I just figured I'd add
that in since we did have some other heating.
Make it like the heating tips section. Yeah.
A house heating, not even Overland related, just
house heating. I wonder how much you could save
by swapping your electric heaters for diesel
heaters. Well, so I'm going to get a diesel heater
because we, typically in Michigan winters, we
do lose power quite a bit. especially our house.
We've lost it last year probably three times
or so. Oh, yeah. And everything is hooked on
electric, so we don't have any gas heating other
than our stove. And so I'm going to get a diesel
heater just to heat parts of our house where
we can actually sleep. The living room, we'll
just move the couches aside and sleep out there.
Or we'll use it to actually plumb underneath
the house to keep the pipes from freezing. And
we lose power because that's a big thing too.
We blow pipes all the time. And last time we
blew a pipe in the winter, we didn't even know
it because we don't use that part of the house.
Like the bathroom, the second bathroom. So then
your electric bill goes up. Yep. Electric bill
went up and we had the whole underside of the
house was full of water. And then that sogged
into the foundation. And yeah, so that's. We
had to replace a bunch of wood. It was horrible.
It's one of those things where, like, your pipes
break. That's, like, the worst thing ever. Yeah,
I have the luxury, I guess you will, of having
a big, massive 20K generator at the farm, and
I just run an extension cord up here and plug
it in and then turn the furnace on. It's very
safe if you don't think about it. Hey, do what
you got to do. Yep. All right, guys. I guess
that's an hour. Yep. I hope you enjoyed Heating
Tips with Gavin. Yep. We'll catch you guys later.
Yep. Later.