Ah memories...

Hey interwebs!  So it's been, what, 4 years?  haha  Things have moved quite along since I started this thread.  I happened back upon this ol' blog and read through it, my how things have changed.  I really wish I'd kept up more. 

Just got a new driveshaft, fixed a ton of leaks in the engine (wear and tear I guess), and replaced the clockspring (it went bad or something, couldn't honk my horn or use steering wheel controls).  Total bill was... more than I'm going to type, but rhymes with "In The Fousands".  Other than that... not sure what else I've done in the last 4 years that's major.  Still have the same lift, shoot still on the same tires...  I did do a lot of lighting and fender area mods.  I got some Poison Spyder wheel well inserts and the cheapest flat fenders you can buy.  I put colored lights in the wheels wells and in the grill, white rock lights on the undercarriage, purple light strips in the cab, cube lights on the pillars, light bar on the bumper, cube lights on the rear, pod device to wire it all... ok so I have done a few things.  haha

I'm sitting here imagining describing in any detail my installation processes and posting pics and links, and... don't want to.  Maybe a later post, one on each or something.  For now though I will leave you with a pic of the Colonel.  (oh, also got a new soft top and prob a lot of other things I'm not remembering at the moment).

Tire size re-calibration, gearing re-cal, FlashCal, etc.

If you read my last post you'll see I got screwed by a Jeep dealership.  What I've learned since then is that the dealership can't re-calibrate for tires over 32" (or somesuch).  I expect the dealer, you know, understands this.  I have 35s, a fact made clear to the dealership as we discussed re-calibration of the speedo.  I wasn't born knowing they couldn't do it.  They should have told me they couldn't do 35s.  But they were all "Ok, sure, we'll do that for you."  When I picked it up a day later and paid them $120, they said they calibrated it for "the largest tires they could".  I'm repeating myself now, but suffice it to say I think they should have told me they couldn't accommodate 35s and saved me the $120 I gave them to essentially do NOTHING to my Jeep.

So my advice for the 2 people in the world that don't already know that the dealership isn't the best place to service your mods, research first how to do these darn things yourself.

I recently got turned on to the FlashCal by Superchips.  The more robust product, the FlashPaq, isn't available for 2015s yet, so I got the Cal.  It plugs into your Jeep via a remarkably accessible port under the steering wheel.  With this device you can set the tire size up to 42" and re-cal your gearing.  I'm learning new stuff every day, I'll try to keep this blog up to date with what I'm learning now that there's actually something happening in my Jeep world. 

Tah for now, got someone waiting on me.

Dealer service, really guys?

Since I got the new tires (35") my speedometer was about 10mph off.  I took it to a Jeep dealer to get...

• The  speedometer recalibrated
• 20k mile service (can't believe I'm already there)
• The trailer hitch wiring fixed (doesn't work)
• My clutch checked out (it was creaking)

They said they calibrated the speedometer to accept the largest tires possible that the computer would accomodate.  The hitch wiring will need "further diagnostics" (I was told this after spending $3 on a new fuse they thought would fix that problem).  The clutch had a service advisory for it to grease a particular part.

The speedometer, after $120, reads 7mph slow instead of 10.  :-/

The hitch wiring still doesn't work.  :-/

The clutch still creaks.  :-/

Not real happy, I feel like I spent $140 (total out the door) on the 20k mile service alone, which is really just a bunch of inspections (all of which apparently passed so there was nothing "fixed").

I'm looking into second opinions on the tire size thing, seems weird that of all vehicles a JEEP wouldn't be capable of correctly reading 35s.  Shoot, people are commonly known to put 40" tires on Jeeps.

I feel cheated.  I called the service guy and let him know.  Maybe I'll hear back.

Riding High!

News!  So I got the lift and the tires.  In all I got...

• Lift
• Teraflex 2.5" coil lift, no shocks
• Rancho RS9000XL shocks
• Rancho Control Arm Correction Bracket
• Tires/Wheels
• BFG All Terrain TA KO2 35" tires
  Fuel JM2 wheels
• Spare carrier
  • Teraflex Hinged Carrier
  • Teraflex Adjustable Spare Tire Mounting Kit

The result:

 

My thoughts:

Lift-  I got the lift before the tires, so I can talk about JUST the lift.  The ride improved GREATLY.  We felt like we were on a carnival ride at times with the stock suspension.  The lift provided a lot of ride stability over, for instance, speed bumps.  We'd rock back and forth on stock, after the lift it felt more like, well, a normal car.  haha

Tires-  The tires came later.  The ride stiffened up.  The shop that installed them inflated them to the max PSI, so that might have something to do with it.  Speed bumps aren't rocky like they used to be, but they're harsher than with just the lift.  The tires could be deflated a bit, and the shocks themselves can actually be (easily) adjusted to make the ride softer.  I just haven't played with it yet because its really not that big a deal to me.

Tire carrier-  The tire carrier is burning my biscuits.  I decided to install it myself because it would save me $550.  The general consensus was it should take 1 hour.  It took me about 4 hours.  I'm completely inept.  Once it was finished I was ready to be done with it.  Then I realized, after I had installed it, that I needed to prime some bare metal left under the old factory hinges, now under my new Teraflex hinges.  My own fault.  I took the thing off, primed it with Rustoleum, and let it sit to dry for 24 hours.

Then I put it all back together - this time in an hour!  haha

But, the darn thing squeaks!  I think I just need to adjust it to hold the tire closer, but it's already pretty dang close (touching quite a bit).  I'll still have to fiddle with it, but I'm getting pretty sick of it.  I have to take off the spare, loosen some bolts, re-adjust it, tighten the bolts, remount the spare, drive around, rinse and repeat (about 3 times so far).  Maybe it's my ineptitude.

But it LOOKS good.  I even got a custom printed spare cover for ol' Colonel Mustard.  :)

Next time... the bad news.

Hello Void! And an uplifting experience...

Sorry people who don't exist (or I don't know, who knows, maybe I've got a million followers and don't realize it).  I got a new job, moved to a new city, started and try to maintain said job, etc.  I haven't posted in forever.  I don't know if I'll be able to too often going forward, it's not like anything's really changing in my current life (and that's ok!), but just so you know because I know you're worried, I'm alive and well as is the Colonel.

And about the Colonel!  Nothing's really changed since I posted last.  Moving is expensive and it wiped me out.  Recently I've been spending on other hobbies and haven't put anything new on the Jeep.  But all that changed today!

I bit the bullet.  I put some money down on a lift!  2.5" Teraflex lift with Rancho RS9000xl shocks and a Rancho control arm.  I'm having it installed, so beaucoup bucks.  But if I tried to install it myself?  Well, that would be impossible.  If I enlisted the help of a friend I don't have, I don't even know enough to know if we would be doing it right.  So heck with it, I'll pay for convenience on this (although I think it would have been a lot of fun to learn how to do it myself).

Just getting the lift at this point.  Later I'll put some BFG All Terrain 35s on that bad boy and I'll have a tank.  Until then I'll be cruising 2.5 inches higher on factory wheels and tires.  :-/

Anyway, I'll try to get on again and post pics.  Finally something to talk about!  And if you'd like to help me out with tires, just send all of your money to Discount Tire on my behalf.  haha

Mountain Trip Forthcoming! Supply run...

My dad and I are going to take a trip to the Arkansas mountains this weekend (that's the current plan anyway).  I decided to take this opportunity to stock up on some things I'd been meaning to get.  I got some towel seat covers (these guys) (in yellow of course) that I wished I'd had a couple weeks ago while at the beach.  I also got some other little things: a flashlight, a fire starter thingy, fire tinder thingies, a tow strap cuz you never know, a rain poncho to make the single one I currently carry around an official set of two, and a "space blanket" (glorified thermal blanket that doubles as a tarp, seat cover, tons of stuff) to also make the one I have a set of two.  I had an REI gift card and I also got an emergency medical kit with it.  I hope I have a place to put all this stuff!  These are things I've been wanting to have available to me, the type of things I'd know I'd kick myself for not having if I got stuck out somewhere while adventurin'.  I'm planning on taking "the good camera" on our trip as well (maybe, "Jeep security" being what it is - non-existent - I might not) so maybe I'll get some good shots.  To Adventure!

Grille and Insert

Since going to Topless Day I've had a couple (quite a few...) projects I've wanted to do with the Jeep.  "The Jeep" is officially a.k.a. "The Colonel" now by the way, his name being Colonel Mustard.  One such project was bed lining the grille with truck bed liner and painting a mesh insert to match the yellow body.

First of all, I'm inept at these sorts of things so I didn't really know what to look for.  I bought a grille from CARiD.com (this guy) (I didn't want to screw up my factory grille) and a mesh insert (this guy).  After I ordered I thought to myself... how am I going to paint these things?  I started looking for info on how best to do it myself, specifically for the insert, and found that people actually HATE this particular mesh insert.  Oh well.  That's what I get.


The grille was pretty perfect.  It came as just a big ol' piece of black plastic totally unfinished and a little scratched up but I didn't care, I was going to bed line it anyway.  The mesh insert came powder coated black.  I started looking into where to find color-match paint and how to prep/prime the powder coat for painting.  I fell in over my head pretty quick, and perhaps I didn't look in the right places, but it seemed that for a spray kit to accomplish such a task was about $60 (this is just for painting the mesh insert).  I'd also read that it might be possible that I'd need two cans of paint, possibly of primer as well, and if I bought 2 kits that'd be $120!  I started re-thinking the whole project...

I ended up taking the mesh insert to Maaco to see if they'd paint it for me, and if so how much they'd charge.  Long story short, they charged me $80.  Then I took the grille to a bed liner company and they only charged me $50 to bed line it.  All in all I got a professional paint job of the mesh AND the bed-lined grille for the $120 I thought I might have to spend on paint for the mesh alone!  I call that a score, and my takeaway is that sometimes it's NOT cheaper to "do it yourself".  Please don't try to convince me otherwise, I'm lazy.

After I picked the stuff up and got it home, I started really looking at it as I prepared to put it all together.  The Maaco paint on the mesh was already chipping.  I'd heard Maaco isn't the best in the world, but I figured it was just a little mesh piece, not a whole bumper or something, give them a shot.  But yep, the paint was scratching off.  Mostly on the back though, so that's good.  I thought once I got it attached it would be ok unless a rock jumped up and hit it or something, and in that case I can probably just use touch-up paint.  The bed-lined grille looked amazing.

Attaching the mesh to the grille was a beast of a job.  Well, kind of, I'm sure it could have been worse.  You have to bend these bars over the mesh and drill holes into the grille in a couple difficult places.  The locking nuts for the little bolts were tiny and difficult to manipulate with your fingers in some of the tight places they were supposed to go.  It took quite a while and I almost really messed it up (drilling fail), but in the end I got it done.  I did notice though that there's a plastic part on the grille that inserts into the body of the Jeep and it broke a little.  It's still attached but it was cracked.  Hopefully that won't become a problem.

The last hurdle, I didn't realize it when I took the grille in to get it bed-lined, but there is a rubber weatherstrip on a Jeep grille's top where it meets the hood.  If I'd realized it and thought about it, I would have had the bed liner guys tape off that part or something so I could get a good, flat place to stick the weather strip on.  But, oh well.  I ended up sanding the heck out of it.  I got it to stick really well actually!  Yay!

Anyway, sorry for the long post, maybe I'm just trying to make up for lost time!  Here's a bad picture of the final fruits of my labor and cash.

You can also see my name sticker on the side there.  The bubbles all worked themselves out by the way, I hadn't mentioned that to y'all yet I don't think.  It looks great!

Jeep wave count:  Still coming...

Mobile!

I'm sitting at a coffee/taco shop experimenting with mobile blogging. So far so good. I'm not sure be told you yet, but I got a new grille and mesh grille insert for the Jeep. My goal was to get the grille sprayed with truck bed liner for rugged durability (and to look flippin sweet as Napolean would say) and to paint the mesh the same color as the rest of the Jeep.

Well shoot. Foods here. As I'm typing with my little thumbs here I realize I want to post pics along with all this anyway. I'll try to update later. :-)

Bubbles and Other Troubles

So I proved once again that I don't know what I'm doing.  I put on my vinyl name stickers last night and I was most concerned about getting it straight.  You've got this really long and narrow string of letters, it was a bit awkward to put on (didn't want to remove all the backing at once), maniplutaing this little plastic ruler to keep it straight...  And we finally got it on for better or worse.  We measured again and it was pretty straight!  Vinyl stickers are surely removable, but I don't think they'd be salvagable in any way so this was one of those "do it right the first time" moments which I hate and am notoriously bad at.  But it was straight and looked good.  VICTORY!

 Then we took the paper backing off.  O.O  D'OH!  I didn't even think about bubble prevention!  What's wrong with me!?

WAH!!!!  IT'S SO BAD!!!  I feel so stupid.  I mean, it looks "ok", but I just feel like this all could have been prevented if i was smarter about stuff.  Why do I attempt these things on my own?

Anyway, from far back enough it looks pretty decent.

I've read that sometimes the little bubbles will work themselves out over time, and if all else fails I could resort to the push-pin fix, but dangit.  Even if I do work them out with brute force it's still not going to be as perfect as I want (I'm a bit of a perfectionist).  I wish I could do things right the first time and just have them come out awesome.  Such is life I suppose.

In other news, check out the sweet angry eyes I also put on the headlights (pictured above, you can just make them out)!  It looks GREAT!  It's also ILLEGAL!  :-|  I think, I'm not sure.  I didn't even think about checking up on the laws before putting them on because, seriously, they're not a safety hazard.  My headlight light distribution is fine.  But they're not so great I want to pay fines for having them.  I can't find a straight answer, but Texas law states something to the effect that you can't have a cover obscuring the headlight.  Does that mean an inch or less on the top corner?  I don't know.  Apparently so, at least in some other states from what I've since read on the interwebs.  I'd rather not find out the hard way.  So now that I've 3M-tape-stuck the heck out of these things to my car, I'm going to have to try to pry them off probably.  At the risk of getting a ticket, I'm looking for a cop at a convenience store or something that I can just stop and ask if it's ok.  And since I can't find a single Texas site that says definitively if Angry Eyes are legal in Texas or not (maybe I'm just missing an obvious site?) I might be the only site on the entire internet that can give you a straight answer on that once I ask.  I'll be sure to post what they say.  Perhaps from my jail cell, but I'll post it.

Jeep Wave Count: Still haven't tallied it.  I will.  Eventually.

My Gosh...

Whoever is checking this blog, I'm sorry.  I went on vacation for a week, and then work decided to blow up on me once I got back.  In fact I'm still too busy to post adequately, so I won't even try.  But I wanted to let you two or three know that I AM still here and I WILL be posting again once the dust settles a bit more.  Items to discuss...

- Got my foot pegs on, they're pretty cool with minor complaints.
- Just got my COL. MUSTARD name sticker, I'll try to get some good pics of the application.
- Got some angry eyes for the headlights.  Kind of on the fence about them, eventually they'll make more sense (coordinate with my eventual spare cover, you'll see eventually I hope), but I'm still excited.
- Got some tail light covers with little Jeep emblems on them.

Think that's it.  And honestly that's a lot.  haha  Still no lift, I kind of gave up on it for the time being.  My next big purchase will probably be soft doors so I don't have to lug 160 pounds up two flights of stairs anymore (during the summer anyway...).

Jeep Wave Count:  Continue to climb, and I AM making note of it (never stopped), but I'll need to count it up still.  BAD blogger.

Foot Pegs, JUST too late...

I recently had the doors off for about a week, but just put everything back on in anticipation of a lot of rain we're suppose to be getting.  Wouldn't you know, the next delivery day after I put it all back on I got my foot pegs.  :-/  For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, when you take the doors off your Jeep one of the most amazing pleasures in life is to cruise around with your foot hanging out of the car, preferably bare foot at highway speeds.  You can get foot pegs to rest your foot or leg on that hook onto the door hinges.  Like this...

http://www.skidrowoffroad.com

 

 

Just set your foot on it and away you go!  So I'm glad I got them, but now there's rain in the forecast for the rest of the week.  Next week I'll be in Florida (probably won't be posting btw).  After that who knows?  So I'm not sure when I'll be able to use them.  Oh well.

In other news, my wife and I almost ate it.  We were driving home when we passed an unkept dirt road that I've always wanted to explore.  Keep in mind what I said above, it's been raining here quite a bit lately.  But it looked pretty flat and mundane, so we decided to check it out and I didn't bother with 4 wheel drive.  It was all a mistake, and almost a BIG mistake.  The dirt was more like quick sand it turned out with all the rain we'd been having.  I lost nearly all traction after about 20 feet.  I don't exactly have mud tires (far from it) and they got absolutely CAKED with mud.  So we're in 2 wheel drive, and then traction control started kicking in.  It keeps you from giving too much gas and spinning the tires, and it resulted in us traveling at about 1 mph, slipping left and right, steering wheel did no good, we were barely missing trees, almost slid off a little hill slope that probably would have rolled us had we gone over at the wrong angle, it was a mess!  haha  I wanted to pop it into 4WD but didn't want to take my foot off the gas long enough to do it.  We made it to a paved alleyway - FINALLY - and decided we'd either never try mud again (I'm not interested in mud tires) or at least put the thing in 4WD before trying even boring looking dirt roads after 2 weeks of epic, flooding rains.

Jeep Wave Count: Still coming...

SPIDERWEBSHADE

So I've bought a few things for the Jeep so far, but nothing has been as satisfying (yet) as the new SpiderWebShade.  This thing is awesome!  For the uninitiated, it's a mesh cover you elastic-band to the top of your Jeep to give you some shade with the top down.  Behold...

Outside

Inside

The temperature difference in full sun is remarkable.  I mean, don't expect a 20 degree difference, but it really is very nice compared to full sun.  The main complaint I've heard about these things is that it doesn't feel like you still have the top off; the SpiderWebShade still "feels like a roof."  Well, yeah kinda, but not really.  You can see through it (see the trees in the second pic?) and it feels very "open air" (the doors being off probably helps that I guess...).  My wife said it felt like being under a camping pavilion or something.  haha

Anyway, 3 big cheers for this thing.  Easy to install, good lookin, and functional. Don't expect it to keep the rain out though!  It started raining (kind of hard actually) and the water came through like nothing was there.  It was actually kind of nice.

Another story:  The other day I was runnin TDDO (top down doors off) and it started raining H-A-R-D.  I can't recall ever being out in rain this hard, I couldn't see anything through my windshield with the wipers going full blast, the wind was ridiculous whipping me all around, it was nuts!  Thankfully I was on the highway and managed to keep up about 50+ mph and didn't get too wet.  Mostly I had water blow in from the sides.  I didn't get much from the top.  If I'd slowed down another 10mph I'd probably still be swimming though.

Jeep Wave Count: I'm keeping up, really, I just need to review my dumb notes.  I'll post it eventually.

More Stuff - Cab Cover

I told you.  I told you.  I can't save money.  :(

Other side of that coin:  I got some AWESOME STUFF!!!!@#WEFQ#$^WA%H#%

I finally, FINALLY pulled the trigger on a yellow SpiderWebShade.  This guy.  I of course don't have it yet to show you, but this is a pic I totally pirated off their website (not my Jeep):

http://www.spiderwebshade.com

The coolest thing about them in my opinion (aside from the fun colors) is that you don't have to remove it to put the top back up.  So now I'll essentially have a yellow headliner all the time!  Yay yellow!

Before I tell you my next purchase, let me 'splain.  Rain was in the forecast for Wednesday, but it ended up raining (pretty hard actually) on Tuesday.  I currently have the top down and doors off and I didn't feel like scrambling to put them all back on, it's supposed to be pretty clear for the rest of the week.  Anyway, I had another option- get a cab cover.  I'd been wanting one since Go Topless Day anyway (keep sand and possible rain and junk out of the Jeep overnight), but now I wanted one RIGHT AWAY.  So I went to 4 Wheel Parts (I'll probably post on them later) and got one.  But I broke my rule, it's made by Stupidbilt.  I would link to it, but I'm not completely sold on it yet and don't want to lead anyone astray.

Overall it fits pretty good, and honestly if I didn't have doors-off removable side mirrors or running boards it would probably fit perfectly.  As it is though, the mirror brackets prevent the side of the cover from completely covering the doorway, and the rails limit my bottom bracket placement options.  The end result is a gap between the cover and body at the doorway.

So this cover will keep the rain out of the big areas I'm pretty sure.  The fabric itself is rated as "water resistant", not "water proof", but man, it's pretty thick and plasticy.  That said, it probably won't be a bad idea to hit it with some water sealer for tents or something.  Also, without the top on, the middle of the top of the cover sags down quite a bit.  I could totally see water pooling.  I think if it came down to it I would put the top up, put the cover on, and at least have protection over the open windows and the majority of the doorways.

That said, look at that gap!  Again, it's not really the cover's fault, it's the mirror bracket placement and there's not much to do about it.  Perhaps I could move the mirrors to the lower position (the bottom two bolts in the pic), but I played with that when I first put the mirrors on and it didn't work extremely well.  I don't want to just remove them all together, even "temporarily".  It's not a HUGE gap, and it is a Jeep after all...  The cover is really more of an emergency flooding mitigation tool anyway, I didn't expect an airtight seal or anything.  But what about that eyelet hole?  Seriously?  What's that thing all about?

Jeep Wave Count:  Still need to tally.  :-/

Latest Purchases!

Well, I don't have them yet, but I did pay for them and they're on the way!

1)  Foot pegs.  I like running doors off and have been disappointed in the "fun" level of my foot/leg placement options.  So I picked up these guys.

2)  Soft top boot.  I also like putting the soft top down and, mostly just for looks, I got this guy.  Well, not only for looks.  When you put the soft top down, the fabric hangs into the trunk space.  You have about 2 inches of storage space before you have to start messing with the fabric to move it out of the way.  Not too bad, but when you're loading an arm-full of junk at 1am in a dark street (no trunk light) it's kink of a pain.  This boot wraps around the fabric and zips shut, so I'll essentially have more easily-accessible trunk space while the top is down.  This as opposed to what I've read anyway about the Smittybilt boot (this stupid guy), and we all know how I feel about Smittybilt anyway.  So here's the Rugged Ridge awesomeness (fingers crossed) that I picked up:

So there you have it.  So much for my lift savings...  Honestly though, there's a heck of a lot more I want that I could have bought and didn't, so I consider it a victorious savings day!  ...Right?

Jeep Wave Count:  Need to tally, not sure.  :-/

Window Tint

I think I've wiped out on the blog here.  My intent was to update every Mon, Wed, Fri, and I still hold to that as being ideal, but I've had trouble making it happen.  It's kind of been like a New Years resolution.  I think about 1 month of having kept up more or less as planned is actually pretty good.

I will continue to post though, and my new commitment is at least once per week on no particular day.  For this week's installment, I got my windows tinted!  Here's the guy putting it on.

Not my best photographic work ever, but you can see him working on the passenger side window.  The driver side had already been done.  I don't have any good pics of what it actually looks like now but I'll try to get one up.

I generally like it ok.  I do have a couple... not complaints, just mentionings. whatevs.  The total cost for both front windows was under $40, so you kind of get what you pay for and honestly they look just fine.  That said, my "mentionings":

• The color is grey.  Perhaps that's ok, but the tinted window kits for the rear windows I've seen online for Jeeps look like they come in amber.  I do intend to eventually get a tinted window kit for the back windows, and if they ARE in fact amber (and they might not even be) I'll have grey up front and amber in back.  That's dumb.
• There are tiny pieces of dirt that bubble out the tint film.  They're really REALLY small and toward the lower corner of the driver side (that's all I've discovered so far anyway), but still, I want PERFECTION!  haha  Well, I did only pay $40 so I'm not going to complain really.  
• They're not as dark as I'd hoped.  There are laws that govern how dark tint can be, and I believe the law is 35%.  I was told my tint is 31%.  So it COULD be a smidge darker, but oh well.  

 Honestly overall I'm totally fine with it.  I think it looks pretty good and I can perceive a difference now in the temperature and incoming light.

Still saving for the lift...

Jeep Wave Count: 58

Got Money...

No you can't that away from me.  NIN kick, sorry.

My birthday recently passed and I got some buckaroos.  I'm trying to save it for a lift (IT'S SO HARD!!!) and I'm about half-way there.  But I'm getting to the point where I'm like "well, maybe if I just spend a little..."  So I'll probably be broke by this time next week.  With no lift.

One thing I think I'm going to go ahead and do is tint the windows.  Another thing I might like to do is get some light-weight full doors for highway-travelling to places I'll ultimately want to take the doors off at.  Like Topless Day for instance - all the rain and junk kept me from leaving the doors at home and driving all the way to Galveston.  If I'd had the light-weight doors, I could have just thrown them in the back once I got there.

Anyway, sorry for the boring posts.  This is just kind of my Jeep diary and perhaps someone is able to find amusement in it.  haha

In other news we recently visited Austin during the crazy floods and rain storms.  We managed to stay pretty dry actually, we didn't get flooded at all.  But other places in the city did.  The only flooding I actually got to see was at Barton Springs pool.  First is a picture I found on the web from about the same angle, second is the one I took this weekend.

http://www.texasoutside.com/bartonpool.htm

 

 

 

May 25, 2015

 Crazy.  On the way home the rain finally stopped for a while and the sky looked nuts.  I've seen red skies in West Texas during and after dust storms, but this was just after rain.  I'm not a scientist, I don't know why it looked this way.  haha  But it looked like you had amber-tinted glasses on or something. 

Anyway, that's not Jeep stuff, just interesting.  To me anyway. 

Jeep Wave Count: 54

Crystal Beach Go Topless Day 2015 - Pics!

Ok, sorry it's taken so long, been really busy at work n junk.  Here are some pics from Topless Day 2015 at Crystal Beach!

We left on Friday afternoon to head to the beach.  I took the back seats out for the trip (first time for that!) and we managed to get quite a bit of stuff in the Jeep with plenty of room to spare!

As we headed to Galveston it started raining.  I really wanted to take top down / doors off for the trip so we wouldn't have them to mess with on Topless Day, but rain was in the forecast (we were only hoping it wouldn't rain all weekend!) so we left it on.  We did have to keep the doors on (didn't want to try to lay them in the tent or anything once we got there) but we did manage to take the top off.  Anyway, on our way into Galveston we had a lovely rainbow to greet us!

I thought this was funny.  Our Garmin showed us as being in the water (we were on the Bolivar Ferry).

We started seeing Jeeps in Galveston and many more once we got to the Ferry.  We stopped for some last minute supplies and saw some tricked out Jeeps at the store as well.  We started getting excited!  So we finally get to the beach and ... nothing.  Well, nothing much anyway.  A few Jeeps here and there cruising up and down the beach, but not the huge spectacle we expected.  We drove down a ways, decided there was nothing going on, then turned back and headed the other way looking for a good camping spot - one that was flat and fairly far from the water.  Then, we, uh, found it!

Those hammocks are hanging off a thing that connects to a tow hitch.  Totally getting one of those.

We found the party.  These pics don't really do it any justice at all, it was absolutely nuts.  Jeeps parked on top of Jeeps, people standing around getting wasted, you had to be really careful not to run over anyone!  To my knowledge no one did get run over for the entire event, which is both good and a little surprising.

We made our way through the madness and down a little ways and found a great camping spot.  We set up our tent, again as always while in the dark (though we had a lantern this time!), and built a fire.  We were better prepared on that front as well (as opposed to my last beach camping post).

Better fire this time!

Here is our tent set up in the daylight.  We had a nice little canopy shelter we picked up that we absolutely love.  It gave us a nice place to sit in the shade and watch the oncoming madness.

So what is Topless Day all about?  Jeeps.  It's like a parade!  We sat back and watched Jeeps cruise back and forth for hours.  And hours.  And hours.  All day and most if not all night Jeeps just parade back and forth.  Here are some pics for you.

It was really awesome to see all the tricked out Jeeps.  My wife and I got some ideas as to what we want to do with ours, and she's come around to concede that we need a lift!  Yay!  haha  There was a guy selling flags and we bought one, so we did trick our rather stock Jeep out a little for the event.

It's hard to describe how many Jeeps were there.  Forecasts were for 2000-4000 Jeeps.  I would say there were probably about 5 miles worth of Jeeps parked really close to each other side by side in two or sometimes 3 rows.  It was pretty crazy.

Don't know if you can tell but it goes back as far as you could see - and this was just in one direction

So in addition to watching the Jeep parade we got to go swimming, met some cool people, and generally just lazed about the beach.  It was a lot of fun and we intend to go back for sure.  Next time with a more personalized Jeep to show off hopefully!

Night time didn't stop the insanity.  In fact it bumped it up several notches.  My wife and I aren't partiers, so maybe we're not really cut out for the Jeep community because they all seem to be.  And then some.  They're crazy!  There were several fights and drunken stupors to be witnessed.  Oh, and one other observation, they enjoy horrendous music.  If there's one negative thing to be said about Topless Day, it's that the music that blasts out of every other Jeep is full of nasty lyrics and, well, just sucks to be honest.  There was one song in particular that you would recognize if you heard it, and it was particularly popular.  We literally heard it like 20 times or more.  It became a joke to us.  It was the SAME SONG.  Over and over different Jeeps would be blasting this freaking song!  haha  AHHH!!!!  I had to turn on some metal every now and then to just clear my head.  haha

Anyway, night time.  With the night also came all the awesome lighting that people have added to their Jeeps.  Crazy headlights, KCs, halos, LED illumination, you name it.  It was pretty awesome.  Here are some horrible night time cell phone pics.

I hadn't mentioned it yet but there was this little water channel across the "road" that you had to cross to get to "the party" and, further down the beach, our camp site.  It started when we showed up to be about, oh, maybe 1.5 feet deep.  There was one point when, top down, I decided to gun it through.  It had increased in depth to maybe around 2 feet or so and I hit it going, well, too fast.  Water shot up and POURED into the car.  I mean the seats, us, the back, the carpet, the radio, everything was wet!  I thought it was pretty funny, but my wife was, well, pretty upset about it.  I'd gotten water all over her and she just didn't see the humor in it.  Oh well.  Sorry honey.  :(  I won't do it again.

On Saturday night one of the attractions was to either participate in or just watch people gunning it through the pit or stopping mid-way through to burn out and dig the hole deeper.  People were getting stuck, people were losing axles trying to pull each other out, it was nuts.  My wife and I just looked at each other and marveled at how "different" this experience was for both of us.  haha  More bad cell phone pics.

My wife and I finally decided we'd had about enough and made our way back to our tent for a campfire and some smores.  Check this sucker out.

mmmmmmmmmm

We went to bed at, oh, midnight or so completely exhausted, gritty from the sand, and rather sunburned as well.  Time for a good night's sleep....

BOOM!  WHAT WAS THAT?!?

I looked out of our little tent window and noticed that our canopy cover was, uh, gone.  I got out and quickly noticed that the tide had come WAY up, all the way to the tent, had saturated the ground, loosened the pegs, and "bye canopy!"  We'd just BOUGHT that darn thing! This was at about 3:30 in the morning.  I jumped up and out and noticed that the canopy didn't make it too far (thank goodness).  I was able to recover it.  I broke it down, put it up, and tried to figure out what I was going to do about everything else.  We still had out chairs, our tent, coolers, junk here and there, it was a total mess.  Here's how far the water came up.

Keep in mind we started the weekend at least, oh, 100 feet or more from the waterline.  The ground got saturated enough to loosen our tent pegs as well and I had to get creative to keep our tent from blowing away.  Here's what my handiwork looked like after the sun came up.

 Gotta love bungies!  I bungied the tent to the car in 4 different places.  It worked though, we didn't blow away.

Since everything was wet and half-put up anyway we decided to take out pretty early.  We got everything packed up and cruised the beach a couple more times to see who was left and it was like night and day.  4000 Jeeps one day, about 50 the next.  We were pretty surprised to see how well most people cleaned up after themselves.  It was like nothing had happened.

Here we are on the Ferry back to Galveston.

sanded

We finally made it to civilization and ate at our favorite place in Galveston, the Gumbo Diner.  We polished off a fun and eventful weekend with a huge bowl of seafood gumbo.

Looking forward to next year!  Now to get a lift, bigger tires, halo lights, seat covers, a flag holder, ........

Jeep Wave Count: 54