Black Friday

Here’s the crowds that I braved on Black Friday.  I didn’t get any good deals on merchandise, but I did get relaxed.

And the cat had the right idea too…

Winter is here…

…it has won.

I haven’t had my hard top on since I bought the soft top at the end of April.  Today I gave in to winter and put the hard top back on.

Let the snow commence.

Running with the birds.

Made it out to the west desert today.  Found an arch and got to run with the birds.

As I was driving up a road lined with sunflowers on both sides I annoyed a few birds.  They came out of the flowers and would fly up the road, right in front of me, like a bat outta hell. 

The pictures don’t do it justice, at some times it seemed like I was in a Hitchcock movie, there were at least a dozen flying in front of me, which had me swerving left to right to avoid them.

Up past the swarms of birds, I found this arch.  And it wasn’t even Arches National Park.

Trailer, cats, rainbow and a sunset.

About a year ago I got a trailer from a friend’s father.  He moved into a condo and didn’t have room to store it so he just gave it to me.  It was a rusted old International truck bed, with ratty old tires, made into a trailer.

Well, yesterday I got it two brand new tires and $30 of paint.

Looks a little better, eh?

And today I hooked it up to the Jeep and put it back on the side of the house.

Then I went back into the house and joined the cats in a strenuous workout of napping.

Finally ended the day with a trip to the park to get shots of the sunset.  But first I caught this one of a rainbow.

Put some new options on the Jeep today.

 

Latest change.

Plasti-Dip is great stuff. It's a spray on plastic paint that can be peeled off without any damage to the paint underneath. It's not good for the long run, but it worked perfect for seeing if I wanted to paint my tire rims white. Painted one, saw that I really liked it and then had to peel it off so I could paint all 5 rims with real paint.

I thought about painting the center cap black, like in the picture of the spare tire, but as soon as I put the back tires on I thought "VW Beetle". Not the right look for my Jeep. So I went back to all white. Looks great. I don't know if you can see the difference that well in the pictures, but the first one is original and the last one is with the white rims. That was my day today.

Before:

After:

And...

the back is bed lined:

You may think I'm crazy...

… but it’s not an uncommon thing for new Wrangler owners to do.

I spent an hour pulling out the carpet in my Jeep.  It was really easy – it comes out in 6 pieces so I didn’t even need to take out the front seats.  There were 6 plastic bolts that I removed by hand and the rest just pulled out from under the trim.  Obviously designed to come out easily.

Easy as pie.

It's amazing how fast things dry out here in Utah. Went back to get the Jeep today (yeah, couldn't get it out yesterday - too muddy) and we decided to hike out to it to see if the Armada would make it. We get there and my little brother says "You got the keys?" He suggests we try it before heading to get all the equipment*. I hand him the keys and tell him to go for it, expecting it to go nowhere. He puts it into 4-lo, rocks it about 3 times and it comes right out of the holes. It was like pudding yesterday and after only 14 rain-free hours it was solid. Go figure.

*Figuring we'd be fighting to get it out, we brought:
- 2 hi-boy jacks
- tow chain
- come-along
- winch
- 6 bags of lava rocks to put under the tires
- 3 2x6s and 4 2x4s of varying length
- a big, flat rock
- gloves and spare shoes.
We could have walked out in shorts and flip-flops and got it out.

My new mantra.

“No more dirt roads in the rain.”

That’s what I said to myself for the hour or so I was waiting for my little brother to help me out of this mess.  that and “stoopid” about a million times.