nfo PODCAST | Overland Shenanigans | Baker Overland Members Recap

0:00Welcome back to another episode of new found overland podcast. I'm your host, Benji. As you can tell, I'm doing some video today. I've always wanted to do the video, but I only hang up if you will, would be my camera setup. A camera's aren't cheap, and the one I've got is Sony A73, and it gets hot about after 30 minutes of record time. So we're going to try it. If we lose the video, just bear with me. I'm going to keep trying and trying until we get it right. But anyway, this is overland shenanigans. If you're guys new to new found overland platform, we got three shows that we try to do on here. Not necessarily a weekend show like they used to be, but we still have overland shenanigans, which it's kind of like it sounds like come on here and talk about just a bunch of random stuff. Kind of get you guys started through your day or whatever you're doing. I'll give you some cheap entertainment. And then we've also got another new show that we incorporated. It's called fellow landers. And that's just like it sounds as well. You're meeting up with fellow landers, overlanders in the space. And I just want to interview kind of normal people, if you will. Not necessarily content creators, although there's nothing wrong with content creators that don't have

1:03any issue with them. I'm just saying for a relative or not a relative, but a relatable sense, I guess, just to normal folks out there who might be entertaining, but just don't have a channel to broadcast it on. So I want to utilize kind of my platform here and interview fun people out in the space. So if you're someone that might have an interesting story or a past or current situation that you want to share, you guys can reach out to HeyNFO at Gmail.com. I would love to have you on the show. That's all it is. Just send me an email and we'll set up a time to record and go from there. But in today's episode, in the other, I'm getting stage fright guys. If you can't tell, I got like six cameras lights, all the things. But the other show I forgot to mention is sticks and I've not yet done one of those. But what the plan is with that is to meet up with my friends or just anyone out in the woods. Sounds creepy, but out in the woods camping, then have kind of a outdoor studio. So I'm wanting to do one of those. Sooner than later, it's just been crazy. Everything here at the shop's been really good, but really busy. And I'm just trying to, I don't know, get out

2:08in the woods when I can and not do so much camping, not so many events, stuff like that. Last year, I did a ton of events and it really wore me out. First year of Midwest Adventure Outfitters, if you guys don't know, I've got an off-road shop here in Crocker, Missouri, Slash, Overland Shop. We could sell you tents. We could sell you recovery, cooking, whatever. We could install all the things. But I don't want to get into that. I just want to tell you guys what I do. Whenever I say the shop. So anyway, today I want to talk to you guys about my weekend. I went down to Arkansas with some friends of mine, met up with Caleb Baker. And his members trip. He does that about every two months. He'll take members from his YouTube channel and just go out in the woods and camp for a week and go do a wheeling trip and then he'll make a video out of it. So if you guys don't know who Baker is, go check out Baker Overland. He's got a lot of great content. He's an excellent storyteller and phenomenal film editor. He's very good at what he does and what he likes to do is kind of give back to the community. And one way he does that is through his member support. He'll just let you guys know when the next camp

3:12out is. You guys just sign up and if there's availability to join that trip, then you'll be able to go. So I encourage you guys go over to Baker Overland get get signed up for his members thanks through YouTube. So I'll kind of paint a picture as to what happened. And nothing too crazy. I don't want to lead on to a stray story. But I don't have a rig right now. Of most of you know, my third gen four runner, if you've been a long time listener, needs a heart transplant and a lung transplant, i.e. engine and transmission. I have both of those in a parts rig out behind the shop. I just need time and good weather to cooperate for me to pull the engine and transmission. But once it's pulled, Patrick's going to go through everything to do new seals of bearings, whatever else he thinks needs done. Do all of that. Pull my engine out of the third gen and just do an engine transmission swap while I'm in there and doing all the things I want to do on board power. I want to change my front bumper potentially right now. I'm rocking an ARB. It's a cool

4:13good bumper. I'm just wanting to switch up my rig a little bit, change the looks. I want to do different wheels and tires. I might even do a body lift. Might run 35s instead of 33s. Yeah, there's a lot of things I want to do. I could spend a million dollars in a day very easily. And I don't have a million dollars, but I have the available means, if you will, as far as a mechanical and parts, I can throw at it, realistically be cool to do a complete repaint and all that stuff. And I was thinking about doing that. I wanted to paint it the trail hunter color, because it's just really cool, unique color and new to Toyota. And start thinking about it. If you guys recall, I busted out the right rear glass on the 400 and the quarter panel. Got a little crunched up, the doors a little crunched up. So I don't want to do a ton of bodywork. And if I was going to paint it, I'd want it to look good. The other catch 22 to that would be trailing it constantly and tearing it up. So I've kind of decided against kind of a refresh, if you will, or even a repaint. I'm just kind of stick with what it is. There's some

5:16rocker rust. I'll probably cut out some rockers on our parts rigs out here and weld those in. Just make it look a little bit more presentable. She's been road heart and put up wet. And I don't like that. I want to start taking care of my stuff a little bit better. Especially camping with being at the mercy of those who you ride with. So I kind of get into our story. Offroad Brian graciously volunteered to haul my little utility slash adventure trailer with my rooftop tent on it. He offered to pull that down with his Raptor this weekend instead of me having to sleep in a gazelle, which is fine. I would have totally done that. But whenever you take the trailer, I mean, you should take more things. So all my gear, which wasn't a ton, we've put a lot of it in this truck. So that worked out great. But you know, like a cooler diesel heater, diesel heaters are nasty. You get diesel everywhere. So we put that in the trailer and it didn't end up working anyhow. But anyway, you could use a lot more with the trailer. So I didn't even say,

6:16oh, no, you don't have to do that. I was like, okay, yeah, let's do it. We got down there. And I realized I forgot to buy an inflatable mattress. If you guys recall, when any of the previous episodes, I've gone through three in the last year, ranging from all over everything except for X pet. I just don't have X pet money right now to throw at that. It was like 500 bucks. I've been in the King camps. I've been in the King Camp knockoffs. And then most recently, I think it was like a $120, $130 Amazon special. I got one night out of that. I roll around a bit. I'm a big boy. And I think I popped it. Don't crack no fat jokes. But I think I popped it. And I threw it away. Wherever we were, I just threw it away. So we get down there. And of course, it was like crap. I never I was playing on the Walmart when we were there getting some groceries and stuff to replace the non-existent mattress was just a cheap $20, $30 blowup one failed to do that. So I took like a couple blankets of pillow and I was freezing. The first night was cold. I will not lie. It was cold and

7:21comfortable. And then the next night, Patrick and Jim let me borrow Jim had an extra sleeping bag. And then Patrick had some extra blankets. So I was able to kind of make a little bit more of a bedding if you will some more of a padding. And then I had my wool blankets. I slept like a baby on Saturday night. So that was good. So let me tell you about all the trips you guys won't hear me sleeping and popping mattresses. That just that sounds creepy. But we went down Friday and we met up with Baker and his crew for the members trip. And there was about I don't know 17 rigs. I think I counted right. There's a lot of people. It's a good time. There's a lot of Tacomas. There's a few jeeps. Good handful of mixes and builds. It was really neat to see everyone's idea for their situation. You know, they're their ideal setup situation. I should say seeing how people do stuff. And then, you know, there's newbies there that kind of were just, you know, when you start out, you just have a lot of extra crap and just your flow's not kind of there. And you see the other ones that are set up in two seconds and they're chilling around the fire. Brian, this was his

8:24first time taking his Raptor out on some actual trails. He was a little hesitant at first and rightfully so taking his Raptor down. Some of those Ozark trails were really tight. And I kind of said, you know, more or less, you know, you got a cool rig and everything. Let's not tear it up, but I think you should go enjoy it. And so he tried it this week and I think you absolutely loved it. It got a little bit more comfortable getting into it and doing it. I don't want to speak for Brian, but nobody wants their rigs scratched up and did it real bad. But it's pinstripes on the Ozark guys. It's inevitable. He's got kind of a darker charcoal grayish Raptor. And those are wide. Those are bigger trucks. And it did well, you know, it was in February. So there's no foliage out or anything. Just a bunch of dead limbs and stuff that you can kind of tuck back if you needed to. We did that in a couple spots. Did some water crossings. Did a lot of dips and stuff. Pulling my trailer might I add. And that thing did fantastic. Turns out Raptors have a rear locker plus all the different settings you could do like Baja, you know, sand mud, all the

9:29things. But he utilized that well. And it was nice. It was nice going down there. He was able to take off from work and without the kids and everything. He needed a good break from reality, if you will. And anytime we go camping, that's just kind of a good time to cut loose cut back. So anyway, Friday night met up down there hung out around the fire. And then Caleb and Andre rolled in late. I guess they took a trail coming in the back way. And it was pretty gnarly because Andre, he just recently got a third gen Tacoma a few months ago. He's kind of building it out. But his front bumper got ripped off. It's plastic. It wasn't armored or anything. It ripped off. And then the back right plastic piece of his bumper ripped off as well. So he rolled into camp first night. And he was already, you know, like, just trail blah blah blah. So he started off his weekend a little, a little bit violent or gnarly or whatever you want to call it with a little bit adventure. But it was good. So we got fires going, sitting around all that. And then 10, 15 minutes later,

10:33the skies opened up. And it just poured down rain. So we hung out separately. There was two awnings that were deployed. So we kind of split up in the groups. And you know, it was hung out and everything. I was just, I was tired. I think a lot of people were tired. And I was telling Baker, I was like, oh, where'd my beer go? Bubba blow. And he's like, oh, go get you one. So he gets up and goes gets one by the time he got up. I was like, I'm going to bed. You know, I was, I was done. Sometimes you just, you just feel that weight. And you're just like, okay, I can't do this anymore. I've got to go to bed. It's the old man creeping in. So anyway, I went to bed. And then the morning, you know, we all got up packed up, started heading out on the trail. The thing is about the Ozarks and doing large groups. You know, I think we had 17 rigs. I don't know for sure. But it's a goat rope effect. And if you don't know what I mean by that, let's say you move three cars and then stop. Then the next three cars move and then they stop. And then the next three cars move and then they stop or keep going, etc. But it's a goat rope where you just keep barely going at a time. Another thing to consider is other traffic out in the woods.

11:41So we were on a national forest road. And there was a few side-by-sides. Thankfully, I should say thanks, thankfully, they were coming towards us at appropriate times versus like hanging off a shelf road or something like that. Now there were some spots where it was a little sketchy, but side-by-sides are way smaller and they can kind of duck off to the side a little bit easier than a full-size truck. So Caleb was leading and Jacob Bittles was taking the rear, making sure everything was going good and that everyone was still there. But there was a few instances where some side-by-sides were there. And guys, 16, 17 rigs going up a hill or in obstacles and going around side-by-sides, it took us a good minute to do like, let's say an hour trail could take like three hours, setting up cameras and doing other things too. But we all knew what we were signing up for because Caleb turns these into one of his featured videos for his YouTube channel. So it's all, I mean, it's cool. Everyone knows what we're getting into. That is the trip. And then so all those side-by-sides would get out of a way and they just look at us all,

12:44you feel like, oh my gosh, you guys are bringing those out here. And most of you have seen that expression or of even, you know, conversed with other side-by-side or other wheelers out in the forest where they see like some of these rigs, man, they're massive with all their tents and all the accessories and everything bolted to them. They just look at you like a crazy. And then someone said, man, you guys must be made out of money. I was like, we're just made with no brains. So we just kept driving and doing all the things. And then one of the rigs in our little fleet was Patrick's 1986 Tracelle. And this four-wheel drive, it's five-speed manual, six-speed manual, excuse me. That thing was going over every little obstacle. Now we all did get hung up. I do say all. I would say 70 to 80% of us all got hung up in a like mud pits, whatever you want to call it, even the bypass to the mud. It was all mud. It wasn't like water in me. It was like all mud. It was like peanut butter. And so everyone would just kind of go get stuck in it. And then thankfully,

13:47you know, the person that got out before, then they would have a kinetic rope go back, pop them out, et cetera, repeat the steps, except for the Tracelle, the trailer, and who else is rigged. Somebody else's. We all had to utilize. I think his name is Charles. He had a second gin, Tundra, and he just kept popping people out. So that was cool. You know, everybody's looking out for everybody. But at the end of that night, we ended up camping out on the Piney. Beautiful little spot right out there on a little beach, rock beach. We all hung out there, Brian, gentleman from the night before. He had to go back home that day to do some family stuff, but he at least came out one night. And he brought like two or three slabs of ribs, which was super generous, generous, and nice of him. So that night, we all kind of cooked our own food, and then I had some, some of those ribs. So those were really good. And then you know, just hang out the fire and normal stuff. And we started playing, I forget what it's called. We call it bunny whoop. There's other names for it too. But just watching people not get the game, that's the whole thing is just it's a monkey sea monkey do there's certain patterns to it. Once you can repeat those patterns in your past and you're in

14:51and you make fun of everybody else who can't do it. So that's a fun camp game. We do it all time. But there were some people in there that were getting really mad. Well, I should say mad, just frustrated. But that's the point, right? It's fun. It's a kind of, you know, once you get it, you get it and you can kind of poke a little fun too. So that was good. And then Saturday, you know, woke up 17 degrees outside, absolutely cold, portal water into my little thermos cup. And it just started freezing up a little bit. It didn't get like a chunk, but you could see what he poured in is like a bunch of ice. But anyway, that was fun trip. Got back Sunday. Good times. And here we are doing a podcast on a Monday for you guys to hopefully watch tomorrow. If you're not watching, that's cool. You can listen. I think on Spotify now, I'm going to try to upload this as a MP4. So you'll be able to get the video and audio if you're on your phone or if you're on your whatever fancy car, those Apple Car plays, whatever you might see it on there too. But this should be uploaded on YouTube as well. I'll tell you kind of what we're doing this week here at the shop.

15:53If you guys want to get into that, we're going to Wyoming. And we're going to look at two or three 60 series land cruisers, hopefully buy and drive. We're going to take the trailer in case we have to haul one. We might not buy any. They might be all junk. But we're going to leave Wednesday. We're going to be back Sunday. So it's going to be exhausting for us this week. So I'm trying to do all these things. I record a podcast earlier with Ricky with loose nuts off road. So that will drop this Thursday while we're out on the road. You guys will have a fellow Landers episode this Thursday. So make sure you tune back in for that. But to outside of that guys, life's good. Everything's good. I'm just hoping to get my rig back on the road sooner than later. There's a lot of work piling up here at the shop that we're trying to juggle. I really need to find new or another mechanic to start doing some stuff. I'm wanting to grow the business. We're at that fine teeter totter where yes, we've got enough work to justify bringing on somebody else. But I want to make sure we have more and more work to to kind of help keep them on, if that makes sense. I'm looking for maybe

16:58a part time guy looking to go full time. But yeah, that's all here in the works. But yeah, figured I'd try to do the video today. Hopefully that thing turned out. Hopefully I wasn't too all over the place because I've got a camera here, a camera there and then these two goofy lights pointing at me. So hopefully everything's going good. Guys, I just want to check in. Do a fun little overlay and shenanigans for you. Nothing too crazy. Something to keep the ball rolling. And one more thing. Go over to Apple Podcast and leave this show a review. Hopefully a five star review. But I want to honest you from you. And we're at like 92 93 reviews. Once we get to 100, we're going to do a four tire deflation kit that screws onto your valve stem. I got that through OVS, but I'm going to throw that on through Midwest adventure as a giveaway. And once we keep growing that, we'll probably do some other fun giveaways throughout should be getting some stickers. I'd like to start sending those out again, doing all the things. The past year and a half guys, life's been busy with work. Just trying to get the shop off the ground, doing everything else,

18:01family life, trips, mental stuff, just trying to keep everything afloat, trying to keep the sanity levels high. And the podcast kind of took a hit just because of the times that I've kind of stepped away from it. Just don't have the time like I used to. And that's fine. That's good. You know, as long as we keep doing these little shows here and there and you guys are liking it, I'll keep doing them. Just guys have a killer day. Do something nice for somebody to screw up, make up. Don't don't choke code it. Don't bury it. Just be honest, transparent. And you'll do a lot better in life if you're just open honest. But the world's crazy right now. Guys, don't feed into it. Just give some love and show love. Don't be, you know what? So guys, we'll catch you on the next one. Bye. Bye.