The Grey NATO – 165 – Rock Crawlin' In The Iron Range
Published on Thu, 14 Oct 2021 06:00:47 -0400
Synopsis
The hosts discuss various topics including the Netflix series Squid Game, the new James Bond film No Time to Die, and Jason's experience taking an off-road driving course with his Land Rover Defender through a company called Iron Range Off-Road. They also recommend checking out the Instagram account J.E. Brickworks which features custom Lego car models, and a video called "Devil's Teeth" about diving with great white sharks near the Farallon Islands off California.
Links
Transcript
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| Jason Heaton | Hello and welcome to another episode of The Grey Nado, a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 165 and we thank you for listening. James, boy it's been a while. We've been both from different places gone and offline and all that for a couple of weeks. We pre-recorded those few episodes which people probably Hopefully enjoyed, but now we're quote unquote live again together. |
| James | Yeah. We had planned out all of these episodes so that I would have this, uh, so that I would have this sort of week long vacation, like a chance to essentially, but because of the timing of the vacation, it was kind of like two episodes. Yeah. Um, and then we had the, the Corey Richards offer from Vacheron, which is very sweet and we're super thankful, but that meant a third episode. So I ended up making four episodes in a week, which is a lift, especially with you know, other work and everything. But I hope that everybody dug it. It was really nice to have kind of some time to not really do that much, you know, flew out to BC to visit my brother. He lives in Squamish. We just kind of laid low, walked in the mountains, watched some TV. It was a, it was a good vacation. Um, I, squid game came out while I was in there. Jason, I don't know if you got on the squid game train or not. You got to tell me about that. |
| Jason Heaton | I mean, I, well, I guess I'm probably one of four people that don't know what it's about, but, uh, I keep seeing hints about it. |
| James | Yeah. I'm not sure. Like, I guess, I guess we can, I guess we can chat about it because if you haven't seen it, I figured out the level of saturation is pretty high. It's a Korean, I think it's an eight part or seven part, uh, TV show drama in which, um, people who are in like huge amounts of debt are contacted to take part in a game. Oh, a little over 450 people are brought to an island. Huh. And and they they have to survive six games. |
| Unknown | Huh. |
| James | And the games exist in a manner where if you fail to do this task and they're all based on like childhood playground games from Korea. Yeah. And if you fail any of the tasks, you die. or you're killed. And each person has a dollar value. Like everybody has an equal dollar value for playing. Yeah. And when they died, their amount is given to the big pot essentially. And, and it's a, it's a, yeah, it's a really fantastic sort of in the same vein as if you ever saw battle Royale, uh, which was a pretty fantastic, but this has more of a point and more of a structure. And I, I'm, I was really impressed by it, but obviously everybody was, I think at one point it was like the top, Netflix show in 90 countries or something like that. So, uh, if you haven't seen squid game, I highly recommend it as long as you're not averse to violence and, and, uh, you know, a pretty sort of depressing consideration of life. Yeah. Not, not through the whole film through the whole series, but through definitely parts of it are pretty sad and kind of difficult to manage. But I mean, for me, I, it felt like, uh, the same sort of buzz I got from watching, you know, parasite, it's not as good as parasite by any stretch. But it is really good. It's well acted, it's well written. The art direction and the cinematography feels very kind of strange and interesting, especially the parts that are within the gameplay. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And then the character study, it takes me back to sort of my sociological years in university, you know, looking into, you know, the prison studies and the guard versus prison mentality and all that kind of stuff. And I really enjoyed it. You know, I think it was a little bit too much for Some of the people in our party found it a little too intense, wanted something a little lighter. Yeah, yeah. But I ate it up and really enjoyed it. Watched, finished it once I got home, just the day I got home. And yeah, it was good. It was nice to have something kind of exciting to watch. I feel like the last time we all did this was Tiger King. And I'll say this has a lot more merit than Tiger King. I think that's kind of where I would leave it. |
| Jason Heaton | I'm not sure. I'll check that. It sounds intriguing. I think I'd have to be in the right frame of mind to to watch it. Speaking of death-defying Netflix backstabbing competitiveness, I launched into the third season of Drive to Survive last night, the Formula One series. We talked at length about it earlier, but Ghoshani was working late uh, doing some, uh, for a day job stuff. So I had some time to kill and I was like, Oh, I had never started the third season. I was, I binged the first two while I was convalescing after my surgery. And right. So I started the third season, which, which is all about the, the 2020 formula one season, which, you know, racing aside, it was so kind of weird to see, you know, the first couple of episodes were at the very beginning of the Corona virus, uh, pandemic and kind of how they were all coming to terms with that. And it was, I kind of made my skin crawl to like, see the, those early days and kind of gave me this weird sense of dread remembering how, you know, we were all kind of wrapping our heads around, you know, how to deal with it. |
| James | But, uh, I thought about this a couple of times, just a little off topic from drive to survive. I haven't seen the third season yet. Um, but I thought about this a couple of times, like back when we had to cancel our get together, which would have been March 18th. Um, in New York city of 2020, right. Uh, I, I remember having conversations and I'm just thankful that it wasn't a point where we were recording an episode where I was like, this is just a flu. Like people are really over like overreacting to this. It doesn't, this seems like not something we should be canceling hangouts because of people should just like, you know, be careful or wash their hands. And I mean, look, you couldn't have been more wrong than I was. Goodness sakes. So yeah, lucky I didn't record that in the moment. I can eat crow looking back on it, but it would have been tough to have had that as your kind of public statement. I would have been backpedaling for the last 18 months, but it's been an interesting time and it is strange to watch anything that's been made through this. The documentary stuff is weird, but then a group of people that I really like made a movie for Netflix that I actually don't like. Did you see the ads for The Guilty? |
| Jason Heaton | Um, yes, I haven't. And I guess someone told me to watch the, uh, the Danish original as well. I haven't seen either. Did you watch it? |
| James | Oh, I did watch it. I didn't realize that it was a remake. Yeah. Um, but it's, uh, you know, it's Antoine Fuqua who's, who's known for, I mean, end of watch with Jake Gyllenhaal and, uh, you know, his work with, um, Denzel Washington. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James | Right. Right. And the screenplays by Nick Pizzolatto. Um, who's the guy that did the first season of true detective, which I think is probably the best TV ever made. Yeah. everybody has their own opinion, but that's absolutely mine. That's the finest bit of TV I've ever watched. Yeah. So I was really excited. I'm a huge Jake Gyllenhaal fan, uh, certainly. And he's also a producer. Ethan Hawk is in it. It's a, and then it was very clearly, you know, filmed during COVID and it's sort of, um, it's sort of a bottle style film, almost like if you remember phone booth, Yeah. It has a similar, but it lacks some of the same tension or theater of, of phone booth. And in the end, I just don't think it worked out that well. Um, I watched it and it didn't really, I feel like it didn't engage that well. And it could be some of it was just, you know, Jalen Hall acting to a set of big monitors, uh, to the, to the, to the most part. And, uh, you know, probably a really hard movie to make because of COVID. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one that, uh, there's an example from, and that was also a Netflix one, um, that I just thought didn't, Didn't work that well. What, how did you, how far did you get into season three of drives to survive? |
| Jason Heaton | Gosh, I think, you know, they're pretty short episodes. I realized they're less than 40 minutes. Most of them. And I think I got through four or five of them. Um, and it's, it's a fall asleep and back into you're like, yeah, Oh, definitely. It's, it's equally good. The first episode's a little strange, you know, they canceled the Melbourne formula one at the beginning of COVID and then, and then it kind of picks up from there. Once you get into the, the intrigue of drivers switching teams and all of that kind of stuff. It's a little soap operation. I mean, if somebody commented on, uh, when we were talking about it on the previous episode, someone commented on our sub stack that, you know, don't, don't take it at face value. He said, it's probably a lot of, uh, kind of theater for, or, you know, edit and creative editing from, from Netflix to kind of make it more interesting. And I, you know, I get that, uh, I think sports in general, you know, high paying sports, uh, do bring out, uh, a lot of, uh, truths about people's personalities and that sort of thing. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun. And, uh, I'm sure, you know, from the casual observations about the current formula one season, I'm sure next year's, uh, drive to survival be equally good because it's, it's shaping up to be a pretty, pretty interesting season with the back and forth, uh, at the top of the rankings. So. |
| James | Yeah, it is looking like a pretty interesting season this year. I've been enjoying kind of following along. I haven't been watching the races in their entirety, but it has been a more kind of dynamic season than I think we've had for the last couple of years. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And I noticed you speaking, this is turning into like a mini film and TV episode here, but I noticed in the notes here that you watched Sorcerer. |
| James | I did. Yeah. I, I bought a copy of sorcerer and watched it. And, uh, really like Tim could not have been more right. Uh, that's episode one 61. My brother, Tim came on for our film club and recommended, uh, this movie sorcerer that I had tried to watch in the past and it didn't work out. And then, uh, I got a proper, a real copy with proper subtitles and it's just fantastic. It's just an absolutely amazing movie. So, so good. Oh, that's, that's amazing. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James | I got to check that out. You know, taking it a step further, you also saw a movie that we've been pretty excited about. I haven't seen No Time to Die, but you have. We haven't really talked about how to cover the new Bond movie. Maybe let us know in the comments. Yeah. If you want a Bond episode, if you want one with a bunch of spoilers, maybe that would have to be like a surprise episode or an extra episode so that people who haven't seen it could save it for later. Let us know in the comments on Substack. We would like we'd be happy to do something like this and even try and see if we could reach out to people from the film. or maybe through Omega and see if we could have on somebody to talk about it. But I'd be interested to see how much people want us to talk about a brand new movie. So let us know in the comments if you'd be keen on that, and we can probably look into it. But Jason, in a spoiler-free manner, because I probably won't get to see this for a few more days anyways, by the time this comes out, it'll be Thursday. I might be able to see it Sunday. It's been like insanely busy. And, uh, and, and I just, I haven't really been leaving the house. I've just been working and trying to catch up on sleep and that kind of stuff. So, uh, where, where'd you stand on, on bond? |
| Jason Heaton | Boy, it's it's, I would say it's in my top five, um, bond film, uh, bond films. I think, uh, you know, it's hard from in my mind to beat casino Royale. I actually, as I, look back and I did this recently, started thinking about which was my favorite overall. And I, so often kind of just sort of my pat answers always, Oh, the Connery films, you know, Thunderball, Dr. No, whatever, but I don't know. Casino Royale was pretty much almost a perfect Bond film. Um, and I, I was always let down by, you know, Spectre, Quantum of Solace, uh, Skyfall. They all had their, their, high notes in terms of cinematography, music, theme songs, uh, certain scenes and whatever. But this, this really has a real standalone, like proper film with, with good bond elements that will make, you know, diehard bond fans happy. Um, and then there are some seriously interesting developments and, and, uh, twists that, that will shock people, I think in the movie. And I think that's, that's good. I, you know, hats off to them for taking some chances and, you know, Fukunaga, you know, we talked about True Detective earlier and he's, he's a great director. And, uh, I've read interviews with him and with others about the movie and, and, you know, how his kind of obsession with filming at sunset, uh, caused some, some, uh, hurried moments and kind of, uh, complications on set when they were making the movie, but boy, it really comes out in the end. It's a, it's a tremendous film and I need to see it a second time. I need to, you know, I think with any of the new Bond films, there's so much anticipation. And there's just so many little nuggets to kind of capture that I need to see it a second time before I can really properly weigh in. But, uh, yeah, in a nutshell, uh, I loved it and, uh, yeah, I can't wait for you to see it. And then we can compare notes. |
| James | Yeah. I think I'll, I think I will make an exception to my, you know, I don't really go to the theaters, uh, even, even before the pandemic, I really didn't care for the theater unless it was a movie. I was really crazy about like, uh, Blade Runner is the example of use in the past. I saw that a couple of times, like midnight showings where there'd be three other people in the theater. I'll probably do something similar for this, find a nice late showing and check it out. That'd be nice. Maybe I can make that happen Sunday so that we can chat about it in some depth on the next episode, or we'll see what people say in the comments if they want more. More James Bond talk. But I mean, if it's even in loosely the same category as Casino Royale, then I'm already... I'm all the more excited for it. I think Casino Royale is one of the most complete Bond movies. If you only saw one, that's a great one. Yeah. Yeah. You could you could watch Casino Royale and then go like, all right. I mean, some of the content wasn't really for me. Maybe I'm not a Bond person, but I'm glad I picked that one. It has a complete story. It has an arc. They have characters that develop it and it has all the great action and the rest of it. You know, for me, Skyfall will always be so high on my list because of how it looks. Yeah. Yeah. There's moments of that movie that seem kind of anemic, like they don't really it feels like they there wasn't a lot of development throughout the film necessarily. And it could be because you have in Skyfall, and this is a spoiler if you haven't seen Skyfall yet, but the proposed Bond woman really dies quite quickly in the film. Yeah. And it leaves this sort of vacuum in the second act that kind of, you know, Judi Dench fills in towards the end. But in some ways, Casino Royale is more of a thriller and a Bond movie with the gambling and the you know, opening sequence in the bazaar in, in Madagascar, I think, and then all this. And then with Skyfall, that's more of a straight down the middle action film. You know, it's, it's two guys kind of that came from the same world kind of deciding who's the strongest. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And it's a different energy for sure. I, you know, there's just something about Deacon and, and Mendez working together on a, on something like Skyfall is, is a pretty special. So |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And, you know, um, before we kind of move into a risk check and the main topic today, I do want to give a quick shout out, you know, we, since we had a couple of weeks of not recording this, I was invited to, to be a guest on the spirit of time podcast with Matt and Greg and boy, they, they turned that around in a hurry. They were, it was up the next day after we recorded and, uh, it was, uh, it was a lot of fun. So, uh, you know, Matt and Greg, thanks for having me on. It was a, it was a good chat, you know, as the name of the podcast, suggests, uh, you know, it's, it's a pretty heavy, um, kind of in watch content. Um, but that's what you go there for. And, and we talked about a lot about, uh, uh, Greg was wearing kind of a stealthy bond watch that he didn't realize was a bond watch. And then we, uh, we talked about, uh, everything from Frank Miller to Braymont to everything in between. So it was, uh, it was a lot of fun. So I appreciate, uh, you're having me on guys and, uh, and check them out in spirit of times on, uh, I think it's on Apple podcasts and soundcloud and whatever. We'll put a link in the show notes to that one. |
| James | Yeah, very cool. Glad to hear you made it on there. I can check that out. I wasn't aware of this show, but... Yeah. Oh, and lastly, I would just shout out to anyone who's in Vancouver, because I was there last week, as I mentioned. I was able to swing by the Roaldorf location in Gastown. Absolutely worth your time. Got to see some Seikos I haven't seen in person ever. He's got a really good stock of like sporty Seiko's, the ones that people actually want. Yeah. Nice to see some Bramont stuff that and ordained stuff. Uh, I was sadly, it was probably a day or two too early to see their latest drop of an ordained stuff, but apparently it was almost all entirely pre-sold. Yeah. Uh, been a very popular brand for them. So that's pretty exciting, but the store is killer. It's in a really nice, really like interesting and good part of town. There's some great food and sightseeing to do around there. So just a heads up for anyone who, who maybe makes a Vancouver, uh, travel destination in the next little while swing by Roaldorf and, uh, and be sure to say, hi, the, the new store is absolutely gorgeous. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I mean, you know, I saw your photos and of course I've met Jason at, at Hodinkee 10 event and, and know him well through your associations when you lived in Vancouver. And, um, you know, Jason's an interesting guy anyways. He's a Brit with a defender and a, he's a very accomplished technical diver and a watchmaker. And, I'm |
| James | Yeah. Bramont, Seiko. |
| Jason Heaton | That's like a legitimate reason to cross the border and like make an actual watch pilgrimage. Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And they do a lot of the assembly for Halleys. Yeah. So cool. You know, when they, when they need help with putting the watches together. So yeah, it's a great shop with a really killer lineup. They carry a lot of good brands and nice people. And it's a nice part of town. You can sit and like enjoy some space there. And then there's like five or six amazing places to get lunch right nearby. Wow. So cool. So yeah, just another one of the many treats that are, uh, that'll wait anyone who heads out to, uh, the perfect city of Vancouver. Uh, how about some wrist check? |
| Jason Heaton | I, uh, I'm still wearing my Seamaster, uh, the, the white dial Seamaster Pro. I mean, it's, I I've, I've changed it a few times, uh, for a day or two here and there in the past couple of weeks, but, uh, it remains, uh, firmly on my wrist and I've been having fun with, with strap changes. Uh, you know, today I've got it on, on the Artem, uh, sailcloth with the gray stitch and, uh, the fold over clasp. So, you know, uh, Artem was kind enough to, I had bought an Artem sailcloth strap a while back. And then, um, they reached out and asked if, if you'd be interested in checking one out and if I'd like to try out one of their fold over clasps. And so they were kind enough to send us each some samples. And I moved the Omega onto one with the fold over clasp and, you know, Not just saying this because they gave us these samples, but these are just tremendously good straps. My only quibble would be, I really want other colors. Yeah. But, you know, what do you think? I mean, I think they look good on so many watches. |
| James | Yeah. It's a largely similar story with me. I'm wearing my Braymont S302. I've only taken it off to take some photos of the Vostok, which the review will be live the day before this goes up. So if you want to read about the Vostok Amphibian, I had said on a previous episode, it was a 420. 959, it's a 42380. It just took me a little while to figure it out. I did buy a 42959, but as these things go, uh, what I received was a 42380, which is a scuba dude version of a very similar overall thing. Anyways, that's not that important as I'm wearing my brain on Esther too. Uh, I'm, I've had it on every day, all day. It was the only thing I wore through vacation. So since I got it, it's, you know, it's pushing up on about two weeks now, uh, that I've had it on. I absolutely adore it. And I came home from traveling and I had this package from Artem. And to be honest, like I don't wear black straps almost ever. I have a couple of black rubber straps, like a black tropic. I don't mind. I have a nice like Hirsch pure in black, which I like as well. And I got this and sailcloth for me, it's all a question of how easily it eventually molds to your wrist. Cause you have to deal with that span of time where the durability of the strap makes it kind of rigid. Yeah. And it's not always comfortable. Sometimes I have a bony wrist and sometimes it kind of pinches the flanks, the outer edge. Yeah. You know, with this one, it took maybe a half hour to settle in a little bit on my wrist. And now after say four or five days. Yeah. I find it quite comfortable. I really like this. Some fully spring loaded sort of a double butterfly fold over that they've got on it. It's like very secure and strong and has a clip in it. Yeah. But it's easy to take on and off. This is a black 20 millimeter with the gray stitches, similar to what you had, you had mentioned you've got on there and yeah, like you, I think the only thing I would change is I'd love to see it in gray, obviously. Like I think it would just be, if they only do one other color, I'd love to see a gray one. And, and, you know, maybe that's something that we could, who knows, maybe we could kind of make something with them in the future as we know our way around a gray strap here or there. But otherwise, I mean, color aside, and that's so personal, most people adore black straps, so this isn't like a normal opinion that's worth carrying on. I really like this strap. It's really well made. I would say it's very close to any other OEM sailcloth I've ever come across. And of course, what it might lack over a $700 or $800 option from, who knows, IWC or Omega, I guess. Uh, this is 85 bucks with a buckle. Yep. I'm really impressed by it. They make a, they make a nice thing. It looks really good on the watch. It's definitely comfortable. I could see it being a really good summer strap because of course you can get it wet. You can, yeah, you can really kind of, uh, you know, get it sweaty and all that kind of stuff. So, uh, I would say for the, for the money they seem to have made a good strap. So it can be hard to find what feels like a high end strap for under a hundred dollars. Yeah. Uh, and I think they've done a nice job with it. So I would say kudos to Artem on the sailcloth strap. Uh, And yeah, reach out if you want to talk about other colors. |
| Jason Heaton | Not that they need our help, but a gray one would be rad. You know, I had initially bought one for, for my Blancpain because the, it actually comes on a sale cloth, but it was always too short for me. And I, you know, I tried to punch a new hole and that didn't go all that well and whatever. And so when I looked into it, somebody had written in one of our listeners and said, Oh, you should try Artem. So, you know, thanks. Thanks to our listener who, who suggested Artem way back when, but that kind of turned me onto them, but I, I have to wonder, you know, sometimes like a strap like this will sort of fade out or discolor a little bit. Maybe that'll happen if we wear them enough. Maybe it'll kind of bleach out a little bit from salt, sweat, sun, water, et cetera. |
| James | It can only help. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James | Look good. But yeah, solid straps. I love the Omega. I love seeing the pictures of it and I'm just obsessed with this S302. I simply adore it. Yeah. It's such a nice watch. I love that it's like a a chunky enough, like tough dive watch that I can sleep with. Like I could just have it on my wrist. I don't have to take it off. It's good on a NATO. It's, it's incredible on a, on like a light leather strap. And I'm just kind of getting used to the sailcloth, which is kind of a different thing altogether. |
| Jason Heaton | One day I'll rant about, um, people complaining about divers on leather straps, but I'll withhold that for now. But that is one diver that does look really good. |
| James | That's been a thing as long as I've been into watches. People telling me that I shouldn't, and I just don't get it. I don't either. |
| Jason Heaton | I don't get it. But that is one that looks tremendous on leather. |
| James | If you're about to go diving. Yeah, I agree. Right. It's real easy to change watch straps. Yeah. Yeah. I can put it on something else before I go diving. Don't worry. Yeah. I don't just suddenly find myself scuba diving. Like if I, if I plan to go out for a coffee with somebody, I don't usually end up also just underwater. Yeah. Right. Right. So I think it'll be okay. Like if the, if the consideration is like, it's like you shouldn't put street tires on a, on an SUV. Yeah. Yeah. I drive it on the street. Yeah. Yeah. I'll put winter tires on it when winter gets here. Yeah. What a weird thing that some strap shouldn't be on some watch. Leather on a diver's fine, for God's sakes. |
| Jason Heaton | No rubber on chronographs, heaven forbid. |
| James | How would we all survive? All right, well, with wrist jack out of the way, I think it's time for some main topic. We've got a kind of fun one because while I was hanging out in BC looking at mountains and laying on a couch a lot, You went out and did an off-roading course that we've talked about a few times on the show, but now we get to actually hear how it went. Yeah, finally. So this is through Iron Range Off-Road. And why don't we start with the basics, maybe what it costs and what you need if you wanted to take part in it. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So this course is offered, as you mentioned, by Iron Range Off-Road, which is a private company. It was started by a guy named Mark, who used to be local to the Twin Cities. He's since moved somewhere up onto Lake Superior and, uh, started this business. I think he said, oh gosh, I think he said 20 years ago. So he's, he's a pretty avid off-roader, um, and just kind of saw a need for, um, instructing people that, that, you know, have, have Jeeps mainly. Um, but basically any four by four that, that you want to, you know, get a little bit more comfortable with off the beaten path, so to speak. And so he started this class, it costs $399. for a two day class and he holds these classes up at the iron range off highway vehicle park. And this is a, it's a dedicated, gosh, I think they said 160 acre, uh, area of the iron range in Northern Minnesota, which is where they used to mine for iron ore. And it's kind of this heavily forested, rocky, hilly, uh, part of the state kind of perfect for this. And, um, He, I think there were about a dozen vehicles and I think that's about his max. He said that was a big class and it's, it's over two days. So you kind of book your own lodging and, and go up there and, and, uh, and then you meet for, it's not quite two full days. It's about a full day and about a half a day. And he, he, he calls it, you know, distinctly like this is not for extremists. This is for, uh, beginners, you know, people that just want to get comfortable with their vehicle. Um, the only requirement really is that you have a proper four wheel drive vehicle. So, you know, Taking our Volvo XC60 with all wheel drive would not have cut it. You need something that has low range, uh, four wheel drive, some ground clearance, some ground clearance, uh, is kind of the only requirement. So, uh, as you might expect by and large, our class was made up of, um, jeeps, Jeep Wranglers, mainly modern ones, I'd say within the past five years. And, uh, there was, there were only two outliers. There was, um, us with, with our, uh, 1993 Defender. And then there was another guy and his wife who came with a Toyota Tacoma TRD pickup truck. A modern one? Modern one. Yeah. I think he was brand new actually. I think he'd just gotten it within the past year. And, um, so, you know, that's what it took. And, and it was great. Mark is, he's a fantastic instructor. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. I thought, you know, off-roading is, is one of those, those pastimes that, that, um, kind of runs the gamut in terms of, of, you know, the, the types of people and the ambitions and expectations that people have. And, and I, I didn't want to get into a course with, with a lot of big mutters or guys that just want to go wheel in and, and, you know, bash up their vehicles and whatever. And it turned out to be a really pleasant group of folks that, that really just wanted to learn how to, how to do this kind of thing safely. And so, you know, we, we just had really good fun. It was. There were some, certainly some, some scary moments, some anxious moments. I had gone into this without really any off-road experience. I had, I had been a passenger off-road a few times and I had, um, taken, you know, the defender and some past vehicles on kind of fire roads or forest roads. Uh, but nothing, nothing to this, uh, to this extent, it was great. And, uh, you know, uh, I, one of the other guys in the class, this is funny. We, we, we broke for lunch both days. So you had to pack a lunch. We just made some sandwiches and a flask of tea and brought it along. And then we would take a break halfway through. And I was sitting at a table with a guy who had a white dial Explorer two on like yours. And turns out his, his name's Peter and he's, he's a TGN listener. Um, Oh, no way. Yeah. Which is like, you know, like what are the odds? You know, I mean, now I've met, TGN listeners in the strangest places, but, uh, the North woods of Minnesota at a four by four class was, uh, was a new one. And, uh, and he was there with Alyssa and, and he had a Rubicon Wrangler, beautiful truck. And, uh, yeah, he said he was a TGN listener and he said his, uh, his polar explorer may or may not have been influenced by you with yours. So, uh, yeah, Peter, if you're listening to this episode, uh, it was great meeting you and, and, uh, We were, we were divided into two groups, uh, the, the way that the class had, had split up. Mark, the founder of the, of the group, um, had, uh, I think two or three other instructors working with him and they split our group into two groups of about six or seven trucks each. And the one group was the Rubicon group. And I'll explain this in a second. And then the other group was the rest of us. And Peter, this TGN listener was in the other group because he had a Rubicon And the reason Mark split it up that way is because, uh, if you're not familiar with jeeps, a lexicon, um, and James, I know you are the Rubicon is a, is a more. Extremely off-road oriented vehicle that has locking differentials, uh, front and rear so that you can lock left and right side wheels at front and back together, which makes it a more capable off-road vehicle because it won't, uh, spin a wheel that is, uh, on slippery terrain. So our group was the non Rubicon group. So it was the, the other Jeeps, it was the Saharas and the, uh, I guess kind of the base model Wranglers. And so the, the, even though the Tacoma has locking differentials, the TRD version, um, which is a pretty cool truck, actually. Um, uh, it, it still had lower ground clearance, um, and a less experienced driver. So he was with our group and then Mark himself was actually driving, uh, and this is the coolest vehicle of all. It was a 1981. Jeep CJ eight scrambler. Uh, and he'd had this truck for many years. Uh, it was a four speed stick shift. He had a locking differential only on the rear. Um, and he had, you know, no roof, no doors. And, and, uh, you know, he's, he said he's replaced the chassis like two or three times. And the tub was a, was a custom fiberglass, uh, actually body that he had swapped years ago with a straight six, uh, motor in it. Um, just a, Beautiful old battered old, old truck, but it's super cool. But he was with our group. And I think it's because, you know, he, given his, his vehicle, he, he on paper at least would not have been able to keep up with a Rubicon. And so our group with the sort of the lesser outfitted trucks went with him. It was some measure of comfort to me because I, when he asked us at the beginning, who all here is driving a stick shift, Mine was the only hand that went up. And then of course, uh, him with his, uh, with his old, old Jeep. And so it was nice to have somebody that could at least commiserate with, you know, with, with a stick shift, older vehicle, like our defender. |
| James | Yeah, that's fun with the, with the lockers. That is an interesting thing. And if, if, if you're listening and you don't know what a locking differential is, so differential is decides where, which, uh, wheel gets power. And typically cars have, uh, normal vehicles have an open differential. So the most power. coming out of the transmission and going to the wheels will go to the wheel with the least resistance. But if you're off-roading, that's a big problem because you could have a wheel in the air. You could have a wheel that's slipping on rocks, right? Yeah. And so the idea is if you have a locking differential, what it's going to do is it's going to lock the driveline together so that the wheels rotate at the same speed. So you'll see some vehicles have locking differentials under certain scenarios. Some vehicles have E lockers, which is an electronic differential. And some people, some vehicles kind of have a mix of that. Um, the gold standard in many ways is the G wagon, which has, uh, you know, independently controlled three-way lockers. So front, back and down the middle. And it just gives you more flexibility to decide how your wheels are managing the power. And you get a lot of the same You get a lot of the same things in higher-end sports cars. They're just put to different use to keep the axle spinning at the same speed. And it can change the way that a car handles or operates. But for off-roading, it's really considered to be essential, especially in terms of the rear axle, if it's a rear-wheel-drive vehicle. And there's certain considerations in which you want the ability to have it unlocked or locked, turning circles, things like that. Uh, but that, that, that would be why that's kind of crucial to off-road driving. And, um, and a lot of different manufacturers handle that in different ways. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And it was, it was interesting to kind of see that in practice, uh, the defender, um, you know, all old Land Rovers, uh, did not have front and rear locking differentials. They do have a center locking differential, um, which, uh, is controlled by a lever in the, in the cockpit there. you know, driver ability does, uh, you know, and, and I suppose other factors come into play as well. And so, I mean, it's not to say that without the lockers, you can't get through things. And the defender certainly was plenty capable for everything that we did. And I was quite happy with it. Um, and, and pleasantly surprised. Um, but it did make sense for the group to kind of split up along those lines and, and, you know, you could see, and Gashani has put up a, she edited together a nice video of, um, of our experience and it was in an Instagram story. Uh, and, uh, we can link to that, but, uh, you can see some situations where, particularly when we were doing a rock crawling segment where, um, you can actually see the front right wheel of the defender kind of spinning in air, trying to, to kind of grab something, um, and kind of spinning freely while the left wheel was not turning at all. Um, that's because of the front differential being an open differential. But, um, the other added challenge was, was this idea of having a manual gearbox, because, um, Um, it, it does have some advantages, but on, there was one sort of situation where we, we were practicing hill ascents and descents. And, uh, one thing that Mark had told us to do is that, you know, if you get committed up, up a very steep hill and you realize either you can't make it or you've encountered an obstacle or you need to take a different line, you should know how to safely back down the hill because if you just mash the brakes, Um, you're going to slide sideways. You could roll the vehicle, et cetera. So the idea is that you get halfway three quarters of the way up a very steep hill. You should be able to put it into reverse and back down and keep in mind you're in four wheel low. So the, the, the engine compression is actually what kind of slows the vehicle, not the brakes. Um, you should be able to put it in reverse and go back down or, and then even restart on a hill, you know, Stop halfway up and then, and then get going again based on just tire grip and low range gearing. Well, you know, anyone who's driven a stick shift knows that even on a steep city street, it can be a challenge to kind of get going again without the vehicle rolling backwards. And so we did this exercise where we went, we were doing these hill climbs and then he said, you know, okay, I want you to stop halfway up and then kind of get going again. I want to demonstrate to you that your vehicle can do this. Well, I think he had forgotten that I was in a stick shift. And so I stopped halfway up, you know, must've been like a 30 degree incline. And, um, and then he's like, okay, you know, now, now come back to the top. And I was like, shaking my head like, ah, and you know, I, I mean, I've driven stick shifts since the mid eighties. So I'm, I'm pretty good at it. And I, you know, I just kind of did it quickly and got it going again. And, you know, certainly all the tires spawned and grabbed and I didn't roll back too much and, and made it to the top. But, uh, when, when you're doing like rock crawls where like you get bashed up against kind of a boulder or something and you want to kind of creep over it. The modern Jeeps with automatics, some of them have, you know, a crawl feature or hill descent or, you know, these features that will just allow the vehicle where you can just sort of take your foot off the brake and it will just very slowly kind of creep over without rolling backwards at all. Well, you know, I don't have that option. So you spend a lot of time kind of feathering the clutch or timing your approach. Momentum is very key with with an older stick shift truck like this to kind of keep going up a, up a hill while you're also trying to find the correct line to take over and around rocks. And, um, uh, but I was, I was pleasantly surprised I was able to, I was able to do it. There was one particularly big. Rocky climb that I thought there's, you know, I saw it from the bottom. I, it was very daunting. And, you know, we'd heard that, uh, even Rubicons and the other group were getting hung up and stuck in the mud and ruts and on rocks and So I thought, okay, this is gonna be a challenge. And a couple of the vehicles went first and Mark and his other instructor, Jim were up ahead of us kind of spotting for people pointing out which way to go, which rocks to avoid or which rocks to crawl over. And, um, a couple of the other vehicles had had difficulty that Tacoma really, really struggled. Um, despite the lockers, you know, just didn't have the greatest ground clearance. And then he had kind of road tires on as well. Um, And so when it was my turn, I, you know, I just, I kind of picked a line and just had it in four wheel low first gear. And I just kind of, I don't want to say cruise to the top, but, uh, managed to kind of dance my way around the rocks and get all the way to the top. And, and it was, it was really satisfying. It was a very empowering kind of experience to have moments like that. Even the rock crawling was cringe worthy. You know, you hear something scrape or bash or, or, you know, whatever, or you get stuck and it's like that, that's what it's all about. It's a, it's a, I, you know, it sounds a bit goofy and cliche, but you know, it's kind of a team sport, you know, Ghoshani was doing a lot of the spotting pointing out, you know, which way to go. She had to be my eyes and kind of look underneath to make sure I wasn't going to bash my differential or any of the steering rods on, on rocks. Um, but, uh, yeah, and that way, I mean, you learn about the capabilities of your vehicle and I just found that the defenders way more capable than I'll ever be. I mean, this is a. legendary kind of camel trophy Darien Gap kind of, uh, kind of truck. And I'm just this novice city dweller. Um, but it did. Okay. |
| James | Well, yeah, I'm, I'm glad that I'm glad that it worked out well. I mean, I guess I kind of expected as such. I mean, the, the mate, maybe the hold back for the Tacoma is, you know, the, the locker and that is only rear I believe. And it's electric. Oh, okay. That could be, that could be, it could be something that's changed or you can upgrade it from the factory. But in my understanding for four wheel drive tacos, The rear is a locker, then there's a center limited slip differential. But then with an e-locker, it's not mechanical. That's the e part, right? So they're using something to retard the wheel with less grip, usually the brakes. But again, I don't know the specifics of the Toyota system. If you're a Tacoma driver and I'm getting this wrong, one, it's probably not super important to the conversation. But two, I'm doing my best in my experience with, uh, you like donut just built out to Tacoma's from a previous generation. And, uh, one of those had an E locker it's built into the rear axle. And then to go a step, if you want to go a step beyond that, they installed like ARB pneumatic lockers, like hydraulics. |
| Jason Heaton | And, um, I think with bigger tires and ground clearance, this guy would have done a lot better to tires make a huge difference for sure. |
| James | Uh, it's funny with the manual thing. Cause I was kind of hoping that you'd have at least a couple of the other Jeeps there would have been one of these unicorns that buys a JL with the stick right. Jeep has made it. So they really don't seem to want people to buy the stick. I mean, I think the take rates less than 4%. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then I believe, and again, this could change where you live. It could be different, but at least in Canada, and I think in the States, you can only get the six speed manual on either the kind of not the base gas engine, but the least interesting engine, the six cylinder. and or the diesel and the diesel with the stick is probably an absolutely incredible thing to drive off road. Yeah, but I think most people. Yeah, it seems are going with the with the automatic and I you know, if you're if you're rock crawling and you just want to be out there and enjoy yourself, it makes sense to go with the automatic like I get it. Yeah, only by the manual if you think it's going to be more fun because that's the only scenario in which you'll you'll be right. The rest of the time, like automatics have just gotten so good and capable and strong and the rest of it. But it's exciting because I've done a couple like little off roady roads around Toronto, unassumed roads, rutted out off road roads, but nothing with like the crawling or the really steep stuff. And it's fun that you had to sit at the bottom of a hill and look up and be like, I don't know about this. I remember I went, um, I went on the, the launch, the press launch for the current generation Range Rover Evoque. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. And when we were there, it was in London. They had set up like this course in what was kind of, I think an abandoned train yard somewhere in central London or nearly central London. Yeah. So they had this whole course and it was, it was wood that you were driving on kind of like those, those ramp walls that you see for single track mountain biking. Oh, sure. Yeah. Those big, steep things that you're meant to rip across. And there was a guy standing in front of you doing the hand signals. They had a radio in the door in case you really messed it up. And you basically just had to very slowly crawl along. And let's face it, like the Evoque, especially if you put some tires on it, like any modern Land Rover or Range Rover is a seriously capable vehicle. It mostly comes down to tires and ride height. And the Evoque kind of has both. It's not a rock crawler. but it was more than comfortable. Like we, we drove it through a pool, like very deep water and uh, and up and down these weird ramps and then up these. But the one that got me the worst was that it was like a certain degree of like leaning to the side. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. And it was passenger wheel up. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. And I was just driving. I'm like, I'm going to roll it. I'm going to, it's somebody else's car. I'm going to roll it. It's going to go over. Yeah. And then like we finished it and the guy was like, hold, wait here. You know, the next car is not moving as quickly. So I had my window down. I was chatting with him. I was like, how much steeper would that have to be to roll it? He's like a lot. You're not even close. Like we just pick a, we pick enough incline that it makes people feel scared if they don't know what they're doing. I was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. That was scary. |
| Jason Heaton | There was a, there was a trail system that we did on the second day called on the edge. And it was aptly named because it was a, it was a trail that was, Gosh, maybe two feet wider than the defender. And on one side was on the right side of the vehicle was a sheer drop into a ravine with a lot of big boulders at the bottom. And then the left side was the hill coming down quite steep on that side. And so there was really no room other than the width of the vehicle. And before we set off on it, Mark said, you know, what you don't want to do here is, is get too far to the left compensating for that drop, because then you'll start to get further and further up the slope with your left tire and the vehicle will potentially roll. And, uh, it was a little daunting. You know, I was of course the only one in a right-hand drive vehicle. And so I was on the ravine side. So I was actually, it was kind of an advantage because I was able to kind of peer out the window and see just how much room I had. Um, but it also gave me a view right down into the ravine. So it was a little spooky. Um, and we all had radios, you know, just two way radios that, that were clipped onto the, visor. And at one point somebody said, okay, stop, you know, we got a problem. And so we all kind of stopped in line and I walked back to two Jeeps behind me. Uh, and another, uh, student in a, in a Wrangler had really gone up the side of the, of the incline and was at a, I, I, I don't know if all Wranglers have this as a, as a, as a feature, um, or if it was something aftermarket, but it was the, it was the, uh, the angle, Um, it told the, uh, the pitch or the, I guess the roll angle inclinometer. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, I think she said it was a 34 degree angle that she was hung up on a, on a rock. She had gone too close to the embankment, um, on the left side. And there she was with in the driver's seat and her passenger, you know, poor passenger was like looking down into this ravine and it was a pretty precarious angle and everybody was like, okay, this is, this is kind of serious. And Mark and Jim, the two instructors, very quickly, you know, said, okay, roll down the driver window. Um, we're gonna, you know, put a tow rope around a tree up the slope, um, put it on one of your recovery points and then winch, slowly winch it with, with Jim's Jeep behind to, um, while you reverse off this, this slope slowly. And so we all kind of watched while this happened and, and, you know, it was one of those, like, mildly like scary situations where you kind of see what could happen if you do things wrong. And then the other group, uh, in the Rubicon, someone actually rolled, rolled one of the Wranglers and it was a Wrangler with a soft top and it kind of crushed in the rear. All it did was actually damaged the rear frame of the, of the soft top at the back. And then something about rolling it on its side, they had to crawl out the roof and then they righted it and were able to finish. But. It was, it was kind of pouring, uh, smoke. That's gnarly. But, um, you know, I, this is not to say that this, this class is death defying. You can certainly opt out of anything you want and everybody kind of emerged unscathed and still smiling and happy. But, uh, you know, it was kind of a little, little window into, you know, how, how serious, uh, this kind of thing can be. So I didn't have any lasting damage on the defender. Fortunately, despite the kind of clunks that I was hearing when I was doing the rock crawl, I, did manage the trailer hitch is kind of a weak spot. It's kind of a low point on this, unfortunately. And it had these built in kind of aftermarket steps, so you could climb into the back more easily and that got bent up. And then there's like these two small bumperettes on each rear corner that got bent, but I just had to kind of kick them, kick them back into, into proper orientation after the fact. And they were all fine. But other than that, it did okay. |
| James | So when you're doing this, is there, is it kind of like the, the lead car is the first one, um, going, going along and then someone gets out and they do the hand signal thing or is it all on the radio? How's it work? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So, so Mark was in the front of our group and then, you know, five or six of us and then Jim, the other instructor was at the back and he had like a 99 Jeep. I don't know if that's a TJ, um, but, uh, that he'd done some modifications to over the year, but a pretty, pretty basic, basic Jeep, but he, he also took a lot of the photos and he did a nice job of that, but he was, um, a good calming presence, uh, doing followup. And then we all had radios in our vehicle. So Mark would say, okay, coming up here, there's a bit of a tricky section, try to stay to the left, whatever. But then Mark would kind of navigate a section and then he would park and then he would come back and kind of spot for us. Um, and then along the way, you know, I mean, you're going so slowly. I mean, I never got out of first gear the whole, the whole weekend. Um, Uh, Gashani would jump out and kind of direct me around rocks or, or through, through water or whatever it was. Um, so yeah, the, the instructors kind of flanked the group or bookended us as we were moving through. Um, and they did, they did a really nice job and, you know, I would say, you know, it's funny cause at the end of all this, Mark handed us all a bunch of like these postcards and kind of ads for his business. And he's like, you know, if you're ever at the grocery store and you like park next to kind of a cool Jeep, like stick one of these under the, under the windshield wiper. Like a lot of people have, have jeeps or land Rovers or, or, you know, land cruisers or whatever that like want to do something a little more ambitious. Like they want to get out of the parking lot, out of them, you know, the city streets, but they're a little intimidated. I mean, that's exactly how I was. And I would absolutely a hundred percent recommend something like this. If you're in the Midwest, this a iron range off road park is kind of the premier location in this area, but you know, certainly out West, you're going to find all sorts of stuff like this, but Yeah. I can't recommend it highly enough. And I, I actually want to go back, um, next year sometime and, and, you know, put together a little group of friends, you know, Mark will do private classes and, um, you know, I even thought, you know, it'd be fun to do like a TGN thing or something. I mean, just kind of just super fun, get some folks to kind of road trip there. We, we ended up staying, we rented like a condo at an off season ski resort place. That was a pretty quiet and pleasant place to be. It was about 15 minutes from the off road park and, Um, it was just a blast. It was just so much fun. Like it was, it really, you know, sitting in the vehicle for eight hours, you wouldn't think would be, would be, uh, exhausting, but I mean, I'd go to bed that middle night, you know, that Saturday night, like just worn out from, but still kind of jacked up from the adrenaline. I mean, it was, it was, it was proper fun. It was, uh, it was really good. One, one little tip that we did take away from this and, you know, I've heard of this before, but I'd never actually seen it in action was, was Mark and a couple of the other instructors in the group. for the lunch break, they'd, they'd strapped, uh, food onto the exhaust manifolds of their vehicles all morning while they were driving around. They call it manifold meat, but one guy actually zip tied a can of, you know, chef Boyardee soup or SpaghettiOs or something to the exhaust manifold of his, of his Jeep. And then at lunchtime, you just snip it off, open the can and you've got like piping hot soup or Mark had done like smoked pork shoulder or something like that, that he wrapped tightly in tinfoil and and lashed that onto his, uh, to his exhaust manifold and then just put it into like tortillas at lunch and had a hot, hot meal. I mean, it was just blown away. She's like, Oh, when do we go camping next? We're definitely going to do that. And it's a, it's a cool idea. |
| James | I always got a laugh on top gear. They would do that. But half the time they would just put like a piece of bacon on the engine and then they'd be like, you know, this doesn't taste great. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | I think the key is to seal it up from any, uh, spatter and whatever else. Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, even even, you know, a great car is going to be dirty after a few miles when it comes to what's on the engine. But that's super fun. It sounds like it sounds like a real blast. I've had some experience doing that both at a paid level and at like a press level and serves with like driver instruction courses. Yeah. And not a ton of off road. They had an off road rally course set up when I went on the Lamborghini Urus launch. Oh, yeah. So they allowed you to do two laps kind of in anger. but it was a single track. It was just as wide as the, as the, or it's just a big vehicle. If you imagine like driving a really big Subaru, like STI, that's kind of how this feels like triple the power. Yeah. So that was fun and kind of scary. And they, they definitely had it designed. So there wasn't any actual technical challenge, just kind of power it out of everything and the all wheel drive. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Uh, but a lot of that stuff is when it comes down to like, when you're learning, I think that adds a lot of it. Like it's one thing to find a road and go for a drive. But the whole time you're kind of hoping like, Oh, I hope I don't snap a control arm. And then I'm stranded out here. Right. Uh, you know, I don't know if CAA or AAA is going to drive down an off road road to come get me, uh, that kind of thing, but to do it in a course where, yeah, when, when you do put your wheel in the wrong place and you might roll your vehicle, someone's there to figure out how to do the, the, you know, the recovery safely and that kind of thing. I, I can't support this enough. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a great way to experience a vehicle. Like a lot of people these days own SUVs. And to your point, you know, don't, it's more about the space and the comfort of winter driving and that sort of thing. But a lot of these can do some stuff off road and you get out into nature and I don't think it has to be rock crawling. Like I've driven down some unassumed roads that are really lovely. And I would say that the challenge for the most part is finding a place where you can do it, where you're not like, am I maybe trespassing? Is someone about to get really angry? Yeah, because that's always my concern. I'll drive around even area by my cottage and I'll see roads that are marked as unassumed by Google. But then, you know, they have no trespassing. And then you look up the municipality and you're like, well, the roads mostly on, you know, public land. So I should be able to drive on it. But you don't know if the person who maybe lives at the other end of the road or off an offshoot of the road feels the same way as you. They might not. I probably don't. Yeah. So I think that's some of the challenges that I always liked about uh, venture forward, venture four wheel drive, you know, Chris Sean's YouTube channels. He, he uses some apps, you know, Gaia GPS and such to make sure that he can really get around. And it seems like there's areas where there's tons of that, uh, you know, uh, BLM land, et cetera. Um, and there's some where there's less and I should definitely, um, uh, see if there's a similar, like maybe guys got the same sort of thing for Ontario. I've just never tried. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I mean, our goal of doing this was, was really to get comfortable with less than comfortable travel situations. So if, if we do want to, you know, we've done some camping in the defender and we want to do more of that and potentially some light overlanding stuff. And, you know, inevitably you're going to get into some, you know, rougher terrain. And, and even if it's just a fire road that has some washed out sections or some Rocky bits or water crossings or whatever, you want to be able to know, you know, how to get out of it, what, what your vehicle can do and can't do and what's safe and not safe. And I, I, you know, this, this was just great. And I, Like you, I mean, I fully endorse stuff like this, whether it's an off-road course or, you know, winter driving class, you know, driving on ice or performance driving or track driving or anything like that. |
| James | It's just fun. Yeah. I've done Porsche and, um, Mercedes, uh, winter driving, uh, Porsches is more like track driving in the winter and Mercedes is a lot more about car control. It's on a frozen ice. Uh, it's on a frozen Lake in Manitoba. Um, both are incredible. I highly recommend either. You know, I, when I was younger, I went through three, maybe now it's two, but at the time I think it was three courses, maybe four days total over the course of the while of the BMW performance driver sort of program. Yeah. And so that starts with like a half day, you sit in a class for an hour and then you go and you do some skid pad stuff, kind of get an idea for car control and then it accelerates from there. Yeah. And I never got to the part, you know, eventually you can apply for your race license, you can go do like a weekend at Mont Tremblant with open track driving and that kind of thing. And I'm sure that's incredible. It's also just like five grand. Oh yeah. So I didn't, I never got that far. I think I probably topped out wherever the course maybe was around a thousand dollars, maybe a little bit more. Yeah. Um, I really enjoyed all those. So I agree whether, whether you're curious about driving your vehicle off road or you've always thought like, Hey, I, you know, I I'm a capable driver. I'd love to see how I fare on a track. Um, all of this kind of stuff with an instructor, whether it's a radio or right seat is, um, is very valuable. I think it's super worth it. It's going to increase your confidence behind the wheel, especially in bad scenarios. Yeah. Uh, which is when you need it the most. Uh, I think this is super, and I'm thrilled you had a good time and, and I'm not at all surprised that the, um, the defender was more than capable of it, but, uh, glad there wasn't any damage or anything like that, which can happen at these things. Like you said, with the rollover. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, cool. So, you know, Hats off. Thanks to Mark and Iron Range Off-Road. And certainly if anyone has any specific questions or comments about your own off-roading experience or about this class in particular, drop them in the comments under the notes for the episode. |
| James | Absolutely. You want to get to final notes? Yeah, let's do it. Why don't you go first? Yeah, I'm happy to go first. So mine this week is actually one that, Jason, you sent to me. I haven't really been up to that much. We already talked about Squid Game, which was possibly the only other thing that would have kind of worked here. But this is an Instagram page and a website called J.E. Brickworks. So on Instagram, it's J.E. underscore Brickworks. And it's essentially Lego sets, both complete sets or just instructions that will allow you to build a range of cars. So they're smaller cars, closer to what we've seen with like the Speed Champions stuff I've talked about before. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | So you're not talking about these giant things that are going to take hours. The idea is they're more in line with a small model in terms of size and they're $20, $30, $40 for the most part. uh, completed kits, uh, would include things like he's got this incredible, that's in two 40 Z like a vintage one. I think the Kuntosh looks incredible in Lego. It's all hard angles and straight lines so that it works beautifully. Weirdly, he's made a beautiful mirror, which I'm going to have to buy all of these ones where it's the kit with the instructions is 35 pounds. So it's more money than a, than a speed champions, but it's a different sort of thing. And I would say they're almost Almost all of them, if not all of them, are better executed designs of the original car than the Speed Champions are, or at least equal to. Like the 308 looks incredible. I have the S1 Quattro from Speed Champions and he has a Quattro Group B kit car here. A really fun, really cool SL300, a killer Toyota 2000 GT, not a common car, you know, a really, really cool collector car. I'm really thrilled by this. And then if you Even if you don't have any interest in buying and building a little Lego kit, go to the website or the Instagram and just look at the instructions, because each one has a photo of what he's built. Yeah. And it's like some really cool stuff. There's a Julia GTA. There's a Defender, a blue long body two door Defender, old like a Series 3, I guess. Yeah. Cayman GT4, 930 Turbo, VW Transporter, a really cool, you know, the two door Range Rover series ones, the 1970s Range Rover. Yeah, there's I really like this. This is super fun. They're really cute. There's like a really awesome Volvo wagon with like a roof rack. Yeah, I could see this. You know, the instructions are something like seven and a half pounds, which seems fair. And then in the little about section here, it's saying that you can use a service called Bricklink, which I guess is where you order raw Lego and It's this self-populated list so you can get all the pieces you need and then order it. So you do the instruction from him and all of the pieces from BrickLink and you've got yourself a kit. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it's super cool. And yeah, I love this. Super, super fun. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And I've got to give credit where credit's due. This came to me from Matt Nundorf, an old, uh, old gear patrol buddy of mine, a fellow Canadian, um, up on your side of the border. Uh, Matt's great. A little car and motorcycle buff. Anyway, he, he sent me, uh, yesterday on Instagram, the, uh, the blue Land Rover and said, ah, this might interest you. And then that sent me down the rabbit hole and I sent it to you, but. Yeah. I mean, this stuff's so affordable and it's so cool. I think I had talked about in a past episode that Histobrick, which make this equally niche, uh, custom Lego guy who does, um, like Great Lakes ships and the Titanic and Britannic and some of these, these custom, uh, ship models. But, uh, yeah, these are, these are cool and so affordable. I mean, it's dangerously affordable. |
| James | So, yeah. And then did you, speaking of Titanic, did you see the new Titanic Lego? |
| Jason Heaton | No. Uh, yes I did. Yes. Yeah. |
| James | That looks amazing. 9,090 pieces. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James | $630 is the price I'm seeing. I think that's yeah. U S I'm seeing us price. So that's like, that's an $850 Canadian. |
| Jason Heaton | And I think it's gigantic too. |
| James | I don't think it's gotta be. Um, let's see. Dimensions is 54 inches long. Okay. Yeah. That's like 18 high and seven inches wide. Yeah. It comes with like the little plinths that a boat would sit on. So you can like put it on your, on a table, I guess you need a big table. 54 inches. That's yeah. $630. But I know you mentioned the Titanic and if we didn't mention this, we were going to get a lot of emails being like, you can get a Lego Titanic. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I saw it. |
| James | It's insanity. That's a full-time job with expenses. Yeah. Right. So funny. Uh, but yeah, so J E brickworks again, that's a J E brickworks.com or J E underscore brickworks on Instagram. Jonathan Elliott, uh, great work, man. Uh, if, if we ever cross paths, I'm, I'm, I'm thrilled by these. Yeah. Super fun. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | And what do you got? Well, I've got a, uh, I guess it's a two part sort of thing, but it's, it's a story or a video called devil's teeth. This is on YouTube and it's, uh, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes long. It's, uh, it's some kind of archival, uh, film footage, uh, edited together with some, some kind of modern underwater footage of a guy named Ron Elliott, who is, uh, he's a former urchin diver. So he would, uh, kind of a commercial urchin diver, uh, in Northern California who would use a surface fed hookah system to, to dive in the Farallon Islands off of outside of San Francisco Bay off the coast of California for, for sea urchins. This area, if you're familiar with it, is known for a pretty high population of great white sharks. And I think it's elephant seals that seasonally roost there and swim around there. And that's what draws the great whites. And Ron is a fairly fearless guy who, during his urchin diving, took a fascination with these sharks and started making films of them and then working with the researchers that live on the island there to research the sharks. And, um, Um, so this video came from, from an article I saw in the New York times by Bonnie Tsui and, and she's a really great writer. I think I've read her work in outside magazine over the years and she's written a couple of books about open water swimming. Um, and she wrote a book about Ron and, and kind of his, his fearlessness and his, his interest in diving with the sharks. And then there was a link to this video. So, uh, I'm going to put in a link to this New York times article and hopefully you can read that, um, without a paywall. Um, And then, uh, also the, the YouTube video, which is, which is just great. I mean, I love, I love the kind of the quality of this video. And, and I think, you know, we've, we've took, you know, we certainly talk about diving enough and sharks to a certain degree, but, uh, I've long had a fascination with the Farallon islands. I remember reading a book years ago by Susan Casey called devil's teeth, which is the old nickname for the, the set of islands. And it's just such a spooky ominous place. Um, and then knowing that the waters around it are populated by, by great whites. And so he's just kind of sent a shiver up my spine. And then, then there's this guy who, who kind of has this understanding and he's, you know, he, he survived an attack that almost took off his hand, um, by a shark, but he's like, you know, we're, we're in their territory. You respect them. He's learned, you know, how to, how to kind of, uh, work among them, uh, and film them. And, and I don't know, it's just, uh, It's just a really interesting read, uh, in the article. And then, and then the video is definitely worth, worth seeing as well. Um, this kind of murky water and these, and these big sharks, and then this guy, uh, kind of diving among the kind of the kelp and gloomy waters out there. |
| James | So yeah, definitely. I, uh, I clicked on that while you were talking, you just muted it. It's, it's creepy to watch with no, with no sound. Yeah. Yeah, man, the fair lawns, like if you needed to, if you just needed in your mind to draw or imagine a place where there's great white sharks, this is it. I mean, the water's beautiful, but on the darker side, you know, dark blue, green, and then these like really kind of jagged, sparse peaks essentially coming up out of the water. And you're like, this is just a place where things are, are gnarly. |
| Jason Heaton | It looks very primal. It looks like right out of, you know, like a Harry Potter or something like this is where the, you know, the evil villain lives or something like that. Yeah, it's, uh, it's good. It's a bit spooky, but, uh, it's a good read. Good, good, good watch. |
| James | Yeah. Well, yeah. So we'll be sure to have both of those in the show notes. And if any of you end up getting one of these kits, be sure to tag us in the photo you put on Instagram for the Lego and, uh, and yeah, try not to, if you get to Farallon Island, you know, stay away from the sharks if you can. As always, thanks so much for listening. You can subscribe to the show via notes.thegrenado.com or check the feed And we leave you with this quote from Jack London, which happens to also be a subtle nod to No Time to Die for those who've seen it, who said, |
| Jason Heaton | The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. |