There is no substitute...

[H8PVMNT]

I have my own real estate appraisal business.  I have the rural remote property niche, so some of my job is reasonably bearable field work, but alot of it is super teadious office work.  Even though I occasionally get to actually wheel while working most of the time I'm just driving somewhere boring. Since I've had my own business my personal time hase been drastically deminished. I like to get on this forum to think about wheeling for 10 minutes at a time but there is just no substitute for actually wheeling. I find that since I've had my own business I get to go actualy wheeling like maybe 4 or 5 times a year, where before I got to go out maybe twice a month.

I am 36 and have a wife and two boys, who also love wheeling.

I am trying to figure out if there are any correlating factors as to how much we get to wheel in life...

So my question is:

1)What do you do for a living?

2)Are you self empoyed or work for someone else?

3)How old are you?

4)What is your home/family situation?

5)And the big question: How often do you get out and have a decent trail day?

[95toyrunner]

1) student
2) work for someone else
3) 21
4) outta state school, apartment with one buddy
5) MAYBE once a month (not even my rig either cause its not done)

[bleakhorizon]

1) sell parts/wrench
2)both
3)28
4)own/2kids ex wife
5)used to be more now maybe once every 2-3 months

[ajordan1975]

1. Unemployed at the moment
2. Same as above
3. 37
4. Married, 2 kids, live w/ inlaws
5. Once last year, twice this year!!

[Cheesemaker]

1. cheesemaking  (I work with Bleakhorizons other half  )
2. for the man
3. 40
4. married, 3 kids, and very busy and broke all the time.
5. I don't get to go wheeling as often as I would love to do, but I do get to run away up the Kilchis River once in a while.  It's more just driving old logging roads, and firebreaks.  Or, I'm just sitting on the river bank watching the steelhead and salmon swimming upstream while drinking a cold one. 

[H8PVMNT]

Yeah I get to fish alot more than I get to wheel because we have a good trout stream on our property. I guess I need to build a good trail over there then I could fish and wheel 30 seconds from my house.

Hey I need to hook up with you Tillimook area guys next summer.  We took a trip up there during a road/wheeling/surfing trip last July and I had a heck of a time finding the good stuff.  Last time I wheeled there for real before that it was like 1996 and needless to say things have changed alot since then. We wanted to wheel the back side of 7up and a few other moderate to decent trails.  We were in my 4Runner and a Dana 60ed CJ7 but we were with a guy in an H2 so we were kind of limited.  We went through happy meal and wheeled a bunch of the easy stuff in the front (not really wheeling at all) and spent an hour geting him around the high side of the stump on the bypass going down little rubicon. Then we got separated and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find eachother.

Anyways we determined we need a local guide... Would any of you guys we willing to meet up in like August 2013 for a day on the trails? We could trade for some Montana deep snow wheeling or a trip up Compressor Trail in N Idaho sometime.

[Wainiha]

1.  Construction/Home maintenance

2.  Someone else/Myself

3.  36

4.  Rent/Single no kids

5.  Only a few hear and they are the stickiest red clay, rutted up trails ever( no rock crawling).  They are hard.  and after a few times, boring.
     I'm not even sure they are legal.  There is the beach, fun, and illegal as well.

     Last the road to my owned property.  It is a long, muddy, with some rock too.  It used to be a road to the quarys' rock crusher.  Legal.
   
      So once a month



Oh yeah, it is legal to go on the beach if your fishing.  So you always have to carry a pole.
     

[22rMudToy]

work at a Hardees/go to school

Work for another person obviously

17

not married no kids living with parents and little sister

Bein from the south "trail" means mud and we used to go a good bit till the land owner started puttin re-bar in the holes and cops started tryin to catch us so now maybe once every few weeks

[Cheesemaker]

Bein from the south "trail" means mud and we used to go a good bit till the land owner started puttin re-bar in the holes and cops started tryin to catch us so now maybe once every few weeks

This is what gives us a bad name.      

[22rMudToy]

oh Well in a small town an hour away from the next real trail then thats all you got. Never caused any trouble just had fun out there and we never went durin huntin season cause we didnt wanna ruin a hunt. We like to have a good time but we're considerate about everyone else and never left trash on his land. The other guy said his trails werent legal either so why jump on me? Its cool though we all just here cause we like wheelin right?

[Wainiha]

When I say illegal.  I mean, not a designated wheeling area.  The two trails are accepted by most as is and what they are used for.  They are public service roads.  One for a damn and one for the powerlines.  They have been used for wheeling for 30 years.

No ones private land and no one cares.  That is Kauai for you. 

You can drink beer and smoke pot in the beach parking lots too.

Calling the cops is highly frowned upon here.

[22rMudToy]

Thats pretty much how that road is for us in our small town. Our dads used to go out there way before us. logging companies created the ruts back in the late 60's and its been the most popular trail around for years. Its privately owned now when it wsant before. thats why we cant go as much.

[H8PVMNT]

Yeah we've all had the "urban wheeling" spots, the powerline roads and such.  Some of the best wheeling I've had was in a snow dump area on county property where they dump plowed snow from parking lots and you get a glacier/ice crawling course by late winter. That wasn't exactly legal but nobody cared and it wasn't tearing up somebody elses land either. I guess most of us have participated in a bit of outlaw wheeling at one time or another.  When your 17 it's kind of expected, but you find over the years that tearing up private land just creates a bad image for the sport in general and makes it alot tougher to be taken seriously as a legitimate sport. I understand you had a kind of historically used trail there and it sounds like now the owhership has changed the access which is too bad but there's not much you can do about that.

I own land now that I sometimes let people wheel on, but I have to say I wouldn't let just anybody go tear it up either. I have a big red built Toyota in an area wtih 99% stock trucks so every time somebody rips anything up around here most people think it's me even though it's not, which ticks me off a great deal. I was also 17 once and liked to spin in the mud at one time so I understand both sides of the coin. Alot of us have seen legal trails get closed over the years due to guys spinning up stuff off the trail and making a bad image for the sport.  I have a buddy with a small ORV park where you can do whatever you want if you pay to get in and sign the waiver, he wouldn't care if you went in there and set fire to your truck while dancing naked to irish pub music .


However you feel about it though the fact is if it's private and they want you off it's the land owner's right. You're 17 and you can pull the just kids playin' card for a little while longer, but as you get older you have to clean up your act a bit or it gets expensive and disapointing. Don't be suprised if you get the wolverines unleashed on you when you talk about wheeling like that on a forum though, most of us are just trying to keep a clean respectable image for the sport.

All that said if we can just keep to the facts on this post I would appreciate it.  I'm not trying to make a trail ethics thread here, I'm just trying to get some actual statistics on employement/lifestyle/age and how it correlates with wheeling and personal time. I don't care it you wheel in a golf course at midnight or if you get to wheel legal trails, I just want to know how often you get to go in relation to the other factors I listed.  Thanks for the posts so far guys!


Here is a pic from a great urban wheeling opportunity we had at our county fairgrounds where we had a 4WD trials event and they left the course up. Legal? Maybe, maybe not. Tolerated? Yes.  Private property? No...

The lesson here is if you don't have a legitimate place to wheel, make one happen! The local kids played on this for several years untill they smoothed it out for horse trailor parking.

[22rMudToy]

I understand and im glad someone admits to ridin on illegal trails too. and i know there are consequences to everything i do. Got a $500 ticket and 50 hours of community service at the end of this past summer for underage drinkin and open container lol cops dont like it too much when you tell them you were "framed" and someone else put the can in your car while you smell like the bud light brewery . Didnt like the stares i got on Sunday morning either. So iv kinda grown away from sneakin onto land like that and iv grown up a little just from that big experience. i just like to talk about the good times. sick picture though, we've all put a yota on its side before haha. I actually might take my truck to a LEGAL trail this weekend with my dad for the first time on real rocks.

[Prismo]

1)What do you do for a living?
I am retired but I keep busy with a small home based printing company & serve on the board of directors of my local water district (& read the meters once a month)

2)Are you self empoyed or work for someone else?
Basically self employed

3)How old are you?
57

4)What is your home/family situation?
Own my own home

5)And the big question: How often do you get out and have a decent trail day?
Any day I like. I have a trail that starts out of my back yard lol

[86bobbedtoy]

1)What do you do for a living?
construction rental maintenence

2)Are you self empoyed or work for someone else?
self/property-realty mgmnt

3)How old are you?
old......................28

4)What is your home/family situation?
was a apt manager but buying a house w 5 acres

5)And the big question: How often do you get out and have a decent trail day?
rare, im gonna say twice a year