Campfire Tales - August, 1997

Family Fun Road
at 
Spring Creek

by
Larry E Heck

Another of the many adventures of PASS PATROL

Everyone pretty much had this one decoded long before the trip left Denver.  “Anything with a name like Family Fun Trip, was gonna be a real gear jamber.”

We left town with Boss & U-Boat Commander from Texas, Red Rover from California, Happy Jack from Kansas, Trap Door, Slowpoke, Programmer, Snap Shot, and me.  More than half the vehicles had lockers and winches.  Those with the lockers used them numerous times and most of the group got to use their winches.

Of course we got in the way of other folks who didn’t like the pace we putt along at, but we just moved over and let’um pass.  One group that went around us was in such a hurry, they banged, clanged, and scraped just about every rock that dared poke its top above ground level.  Our group managed to make the entire journey without any new dents or serious scrapes.  A few skid plates got autographed but that was mostly ignored.

Some of the group turned out to be good road builders. I reckon they didn’t like the angles I put ole Trigger in.  Might have looked a bit too threatening.  The next thing I knew, they were carrying rocks in by the dozens and putting them in the exact spot where they wanted them.  Then a fella who was deft came spinning, slipping, and sliding up the trail and knocked the entire pile of rocks back down the hill.   Oh well!

After our group went up one difficult spot, a fella in a Jeep came up behind us and decided the road was too easy so he threw out the rest of the rocks our road builders put in.   To his surprize, his Jeep wouldn’t climb that obstacle no matter what angle he tried.  He was kinda embarrassed when he had to put some of the rocks back to make it through.

I used one obstacle to realign my TJM bumper.  Last week, I was pulling out of the apartment lot and stopped behind a woman at the stop sign.  I’m not sure why she did what she did, but my guess was she had run a stop sign earlier in the day and decided to make it up by stopping at this one twice.  While my wife and I sat patiently in ole Trigger, this woman put her car in reverse and backed right into that TJM bumper.  Of course, it would take a lot of muscle for some street car to put a scratch in that shiney polished aluminum hunk of metal but the back end of her car was looking a little messed up.  She got out all worried that I was gonna hit her with something but the only thing she had changed on ole Trigger was the alignment of the bumper on the drivers side.  There was just enough play in the bolts, that she pushed the bumper back about an inch.  Of course, the proper way to fix such a problem is to loosen the bolts, realign the bumper, then tighten it back down.  That’s the proper way.  But for those of us who are too lazy to do that, the easy thing to do is to get the vehicle into a situation where it has to be winched out.  The torque from the winch pulling on the bumper popped it right back in place.

It took us a long time to get through the trail.  We finally had lunch about 2pm and then headed off for Saxon Mountain.

For those of you who wondered who that little fella was ... the one Boss called U-Boat Commander ... his past does have a little color.  Here’s the way Boss describes U-boat Commander.  Excuse the spelling.  Boss is a Doctor and he is used to writing prescriptions.

“I may bring the U-boat Commander on Pearl.  He has had the best time of his life on these trips.  I might relate a little of his story - when Hitler came to Vienna, Fred was elected to serve on the U-boats when he was 18 years old.  He was shot out of the water 3 times on U boats - and survived. Twice he had to eject out of the torpedo tubes at 150 feet under, and was blown off the deck by a 500 lb. bomb dropped by a Spitfire.  Was in the north sea for 35 minutes before being picked up by a German destroyer.

He subsequently became a citizen of Canada, and helped build the French naval station in Tahiti.  He ended his career with Brown and Root and Fleur designing off-shore oilwell platforms, for 60 wells + in the north sea (ie.1 billion dollar rigs).  He is a no nonsense kind of guy with a great sense of humor - pretty good for being an unsolicited player for the fuhrer! 

His wife was a telephone operator for Hitler in Berlin.  She came home one day, turned the corner, and the whole block was gone thanks to our B-17's.  You need to meet her sometime.  They have both setteled in Bastrop, Texas - 30 miles from Austin, in a pine forest.”

We finished our day by running over Cumberland Pass and camping near the ghost town of Geneva.  It was a beautiful night with lots of Campfire Tales.  I got everybody prepared for the following day over Red Cone by telling them that three out of four vehicles in the last group I took made it down without turning over.

Happy Trails!

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