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NO SUCH THING AS NANNY STATE WHEELIN!

 Sunday was a great day for some off road summer fun. It was a little warm in Corral Canyon, and no it’s wasn’t global warming, it’s called July. I’m always amazed by people’s astonishment over warm weather. We use to call it summer and today it’s a catastrophe and instead of “Sun Block” we used tanning oil. Yes it smelled like a Pina Colada but it was probably made from asbestos extract. There was no such thing as a spray on bronzer either and if you wanted to get that effect you would use lead based paint and a tattoo gun. Despite the warm day and the coming apocalypse we had a great time.  

 Now I' ve said many times that you never know what you’ll learn when you’re off roading, and this weekend was no exception. Just one example, who knew that Ken Steele was a Jr.?  I didn’t… I thought it was just good redneck law to put that on the table. The reason I know now is the original Ken Steele was there and if you thought Ken was cool you should’ve met his old man. Let’s just say real men lived long before us and they didn’t invent warning labels, if they had they would have said “Natural Selection in Affect Today!” The best part of meeting the original Steele was finding out that Ken didn’t have to swim through a cesspool up hill in both directions to get to school, but if he had his Dad would have told him that was stinkin’ dumb! I could have easily called this blog “Poppa and Jr. Steele Wheelin’” but it sounds a bit like the Smurfs and I’m more of a Flintstones guy.

 The people made the day great but what made it interesting was the driving dynamics. There was a strange little ballet going on between some of our members. Ken was teaching his old people tolerance class and even Poppa Steele had had enough. I think I heard him say, “My John Deere doesn’t go this slow.” This didn’t detour Ken Jr. he had his protocol.  Travis was rockin’ the 40’s and that wasn’t an era in music. We know he’s big but he had to keep showing us with that Dirty Harry smile. I felt that feeling of “Get off my lawn” after hip surgery with a 44 magnum feeling, but it was bad ass! Balvino would try to one up him with air moves that would make Richard Simmons proud. I don’t know if he was trying to impress the wife or make sure she never came back again. All I know was somehow all the antics came together with a seamless flow, like off road dueling banjos. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen on the trail. There was a lot of bravado and no fights, hard to explain.

  I swear the major key to life is fun with family and friends and making fun of both. Off roading provides the glue to bring us together and the terror to make us question everything but somehow we manage to walk away wanting more. A really good  challenge should try our skills, intelligence, sanity, and relationships but if all survive then what we show is character and what we have are life long friends and a really good time. One thing is sure this group of people doesn’t anyone telling them how to have fun. I’m sure Poppa Steele agrees because that’s just good redneck law, even if some people think were stinkin’ dumb!