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We headed out to Butler Mainline to air down. After everyone made to the trail head it appeared that we were missing someone. Apparently Mia got left behind, and didn't know if we had turned off the main road so Rosie went back to get her.

Most of us had headed down the trail to the first obstacle to wait for them. After a little while we heard on the CB that Lee had broken his transmission mount not a few minutes down from the trail head. No doubt it was already in rough shape and was on it's way out. I hate little gremlins like that.

Mia towed Lee back to the main road where he got a tow truck to pick up the Sami, and Rosie went with them to make sure they made it out ok. Jay, being in the unfortunate position of being the tail gunner now, was sent back to pickup passengers. Back at the first obstacle I believe the comment was made about one sewing machine pulling another sewing machine. Yes, we are a sarcastic bunch of rock monkeys that's for sure.

Everyone made their way down the first group of rocks without a hitch, and Keith managed to put on a pretty good showing of air under his rear-end. Um, I'm talking about the 3.5' his passenger's side tire got off the ground, not the other air coming out of his rear-end. Eeeewwwww.....

Noel, Simon, and Warren had gone up ahead. I can only assume because Noel was impatient and wanted to break something sooner than later. Hee hee...um ya, we caught up with them, and apparently Noel had thought it would be a good idea to move some dead-fall out of the way with his radiator...Doh! Noel headed back up the trail and home.

On my way down, I was testing the laws of gravity at every opportunity. I just love taking my Jeeps to the very edge of flopping on their side. I'd say over the years I have attempted to get as close as one can get to a flop without actually going over about 100 times, and never have I yet to flop one. I know it will happen one day, but not this day. I think I came close about a half dozen times on this run. It's always more fun with passengers onboard as well. I think it was the first major one that I stopped on the top of and asked Cody to get out to take pictures. I've never seen that kid move so fast in my life. Not only that, but Tim was in the back seat, and he whipped off his seat belt, and said, "um ya, I think I'll be getting out too", and out he jumped.

*Update...click here to see me the following weekend!

The plan now was to meet Rosie and Mia on Boneyard Mainline and head to Escalator for the completion of the run. Well, we ended up taking a long time to get there. Nearing the end of the trail we ran into a bit of a snag. There was a very large stump that narrowed the trail at one point. The obstacle was a little deceiving, as the approach was loose dirt and rocks, and the stump was directly across from a good sized tree. You had to make a relatively tight left hand turn coming into the narrowed section and there wasn't much room for maneuvering as there was a bit of a cliff on the passenger's side.

This is where Bucky decided to tempt fate and see how close he could come to rolling off the cliff without actually rolling off the cliff. He got jammed up with his rear end close to the edge, and a big ass rock right in front of him. With Kenny taking control of the situation (since he's the Big Ass Truck expert around this group), we cinched up the truck's rear and front ends to a couple trees using tree savers, rope, and come-a-longs. It took us a little while to jostle him around, and we had to move the big stump (which we put back later), but we got him out of the hairy situation eventually.

Once we got everyone through this section, we found Rosie and Mia had come up the trail the other way to find us. So off to No-Way-Out and the last leg of the trail before Boneyard we go.

I did a pretty good job of convincing Rosie that No-Way-Out backwards would be pretty easy. He was in front of the group so he went down first. No-Way-Out is like a large gully. On one side, the side we were on, it is a loose dirt descent, and on the other side is a loose dirt hill climb of about 70 yards give or take. Rosie makes it down no problem, but the other side proved to be a bit much for his open diffs and all-terrain style tires.

He gave it a couple good tries, but just couldn't get up all the way. I had descended into the gully by this point, and after some shouting back and forth it seemed like the plan was for him to try to make room for me to get around, and then I would attempt to tug him the rest of the way up from the top.

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