The web and mail server is back up, so feel free to e-mail us again. The office with Melanie's PC, etc., isn't setup yet, so in the mean time we're using the small 'Jeep Laptop'. Hopefully I'll get around to setting up the office soon, but the Todo list is quite long. :-) Mike and Johanne have been giving us a hand -- Mike painted the garage, wired a new circuit for the alarm system, helped install the dishwasher, and a bunch of other stuff. He's helped us out a lot. The move took a lot of effort from everyone, so it's a good thing we don't do this too often. :-)

The new place is great. We went for a walk by the waterfront and saw several fishermen on the marina's breakwater. I'm sure Pete will love playing in the water, once we make sure the current is ok. We have a local kid cutting our grass, so we've put off buying a lawnmower for now. The traffic from the highway will take some getting used to... Not much we can do about it. If there were houses between us and the highway, instead of a park, it would probably help cut down the noise a bit more. And if the house had been farther from the highway, it would have been a lot more expensive. :-) You can't have everything, but aside from the highway noise (which we should get used to in a few weeks), and the garage door not being tall enough for the Jeep, everything else is great. :-)

On Wednesday we're going to Eric's new place (aka our old place) to pickup some cables and winter tires we left behind. On Thursday the window guy is coming over to check the back door / window for the leak issue. Hopefully it won't be a big job, like replacing the whole door / window frame... And on Friday we're doing the Ikea thing to buy some curtains. Not soon enough, if you ask me. :-)

Once we have everything squared away, we'll have everyone over for a BBQ. :-D

js.

It's been a crazy few months -- both of us finding new jobs, looking for a house, selling our place to Eric, and ordering an off-road trailer. Phew! And the fun isn't over yet! :-) We're picking up the trailer at the end of the month, and haven't been able to insure it for the time between the import and registration dates -- we may end up taking our insurance through the manufacturer for the first month. :-) And then there's the house. Perfect... until it rained. We took ownership yesterday, and last night discovered some water coming into the basement. It took a visit from our inspector this evening to track down the culprit -- the large kitchen door / window. We think it might be an installation problem, which (fingers crossed) the installers can fix easily. Meanwhile we had an extensive alarm system installed this morning, and we're slowly moving our stuff in there. The big move happens this Sunday, followed by a BBQ a few weeks later. :-) Both of us are on vacation starting Friday, and will be knee deep in paint and boxes for several days to follow. :-)

js.

View the Special Events > 2009 > 20090615 - We're Moving! folder...

We kicked off our off-roading season with the Weir hydro-line trail last Saturday. Matt, Yann, Simon, their friends and ourselves ran the trail early to avoid some other folks that might be running the same trail. We're a 'slow and easy' crowd, where-as some of the other guys who run this trail are not. :-) The trail is fairly easy, except for two challenging spots: The Stairs and the "S". There's a bypass for the "S", but you can't go around the stairs... Luckily the mud wasn't too wet, and with the help of some waffleboards and plenty of winching, all of us made it up fairly easily. This is a picture of the Stairs -- obstacles always look a little smaller in pictures, but you get the idea... :-) There are a few videos in the folder -- be patient if you want to view them, they can take a little while to download.

Everyone made it out without any breakage, although Matt's winch slipped in it's mount and was out of service for the second half of the trail. After getting back, he was able to brace the winch with some longer bolts, which should prevent the same problem from occurring again.

js.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2009 > 20090523 - Weir folder...

Yesterday we spent the afternoon working on Steve Jeep and trying to troubleshoot his death wobble problem. We found 2 johnny joints that were in bad shape. Furthermore, some of the connection were not torqued at the right pressure. We could not finish adjusting the toe in as the tie-rod was seized in place by rust (it cracked while JS and Steve were trying to untwist it).

View the Jeep > Repairs > 20090404 - Working on Steve's Jeep folder...

Registration Day

It was a beautiful day getting to Bethel from Montreal, QC. We headed down through highway 10 and through the Stanhope border crossing (just one small booth), then took route 26 and route 2 to Bethel Maine. We had the road to ourselves and beautiful fall views. We had forgotten that our soft doors flap a little when we go over 100 Km. :-)

We got in line for vehicle inspection early at 3 pm, and proceeded to the trail sign ups that began at 5pm sharp inside the convention center. We selected a easy trail for Friday for me to drive and a moderate trail for the Saturday drive for JS.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2008 > 20081002 - Bethel Maine Jeep Jamboree > 20081002 - Inspection and Registration folder...

Day 1 - Sunday River/Moose River Run (Difficulty 3-4) – Melanie Driving

JS drove this trail last year on our second day. It's a very nice trail with some mild obstacle, water crossings, some rocks with muds holes/tracks. We aired down to 14 for the trail. The trail was wet and it rained a bit throughout the day. Our guides on the trail were Ron, Rick and Jon. We had some people on the trail that we met last year and made new friends. We were the second Jeep behind Ron. Sport and Merrick riding in Fiona aka “Fefe the Jeep” were in front of us. We had a wonderful time. I made all obstacles with ease (The jeep is far more capable than my driving skills). There was some pulling and some easy trail situations to handle. CB talk was very quiet. As always Ron was super. We met Rick for the first time - a very nice and funny guy. We also had Jon with his girlfriend on the trail with us that help a lot to guide people through obstacle. Overall, a nice day wheeling with just enough challenge for Me.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2008 > 20081002 - Bethel Maine Jeep Jamboree > 20081003 - Sunday River - Moose River Run folder...

Last trip we were determine to find our first nudibranchs. Accompanied by our friend/divemaster Linda, we went on hunting for nudibranchs at Bonaire town pier. We did 2 very long dive each @ 2 hour long and saw amazing things - Seahorses sleeping, octopus, batfish, orange ball coralimorph anemone, sponge crabs ...... and many nudibranchs. The most common was the long horn nubibranch (we saw dozen of those); we saw 4 of the gold-line sea goddess; discovered a blue-ring sea hare (who looked very much like a ball of snot).

We need a little help identifying the Doris that we found at town pier though. The only Doris documented in the Reef Creature P . Humann and Ned Deloach that looks a bit like this one could be the brown doris. We believe that the doris we found at town pier looks more like a NODULOSE HOPLODORIS (from the book of Neville Coleman 1001 nudibranchs p.57) a doris found in the coral sea. We would love to get confirmation on our find by nudi experts. If you can positively identify this nudibranch please send us an email.

View the Scuba Diving > 2008 > 20080506 - Bonaire > Nudibranchs folder...

Old fridge died after 13 years of usage. You can see in that folder another picture of our 22.1 C/F Amana fridge and our new rail for my copper pans.

View the Special Events > 2008 > 20080808 - Kitchen Stuff folder...

We had a wonderful weekend at the Jeep Jamboree. We met very nice folks and even saw some people from Bethel Maine Jeep Jamboree 2007. I think they said that there were @238 Jeeps at the event ... @124 who got some damages of different kinds. Our comparison for this event was the Maine Jeep Jamboree with it's 18th year ... For the second year I think we can say that the organization was good & Staff very friendly. Not so many trails (They have added trails since last year). Few hours driving compare to the Bethel event. The base camp is ideal as everything is close by. Food was OK. Lunches were better than the Bethel event. Killington dead in the summer time. We learned many things during our trip especially after having a close encounter with a tree ... hale, rain, cluster fuck on top of hill, hit the tree going down, winch fest, more winch ... Everyone OK, Happy ending with more than 3 K repairs and 4-5 weekends to repair the Jeep. So for My B-Day I got a new hood and my second AEV bumper that saved the day ;) Enjoy our pics.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2008 > 20080717 - Vermont Jeep Jamboree folder...

We went dog training in the St-Thomas/Qc area with our friend Steve and his 2 chessies - Yuma and Kira. Steve has been training very hard with his dogs to get them titles and prepare them for hunting season. Yuma got his JH last year and one leg of his SH. This year he got his WC, WCI and is aiming at completing his SH. The young Kira 9-10 months old is working to complete her JH. She is out of the Skeetercreek line from H. Goeree. The 2 are great chessies with beauty, great personalities and hunting abilities. Steve really enjoys working out with his dogs. He is doing a great job !! All in all a great day outdoors enjoying the dogs, chilling in good company.

View the Dog Training > 2008 > 20080629 - Training with Steve and his Team folder...

We've been in Bonaire for about 1 1/2 weeks, and quite a few things have happened... The latest is that Melanie found a green Frogfish this afternoon. She was quite ecstatic since this was the first one she found all by herself. Frogfish, as you can imagine, are quite hard to spot. :-) We've also seen quite a few Turtles -- there are some fish species that are doing well, but others are on the decline. For example, Bonaireans have started fishing Parrotfish recently, and we can clearly see an impact. Some dive sites, far north or south, are pretty much like we remembered, except for a little more algae, while those in the bay are still on the decline. We don't dive in front of the CaribInn anymore -- the reef is just too damaged. Unfortunately Bonaire is in the middle of a mass expansion, so this isn't likely to get better. There's construction all up and down the island. All this construction is sending lots of dirt into the air and consequently, onto the reef. Visibility has been hit and miss, with very few instances of 60+ feet. Several years ago, we remember 100+ feet vis., but this seems to be a thing of the past.

We've had a few challenges to overcome on this trip, which helps to make this trip a little more noteworthy I guess. :-) In no particular order... We've gotten the pickup stuck, broken a flash, broken an oxygen analyzer, forgot a port section and killed a bird. We dug the pickup truck up to the bumper in coral rubble exploring a new dive site. Melanie took off to get help, while I used the jack to work on the truck -- All the while thinking of all the tools we have in our Jeep... It took me a while to get the truck out, and got a good sunburn out of it. Meanwhile Melanie had been busy finding a tow strap and getting a Taxi to pull us out. I'd already left by then so we met up at the CaribInn a little later. No harm done, except a few scrapes to the wheels from spinning in the coral rubble. :-) As for the flash, since I bought five, the spare was pressed into service. The oxygen analyzer of the dive shop is pretty good, so we don't really miss using out own. I had a spare sensor, but I think the electronics took a hit because the new sensor (and batteries) didn't make any difference. An e-mail to Mike helped get the port down here -- Eric brought it down with him last week. I didn't think I needed it, but we have 2 new lenses on this trip, and one of them needed that port. :-)

The diving has been good, and we're being a little more picky with our pictures. Hopefully we can process them in a timely manner this time! :-) I still have a few thousand to sort and process at home, so we'll see... :-)

View the Scuba Diving > 2008 > 20080506 - Bonaire folder...

I've been working on a new head-unit & switch combo for the past few weeks, and yesterday was the first test fit. It looks pretty good and fit very well, although it didn't play any sound. It's no problem though, just a switch set to the wrong setting - I think. We'll see when I do the final install this week. :-)

View the Jeep > Projects > Alpine IDA-X100 HU and Switch Panel folder...

Anyone interested in a Brinkmann Stainless Steel Magnum 2 Burner Propane Stove? It's in great condition (only used a few times) and is excellent for car/minivan camping -- big enough for some fairly large pots. We bought it for $80 from Cabelas and we'll let it go for $40 CDN. The kitchen table is also for sale, but we have to dig up the receipt to figure out the price. :-)

Update: The table is still listed on cabelas for $70 USD, so we'll let it go for $35 CDN. So that's $75 for both the table and stove.

Update: The table and stove have been sold.

I've installed a new Network-Attached Storage (NAS) file server with 4 Terabytes of disk. I've moved all our music, pictures, websites, etc. onto the NAS, and now I'm just fine-tuning the file and directory structure. You'll notice some small changes in the photo album folder names. For example, the "Canoeing" folder is now called "Canoe-Camping". There are many, many more changes, and some of these could cause broken links here and there. If you find something doesn't work, please let me know. Thanks.

Some of you must have thought that we forgot to take our traditional holiday picture. We were a bit late this year and did not get around to sending X-Mas cards. We are sending you guys our best wishes for the new year. For all our friends we wish - Health, Excellent Diving, OffRoading, Dog Training, Traveling, Cool professional and personal projects. We hope to see you all in the new year. Enjoy x!

View the Special Events > 2008 > 20080101 - Happy New Year from JS, Mel and Pete folder...

It was our first outing with the new sleds. The weather was nice / -13c and sunny. All tree of us did some sledding with the dogs and had opportunity to practice passing. As a leader Pete prefers to pass to the left. Pete was a bomb. He loves it so much that on the 4th ride he started not wanting to come back to the start. The sleds were just amazing. Speed was nice. We can't wait to some day have more dogs to add to the bunch !

View the Dog Training > 2007 > 20071215 - Larose Forest Passing Clinic folder...

The 2008 Jeep Jamboree Schedule was published earlier this month. Melanie and I were looking forward to booking the Vermont and Maine Jeep Jamborees. Unfortunately, the Vermont Beer Festival and the Vermont Jeep Jamboree are both on the same week-end! So we had to choose one or the other... Last year's VIP experience at the Vermont Beer Festival was really excellent and we were hoping to do the same this year. JP also came up from South Carolina for the Beer Festival, which made it all the better. Hopefully we can convince JP to attend the Vermont Jeep Jamboree instead. :-) It's a long drive though, so we'll see. If anyone else would like to join us, the Vermont Jeep Jamboree is July 18-20 in Killington Vermont, and the Maine Jeep Jamboree is October 3-5 in Bethel Maine.

I had a hell of a time finding winter tires I liked, but finally bought some US made Toyo M-55s. I had to drive down from Montreal to the US to pick them up, but it was well worth it since the US made M-55s are pinned for studs. These tires are used extensively by commercial fleets and working pickup trucks out west and up north. They easily last 80k or more and many owners sipe them. There are siping machines that exist, but there none in Montreal, so I had to hand-sipe mine. Hand-siping also does a better job, supposedly, because you can stay away from the edges of the lugs. Automated siping machines are just a big cork-screw cutter that cuts 1/2" wide sipes along the tread circumference.

We went to get our first snow tires yesterday in Champlain NY (JS bought them from a place in the US and had them shipped to a warehouse in Champlain - literally on the border line). Yep we could not get those snow tires in Canada - TOYO's 33 inches M55 studed. In Canada, they only have the studeless version. We did not wait at all to pay the Duty on the tires. They are quite heavy 60 pound each. Now we are missing 2 wheels before we can have these installed.

View the Donnett's Pepper Pete folder...

This week we got our first snow storm in Montreal. Pete loves it. He loves to smell the snow, run in it ... and yes in this picture you can see that Pete likes to recycle. He carries empty bottles to the trash !

View the Donnett's Pepper Pete folder...

On Saturday, three of us met in Terrebonne to run a Jeep Trail along a Hydro line. The trail is known to be mostly sand and water, with some mud here and there. Melanie and I were driving our green 4-door JK with 33s and 3" lift. Matthew was driving his stock red 2-door JK with 32s and FabFour bumpers. Steve was driving a black 2-door JK with 35s, 3" lift with pucks, and 1" body lift. This is a trail that can be done by smaller 4×4 stock vehicles, but last Saturday, this probably wasn't the case. It had been raining for several days, and the weather was dipping well bellow 0C at night. This meant the ground wasn't absorbing much water, and most of the water holes had a good 3/8" of ice covering it. When we got to expanses of water that we couldn't go around, we stopped and tested the depth with our rubber boots. We took some risks based on guestimates of depth, and were pretty lucky generally. We took our time and tried to be careful. Matthew calculated our average speed for the day at around 2.2km/h. :-) All of our Jeeps survived, although we all have to check and/or change fluids in our diffs, t-case, trans, etc. Steve has some problems with his ESP, and has difficulty turning to the right. Hopefully it's just electrical and not too serious. Unfortunately there aren't too many pictures of our Jeep, because we were in front. When possible, Melanie would try and tip-toe around and take a picture, but often the water holes were just too big to walk around.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2007 > 20071117 - Jeep Trail in Terrebonne folder...

The Event

Last September 27-30 we attended our first Jeep Jamboree in Bethel Maine. It was the 18th annual Jamboree for Bethel. There were over 130 Jeeps of all kinds and 250 + people. The types of Jeeps varied widely - Willy's, Army Jeeps, CJ's, TJ's, YJ's, Jeep Cherokees, JK's 2 and 4 doors - Sahara, X's and Rubicon .... and 1 Jeep Liberty. Doug and Jodie Wilson are the organizers of the Bethel Jamboree. Many thanks to all the land owners who allowed the use of their land for the trails, all the trail guides who accompanied us and prepared the trails before and after, the lunches were prepared by the local school ... The whole weekend went very smoothly - at least from a participant standpoint. Our experience was great and yes we will be back next year to the event. THANKS to all.

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Enter Last week we installed the new horns and skid plate, finishing the front bumper. It took a while, but looks pretty good. Once I have the new "Heavy Duty" coils up front, I'll calibrate all the lights.

Last week-end Mike and I changed the battery to an Optima D34M (Deep Cycle 750 CCAs), and just about every connector on it. I think there are about 9 wires going to the battery! :-) We also added a 7 circuit fuse box bellow the globe box. This'll power the CB, GPS, and three gauges. Those are the three projects for this week. We're going to be busy if we're going to get everything done before next Wednesday. :-)

View the Jeep > Evolution folder...

Last week-end we installed a Garvin Roof rack on the Jeep. These racks are a little different than the typical ones you see -- they have to bolt onto the body because the Jeep Wrangler's roof can be removed completely. :-) The body panels are a little thin, so I purposefully installed some heavy steel corner guards a while back to support the roof rack. The rack also tilts back to allow the soft-top to open/close. We'll get try out that feature next spring, once we have the soft-top on there. Next Monday we're having the 3" lift kit installed, and that'll pretty much finish this project -- just a few odds & ends left, like the winch, lights, and CB.

View the Jeep > Projects > Garvin Roof Rack folder...

	Jeep/Evolution/20070811 - Installing Tow Hooks and Rear Diff Cover/20070811-152951-lx2-10764.jpg does not exist.

Phew! Mike and I added some tow-hooks to the front bumper yesterday, test fitted the winch, all while Melanie emptied and prep'ed the rear differential for a new cover (shown here). Then today I mounted the CB antenna bracket and ran the coax. You can see pictures of that install here.

View the Jeep > Evolution > 20070811 - Installing Tow Hooks and Rear Diff Cover folder...

	Jeep/Evolution/20070804 - Installing AEV Front Bumper/20070804-143839-lx2-10694.jpg does not exist.

Mike, Melanie, and I have been working hard to get the Jeep ready for the September Jeep Jamboree in Maine. The roof rack, shocks, springs, etc. should be in shortly, and last week-end we finally got to install the new bumper. We decided to install it in two steps, saving the winch, skid plate, off-road lights, and crush cans for another week-end. We're also going to replace the stock fog lights, but we'll have to fab a bracket for those, so it might take a little longer. :-) Anyway, here's our new bumper, about half-way done.

View the Jeep > Evolution > 20070804 - Installing AEV Front Bumper folder...

Jeep/Evolution/20070729-181729-lx2-10623.jpg does not exist.

Mike and I installed some new rock sliders (aka rock rails) on the Jeep this week-end. They stick out 4" from the body, so they will also work as steps to access our future roof rack. Luckily Patrick lent us his garage for the day, 'cause it would have been near impossible to install these on the street. :-) Earlier in the week, I also installed an under-hood relay and fuse box and a center console switch mount to control future off-road lights, backup lights, etc. The off-road lights will be installed on our new front bumper, that should be shipping this week.

View the Jeep > Evolution > 20070728 - Installing Shrockworks Rock Sliders folder...

We celebrated the 15th Burlington VT Beer Festival with our friend JP this past weekend. We had VIP pass and were treated to the VIP tent, nice seating, escape the line-ups, some finger foods, special brews, chocolate, etc. We did 2 sessions and the end of the 3rd. JS will remember the Atomic hot sauce and the cinnamon chocolate :*) Melanie will remember the small room at the Wynham hotel, JP did la tournee des bars by himself and rock Burlington once again. We did breakfast at the Penny Curse Cafe and Mirabelles. We did dinner at the single peable for my b-day. It was delicious Cantonese style dinning (JP was happily surprised). We had black sauce green beans on BBQ, shitakes els style, lemon chicken, sheaded pork BBQ with fried oyster on top (yum), dumplings and some very hot pork. Just delicious :*; We had time to catch up with JP and talk Beer, Job, Girls, Jeep, Dog ... and did a couple loop on those subjects. I went shopping at Victoria S, bought Happy Potter last book and turn 35 ... It was a cool weekend.

View the Special Events > 2007 > 20070720 - 15th Vermont Beer Festival With JP, JS and Mel folder...

We had a great BBQ to celebrate the beginning of the summer. JS and I just came back from Bonaire and Pat, Tove and Leon were visiting. Leon received many gifts. Leon was quite happy of the Pink Flamingo.

View the Special Events > 2007 > 20070521 - BBQ with Pat, Tove and Leon folder...

	Jeep/Evolution/20070706-150720-lx2-10308.jpg does not exist.

The wheels finally came in this week and I had the tires mounted this morning! I used 8oz of Innovative Balancing's ceramic beads per tire. It took about 10-12 mins per tire to add the beads - a real pain in the butt. The advantage to ceramic beads, instead of conventional lead weights, is they can't get dislodged when off-roading. It also balances the tire no matter if there's mud, snow, or ice on the wheel.

View the Jeep > Evolution folder...

I've had quite a few things in the workshop waiting to go on the Jeep, but there's only so much time in a week-end, so Mike and I have been tackling one project at a time. This week-end we changed the headlights and improved the turn signals. Mike worked out a sweet wiring diagram to turn the sidemarker lights (the orange lights on the front fenders) into a running light / turn signal combo. The new Cibie headlights also have a "city light" feature for the daytime -- a second bulb that got wired to the running lights. We also had to splice in a new connector for the H4-type lightbulb. The new headlights look really sweet and should be a huge difference. All that's left to do is align them properly before using them on the highway. I figure the local Loblaws should have a good level parking lot and wall to do this.

View the Jeep > Projects > Cibie Headlights folder...