We all have stories.  Stories that you keep in your back pocket in case you find yourself at a party or social gathering where you need something a bit crazy to bust into the social stratosphere.  Dan has tons of stories, and it’s always fun to hear him bust one out every now and then (alright, it’s more often than that).  My stories tend to be a little more subdued and revolve around something with a motor.  Regardless, yesterday, Dan and I experienced a new story that spans both of our typical genres to add to our social arsenal and boy was it a dusey. Dan’s a better storyteller than I am, but he’s involved in his usual shenanigans so I’ll do what I can.

We’re in the works of planning a new video. As always, I’ll keep you in suspense about the details, but I can say it’s going to involve rally cars in their natural habitat. That being said, yesterday we decided to head out to the desert and scout some potential shooting locations.  Some 60 miles or so out of Irvine (Dan’s stomping ground) is a little town out east of the Inland Empire before Palm Springs called Beaumont.  According to Google Maps, It’s got some really gnarly off road stuff that seemed more than worth checking out.  So after a morning of Cars and Coffee, we jumped in Dan’s 2wd (key for later) ‘99 Toyota 4Runner and headed to the desert.

As with all stories, this one started off with everything going according to plan. The weather was beautiful, there was no traffic on the roads, and the trails were incredibly easy to find. As we drove down what was nothing worse than a rough dirt road, we crested a hill that overlooked a dry riverbed which was aesthetically ideal for our next epic production. Stoked, we drove along side the riverbed until the road ended pushing us onto what looked to be hard-packed dry dirt. Easing our way onto the riverbed we made it about 3 car lengths before the rear tires became shovels. This was no hard-packed dirt, it was loose sand/gravel/dirt. We were stuck.

I’ve been in this situation before so keeping calm, we got out to check the deal. Yep, we were stuck all right, but we stopped before getting too buried. Looking back on it now, we should have just let the air pressure way down in the tires and we probably would have been able to motor out. However with no tire pressure gauge, I was leery to get too ambitious with letting the air out. Reminiscent of Bear Grylls, we headed out scrounging for any wood planks we could find to dig under the tires for some stable traction. I was able to find an old fence post and Dan scavenged a 3 foot-long 1×6 with a rusty nail in it that he hammered out with a rock. Would this work? Sure, in theory…

Our first two attempts worked great putting us within 4 feet of the hard river edge.  However, third time was not the charm. The right rear tire just kept digging deeper and deeper until the axle was touching the sand. F’d.  Off in the distance we could see a new development of houses, so leaving the old 4Runner behind we ventured off to find a tow. How hard could it be?  I mean, we were in some pretty neat off-roading material in the middle of nowhere, there had to be someone with a truck.

After speaking with one very pleasant fellow </sarcasm> who looked at us like we might as well have been from Mars, we thought we’d give triple-A a call. Oh, not directly off the road? That’ll be $250 for the first hour and $100 every hour after. A worthless reminder of why I don’t waste my money on AAA (sorry Dan).  Soldering on, we were determined to find someone that would tug us out.  We stood at a decently busy intersection, only to be blasted past by every individual with a truck.  Deciding to split up, I left Dan on the corner while I ventured into the neighborhood.

The beacon of light was a white Ford Excursion with probably a 10″ lift and the 37″ tires.  The owner was sitting off to the side enjoying the stupidly hot desert air and I approached him.

“Dude, my buddy and I were screwing around across the street and got our truck stuck. Any chance you could pull us out?” Looking at me like was wearing a clown mask he replied

“Yea, I don’t take my truck off-road.”

“Really!?!” I retorted “what’s with the expensive lift and rolling stock?”

“Oh, I just like the way it looks.”  He replied.

“Thanks bro.”

Now, I know my 4-wheel stuff. A 10″ suspension lift for a Ford Excursion is easily 10 grand not to mention the 17″ polished aluminum wheels and massive BFG M/T’s. I bet he had 13 grand in the suspension, wheels, and tires alone  And thus, I met the first kind of car guy I hate the most:  the dude that dumps serious money into serious mods for looks alone. I’ve seen tons of people drive jacked up trucks around LA without a spec of dirt anywhere underneath, but this is the first time I’ve actually talked to someone like that. I’ll probably do another post in this though before I go off on a tangent now.

After two more encounters of the exact same type (seriously, what was it with those people?), Dan called with some awesome news. He found someone willing to tug us out!  I found a bench and took a load off while Dan rode off with our savior driving a lifted black F250 chariot. Within 15 minutes, Dan came and picked me up in his now pretty dusty 4Runner and off we went.

We beelined out of stupid Beaumont and stopped at Mickey D’s for a quick bite. The first we’d had all day and it was 1 pm. Thinking it was all for naught, Dan told me that our savior informed him that we were lucky because cops usually patrol the area on quads and impound vehicles on the spot. Hm well, at least now we know we can’t shoot there, and we can check that location off the list. With no redeeming qualities to the area, I think we’re going to avoid it there for a long time. Hopefully our next location scout will be a little more productive and a little less eventful.

Tags: 4runner, scouting, Shooting locations