Modified Stock Champion, Announcer, fabricator, and all-around good guy, Jake Good, of Kansas City joins Rich for a reminder of what family means. Another family man teaching his kids about rock crawling and the family you choose. Listen in to hear Jake’s journey to rock crawling.
2:17 – I’ve lived 97% of my life on the same piece of property
7:57 – A rear engine mower led to road-building
10:56 –I wanted to be like my dad
15:02 – this is the guy responsible for traffic circles
20:12 – Building a brand in the Midwest
22:47 – finding a rust-free Bronco in the Midwest
33:01– Fair price for a fair product
35:20 – I threw together the cheapest thing that I possibly could find and go have fun
38:55 – concerned we were some hotshot team
46:44 – I was scared to death
52:53 – blessed with the best team in rock crawling ever
59:01 – Opened Kansas Rocks Recreation Park twenty years ago
1:01:29 –Announcing, it was very intimidating
1:08:02 – Opportunity to run Kenny Blume’s ProMod
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
Modified Stock Champion, Announcer, fabricator, and all-around good guy, Jake Good, of Kansas City joins Rich for a reminder of what family means. Another family man teaching his kids about rock crawling and the family you choose. Listen in to hear Jake’s journey to rock crawling.
2:17 – I’ve lived 97% of my life on the same piece of property
7:57 – A rear engine mower led to road-building
10:56 –I wanted to be like my dad
15:02 – this is the guy responsible for traffic circles
20:12 – Building a brand in the Midwest
22:47 – finding a rust-free Bronco in the Midwest
33:01– Fair price for a fair product
35:20 – I threw together the cheapest thing that I possibly could find and go have fun
38:55 – concerned we were some hotshot team
46:44 – I was scared to death
52:53 – blessed with the best team in rock crawling ever
59:01 – Opened Kansas Rocks Recreation Park twenty years ago
1:01:29 –Announcing, it was very intimidating
1:08:02 – Opportunity to run Kenny Blume’s ProMod
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
[00:00:01.080]
Welcome to the Big Rich show, this podcast will focus on conversations with friends and acquaintances within the four wheel drive industry. Many of the people that I will be interviewing, you may know the name, you may know some of the history, but let's get in depth with these people and find out what truly makes them a four wheel drive enthusiast. So now's the time to sit back, grab a cold one and enjoy our conversation. Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail Maxxs has the tires, you can trust for performance and durability four wheels or two Maxxi tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play for fun or competition, Maxxis tires delivers. Choose Maxxis tread victoriously.
[00:00:56.040]
Why should you read 4Low magazine, because 4Low magazine is about your lifestyle, the Four-Wheel Drive adventure lifestyle that we all enjoy, rock crawling, trail riding, event coverage, vehicle builds and do it yourself tech all in a beautifully presented package. You won't find 4Low on a newsstand rack. So subscribe today and have it delivered to you.
[00:01:21.000] - Big Rich Klein
All right, on today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Jake Good, some of you may know, Jake from back in the day driving the modified stock class.
[00:01:31.620]
And we'll talk about his history in four Four-Wheel Drive. I know he worked for Four Wheel Parts for a while and we'll get all of that. So, Jake, thank you for coming on board and being here and and spending some time with us.
[00:01:46.350] - Jake Good
Oh, well, thanks for having me. I've listened to all the podcast, and I definitely am outclassed here, but a lot of great people that have been around the sport for a long time and truly humbled to to come on and talk with you today.
[00:01:58.590] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, no worries.
[00:01:59.760]
It's time that people get to know you better. I know the guys at the events know you because you've done some announcing for us, especially on the East Coast and during our grand nationals. But besides that, you know, let's get started right off. And where were you born and where'd you grow up?
[00:02:17.530] - Jake Good
Well, I was actually born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, and more specifically, I've lived on the same piece of property for all but about a year and a half of my of my life. So I have not gone very far as far as home life is concerned. I've always been based here out of Kansas City, in the Midwest. Wow.
[00:02:39.880] - Big Rich Klein
All but about a year and a half you've been on the same piece of property. That's that. I have to say. That's amazing.
[00:02:45.730] - Jake Good
At least yet it's you know, it does have its challenges because honestly, I had aspirations of moving out west closer to where the wheeling is. But my family's been on this property since the late 30s. And, man, I just it makes it very difficult for me to leave my parents live on the same property as well. So I've got instant babysitters. They watch the dogs for me when we're out of town, take care of the house, any of that stuff.
[00:03:15.650]
So it is really afforded us a lifestyle that would honestly require a lot more money, you know, if we didn't have those opportunities.
[00:03:25.510] - Big Rich Klein
Right. So it's like a family homestead. Your your parents or brothers and sisters. I don't know, I, I only know of you. I don't know your whole family. We've never talked about family. So let's let's discuss that a little bit. What's the who's all living on the homestead.
[00:03:45.070] - Jake Good
Yeah. So we have both my my parents, they're doing well. They've they've got a house that they built in the late 70s. And then I live in my grandparents house. That was myself and my two boys, you know, Caleb from Rock Crawling as well. He just turned 16. He's my youngest and he is my outdoors off road enthusiasts in the family. And then my oldest son is 19, just graduated high school, and he lives with me at the in the house as well.
[00:04:19.000]
And we have one other. My great grandparents have a small house across the street, the driveway from us that's currently vacant. It's been been vacant for a number of years. But prior to that, my grandparents had a log cabin that they lived in and my dad and my grandparents grew up in what was part of a log cabin on that property. Wow.
[00:04:44.950] - Big Rich Klein
That is some history. That's great family history. So how big is the property?
[00:04:51.580] - Jake Good
We only have about 10 acres, but we are about 10 miles from downtown Kansas City, Missouri. So for me to work right in the heart of downtown took me about 15 to 18 minutes to get to work. And then we're surrounded by hills and valleys and it's heavily forested. So we're very secluded back. We're about a half mile from the Missouri River and there's nothing between us and the river besides trees.
[00:05:20.440] - Big Rich Klein
Are you high enough in elevation that you're not getting you're not in an area you get flooded? Because I know the Missouri floods, like every year.
[00:05:29.500] - Jake Good
It does. It does probably.
[00:05:33.050]
Really, only twice, you know, in my 43 years that I've been there, has the river gotten really high and those have been the dream was one ninety three,
[00:05:43.070] - Big Rich Klein
OK, because the last five or six years, I know that where we cross over in Lincoln City or from Lincoln, Nebraska, over to. From Nebraska into Missouri, where we come down here, I guess we go to Iowa first for a few miles and then into Missouri. That area there, that road's been closed numerous times over the last ten years.
[00:06:10.100]
Yeah.
[00:06:10.730] - Jake Good
And it it's still very, very far away from us. There's a creek that runs through our property, you know, just really about 20 yards from our house that feeds into the Missouri River. But it yeah, we're definitely high enough in elevation that it doesn't doesn't affect us at all.
[00:06:27.420] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, cool. So then on a 10 acre piece of property like that, that's pretty secluded. What was that like? I would imagine you you were very outdoorsy. You know for sure. You're of an age before video games.
[00:06:45.170] - Jake Good
So let's talk about that. Yeah, my my brother I have one brother. He's four years younger than I am. I grew up outdoors, playing in the woods, building forts and, you know, just just exploring the property and the hills and creeks that we have there. And so I would have to beg my brother to come out and play because with him being four years younger, he was more of the video game generation. And so he was really into video games and he would play things that I wasn't very good at.
[00:07:18.590]
And it's like I was really into car games. And it's like, well, man, I would I just don't get playing a video game. I would rather just go out and drive a car or, you know, do whatever whatever you're doing in the video game. I'd rather do that in real life. And so that's what you know, from from playing in the snow here in the Midwest to if it was hot during the summer, you know, we could go play in the woods.
[00:07:41.630]
And it was it was nice and cool. We could always find a place that was, you know, that was entertaining and fun to play and just, you know, explore and do all of that stuff growing up.
[00:07:51.800] - Big Rich Klein
So did you have ATVs or motorcycles or anything like that or.
[00:07:57.170] - Jake Good
Well, I started I started mowing grass when I was about seven. My parents had a a little rear engine John Deere mower. It was the coolest thing in the world. And so I started mowing my parents' yard with that. My grandparents living across the street from me. My grandpa gave me a it was an old Sears and Roebuck garden tractor. And it had I mean, it was a, you know, like a 10, 12 horse. I mean, it was it was a lawn mower, but it was it was industrial, especially for back then.
[00:08:33.620]
And it was it had a high, low transfer case and it had a locker for the rear axle and he had all the implements for it. So a little little blade that he would use to push snow with, you know, a disk and all that for the back that he'd use in the garden. And so when I got that, that's honestly what I started pushing the limits of as soon as I could. You know, I got a hold of that.
[00:09:01.190]
We would I would start to push. I was mowing further and further into the woods. And eventually one summer, I used it to build a road that was only three feet wide. But I built the road all the way up on to the plateau of one of the hills by us, which just had a little deer trail in it. And so I spent all summer, I he he had a garden tiller and I use that and shovels in this tractor and and built a road which in turn at that time I probably I think it was 13.
[00:09:35.600]
I begged my parents for a dirt bike forever and ever, and my dad finally caved in. And so I used that to build a really small motocross track at my house. And so that's what just kind of kept pushing the limits of what, you know, what I could do with mechanical things. And that's really kind of what what started to get me hooked into that side of. You know, cars and things like that.
[00:10:01.720] - Big Rich Klein
All right, now, going into into school years, did you participate in any team sports or was it always, you know, after school, head back home and, you know, bust around the property?
[00:10:14.350]
What was the upbringing like that way?
[00:10:17.440] - Jake Good
Yeah, so I, I lucked out. Somehow. I tested into a college prep high school, which was really beneficial. It was. And it still is the in my opinion, the one of the best high schools in Kansas. But the downside of that was that it was a five year college prep school. Wow. And so there weren't things like auto mechanics or shop. You know, the closest thing that we had was was drafting. And so I took every drafting class that I could because that's what my dad was a drafting technician for over 30 years.
[00:10:56.650]
And so growing up, I wanted to be like my dad. And that's all I ever wanted to do, was to be a drafting technician for an engineering company. And so, you know, that kind of really shaped the direction for my my schooling years. And, you know, looking back and now, you know, going through this with my sons, I want to provide them some different opportunities that I didn't have because of going to that school.
[00:11:23.350]
I've circled back around in my life to come back with a career in automotive stuff. And I really fought to stay away from that as a career path. So if I would have had shop and that in high school, I think that would have changed direction for me a lot. But now I. We had a ton of homework. I was not the best at doing any of that. So but I went to school and paid attention to school, had almost perfect attendance every year.
[00:11:52.150]
And but then I would come home and we're one of those kids that was me. Perfect attendance.
[00:11:58.690]
Right. My grades didn't reflect that in any way, shape or form. But but I was there and I paid attention.
[00:12:05.050]
I just I didn't learn the best from a book. And that's kind of a trend that we see in people that are in this sport that are. Yes. Or in this industry. They're much more hands on. And I'm glad to try and give my boys a little bit of that opportunity that that I didn't have because college was what we were supposed to do. Right.
[00:12:26.950] - Big Rich Klein
So then after high school and doing the college prep high school, where did you is that the year that did you spend that next year and a half? Is that where you were off the property and out of the area? It was, yeah.
[00:12:41.050] - Jake Good
I went to Kansas University for three semesters. I struggled there as well because I didn't learn good study habits in high school. It by my third semester at KU, I had really learned what was working for me, but my parents were were paying the bill for me to go to KU and I just didn't feel like that was the most effective use of their money. I didn't feel like I was getting what what I should be out of it. So yeah.
[00:13:10.840]
So after three semesters at KU, I came back, I finished up with an associates degree from the local community college here, and that that really afforded me to transition into a good paying job working for an engineering company.
[00:13:27.520]
OK, and how long were you in engineering? I did civil engineering for almost 15 years. I started out my my first job, I worked at a golf golf course, working with the golf carts, you know, just making sure they were washed and put away. And of course, I may not have driven those appropriately at all times, but that's OK because you were washing them, so nobody knew.
[00:13:52.600]
That's right.
[00:13:55.300]
And then I, I went and I worked for O'Reilly Auto Parts for about four years and really loved it. I loved building the customer relations and helping people with their vehicles, but I kind of got pushed away. I was doing both night manager and assistant manager and helping with store manager duties right when I left and my regional manager said, you know what? You should really pursue something in, you know, what your schooling. Keep keep doing that and go to work in engineering.
[00:14:32.740]
And since he kind of pushed me in that direction and didn't offer me advancement in the in the parts store arena, I stepped away from that completely and for the most part did 15 years of civil engineering. I did a lot of traffic engineering with traffic signals.
[00:14:54.700] - Big Rich Klein
So your designs, designs, all of that. So you're one of those guys that we can blame for traffic circles? Yes.
[00:15:02.560] - Jake Good
Well, traffic circles, all the crazy GDI interchanges where you drive on the wrong side of the road. Yeah, I've worked on all of that stuff. So in it, I loved it. It was it was really a lot of fun, but I was very limited because I didn't have a four year degree. And I really felt that my skill set that I had in drafting was was very limited. I felt that really I was doing something that my kid coming out of high school could jump right in and and, you know, do the same thing.
[00:15:37.960]
I was so I really felt that I was know, very limited. Moving forward in that career, that at some point they're going to say, this guy's making too much money, you know, we need to get get rid of him, right.
[00:15:53.470] - Big Rich Klein
OK, fair enough, you know, I'm going to say about traffic circles, I guess, as a as a truck driver, you know, are driving the Taj Mahauler. I hate traffic circles and I think it's going to take probably two generations. For Americans to get used to driving them, I know they can drive them in Europe because everybody kind of grew up with them. They've had it for a long enough time where traffic circles make sense. But in this country, nobody knows how to merge anyway.
[00:16:26.650]
And so when you get to a traffic circle, everybody just stops instead of just, you know, works into the flow and it's going to take two generations until people figure it out. And heck, the generation that's that's ready to drive now. Or, you know, say 30, and less most of them don't want to drive anyway, so it's yeah, sure, sure.
[00:16:49.850] - Jake Good
Well, coming from the engineering side, my issue is that.
[00:16:55.310]
You know, like anything, it's like I don't know why they designed this the way that they did. There were so many. Improperly designed roundabouts and and there's a big difference between, say, a traffic circle and a roundabout, but we're talking semantics on right for general purposes. But yeah, on a on a roundabout, there is there's so much information and so much design that really needs to go in there, A, to control the speed of the vehicle coming in, but also to aid in getting through the circle.
[00:17:27.710]
So and we saw a lot of companies that just I don't know if they didn't know what they were doing, but made it very difficult for people to come in and make a hard 90 degree turn to try and get a semi truck through. It just was ridiculous. So I felt good about a lot of the work that we did.
[00:17:46.870]
I worked with some really great engineers and, you know, took a lot of pride in what we did. And I thought that we designed some really good functional stuff. But that's not the case nationwide, unfortunately.
[00:18:00.040] - Big Rich Klein
OK, well, I'll give you a I'll give you a pass on that then.
[00:18:05.560]
So after the engineering, you basically said you got to you're going to go find something else. Yeah, so I had actually been talking with my my heart, honestly, is in Colorado, and that's really I grew up with my parents. You know, we would go and take a week long vacation every year. And more often than not, we would go to Colorado and have a camping vacation. My parents would take us up and we would run all these different mining roads, go see if we could find this mine or follow a herd of bighorn sheep all day just because it was it was a really cool thing to do.
[00:18:50.790]
And so my off road experience really started, you know, at a very young age. My I was born in seventy eight. My dad started with a seventy two blazer. He had like an F.J. fifty five in seventy eight. He had a brand new CJ seven and then decided that wasn't a good idea with, with a newborn and then in eighty started him with Ford Broncos. And so he had a number of full sized sport Broncos. And so that's kind of where my Ford background has come in.
[00:19:25.830]
And he was he got me into early Broncos just because, man, that was you know, those were cool trucks. So still.
[00:19:35.460]
Yeah. So I was looking at a shop here in Kansas that was talking about opening an accessory place over in outside of Denver. And I thought that would be a really good fit to, you know, maybe to transition out there and see if I could I could make that a fit. And in the meantime, four wheel parts came into town and they were opening a brand new store. Being in the industry for as long as I have. I knew a lot of the managers and a lot of people that worked for four wheel parts.
[00:20:12.000]
And they they offered me an assistant manager position there. And I thought, man, that just sounds sounds like it's so much fun. And unfortunately, you know, with the way things go with staffing within six months, I was moved into the manager's position there and I was became overwhelmed. And I worked so hard to build the best reputation for a Four Wheel Parts shop that I possibly could because, you know, when you own a chain, I mean, you worked for four auto parts as well, you know that it's easy to get a bad reputation.
[00:20:55.890]
And we were given the opportunity to build our brand, you know, here in the Midwest, because the next closest store was four hours away. So we didn't have people that were familiar with four parts and didn't have a bad taste already. So if they had a bad taste, it was because we didn't do our job, you know, at our store to do the right thing and take care of our customers. So I worked really hard to.
[00:21:20.360]
So to get that out there, we did extremely well with the Jeep side of things just because, you know, being an active member in the off road community here for so long, it was very easy for me to sell our jeep stuff. Where I struggled was on the truck side of things. And you know, where our Texas shops, where they sold truck stuff, you know, 10 inch lifts, eight inch lifts. Twenty to twenty four inch wheels.
[00:21:50.930]
Big bro dozer trucks all day long.
[00:21:52.850]
A completely different mindset here. And it is.
[00:21:56.330]
Yeah. And I, I mean I drive an F one fifty that has a twenty fifteen. It has a level kit on the front and it has thirty seven, thirteen fifty twenties on it. So I like big tires and low lifts and that's a completely different style. I want something that's functional where we can go, we can go take this through Colorado and explore, you know, 90 percent of every trail in Colorado comfortably and you know, in a vehicle like this.
[00:22:30.260] - Big Rich Klein
So. So then you you're you got started early. Driving the roads in Colorado and stuff in the the CJs, the your first vehicle then was a Bronco. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:47.040] - Jake Good
My my dad bought me would have been in about ninety three. My dad bought me an early Bronco. We went through the the Kansas City Star, which was our local paper, and we searched through classifieds and even back then trying to find a rust free Bronco in the Midwest was impossible then. And I looked at trucks that even with the doors closed, I could see all the way through one side and out the other. And they were they were still asking good money for him even back then.
[00:23:22.770]
But a friend of my dad's had an old 76 Bronco sport sitting on on his property. And we made a deal and brought it home. And then I took a little over a year, maybe almost two years before I was even able to drive it, cutting out all the rust, the floor pans and rocker panels and the doorpost and all of that. I had to, you know, replace it all in order to have a fairly solid truck. And even then, that was my first vehicle that I had been that deep into.
[00:23:59.220]
So it wasn't it wasn't perfect. But I learned I learned a lot. I had a one 10 flux core welder, and that's what we used to build that back together. But I would spend a whole year prepping that truck. For a week's vacation in the mountains, wow, so, you know, and then we'd go out, we had camp and I remember my first trip, we went to Ouray, Colorado, we flattowed it, out to Colorado Springs, drove it almost to the top of Monarch Pass.
[00:24:34.170]
And my dad had to tow me over the rest of the way because it wouldn't run.
[00:24:37.620]
And carburetor and carburetor. Yeah, we spent so much time so trying to get it to run. Right. I ran to the top of Yankee Boy Basin with it in first gear transfer case in low and accelerator to the floor, just trying to keep it chugging along.
[00:24:56.010]
And we got up there and and got back. So I would come home after those trips and go, all right, well, this didn't work. This didn't work. And so I'd spend the next year making changes and then we'd go out for vacation again and see how it worked and see what improvements I did. So over and over again through the years, just kept refining the truck. And then finally in 97, I bought I was buying a body for my truck because it was still just continuing to rust out.
[00:25:28.050]
And so I bought a whole new Bronco, took me six loads to get it home. I rented a U-Haul trailer for the Chassis, but it came with two engines and two axles for the front two rear axles. It had a fuel injected motor. It had three transmission. So it took me six loads to get all this stuff home because it was in complete disarray. Just a huge basket case. But I was I was living at home. I was working at the parts store.
[00:25:58.890]
And so I didn't go in until noon. And then I worked until 9:00. And so I would get home from the parts store and, you know, put this truck together from a bare frame. And I had it back together in about six months. And but every ounce of free time I put into it and built the truck that I still have today.
[00:26:21.990] - Big Rich Klein
Wow. That's awesome. So at what point did you go from that Jeep or that Jeep, what point did you go from the Bronco?
[00:26:32.670]
It's all right.
[00:26:33.060]
I'll let you slide on that. I'm going to be honest, this whole little part, though, that I just screwed up on is going to get edited out so well.
[00:26:42.570]
You can edit mine, too. OK, from from the Bronco, what you're building and working on. Obviously, it wasn't a daily driver if you were working on it all the time or was it did you did did you have something else that you drove or was that your daily driver and you were working on it?
[00:27:01.080] - Jake Good
Yeah, no, that was my daily driver. I drove a Bronco from. I would have started my junior year and I drove that that truck almost every day. Until probably 2001 and I bought my dad's 92 Bronco from him, I did have a stint where I ended up. Blowing up the engine in that that Bronco I had. I paid a guy believe we all start somewhere, I when I was working at O'Reilly's, I paid a guy to put a carburetor on it for me because I had no idea how to do that.
[00:27:40.940]
As I drove that truck, more and more developed a knock. And so I had the same guy rebuild the engine and put it back together. For me, it was it only lasted a year and something came apart. And so I was at KU at that time and I needed transportation. So my dad bought me a very well used ninety one S10 four cylinder five speed that I used to to get back and forth from Kansas City to Lawrence. But other than that, I drove that truck and when I pulled the motor out I borrowed a, I would say a garage, but it, it was so drafty I ended up having to rent one of those big salamander heaters because I pulled the engine in the dead of winter and it was so cold in there and there was holes in this barn everywhere.
[00:28:31.100]
But I pulled that engine out with everything that I carried in the truck with me except for a five eighths combination wrench, because I was missing that and I needed that to get the transmission to engine block bolts out and the engine hoist. So I carried all the tools that I needed to repair my vehicle because obviously backcountry wheelers that we were, that's that's what you did. So but that that was the only other time in that stint that I drove any other vehicle other than having my Bronco so so going from, let's see, four wheel parts.
[00:29:08.720]
That wasn't too long ago, was it? And then you moved on and created your own business.
[00:29:14.490]
Yeah, that was about a year and a half ago that I left four wheel parts and decided that the best way for me to control quality and deadlines and things like that was for me to own my own business. And, you know, dealing in a retail shop like that where you're dealing with thousands of customers, you know, very quickly, my goal was to do the exact opposite. I wanted to have as few of clients as possible and then, you know, provide a higher quality of service and a higher quality of work.
[00:29:55.040]
Well, like most of us, you know. We bought parts for our vehicles and especially not being a Jeep guy. It was a much more niche market. So you'd buy something to bolt on my Bronco and it didn't work. It didn't fit right, whatever the case may be. So you had to reengineer it in order to make it make it work. And so that just got me into, you know, I was the guinea pig for a lot of my friends when we were building things.
[00:30:27.050]
It's like, well, I'll buy this stuff. And then we figured out how to build it better and then just kind of continue to do that. I did. It was back in 2001. I did a big overhaul on my Bronco. I went from being a stock suspension to I did a three link in the front with the with the pan hard. And I did a wishbone three link in the rear as cheap as possible because we were young newlyweds and having my first kid at that time, we didn't have spare money.
[00:31:05.900]
So I was just doing what, spare money.
[00:31:08.630]
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I borrowed an AC DC stick welder from a friend of my dad's and and that's what I built all of my suspension with in the, in the garage was I designed everything and I tried a number of different products that you could buy over the years and finally just decided that this is not this isn't working. I'm going to make my own. And so that was the start really of. Bigger modifications and learning all those skills, but the the biggest joke that we had for years was that when I did that version of mods on my truck, I probably had hours of trying to free the electrode after it stuck to the frame rail and try and break it free so that I could start another arc and make a weld
[00:32:03.250]
So so that kind of led into my skill set.
[00:32:05.350]
And really, it wasn't until I worked at four wheel parts and the technicians that we were hiring. They were great parts changers. But man, they had no idea how the Off-Road community worked and how to lift a jeep. And you know how just because you put something on the alignment rack and it says this is right doesn't mean that it's going to work, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it really opened my eyes to the amount of knowledge that I had acquired over the years.
[00:32:37.570]
And so I was spending a lot of time trying to teach our technicians that type of stuff. And and so it really wasn't until I went to or went to work for four parts that I had an appreciation for the amount of knowledge that I had gained in building my own stuff over the years.
[00:32:55.630] - Big Rich Klein
And so they gave you a lot more confidence to say, OK, it's time to go out on my own. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:33:01.780] - Jake Good
I mean, and I'm not I work extremely hard to try and put out a good a good product. I think, you know, I charge a fair price for for a fair product. But you go on Instagram and look at people that are incredible welders and incredible fabricators and you still aspire to be to be those guys like Jason Paule and Jesse Haines and like the red dot cars and even into the desert stuff. Now, with all the ultra for I mean, man, there's just incredible fabricators out there to to aspire to.
[00:33:38.150]
So so you feel like you're, you know, feeling good in your in your skill set. It's pretty easy to keep you humble.
[00:33:47.500] - Big Rich Klein
Instagram does that. It does.
[00:33:51.370]
So let's go back into the years of competing and how you you got into that, who you drove with and you know, what you drove and all that kind of stuff. So let's let's let's investigate that.
[00:34:07.130] - Jake Good
Yeah. So what kind of started to be down this path was in 2005, I got invited to go on the Petersons four wheel and off-road ultimate adventure. And I got a free set of B.F. Goodrich crawlers to put on my Bronco, I got a brand new Warn Winch, to replace my older Warn winch that I had. And I mean, that stuff is just so cool to be a part of of something so grand is that and to be around so many people in the industry of who's who people, you know.
[00:34:43.460]
And, you know, I met people like Chris Durham and. Derek West and Richie Keller, you know, through that that from the competitive side of things, but what really kind of opened my eyes again kind of was, again, a similar story from the fabrication side, was that just because these guys were incredible people like Fred Perry from Clemson in the in the industry, it didn't mean that they knew how to drive. And that was really eye opening for me.
[00:35:20.210]
I mean, I, I just assumed that. And so we came home from ultimate adventure and it wasn't long. I had put together a plan that I was going to build a vehicle. And at the same time, Tom Wombles and Debbie had bought an incredible rock quarry and they were going to host local rock crawling competitions. And it's only four hours for us to drive over to Hannibal, Missouri, and be a part of that. So like everyone else, I'm going to throw together the cheapest thing that I possibly could find and go have fun with it and see what happens.
[00:36:02.210]
And I made a phone call to Linda at Trail Tough told her what we have going on, and she immediately was like, we can set you up with this and this, and this will be perfect for your build. And I was like, well, this is like cheating.
[00:36:20.900]
What in the world? I, I've never dealt with with sponsor stuff like that before where it was. It was just incredible to have support from from vendors like that. And we had a handful of other good sponsors, but. I wanted to do something unique because I knew that would bring attention to our team and we settled on building, it was a 1996 geo tracker. And a really good friend of mine, Jason Troxel, had put up the five hundred dollars for us to buy the vehicle initially.
[00:37:02.680]
And so we had a handful of parts, we had B.F. Goodrich crawlers, I had some wheels, I had scrounged around axles and built spooled axles front and rear and built a link suspension underneath this geo tracker. And we used a friend of mine who had a shop in Topeka, Kansas, at the time. It was called Expert Off Road. And another friend of mine, Rob Debrock, with Muchato Productions, who was huge in all of the Little Rock crawling stuff at the time with with doing videos, which were DVDs back then.
[00:37:41.270]
Right. And so we put together we were going to do a three day build. And get this vehicle built with as many people as we could throw at it with our sponsors, help and build a functioning rock crawler. With customs, suspension and everything in three days, and it was an incredible three days, we had a lot of great people that showed up and helped out and man, it was exhausting it. We worked so hard and we were so close to being able to drive the vehicle out of there.
[00:38:18.320]
We were missing just some steering linkage and just a couple other things. I mean, it took a while to to finish it up, getting the winch and stuff like that. But for the most part, we had probably a good eighty five percent functional vehicle that left that shop after driving in there being one hundred percent stock. And that that may not sound like a lot for a jeep. But going from an independent front suspension to a three link front and four link rear, custom roll cage and rockers and bumpers and and everything that was hand fabricated in there, it wasn't a bolt on build that we did.
[00:38:55.870]
It was all very heavy fabrication. So that was that was incredible. We we took that and our first we rock event would have been in, I believe, 2006. We had and I think that was the first event for Hannibal Rocks that season. And so Tom was really concerned that we were some hotshot, you know, big we rock team coming in to sandbag his series. And but we had no idea what we were doing.
[00:39:33.820]
And it was we were just coming out to have fun. And so we went out. We went out there. And looked at a bonus line and Scott Angel ended up being my my spotter, he came up and helped us during the build and he actually edged out another friend of mine that was supposed to be my spotter at that time. We got on course and he's you know, I don't know, there was a bonus gate, maybe like the third or fourth gate.
[00:40:01.880]
And he said, you know what, you want to do that bonus. I said, well, shoot, we still got five minutes left on the clock. We should just go play on it and see what happens. And that was our attitude. We were just out to have fun. And it was it was incredible. We ended up getting a lot of attention because I don't remember where we were at at the end of day one, but it was top top three, top four.
[00:40:26.750]
And those were against the best people in the country at that time. Derek West, Erik Miller, Jake Tennis, Kurt Shramovich I think was there. I mean, it was we had 14, 15 modified stock vehicles at that event. And it was and here we are sitting in the you know, the top quarter of the field was was incredible. So unfortunately, we went on the next day and we broke the crankshaft in that in that old motor, but ended up dropping down quite a ways because we weren't able to finish.
[00:41:01.940]
But, man, it was you know, I remember coming home, going to some of our first rock crawling competitions where we podium and got a check and it just felt like we were. We were cheating somehow, it's like we went out, had the time of our lives and got paid for it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:23.390]
So it was it was incredible. I mean, and I got into competing mainly because of Derek West. I really wanted to know how our skills measured up to the best in the country. He was undefeated for I don't know, I want to say four or five seasons on the East Coast. So, I mean, he was the guy to beat him and Ritchie and to come in and battle with those guys back and forth and battle with the Kyles, Kyle Bruso and Kyle Holand through all those different battles.
[00:41:58.420]
And Kurt Shramovich.
[00:41:59.600]
I mean, an event was even so much. Duane Garretsn Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't Forget Duane because it was it was always a toss up. We never knew, you know, where we were going to end up and we knew it was going to be a battle. And that's what we enjoyed was, you know, playing the game, taking chances. And they forced you to you forced us to do things. Well, Lil Rich forced us to do things that there is no way I would have done on a trail ride.
[00:42:29.450]
But, you know, when you're sitting there a couple points out of first place and you can take a ten point bonus and it just involves you kind of throwing the car off a cliff, it's like, well, why not? We'll give it a whirl and, you know, and take those chances.
[00:42:44.060]
And and really, one of my my my favorite modified stock and there's so many we went to we were in Dayton, Tennessee, one time competing against Kurt Shramovich it was.
[00:43:00.200]
We were first and second right back and forth together, and little Rich had put like a six foot tall vertical wall and just tossed two cones on it to mess with Kurt because he knew Kurt was going to go for it.
[00:43:14.450]
And I mean, we stretched. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it was. And we stretched that that little geo tracker. You know, I, I can't hear if it was eighty seven inches or eighty nine inch wheelbase. I mean, we stretched it for everything we could per the rules and we knew we had to take every chance we could to try and beat Kurt.
[00:43:37.910]
And we got on this wall. I just put the front tires on it just a little bit and I just held the throttle down and it just leapt up that six foot vertical climb. And I, I couldn't believe it. It was I would have bet everything in my life that a vehicle of our size would never go up that. But it made it. And it was there's just so many moments like that that were that were so incredible. We went to Rausch Creek again, competing against all of those guys that were local up there that that played on that manmade course.
[00:44:14.240]
So it doesn't it doesn't change so much. And we did we won that event. We rolled the car twice. But we're able to get it righted in the rain and typical East Coast wheeling a heavy downpour. And I flopped a car over in a big bowl and I was ready to call it quits. And Scott's like, now crank it this way and spin it. And we got it right it back up. And we had less than thirty seconds to clear the course and we got out, finished the course.
[00:44:45.710]
And it was just I mean, the adrenaline was intense. It was so much fun. And probably one of my favorite things to come in to Rausch Creek where those guys have played time and time again and bring home a win from there was I mean, that's definitely cloud nine. So having Scott on board were very, very similar. I like my vehicles that look nice and function to the best of their ability. And Scott's the same way. I'm a little more conservative on the funding side of things.
[00:45:16.850]
And Scott came in and he's like, hey, we got to do this. We got to it needs to steer better. We need to get rid of these schools. And Cooper tires came on board with us and we switched over to Cooper tires, Raceline beadlocks and things like that. But every season that car just kept getting better and better. And then Scott is more of a go fast driver. I am definitely not a go fast technical rock.
[00:45:42.570]
Crawling is my thing, but in two thousand nine. Late 2008, we rebuilt the car to still meet, we rocked modified stock class rules, but also be as competitive as we could possibly make a very low center of gravity. Thirty five inch tall tire for King of the hammers. And so we swapped out and put a two liter engine in it, automatic transmission. And we had a tracker. Transfer case made it to the jeep, Dana.
[00:46:18.280]
Three hundred and we had all of that stuff in there and just did everything we could to make that car, what you know, what we could with it. And so we went to King of the Hammers in two thousand nine. We we it was an absolute blast to be a part of that out there. It was still so grassroots at the time. It was so much fun and I really enjoyed that. We took off from the start line.
[00:46:44.610]
I was scared to death. I was holding onto my bar for everything I could I could do. Scott got air off of the first jump in the in the infield. And then as soon as we landed on the tabletop, the throttle became disconnected. And we were we were running up back door at that point. And we had measured everything out. We had toe straps and we had our winch line. And so our plan was we were going to pull up the back door.
[00:47:10.410]
I was going to jump out. I was going to hook on the the furthest which point winch up the big ledge on back door. We could pull it up on the spot or strap, but I couldn't do it consistently. And so we thought it would just be smart and just play it safe, winch up, drop the toe strap, rehook the winch so that we didn't have to we could save all that time. So here I am sitting in the passenger seat, fully buckled in.
[00:47:40.080]
I've got. 50 feet of toe straps and winch ropes sitting on my lap so that I could jump out at that door and so Scott jumps out, gets all unbuckled, jumps out, puts the throttle cable back on and finally gets back in, gets everything buckled back in. I say finally, it only took a minute and a half watching on the GoPro.
[00:48:02.350]
And but it seemed like an hour. It seemed like forever.
[00:48:06.070]
And I got out it back door. We got everything winched up. He cleared up out of the valley and I stayed there. I burnt my lungs so bad I ran as hard as I could so I could hardly breathe. And it was awesome. I mean, just the still at that point, the John Terhune and those guys were standing right there back door and they brought me a beer over and was like, oh, I was awesome, you know?
[00:48:30.310]
And at the end of all of the qualifying for what it was in last chance for two thousand nine, we missed qualifying for the race. There was no every man challenge or anything. There was just the one class we missed qualifying by just over a minute. So if it wouldn't have been for that coming apart, we would have beat that car and ourselves to death out there in Johnson Valley. But we would have had a blast doing it.
[00:48:56.020] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, I wish you guys would have had the chance to do that. That would have been been awesome to see that little track. It was one of my favorite. Cars in the the stock class, just because it was so full bodied and those are a unibody, aren't they?
[00:49:14.180] - Jake Good
Now it was a body on frame, actually. I'm in when I ran Ultimate Adventure with Tim Hardy and he had his samurai, right. I was like, man, I need something like that. Well, we went to the Badlands off road park not long after that, and there was a gentleman that was guiding us around in a pretty much stock geo tracker. It had like a three inch body lift on it in like thirty one inch Boggers and he was trying some hill and ended up rolling it over.
[00:49:47.720]
And I got to looking at it, I was like man this is a perfect platform. The frame rails are straight basically 2x4 box tubing. It's already got a three link in the rear with coils and in the front IFS. So I went and bought one. That was after that. To that point that was my daily driver for for quite a while, was in a ninety three. It was that terrible teal color, you know, that had that green Mountain Dew green kind of color.
[00:50:16.520]
And that's what I drove back and forth to the engineering firm for for quite a while until I finally just wheeled it so much that it. It wasn't holding together very well anymore, but, yeah, I mean, that's so that's kind of what what led to that vehicle decision was, was Wheelin with Tim Hardy in his samarai. And then seeing that, you know, obviously, in my opinion, the answer to the rollover problems with the samurai was to lower the center of gravity as much as possible in the Geo's.
[00:50:47.800]
And so, I mean, that makes and the Suzuki sidekick's well, that's what you want in an off road vehicle. Is the center of gravity as low as possible? Well, this was designed specifically as an answer to that. So it seemed like we could take advantage of a lot of that factory engineering that went into those Suzuki Sidekick's and trackers.
[00:51:07.490]
Yeah, good, good choice. Now, Brian Cooper has that car now, doesn't he? He does.
[00:51:12.700]
Yeah. I and it couldn't have gone to a better family. Those those guys are incredible and and great drivers. It sits for three hundred and sixty four days out of the year. But when we rock comes to Dayton, Tennessee. Yep.
[00:51:27.130]
He rolls it and they bring it out and they wail car.
[00:51:31.850]
Oh yes they do. But, but I mean you know, we, we trail wheeled it a little bit. It wasn't fun to trail wheel. It rattled a lot and it was hot and you couldn't see anything out of it because you set so low in the car. But, you know, when we were out playing, that car would really show up a lot of full tube chassis buggies that were on bigger tires.
[00:51:54.940]
And it would do that a lot. And that's a lot, thanks in part to people like Steve Sharpe and Jesse Haines and Jason Paule that, you know, I was able to absorb what what they were doing and have some of their their guidance in building vehicles and package that all into a little eighty nine inch wheel based Geo tracker.
[00:52:16.240]
Yeah. And then you guys you guys approached the competitions very well from what I remember, especially, you know, you and Scott just you had you had a knack for finding the lines, for figuring out the strategy and always being at the top without taking huge risks. You know, some of the guys would just if there was a bonus, they just had to do it, you know, and some of those bonuses were were sucker lines. But you guys seem to be able to figure out which ones were the right ones to take.
[00:52:52.810]
Yeah, we did.
[00:52:53.650]
And I will say that we were blessed with probably not probably we were blessed with the best team in rock crawling ever. We had Jeremy and Josh Hislop, who were brothers, who were incredibly mechanically minded and just and great people to boot, Jason Troxel, Adam Ross and Dave Fugit and I'm sure a couple others, a couple of other scouts in there as well that would come out and support us, you know, at the events. And, you know, if you have somebody that's helping you get buckled in the car and helping you make sure that the the intercoms are working correctly or if the car breaks down, they're helping get parts and and taking that load off of a driver and spotter to do that.
[00:53:49.630]
You know, that frees us up a lot to concentrate on our job and the courses and things like that. So I watched a lot of the courses before. You know, as soon as we get done, I'd move to the next course and I would study what was going on and try and learn what other teams were doing. And Scott and I were both very good at discussing line options. And Scott was really good at the game, too.
[00:54:17.800]
He kept track of all of, you know, the scores of other teams and what we needed to do in order to win versus just going out there and and taking chances.
[00:54:31.030]
But ultimately for me at the end of the day. I even if we won, there's events that we won. And beat everybody else, but we're driving home with our heads low because the courses beat us.
[00:54:46.520]
So at the end of the day that was all I wanted to do, is I wanted to beat the courses. And if we came out on top, that was even better. But I wanted all of our friends to succeed in that way, too, like a trail ride, just because that's what I grew up with. And that's the mentality I had was that we're we're going to beat the WE Rock courses, you know, whether it was Josh or Little Rich or you setting courses at the end of the day, that's what I wanted to win.
[00:55:17.670]
Right, that chess match.
[00:55:20.240]
Yes. Yeah, for sure. So and having that team and we had a traveling group, we we had it like a thirty four foot gooseneck that had a slide in camper on the front.
[00:55:33.020]
We would back the tracker on up to that and then we had an eight foot pop up that we would winch onto the back of the trailer and that's how we would travel from California to Pennsylvania, Tennessee and everywhere in between is we'd all jump in the back of Scott's dually and travel the country, I think we did in 2000. What have been two thousand nine, I'm pretty certain we did like 12000 miles on his dually just in in competing. So that's off road stuff is what I live and breathe.
[00:56:06.830]
And that was that was perfect for me. I'm glad you're still living, living it and breathing it, that's all. Yeah, me too. So we. We got to the point where that was really preventing us from going out and camping and doing other family vacation stuff, and my my wife never asked for hardly anything ever, and she was tired of camping in parking lots to go to events.
[00:56:37.870]
And because that's what we did, we didn't get hotels or anything like that. We camp at every event. And so she she said that she wanted to go do more recreational wheeling. And so that's kind of what ended the rubber belly racing, you know, efforts right there. Was that the economy was, you know, hadn't been good for for a year or two and things were going downhill. And it just made sense for us to get back on on par financially.
[00:57:05.890]
So we kind of went that direction. But it you can't get it out of your blood. I mean, that's it's something that the people I love being around, the people I love, being around the competitions and and seeing how people react to different challenges and all of that, it's it's just so much fun. Absolutely.
[00:57:27.160] - Big Rich Klein
That's why I've been doing it for over 20 years now. So let's talk about the name of the race team. Probably. How did that come about?
[00:57:38.210] - Jake Good
You know, I don't know that I really know the full story on it, but Jason Troxell was the one that put up the money that actually started our racing efforts with WE Rock. And his nickname in school one way or another was Rubber Belly. Well, so as a as a thank you to him for for doing that, that's what we named the team was because if it wasn't for him, I didn't have a spare five hundred bucks to.
[00:58:10.070]
To buy another car that I didn't need. And so if it wasn't for his efforts to do that, it wouldn't have happened really. It might have later, but it definitely wouldn't have been without his efforts. And the team and Scott, we ended up going in partners as more and more money got spent on the car, you know, into the racing effort. So it was we definitely would have been able to do near the things that we did without those guys support.
[00:58:41.630]
Excellent.
[00:58:43.310] - Big Rich Klein
So now you guys get out of competing and you're just trail wheeling and having fun. And when did the Kansas Rock's event site or event site park come about? Yeah. That you had something to do with that. Am I correct?
[00:59:01.700] - Jake Good
Yes. Oh, my goodness. That would have been back early 2000. Man been, been a part of that for a very, very long time. I unfortunately haven't been as active with it as much as I would like to just with with my wife's health issues. And in that over the past four or five years has really limited my abilities there. But it's yeah, it's been almost 20 years that we've opened up Kansas Rocks Recreation Park, located in Fort Scott, Kansas, and everything from we originally leased the property with money from the state of Kansas, did a 15 year lease on it.
[00:59:48.740]
We now own it. We've bought additional property. We've got bathrooms, shelter, houses, all kinds of really nice facilities, camping facilities and everything going in now, too. So, yes, it's been a lot of fun and it's been a great way for for us who live the lifestyle to try and teach those that are that are coming into the sport. Now, you know, the etiquette of how to do that. We teach 101 courses a number of times during the year.
[01:00:20.480]
So if you just bought your brand new JL or JK Wrangler, you can bring that out and be taught the appropriate ways to use low range or use your lockers. How to yield to traffic coming the other way on the trail. You know, all of that stuff that we take for granted because we grew up, you know, doing this, that no one, when you just jump in buying a brand new Rubicon, you have no idea. These guys want to go to the biggest obstacle in the park and drive straight there because they just bought a brand new buggy and they don't have any concept of etiquette in off road.
[01:00:56.240]
And there's really a lot of that.
[01:00:57.950] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, people need to learn to drive without all their tools first.
[01:01:03.890] - Jake Good
Yeah, no, I think it makes you a much better driver for sure. Right.
[01:01:09.330] - Big Rich Klein
OK, so then you started I called you up one day and said, hey, would you like to announce?
[01:01:17.210]
And you came out and started announcing and you were a natural. Just wanted to know that I appreciate that, I do like to talk.
[01:01:29.740] - Jake Good
That is that is a very, very known. It was definitely very, very intimidating. I grew up playing in a rock band. I played drums in a rock band in high school. I played in marching band in both symphonic orchestra and band and all of that and the percussion. And it was it was always so nerve racking.
[01:01:52.840]
It wasn't like you could hide in the clarinet section and just take what you were doing. You were the one guy crashing the symbols and oh my gosh, that was so nerve wracking. But it helped, you know, all of those things kind of helped prepare me to put myself out there and mess up and say dumb things that other people were listening to. And and I got the opportunity, you know, once we stopped competing and sold the the tracker to Bryan Cooper was I found that that was such a great way for me to still be involved with rock crawling and and honestly have that backstage pass, you know, to be able to help out, but also to be able to wander the courses and kind of do whatever I wanted to do.
[01:02:39.790]
So it was it was just such a natural fit for me. And I I really, really enjoyed it. I got to learn from Dustin Webster. We worked together for a number of years at Grand Nationals, and that was just such an incredible experience. Dustin had been around forever and was was an incredible announcer. I would love to be able to do some of the things that he would do for the national anthem. And I get choked up.
[01:03:06.670]
Too bad. And I can't talk about that. So we just we just play the national anthem. But I would love to be able to hone that skill even further and become a better announcer as I go through my life. Well, that's good to hear.
[01:03:21.370] - Big Rich Klein
You know, we're going to be doing an event in Oklahoma, in Glencoe, Oklahoma, this year with we rock. So we're not too far away from you. So we hopefully now that you're self-employed, maybe you'll have a little bit of time. You can come out and help me set courses.
[01:03:38.140] - Jake Good
Oh, yeah, yeah, that would be great, I would love to come down and help, and I know I got to help set the shoot out course at Grand National's last season in Cedar City.
[01:03:49.180]
And I don't want to hurt myself, patting you and I on the back, but I think we did a pretty darn good job.
[01:03:56.650]
I think that shootout course was that whole event was awesome. But the way that the shootout unfolded with with the guys that were in it and what they attempted to do and what they pulled off was was just phenomenal. Even even rich.my son
[01:04:16.360]
came up and said, you know, wow, you knocked that one out of the park.
[01:04:20.260] - Jake Good
So I couldn't agree more. That was you know, we've been around competitive rock crawling since two thousand five. And I mean, I've seen Jason Paule. I've seen I mean, just just the huge list of who's who the best competitors out there. And the last season was probably the best shootout I think I've ever been a part of and witnessed that was just incredible. And to be a small part of that was with Tacoma out there announcing was absolutely incredible.
[01:04:55.990]
It's definitely on the top of my list.
[01:04:58.540] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, it was a great one. Let's let's see. Is there oh, we should talk about about your son and what you guys did over the last couple of years. Competing. You want to talk?
[01:05:11.630] - Jake Good
Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. So my my wife passed away a little over two years ago. She had breast cancer that we thought we had beat, but it it spread to the lining of her brain and we just weren't able to overcome that.
[01:05:28.980]
So she passed away a little over two years ago. And I knew that I had a limited amount of time with my boys before my oldest graduated high school. And honestly, my my youngest graduates. And they go on and do things with their lives. So I made the decision that I really wanted to jump in the in the rig and go out and do get back into competitive rock crawling. My youngest has been in it from a very young age, you know, running the old Nylint RC car or the Nylint jeeps, you know, now to the new Axial stuff.
[01:06:07.070]
I bought Job Johnson's old ProMod car because I've started building the boys a kid buggy. And I realized that by the time I was going to get done with it, they were going to be too big and it just didn't make sense. So I ended up buying Job Johnson's old Cooper tire sponsored ProMod. He had taken the axles out of it and transfer case and all of that, but he had put back stuff that made it fairly functional. And so at seven years old, we went and competed at RRock in what they called SHErock.
[01:06:39.620]
It was a female rock crawling, but basically it was the non-competitive guys, I guess, for the most part. So the kids were in it and in a lot of the female judges and that and we went up against people like Brandon Blume was spotting for like an 18, 19 year old female that was had her own Jeep been driving for for a couple of years and some other really. Should have been good quality teams, and Caleb and I brought his thirty one inch tall, tired ProMod car with no Locker in the front, it didn't it didn't steer very well at super low to the ground.
[01:07:23.450]
And I was able to spot him through the courses and and he actually won. And so. He's just he has a knack for understanding how the vehicle works and is an incredible listener, which, as you know, is the majority of the game, you get your driver to listen to what you're telling them to do.
[01:07:44.500]
And he does. He he trusts me way more than he should because I'm his dad and, you know, and he believes what what I'm telling me to do is, is safe.
[01:07:54.440] - Big Rich Klein
And you've done a good job as a dad then, because a lot of kids don't listen. Yeah.
[01:08:02.050] - Jake Good
So we had the opportunity I. I don't even remember what we were planning on doing, but Kenny Blume the year before had reached out and asked me to drive his ProMod car and the timing wasn't good with my wife in that. So I couldn't do it. But then you know once she passed. I was like, this is a good opportunity for us to spend time as a family and honestly for us to be in the vehicle together. Is my my favorite time, you know, there's nothing else going on, everybody can kind of talk about whatever they want to talk about.
[01:08:42.000]
And, you know, it's just to me, that's the best time is when we're all forced into a vehicle together with nothing else going on. There's not video games and other distractions. You can just everybody can talk freely. So and I really wanted that for my oldest son's last year of high school to make sure I captured that. So we got the opportunity to drive Kenny Blume's pro modified car. And it was definitely. Definitely a learning curve to operate that vehicle.
[01:09:21.600]
It worked so much different than than the cars that I build and you really had to drive it. So it's a really a true credit to Caleb to to get in there. I mean, I put him in the driver's seat down in Disney, Oklahoma, and said where we met Kenny and. I said, all right, let's go test this out. I almost rolled him over in just a little a little ravine, had it all wadded up in the car trying to roll over in, and he had to save it within three minutes of jumping in the driver's seat.
[01:09:49.790]
So, you know, it's really a true credit to his driving skills of operating an unknown vehicle and jumping in there. And I mean, it was an absolute blast. We we didn't do as well as we liked, but I mean, we were the East Coast Series winners. So it's really hard to be upset about that. We went to grand nationals.
[01:10:14.270]
And the thing with going to Farmington, New Mexico, is it's big and really there's only a certain amount that a spotter can do out there.
[01:10:26.630]
Otherwise you really have to drive the car and make the car do what you want. And we were right there with Craig Allen and Ryan Maxfield and we had two two rollovers, one of them incredible from top to bottom end over end with the pirouette in the middle of it. If you want to check it out, you can find Caleb underscore good underscore on Instagram. And he's got that on his Instagram there. It is an incredible crash like most that you see from Farmington.
[01:11:02.570]
When something goes wrong, it goes wrong spectacularly out there.
[01:11:06.050]
So but even with with two rollovers, you know, we were still right there with those guys and putting pressure on Ryan Maxfield in second place at Grand National. So that's that's a really good feeling we didn't expect. You know, the world for our first time out, working together in a in an unknown vehicle in that and while it was it was such a great experience, we were in Dayton, Tennessee, and we had a lot of family from Kansas City make the 12 hour drive all the way out there to support us.
[01:11:40.180]
And my oldest son, Colby, is explaining what's going on to family and making sure we had waters and things like that. It was just such a great bonding experience. And I'm really glad that we took the opportunity to do that as a family. Yeah.
[01:11:59.410] - Big Rich Klein
So what's in store for the future, for the goods? You know, I know that you've got your shop, Caleb is two more years of high school left.
[01:12:09.790] - Jake Good
Yep, yep. Yeah. So at that Grand National's in twenty nineteen, we picked up a unlimited class chassis from Jesse Haines. We were hoping to have that together last season. But, you know, owning your own business and trying to get work out the door and all that just kind of got back-burnered, a little bit. But we are working real hard to have the new chassis put together and functioning for the twenty twenty one series of We Rock.
[01:12:43.240]
And I'm really excited to get back out and we'll be there. Whether it's in an unlimited car, we might take his trail car or we might just come support the event and help set courses. But one way or another, we'll be a part of the That We Rock series for for this season. And then, yeah, just, you know, continuing to kind of do work from home for probably the next couple of years.
[01:13:10.990]
I would really like to maybe get into assisting a manufacturer with outside sales or something like that. That's in the rock sports arena is something that whether it's Jeeps or the new Bronco or whatever the case may be, the you know, I think maybe that would be a good fit for me to try and sell something more from the manufacturing side on wholesale versus a retail side thing.
[01:13:40.270]
I think that would be a good fit for me. But you know what?
[01:13:42.860]
There's there's a lot that can happen between now and then. And for the time being, I'm just going to focus on trying to build the the coolest vehicles I possibly can at the at the shop Jake's off road in Kansas City and and just trying to to focus on that.
[01:13:59.680] - Big Rich Klein
Cool. So one of the things that that, Fred. Williams started was he asked me a question, and so now I'm asking everybody I interview if there's anything that they would like to ask me.
[01:14:16.620]
And I spring this on people, so I don't give you much time to think about it, but is there something that that you've always said? Can I need to ask Rich this if you've got something to shoot it?
[01:14:30.720] - Jake Good
Yeah, no, I we we talked a decent amount at the events and or I'll I'll text you if there's something that that I really want to know, but that more than anything, I just can't say thank you enough to continue, you know, to push forward and and be the rock crawling, you know, promotor that that we have to come out and play and have fun and hone our skills and to bring together such incredible competitors and incredible judges.
[01:15:04.800]
Making the change to Cedar City last year, we had a lot of judges that came up from Farmington, New Mexico, to Cedar City, Utah. And, you know, it just is such an incredible family, you know, of all of us together. And if it wasn't for you and Shelly continuing to do that, it would it would be lost and we wouldn't have the same outlet to to get together. So I really appreciate you guys for everything that you've done and continue to do.
[01:15:34.110] - Big Rich Klein
Well, I appreciate that. So I guess I guess we've hit all the points. Is there anything that that we didn't hit that you want to talk about?
[01:15:44.710] - Jake Good
No, I think that covers just about everything I again, I'm very humbled to be on with you and have a conversation with you today. It's definitely a dream. But wow, the guys you've had on, you know, the men and women you've had on the program so far just are so entrenched in the who's who of of rock crawling.
[01:16:07.120]
And I really felt like I missed out on a lot of the early stuff. But in reality, I did. I mean, we didn't get involved until late 2005 or so, but it. It did highlight a lot of the things that we were around for, you know, we got to compete in the Cooper Tire's All Stock Nationals that that you guys hosted. We got to go to Tooele. We've been so many incredible places. And that's really my favorite part of of competing is going to new places and competing on new terrain.
[01:16:45.060]
You know, it just has that that allure to me. It's just so exciting to try and figure out a new line and how to accomplish something, as, you know, effortlessly as you can. Yep. Excellent.
[01:16:57.630] - Big Rich Klein
Well, OK. Well, thank you, Jake, for coming on and spending an hour and a half or so with us and being the friend that you have over the years coming out and doing the announcing. You know, it's whether you've done it with Dustin or you've done it with Tacoma or you've done it on your own, you've always done a superior job of informing the spectators about what is actually happening and happening on course. That's a big, important job and we really appreciate you doing it.
[01:17:31.410] - Jake Good
While I allow or I appreciate you allowing me to do that, it it's definitely an honor. And man, we've had some great times with with Tacoma and I work in back and forth and really trying to take our announcing to the next level to really make a better, sellable product for you is obviously the end result. If whatever we can do to help keep we rock on the road and and putting on events is is what we're all about.
[01:17:59.020]
So thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of it.
[01:18:02.160] - Big Rich Klein
Well. Same here, so great. Have a good evening and say hello to the kids for me and we'll talk again here shortly.
[01:18:11.800]
All right. Sounds great. We will see you soon. All right. If you enjoy these podcasts, please give us a rating, share some feedback with us via Facebook or Instagram and share our link among your friends who might be like minded. Well, that brings this episode to an end. OK, you enjoyed it. We'll catch you next week with conversations with Big Rich. Thank you very much.