Conversations with Big Rich
Hear conversations with the legacy stars of rockcrawling and off-road. Big Rich interviews the leaders in rock sports.
Conversations with Big Rich
OG Rockcrawler, extreme sports afficionado, Bart Jacobs on Episode 223
Bart Jacobs hails from Utah and has participated in every extreme sport the state offers – from skiing to mountain biking to OG rockcrawling. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
3:41 – I decided, as stupid 16-year-olds do, that drag racing would be fun.
10:40 – I was still ski-jumping and ended up hurting my leg, for rehab, I started mountain biking, and doing longer and longer rides
18:46 – XJ’s didn’t have a great reputation, and still don’t for the people who like frames and such
29:43 – …we watched a lot of other teams, and there was nothing in the back…and the light bulb went on and I thought “OH, maybe if we took some weight out of this thing, it might do a little bit better!”
40:21 – In my first six events, I broke on the first or second obstacle on every event, it was frustrating
48:31 – I got so much from this sport, I feel blessed. The friends I’ve met, the relationships I have and the fun we’ve had doing it – I felt like I needed to give back to the sport
59:19 – I had the midnight to 2 am shift, we had just passed Bimini and started heading in a more Southerly direction…
Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
All Automotive with Matt Clawson
Automotive related topics. Anything from owning an repair facility to racing. Anything...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
[00:00:01.000]
Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.
[00:00:46.560]
Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.
[00:01:13.030]
Have you seen 4Low magazine yet? 4Low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4Low is the magazine for you. 4LOW cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4lOWmagazine. Com to order your subscription today.
[00:01:40.080] - Big Rich Klein
On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich is an O. G. Utah Rock Crawling competitor, avid outdoor recreationist, boater, skier, mountain bike rider, and all-around great guy, Bart Jacobs. Bart, how are you doing today?
[00:01:55.810] - Bart Jacobs
I'm doing great, Rich. Thanks for having me on. It's an It's been a pleasure to be here and talking with you.
[00:02:02.750] - Big Rich Klein
Well, it's my honor to be able to talk with you. We've known each other for quite a few years, but never really got a chance to sit down and talk like we're going to do today, so I'm looking forward to it.
[00:02:14.840] - Bart Jacobs
Me too, Rich.
[00:02:16.380] - Big Rich Klein
Let's get started with the easiest question, typically, where were you born and raised?
[00:02:23.310] - Bart Jacobs
I am a Utah native. I was born in Ogden, Utah, raised there all the way through high school. Our family spent a brief time in Texas and then moved back. After high school, I moved to Wyoming for a couple of years, spent a little time in West Yellowstone, Montana, and then moved back to Utah. I'm basically from Utah all of my life.
[00:02:54.280] - Big Rich Klein
With growing up in Ogden, you and I are pretty close to the same age. What was it like back in those, say, in those early '70s?
[00:03:05.000] - Bart Jacobs
The '70s were a great time from what I remember. I wasn't real into high school at the time. I had a little bit of a rebellious attitude. The '70s were great. We had great music. We went to great concerts.
[00:03:30.050] - Big Rich Klein
Cool cars.
[00:03:31.670] - Bart Jacobs
Cool cars, yeah. My first car was a 1966 Bronco.
[00:03:37.600] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, nice.
[00:03:41.000] - Bart Jacobs
I spent some time with my dad when I was 15 and we sanded it all down, put a little bit of a roll cage in it and got it all painted up. It was a going concern. It was a nice little Bronco, and that was also the first four-wheel drive that I rolled. About four months after I was 16, one of my jobs was cleaning up the football stadium at Weber State, and After that, I decided that, as stupid 16-year-olds do, that drag racing would be fun. I raced a friend in his Volkswagen, and I I was beating him, but I wasn't prepared for the corner coming up. He backed off, and I went into the corner too hot, hit a drainage great, rolled end over in the first time and sideways four or five more times. That was my first experience in rolling a 4x4.
[00:04:51.740] - Big Rich Klein
Was the Bronco salvageable or did you have to start over?
[00:04:56.590] - Bart Jacobs
No, it was not salvageable. I survived it with some stitches in the head and a lot of bumps and bruises. Ended up selling that. Then I went on to... I had a '66 Mustang and a '64 Or spit fire, and just a whole myriad of cars after that. Ended up graduating high school, and like I said, spent a little time in Wyoming after that, and then moved back to Utah, and got into skiing at the time. My stepdad had a ski shop, and I started mounting skis there. This is how I got into off-roading. Whenever I got into a sport I really liked, I tended to go to extremes with it. With skiing, I worked at Snow Basin for eight years. Everything from being in the rental shop to running a snow cat, which, by the way, was one of my favorite jobs I ever had. There's nothing like being on top of a mountain at night, seeing the stars, a full moon, and being all by yourself and just enjoying that part of life. It was very surreal. I agree. Also, being in a blizzard and a wideout, a whole different experience. I really enjoyed that part.
[00:06:29.380] - Bart Jacobs
But then I decided to be a mountain host up there and then work on the race crew and started racing. Then the more I got into it, there was a group that we did Galandi jumping. We jumped Nordic-style jumps on downhill skis. We would build jumps, and I had a couple of sets of 23s, and we would see how far we could go. There was a series created called the World Pro Fun Tour. We traveled between Wyoming and Montana, and Idaho, and Utah, and jumped this series. And, wow, what a blast. Again, I can't leave anything alone and have to take it to extremes. So that was a good time.
[00:07:30.350] - Big Rich Klein
So when you were in school, let's backtrack a little bit. When you were in school, you were rebellious and stuff, so you didn't play sports or anything like that?
[00:07:40.560] - Bart Jacobs
I played football in my senior year. I wasn't a starter, but I was pretty fast and played defensive back and had a good time. It was the senior experience. I missed a lot of school that year just because they didn't watch us that closely. I had auto shop, was my first period class, and he didn't really care if we were there as long as we brought him coffee and donuts. We would grab some coffee and donuts and give it to our teacher, and then we'd head out. High school, I had a lot of fun times, but I barely squig by there.
[00:08:33.900] - Big Rich Klein
When you said you went to Wyoming after high school, was that chasing a job? Or what was the Wyoming?
[00:08:41.550] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, it was chasing a job. I needed to make some money. So went up and worked on top of the Trona Mines by Green River, Wyoming. That was just to make some money and get a nicer car. I bought a '72 Blazer while I was up, or Jimmy, while I was up there. Again, I enjoyed the off-road life and had a good time up there, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I ended up moving back to Utah after a couple of years.
[00:09:20.500] - Big Rich Klein
And then got involved with Snow Basin. Okay.
[00:09:23.420] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah.
[00:09:24.020] - Big Rich Klein
You mentioned Texas. Was that early in life then?
[00:09:29.810] - Bart Jacobs
Very early in life, in fact, yeah, probably three or four years old. What was weird was I remembered the trip out there, driving out in the hot car, getting stung by a bee somewhere along the way, hanging out in Texas for a few months and then heading back. It was a very short time, but for some reason it comes back to mind. Maybe it was the Texas thing.
[00:09:58.170] - Big Rich Klein
Was that Are your parents chasing a job?
[00:10:03.480] - Bart Jacobs
Is that- Yeah, my dad chasing a job out there. I think it was in the insurance industry and not working out and coming back.
[00:10:11.900] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. Then you said Wyoming, Montana. Was that part of the same thing, mining, or was Montana something else?
[00:10:21.880] - Bart Jacobs
No, that was the ski jumping series. Okay. Traveling around and just hanging out with a a bunch of fun people and doing some extreme sports.
[00:10:33.000] - Big Rich Klein
What are those extreme sports, besides the skiing, did you like the most?
[00:10:40.960] - Bart Jacobs
Loved the ski jumping. I decided to go back to college about 10 years after high school and went to UTC and got back into the skiing thing and joining the ski team and ended up doing really well with that. I would win quite a few GS races. We raced colleges. We raced Weber State and Utah State and Idaho State and Rocky not in college. I liked that so much that I ended up coaching that team. Very good. Coached for 15 years. The very first part of that, I was still jumping, ended up hurting my leg, hurting my knee, and part of the rehab was riding bikes. That, like every other sport, I got into it. I would ride with some friends, and we started doing longer and longer rides. Pretty soon, we were doing centuries, 100-mile day bike rides. I was riding 2,000 to 3,000 miles a year, which isn't a lot for most people, but for me, it was a lot at the time. I guess it isn't a lot for some people, but it is a lot for most people. Then I got into races, doing criterions and these long distance rides, and that led me into mountain biking.
[00:12:24.020] - Bart Jacobs
I just enjoyed it. We had Moab close by, and my first experiences in Moab were on a mountain bike.
[00:12:31.350] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, you're one of those.
[00:12:33.010] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, I'm one of those. Which is pretty funny because that was at a time when people didn't wear bike helmets. I would go out and do the Slick Rock Trail and have a couple of water bottles with me, no bike helmet. If there wasn't anybody to ride with, I'd go ride by myself and do the whole Slick Rock bike trail and come back and There was a time or two I got out to the far end of that, and there were people out there struggling, trying to get through the trail, and I ended up giving them my water because they were hurting pretty bad. But again, it was that it was that thrill. It was that adrenaline rush of doing something a little more on the extreme side. One year, I decided, Well, let's see what we can do competing with a mountain bike, and I went down to the Utah Summer Games in Cedar City. I was going to just do the cross country, but I decided, What the heck? I'm there. I'll register for the downhill, too. The funny thing was, I ended up winning first in the downhill in my age group and third overall, and then doing second in the cross country.
[00:13:54.810] - Bart Jacobs
I was a pretty avid bike rider at the time.
[00:13:57.820] - Big Rich Klein
What year was that That was in the early '90s, '91-ish.
[00:14:09.570] - Bart Jacobs
I was married at the time, and my wife just rolled with the punches then.
[00:14:17.620] - Big Rich Klein
That was before I got to Cedar City because the summer games, I guess, have always been down there based out of SUU. When I was down in Cedar City, living for the four years I was down there, three and a half years, we wheeled out at Three Peaks all the time, but it wasn't a county park like it is now. It was just a BLM stretch of land out there that everybody abused the hell out of dumping cars and dumping refrigerators. Instead of going to the dumps, they used Three Peaks.
[00:14:54.250] - Bart Jacobs
Wow.
[00:14:55.040] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, it was nasty.
[00:14:57.730] - Bart Jacobs
That's an amazing area, so I'm glad it got cleaned up.
[00:15:01.760] - Big Rich Klein
As a club, I was there from '95, '96 for about four years. Then 2000, I moved back to Northern California. But we did cleanups every year with the off-road club that we had down there, Color Country, Four-wheelers. It was a dump. It was amazing. Every time we'd go out, which was two or three times a week, we'd stumble across new stuff that was dropped off. We never saw anybody dumping, or I didn't, but man, people dumped out there all the time. It was bad.
[00:15:44.530] - Bart Jacobs
Well, I'm glad there were clubs like yours to clean that up. It takes clubs like yours to keep places like that open because at that time, we were getting things closed down just for that reason. So well done.
[00:16:00.680] - Big Rich Klein
And then we helped the county get that land from BLM and turn it into the county park that it is now, which is really nice, very nice street peaks park. So then for mountain biking and stuff, what was the next big adventure?
[00:16:27.790] - Bart Jacobs
Well, I coached for a a long time. When my kids finished ski racing, I ended up not coaching anymore and actually not skiing for a few years. I needed something to pass my time, so I bought a little '76 CJ5. I'd always been into off-roading. In fact, some of my fondest memories was riding with my grandpa in this little green CJ3A flatty around. We deer hundered a lot as kids, and my dad always had a truck or some type of a four-wheel drive. I started driving off road at an early age when we'd get a deer and I had to go over a couple of mountain ridges and bring the truck over so we could load a deer up. I worked on a farm and drove an operated machinery. I was pretty good at operating vehicles. I got this little CJ5, and about that time was when internet lists started becoming available. There was a Jeep's SLL I'd see internet list. They were weird at the time. It was just a whole line of posts that people would post, no real format. Started seeing what people were doing with their Jeeps, and I wanted to fix it up.
[00:18:06.240] - Bart Jacobs
I took Peterson's Fourwheel and Off-Road and Four-wheeler and JP magazine and Started seeing what I could do with this little CJ5. Unfortunately, that didn't last for long because I couldn't fit the family. I was married and had four kids, and it was just It just didn't work for the family, so I ended up selling that. In about '97, I bought a little '88 Jeep Cherokee, an XJ.
[00:18:42.660] - Big Rich Klein
I love XJ.
[00:18:46.090] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, I know. You're very familiar with that platform. Back then, XJs didn't have a great reputation, and they still don't for the people that like frames and that. But I was always impressed with how well it did. Like everybody else with an XJ, the first thing I did was I bought a three-inch lift and put it on and 31-inch tires and went to my first Easter Jeep safari with it. I remember doing Strike Ravine and Hell's Revenge and thinking, Oh, man, this is the best thing ever. The The kids liked it, the family liked it. That was the start of it. I started reading more and more magazines, and I wanted to get 33s under this Cherokee. I went to three different shops. I went to Mepco, and they didn't really... At the time, they weren't even building lifts at the then, didn't have a lot of parts. They were Cherokees. There was another place in Salt Lake, and I went to a place down here in Utah County, and everybody said, Now, the most you're going to get underneath the Cherokees is 31-inch tires. But the more I willed it, the more I wanted something bigger.
[00:20:16.670] - Bart Jacobs
I was reading in a paper one day, and there was an ad for a new 4x4 shop. Little did I know how much that would end up costing me. That's when I met my good friend Matt Hornback, and he owned Rocky Mountain High 4x4. That's where I also met Dave Laws, an engineer that was also building a rig then. I walked into that shop and started talking to Matt, and he was very cordial and had all kinds of information. I said, Well, what I'm really here for is I want to see if I can get 33s under my Cherokee. Instead of the old, No, you can't do it, he said, Yeah, I think we can find a way to do that. He started coming up with some ideas that he'd thought about, and I knew Matt and I were going to get along really well from then on. I had a trip coming up to the Rubicon, and I really wanted to get bigger tires underneath it. We did a lift and I put some TJ control arms underneath the front that were adjustable. We did a few things, and it actually worked really well.
[00:21:44.180] - Bart Jacobs
I was able Matt actually let me borrow his 32-inch tires, and we regeared it. I threw a lock right in the back, and my wife and I loaded up and headed to the Rubicon. We drove there and met some friends from California, and a good friend from Iowa, and they were all part of this. It was a Jeep L list at the time. It was an email list. Got to be friends on that trip. When I talk about my first trip to the Rubicon with my wife, We had that thing so loaded down, you couldn't see out the back windows. We had a cooler, we had steaks, we had dry ice in the cooler to make sure we were going to have food through the whole trip. And we had tents and sleeping bags and chairs. It's a lot different than the way we go now. But the wife liked it, I liked it, and we made some good friends along the way. That was my first experience with the Rubicon.
[00:23:04.140] - Big Rich Klein
Very good. How many times do you think you've run it?
[00:23:08.200] - Bart Jacobs
We've been up there three times. Three times, okay. Yeah, in three different rigs, that Cherokee and then I had a stretched YJ, CJ at one time. Then I had a JK Unlimited that we took out there. Love that area. Can't wait to go back. One of these years, when I'm out there, I want to go do Four Dice. It's always been on my bucket list.
[00:23:36.630] - Big Rich Klein
Four Dice is the hard trail. The Rubicon is the scenic trail.
[00:23:42.730] - Bart Jacobs
Yes, it is.
[00:23:43.980] - Big Rich Klein
There's a few little difficult spots, but if you have got any experience, it doesn't matter what size tires or what you're doing, you can drive it.
[00:23:55.720] - Bart Jacobs
So you've done it a few times, Rich?
[00:23:57.930] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, yeah. I live an hour from the Go ahead.
[00:24:00.970] - Bart Jacobs
Oh, man. Lucky. Yeah.
[00:24:03.820] - Big Rich Klein
In fact, I'm now on the Rubicon Trail Foundation on the. Oh, nice. Yeah.
[00:24:12.310] - Bart Jacobs
We appreciate everything you do to keep that open and and go in.
[00:24:16.930] - Big Rich Klein
Well, I appreciate that. What other places... I mean, I know that you've done Moab, you're Utah native, so I'm sure you've wheeled Sand Hollow. In fact, I've seen photos. And then the Rubicon, where other places have you wheeled that you like to talk about?
[00:24:37.060] - Bart Jacobs
Well, actually, I just was going to different places, the Rubicon. I heard about this competition that they were going to have in Johnson Valley in 1999. Like the other extreme sports that I got into, I decided, maybe we could take the Cherokee out there and play there. I'd never been to Johnson Valley before. I caught with Matt and we ended up throwing a Scout 44 in the back of this Cherokee and an early Bronco 44 in the front. And ARBs, I had a friend help me build a front bumper that we could put a winch on and found a set of sliders from Klan Wakefield, and we decided to try our hand at the off-road competitions. We went down there to practice a couple of months before that event. I had asked my friend, like I mentioned, I met a guy from Iowa, Mike Garner, and we became friends on the Rubicon, and I asked if he wanted to come out and spot me for this competition. A couple of months before the Lauren Rock Crawling Championships in '99, we went to Johnson Valley to practice. We got there, set up camp, and I see this car driving out.
[00:26:27.510] - Bart Jacobs
The closer it got, I see that it's Mike, and he had flown in to California and ran in a car and came up so that we could actually practice on those trails. Mike and I became real good friends after that. The next day, we went to Jack Hammer and ran it. Then we did Sledge and We had a great time on those trails, got to know what the rocks were like and how sharp they were. That night, we were hanging out on Means dry Lake bed at a campfire and having a few barley pops. I just barely gone to bed when all of a sudden I thought somebody was shaking the motorhome and shaking it really hard. It ended up being the 7.1 rector scale earthquake that they had out there in '99. We were on the lake bed enjoying it. It was pretty crazy. It woke everybody up, and that was pretty close to the epicenter at the time. That's one of my first memories of Johnson Valley.
[00:27:51.510] - Big Rich Klein
Rocking and rolling.
[00:27:52.890] - Bart Jacobs
Rocking and rolling with an earthquake.
[00:27:56.080] - Big Rich Klein
Let's talk about that competition then. What's That's it. Let's talk about the competition.
[00:28:02.470] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah. We get out there and we pull on to Means, Dry Lake bed. I thought I was seriously in a city, and I I think there were only 50 rigs out there. Nothing like King of the hammers are these days, but it was the most people camping I'd ever seen in an event. Every rig you can imagine and really built Jeeps. I was really intimidated because I'm in a Cherokee on 35s, and we're going to compete on this new trail. It was just opened up called Wrecking Ball. I think I'm in way over my head, but I decided we're going to go out and have fun, and we did. Mike and I worked through the first day, and I think we only pulled the winch once. We were solidly on the front half of the middle of the pack after that day. It really surprised me how well we did and how well the Cherokee could do. We popped a tire. That was at the time when we carried a spare with us. I had to spare drivelines, I had spare axial chefs. I had a high lift jack and all the tools, and we actually changed the tire in between an obstacle and finished that day pretty well.
[00:29:43.390] - Bart Jacobs
We were going into that night pretty well and probably partied a little too hard that night because we were celebrating. Start the next day, and the next day was about the same. We surpassed expectations. We had a good time. I think we ended up about 25th, 26th, somewhere in that competition. But one thing I noticed that day, watching all the other teams, and we watched a lot of other teams, was I looked at, I think it was John Curry's Jeep, and there was nothing in the back, and we saw them rolling their spare tire up the on obstacles so that they didn't have to carry it. The light bulb went on and I thought, Oh, maybe if we took some weight out of this thing, it might do a little bit better.
[00:30:40.710] - Big Rich Klein
That was eye-opening.
[00:30:45.270] - Bart Jacobs
A lot of things on that trip were eye-opening. But it was a fun experience, and it really put the bug in me to keep going.
[00:30:58.530] - Big Rich Klein
A quick question. So do you carry a spare now?
[00:31:02.830] - Bart Jacobs
No. Right. Haven't carried a spare for years. Even when we did the Rubicon the last couple of times, I had a spare in the truck, but now very minimal tools, no extra parts. A quick trip to the truck will help with that. Yeah.
[00:31:24.450] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:31:25.780] - Bart Jacobs
So that winter worked a little bit more on the Jeep, and there was one event in... I forget where it was, and we missed it, and I thought, Man, I really want to at least go to a competition. We had plans to go down to Cedar City to Ranch's first event there in Arca. We loaded up and headed down there. I had a friend that was helping with that competition, and They said, Somebody canceled. We were full, but somebody canceled. There's a spot open. I said, Really? They said, Yeah, why don't you come through tech and let's just see if you pass. We went through tech. I think I had to go to Walmart and buy a first aid kit and put it in the Jeep. We ended up registering for our first ARCA competition there.
[00:32:27.470] - Big Rich Klein
At Cedar City, I was helping with that event.
[00:32:30.110] - Bart Jacobs
I think I actually met you there that time, Rich. You were one of the organizers there at that area or something? Yeah.
[00:32:40.460] - Big Rich Klein
Our club was… I'd like to think that we were pretty instrumental in helping Ranch with that event. I mean, as a club, we helped with some of the setup and then judging and stuff like that.
[00:32:56.670] - Bart Jacobs
You guys did a great job. I think the thing that me away the most with that competition was how many people were there.
[00:33:04.290] - Big Rich Klein
Wow. Yeah.
[00:33:06.260] - Bart Jacobs
I mean, just wild.
[00:33:07.990] - Big Rich Klein
The sheriff estimated 10,000 people.
[00:33:12.350] - Bart Jacobs
That does not surprise me at all.
[00:33:15.020] - Big Rich Klein
Me neither. I was absolutely in shock. And my dad, it was the first time he'd been to an event. I had been to Johnson Valley for that JV event as well, and then also to the Phoenix. They I had one out at Ranch, put an event on down at, outside of Phoenix, Apache Junction in upper and lower Woodpecker. I went down to that event just to see what we were up against. As a club.
[00:33:48.780] - Bart Jacobs
Wow, that's awesome. I did miss that Phoenix event. Sorry that I missed it, but I think I hit every other arc of it after that, and then you rock after that. Right.
[00:34:00.850] - Big Rich Klein
And Craig started U-Rock the same time I started Cal Rocks.
[00:34:04.430] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, funny story with that. We're on this little list, and I forget whether it was Rocky Mountain Extreme or Jeep Salt Lake. Craig had been, I think to that Cedar City event, was competing, and he posted on this list that, I'm thinking of starting this little local series that anybody from around here It could come out and do, and it'll be cheaper and easier to get to. We were actually throwing out suggestions for names on that. Somebody threw out U-Rock. I'm not sure whether it was Craig or somebody else. At that time, the U stood for Utah. Then after that, somebody said, You might not want to pigeonhole yourself in just Utah, and they changed it from Utah to United. The rest was history with U-Rock. We did every U-Rock event there was.
[00:35:09.530] - Big Rich Klein
Very good. What was the most memorable, easy word for me to say this morning, memorable event that you competed in?
[00:35:22.380] - Bart Jacobs
There were a lot. I loved going to Farmington. I love Chope Cherry Canyon. It was a different willing for us. Whoever has not been to Farmington and that area, just you can't imagine the grip you get on those rocks and the type of terrain it is. But I think the most memorable one was about 2001, maybe 2002, and we went back to Johnson Valley. That winter, I had taken the Cherokee. It was on 37s at the time, and in an effort to cut weight, I'd cut the back off of it. Matt let me borrow his shop in his plasma cutter, and I bought a bunch of Sawzall blades and actually cut the back off that Cherokee and put a wrangler tub on the back of it. It lightened it up quite a bit. I'm going to Johnson Valley with this rig that looks awesome. We painted it white and it was wheeling better than it ever was. I thought, Man, maybe I should retire this rig and get something else. But we were having so much fun in Johnson Valley. Actually, it was one of our better events. I get a little cocky going on the second day and ended up rolling it and took out the A-pillar and the windshield.
[00:37:00.040] - Bart Jacobs
I still had a windshield at that time. We went from being on a super high to a super low, knowing that I'd pretty much crunch that Cherokee and That was probably the beginning of the end for it, but it was memorable. We ended up doing pretty well at that. I think we had a top 10 finish in that one. We had a couple of top 10 finishes. Never got in on the podium, but man, we had some good times out there. But that event led to the beginning of the end for the Cherokee. Every part that I dented from then on, I ended up cutting off. By the end of that year, it didn't have a top, it didn't have a B-pillar. I had an internal cage and frame stiffener. It was a solid rig, but it didn't look anything nothing at all like it had in its glory years. But I think that was the first year that Craig had Super Crawl at the end of the year in Bernal. We ended up going into that and placing third. We had a great competition. It was a fitting ending for that Cherokee that that was the last event, and we did so well with it.
[00:38:30.850] - Bart Jacobs
It went out on a good note.
[00:38:34.850] - Big Rich Klein
Then what was the next rig you competed in?
[00:38:40.790] - Bart Jacobs
The next one started in Farmington, and Matt and I built a YJ Jogging for that year. I think that was 2002. It was fun competing in something a lot lighter. I was with some different tires. I think I threw Super Swampers on that one and the first set of 40s that I had. It did pretty well. There were some geometry problems. It had some anti-squat and some rears there going on. But we had a good time in that rig. Actually, probably the most wild pitcher I was ever in was hanging off There was a cliff in the back of Farmington, and you had to climb this hill. At the top of that, I rolled and I was hanging on with my tires hanging on. Troy, my spotter, keeping me from rolling down this hill. It ended up being a great picture. But that was fun. At the end of that season, I had a A company in Salt Lake, factory tubular, approach me and they said, We want to build a couple of buggies. We'd like you to drive one of them. We're going to put some narrow Unimog axes underneath them. That was my experience with 2003.
[00:40:21.250] - Bart Jacobs
Going into that season with a full... It was my first full-tube buggy. The Mog axles would have been great if they would have been dependable. But 2003 started probably the most frustrating year ever that I ever had competing. We were signed up for U-Rock, Arca, I think Pro-Rock, and we had scheduled 12 events that year. In the first six events, I broke in the first or second obstacle on every event, and it was frustrating. Lucky for me, when I first started breaking, there were great people. That was the one thing with the sport. There were so many people out there willing to help and willing to loan parts and that. Todd Little was running mogs. Charlie Meltzner was running mogs, and I was able to scrounge enough parts to finish some of those competitions. But it was a frustrating year. We did not do well that year.
[00:41:31.930] - Big Rich Klein
It was the mog parts that would break, those boxes?
[00:41:36.140] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah. It wasn't just one part on the Mog. I broke portal boxes, I broke shafts, broke the lockers. It all just ended up being the locker wasn't quite engaged, so that's what broke that. We did a lot of work on those axles, and they became somewhat dependable. But my agreement with factory tubular was to run that rig for two years. As well as we did in 2004, I couldn't wait to get out of that rig. 2004, I think, was the year that Ranch built the manmade course out at the Speedway in Salt Lake. Wow, I think that changed rock crawling forever. That was so much fun. Even though we weren't in a rig that I thought we could do well, and we had a ball out there. It was such a fun event to go out to a place that was that condensed. We had that many obstacles in such a small period of time. There were bleachers there and fans. What a ball.
[00:42:56.430] - Big Rich Klein
Was that the year that nick Sosha got hurt?
[00:42:59.930] - Bart Jacobs
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lots of changes going on then. In fact, I remember when Ranch sent out an email to all of the competitors, competitor saying, I know some of you guys may be against this, but I think we're going to start requiring helmets. And there were new rules that came out that we had to wear helmets. At first, we were in ball gaps. We were just strapped into our seatbelts. It was wild the way the sport progressed to where we needed five points eventually and helmets, and they were limitations on touching the vehicle and riding on a wheel or a rocker. It was fun to watch the sport progress.
[00:43:56.210] - Big Rich Klein
That event in Cedar City One of the most memorable things I remember about that event was Lance Clifford spotting for Bob Rogge and stepping on the fire extinguisher, and the fire extinguisher was pointed right at him. He's standing hanging on to the cage, steps on the fire extinguisher to get a better footing, and it just blew right into his face. Somebody got that. It was just pretty awesome. Oh, yeah.
[00:44:27.490] - Bart Jacobs
It was a cloud of white smoke. It just covered the lens. It was hilarious. Yeah, those were some good times in Rock Crom. That was fun.
[00:44:36.310] - Big Rich Klein
Did you ever compete at the Super Crawls at the Convention Center during CEMA?
[00:44:44.180] - Bart Jacobs
I did. After 2004, I was approached by a marketing company called Got Rocks. They arranged to have a buggy built for for me to run in. I wanted to go to the Legends Group. The Level brothers had come in with their Ranger and it looked like fun. They said, No, we're building Clay Egan, a rig for that. We want you to run. I think it was called Unlimited then. I got my very first rear engine buggy. It had a Ford 5.0 in the back of it. I wanted a V8, even though I knew some of the four cylinders people were going to were a lot lighter. For some reason, I wanted that power. But that was a fun buggy. It was a lot of fun. That year was when we got to go to the convention center and there was that man-made course, and what a riot. That was so much fun. I think that was the last event in 2006, and that may have been my last event competing. But I had a sponsor through all of my rock crawling and onboard air, Brad Kilby with onboard air. Being there, I was able to compete and have a blast there and also help Brad out with his booth that he had in there.
[00:46:27.970] - Bart Jacobs
It was a lot of fun, twofold. Then to be part of that CEMA event, holy cow. I wanted to go back there ever since. What an event.
[00:46:41.940] - Big Rich Klein
When that 2006 season was over and you said that was your last competition. It was your last true event competition, but you did old school, didn't you, a couple of I did old school.
[00:47:01.870] - Bart Jacobs
I went out there with a stock rig once with the TJ, but I didn't want to scratch it, so I didn't do real well. Then I was fortunate enough to buy the original level ranger buggy and went out there with that. Instead of running legends, I qualified easily for legends, I ran the unlimited class. We were in first and second that whole time. I had Dusty Sexton spotting for me. We did one obstacle that nobody else was able to get up through the whole weekend. Dusty was a great spotter. That rig worked so well. We had one obstacle the second day where I ended up on the side and slidded all the way down and ruined my new paint job that still smelled fresh. We ended up in third place, but that was a riot. We had so much fun in that. I did finish third in my last competition that I did.
[00:48:23.020] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. You've also spent a lot of time wheeling as doing trail guiding?
[00:48:31.980] - Bart Jacobs
I got so much from this sport. I feel blessed. I really do. The friends I've met, the relationships I have, the fun that we've had doing it, that I felt like I needed to get back to the sport. I've been gunning at Moab for Easter Jeep Safari for the last 20 some odd years. When When Winter 4x4 came out, it was Winter on the Rocks at first, but when it became Winter 4x4, I went down, and Winter Jambury. I went down and helped with that. Then I've done every gun for every Trail Hero event since they started, except for one, when my mom passed away, when I was on my way down there to help. It's been It's fun. I feel like I'm still involved with the sport. It's nice being the old guy that people don't really know, but I can help people out and maybe give a little bit of education along the way, and I just enjoy doing it. I hope to always be involved with the off-road sport. It's been such a big part of my life, and I really hope that it continues. I hope we don't get the land closures that are coming up and that we can keep parks open, especially Sand Hollow.
[00:50:09.690] - Bart Jacobs
What a jewel in the off-road community.
[00:50:15.220] - Big Rich Klein
When I was in Cedar City, of course, my son, Little, he was always wheeling with us with Dean Bullick and all that Cedar City crowd, and then Todd Little and those guys, we'd all wheel down. We'd normally wheel up in the Cedar City area unless we wanted to go do sand dunes. And then so we'd park out there by where Walmart is now, and then wheel all the way in because there were no roads. And we'd wheel all the way into the sand dunes to wheel the sand. And we never even looked at all those rock formations, really, because we were there to do the sand. And now it's a mecca. It's turned into that, especially over the last... Well, this will be the ninth Trail Hero coming up?
[00:51:11.870] - Bart Jacobs
Yep, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I remember my first visit there, and it was in the mid 2000s. I think I had my Willy's Buggy at the time, and Craig Stumpf took us out to some places that he had found. What a riot. Then we took a hike up a couple of those canyons, and we thought, No, there's no way anybody's coming up these. I'm pretty sure now they're part of probably triple sevens or some of those eight or nine rated trails down there. We were just blown away at the time. But wow, what that area has turned into is amazing. Right.
[00:52:02.560] - Big Rich Klein
Absolutely. It's a great place to host an event like that.
[00:52:07.380] - Bart Jacobs
Oh, man. Little Rich has done such a good job with that. I'm just so impressed with what it's turned into and how much that event helps so many different people and so many different groups of people. It's well done, Little Rich. Yeah.
[00:52:25.450] - Big Rich Klein
I'm proud of him for that event. He's done a great job. You retired. What did you retire from?
[00:52:35.720] - Bart Jacobs
When I moved down to Utah County in '83, I started going to school there. Like I mentioned before, I was on the ski team there. Well, the advisor of the ski team was the controller for the college, UTC at the time, UVCC, there was a few iterations of the name. He asked me what I was going into for my major, and I said, Accounting or programming, one of the two. He said, Well, would you like to come in and help me close the books? I think this was in '86. I was getting close to having my degree, and I was working at a sports store at the time, and I jumped at the opportunity. I went in and worked in the business office. It was when the business office for UVU was in Provo by BIO and helped them close the books. That ended up becoming more than a temporary job. It was a part-time job. Then Mike asked me to come on full-time, and that was the start of that career. I ended up spending 36 years at UVU in the business office and in IT, and eventually in the foundation for the last 22 years of my career there.
[00:54:20.440] - Bart Jacobs
It was a great career. I had some good growth opportunities there. The The thing that I really liked the most is, even though I wasn't making a lot of money working for the state, the benefits were great, and I had a lot of time off to go and play. That's what allowed me to compete. When I was competing and gave me time to hang out at Lake Powell, water ski and boat. We had a lot of boats on Lake Powell and really enjoy life. Again, that was blessing that I never saw coming that turned out to be just great. That's also where I met my wife. It was a great place to work and raise a family here in Utah County.
[00:55:15.330] - Big Rich Klein
You just recently had a chance to take a boat from the American mainland to the Bahamas, correct?
[00:55:26.950] - Bart Jacobs
I did. What a treat that was. I mentioned Glenn Wakefield. He owns Rocky Mountain Off-Road up in Heaver. When I was competing, getting the Cherokee ready for my very first event, I met Glenn, and he was the only person that had rock sliders for a Cherokee. I called him and told him I was going to Johnson Valley, and he said, Well, I don't have any sliders made up except for the ones that are on my rig. But if you come up, I'll pull those off my rig and mount them on yours. That was a beginning of a friendship I had with Glenn. Him and his son, and my son and I, skied together a few times and rode mountain bikes with him a few times. Well, I noticed Glenn started sailing in the Bahamas, and he had a Monahull sailboat at one time, and then he got this catamaran. And, wow, what a nice catamaran. So I messaged Glenn and I just said, If you ever need any help, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty handy with boats and their systems. I'm happy to come down and help. And early this spring, he messaged me and he says, Hey, I'm bringing my boat into Fort Lauderdale.
[00:56:58.230] - Bart Jacobs
I'm going to get a bunch of work done to it, and we're going to do a bunch of work, and then we're going to sell over the Bahamas and down to Great Xuma Island. You're welcome to come for any part of it and help out when you can and leave whenever you want. Talked to the wife, and my schedule was opened, and she's so understanding. She said, Do it. I flew into Fort Lauderdale. It was in March this year, and We worked on the boat and got most the systems ready and had a plan to leave the second or third night and head over past Bimini, and to an island over there. We went into the... I forget what it's called. But the wind was blowing so hard and the waves were so big that we were only out for 15 minutes and had to go back. Luckily, this slip that we were in was still open for the next night. We did a little more work on the boat and then went out the next night at five o'clock. That was amazing. The timing couldn't have worked out better. The weather was great. We went from five o'clock that evening and settled all night and 10 o'clock the next into Chubb K.
[00:58:32.970] - Bart Jacobs
The whole rest of that trip was just amazing. We stayed that night in a slip, and then the rest of the night, we were either on anchor or at a buoy and just traveled the whole chain of islands down to Great Xuma. Glenn knows that area really well. He knows when the tides are going to be in and out. He knows it as well as I knew Lake Powell, where you could go, at what time. It was just an amazing trip and amazing opportunity. Yeah, that was awesome. What a fun way to start the summer.
[00:59:14.930] - Big Rich Klein
On that night crossing, did you stay awake the whole night?
[00:59:19.470] - Bart Jacobs
We took shifts. There were four of us on the boat, including Glenn and myself, and we would take two-hour shifts. My shift was from midnight 2:00 in the morning. We had just passed Demony and starting to head a little more in the Southernly direction. He had an autopilot on the boat that corrected for wind. We were under motors because we didn't have much wind that night. We just had to make sure that we didn't hit any of the rocks that were identified on the GPS. What an experience. Because you're out there in the middle of the night and the stars are all around. If you see a boat and it starts getting closer, you know you're on the same path as it. We had to slow up for a cargo ship that was coming by. We had to slow up for a crew ship that was coming by and adjust course a little bit. But you're out in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden you're on a collision course with another boat. So you do have to be awake, you have to be alert. But most of the time, you're just in awe of how bright the stars are and how great it is to be out there in the ocean.
[01:00:38.070] - Big Rich Klein
It's amazing with autopilot, what some of the people do. I follow a couple of pages on social media that have qualified captain and that stuff, where they show these videos of people just hitting various things while they're on autopilot and not paying attention. It's autopilot. I can go to sleep now. Yeah, right. I would never trust. It's like autonomous cars. There's no way I'm getting in the back seat of a car and having the computer drive me someplace. I'm just too much of a control freak.
[01:01:22.320] - Bart Jacobs
No kidding. That trip across the ocean was It's so nice and it would have been so relaxing. But if you're not watching, you're going to be in trouble or dead pretty quick. So, yeah, I agree with you on the electric cars, too. On the autonomous cars. I'm not getting in one. I don't think ever.
[01:01:47.370] - Big Rich Klein
Right. I was driving through San Francisco last year, and we were on 19th Avenue, which heads out to Golden Gate. After the Golden Gate, all the way through town from north to south or south to north. And one of those wagos or whatever they are, the mapping vehicles that are autonomous and nobody's in them, and it's driving in traffic. With everybody else. And I just wanted to... If it had to have been quite so much traffic where you could try to fake it out and you're going to crash into it and see what it would do. But the wife was with me, and Shelle wouldn't appreciate it if I did something like that. I didn't try, but all I could think about was, Oh, I just know this thing's going to slam on the brakes or do some action to avoid a collision. Let's try it.
[01:02:46.150] - Bart Jacobs
See what reaction you could get from that.
[01:02:49.980] - Big Rich Klein
Exactly. Because all these things are on there spinning around and these little pods and stuff. It's like, this is nuts that we're getting to that point. So what's on your bucket list still to do? Or as I like to call it a life list.
[01:03:06.850] - Bart Jacobs
I'm going to continue wheeling. My son-in-law and my grandsons are really into it. In fact, I've got one grandson that's 13 and one that's 15. Right now, they both have Jeeps. I had quite the experience with Tim Jackson and the Postal Mel Jeep. My 13-year-old grandson, when he was 11, was Tim's biggest fan, Timmy McTimface. He loved the Postal Jeep, and he followed it. He actually bought a T-shirt with that Jeep on it. One time, I didn't know Tim, but he was in Moab, and we were in Moab safari. I messaged him. We passed him and my grandson wanted to turn around and we couldn't. I messaged him and I said, My grandson's your biggest fan. If there's a place we could meet, that'd be great. Tim was so nice. He in Georgia met us up at potato salad Hill. He let my grandson get in his Jeep. He took up and down potato salad. He just made Everett's whole day. We stayed in touch over the years. Just recently, Tim has decided to go to a flatty, and he contacted us. After some negotiation, my grandson actually has the US Postal Mail Jeep now.
[01:04:57.420] - Bart Jacobs
We We bought a TJ with a 6-0 in it with an LS for a platform, and that body's going on that. We're building an LJ from my other grandson, and I just see lots more wheeling coming our way. They love it. They've driven my rig and they've driven their dad, Jared's rig, all over Sand Hall, even on some of the harder trails for the last couple of years. They're good wheelers and that'll be fun. I'm riding bikes more now than I've ridden in a long time. In fact, I turned 68 this month, and I'm going to do a 70-mile ride on my road bike for that. I'm riding mountain bikes quite a bit. Any chance to get out on a boat? I do. I went up to Bear Lake last week and helped a friend do some racing up there on his sailboat. So I'm just enjoying retirement. I'm really having a good time. My wife's still working, so we're not traveling much, but we are going to Africa in a week and a half, so looking forward to that. Retirement has just been awesome and looking forward to when my wife gets to retire and we get to travel more and just hang out with the grandkids.
[01:06:24.780] - Bart Jacobs
Got another granddaughter on the way, so that'll make five total. Can't wait for that. Awesome.
[01:06:34.320] - Big Rich Klein
The Africa trip is a photo safari?
[01:06:38.330] - Bart Jacobs
It is. It's actually three safaris to three different places. We're going to be there for 10 days. One of those is in a hot air balloon. Really looking forward to that. This is a bucketless trip for my wife. She's been so nice to me to let me I go off on all my tangents and go four wheeling in that. So this is a trip for her. But the more I hear about it, the more amazing I hear it is. I'm really excited for it.
[01:07:14.010] - Big Rich Klein
Well, that's awesome. I'd love to hear. Well, I'll follow your stories as you post them on social media. I'm sure you'll be doing that.
[01:07:24.800] - Bart Jacobs
I will. I'll get them posted up. Great. Excellent.
[01:07:28.380] - Big Rich Klein
I love watching other people's adventures, especially the people that I know it because it becomes more personal that way. I realized that I was at CIMA one time, and I was talking to a business owner that I've known in the four-wheel drive industry, and I was totally shocked. And he goes, Man, I just love following your adventures, your Australia trip and your Japan trip. And I'm like, Wait, you follow that stuff? And he goes, Yeah, it's awesome. I can't wait to have time to do those things myself. And I'm thinking, Okay, that's what life's all about, is being able to share your adventures.
[01:08:16.090] - Bart Jacobs
Absolutely. Rich, not this year, from what I hear, but your adventure living on your boat in Texas, that was a dream of my wife and I. I love seeing the pictures that you posted living on your boat and just being on the ocean. Yeah, that is so cool.
[01:08:38.850] - Big Rich Klein
We are going to do, when things change for us and we're able to get back to the boat, we are going to do the great loop. Are you familiar with that?
[01:08:50.800] - Bart Jacobs
I'm very familiar with that. I'm on a group on social media following that. That's a bucket list of mine, but not so much my wife's at the moment. When are you going to do that? I'm excited to hear about that.
[01:09:05.320] - Big Rich Klein
I'm hoping to do it. I'm 66 now. I hope to do it before I hit 70. It really depends on what the situation is here with my parents in Placerville, but we're looking forward to doing that. We're not going to do it in the boat that we currently have. That's more of our house, our retirement house. What we'll probably do is is purchase a loop-ready boat, something that somebody just finished the loop in or whatever, take a little bit of time and making it ours and then doing the loop itself and then dumping that boat afterwards to somebody else that's waiting to do the loop. Yeah.
[01:09:47.780] - Bart Jacobs
That seems like a great way to do it. Maybe something with some diesel engines on it. Yes.
[01:09:55.170] - Big Rich Klein
It gets good.
[01:09:56.810] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, that's so cool. I can't wait to see your adventures on there.
[01:10:02.910] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. If our boat had the diesel engines, we would be doing it in our boat. Our 48-foot Chriscraft, it's a great boat. It's just with those gas motors, just It would be not cost-effective and too much maintenance to deal with on a 6,000-mile cruise.
[01:10:25.440] - Bart Jacobs
Oh, exactly. Shelley must be a pretty good first mate. I know that's one of the problems my wife has is when we were coming into docks with the wind blowing. That was always a stressful time for us. Always. It's good to have a good first mate there and maybe a little help on the dock sometimes.
[01:10:52.260] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. That's one of the things that I found is that if there's anybody that's watching you come in in its windy conditions, people are willing to help. They'll get off their boats, they'll put down their cocktail or whatever they're doing and come over and help. And that really makes a big difference. I'm looking forward to doing locks for the first time and see how that goes. There's some locks within a day's trip of where we keep our boat on the inland waterway. When we bought our boat and we brought it down from Kema, Houston area, Josh Jackson was with me, and we just jumped right out to the... We went through Galveston Bay and then jumped right out to the Gulf and came down all the way down the Gulf instead of doing the inland waterway. So we missed the locks. But I'm looking forward to going up there and practicing locks, at least on the locks there, before we do the great loop.
[01:11:55.470] - Bart Jacobs
Yeah, that sounds like a good thing to practice, if you're going there. Yeah.
[01:12:00.190] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah. And the wind, you get used to docking in the wind, being in the Gulf Coast of Mexico anyway, because it's always windy. Right. And I hated growing up in the wind when I grew up in south of San Francisco. The wind, I mean, it was always windy. Whenever we played football or baseball or went bike riding, there was always a wind, and I actually hated the wind. And now it doesn't bother me when you're on the golf Coast because It's refreshing. Without the wind, it's way too sweltering.
[01:12:35.780] - Bart Jacobs
That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.
[01:12:40.310] - Big Rich Klein
Well, we'll have to talk. Maybe the timing will align and you can do the great loop at the same time.
[01:12:46.440] - Bart Jacobs
Oh, that would be awesome. If I can talk my wife into it, I'd love to get some a loop boat and do at least part of it. My dream is to do all of it, but that probably won't come to fruition. But We'll see how it goes. I'm excited for you. What a great trip.
[01:13:08.110] - Big Rich Klein
Well, Bart, I appreciate you taking the time today to have this conversation and to learn more about you and your adventures and your life. It's been very refreshing. Thank you.
[01:13:22.990] - Bart Jacobs
It's been my pleasure, Rich. Thank you so much.
[01:13:26.710] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. You have a great day, the rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing your safari pictures.
[01:13:34.250] - Bart Jacobs
Okay, you too. And take care.
[01:13:36.680] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. Bye-bye now. Bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.