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
Former NAXJA President, Matt ‘McGyvr” Rowland on Episode 236
Matt Rowland from Indiana is a bit of an anomaly. A communications major in criminal justice, attends XJ conventions without an XJ, and a builder of fabulous bonfires! Join us for some Midwest history on Episode 236. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
4:35 – …that might be part of the reason I’ve always had affection for Jeeps
13:50 –my freshman year, we lost to the big high school in Fort Wayne by over 100 points
18:49 – everything auto mechanic-wise, I learned from working on the junk we were driving
31:59 – Tony bought a ’99 TJ and started taking it to the Badlands, in Attica, Indiana
39:24 – In 2005, I got on the police department in Fort Wayne, and I’ll have 20 years next May
44:31 – I had to borrow $1500 from my parents to pay off the loan on the XJ because they said Modified Cherokees were worthless
51:02 – I had a buddy who said, “Hey, are you ever going to settle down and get married?” and I’m like, I guess, maybe.
1:03:45 – The LJ became the family truckster for wheeling, and we changed the bylaws when I was NAXJA President
Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
[00:00:01.040] -
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.
[00:00:45.280] -
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[00:01:13.020] -
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.
[00:01:39.800] - Big Rich Klein
On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, I'll be talking with a past President of the North American XJ Association, Yep, NAXJA, a member of Team Indiana, and a longtime friend, Matt MacGyver-Rowland. Matt MacGyver-Rowland, how are you doing?
[00:01:59.600] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I'm doing well, sir. How are you?
[00:02:01.450] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent. So it's really good to have you on the air here. Thank you for saying you would do this. We go back quite a ways, but we're going to go back even before that and find out more about you. You ready for this?
[00:02:19.510] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Let's do it.
[00:02:20.380] - Big Rich Klein
All right. So first question, where were you born and raised?
[00:02:25.580] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So I was born in Muncie, Indiana, East Central, Indiana. My dad was a glass factory worker. He was an electrician, and he started working in the factory. And we grew up... He got laid off a lot. So money, I remember a Christmas where the Christmas presents was the free stuff from the auto parts store in town. Things got better, though, because eventually he was able to change jobs, and he actually just retired in 2022 from Dana Corporation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So we moved up to Dana. I'm sorry, we moved up to Fort Wayne in 1989. He started there in '88, and on my 10th birthday, and then we moved up to Fort Wayne. All right. So the early years, we're in a little town called Dunkirk, Indiana, which is affectionately known as the Glass Capital of Indiana. They had two glass-producing plants there, foundries or whatever you would call them. And he went into Hartford City, worked for an auto parts place that made the... If you remember the old Impalas? Right. They had the plastic pieces on the front. They used water jets to cut those pieces. So we worked there for a little while and then ended up getting the job in Fort Wayne.
[00:03:57.470] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And I had to say that was It was pretty awesome because that just opened up a lot more opportunities going from the small town to the big town of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
[00:04:08.070] - Big Rich Klein
When that move happened, about how old were you?
[00:04:15.930] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I was 10 or 11 when he got that job. I believe he started on my 10th birthday in '88 in July, and then we moved in January of 89 up here.
[00:04:31.600] - Big Rich Klein
So your dad just retired in his 60s?
[00:04:35.200] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes, he is 69 years old. He retired two years ago after 34 years at Dana. And that might be part of the reason why I've always had affections for Jeeps. It also might be the 1955 Willey's pickup that he's had since he was a senior in high school in 1973.
[00:04:55.820] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, there you go. He bought it.
[00:04:57.400] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
He bought that truck when he was 18, and the truck was 18, and he still got it. We've still got it, and we're hoping to do a father-son restoration on it here sooner than later.
[00:05:11.300] - Big Rich Klein
Well, that's pretty awesome. I wish I had my first vehicle It was a 1954 Volkswagen Bug. It was pretty cool. But it's gone, along with everything else I've ever owned.
[00:05:27.660] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
When my parents met, My mom had a VW Bug. I don't know what year it was. 70 something, I think, probably. But she had a Volkswagen. I do not remember it. It was long gone before I could remember cars. They had citations, if you remember those, is what the family car was in the early days. Oh, yeah.
[00:05:49.780] - Big Rich Klein
Chevy Citation. See, I'm just a couple of years younger than your dad.
[00:05:54.960] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
There you go.
[00:05:56.640] - Big Rich Klein
So he and I had that same high school time experience then.
[00:06:02.570] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah.
[00:06:03.640] - Big Rich Klein
So Dunkirk, was it pretty rural, being a small town, or was it just part of a bigger city, or what?
[00:06:13.910] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was rural. It was a one or two stop light town, depending on if one of the two stoplights worked. That's the joke. If one of them quit working, it'd be a one stop light town, and then it was a two stop light town.
[00:06:30.570] - Big Rich Klein
And what was it like going to school there? I know it was your first year.
[00:06:34.480] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was a very small school. Yeah, in the early years, the elementary school was very small, and there wasn't very many kids. I can't tell you how many, but it was very small because it was a rural community. So there was kids that got bused in from Jay County that came to the elementary school. And then the middle school was down the street, and then the high school was not in Dunkerque. I think it was in Portland, maybe. Okay.
[00:07:05.350] - Big Rich Klein
And was it like you lived in town, or did you live out and about?
[00:07:12.550] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes, we lived in town. We lived at 126 North Street, which that house has burnt down since. After we, my parents sold it, years later, we drove past and seen that it had burnt down. But it was in town, and it was a block away from the railroad tracks, and you could feel the trains come by.
[00:07:36.740] - Big Rich Klein
As a little kid, did you get a chance to go play around the railroad tracks?
[00:07:44.650] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
There's a story there that I won't go into, but no, my mom absolutely would not. But there was a field across the street from the house between the house and the railroad tracks, and that's where me and my brother and some of the neighborhood kids would play baseball and ghost runners and have bases and run around. I learned to ride a bike in that field. So there is some pretty fun memories of that field.
[00:08:14.380] - Big Rich Klein
And what did your family do when you were in Dunkirk, when your dad wasn't working? Did you guys vacation, anything like that? What fun?
[00:08:28.510] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
We didn't have a ton of money So a lot of it was going to the big town of Munsey, Indiana, because that's where my grandparents lived and my aunt and uncle lived. A couple of aunt and uncles lived there. We had some family in Dunkirk, and so we would go over there. But I It wasn't until we moved to Fort Wayne that I really remembered family vacations. I think we went to Atlanta once. I have an uncle that lives down there. But otherwise, I don't remember too many vacations when we lived in Dunkirk.
[00:09:04.640] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. What was the move like for you, if you can remember? Because when you're really young like that, the friends that you have in the neighborhood that might be on the same street or whatever are pretty important, typically. Then when you moved to a larger town, did you miss your friends? Was it an easy transition?
[00:09:27.470] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was a transition that I did did not and don't want to put my kids through. And I don't have any ill will towards my parents for it because it was a great move in the overall picture. But at the time, I do remember because I still have one or two people that I still keep track of from all those years ago. But yeah, I had to make new friends and change schools, different town. And it was It was fifth grade, which was an interesting... Because that's middle school, but not depending on the school system. So it was still elementary in Dunkirk, but in Fort Wayne, it was considered middle school. So you had all the middle school things and changing classes and doing different things. And so I remember just not being comfortable with it. And then My parents wanted to send us to a private Christian school, but we couldn't get into it. So we had to do a semester at the public schools in Fort Wayne. And then when I started sixth grade, we moved to the Christian school. There was three schools in a year, and that was frustrating. And again, I don't have any will towards my parents for because they were just doing what they thought was best.
[00:11:02.360] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And in the end, in the whole bigger picture, I'm glad we did what we did and where we are, because the opportunities that have come from being up in Fort Wayne have been awesome So then when you moved to Fort Wayne and the public school there, was it, I would imagine a lot more students, probably more diversity?
[00:11:31.980] - Big Rich Klein
Was that the case?
[00:11:35.280] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Not so much. I don't really recall much about the public school because I was only there for one semester. I am not in contact on a regular basis with anyone from that one semester. I did have a teacher that was awesome. He's since retired. I've never talked to him since, but I remember him being pretty awesome in that one semester. But then we went to the It was a private school, it was smaller and a lot like the country school, the elementary school that we had come from. So it was a lot... I liked it a lot better because it was more comfortable be in that smaller school. Right.
[00:12:17.900] - Big Rich Klein
And so you went to that smaller school through that small private school through high school?
[00:12:28.670] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes. Graduated from there in '96, and still have a core group of friends that I still talk to on a semi-regular basis. We still hang out a lot. Actually, So this is here's part of the Rosco racing twist. I was in sixth grade, and when I started the school, Tony Reedorf, Rosco, was in fourth grade. So that's where I first met him Because he was in my brother's class. My brother was two years behind me. So that's where we first got to know each other. And then we were always driving like idiots in the school parking lot, we getting in trouble. And around back, there was a gravel parking lot when you got to start driving to school because that was a big thing. And then there would always be a little muddy trench that you could drive in. And so my first car was a 1980 Chevy love pickup with a 1.8 liter four cylinder that could barely get out of its own way. But we would drive that thing like it owed us money.
[00:13:45.890] - Big Rich Klein
Was there sports involved at that school?
[00:13:50.240] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
There was. There's actually a front page article that I think I posted on Facebook a couple of times over the years. But my freshman year in 1993, We had beat people on our basketball team. And Indiana back then was not class basketball. If you remember the old movie Hoosiers, where the small school takes on all the big schools, that's what it was, and that's what we were. And my freshman year, the first game of sectionals, we lost to the big high school in Fort Wayne by over 100 points. Oh, wow. You learn to be Humble when it comes to situations like that, when they have folks on their team that can literally jump over the top of you and slam dunk a basketball.
[00:14:40.090] - Big Rich Klein
That's when you just have to play with more grit. Yes. Elbows as they fly over the top of you.
[00:14:47.980] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah, very, very humble. And then we set the state record for the most basketball games lost in a row. And I don't know what that number was. It was in the '80s, maybe 100, I'm not sure. It had been an ongoing thing, and it wasn't until my junior year that we actually won a basketball game. And that's because when my brother's class and Tony's class came in and they played basketball, their class was a lot larger class. And so we actually had enough people to have decent, okay players for basketball. And it was more than just an eight-man team.
[00:15:28.310] - Big Rich Klein
Right. So did Did you play basketball?
[00:15:32.870] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Oh, yeah. Yeah, pretty much everybody, pretty much all the guys with a heartbeat and any hint of athleticism played basketball.
[00:15:41.240] - Big Rich Klein
Was it by choice or was it just the Which is the thing your teacher said, You're playing?
[00:15:48.370] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I don't remember how much pressure there was, but I was always a bigger kid. But yeah, I played all four years of basketball and I enjoyed it. I mean, team sports always build you on that team, I think, helps you in far as life's concerned with future team building and all the stuff that happens when you have to go to the real world. My junior and senior year, we actually got a baseball team together. So we had basketball and baseball. We had nine guys to play baseball.
[00:16:29.870] - Big Rich Klein
So when somebody got pulled as the pitcher, he went out to right field and everybody swaps gloves, huh?
[00:16:38.800] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was like Little League. You just move around because we didn't have... I don't know if we had 10 people or not. I'm pretty sure there was nine, maybe 10. But yeah, it was everybody played. And that was the only reason we had a team was because it was everyone that was interested in high school that wanted to play, played.
[00:16:57.290] - Big Rich Klein
Nice. So that '80 Love pickup, the '80 Chevy. How did that come about? Was that something that you saved for, or was it gifted, or hand me down, or what was it?
[00:17:12.190] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
My dad actually bought that truck. So when he got the job in Fort Wayne, he needed a truck that was more reliable than his 55 willies pickup to drive back and forth. It was an hour from Dunkirk to Fort Wayne. So he bought that truck. It was good on fuel, four-cylinder. And so he drove it back and forth for six months until we moved up here. And then, through attrition and time and everything, he bought a '79 Ford Bronco to be his daily driver and gave me the Chevy Love pickup truck.
[00:17:48.170] - Big Rich Klein
Two-wheel or four-wheel?
[00:17:50.470] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Four-wheel drive. And depending on how you read it or say it, it was the Mikado or Mikado package. I don't know what that meant. It didn't have power or anything. It didn't even have power steering. That's what I learned to drive a manual in. And that truck always had a problem. It was always fixing it. It was always... Dad and I pulled the motor out of it. I can't even tell you how many times. It ran on three cylinders for a year for a while because somebody may have been doing donuts in the school parking lot in the snow and floated a valve. So, yeah So then we had to pull the head off of it and work on the valves and replace the whatever I burnt up when we did that.
[00:18:43.680] - Big Rich Klein
So did Was there auto mechanics at your school or anything like that?
[00:18:48.300] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Oh, no.
[00:18:49.120] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, no. No trades?
[00:18:49.910] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
No, it was no trades at all. It was straight up got an education. Everything auto mechanic-wise, I learned from Working on the junk that we were driving. Because dad always kept mom in a nicer, newer car, so she always had something reliable. And he drove, he had the '80 love, he bought an '81 love. We rebuilt the motor in that truck. He got the Bronco. It wasn't until, gosh, I think we were out of school that he finally, some friends of ours at church had a '92 Blazer that needed a motor, and it was all decked out, loaded leather, digital dash. We pulled the motor out of that and rebuilt it, he and I, and that was his nice vehicle. But he always kept mom in a nice car.
[00:19:40.560] - Big Rich Klein
Did mom work or was she a stay-home mom?
[00:19:44.000] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
She stayed at home for a while, and then she worked as the Church Secretary, but it was very flexible for her. She could be home with us when she needed to be. Sometimes we would actually on days off or stuff like that, we would actually go in and hang out at the office, the church office where she worked. She never really made a ton of money, but she made enough to buy groceries and supplement income as needed. And then we were part of a car pool because school was across town. So we lived Southwest Fort Wayne, and the school was more on the East side. So we carpooled with another family. So mom would drive in the mornings and take us to school. And then the other family would pick us up and their kids up and take us home. And then she'd go to work.
[00:20:38.880] - Big Rich Klein
It was a lot different back then with things like that. We live right by the high school here in Plasterville, California. And we're within six, seven houses. Of the high school? Of the high school. And it's So when the kids are being dropped off in the morning, they get dropped off in front of the school, and they just down the street and around the block, that thing. And then in the afternoons, everybody is People are parked all the way down here, and the kids walk to wherever their parents are picking them up. And you just see a lot... I don't ever see more than rarely, sometimes Sometimes two kids that you can tell are not brother and sister, or brothers or sisters, and they get into a car. So it's all individuals. You don't see that car pooling with neighbors, at least around here.
[00:21:46.960] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. Well, the private school, it didn't provide transportation, so you had to take your kids to school. Right.
[00:21:55.510] - Big Rich Klein
No bussing.
[00:21:56.840] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
There was no bussing for that school.
[00:22:01.900] - Big Rich Klein
And what student were you?
[00:22:05.920] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I think a lot of people in my class were very smart. I ended up, I think, fourth out of... I graduated with 15, and I think I was fourth. I'm laughing because in some of your podcasts, there's been people that have mentioned math, and I was a math kid. We didn't offer any high school math like they do now in middle school, and I wanted to get to calculus for some reason. So my sophomore year, I took geometry and algebra 2 in the same year, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I did five years of math in four years of high school.
[00:22:55.580] - Big Rich Klein
I never considered myself good at math I'm good at what I call dart math. If you've ever played darts, trying to figure out what's left on if you're playing 501 or a game like that, and you get your score, and you got to think fast each dart so you know what your next dart should be. But when I was a junior, I had free time, and they said, Oh, why don't you be an aid in the freshman algebra? And I'm like, Okay. And I was like, I didn't know that I was accomplished enough to be able to do something like that. I don't remember much of it, except that it was all a bunch of freshman kids, and I was a junior, and it was like, Okay, this is awkward. Of course, the girls were okay, but the boys were all awkward.
[00:24:00.120] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
We had a teacher that I would help with. I would have two study halls because I had taken so much that by the time my senior year came around, we didn't have a part-time program or going to work anywhere, that a program. So I ended up my senior year with two or three study halls. And so I would help this teacher with some of the classes that he was doing. And so, yeah, he had me... He wasn't I'm a math teacher, but I remember that we got a computer. My dad bought a computer, always had to have the newest and latest and greatest. So in '92, we bought a computer that your your cell phone now has 2,500 times more power than that computer did in '92. But we had a program that you can make crossword puzzles with it. And so he would have me make crossword puzzles at home and then print them off and bring them in, and then he'd copy them to give out to his class.
[00:25:01.710] - Big Rich Klein
Interesting.
[00:25:03.180] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah.
[00:25:04.740] - Big Rich Klein
Was it an Apple?
[00:25:08.200] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
No, it was a sensor by Samsung, and it used a operating system called geoWorx, which I assume Windows bought at some point and made go away, because it wasn't a Windows machine. That's the only computer I've ever known of that wasn't a Windows machine, as far as stuff back that day.
[00:25:31.490] - Big Rich Klein
Interesting. So then when you were in high school, I would imagine you were still running around with Tony because was he Tony was in that school, right?
[00:25:49.240] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. Tony was in the school. We ran around, but not a ton. We actually probably irritated each other more than we actually got along with each other. We may or may not, I may or may not have, my senior year, gotten the keys. He had a '86 Toyota Supra, and I may or may not have gotten the keys out of his locker that he never locked and drove it around behind the school further, and then put some telephone pulls around it, and then put his keys back. And then when he went out to his car, he didn't know where his car was. So it And then after I graduated, he ended up taking my brother's truck and running it through the woods behind the school. And they were all riding in the bed and hooping and hollering. And so, yeah, we may have not had quite the, I don't know, I guess, complicated friendship, you would say.
[00:26:53.470] - Big Rich Klein
Right. Okay. And upon graduation, what were your plans for after graduation to high school?
[00:27:04.330] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So after graduation, I went to Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana. I double majored in criminal justice and communication with a TV emphasis. My advisor could not figure out what the two of those degrees would have in common for a double major. I can tell you as we get on later, as as far as work and stuff, how it came full circle. But he definitely at the time was like, What in the world are you doing? I want to be a police officer. And I love TV, I love technical. In church, we did... My dad ran sound, and I ran the video camera because we would send VHS tapes to shut-ins. And before all the live streaming that you can do now, they would send the videos to the shut-in. So I'd always run camera, and dad would run sound. And so we did that. And so I was just always techy. And I really like that stuff. So I was like, well, I want to be a police officer, and I can make this work. It was a little more work than the double major criminal justice psychology or some other stuff that made more sense for them because all the criminal justice majors did something different that maybe made more sense.
[00:28:28.730] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And I'm the only dude that's double majoring communications. But then I worked at the TV station, which was a job that I loved in college because we ran cameras, we recorded stuff, we did on campus. It was a low power TV station on campus. And so we ran, we tape shows. We tape all of the men's and women's basketball games at the school. So we have lots of set up, teardown, moving equipment around Anybody that goes that far back can tell you about color bars, and adjusting color bars, and white balance, and all the fun things that came with TV back in that day, because digital TV didn't exist yet. That was back when they wanted to go to digital TV, but they kept delaying it because people had cube TVs that couldn't do digital. So they were putting out the gift card cards and stuff so people could get the converter boxes. And so they kept pushing it off. It was supposed to be late '90s, and I don't even remember. Maybe it was early 2000s when they finally made everything have to go digital. But yeah, so that was an interesting transition. So everything I did at the TV station, we actually physically would do on a...
[00:29:55.800] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was like a mixer type of board that would take two videos and record it into one. So you take one cut from one and another one, and then you would put it. And then everything was recorded on SVHS and Betamax, which was like the industry standard for commercial Betamax And then as we got to my senior year, we started using digital 8 millimeter. And then we had this machine called a toaster flyer that was as big as a refrigerator, almost. That was a computer that you could put your tape, your eight millimeter, into the computer as a file, and then you could cut and move them like we do on our cell phones now. But this was in 2000, '99, 2000. And we were taking these huge files and saving them on this monster of a machine. And then we could do graphics, but it was... Adobe was just a thing back then. And so we could make graphics and do different things. And my senior project for communications was an actual video that I made of a friend of mine's hockey team. He was a senior in high school. I knew him from church.
[00:31:15.710] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And I made a video for his hockey team from the season and then gave copies of it to all the kids on the team. But you had to record it all individually on this machine, all this stuff that would take so little time now that you could do with your iPhone. And it was so much more work back then.
[00:31:42.730] - Big Rich Klein
So when did you meet your current wife?
[00:31:51.360] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I did not meet her until 2008.
[00:31:56.300] - Big Rich Klein
Okay, so we got some time until we get to that point.
[00:31:59.430] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah Yeah, I didn't meet her in high school or college. It wasn't until later. I didn't talk to a ton of the people from high school while I was in college because I was in Marion, I was an hour away. A lot of that didn't really come together until my senior year of college. I got invited by a friend named Seth, who was a couple of years older me, who had been hanging out with Tony a little bit. And Tony bought a '99 TJ and started taking it to the Badlands. And he bought the Jeep brand new. It was a four-cylinder. He bought that thing brand new. And it was in the... I want to say it was the summer of '98 or '99, I actually rode with him to the Badlands on a Jeep trip from Fort Wayne. We drove down and wheeled for the weekend. And the Badlands back then was way different. Badlands Off-Road Park in Attic, Indiana. It was a lot different, obviously, than it is now. But I got hooked on the whole wheeling thing. We had never really done it. I had never really gone wheeling before. And went out with Tony that weekend.
[00:33:25.360] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was a club that had an event, and we had a blast.
[00:33:33.410] - Big Rich Klein
And how long did it take you to go out and buy your next four-wheel drive?
[00:33:39.520] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So at the time, I was driving a... I And by this time, I had gotten dad's Bronco, the '79 Bronco, and we still had a love truck. And I told dad, I said, I'm buying a Jeep. And he's like, okay. He was not against it because he still got that Willies. I found a '95 Jeep Cherokee, and I bought it in December of '99. So it would have been the the winter, basically, of that summer, I finally got my ducks in a row and bought that Cherokee stock. So it would have been four years old. It had 80,000 miles on it. No power, nothing. It didn't have air conditioning, but it was what I could afford.
[00:34:36.700] - Big Rich Klein
It didn't have air conditioning. You mean it didn't come with it or didn't function?
[00:34:41.050] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
No, it did. It had air conditioning, but it didn't have any other frills. It didn't even have cruise control. It didn't have power windows, power locks. The only thing really that it had was air conditioning. Okay.
[00:34:56.430] - Big Rich Klein
And what was it that it How did that get you to an XJ? Just cost?
[00:35:02.830] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes. I tried to buy a TJ, and I couldn't get qualified to buy a newer, nicer TJ. So I had to buy a four-year-old Cherokee, that's what the bank would let me... I mean, I had a little bit of credit, but not a ton. So that's what I could put together. It was this little car lot on the north side of Munsey. I had seen it there, and my mom came down from Fort Wayne to help me get the car back or to shuffle cars around so that I could buy it. And we bought that thing in December '99. And on a Y2K, within two weeks, we were wheeling it at the Badlands for January first, 2000. Me and Tony and his girlfriend, who he ended up marrying Michelle. We all went to the Badlands for January first of 2000. We were like, Well, if it's going to end now, we're going to end it here. And that the Badlands. This is what we're going to do. And so that's where we were for Y2K.
[00:36:19.370] - Big Rich Klein
And that was a disappointment. Nothing really happened.
[00:36:22.570] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah, nothing happened.
[00:36:23.940] - Big Rich Klein
I know people that built bomb shelters and stalked them and all this weird shit. And I'm like, dude, why? You know what's... You really think that we're technologically set up to where this this thing is going to shut down everything because we weren't that advanced in computers yet.
[00:36:53.030] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
No, no. It was because we watched the ball drop in the hotel room in Lafayette, and it was just like, okay, let's, life goes on. Excuse me. So that trip, the Jeep, I can't remember if it was that trip or the next trip, but the first trip, I took the Badlands, the Jeep was stock. The second trip, which was a couple of weeks later, the Jeep had a three-inch Rough Country lift on it and 31-inch tires, General Graver tires. I bought the $200 Rough Country Adelief with the coils, with the shocks. And that's what we put on the Jeep with 31-inch tires.
[00:37:40.280] - Big Rich Klein
Falling.
[00:37:40.570] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And I still have a picture. I still got some old pictures of it. But that trip with the 31s was still within 31 days of the temp tag on the Jeep. It still has a temp tag in the back window in the picture.
[00:37:55.790] - Big Rich Klein
Couldn't get the TJ, but we're able to fix up the XJ. Oh, yeah. The XJ was a better route anyway.
[00:38:07.280] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Well, I can afford the six-cylinder, and the TJ, I was going to get a four-cylinder.
[00:38:12.120] - Big Rich Klein
There you go.
[00:38:13.400] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And it was all downhill ever since.
[00:38:16.640] - Big Rich Klein
Right. So then, speaking of that, what were you doing for work at that time?
[00:38:25.520] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So after I graduated college, I started working in in Delaware County as a dispatcher. So that was my first... I did that for two years, and my uncle was a Munsey police officer. And so I lived with them for a minute, and then I got my own apartment. And then eventually I was like, I want to go back to Fort Wayne. So the opportunity came up and I got a job with Fort Wayne and Dispatch in 2002. So I graduated college in 2000, and then I got a job in Dispatch in Fort Wayne in 2002. So I was in Delaware County, Munster area for two years, moved back to Fort Wayne and dispatched up here. And the money was twice as good up here as it was in Delaware County at the time.
[00:39:15.390] - Big Rich Klein
Nice. And you got to use that studying of communication, being dispatched. Yes.
[00:39:24.690] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And then in 2005, I got on the police department in Fort Wayne, and I'll have 20 years next May.
[00:39:31.740] - Big Rich Klein
Very good. Very good. Congratulations on that. Thank you. I have to give it to you guys in law enforcement. I would not go into law enforcement for my life right now. Things are just too crazy.
[00:39:50.070] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
We've definitely worked hard in Fort Wayne at recruiting to get new people for the police department. It's been a giant road, and the department's done a lot of good things to help. And we've got a full-time recruiter. And I don't know how far you want me to get into the weeds on this, but I do our drone program now. I'm not in charge of it, but I'm assigned full-time to the unit. And we use the drone stuff a lot for recruiting as well, because the kids and younger adults love to see the drones. And so that's one of the things that we use, and we do demos and stuff Cool.
[00:40:30.640] - Big Rich Klein
That's awesome. And hence, the using the drones is how that great shot at Moab that we used on the cover. Yes.
[00:40:45.230] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
For 4LOW. On the 4LOW cover from the 2018 next year Moab event.
[00:40:52.580] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, that was... People still, when they see that photo, are like, what the hell? What? They can't fathom how that was taken and looked. When I saw it, I said, Okay, this is a cover. I don't care what anybody else thinks. This is a cover shot.
[00:41:11.110] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was just perfect the way it lined up, and that was an old Mavic Pro that I had, and it worked out really well and took a great shot.
[00:41:23.510] - Big Rich Klein
So that first XJ, how long did you keep that? Did you have it when you to move back to Fort Wayne?
[00:41:32.810] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes. So I kept that Jeep until 2013. By the time I was done with it, we had cut And I took the front and the back of it off and tubed it out and made it like a half buggy with a fuel cell, still rocking the four liter. But I had put axles. I bought a mud truck out of Michigan, and put a Dana 60, Kingpin Dana 60 in the front and put an Eaton Axle, if you've ever heard of them. Oh, yeah. We put an Eaton Axle in the back of it. And that thing was on 39 wasted and wasted 39-inch red label Crawlers. They were a set of tires that when Tony transitioned, when Rosco transitioned the buggy in one form or another, I bought a bunch of his old stuff and was able to put it on my Jeep. So I had some wasted red labels. I ended up buying some coilovers from him, and so the Jeep had coilovers on it. I bought an Atlas 4.3 transfer case because As we know in the industry, the 4'3 was too deep for racing. So he transitioned into one with a better ratio for low range for racing.
[00:42:56.510] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And so I bought his 4'3, and we put that on the back of the AW4. It was pretty rocking. The back seat was gone by then. We had caged it out, full tube, fuel cell. It didn't look much like the Jeep that it started.
[00:43:16.940] - Big Rich Klein
That's what happens to Cherokeys. Those crunched beer cans.
[00:43:23.670] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was at a Brandon Hot Dog Friday that we cut the back off of it before the big tube project started.
[00:43:34.390] - Big Rich Klein
Was that planned to do it there?
[00:43:37.150] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes, it was all planned in all regards as far as cutting it off and leaving it there and all that that night. But yeah, there's pictures of me with a sauzon on the roof, cutting the back of it off at a Hot Dog Friday. That would have had to have been, oh my gosh. It was '07, maybe '08, I think. No, maybe earlier than that, '04, maybe '04, '05. I don't know. It was one of the first times that Stan had ever put a Hot Dog Friday. He had been doing them, but this was in those early days of Hot Dog Fridays. Okay.
[00:44:19.180] - Big Rich Klein
And so you're working as a police officer. You're driving an XJ. I'm sure that was your trail rig, or was that your a daily driver as well?
[00:44:31.800] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It soon became a trail rig only. Was it paid off first? Well, in 2001, I rolled it with Tony and another buddy, Todd. We were down in Livingston, Kentucky. There was this off-road area. It was considered a public road, and people would just go there, and it was up in a mountain, and you'd go wheeling. But it was like a public road, and then there was obstacles, and I flipped it. I think they called it warm up hill or something, but it was April of '01, I flipped it, and it rolled completely over There's video on YouTube of it. Still, a dude happened to have a video camera in '01 and caught the roll. That was before I had a cell phone. And so then I still owed money on it. The insurance guy was not very happy with me. I had to borrow 1,500 bucks from my parents to pay the loan off because they wouldn't give me enough money because they said that modified charities were worth less than what the value of the Jeep was. So they didn't give me enough to pay it off. Well, in Indiana, I don't know what it's like in other states, but if they call it a total, you can buy it, and then you get the title from the bank, and it never becomes a salvage title.
[00:46:04.940] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So even when I got rid of that Jeep, it still had a clean title on it.
[00:46:08.990] - Big Rich Klein
Nice.
[00:46:10.440] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
But I bought it back from insurance for 500 bucks. My dad The roof was bent, everything was tweaked. We had some friends that had a frame straightener. Of course, it's a Uni frame. But my dad and all of his ingenuity helped me figure out a way to support everything. And we actually pulled the whole top of the Jeep back forward. So it had been pushed back. We pulled it back forward, and we built this contraption with a floor jack and pushed the roof back up at the same time that we were pulling all this forward. And got the thing about... Of course, it's a pop can, right? So once you crush it, you can never get it back perfect. But we were able to get that thing close enough that we were able to get a windshield back in it and got it sealed back up. And this is a few years before we cut the back off. So it was still my daily driver. Going to the cop shop. For a while. No, it was I had in dispatch, when I came to Fort Wayne and got the job with dispatch, I made enough money.
[00:47:22.080] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I lived with my parents before I got a house. Me and a buddy rented a house around the corner from Tony. But before I rented that house, I made enough in dispatch. I was able to pay off all my debts and pay my parents off. And so then I bought a '99 Dodge, Dakota And then that wasn't enough to pull my Jeep on the trailer. It was just not quite... It didn't have enough. It had a V8, but it just wasn't quite enough. So I ended up buying a 2000 F150 with the five Ford Triton And so then that became my daily driver.
[00:48:04.340] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:48:06.240] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
The Jeep only had to do daily status for a little while. In fact, even in between the wheeling and other stuff, we still had that 79 in Ford Bronco. ' And I blew the motor up in the Jeep shortly after I bought it, before the roll. I blew the motor up in a mud hole at the Badlands. And I was trying to drive it home and blew the motor up. And my dad came down on the Bronco with the trailer to tow it back to Fort Wayne. I didn't even had the thing like six months. Well, it was a year, a little over a year, and we had already done a motor in it, replaced the motor, and I'd flipped it. That's what I said it was downhill ever since.
[00:48:50.760] - Big Rich Klein
Right. And were you questioning your life decisions at that point, or were you just having too much fun?
[00:48:57.750] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I was having too much fun. And like I said, I didn't date much, and I hadn't met my wife yet. And so it was really... I finally got a dog in 2003 or 2004, just to see if I could be responsible enough outside of me. I was in my early 20s and just having a good time. And we were wheeling, Rich, we were going to the Badlands once or twice a month for a couple of years straight. And every time you go to the Badlands, you'd say, oh, I need lockers. And then you'd come home, and you'd try to figure out how to buy a locker, or you'd try to... Every time it was like, we're going to make this mod. And then the next time you go down there, we're going to be like, all right, we're going to try this obstacle because I couldn't get it last time. And then we're going to try this obstacle. And so it was a never-ending battle. And sometimes when you filled up with gas in Attica to drive home, that was your gas money for the whole week. Right. So you make the three-hour drive home, and since it was highway mileage, and then the commute to work, and so you got paid on Friday, you're like, All right, we got to make this fuel last the rest of the week.
[00:50:18.660] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And then do it all over again. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times those first few years we went to the Badlands. It was all the time.
[00:50:27.770] - Big Rich Klein
Nice. But you guys had a great time. Is that when the bonfires started?
[00:50:33.870] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Those weren't until later. Okay. Yeah, the big bonfires came in the in the TREC Racing Series days later on. All right.
[00:50:46.020] - Big Rich Klein
So then with somewhere in there, you're being Mr. Police Officer, and somewhere in there, you met your wife. How did that come about?
[00:51:02.580] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I did. I had a buddy who said, Hey, are you ever going to settle down and get married? And I'm like, I guess. Maybe. And he's like, Well, you're pushing 30, and if you're going to have kids, and all this stuff. He's trying to be the voice of reason. I don't know if he's being the fun police, too, but he's trying to be the voice of reason. So he ended up connecting me with His wife worked with the... Well, she ended up being now my wife's sister, but his wife and my wife's sister worked together at a hospital. She had recently been divorced and was going to school and was working a couple of jobs and doing all this stuff. And like, hey, Grace is She's not married. And she... And one of my... This is going to sound terrible. But one of the things that I asked him, I said, well, if you're trying to play matchmaker, I said, I really would like to find someone close in age that doesn't have any kids. And that was just me being selfish, but that's what I told him. And he's like, okay, so she didn't have any kids.
[00:52:29.680] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So we ended up, we went out on our first date. At the time, I had a mega cab, a Dodge Ram mega cab diesel, because we had moved up in trailers and we're towing more stuff, and racing, and doing all sorts of craziness. So I had a '06 mega cab, which if there's one vehicle, even though I hated the seats in that truck, if there's one vehicle that I still could probably not buy for what I sold it for when I sold it, it's probably that. That no DPF, no emissions, straight up 5.9 Dodge mega cab pickup truck. And so we went on our first date in that truck, and we were... My brother was living with me at the time, and he texted me. He says, Hey, your dog got out. So we have our dinner. And then And I said, hey, I said, I can take you home, or do you want to come over to my house? And I said, My dog's missing, and we need to try to find the dog. And she's like, Oh, let's go to your house. And she's a dog lover, still is a dog of her.
[00:53:47.420] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So she came over to the house, and we looked for the dog for two or three hours. Never found him that. So I ended up taking her home. And then when I came back, the dog finally showed back up. But it was an interesting first date story, I guess.
[00:54:02.040] - Big Rich Klein
So my question is, was that with your wife, or was that that date with your wife, or was that date with your wife's sister?
[00:54:13.960] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
No, that was my wife.
[00:54:15.910] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:54:16.050] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
The sister was already married. All right. But they were the ones that played matchmaker between my buddy, his wife, and then my wife's sister, Olivia. They were the ones that played matchmaker to meet my wife, Grace.
[00:54:34.100] - Big Rich Klein
Okay. And how long you guys been married now? What year did you say you got married?
[00:54:43.320] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
We got married in 2011. So our first date was late, was in December of '08, and then we got married in '11. So we're coming up on 14 years in March. We got married at the Badlands in Attica, in the Rock quarry.
[00:55:06.320] - Big Rich Klein
And she went for that?
[00:55:08.560] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was her idea.
[00:55:09.960] - Big Rich Klein
Excellent.
[00:55:11.320] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah, I was going to get married in a church, And so the year before... So we've missed a big chunk of Naxtia here.
[00:55:21.230] - Big Rich Klein
Yes, we did.
[00:55:25.060] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I'll take a step back for a second. I've been involved with Naxtia since 2000 is when I joined. I bought my Jeep in '99. The first Winterfest was in February of 2000. I actually went to the event, but not as a participant because I wasn't sure what was going on with the club. But I was there I met some people that I still know to this day. And then in 2001, so I joined actually in 2000. And by the time 2001 came around, I had been going to the Badlands so much. I ended up leading trails at Winterfest in 2001. So Winterfest has always been a thing. It's moved back a little later to March because there wasn't campgrounds at the time. We camp down at the river by the river in town. We've camped all over. And finally, they've been 2004, they opened up the campground in the same spot where it's at, actually. And then we start having the event the first weekend of March, because that's when the campground was open. And so it gave us a safe, responsible place to camp. So I on and off helped in the early days with stuff.
[00:56:38.740] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And then I went to the Police Academy in 2005. So I took a little time off from and extra things. I still went to Winterfest because our police academy runs Monday through Friday. And so the weekend of Winterfest, I actually drove down Saturday morning, wheeled the trails, went to the raffle and stuff, and then drove home. So I was there, but I didn't take a I just showed up because I was in the academy and lots of other more higher priorities when it came to getting through the academy in '05. Right. But ever since then, I've gone to every Winterfest that's been held at the Badlands. And so then, obviously, naturally, when I met Grace in 2008, she came with me to the Winterfest in 2009. And I had decided at that point that if she could survive this weekend with my friends, that she's probably going to be a keeper. So in 2010, the President of Natcha Midwest Chapter at the time, I got with him and I said, Hey, I said, I want to propose at Winterfest. And he's like, Okay, how do you want to do it? And I said, Well, I'm going to get a ring and we're going to put it in this mystery box, and then we're going to make it a raffle prize.
[00:57:58.710] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So And his name is Tyler Preston. And a shout out to him because we had to pause the raffle for a break because he wanted to make sure that he had the right raffle ticket number that we had agreed upon ahead of time that was going to be mine to win so that I could go get the package and then come back and get on one knee and propose to her.
[00:58:24.570] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, because it would have been terrible if he ended up winning a winch.
[00:58:28.020] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It would have been terrible if someone else would have won the ring that was in the box. Correct. Yeah.
[00:58:35.490] - Big Rich Klein
Or a bushing kit.
[00:58:40.550] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And that's on video. It was caught on video. I had it all. I it all set up, made it all work, made it all happen. And then once, obviously, you get engaged, you start, What are we going to do? When are we going to get married? How are we going to do all this? And the church that I had grown in had recently been sold, I guess, or the church itself was changing buildings. And so we didn't quite have the access that I wanted to that church. And she didn't care if it was a church wedding. And she's like, let's just get married at the Badlands. So finally, at some point in there, we decided, okay, we'll do this at the Badlands. So we got married on a Saturday afternoon in 2011, March fifth, 2011. We got married at the Badlands in the Rock quarry, officiated by... His name on the board was Rev Den because he had a license to marry folks. And That'll be 14 years this March.
[00:59:48.990] - Big Rich Klein
Nice.
[00:59:51.160] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
And then the next Winter Fest, we announced we were having our first kid, so whose 12th birthday will be next week.
[01:00:01.320] - Big Rich Klein
Very good. Very good.
[01:00:02.910] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. So it was like every year there was like, got engaged, got married, announced the kid. And then they're like, what are you going to do? I'm like, I'm done announcing things right now.
[01:00:16.750] - Big Rich Klein
So then let's talk about next Jay. You weren't only just a club member, didn't you get into the the board and all that stuff?
[01:00:32.990] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I did. In 2001, so in the early days, they had an events coordinator. So I was involved a little bit back then. And then that office went away with attrition for some other things. And so it wasn't until late 2000s, 2009, 2010, that I got back into it again. I was still always involved, still always a member. And then in 2011 or 2012, I became next year president. I was elected next year president. And that was of the national next year. We have chapters as well. And I didn't do chapter leadership until a little later. And then I was doing both. I was next year president and Midwest Chapter President. I did membership. I I've still been doing membership. I took a step back a few years ago just to slow down because work was more busier than it had been in the past. I'm still on the national BOD, actually, to this day. I'm a member, a BOD member at large. Then I'm on the Midwest Chapter as the Treasurer. Off and on, various roles I've had. I helped plan two or three of the Moab events. Well, so if you know Richard Gathier, Goatman?
[01:02:10.660] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. So he was an action President in 2013-ish or before that. He had been President, but he helped plan the 13 event. He and I planned that one. And then I planned the 18 and 23 Moab events. We go to Moab every five years with '03, '08, '13, '18, and '23. I'm going back in '28. I don't know what next year is going to look like in 2028, but as long as I'm still above ground, I'm planning on going.
[01:02:44.260] - Big Rich Klein
There you go. And you still are an XJ owner then?
[01:02:50.520] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I am not.
[01:02:51.650] - Big Rich Klein
You're not.
[01:02:52.490] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So when I became president in 2012 or '13, 2013, I think, I actually traded the Cherokee because we had just had our first kid in October of 2012, and there was no back seating the Cherokee anymore. And so to go wheeling, I was going to need something to go wheeling. And so I actually traded it right before we went to a KOH in 2013 for a side by side. And then I ended up selling the side by side, I bought a LJ. So I had a LJ, and I had a back seat, and it didn't creak. It didn't make any noises.
[01:03:41.660] - Big Rich Klein
Well, how do you know it's running?
[01:03:45.540] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. So the L. J. Became the family truckster for Wieland for several Very interesting. We changed the bylaws for next year. I was Nxtra President when all this happened. And so we changed the bylaws to say, own or have interest in a next year Okay. And so we took away... It's still Nxtra. It's still everything that it stands for, land use, all the stuff that we've donated over the years, all the things we've been a part of, all the stuff we've done with the Albride, All the donations that we've made, it's still next year, but obviously, the Cherokee hasn't been made in 25 years, 24 years. So we had to reinvent that a little bit. So there's still a lot of Cherkeies out there, and there's still a lot of people with Cherkeies in the club. But we made it so that folks like me that had transitioned on to something else, vehicle-wise, could still be a part of it. And still a member, still with everything we support, everything we do. It doesn't matter. Half of Winterfest now is not Cherkeies, and that's okay, because we're out there to have a good time. In fact, we're getting The Midwest chapter is getting ready to have in March of next year, it'll be our 25th anniversary of Winterfest.
[01:05:24.340] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So we've been doing the same event for 25 years.
[01:05:26.850] - Big Rich Klein
Wow. Sounds like a story for the magazine.
[01:05:34.040] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Well, maybe. Yeah. Very much a possibility. We're working on planning some big stuff and some throwback stuff, and trying to see what we can make happen. But yeah, it's slated to be pretty cool, I think. And I just think back all these years, every March-ish, going to the Badlands Off Road Park in Attica. And there's only a couple of us that have been to all the ones in Attica, but there's a lot of people that have been coming for 14, 15, 16 years, even for a long time. And it's for an event, event like that in the Midwest, it's always very popular. And I think it's because people are shut up all winter and don't really do any wheeling. And there's this little chance. And we've had some that have been 70 degrees. We've had some that have been negative 10. But we still always get a giant crew of people, always 100 plus people that come to. Even we missed COVID because the week after Winterfest in 2020 was when everything shut down. And then we went the whole year and came in in '21, and everything could not be normal, but we could still have our event with very little issues.
[01:07:05.040] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So we were able to do it every year with the COVID. And so it's been awesome.
[01:07:13.920] - Big Rich Klein
Great. So one of the last things I want to talk about is your nickname. How did you get the nickname MacGyver? Macgyver?
[01:07:21.000] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So I don't know if it was Rosco that gave it to me, or it usually was because I always had what somebody needed. It wasn't necessarily made out of nothing like the TV show. It was more because I used to carry two Tupperware, not somewhere, but two big storage containers, Rubbermaid storage containers full of stuff. If someone blew a ball joint on a 30 because they destroyed the U joint, I usually had ball joints. It was more about having... I did make a vice that fit inside a receiver hitch that I had at one point. So it was more about usually carrying too much stuff than it was the necessity of MacGyver, which MacGyver is a wrangler, right? It wasn't until 2013 that I actually had a L. J. Wrangler.
[01:08:27.620] - Big Rich Klein
There you go. So What's in the future for you, Matt? Where do you see yourself in, say, 10 years? Your kid will be 22.
[01:08:40.340] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I don't know. 20 years in law enforcement, we'll see what comes with that. The drone thing is a thing. On the law enforcement side, been doing some stuff, teaching on the side. I don't know when or how that's going to... Retirement at 20 is not as cool as it was 30 years ago when they had 20 and out. But at some point, somewhere along the line, maybe some private sector stuff. It's hard to predict with the economy and stuff. The one thing that's always been for sure in my life the last 20 some years with dispatch and police and all that is that I always get a paycheck every two weeks. The economy, good or bad, they've never laid off officers or dispatch since I've been on. So it's always been a sense of you're going to get paid, which is always good when you're building Jeeps. And I mean, we didn't even talk about all the racing that we did and the KO beach trips and going with Branic and Rosco Racing and doing KOH and all the stuff that was really where we spent some crazy money in travel and everything else. So in 10 years, I'm not really sure.
[01:10:05.320] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I just still doing what I'm doing. I don't know in 10 years that I'll still be working for the police department, but for the not so distant future, I'm definitely... But maybe doing something on my own. I haven't been to KOH since 2017. That was after the So Tony died in 2016 in a freak accident. So he's been gone eight years. And we went to KOH in 2017 because Brandon Haynes bought his buggy and raced it. And I had been there when he raced his buggy in 2011 and 2013. And it finished. Every time that buggy went out there, it finished come hell or high water. And in 2013, he ran the last 100 miles of the race with a paracord, 5150 cord for a throttle, and still finished the race. And then Brandon went out there in 2017. And so that was a pretty emotional finish when Brandon finished in the buggy. But I'd like to get back out to KOH again. I've made it to the Badlands since they've come back with the Badlands races, again with Ultra 4. I've made it to that. So I still like to do the races, still like to spectate.
[01:11:38.400] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I still help a little bit from time to time. We don't quite race like we did, except go-karts in the backyard. Or we were at Terhune's house a few weeks ago, racing go-karts, which you know Terhune, and you know that that just fits in together, doesn't it?
[01:11:54.960] - Big Rich Klein
Oh, yes. Absolutely.
[01:11:59.650] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So we still like to have fun. I got some go-karts, so the kids are going to start riding them. They've got some ATVs, some 110 ATVs that we ride around. We moved out into the country four years ago on three acres and have a nice house. And so the kids are able to be spread out. I'm able to let them do what they want in the backyard and ATVs, go-karts So some of it might be still chasing them. I mean, my son in 10 years will be 19, so he'll just be out of high school. So it'll be chasing them around for a few more years, whatever they want to do sports-wise and that thing.
[01:12:48.530] - Big Rich Klein
Very good.
[01:12:51.070] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Well- Oh, one more thing.
[01:12:52.890] - Big Rich Klein
Sure.
[01:12:53.480] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
So the actual connection between criminal justice and communications is that when I got on the police department in 2013, I got on our hostage negotiation team. Our team with the negotiation bus has a lot of technical, a lot of things that all related back to a low power TV station. And that's where the actual full circle moment came for me when I got on that team, and I'm in this bus, and I'm trying to make a monitor work, and I'm trying to this to work. And that's where it all came full circle. I was like, if my advisor, Bob Otis, if he knew what I was doing right now, I'd be like, look, we put this together. It came full circle.
[01:13:48.970] - Big Rich Klein
That's awesome. That's great. And so what is your motto in life? Is there something that you live by I wish that you had asked me this question a little earlier so that I could pull it up and read it to you directly.
[01:14:11.420] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
But the motto goes something like this, My idea of a beautiful vacation is a few good friends and a few good Jeeps, and an off-road destination.
[01:14:27.230] - Big Rich Klein
Amen.
[01:14:28.910] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I like that The actual quote comes from Cole Quinnell.
[01:14:36.240] - Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[01:14:37.050] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
When he was editor of Four-Wheeler magazine, or Four-Wheeler Off-Road, I can't remember which one, but they were getting ready to launch Ultimate Adventure all those years ago. And that was the thing that he said, and it spoke to me. I've got it. I kept it at the bottom my email for a long time, my personal email.
[01:15:03.500] - Big Rich Klein
Nice.
[01:15:04.090] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
But that was always the quote, and it related back to ultimate adventure. I never went on one. I never was able to have something cool enough to apply to. I probably would... I've I got a gladiator now, a 2020 gladiator, and I probably would make that thing work. Although, I think I just read where they changed it to, they call it something else now because the magazine stuff is all gone. Right.
[01:15:27.680] - Big Rich Klein
Yeah, they just brought it back. They just did their run.
[01:15:31.400] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yes. I just saw one of them. I follow all those guys. I was looking through the names of all the people you've interviewed from this podcast, and I'm like, I can't believe that my name came up for this podcast because I was looking through it all the guys that have put... Magazines, I was into the magazines for all those years. My dad had some magazines from the '80s. He got Fourwheel off road for one year, and then I I started getting them. When I was in high school, I got all of them. You name it, I got them all. And that's probably where I got the little bit of a bug to write a few articles here and there. I've had the one for you, the one article and picture, and I've done a couple other ones. But in 2001, Ken Brewbaker covered Naxtia Winterfest in 2001, and he rode with me with his kid. Now, his kid's got to be in his 20s, probably pushing 30 by now. But he rode with me and took an awesome picture of my Cherokee going through this stream. And that was a full circle moment as far as all the stuff that I had ever read, and all the builds, and all the stuff that I'd seen in all the different magazines from Fourwheelers, Fourwheel off Road, JP, all them all those magazines.
[01:17:01.890] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
It was like a full circle moment. And so then then seeing the getting a cover photo, I was like, yeah, this is pretty awesome, especially to do it in a drone, being the drone guy that I am now, and I fly drones every day at work. So, yeah, that was all a full circle moment of stuff. Awesome. It's been a lot of fun. I'm trying to keep the fun up and keep the kids having fun. So we've had some good fun over the years. We've had some unfortunate things over the years, but you look back at it all and you're like, man, this is this is awesome.
[01:17:54.970] - Big Rich Klein
Keep the dream alive.
[01:17:57.430] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah. My daughter who's turning 12 next week, I said, well, I got a F150, and it's a few years old now. But I said, we're going to try to keep that for you. So when you start driving, you can drive the F150. And she looked at me and she goes, I want your gladiator. Good girl. Yeah. So I'm like, Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
[01:18:32.520] - Big Rich Klein
That's awesome. Well, Matt, I want to say thank you so much for spending the time and sharing your life and everything with us. And I really appreciate it.
[01:18:46.500] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
I just want to say thank you. I listen to your podcast. I've listened to every episode, but a lot of them. And it's just to be put into that category of some of the folks you've talked over the years and seeing people what they've become. Levi Shirley, I was at the XRA Race in Alabama when he wadded up the Diablo buggy. Seeing people like the Gilbert Brothers, they started in track at the Badlands. And all these folks that have been able to do some amazing things in this sport and continue to push the limits. And to be included in a podcast with those folks This is pretty awesome.
[01:19:31.740] - Big Rich Klein
Well, it was my pleasure, and I'm glad that we got to do this.
[01:19:38.720] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
Yeah, thank you very much.
[01:19:40.540] - Big Rich Klein
All right. You take care, and I will let you know when this is going to air.
[01:19:44.260] - Matt 'MacGyvr' Rowland
All right. Sounds great, sir.
[01:19:45.910] - Big Rich Klein
Thank you. All right. You have a great evening. Thank you. You too. Bye-bye. 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 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.