Average-Joe, Jon Larson shares his experiences on Episode 267

Self-described, average trail wheeler, Jon Larson, shares the insights that he’s gained with 25 years of running Cherokees. If you ever wondered how you could get involved in off-road, Jon shares his path. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

5:59 – Dude, did you know that mom and dad were in a cult? I was like, I don’t think it was a cult.

11:18 – I pretty much have OCD when it comes to XJs, I know every part on the XJ by heart, every bolt-size by heart.              

22:46 – I remember some high-speed chases late at night, going through private property, where someone came out with spotlights in some big pickup truck and chased us for 10 miles. 

32:41 – I think the Scout was the only rig I’ve ever sold that I made money on. 

38:56 – I would go to Pick and Pull and take things apart and figure it out. That was my own little personal learning class..

46:03 –I would grab a 30-pack, a buddy or two would come over, and we would part out a whole Cherokee, chop-shop style in 10 hours

1:16:05 – There are private landowners on the Rubicon, 40% of the Rubicon goes through private property, Common people like me don’t know that. 

Special thanks to Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:05.300] - Big Rich Klein

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.

[00:00:46.530] - Jon Larson

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.

[00:01:13.230] - Big Rich Klein

My next guest on Conversations with Big Rich is a self-taught Cherokee enthusiast, an ex-NAXJA board member, an average regular trail user who became a Rubicon Trail Foundation board member. We talk about The History and the Rubicon, and Video Production, and How to make the jump into a Life of Off-Road. Hello, Jon Larson. It's good to have you on the podcast today.

[00:01:43.900] - Jon Larson

Hey, thanks for having me. I am super appreciative for letting me come on your podcast.

[00:01:49.560] - Big Rich Klein

Well, for those that don't know, Jon Larson is on the Rubicon Trail Foundation as well as I am. He's been on it longer than me. I just feel a warm seat, but he is actually a lot more active than I am. Jon, it's good to have you here and talk about your history because I looked on your bio on the RTF page, or site, and all it did was give an email address. So we need to find out more about you. So you ready for this?

[00:02:24.550] - Jon Larson

I'm excited. It's funny because I have that. I think MacGyver said the same thing that I I was going to say when I was listening to his. It's like, I know, looking at the caliber of off-road related folks you have on here, I don't feel worthy, but I'm excited about this. So thank you.

[00:02:40.690] - Big Rich Klein

No worries. No worries. So let's start off with the, typically the easiest question, where were you born and raised?

[00:02:49.750] - Jon Larson

I was born in Oakland, California, and I was raised all around that East Bay, South Bay. My parents, we lived in Cerrito, San Leandro. I think the first memories I really have are probably San Jose. We lived in San Jose. I think we lived in San Jose from the age of five to 13. And then we moved over to Oakley, California, near Pittsburgh and Antioch. And from there, I ended up moving to Sacramento years later for college. But I think in those early years, when we I lived in San Jose, I got into camping very early on. My dad used to go deer hunting a lot, bear hunting. And so I think I started hunting with them when I was five And so that got me- So you were bear bait? Yeah, I was probably the bear bait. Oh, yeah, that's probably why they strapped a bunch of stakes to me and had me go run off into the- There you go.

[00:03:58.540] - Big Rich Klein

I don't want to do that nowadays. Days because of the mountain lions.

[00:04:02.010] - Jon Larson

A lot of cats out there. That's a whole another crazy story because I have a lot of family who are still avid hunters. I got out of it as I got older. I would love to get back into it more. I still collect. I still have all the rifles. I still love purchasing guns, but I don't really hunt anymore. I'd like to get back into it. But yeah, that's where I grew up.

[00:04:29.450] - Big Rich Klein

So Elcerita El Cerrito, here's some Trivia for you. John Fogherdi from Creedence Clearwater Revival is from El Cerrito.

[00:04:40.030] - Jon Larson

Yeah. My dad told me that when I was young because he listened to a lot of classic rock, and he's like, Where do you think this guy's from? I'm like, Oh, for sure Louisiana, or somewhere down south. He's from the Berkeley El Cerrito area. I'm like, You got to be shitting me. There's no way.

[00:04:57.120] - Big Rich Klein

His first band, it was the name of the first band that he was in when they were in high school, El Cerrito High, was the Blue Velvets.

[00:05:08.160] - Jon Larson

I didn't know that.

[00:05:09.020] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. See, there you go. Some Trivia. So now you got a great campfire Trivia question that nobody will get unless they listen to this and remember.

[00:05:18.910] - Jon Larson

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and I love Credence, too, so that's pretty rad.

[00:05:22.920] - Big Rich Klein

So what was the... You guys bounced all around the Bay Area. Was dad or mom chasing a job?

[00:05:32.580] - Jon Larson

I don't even know. I was so young when they were moving around a whole lot. I know that before I was born, they were in some religious group that my brothers and I looked up as we got older, and when you read news articles about it, which are really hard to find, it was actually called a cult.

[00:05:54.510] - Big Rich Klein

So that is- Okay. So like Moonies or something, you know?

[00:05:59.650] - Jon Larson

They They would talk about it. And then me and my brothers, they didn't really... I don't remember them continuing it a whole lot after we were born, but I remember looking it up as we got older. My brother Jesse looked it up and he's like, Hey, did you know mom and dad were in a cult? And I was like, I don't think they were in a cult. And then they would... I think it was called The Way. The Way. I don't think. Yeah, it was very interesting. But my dad ran a car stereo installation shop called World's Best in... I think that was San Leandro. And so he did car radio installations. He did it out of our house. We had a backyard, and that's what he did for years. And then I think the reason we moved to San Jose is that he ended up taking a job for my mom's dad. So my grandpa on my mom's side, he was running a paint spraying business. So they rented commercial paint sprayers for, whether it's like line striping or painting the steel beams at Great America or something. And then I think they sold paint sprayers.

[00:07:05.390] - Jon Larson

And he was there for a long time. So I remember when we moved to Oakley, he was still commuting to San Jose, because I remember going to work with them on Saturdays sometimes. It was a long drive.

[00:07:17.890] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, Oakley to San Jose. I used to commute from American Canyon and Napa down to Newark. And that was a nightmare. Oh, wow, really?

[00:07:30.930] - Jon Larson

Oh, yeah. I think it's way worse now. I don't care for any of that commuting.

[00:07:37.140] - Big Rich Klein

The only time I commute that way now is for Niner games.

[00:07:41.730] - Jon Larson

Oh, yeah. God, you were going all the way to Newark, huh? From there?

[00:07:46.540] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. All during commute times.

[00:07:50.580] - Jon Larson

Yeah, that whole Bay Area commute is like an absolute nightmare. I have to go down to the Bay every once in a while for work. I live in Colfax, and it'll take me five to 6 hours to get to the San Jose, Sunnyvale, Cupertino area. It's not fun. I feel like you did something wrong in a past life to have to do that for me frequently or something. It's like karma. I don't know. But we were in San Jose, moved out to Oakley. At one point, Oakley, my dad ended up changing jobs to Ace Hardware in Concord. He was manager at Ace Hardware & Concord. That's how I got my first job. I remember working at Ace Hardware, making 5. 25 an hour. I'd go in on Saturdays and Sundays with them, and I saved up. I mowed lawns and edge lawns and washed cars. I'd go door to door to all my neighbors and ask them if they need their lawn mowed, their weeds pulled, their lawn edge, their car washed. I was always trying to do stuff like that. I was saving up for a car. I was wanting to buy it, either a four or a Jeep Cherokee or something like that, some SUV.

[00:09:04.180] - Jon Larson

This is probably late '90s, early 2000s. And after a couple of years of working at the hardware store, making $50 a week, I eventually saved up a couple grand to buy a Jeep Cherokee.

[00:09:16.630] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. So was it the hunting that got you into thinking about four-wheel drive?

[00:09:26.930] - Jon Larson

Yeah. So my dad had a '79 GMC Jimmy. To me, when I was young, it looked like a monster truck. I think it was on 32-inch mud tires. I don't think they'd lifted it. I remember him telling me he put some helper springs on it, where as I got older, helper springs are just like... They're like these weird little leaves that you get from whatever, like Summit or something, that just bolt onto the top of the leaf springs to help it load. They're not really- Yeah, they're just loaded adjusters. Yeah, they're not really like add a leaf or a new leaf pack. So once I got really into off-roading, I was like, Oh, that's all he did. So yeah, we would go to Modok a lot. So we would drop into Oregon and drop back down to California. And we had our family I know on my cousin Michael's side, I think their family went super deep in history, and so their deer camp out there and their deer blinds and stuff. And so, yeah, my dad would always hunt with my uncle Mickey. And my uncle Mickey had two sons, my cousin Mike and my cousin Stevie J.

[00:10:34.380] - Jon Larson

And I remember at really young age, going out to deer camp every fall. We had these crazy sleeping bags. It would often snow, it would sometimes snow out there. It was really cold, and you had to do some wheeling to get in there. There was some mud bogs. There were some rocks. It wasn't like rock crawling or anything. But I do remember you needed at least something decent to get out there, and I always thought that was really cool. And I think that my fondest memories of childhood are going camping and going hunting. And I think as I got older, I wanted to reconnect with that when I started going to college. And that gave me the bug.

[00:11:16.260] - Big Rich Klein

Did you ever do any scouting?

[00:11:18.620] - Jon Larson

Yeah, we would do some scouting. I remember living in San Jose, and my dad had... He had bought a newer forerunner, like a new forerunner. I think it was a '91 or '92. It had the 31-inch tire option. I know once I really got into wheeling and got older, I know that there was a couple of years for the second Gen 4runners where they had a 488 gear option with 31-inch tires. And I actually... I never knew for sure back then because I didn't know anything about specs or wheeling to even look to see if that thing had 488s with the 31s. But I always look back and I think, Man, he might have had the 488 option, which I thought would be cool. At least I think that. I'm more knowledgeable about Jeep Cherokees. I I pretty much have OCD when it comes to XJs. I know every part on the XJ by heart. I know every bolt size by heart. I know I've been diagnosing XJs now for 25 years and working on them for 25 years as a hobby. And so it's like, that's my knowledge base. But yeah, I think we had a pretty neat forerunner.

[00:12:21.940] - Jon Larson

We would take that out and we would go up to different places that we hadn't camped or hunted at before. I remember going up and like, going up Highway during bear season and just scouting, just looking for bear scat and hiking around for a long period of time, trying to find... I don't think we ever... We never actually got a bear, though. And I know that when a lot of really good spots, like X10, when they started doing more and more like... When you started having to pull a lottery to go to Modok, I know that's when we stopped going up there. I think my dad might have tried the lotteries for so many years, and I think he just gave up at some point, and we just stopped going.

[00:13:10.050] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So then, what student were you? Since we've talked about jumping around to different places and going, that means you were in a number of different schools, I'm assuming.

[00:13:23.240] - Jon Larson

Yeah. So in San Jose, I think we moved out halfway through eighth grade. I, at the time, I was going to a school called Brett Hart Middle School, which was, I think, a 30-minute bus ride each way from where we lived. We lived on Lansing Avenue, I remember. And I felt like I was an okay student. I mean, there was a lot of pressure for my parents to get good grades, and I was into Star Wars and baseball cards. So I think I was a pretty good kid. I mean, my focus... I was addicted to baseball for a long time. I played baseball as a young kid, not in high school, but I would watch ESPN, like Baseball Tonight, SportsCenter, and I would read the newspaper, and I would just memorize all the statistics for all the players. Every single week, every time we'd get a new paper, I'd be like, Okay, Ricky Henderson was my favorite. I would just memorize all the stats, though. I was fascinated by just who's on top of batting average, triples, doubles, home runs, whatever on base percentage. I remember just memorizing it all, and I would If it changed, I would just log that.

[00:14:34.000] - Jon Larson

But yes, I think the one area where in Brett Hart, I was in algebra. We moved out to Oakley, and they put me in algebra, but I don't know if it was algebra one or two. I remember it was completely different than what we were learning at the middle school I was in. I remember struggling through algebra class, and literally, I made these two friends in algebra class that basically I would copy what they were doing, which looking back is funny because I ended up going to college for applied math degree. And I love statistics now. My job is mostly data analytics, data science, statistics, applied statistical methods. And it's funny looking back how I love stats as a kid, but I struggled in that one algebra class. But then after that, it was like, I think one day it all hit me, and it was super easy. Algebra, moving into high school, took a lot of geometry, trigonometry, whatever, precalc and AP calculus. I think when I hit calculus, I thought, this is pretty tough, but I like the challenge. It was legitimately challenging. Whereas I think most of the school... I always, especially when I got into high school and I started really forming my own perspective on life, I got really into Jim Morrisons and the doors in high school.

[00:16:03.310] - Jon Larson

But you like statistics and numbers. Yeah. I remember when I learned about him, we were actually in my dad's friend. I was in my dad's friend Bill's Jeep Cherokee. We were going to, I think, Stinson Beach, and he's playing this song on a cassette, and I'm like, I love this song. I was like, it's like we had the windows down, the ocean breeze. You're going through the mountains, going towards Stinson or whatever. And I'm like, What is this? And he's like, Oh, that's the doors. That's my favorite band. And he's like, The song is called Riders in the Storm. And I'm like, This is awesome. And he's like, Oh, yeah. He tells me a little bit about Jim Morrison a little bit. And I was like, That guy sounds like a badass. And so I remember, I'd go to used bookstores a lot and just look. I don't remember why or no. Thrift stores, a lot of thrift stores and used bookstores and stuff like that. And I remember finding a auto biography or biography on Jim Morris for 50 cents. And I got it, read it. And then I think I might have found other books on him, and I watched the movie with Val Kilmer.

[00:17:11.870] - Jon Larson

And I don't know, I started buying Doris CDs and became infatuated with the idea, some of the ideas that he had, which was this overall notion of pushing the boundaries of society and fucking with people in a lot of ways. I loved that. He would like to look into things like inciting riots and stuff and just, I don't know. I was super fascinated by that, and I thought he was really cool. So Somehow I got really into the doors and always grew up around classic rock and country music. At the time, I was simultaneously into the doors a lot and other classic rock bands. But I also love punk music and all My friends, we would go to punk shows a lot in high school. I loved... We would go to Berklee, we would go to 94 Gilman, we'd go to Slims, we'd go to shows, we'd pay homeless people to buy us 40s. That was always interesting. But yeah, I had to have good grades in high school. I learned there was a lot of... It was like a game of chess with my parents and with school. As long as you had good grades.

[00:18:30.960] - Jon Larson

People thought you were an okay person, I think. And you had more liberties in your personal life with good grades. I think I had a 3. 8, 3. 75 I got a 5 GPA in high school, and it was out of necessity. Because if I got below a B, I got in huge trouble. I get my ass beat, I get grounded. It was not good. But if I got straight A's, I'd get a bunch of baseball cards or something. And so it was very... I would not get in trouble. And it was like the wrap of God, which I got a B minus or a C or a D or something, which I think I only got one D all through high school. And I was in a typing class, which once again, that class to me was a joke. I thought it was ridiculous. I was like, Why are we doing this? Learning how to type? That's a class. That's an entire class. And I think I got a D minus in that. I don't know. I never had the Nowadays, everyone uses a computer. Back then, late '90s, early 2000s, it still wasn't as common.

[00:19:37.250] - Jon Larson

Typing words per minute was an actual skill set that people were looking for, I remember, because that's how they worded it to us. Here I am doing really good in my calculus and failing in typing, which was very interesting. But yeah, I had to be a good student, so I was a good student, and I got to stay out later if I had good grades. I had a job at Ace Hardware. I was working, and I was always doing stuff like that. So it was like cover fire for bad activities. So they maybe thought because I seemed like a good student that I wasn't doing out doing crazy shit at night.

[00:20:15.230] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. You're working at Ace Hardware. You're going to school trying to keep your grade average up so you can screw around. And you ended up earning enough buy a Cherokee?

[00:20:32.750] - Jon Larson

Yeah, I was stoked on it. And I think one of the exciting factors was, at the time, forerunners were prohibitively expensive. I didn't know much about... Back then, I was pretty clueless on why you would really want a 4-runner over an XJ or an XJ over a 4-runner. I didn't know XJs had data 30s in the front or 35s in the rear with 44 options. And Chrysler 8. 8 in the quarter starting in '97. And I just I just thought four runners were cool because you have the movable top, and they were straight-axle. And my dad would always tell me they were the 85 four runners, the ultimate vehicle. And so those were so out of my price range at that time. Cherokeies were relatively inexpensive. I looked in the newspaper, you'd get two lines in the newspaper back then. It's so funny. Now you have Facebook market and Craigslist has died, but I use Craigslist extensively for years. But back then, you'd say, 1989 Jeep Cherokee 4. 0, whatever, 180K, and then a phone number. And there'd be two lines in the newspaper. And I would just sit there and read through all of them, which there wasn't a ton.

[00:21:41.450] - Jon Larson

And I think I eventually found one that I could afford. I think it was 2,400 bucks, and I think I'd saved up 2,400 bucks in my savings account over a couple of years. So I got that Cherokee. I freaking loved it. God, I I failed my driver's exam five times, not the writing one, but the written one. I just never... I took a driver's training course and stuff. I don't know. I couldn't remember all the little nuances with the questions. And I finally passed, finally got my driver's license, and I think that was a senior in high school by that point. And I remember taking that Jeep Cherokee at the time. The hills of Oakley and Antioch weren't full of houses back then. And literally, they were probably private property, but we didn't know or care for that matter. And after school, I would go wheeling in my Cherokee on these crazy steep hill climbs, and out of all my friends in the Jeep, and we would just go wheeling around. It was probably private property. It was probably not the best idea. We definitely got chased off a lot, which looking back, that was probably pretty stupid.

[00:22:46.260] - Jon Larson

I remember some high-speed chases late at night, going through private property, where someone came out with spotlights in some big pickup truck, and probably chased us for 10 miles. I remember- But you never got caught? We never got caught. We weren't really doing anything bad. We were wheeling out there. I think they probably pictured kids having bonfire parties and drinking, but it was like, no, we were just wheeling around and we'd stop up on the top of the hill on some of these and just check out the stars and hang out. But I loved that Cherokee. I was always amazed. I mean, there were a couple of times where we went up some hills that were so freaking steep that I was like, Can we roll over backwards and die? And I remember just being in four low, just gutting it, praying to God we would get to the top. And all my friends were in the car cheering me on, but I'm like, I don't think this was a good idea. When it starts to... When you're starting to slow down and not grab traction so much, and it's all soft, and you're like, That's a really long way down.

[00:23:52.590] - Jon Larson

I don't think... Maybe I need to rethink some of this.

[00:23:57.770] - Big Rich Klein

But it was all stock?

[00:23:58.970] - Jon Larson

Yeah, it was like bone stock. I had dreams of lifting it, even in high school, but I had no money. And at that time, too, I don't think Craigslist was around, or if it was, I wasn't aware of it. I can't remember when Craigslist started. I remember when Craigslist started, that changed the game for me as far as buying parts and building rigs. It was a massive game changer because now you can buy used parts at an affordable price instead of having to order a brand new lift kit. But yeah, it was all bone stock. I And I ended up not applying to any colleges in high school. I had pretty good grades. I thought school was a joke. I love Jim Morris. In the middle of all this, I think I got suspended. I don't think I got expelled. I think I got suspended, suspended. I ended once or twice for... I didn't like all the jocks in high school. I didn't hate them or anything. I just thought it felt so superficial. And there was these cliques in high school, and I was in the punk rock skater clique. But these jocks always got these self-fulfilling class president or big men on campus.

[00:25:08.560] - Jon Larson

And I think in junior or senior year, I started running for those as a joke, and I would do really crazy shit at the competitions, and then I would get suspended.

[00:25:22.450] - Big Rich Klein

So a little bit of anarchy.

[00:25:25.890] - Jon Larson

Yeah, I loved it because I thought it was It was all a joke, and I saw it as a chess game. As long as I had good grades, I could probably make my parents happy and maybe get a job. That wasn't get some job, maybe go to college. And so I was like, Oh, I got good grades. I have a job. But fuck all these other people. This is all a joke to me. And so, yeah, I would quote Jim Morse and talk about getting strippers instead of balloons for birthdays and stuff like that. And then they would grab the mic and call my parents and stuff, and I thought that was hilarious. I remember me and some of my friends had periods where we didn't have classes, and we would take my Jeep and we'd just go out wheeling in the hills of Antioch and Oakley and Brentwood, and we would find junk piles. As you get older, you realize tweakers dump trash in the middle of nowhere sometimes. So it was probably, I don't know, maybe tweakers dumping trash. But we would just find these dishwashers and refrigerators There's these piles of junk.

[00:26:30.510] - Jon Larson

And we would strap rope to the back of my trailer hitch on my Jeep, and we would tie a bunch of dishwashers, refrigerators, and bikes to all these different ropes. And then I would go flying down dirt roads, 50 miles an hour, and you would see these things crashing into each other, this crazy storm behind us. And we would just do stuff like that. And I ended up loving that Jeep Cherokee. And then at some point, I had started college, going to SAC State, which isn't that far. I didn't apply to any colleges. So when my parents... I feel like they weren't very good at pushing me because they expected me to go to college, and I think they would have been extremely angry if I didn't. But when they asked me, I was like, I didn't apply to any colleges. When was I supposed to do that? No one told me. And so I don't know. So I asked my friends where they applied, and one of my best friends, Jason, was like, Oh, yeah, I applied to SAC State. But I did that four months And I was like, Oh, okay. So I applied to SAC State, and I got in.

[00:27:33.940] - Jon Larson

Right away, I got my acceptance letter before he did. And so I was like, I guess I'm going to SAC State. That's the only college I applied to. So I'm going there. And on the weekends, I would commute from Sacramento to Concerties Hardware on the weekends because I hadn't found a job yet. And so I would go, I think, Friday's after class, I would drive straight to Concerties Hardware. I'd work the evening, get off, and then maybe I'd stop by my parents house in Oakley. And there was It was a good point when I was out with some friends one night and we were coming back and the rig started overheating. And we were out so freaking late, and I didn't know much then about... I was still learning about cars. I was probably 18 years old. I didn't know. If the rig It's in the red. Just pull over and let it sit and call a tow truck. We didn't have cell phones, and we were on some dirt road somewhere. I ended up driving it home totally in the red and seize the motor. The next morning, the motor is seized. The rig is done for, and I'm like, Oh, God, what did I do?

[00:28:32.320] - Jon Larson

Looking back, I probably would have pulled over, let it cool down, maybe done some basic checks to see if it's a stuck thermostat or is the radiator leaking or something like that. But back then, I knew nothing And so, yeah, I drove it home, seized the motor, and I was commuting to Sac State. And so I think my parents had this beater old Tracel that I ended up borrowing. And I was driving that for a while. And I ended up getting a motor from a junkyard in Penol, and putting it in the Jeep. And it never quite ran right again. It ran good for a while, and then it started doing some weird stuff where it had no power. I couldn't go 10, 20 miles an hour. And I ended up selling it to a friend of a friend for 600 bucks. And looking back, all the knowledge I've amassed with XJs, it was probably something really easy and stupid. Could have been a sensor, could have been a bad battery connection, it could have been so many things. And now, I diagnose XJs all the time for friends or even on the Rubicon. And so, yeah, that was wild.

[00:29:43.600] - Jon Larson

I think I drove a little car for a while, but then I was working in restaurant. I ended up getting some jobs in Sacramento, finally. I was working in a restaurant five or six nights a week, and I was saving up money on the side. I was bussing tables. I was a host at a Mimi's Cafe, bussing tables. Ended up becoming a server. And once again, I would pack away. If I had some tip money, I'd pack it away. And I think my first summer after college, I'd saved up like 700 bucks. And I was like, Stoke, because I'm like, I'm going to buy a rig. I don't know what I'm going to buy. And I remember growing up, my dad and his buddies would always go to Slick Rock back in the '70s and '80s. And his buddy Bill, who had the Cherokee these days, he would talk to me about they had this old military truck, and he had a Scout. And I was like, Oh, scouts are cool. I don't even really know what they are. And looking in the paper again, I see an ad for a scout for like 700 bucks.

[00:30:41.790] - Jon Larson

I drove over there and bought it, and it was like rusted out, but it drove. And it was like this dude's hunting rig. And so I ended up buying this '68 Scout 800A. I still didn't know a whole lot about working on vehicles and stuff. So I was like, I want to lift it a little bit. I want to I didn't understand steering at the time. I didn't know how to diagnose that. Steering, it drove, it steered really poorly, but it ran, and the tires were super old, but it ran and it drove, and it looked really terrible. And I remember just putting on like, add a leafs on that thing. I think that was when I bought my... I think that's when we got our first saws on our first angle grinder, because I think I had to cut off all the U bolts. They were just so rusted, and that was my first taste of doing any suspension work. And nowadays, it's like, yeah, I work on suspensions all the time, so no big deal. But back then, it just felt like this crazy thing. And ended up lifting that thing a little bit.

[00:31:39.230] - Jon Larson

And I couldn't get the leaf bushings out because I didn't know at the time enough to know how to get the inner sleeves out. So I ended up punching out the bushings and the new poly bushings. I remember I couldn't get the sleeves for the old bushings out of the leaf eyelids, and I just took a grinder and grounded down the bushings and shoved them in there, and they were pretty sloppy. And it's just hilarious to think back that I did that, because now I would just I would I would figure out a way to get the bushings, the outer metal sleeves of the bushings out, whether it's a sawzall, cut them out, torch them out, whatever. But at the time, I just was clueless. And so, yeah, that scout got me more into wheeling. I started going to Prairie City with it. I would take it on camping trips. It had the removable top, which I thought was rad. So I lived in an apartment, so I I would park it in our parking spot, and I would take off the roof and leave it in the parking spot, and I'd go camping and have no roof, and I'd have to put the roof back on in the little parking stall in the apartment and stuff like that.

[00:32:41.940] - Jon Larson

And I would take it to my parents' house in Oakley on the weekends to work on it because I didn't have a garage. And so that gave me some of my... After doing the motor at the Cherokee, and I did a bunch of other work on the Cherokee, but it was all stock stuff, the Scout got me addicted a little more to off-roading. I I ended up at some point selling that. Actually, that was probably the only rig that I've ever sold that I made money on. I think since then, every rig that I've ever built up, I've always taken a loss on it. You usually don't get the money you put in. And so I think I sold it for 1,800 bucks to some dude. It had the the 1,96, the bigger four-cylinder. I thought it was really cool, but there was a point where I was like, Yeah, I'm sick of this thing. The carburator would die all the time on inclines, and we would go to Prairie City, and the carburator would just die. I remember flopping it on its side a couple of times at Prairie City, and I'd have someone pull me back over.

[00:33:37.740] - Jon Larson

It was just a lot of fun. But the next rig was a '79 Scout 2. It was on 35s, Hydro Assist. I bought it from a dude in Elk Grove that trailered it, and it had really hack job suspension work done for a shackling reversal, spring over. Looking back, I shouldn't have ever driven that thing on the road. But I drove it on the road. And growing up, my dad had all these pictures in his hunting picture books of going to Slick Rock. And I didn't even know what the Rubicon was at the time. I'm probably in my early 20s, and we would take that thing. We took it up to Slick Rock and like, oh, my God. I mean, it literally, you couldn't go over 45 miles an hour. I'm sure it had terrible caster. Who knows if it had bad tie rod ends. And yeah, that thing, we took that on Slick Rock, and I did great on the trail, but we did break a front center pin, I remember, near the stair steps. I still didn't know a lot, but at that point, early 2000s, I was on pirate like crazy. I was on naxtra like crazy, but I never really posted.

[00:34:43.220] - Jon Larson

I just lerted. And I would just read about people breaking stuff. And one of the things that I would make lists, and I was like, Okay, I need to carry some stuff. And one of the things I think I carried was center pins. That was maybe one of the only spare parts I had in the rig. And we're going down Slick Rock, and all of a sudden, the driver's side front tire is under the door, hitting the door. And I had no idea what happened. I get out and I look, and the center pin had broke, a U-bolt had broke, and the actual had shifted completely like 45 degrees under the driver's side front tire. And we had no idea. It was like me and my brothers and some friends, and they're all like... They're probably between the ages 16 and 18. I'm like maybe 21 or something. And so we had no idea what to And we ended up like... It started to rain. It was the middle of July. This was one of my first tastes of trail repair. It's like now I'm so used to fixing broken centerpins on the Rubicon or broken U bolts or broken axial shafts or broken steering or broken whatever.

[00:35:48.760] - Jon Larson

I bring welders everywhere I go. But back then, I had no idea. We ended up hiking out to Lake Alpine Lodge and asking if they knew anyone that could help us. We were worried about the... There were people at the stair steps on Slick Rock, and we were like, Oh, are those mountain tweakers? We didn't know. We were like, Oh, my God. I was like, They might steal the truck. I don't know how. We were young. I didn't know what I was doing. So we hiked out the car battery all the way out of Slick Rock. I carried it out, and my buddy carried the high lift. We all carried stuff out. We carried a bunch of gear out. And so I'm in Converse with no shoestring, I think. And it started to rain in lightning storm, and I'm carrying a car battery. I think I'm carrying a high lift jack out, and we carried all this gear out, and we stuck it at the trailhead off to the side because we were like, Oh, we don't want those people to steal it. Because I don't know why. I don't know why we thought that at the time.

[00:36:46.950] - Jon Larson

We were probably just young kids and not knowing any better. No one's going to take your shit on the trail. I mean, it probably happens in some places sometimes, but especially in a broken rig. And so anyways, we have this random dishwasher that at Lake Alpine Lodge, wheel us back into the trail the next day. We slept on the side of the trailhead that night with all of our gear, and we ended up taking the high lift, jacking the rig up, moving the accel back, and putting a new center pin in, and just wheeling out with one U On the one side, just tightened it real good. And that was my first trail repair, but it was also my first experience where I started to hate the Scout because at the same time, it was a manual, but it didn't have a low gear T-case, and the actual gears were 373, and it sucks. It was like you were either on the gas trying not to kill it, or it was dying on every rock. And so learning how to wheel like that for me was tough. And I was like, Okay, I want to get an automatic, and I want to get fuel injection going forward.

[00:37:49.630] - Jon Larson

At some point, I want to get a Cherokee again, too, because I still love Cherkeys at that point. And so, yeah, I ended up trading that Scout for a Jeep Cherokee. And it was on 33. I drove to Santa Rosa, traded pinks to some dude on Craigslist, handed him the Scout in the pink slip, and he had to be this Cherokee that had death wobble And I ended up building that Cherokee for the next 10 years. And in the meantime, I'm still going to college, and I'm still on pirate and all the time. And I'm constantly lurking, and I'm seeing people break Axel chefs. And I thought I thought that was crazy at the time. I thought that was insane because those Axel chefs look pretty like giant chunks of steel to me. And I had no idea how to do that stuff. I was scared to work on to pull an Axel. I thought I would screw up my Jeep. So I started going to pick and pull before class or during my lunch breaks, I would drive out to Rancho Pick and Pull. At that time in the early 2000s, there were like 20 to 30 XJs all the time.

[00:38:56.870] - Jon Larson

And so I started going there and figuring out how to pull apart axles, differentials, take rear ends apart, take front ends apart, take off steering, all the stuff that I was afraid to do on my rig, I would just go to pick and pull and take things apart and figure it out. That was my own little personal learning class of just sitting there like, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out. And if I screw it up, I'll just move to the next Jeep. I started finding lift parts there, and I started getting more comfortable pulling Jeeps apart. I would Sometimes I would find lunch box lockers in the diffs, and I would take the lunch box lockers out, and I would go back and sell them on Craigslist. And I would find lift shackles or lift leaves or lift coils or control arm, aftermarket control arms. And at the time, in a pick and pull, the pricing was dirt cheap, and I was a college kid with no money, so I would haggle with them at the front desk, and they would usually totally give into the haggling.

[00:39:53.770] - Jon Larson

So I would get stuff really cheap, and then I would just post it on Craigslist, or I would use it myself, depending on what it was, or I would post it on Noxja. And so I did that on and off for fun. And going to pick and pull was a regular occurrence for me in college. I went to pick and pull all the time on Rancho, the one in Rancho. And I would get like butterflies. I would get so excited because I never knew what I was going to find there. And it felt like a kid in a candy store. And that got me really comfortable, like tearing chips apart. Like a treasure hunt. Oh, yeah. It really is. Nowadays, it's hard to find XJs at pick and pull. When the Cash for Clunkers hit, Holy crap, dude. Cash for Clunkers flooded Pick and pull with XJs. During the era of Cash for Clunkers, pretty much every time I went to pick and pull, there were like 40 XJs. I mean, it was amazing because nowadays you're maybe lucky if they have five. I look on their inventory all the time. And so I had a lot to go through, and sometimes I'd find cool stuff, and that was a lot of fun.

[00:40:57.230] - Jon Larson

And then I'm on next, I'm working, still trying to learn how to wheel. I wanted to build up this Jeep more. I just didn't know what to do. I'm still learning, I need lockers, I need gears, I need rock sliders, I need skids. I still had no idea what I was doing. And you just read threads, read build threads, read threads on pirate, read threads on Naxtra, and just... I didn't have a laptop. I was doing this all at the computer lab in the school. So I would sit there in the computer lab before and after classes, and I would log in to next year at pirate at the computer lab, and I would just read threads. Nice. So that's interesting, right? You think back, everybody has a laptop now. It's like, dude, I had to stay on campus and just use the free computer labs to read these threads.

[00:41:46.360] - Big Rich Klein

So what was your username?

[00:41:49.100] - Jon Larson

On next year, I'm still Blonde John Cherokee. And then on pirate, I was Blonde John 79. I still am. I think pirate died off, and I know there's like, I rate 44 now and stuff. I know. I don't know all the history with what happened with pirate, but I know that in general, being on forums over the past 10 years, they've all died off anyways. It's sad. Pretty much as soon as Facebook groups hit, all the forums died off, it seemed like. But back then, dude, you got all the best parts pricing from either the classifieds or the vendors were super good with their pricing to members. And there were certain vendors that I would hit up all the time for parts as I got more and more into rock crawling. So I was always using extra vendors and always He's using pirate vendors. There was one pirate vendor in specific that I used. I think it was Dave's Off Road out of Pennsylvania. And he gave me killer pricing on everything I needed, whether it was 40-inch tires, Atlas transfer case, PSC steering. I would go through and price out stuff all across the internet, and then I would hit him up and say, This is the best price I can find.

[00:42:51.560] - Jon Larson

Can you beat that? And he usually would. And that was always cool. But yeah, I missed the forums. I mean, I'm still on Naxtia a lot, but it's dead. It's been dead for a long time. And I guess to back up and go back to those college days, I ended up like... There was a post on the Sierra chapter where this dude was like, Hey, there's this wrecked Cherokee, and it's got lockers, gears, 33s, sliders, winch bumper, roof rack, tire bumper, all this stuff. But it's been hit, and it's like 2,000 bucks. And he's like, Someone should buy this and part it out. And I remember hitting him up, and I'm like, How about me and you go in and have it and buy it, and we part it out together? And he lived in Santa Cruz, which is crazy. So I was commuting to Santa Cruz on the weekends and parting out a rig. I think it took three or four weekends. And back then, I still wasn't as quick as I am now. But that was my first taste of parting rigs out. Once I did that with him, I started scouring Craigslist every day.

[00:43:54.420] - Jon Larson

I'd go to the lab and I would start checking Craigslist, and I started finding Jeeps, Cherokeys, They had back registration, blown motor, but they'd have 35s, lockers, gears, all the stuff that you dream about in the forums. And I'm like, Oh, my God, this whole rig is cheaper than buying one of those parts. And I'm like, I'm a broke college kid. I'm working five to six nights a week. I paid for my own tuition. I was on the payment plan. Back then, college was, I would say, affordable. I think I paid 400 bucks every two months or something. And so I'm working five, six days in restaurants at the time in the early days of college. And I would take a little bit of money, and I would maybe not pay my rent until the 15th, and I would take some extra money, and I'd go buy a Jeep for a thousand bucks. I was crunching the numbers, I think, in Excel at the time. I think I finally had a laptop when I started doing that. And I would sit there in Excel, and I'm like, If I don't pay this bill, and I don't pay that bill until this date, and if I sell the long arms first and the tires first right away, because back then, you sold things really quickly.

[00:45:00.620] - Jon Larson

Used parts sold fast back then because Craigslist was still new. I don't think the market was saturated. And so I would literally throw these hale marries. I'd buy a Cherokee on a Thursday or Friday night. I'd have a triple way tow it back to my house. I didn't have a trailer or tow rig. I'd show up, buy this rig that didn't run, or if they ran, they ran terrible, and I would drive it on backroads. And at this point, we had moved from an apartment to a house in downtown Sacramento. So I had a one car garage in the alleyway, this really tiny one-car garage. And I started just for extra money. In college, to me, 500 bucks was a ton of money. And I was crunching numbers in Excel, and I'm like, Oh, if I park this rig out, I get the long arms, I get the shocks, and then I sell everything else, and I still make 500 bucks. And I only have to put in, whatever, 40 hours of work to part this thing out. So I started part and rigs out a lot off of Craigslist. I had criteria that I'd set.

[00:46:03.370] - Jon Larson

I would run through Excel, and I would say, Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Does the worst case scenario still make me money and get me parts? And I started selling a lot of used parts just as this little side hobby thing in college. And it funded my builds for my Cherokee. And I think at some point, I ended up buying a 59 Willies in another Cherokee, and I was building my rigs, not for free because I was still buying parts. But I was like, all of a sudden, I had geared and locked axles in my backyard all the time for sale, and I had them if I needed them. And I had all these, I'd sell long arm kits transfer cases with slip-the-oak limiters. I'd sell motors for 50 bucks. Motors and transmissions were worthless to me. And so I would sell these motors and trannies for nothing. Transfer cases, stock T-Cases, 40 bucks. Motor, 50 bucks. Maybe 200 bucks for a good motor. 50 bucks for a running motor. It just depended on each rig on the scenario. So looking back, I think it's crazy I did that because I don't have the energy to part out rigs anymore in that mentality, it got to a point where I would grab a 30-pack, a buddy or two would come over, and we would part out a whole Cherokee down to the frame, bare frame, interiors gutted, almost like chop-shop style.

[00:47:19.690] - Jon Larson

We would part it out in about 10 hours. In a one car garage with an alleyway that always had crazy homeless people in it because we're downtown SAC. And I It would be out there till 2: 00 AM drinking Coors Light with my buddies. And it was a cool way to hang out with your friends. I made so many friends from Nackster that way because I'd be like, You want the track bar mount? It's a hundred bucks if I pull it, it's 40 bucks if you pull it. Come on over and hang out and help me pull shit. And maybe I'll throw in a bunch of free parts because I need to get this rig torn down. And so early days, it might take me all weekend to a week of evenings and weekends to tear a rig But towards the end, I could do it 10 hours. We were saws on through stuff, cutting stuff. I just had a process down. So that was fun. But that got me really, really comfortable with tearing down Cherokees. It It taught me a lot more knowledge on diagnosing rigs because sometimes we would try to figure out why the rig didn't run or if there was a problem or if the owner said there was a problem, I'd be like, Oh, cool.

[00:48:26.520] - Jon Larson

I just learned something new. This rig has death wobble. I would look at the steering, and the steering had tons of slop in it. And I would start learning how to diagnose bad steering or steering wander by tearing apart all these rigs and seeing what was wrong with them as I tore them down. Sometimes you'd tear a rig apart to nothing, and you'd find problems that the owner probably didn't know of. And so after years of doing that, I was doing this in college, working six days a week, five days a week, full schedule, and I would still find time to tear these rigs down. So I was super infatuated. But With learning more and more, and I pretty much saw pretty much every lift kit you can imagine on the Cherokee. I saw so many different Axel, tire, combos. I saw so much cool stuff come through. So I started having this mental catalog of every part you could put on a XJ on top of learning more and more about them, diagnosing them. And then in the same time, I'd started wheeling. I'd at some point put some axels I bought off a dude on an XJ from Chico, a 30 and a 44 I think a Detroit rear, two track front.

[00:49:32.960] - Jon Larson

Got some 35s off one of the parts rigs that I had. I got some long arms off one of the parts rigs that I had. I got a SIE case off a parts rig. I was scared to fabricate, but at one point, I bought my buddy Rob's old Fluxxore Lincoln welder, and I was determined to learn how to weld, and I was scared to hell to even try. And I was like, Well, I got to start sometime. So I bought some rough stuff frame stiffeners and just Never welded in my life and welded those onto my XJ, which was like, if you've ever welded three-eight steel to an XJ frame, it is a nightmare if you don't know how to weld, and it's still even tough if you do. I mean, I weld on XJ frames a lot still, and it's tough for me to not sometimes just blow right through the frame. But back then, I had the heat too low and the speed too high, and the rig never fell apart and the weld never broke. But oh my God, dude, it looked terrible. And then I went into like... I think by the time I got done with the sliders, I felt pretty comfortable welding.

[00:50:40.880] - Jon Larson

I still didn't quite know what I was doing, but I felt like, Okay, I I end up figuring this out, I would call and text my buddy Rob like, Hey, what am I doing wrong? What should I do differently? He's like, Oh, yeah, I turned the heat up, turn the speed down. I'm like, Okay, cool. Make sure you got a good ground and stuff like that. And through practice, I ended up doing a bunch of metal fab on that Jeep. I ended up building a roll cage on it. That was a couple of years later. I'd gotten much better at welding at that point. I ended up borrowing a tube vendor, JD², picked up a ton of DOM, put it on the roof of the Cherokee, and drove it home on backroads from a tube place in West Sack to downtown Sack. So I had 20-foot sticks just on the roof of the Cherokee, I think on the roof rack. It's super crazy. I drove 10 miles an hour through side roads all the way It was such a... Looking back, I'm like, Yeah, that was probably a terrible idea. It was like this ratchet strapped like 100 times over across the doors with the windows down into the bumpers, and I duct-taped all the tubes together, and it was like, I'm out there.

[00:51:46.320] - Jon Larson

I think it took me eight months to build that cage because I would go out on weekends. I'd have to drag the vendor into the alleyway on a one-inch piece of plywood, and I would sit out there with a bunch of tires on the plywood, and I was doing manual bending, and I think one of the most helpful things was, what was it? Like two bending 101 on pirate?

[00:52:09.070] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:52:10.650] - Jon Larson

And that for me was like, awesome, because once I found that thread, it actually was tremendously helpful for calculating your bends on the floor with chalk. I would make a practice bend on some scrap tube, and then I could use that. And And it just took some time. But that cage held up to a rollover at 50 miles an hour on Prairie City Road, and it never broke a weld.

[00:52:39.260] - Big Rich Klein

Very good.

[00:52:40.550] - Jon Larson

Yeah, so that was cool.

[00:52:41.510] - Big Rich Klein

That's how you on a cage deck.

[00:52:43.650] - Jon Larson

Yeah. I had a buddy When I was a welding inspector. He came and checked all the welds after the rollover. This was years later. This was when the rig was on 14 bolt, being a 44, 37s. Tons of craziness on that rig. And I had a break caliper lock up in the rain, a rear caliper from Autozone totally seized. It was like whatever the '70s Chevy K10 calipers that you put on a 14 bolt for a rear disk swap. And a rear caliper seized and I hit the brakes on Prairie City Road. The rig started spinning in circles, and then I rolled down a hill, and I just woke up with the rig running upside down. I'm sitting there like, Oh, what just happened? It happened in slow motion, but it felt surreal. And that cage probably saved my life that day. The caliper probably tried to kill me the kids in.

[00:53:31.590] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. So then after college, you're doing all the XJ stuff and everything, and what was the next step job-wise?

[00:53:48.480] - Jon Larson

So I'm in college, I graduate, I changed majors a bunch. I started off in Civil Engineering, went to Computer Science. I hated both of those. They're stupid. I couldn't focus on it. And I ended up And I was always good at math, and I was like, math for me is difficult, but it's easy because I like the difficulty. And I had like a... I was drawn to it. So I ended up doing applied math for a major, and I graduated, and I had no plans because when I started the math degree, I thought I'd be a math teacher. And pretty quickly seeing professors, I got really good at reading people over the years. And I don't know, I did not I want to be a math teacher. And so I graduated college with no plans. I'm still working in restaurants. And I remember just like, graduate college, hit check that box. And I'm working in restaurants in downtown Sacramento at the time. And I'm wheeling I'm building rigs. I may be part out rigs sometimes. We go camping a lot, go wheeling a lot. And I was just wheeling. And in the weeknights, we'd be out drinking at bars downtown.

[00:54:54.150] - Jon Larson

And the restaurants were really depressing because there were a lot of people working there who were in their 30s and 40s, and I'm still in my early 20s, and they're stressed out about money every day. They're trying to work that extra shift to pay the rent. Some of them had families, and they never had any money saved. A lot of them were jaded, pissed off, angry people. A lot of them did hard drugs. It was super... There was a point where I had this epiphany, where I'm like, This is going to be me in 20 years. This is like this. That's going to be me in 20 years if I don't change my life. And I'm not here drinking every night. You make $400 in a night in cash, and you go blow it at the bar. And I was like, what am I doing? And so I to my younger brother, and he's like, Oh, yeah, you need to get a real job. They won't hire you. You need to get an internship, but they won't hire you as an intern unless you're in college. And so I'm like, Fuck. And I remember one night, I was just drinking super drunk with some friends, and I applied back to SAC State for a master's in economics.

[00:55:50.150] - Jon Larson

I had seen one of my college buddies back at SAC State. He graduated a year before me. He was in the math program. He was super smart, this guy James. And I'm like, What the hell are you doing I'm back here? And he's like, Oh, yeah. So I didn't want to be a teacher or a professor. And somehow, he was telling me, he's like, Yeah, if you get a master's in Econ, you'll So first off, it's hella easy. Compared to the math degrees we both got, he's like, Econ is like a cakewalk. He's like, It's stupid. And he's like, It's all... He's like, It's mostly all applied statistics, but he's like, That's very good for jobs. He's like, You can find a job that doing whatever, applied stats with economics. And so I applied to the Econ program, and I went back to SAC State for a master's in economics. And then during this whole time, I'm parting out Riggs, working a lot. And I got an internship at SMUD, Sacramento municipal utility district. And so I'm interning there as a research assistant, learning all kinds of stuff, which was all directly related to what I was learning in the master's program, which was all...

[00:57:05.010] - Jon Larson

Once you get through the first couple semesters for the Econ program, it's really all applied stats to econometrics. And so I ended up doing that master's during the time when the housing market crashed, 2005 through '08, which was a really cool time to be studying that data. It was very interesting. And then I'm at SMUD working as a research assistant, and they ended up hiring me on because I became like OCD about some of the statistical packages we were using in research methods. I went from accidentally deleting one of the senior analyst's most important files within my first few months, like one of his big import files for our data warehouse, not knowing what the hell I was doing, to having to recreate it on my own, to actually recreating all this code that I had no idea what I doing at the time, but I figured it out as it went, and I made it much more efficient. I added in all sorts of cool stuff, and I ended up managing her data warehouse as an intern and building all these models. I just became super infatuated with applied statistics. I actually loved it because it was real-world data.

[00:58:20.050] - Jon Larson

Because in my math undergrad, once you get out of lower division math, the upper division stuff, it's all theory, it's all abstraction. Like abstract algebra Real analysis, that shit is super abstract. And applied stats is very concrete, easy for me to understand. You're using real data, and you can see what you're doing more. And so I got super into that, and basically ended up doing that. And in the meantime, I was daily driving a shitbox Cherokee to work. I'd be wheeling my XJ on the weekends and going on like Naxtra runs. I was big. At that point in my life, I went from like, lurking on Naxtra to being actively posting all the time, having built threads, going to Naxtra events for the Sierra Chapter. And then at some point, I ended up like one of the guys on the board, the local boards are... I don't know what the word is. It's not a big deal to jump on a local board for an affiliate chapter. But I do remember one of the guys reached out and they're like, You're really good with numbers. Do you want to be the treasurer? And so I was like, Yeah, sure.

[00:59:34.660] - Jon Larson

And I ran and I didn't get voted in because someone else ran who was the current treasurer. And then I go, Why did you guys ask me to run if you already had a guy who was running? And they're like, Oh, I don't know. And so the next time around, I ended up running again and got it. And I put all of our finances into Excel. The previous guys were doing, I don't know what they were doing, like back of the envelope scratch math. And there was no bank account. There was no PayPal account. So I helped set up our Wells Fargo account for a chapter, our PayPal account for a chapter. We got that going, and I tracked everything in Excel and just got organized. And so, yeah, so I ended up being on the I always saw the board as a joke as far as there's no authority to the board. It's really, you're like the current version of the secretaries who are just organizing the annual runs, really, and setting up a series of trail runs. You're just the guy. It's your turn. It's your turn to be responsible for the chapter and just make sure the runs happen and get this stuff going.

[01:00:41.650] - Jon Larson

It's not like, Oh, my God, there's no real authority to your name. You're just like a secretary. That's how I always viewed it. So I did it for 12 years as my duty, maybe 14 years. And in the meantime, I'm building up XJs. I'm parting out XJs. I got out of the part game about eight years ago, just because it was... I ended up going from SMUD to a big tech company during this time. So a job posting opened up for a big tech company. They had a satellite office This is Sacramento, and I ended up taking it. I ended up getting the job, which was crazy. And I've been working there ever since. So it's funny because my current job, I don't want to say where I work because I don't think I'm allowed to. I know people who know me know. Anyone listening to this, if you want to know, you can always reach out. But I don't think I'm allowed to say where I work. It's weird. I can't say it on social media. I can't represent them officially and not get in big trouble, which is really stupid, but that's just my opinion.

[01:01:50.650] - Jon Larson

I forgot where I was going with this. I totally lost my train of thought. Yeah, you could probably tell I have some form of ADD or something. I've had a lot of coffee.

[01:02:02.550] - Big Rich Klein

You got the job at this tech company.

[01:02:05.560] - Jon Larson

Yeah, and that was crazy. And the tech, it's funny because I have not found a single person at this tech company that likes to wheel, wrench on rigs, go camping. I sometimes tell coworkers what I do for fun, and they think it's crazy. The off-roading thing is not necessarily super big. I found a few people that are into overlanding, which is cool, and they were super into it, but not into hardcore rock crawling. During all these last 15, 20 years, I've been planning, organizing. I want to say I was on the next chapter. I call it the board, but I really call it the secretaries who plan the runs and make sure the chapter doesn't die. Planning and organizing like, Sierra Fest. We started an event called Reno Fest, like 12 years ago. The Reno guys in the Sierra Chapter were running these badass trails. They would post every day. Like, Naxtra was really busy back then. People were posting on Naxtra. There wasn't Facebook groups. And the guys in Reno would go out wheeling a night in the summer because it's too hot during the day. But they wheel on weeknights because Reno, Garnerville, Minden, Carson are full of BLM land with badass trails.

[01:03:28.890] - Jon Larson

And I remember going What the hell are you guys doing? That stuff is crazy. And you went there after work. I'm used to planning camping trips and wheeling trips for a whole weekend. They're planned very far out. I'm bringing all my camping gear. I'm bringing all my tools, all my spare parts. And it's like a production. And these guys were casually wheeling hardcore rock crawling trails after work on a Wednesday night. And it blew my mind. So I remember reaching out to them and I was like, Hey, Eric and Alan, hey, can we... Alan Johnson, he's actually on the RTA board with us. And saying, Hey, can I come wheel with you guys for a weekend? I can't just come out in a weeknight, but can you guys show me all these trails? And I remember going out there in my XJ, 35, Dana 30, 44, rear Detroit front two track. I think Cromo is in the front, caged, whatever. And they took me on a bunch of bad trails, cool stuff. I was I think we did the first year in the first day, we ran Dolores, maybe Dolores, Billy Bob, Moon Rocks, in a night run on Tonka.

[01:04:51.120] - Jon Larson

I don't know, we wheeled for 12 hours straight. And we were staying. Me and the guys who came with me, there was a couple of us. We stayed at Circus, Circus Arena for 30 bucks a night. And we were parking our rigs in the parking lots at Circus Circus that night. And we would go gambling after we'd wheel a little bit. We'd wheel for 12 hours, we'd gamble for an hour, and then we'd go to bed, wake up and do it all over again the next day. And it was a blast. And the trails blew my mind. We ran Bronco Canyon the next day, and we were doing all these crazy trails. And I was like, We did it again the next year. So I'm like, This is really cool. We're doing it again. More people came out from California. And I remember that second year, I was like, You guys, these trails are so epic. There's nothing like this in California. It's so close to California. I was like, We need to turn this into an event. And I think at that time, I think I was on the board at that time, if I remember.

[01:05:44.900] - Jon Larson

And I was like, We should turn this into an annual thing we do every year in the spring. And we ended up starting off what we call Reno Fest, which is like, epic Nevada wheeling. Things changed. You couldn't really keep a bunch of guys in a hotel for a cheap price. So we ended up renting a campsite near Carson City, a group campsite. And the event grew over the years, and that's a pretty rad event. It's changing. I think this year, they're doing a... I'm off the board now, but they're doing an overlanding route through the Black Rock Desert, a huge cool expedition run, which is totally different than past years. And it's something that me and another board member were trying to get them to do last year. So I think it's cool that they're doing it, something different, mix it up, because we have been rock crawling those same trails now for 12 years. There's only so many trails that you can bring an organized group on that you could get full-bodied rigs through. Because we... I mean, as you know, you're big into crawling. It's like there's trails for full-bodied rigs and there's trails for buggies.

[01:06:51.350] - Jon Larson

And sometimes there's rigs in between where you don't care about your full-bodied rig getting body damage and breakage. And some guys will bring full-bodied rigs through buggy trails out there sometimes. But it's usually... It's not the body damage. No one cares about that when you're wheeling that rig, but it's more like you just can't hang in some of that stuff, right? This is for buggies on 42s. Every once in a while, we'll do something like that, but we can't do it during Reno Fest because we try to get people to go. You got to do trails where you could get 33s in a walker through. We've been doing that, doing Sierra Fest for years. Love organizing runs for Naxja, for the Sierra Chapter. Super fun. And then there was a point, I don't know, four or five years ago, I'd heard... At this point, we've been doing Sierra Fest on the Rubicon. Most years, we change it up. Location in some years. And we would raise money on our Sierra Fest. We would do a big raffle. And over the years, Naxja died off, and we started getting nothing for raffle prizes because Nxtra used to be pretty big, and the national board would supply each chapter with a lot of raffle prizes.

[01:08:05.080] - Jon Larson

And so fast forward, years later, I remember me and my buddy Lou Dogg were on the board. I've been with so many different board members on this year chapter, and we got like 500 bucks worth of prizes from national after previous year getting 2,500 and previous year getting 3,500. And the attendance was low, and I think we raised like 600 bucks at the raffle. We're used to raising a thousand bucks or two, and we would always donate the money, right? We would donate it to the Blue Ribbon Coalition, Friends of Four Dice, Rubicon Trail Foundation, not Friends of Rubicon, Waukeen Jeepers, Fresno 4x4. So we would take the money that we were making to donate it. And it was embarrassing that we really had almost nothing to donate. And at that point, I think there was a change over in the board. Loudog stepped out. We brought some other guys in, which was Alan, Gordon, C. J. And we ended up... I reached out to National. I said, Can I hit up vendors that aren't Nxtra vendors? And they're like, Oh, yeah, go ahead. So I started this process. Me and Alan, Gordon, Mike, we're hitting up vendors like crazy.

[01:09:12.610] - Jon Larson

Hey, we're at Sierra Chapter, Nxtra. We We do these land use raffles, and we're trying to get prizes to raise money for Rubicon Trail Foundation, Waukeen Jeepers. We want to keep trails open. We've been doing this for years, but now we're going out on our own. And so that's when I got into a little more involved with the whole fundraising part. And I never felt comfortable reaching out to vendors. I still don't. Even with the RTF, even with vendors I know personally, I still feel very uncomfortable asking them for raffle prizes because I'm basically asking them for free stuff. I know there's a huge dynamic there where they feel good about supporting land use, and a lot of vendors do. A lot of vendors don't at the same time. And so you get rejected. You get rejected more and you get told yes. And you always feel like a used car salesman.

[01:10:03.970] - Big Rich Klein

Kind of like dating a car.

[01:10:05.890] - Jon Larson

Yeah, dude. Exactly. So we start doing this, and we get to a point where we go from bringing in 600 bucks in a year to $10,000 in a year. And the Sierra chapter is not big. We increased our fundraising efforts by what? In one to two orders of magnitude within five year period. And that was because we were pushing ourselves really hard. I was emailing vendors every night after work. I was calling vendors on my lunch break, trying to tell them about Sierra Fest, and we started Reno Fest, and we started doing raffles at Reno Fest after so many years. And so anyways, we start raising more money. Start getting a little more active with some of the donation stuff because we're reaching out with more money, right? If you send the club 500 bucks, that's cool. They might never even send you a thank you letter. If you're saying, Hey, I could give you $4,000, they suddenly want to talk to you more. And the chapter itself, you could tell people were starting... The chapter was dying for a while, and you could tell we suddenly had more attendance at the events. And it's because we're posting on our forums and our social media, because at this point, everyone's on Facebook groups.

[01:11:28.970] - Jon Larson

Everyone's not We're not many people on Naxtra, but we're posting stuff like, we just donated 3,000 bucks to the walking jeepers to help with Slick Rock. We just donated $4,000 to RTF to build bathrooms. We just donated $1,500 to $1,500 or $1,000 to the Highlanders. And so people start going, Oh, my God, the money I'm putting into these raffles is making a big dent in some of this trail use stuff, because we're not sending a single $500 check. We're sending multiple big checks. And people, I think, love that. I can tell, because I know every Sierra Chapter member by their face, their name. I know more about their rigs than I do about their families. I know everybody's rig front to back. I could tell you, for most rigs, all the parts that are on it. It's like we're a small chapter. It's not like going to a cantina where you might know a handful of people or 20 people. It's like, no, we'd have an event with 30 to 40 people, and I knew every single one of them, and I knew every single one of them really well. And as we would do this, we started picking up some new folks, some new faces, some people who hadn't been around in a while started coming around in a while.

[01:12:41.080] - Jon Larson

So that was exciting. And then we're moving with this. And then I reached out to RTF at one point because my buddy Alan on the next board was like, Hey, they have a property on the trail. And I'm like, What are you talking about? And he's like, Yeah, they got a property on the trail. And I heard We can help them out with it if they need help, and if they need work on it, and we could go there and check it out. And I was just super... I was caught off guard. What do you mean? They have this property. It's on the trail. I've never even heard of this. I'm just that out of touch, I guess. And so I reached out, and I ended up talking to Ken Hauer. I talked to Amy first. She was, I think, the secretary or She was the admin. She puts me in touch with Ken. He walks me through the history of the property on a Zoom call, and we're talking, and I'm like, Do you need help out there? Do you need to help? We have a really active group, and actually, guys, we love doing work on trails.

[01:13:48.100] - Jon Larson

We want to do more work on trails. We want to help any way we can, where we can. And so I ended up setting up a workday with Ken and doing some repairs where we all brought in bags of concrete and worked on what's called Hauer Hole on the RTF property. And I think we also did... I'm trying to remember. We did, we brought in, I think, 60 bags of concrete, 30 rigs or so. I don't know. This was probably five years ago now. And that same year, we donated like 4,000 bucks from Naxtra Sierra Chapter to RTF for for some bathroom stuff, which was really cool. And then we also bought them a roto hammer because he was like, Yeah, we need a good cordless Milwaukee Roto hammer for putting signage up in the granite. And so we hooked them up big time that year, set up this work day. We did a bunch of work out there on the road in. And I remember at that work day, Ken's like, Hey, have you thought about joining the RTF board? And I'm like, What are you talking about? I'm like, No. Why would you guys I'm this dirty Jeep Cherokee guy.

[01:15:03.010] - Jon Larson

I don't know. I've been running the Rubicon at that point for a long time, and we've been doing events out there. But I was like, I don't think I'm the type of guy that you want around, like an official board. I had this vision of RTF, where maybe it was a little up tight and elitist, just because I didn't know. But Ken was so cool, and I met this guy named Tyler, and they were both so cool. I'm I'm like, Oh, maybe the RTF is really cool. And then you meet them and you're like, Yeah, these guys are rad. And then I was like, There's no way they're going to vote me in even if I try to join, because it's just... I don't know. I've been doing little naxious stuff for 10 plus years, planning pretty small events, planning some work days with the forest here and there. But the RTF sounds like a big jump. But I was like, You know what? I guess I'll just do it. And I put my hat, whatever, I put my card in the hat or whatever, put my hat in the ring, and they end up voting me in.

[01:16:05.200] - Jon Larson

I've been on the RTF board now for four years, and I have learned so much about Rubicon that I never would have learned otherwise. There's so much deep history with the Rubicon. There's so much history with friends in the Rubicon, RTF. There's private landowners on the Rubicon. That simple fact blew my mind when I heard, Oh, yeah, 40 % of the Rubicon goes through private property. I was like, Common people like me don't know that. I'm just a regular average wheeler. I didn't know that. There's so many facts about the Rubicon that are just mind-blowing. I feel like a sponge now at RTF. And literally, I'm constantly learning new stuff all the time. Learning about RS 2477 a couple of years ago and the importance of that statute from the Mining Act 1862, helping keep the trail open as a public claimed county road. I didn't know that. There's so much craziness. The first couple of years on the RTF, too, I was in charge of the property, setting up work days on the property. I stepped off the property committee after a bad head injury, had a bad, bad concussion, traumatic brain injury, like two and a half years ago.

[01:17:25.670] - Jon Larson

And it put me down for a year. I didn't do- Was it wheeling that it Did that happen? No. It's funny because it was wrenching in my own shop. I'd say for the past 20 years, I've been working on Jeeps. My wife can attest to this, probably anywhere from 4: 00 to eight hours a night on weeknights. I get off work, maybe eat dinner, maybe go to the gym, and then I'd go work on one of the Jeeps. Maybe not every single night of the week, but most weeknights. So I've been wrenching, whether it's my rigs or a friend brings a rig over. There's always a project. And so I've I've never taken personal safety into account because I do it all the time. I got so freaking fast at tearing Cherokees apart that when I work on my own rig, I could do a pretty massive project on a Tuesday night. And so I'm just used to that. So I've been doing that forever. We have this Wrangler that we got four years ago. I've always wheeled Cherokees. I wanted something more modern and more new as a daily/camping vehicle that I didn't have work on.

[01:18:30.790] - Jon Larson

And so we bought a JL. I still have my XJ. It's on 40s. It's on one tons, Atlas, Roll cage, like Stroker motor. It's a rad Cherokee. I love that thing to death. But we got this JL. I was working on it. I was putting on some control arm drop brackets, and I'm under the rig. And I'm laying on my back, torquing, doing final torque specs on the upper control arms. So I'm under the rig with my head right in front of the ratchet. I couldn't reach I couldn't reach the torque wrench, so I grabbed my Snap on two foot long, three-eights drive, but it has the flex head on the ratchet. And it had a deep socket on it, which I normally don't use deep sockets when I'm doing final torque. I try to use shallow all the time when I'm torquing down bolts so they don't slip off. That's just normal, whatever. I've been this crazy spaz, like spider monkey, wrenching on rigs every night for years. It's like my... It keeps me When I can't wheel, I like to wrench. I feel like I would rather do eight hours in the shop doing preventative maintenance or upgrading things than trying to do a trail repair at all.

[01:19:42.930] - Jon Larson

And so that's always been my mentality. So I'm always working on stuff. And laying under the rig, stupid two-foot long handle flex heads, the head starts to flex out. I never use flex head ratchets to torque stuff. And I'm under there, and I should have grabbed a right angle impact or something because it was a tight spot. I should have done that. And I'm doing a sit up almost with my head right in front of the ratchet, and I'm ratcheting towards my head. And you're getting down to that torque on the on the bowl where you're like, I'm putting all my body weight into it, just going nuts. And in slow motion, I see the flex head start to flex outward, and the ratchet starts to go out. And then in slow motion, I see the deep socket slip off the nut. And this was me just moving too fast on a weeknight, right? I mean, it was stupid. I should have slowed down. I was trying to get it done so I could go to bed, basically. I should have slowed down, grab a torque wrench and got my head out of the way, or I should have used the right angle impact or something.

[01:20:42.540] - Jon Larson

Instead, I'm under there just moving fast, going too crazy, and put that long handle three-eights drive right into my head with all my body weight. It felt like equivalent to hitting myself in the head with a hammer as hard as I could. Right. And I'm like, okay, head swelled up, got super dizzy, and I finished up the Jeep and came inside, and my wife, like, freaked out. And a couple of days later, I woke up with vertigo. And then every day after that, I I got up with vertigo for months and had vertigo all day, 24 hours a day. Had to go on disability for about six months from work. And now, it's totally changed. I don't wrench as much. And if I do, I keep my head out of the way. This was a couple of years ago now. I'm still dealing with the aftermath and the injury because I never had headaches before my life. I never got any headache ever, not even on a bad hangover or something. And now I get migraines all the time. That sucks. They're dehabilitating, and it stopped me from wheeling for a long time. I barely wheeled that first year.

[01:21:53.080] - Jon Larson

Once I started to heal up and I can go back to work, I would wheel easy trails, and I would just have migraines the whole time, really bad. And so, yeah, I'm trying to get back into wheeling more and more and more. It's tough because our hobby, we're in the middle of nowhere a lot of times. I mean, the Rubicon is very well-traveled. There's always a lot of people out there. But if you get a really severe migraine where you're throwing up and nausea and dizzy, the last place I want to be is in the middle of the granite on the Rubicon, where it's like 90 degrees in the middle of summer, and I am just in bad shape for the next 10 hours. So I've been For the past two and a half years, easing my way back into wheeling. I've been incrementally adding more wheeling trips and harder wheeling trips. And it's been weird, really weird. I stepped down from some positions on the board. I ran Cantina a couple of years ago, and that was hell of fun, but that was just too much for me with the migraines. And then I was in charge of the property committee.

[01:22:59.510] - Jon Larson

I stepped down from that. I mean, I couldn't get out to the property, so why was I the chair? You need someone that can get out there. So Alan took over... Actually, Alan Johnson on our board, one of my best friends, he took over the property committee and Cantina. So that was really cool. And he's doing a killer job on both of those things. But yeah, I just do the social media stuff now because a lot of that's editing, working with our social media management company, brainstorming what we should do next. It's not a whole lot of on-trail stuff. I have gone to the Rubicon. I went once, two years ago with Ken and John to shoot some videos for our YouTube channel. So one of the things I'm focused on is getting as much educational content because I'm in charge of education social media. So my big thing is we're always brainstorming what's the best way to get educational information and content to folks who need it. And we have a pretty good Facebook group. I didn't grow that Facebook group. That was around before I came around. And Troy, at 2: 4 Social Media, did a great job of growing that, and Ken Hauer, and all those guys.

[01:24:13.390] - Jon Larson

But what I've been doing for the past couple of years is focused on trying to work with... I work with Ken a lot on trying to get our YouTube channel to grow. Post educational videos. Maybe the goal would be, too, for YouTube is to get the RTF YouTube channel monetized at some point, so it's like another source of revenue. And also so we could just keep posting information because I've learned so much from RTF about the Rubicon, and not just about the Rubicon, but a lot of the stuff would apply to any trail. It's not like we're in a vacuum with the Rubicon. When there's legal issues or trail issues or trail repair or stuff that you learn about the Rubicon, that applies to any trail in a lot of ways, right?

[01:24:57.810] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[01:24:59.120] - Jon Larson

And I feel I've learned so much. And I'm like, there's people out there like me who know none of this, because I knew none of these things. I picked up Mark Smith's book, Driven by a Dream, after talking to Scott Johnston one day on the phone. That book is amazing. He talks about Expedition de los Americas, and hearing the history of Mark Smith. And I just didn't know any of this stuff. I mean, that's just one little snippet of this massive history around the Rubicon. And And how so much came to be with Rubicon Springs and RTF property and all the historical points of the trail and why the trail is even still open today and the waterboard issues in 2012. The county trying to close the trail a couple of years ago, and not realizing that they had to follow that 2013-5 document from the 2012 easement I'm like, Oh, my God, there's so much history here, but it's all super fascinating, and it's way cool to learn it. And it's also crazy because you're like, Oh, we take the Rubicon for granted, the fact that it's even open right now.

[01:26:15.790] - Big Rich Klein

A lot of people do.

[01:26:18.590] - Jon Larson

And when you start getting into the weeds on some of this stuff, you actually realize you could have someone who's not voted into a position in a county somewhere, There's DOT, there's Forest Service, there's County, and someone who's not even voted in could could possibly close the trail, temporarily or permanently, if they wanted to, without even following the conditions for trail closure. And so learning about some of that stuff, when that was happening with that winter closure a couple of years ago, and just seeing the backside legal aspect of everything, it's been really cool. I feel like the overall mission, the thing that I focus on on the board is really just It's like, how do we push the education in social media is basically the only way we can reach people other than our mid-trail staff with Glenn and other than going to events with the RTF booth and talking to people individually. So that's the crazy story of how I ended up here. And I will say that all the years of reaching out to vendors cold calling for Naxtra, when I When I started at RTF and I was starting to reach out to vendors for Cantina that first year, I couldn't believe how much more receptive vendors in general were to RTF Rubicon Trail Foundation versus like Naxtra, because a lot of vendors didn't even know what Naxtra was.

[01:27:45.170] - Jon Larson

You mentioned Rubicon, and it was like, you still got lots of nos, but you got way more yeses. When we were stockpiling raffle prizes for the fundraiser at Cantina, and I thought that was pretty cool. I've gotten to make a lot of friends with local vendors that I never would have reached out to for Naxja because Naxja is all XJ stuff. So you're not going to talk to a scout vendor. You're not going to talk to a fab shop because a lot of XJ guys are broke. Not all of them, but a lot of them fab their own stuff. It's like a different... Xj guys are like a different breed. I've literally had some shops tell me, I won't donate anything to the XJ guys because they all build their own stuff, and they're not going to buy my So why would I donate to you? And I'm like, Yeah, fair point. I see where you're coming from. I can't disagree with you. And I'm asking you for free stuff. Thank you for your time. I totally respect that. I don't have a I don't have ground to stand on for that. I can agree with you there.

[01:28:48.050] - Jon Larson

But I was like, We're still trying to do what we can to support land use. And so if you're looking for a return on investment, I can't really justify that 100 %. You may or may not get any traction. But our mission really is to donate money to keep trails open and try to work with the forest where we can. But the RTF makes that so much easier because the name is so much bigger. Everyone recognizes Rubicon, and And the only other thing that I've learned, too, is there's a lot of politics with RTF, and other groups, which I just never knew before joining. So that part's always interesting. There's a history.

[01:29:28.870] - Big Rich Klein

There's an interesting dynamics there. That's for sure.

[01:29:32.230] - Jon Larson

Yeah, there's these deep histories with different folks and organizations in a county or whatever. And it's crazy learning about all these histories. And I don't know. I sometimes feel like I'm just waiting for the day when Ken calls me. He's like, John, I need you to step down off the board because we got to bring someone else in who knows what they're doing. But I still... I've joked about that with Ken. He's like, John, you're crazy. Don't say that. I have that. I've always had that imposter syndrome, even at my current job. I've been there 13 years, and I still have imposter syndrome every day. Even on the RTF board, I feel like, Oh, man, there's got to be someone way better who really knows what they're doing, who's probably not as much of a spaz as me. We could do this like 100 times better than I can. But I like to work hard. I always push myself to learn new stuff. And I think joining the RTF was pretty scary at first. I thought, didn't think I would make it very long just because I thought, Oh, yeah, they're just going to kick this asshole out of the board pretty quickly.

[01:30:40.160] - Jon Larson

But actually everyone's really nice, and the board's been really cool, and I've learned so much. I'm overly hard on myself. I think we've done a lot of cool stuff since I've been here. So looking forward to the future with RTF. And it's been crazy to see my progression over the years with my I take a step back. Now that we're talking, I'm like, I don't think I really talk about this stuff, like front to back, as far as like, how did I get in the wheeling? Oh, yeah, I came to with my dad. And then you go, Oh, yeah, I bought a Scout in 2001. And then I bought another Scout, and then I traded that for a Jeep. And you fast forward like, oh, yeah, I was lurking on next year. Now I'm on the board for 12 years in running stuff, even though it's just... And then here I am on RTF, and I do a lot of social media stuff now. I I started a YouTube channel two years ago, by the way. I don't know if I could say that. Yeah, you can. What is it? What's the name of it?

[01:31:36.650] - Jon Larson

The name's cheesy because I was recovering from my concussion. It's Go Wheel, John Larson, Blonde John 83. I think Blonde John 83 is my username on YouTube, but that ties back to my pirate usernames and my national usernames. And then I think the channel is like, Go Wheel, John Larson. And so the crazy thing is, so I was I was a math guy, right? Well, in high school, the only classes I actually enjoyed were my video productions classes. I actually wanted to go into video productions out of high school. I wanted to be an editor out of high school because I loved editing so much. I loved shooting. Then instead, I went to college and became a math major. And literally, even in college, I was taking video productions courses, but SAC State is not the place for that. They had outdated 1970s studios there at the time. I've always wanted to do it. It was a passion. It was probably the thing that I enjoyed the most in high school. I'm like, Why the fuck did I go into math in statistics? It's hella boring. But it's hard, and I like challenges. It's extremely hard, and I love extremely difficult challenges.

[01:32:49.080] - Jon Larson

That's why getting into vehicles was extremely scary and hard. Tearing apart axles, regearing axles, rebuilding transfer cases, rebuilding them on the trail, that's hard and scary, and I love the challenge. And so I hit my head. I'm on disability, I'm going to traumatic brain injury therapy, and they're like, You have to get back on the computer because I work at a computer. And I couldn't look at a computer screen for more than five seconds without throwing up and getting a migraine. And so I had to build it up. And they're like, You can't. I legally wasn't allowed to work. So I'm like, Okay, I can't. I can't work, But I have to do a computer. What the hell am I going to do on a computer? Because I have to look at the screen for 30 seconds and then take a five-minute break and then look at it for a minute. The idea was to build your brain back up to where you could look at a screen again for eight hours a day. That took many, many months of going from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. And they were telling me, Well, you can watch YouTube videos all day, or not all day, but as you're doing your steps, you're building back up your stamina and your brain or your eyes or whatever it is to look at screens.

[01:34:05.080] - Jon Larson

Because they straight up tell you when you get a bad TBI, don't look at screens. Tv, laptops, phones, don't look at them. But I'm like, well, I have to, and I got to build this back up. I was like, Well, what if I make YouTube videos and edit them during these little periods where I have to do my stuff instead of watching them? And she was like, Yeah, sure. Like, whatever. You're on the computer screen, right? Who cares what you're doing, I guess, as long as you're doing something. So I had a crappy iPhone SE, and I just started shooting stuff in my garage when I felt good. I'd get about one hour a day where I didn't have a migraine, and that was on tons of medicine, too. I'd get about one good hour a day where I could shoot something in my shop, and I would go out there and just shoot these terrible crappy videos in the beginning with no mics, crappy single camera iPhone SE camera, which is not good, grainy as hell. Audio sound. I'm 20 feet away from the camera, and it sounds like I'm 20 feet away from the camera.

[01:35:06.300] - Jon Larson

But it was so exciting because here I am in the worst condition of my life. And I'm like, I'm being told I might never recover, and I might never go back to work again, and I might be on disability forever. And the migraines were dehabilitating and unbearable. And it was like, here I am doing very poor video productions. And it was awesome. And it got me so pumped because I was like, this is what I wanted to do 20 years ago out of high school, 25 years ago out of high school, I don't know. And I've always wanted to do this. And I started watching YouTube videos during COVID for fun. I lived under a rock, apparently, because I didn't know there was road kill on YouTube. I'd use bleep and jeep for how-to videos. I'd always use YouTube as a how-to thing. When you're out in the shop, you're out in the garage, you're working on your junk, and you can't figure something out. You jump on your phone, you try to find a YouTube how-to video on how to do something you haven't done before. I didn't even realize that people were using YouTube to post wheeling videos or camping gear videos.

[01:36:18.130] - Jon Larson

I was oblivious to that. And my wife got me into road kill on YouTube, dirt every day. She was like, she would watch this stuff. And I would come in from the garage during COVID, I was wrenching all the time on my evenings and weekends. And I'm like, What are you watching? That's like, badass. And so I started watching these videos, and I'm like, I can probably do that. Not as good. And those guys are awesome, and the stuff they're doing is cool. But I'm always wrenching, and I'm always wheeling. This is before I hit my head. I'm very active on wrenching and wheeling. I could just do this. And it reminded me of that time in high school when I thought I was going to do it for a living and gave up as soon as I realized I had to go to college. So anyways, here I am, fast forward to start this YouTube channel, and it's been super fun. I think it gives me that outlet, a creative outlet, because even though I love math, I feel like I'm a creative person. I don't know It's really fun to shoot these videos.

[01:37:20.170] - Jon Larson

Plus, the older I get, the more I forget. I actually watch my own videos sometimes that I've shot to either work on my rigs or my a buddy's rigs or a camping trip or a wheeling trip to remember what the hell we did. Because a year later, I already forgot a certain detail or something, or what do we do here or something. And so if anything, it's like home movies, but it's super fun. I actually think I'm always telling friends now, I'm like, I'm not very good at it, but you guys should do it, too. It's just fun to do. And it gives... I like video editing, and I'm not very good at that either, but I love it. I'm just using iMovie and CapCut. I'm not even using Final Cut Pro. I need to probably download Final Cut and start using that at some point. But yeah, it's just like, that's a whole lot of fun. And I wish I started doing it 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

[01:38:16.050] - Big Rich Klein

So how's that TVI now?

[01:38:19.440] - Jon Larson

It's way better than it was. I'm not on any migraine meds right now, but I do get migraines. They come and go. I didn't really I probably had 5-10 migraines over the past four months. They're way less severe. Before, literally, I'd have to go to bed. I'd have to put an ice pack over my head and go to bed for eight hours to knock it out and take two Tylenol and a Zofran and a Meclizine at the same time, and then lay down, and I was out for the day. My day was done. My problem is, I guess, the neurologist told me, Well, because When I had six months of issues at the beginning, he's like, Yeah, some people get migraines for months. And I was like, What do you mean for months? He's like, Yeah, you could get a migraine for six months or a year. And I was like, What? Like, What?

[01:39:13.590] - Big Rich Klein

Not just for hours, but months.

[01:39:16.160] - Jon Larson

And so he actually... I went to the concussion clinic at Sutter in downtown SAC. So it's actually a TBI clinic where all they do is work on TBI patients. And he's like, Oh, yeah. You'd be surprised that some people... So When I get migraines now, they're not necessarily lasting for months. But when I get them, they usually last a week or two. So every day I'll just wake up. It's worse than the worst hangover times a thousand. The feeling of the head. It feels like someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat, and I'm busy and nauseous, and it's all day. So I'll take some Tylenol, I'll take some Zofran. And the good news is that's happening less and less. The symptoms are less severe. I'm not taking nausea meds, hardly at all anymore. And I'm taking... Most weeks, I'm taking like one Tylenol a week. It's getting better and better. This week is weird because we went to Arizona for Arizona Tiki Oasis because I'm big into Tiki stuff, big into Tiki. We have a Tiki bar at our house. That's a Tiki party for the weekend. So we were drinking a lot of rum, a lot of cool old-school rum drinks there.

[01:40:29.400] - Jon Larson

And I've literally had a migraine since Sunday. But it's been mild. It's not the old-school migraines that I was getting when it was lay in bed all day. It's like the symptoms are less severe. So it's this constant pressure. I call it baby migraines, where if you don't do an ice wrap and take a... If you don't do an ice wrap and take a Tylenol right away, it turns into a full-bone migraine, and I'll be thrown up, and I'll be nauseous, and I'll be dizzy if I don't catch it. So as long as I'm catching them right away, I'm good. And so it's been pretty good. So I mean, overall, I'm stoked. It's like, I thought I was going to leave the RTF because of my condition. I thought I was going to lose my job and go on disability forever. The neurologist told me it could be like this forever. They don't know why they stick around for some patients. I've talked to so many migraine people who've had stupid head injuries. When you start talking about having chronic migraines, you start finding out a lot of people have them, and it's always so stupid.

[01:41:36.820] - Jon Larson

I'll be talking to the nurse at the office while I'm waiting to go see the doctor, and she's like, Oh, yeah, I have chronic migraines. I'm on X and X meds. I was under a cabinet and hit my head on the cabinet, got a TBI just from a bonk in my head on a cabinet in the kitchen. And now I have chronic migraines for the rest of my life. I'm like, Oh, okay. And then tons of people like that. I'm like, I was oblivious. Once again, just like YouTube off-roading and wrenching, I was oblivious to migraines. And now that I have them, I go from never having a headache. So it makes things tough. I talk about it a lot because I don't shut up, and I tell everyone about it because I'm just like, I want people to... I feel like I don't want to be the disappointment just for being a disappointment. I want you to know that I have a legit reason if I'm going to stop for the next eight hours, we're out wheeling, I'm like, Dude, I got to go lay down in my Jeep because I'm going to throw up.

[01:42:29.880] - Jon Larson

It's like, I want people to be set up for that. So if we go wheeling together, we go camping, people aren't surprised if John's just out for the next two days. I don't want him to be like, Oh, you just mean a bitch. It's like, No, dude, this shit sucks. I just pushed through it. But I actually sometimes think the YouTube stuff helped me stay motivated and positive because it was so rewarding to make videos and edit videos. Adding music to a video and learning that I have to use copyright-free music, that blew my mind. I thought that was so cool. Now I do it like it's nothing, but basic graphic design. I've learned so much, and it's like learning something fresh and new all over again. And this actually brings me a full circle to what we were talking about before the call, which is, yeah, I... Like, math statistics is my nine to five, and it's my career, but it doesn't necessarily fulfill that itch that you get, the camping, the wheeling, the wrenching. That's always been for as long as I can remember, I've been doing that since a kid, and I got really hard core into it as a teen, as we're talking about.

[01:43:45.390] - Jon Larson

And it's like the YouTube thing got me thinking, maybe down the road, I could change career paths. I don't know what that looks like, but when I talk to people like you, and I see everything you're doing in the Before you joined the board, I'd heard your name. I didn't know all the stuff you did. I'd heard your name. I think I knew you lived near Georgetown or something. But I was like, I start looking at all the stuff you do, and you're telling me all the stuff you do. And I'm like, how are you doing all this and paying your bills And you're actually doing this. That seems like for someone like me who's like, Man, the YouTube thing, the off-road stuff is so fun. I've been wheeling all my life. I've been wrenching for the last 25, 30 years. I love it. It's a passion. It's not just like you have to do it to pay the bills. It's more like I genuinely enjoy it, and I've always enjoyed it. It doesn't ever seem to get old. I think that's when you know you love It's like, I could run the same trail probably every day, and probably never get sick of it.

[01:44:51.020] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Like you said, before we started recording this episode, we were just chatting, and You asked how I stepped into this, and I said it in other podcast episodes, but basically it's when I was 11 years old, my grandfather asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, well, I want to be I love the outdoors. I was in Boy Scouting and everything, and we did a lot of camping and backpacking with the family and fishing. No hunting, but we really enjoyed the outdoors, and I wanted to continue that. And I told him, I said, I want to be a forest ranger or fishing game or something like that. And he said, Well, that's really cool. But what you want to do in life is you want to figure out what it is you love to do and then figure out a way to make a living doing it. And when he said living, he explained it to me. He wasn't talking about how much money you make, but how you get to live your life. Yes. Well, from 11 to 42, I did a whole bunch of different stuff. And at 42, I figured out what I wanted to do.

[01:46:06.560] - Big Rich Klein

And I've been doing it ever since.

[01:46:09.740] - Jon Larson

It's funny because it's really that easy, and you got to take the jump. I think that's where I'm at, too, sometimes It's inspiring to see all the stuff you're doing and going like, well, he's actually doing all this, and it's all super fun stuff. You're running like, We Rock, and you got the podcast, you got the magazine. I didn't know you did that magazine. I'd subscribe to it once I figured, once I realized you were doing it. I was like, I just been under a rock in some ways. And it's like seeing this stuff. I'm like, you start thinking about, I just have a job to pay the bills. I do like my job for what it is as far as being a 9: 00 to 5: 00 best job. It's actually pretty rad, but it doesn't fulfill the itch. You know what I mean? Like the way... What if I was wheeling all day? I watch YouTubers where their job is off-roading, like they're camping. Their job is building rigs. Maybe they run an off-road shop and they have a YouTube. There's a lot of YouTubers out there that I follow now that I've gotten into over the past four years.

[01:47:15.670] - Jon Larson

Their trail guiding runs.

[01:47:17.360] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. All sorts of things. Yeah.

[01:47:19.240] - Jon Larson

Well, there's Rubicon Trail adventures. There's YouTubers, there's off-road shops, and it's like, I got a I got to figure out some transition someday. I don't know what it is. One of the things I thought of was like, well, maybe I can do analytics for like, Jeep Corporate, but I think that would be like one more degree closer, but probably still not the same You know what I mean?

[01:47:45.890] - Big Rich Klein

Because you're not going to be doing the statistics while you're on the trail.

[01:47:51.100] - Jon Larson

Yeah, I want to like, how do I get that? How do I figure that out? So I mean, listening to a lot of people on your podcast, too. I listen to the Phil McCarty one the other day, too, Shock Jesus. I don't know him personally, but I follow him on Facebook. Everybody knows him as shock Jesus. And that guy, he does his own thing, and he just does it. And it's like, he makes it happen. You know, and that's like, you never think about that because when you're growing up, you My parents tell you to become a dentist or a doctor or something. That's what they always told me when I was growing up, and I was like, Yeah, I'm not doing any of that. And then you get into the corporate world like I did, and it's cool for so many years. And I I remember a supervisor told me when I left my job at SMUD, and he was like, Basically, the gist of it was, Don't chase the money, do what you love. And at the time, I was like, Yeah, well, I need to take this job because it's going to set me up for the rest of my life, probably.

[01:48:47.610] - Jon Larson

I don't know. I went to a SAC state, and I'm thinking younger, I was in my 20s. I had a lot of flexibility at SMUD. I worked with UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UCLA on research projects. I was rapidly learning new stuff all the time in my position. And so I think, looking back, I don't necessarily get those. I don't get those opportunities in my current role, not necessarily learning rapidly, literally rapid pace of learning new stuff almost daily there. And that's because I was pushing myself to do it. In my current role, it's hard to do that because we have so much work we have to do every single week, day, month, year, quarter. I get to learn new stuff in evenings and weekends. I still take courses online for fun, applied statistics stuff. For fun. But there are certain areas that I do want to learn more about, and I do enjoy learning about. But I'm like, how crazy would it be to somehow figure out whether it's running an off-road shop or somehow... Learning of all the niche—I don't know how to say that word niche—stuff that people do to make a living off-roading is really cool.

[01:50:02.010] - Jon Larson

There's so many people that I follow on Facebook, Instagram. You're like, That's pretty rad. And it took me... I'll be 42 this year, which is funny that you said 42. I think it took me the past 20 something years to realize what I even wanted to do. You do what you have to do, right? To pay the bills.

[01:50:23.140] - Big Rich Klein

I think 42 is one of those time frames that you have a where it's like, okay, it's time to do something, and now I got to figure it out. It was with me.

[01:50:39.840] - Jon Larson

Well, after the head injury, I mean, I thought my My whole identity is offroading, wheeling, wrenching. I'm on the Naxta board. All my friends are on Naxtra. My whole identity is wheeling and off-roading with these people. And that's who I am as a person. And this head injury literally might have taken that all away from me. And then what is my identity going forward? It was like, that was crazy. So now I'm like... And they were like, yeah, you could die. You could have a brain aneurysm or a blood clot and die. There's all these things when they're doing all the testing on me. And I'm like, I thought about that. And so now I'm like, okay, that was eye-opening. Now that I'm on the flip side and healing from it, still healing from I think, maybe forever. I don't know. But I'm like, yeah, we might not have that much time, and maybe I should be thinking about... I was so focused on killing it at the corporate job for so many years, and that was a focus. And off-roading was a hobby, a very passionate hobby. And now I'm like, I wonder if I could apply, if I could somehow shift over the next 5 to 10 years or maybe sooner.

[01:51:55.450] - Jon Larson

I don't know how I would do that. I just don't understand what that looks like for me because I don't I do fabrication. I work on cars. I get people texting me all day, all night for XJ advice, Jeep advice, like friends. People hit me up and they're like, What do I do with this? Because I am like an XJ, it's like the pedia. It's because of the OCD East Side of me. I just love XJs, and that's just... I'm addicted to them. I'm like, I don't think there's any money there, but it's just interesting to think about it. Just even thinking about it is a change in the mindset, right? Because you get the blinders on, and your goal is to get a raise at work this year or whatever, or finish this project and maybe you get a bonus, or something like that. I wasn't really thinking about how... So I think the YouTube thing opened my eyes because I started realizing pretty quickly, YouTubers make money, and some of them actually live their life between YouTube and other things. I'm like, I didn't know that was possible. You talked I talk about Rogan.

[01:53:00.530] - Jon Larson

I listen to Rogan all the time. Obviously, that guy's making a killing just doing podcasts.

[01:53:06.150] - Big Rich Klein

And you're like- Not including everything else he does.

[01:53:08.690] - Jon Larson

Yeah, not even including. Yeah, exactly. I mean, just the Spotify deal alone, but he's already doing stand up and all. It's such It's a interesting dude. And I think Rogan got... My wife got me into Rogan. My wife got me into off-road YouTube channels. And it's because I'm clueless and I like to go in the garage, drink beer, and go wheeling, I never pay attention to any of that shit. And then she would be listening to it or watching it or something. And I'm like, oh, that's fascinating. And then I'm like, oh, now I love podcasts. And now I listen to podcasts every day for the past five years after never listening to one in my life. I've actually been listening to your podcast a lot lately. Me, which has been really cool. I like that you listen to people. As you can tell, the way I talk so much, I don't do a good job of listening. And I've learned from podcasters For the podcast I like the most, it really is the interviewer is listening to what they're actually saying, if that makes any sense.

[01:54:10.010] - Big Rich Klein

I don't know if that's- It is. As somebody that does an interview podcast, sometimes I need to pull things out of people, and then other times it's just lead them down the path. Yeah.

[01:54:28.070] - Jon Larson

Listening to your podcast, you You are a good listener because you don't. I talk over people. I get excited, and I also forget what I'm about to say all the time. So if I don't blurt it out, I forget it. It's always been like that. And so I have trouble being a good listener. And it's funny, but if you think about it, shutting the fuck up and listening, just shut the fuck up, is actually a skillset. And it's a way to get information and really understand what's happening instead of just learning out something, which is what I've always done. And it's like, I don't I have control over it, basically. For me, learning to listen would be a skill. So it's cool listening to your podcast, where some of the ones I listen to, you're listening the whole time. And I think that's cool because what you're doing is you're letting people tell their story, and you're cataloging all these cool off-roaders. Once again, I come back to the beginning when I'm like, MacGyver said, I don't feel like I'm one of them, but I tell you what, I'm thankful as hell that you let me come on here and just talk and tell my story, because I haven't even thought about my own story until I said, Hey, I want to go on your podcast, and you were asking me some questions.

[01:55:36.410] - Jon Larson

And I was like, I haven't even really thought about this personally ever as far as the journey and off-roading and how the hell did I go from A to B to end up on the board of the RTS, and what got me there over the years.

[01:55:50.000] - Big Rich Klein

And sometimes that introspective process to get ready for an interview or doing an interview, then opens up that idea of, okay, what's my next step? What do I really want to do, and how do I focus on off-road? That's one of the things of this podcast, is that I want people, enthusiasts, people that enjoy being off road, and wheeling, and working on cars, or whatever their thing is, is that they realize that there is an avenue to make this more than just a hobby, but a lifestyle. And there's all sorts of different ways to do that. All sorts of streams to walk down, you might say. And some of them we don't even know about yet, because somebody always comes up with something new. And it's just, with me, it was being at an off-road, a rock crawl, watching it happen and going, oh, hell, I could do this, and I think I could do it better. See, that's cool. And so that's what I do.

[01:57:09.850] - Jon Larson

But you had the balls to do it. I think that jump of, I have an income right now. I have bills to pay. And then the future is literally so... I can't forecast what the hell I'm going to be making in the near-to-me.

[01:57:25.940] - Big Rich Klein

Well, see, that's the statistical side of you. I don't have that. I never have. It's never been about... Oh, yeah, I have periods of panic, where it's like, okay, how am I going to pay this bill? And then there's other times where I go, oh, I got to pay this bill. Fuck it. And I just throw the bill where I can't see it. Yeah. And then just move forward. And then when it happens, it happens. But it's hard to explain. For me, it was just one of those things that I get bored. And if I'm not doing something that I really like, I'll just drop it. And that's what happened with all the different careers that I started. It's like, oh, this will be really cool to do. And then I realized, no, it's not. And so I move on to something else, and never know what that next thing is going to be until I start doing it. And it's probably a It's probably a handicap. My parents always wanted me to have that nice solid career, and a pension, and all that. And then, I was on my way to that. And then I realized that some of those companies didn't give a shit about me.

[01:58:46.660] - Big Rich Klein

They just wanted to know how much money I was going to make them. And, so I walked. Now I have a partner, Shelle, who who takes... She's the analytical one. She's the one that makes sure that whatever we're doing, that as we monetize, that we save some of that, and that I can do the things that I do now, being at 67 and semi-retired, that I can keep doing them.

[01:59:23.230] - Jon Larson

So, that's handy. Well, you start thinking about it like, you get, at least for me, it The blinders have been on, the fear of not having a job. My parents were always super broke. My parents were borrowing money from me when I was in college. I wasn't borrowing money from them. I had a very different... I I have friends who parents paid for their college. And I was like, I'm paying for my college, and my parents borrow money for my savings all the time. I always have to have a good paying job. I need to... So I always had that level of stress where I'm like, I just always need to make more money. And I spend lots of money on G parts and tools, which is really stupid. But I think some of the epiphanies I've had in the past couple of years, especially after the head injury, where I thought maybe everything I love is over and I'm just going to be this dude that lays around headaches all day. I was like, you could work a job and retire, and then you maybe work a job that doesn't give you the fulfillment in life, but it does set you up for...

[02:00:27.180] - Jon Larson

You can retire at 65, But you just spent 20 or 30 years doing something you didn't like so you could spend 10 years maybe doing something you like. What if you just do something you like now? I've never felt like I had that parachute or cushion, but maybe no one ever does. And it's just people take chances. I took a lot of chances going back to grad school. I thought the restaurant jobs were good money at the time. I actually took a pay cut to the internship when I quit the restaurants. I got fired from the restaurants every time. So I was like, maybe there never is that perfectly safe landing pad. You just take chances all the time. I've taken some chances with some career choices that I thought I wouldn't last for a long or whatever it is. And it's like, I'm still here. Okay. So maybe it's less you got to take that risk, but you got to go all in if you're going to do that. I think that's what it is. You can't half-ask that shit. That's what I'm thinking is like, I think when you're doing 50/50, and you're Well, I'll work a job, but then I'll try to do this on the side.

[02:01:34.000] - Jon Larson

I don't know. And some people do that. They eventually cross over. I've seen even some YouTubers that I've followed. There's at least one or two of them where they had nine to five jobs, and now they're full jobs, like YouTube shit. But they are expanding.

[02:01:47.580] - Big Rich Klein

But they're just like those companies, that get to a certain point in their growth, where they say, All right, I'm in a 10,000 square foot building, but I need 50, to make it to the next step. So it's that big step. You got to go, you're pushing all in. And that's what happens with with like those YouTubers you're talking about, or like myself, and others that just go, you know what? I don't care about how much I make. I just want to do it because I love doing it. And you just make that step. And it's hard to do because that safety net is always that, well, I got a steady income. And I don't know, I can't tell other people how to do it because I was one of those that never cared about. I mean, I was a commercial photographer before I got married, and I didn't care if I made $6,000 one month and didn't make anything for the next two. Oh, wow. That was early '80s, and it was like, I could do that single. But as soon as I got married, it was like, oh, hell, I got to make a set amount every month for security.

[02:03:13.810] - Big Rich Klein

And then that became old. And then I jumped onto the next thing. I became a contractor, a landscape contractor. And then I stepped onto the next thing. And I just kept changing because I was bored, but I felt I needed the security. Until I finally said, fuck it, I don't need the security. I'm just going to go do this. And whatever happens, happens. And Go all in, roll the dice, and you figure out how to make it work. Or you go back to nine to five.

[02:03:54.110] - Jon Larson

Yeah, I guess that's the worst case. Sure, that's a good point. Worst case is to go back and do the workout. It's definitely cool as hell to be listening to your podcast and other... I didn't even know it existed until you joined the board, and I only started listening to it recently, and I love it. And I feel like there's a lot of these people you see on social media or you see racing or you see on YouTube or whatever. But when you interview them, when you talk about where were you born, growing up, you never get to hear that side. And you really feel like you know the people better. I heard some pretty cool stuff on a bunch of these podcasts lately that I just never knew about some guys that I even know. I'm like, oh, crap.

[02:04:36.030] - Big Rich Klein

Well, and that's the whole idea. To make that step, you have to realize that other people have done it. And some people have stepped halfway, some people have stepped all the way.

[02:04:49.500] - Jon Larson

Yeah.

[02:04:50.420] - Big Rich Klein

And it's a choice. But it's one that if you go to do it, just know that you can always step back over. But if you really, really want something, you just got to go for it.

[02:05:12.470] - Jon Larson

Yeah, that's what I I think there's going to be a point where I got to start telling... It's like back when I was graduated, undergrad, didn't know what the hell I was going to do with my life. I was not drinking at bars every night. And I just remember thinking, I could end up like all these people, jaded and pissed off and living not even month to month, but day to day on tips because they're so bad with their money and they're blowing it on drinking every night. Or I could still do all those stupid things. Maybe go back to school, maybe get a job. But then now I think I'm transitioning to, well, I've had the job. I could keep doing this job until I die and retire early and maybe have some good years before I die of something terrible like everyone does. Or I could maybe try to change it in the near future and do something like do something I truly enjoy now every day of my life instead of clocking in and crunching numbers. So that's, I don't know. It's fun. I'm glad we had this talk because I think it's something that I think was in my subconscious for the the last two years, and I thought about it more and more and more after the head injury.

[02:06:18.070] - Jon Larson

But I think now I'm like, maybe I really should take this more seriously instead of just thinking about it. Maybe I should do something about it.

[02:06:26.900] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's the choice. That's a tough choice to make, walking away from that security. But like myself, when I did it, I really hated myself. I mean, I was not a nice person. Some people will tell you I'm still not a nice person, or at least up until I met Shelle, Shelle made me a much nicer person. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with my past. I'm okay with how I was. But I'm really, really happy with where I'm at now. And that's all because of off-road. So we'll talk some more about all the rest of the stuff. But, John, I want to say thank you for joining me on the podcast and talking about your life.

[02:07:20.910] - Jon Larson

Yeah, dude. I appreciate it, man. That was awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I'll be looking forward to listening to it when it comes out and listen to how I sound and how crazy I probably sound on so much coffee today.

[02:07:32.530] - Big Rich Klein

No worries. No worries. But it's been a great two hours that we've done. Yeah. Thank you. It went by fast. We'll talk some more. And anytime you want to call, You got my number. Just call me.

[02:07:48.160] - Jon Larson

Okay. Sounds good. I'll do that, actually. All right.

[02:07:50.680] - Big Rich Klein

All right. You take care, and I'll talk to you later. All right. Later. Okay. 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.