Tellico! April 2002 | Page 6 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

Tellico! April 2002

Some of you just DON'T GET IT

I am going to say this one more time for those who can't seem to get it. I never said anyone cannot go. As a matter of fact I went out of my way to consider those of you who have proven by your attitudes and consistently improper behavior that you are not mature enough to participate. But if you are under 18, because of liability reasons, if you are in our group, we have to require you to bring a parent. Tellico also has its own rules for minors that are posted on the property that require an adult with any minor attending.

I have no control over anything anyone else does and would never put myself in a position to run anyone else's life. So I don't care if you're sixteen or twelve years old; you come right on out by yourself and break Tellico's rules all you want and break the hell out of your vehicle and get seriously stuck and/or slide off of one of the trails and join the several people that got killed there last year.

But you are not going to do it in my group. Period.

FordMan39 will be happy to oblige since he evidently has no problem speaking for me. And I am sure that FordMan will be happy to take full financial and legal responsibility for anything that happens to all the unsupervised minors without parental approval on a trip that crosses state lines.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year or try it out for $5 a month.

Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





Chin music

Gerald,

Its been my experience that most of the "young guns" just give a lot of chin music and won't show anyway.

Marshmallow, just stirring the pot :D

SEE YA!!!
 






im not looking for an argument here b/c i can see where you are coming from gerald, i mean Americans in general have gone sue happy over the past few years, but i feel that there is also a way that minors such as myself could still be able to wheel. A waiver signed by parents would be a perfectly legal thing taking all blame off of you and the other members of the group, im not into law so im not 100% on this, but i know i've had to sign them and so have my parents. just outta curiousity, i thought tellico was 16 and over???
Peace
Chris
 






Chris, that's a good post, you are probably mostly right. But there are a few reasons I have to be hardnosed about this.

1) It is more than just the fact that I could be bankrupted if something happened. The consequences of mistakes change enormously once you turn 18. And I am over 18. Beyond ruining me financially for the rest of my life, depending on what might happen, I could be held criminally liable too: as in federal prison time.

2) The waiver form may be a viable alternative. However there are a few reasons why I am not willing to go that route with some of your friends:
a) I am not going to pay my attorney his $150 per hour fee to draw up a legally binding waiver that will hold up in court. None of you have volunteered to do that for me yet either.
b) There are consequences to actions. That's Life. Because of previous actions by a few, I simply cannot afford to trust them yet. So;
c) Since I have met none of the parents of any of you, I have no way of knowing that it was the parents that signed the waivers. That is very different from waivers being signed for a church, school, or scouting trip. Your youth minister, teacher, or scoutmaster has met your parents and know the waiver form is legitimate. I don't have a clue.
d) The way the world is now, I have no assurance that even if your parents did sign it, that they wouldn't go ahead and sue me anyway. Even if I won it would cost thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight it.

3) It is quite revealing to me that ever since I made it clear that you guys really are welcome to come and that you only need to bring a parent, that none of you has acknowledged that. Instead you continue to avoid that issue and insist on twisting the facts by telling others that I "won't let you come". I am not stupid. I suspect there are reasons why none of you are willing to bring a parent. This is the perfect opportunity to bring along a parent to let them see how great this hobby is and get them to support you the next time you ask to go on a fourwheeling trip, and you guys are going out of your way to avoid getting them involved.

I am aware that you've found a decent rockcrawling area around here which sounds like a lot of fun, and I have been sent notices of other events by Eric that I wanted to attend (but couldn't on that weekend). I'll be happy to join you guys the next time one of those other groups or clubs has an event. But because I am an adult I cannot have you join me until after I have met your parents and you show some willingness to be mature enough about it to take responsibility for your actions by being willing to participate without selfishly ignoring the facts of life in today's world and insisting on subjecting me and other people over 18 to severe liabilities and consequences.

This is the Last post I will make on this subject and I will ignore all further posts addressing the issue. If some of you really still don't get it, then you are proving that you still have a long way to go and you are confirming the need for me to have to do this the correct legal and proper way to protect myself.

In a few years maybe you will finally understand. Then again, maybe you won't.
 






Originally posted by BoatsRcool
i'd go.. but ah gerald won't let me lol... not that mine could make it up there anyway... i'd would probably break down.
but seriously.. next time there is a run gerald.. its not like your gonna ask me for id to see how old i REALLY am. haha
Aw come on guys. Personally, If I was under 18 I would love to have my dad ride along with me on a trail ride. Most dads know how to fix stuff(including breakage on the trail) and can use tools alot better than we can :hammer: . It would also be a great thing to get your parents involved and show them how capable your truck is and that's It's not just "all show and no go". Unfortunately, mine is "too busy".
 






hahaha... they just need to chill guys all of you. i was just kidding anyway, im going to prom next weekend I couldn't go anyway. I wouldn't mind bringing my dad.. he went with me up to a place in hendersonville he really likes it... gerald... why dont you join us one weekend at this place we found out in greer.. I'd say its about 10-15 minutes from woodruff road, up toward spartenburg. its RIGHT near the BMW plant.
 






Sounds great to me Jonathon. I fgured you were only playing around to stir the pot a little, because I knew you were paying pretty close attention to all of those "plan on damage if you are coming" posts and weren't really planning on coming. But FordMan kinda struck a nerve when he decided to butt in on our posts and speak for me.
 






Sorry for butting in, I didn't think it would have had this affect.
 






oh gerald, we are going back to that Rich mtn. place (its legal) with that atlanta group on april 27th if you want to go and bring whoever... they invite any type of car. eric (the 4runner guy) told me to ask you, since he was banned he said.
anyways, if you want to email him or me about it he is:
eclayton08@aol.com

and I am:
jgstewart8@aol.com
or
boatsrcooi@aol.com
 






Well, you've both been banned, but we are still researching your other logins, so I am currently confused, lol. :D

As long as those trails are legal....
Hey I'm still new here in SC. I don't know what Rich Mtn is, but I'll be happy to contribute and help. Plus it's a couple of days before my birthday so I will be even more of an oldfart. :D
 






its a legal place in georgia.. its where eric went a few weeks ago.. and hey! rick knows who I am now, and you know i've been banned.. im not getting banned again am i!?!?
 






gerald- the place me and eric went in georgia is Amicalola Falls State Park, the group we went with had pretty much stock-mildly modified rigs so the trails we went on were really tame, now as for Rich Mtn, its even further north. It took around 3 hours to get to Amicalola Falls which is just North of Gainsville in Dawson, GA. I THINK that Rich. Mtn. is about an hour from Amicalola, and from Rich. Mtn is about an hour to an hour and a half or so to Murphy, NC. Rich Mtn. has rocks and mud. You can go to www.atlantaorv.com for info on this and other trips. Peace --Chris
 






well crap... i'm in the basement tonight making sure i have all my stuff needed for tellico (i was going to come friday night too) when the grandparents-in-law call and tell us they are going to be visiting us this weekend! we are on their "RV across the US" route.
i normally like to see family, but damnit this time it chaps my ass! i've been planning and waiting for this trip for a long time, even bought some new stuff for it. and i was looking forward to finally meeting some fellow members of the site. oh well, i guess there will be another chance.
well guys.. hope yall have a great time. now at least you don't have to go on anything too easy just for me. unless they change their mind, i'm stuck here for the weekend, but i plan on keeping all my stuff ready just in case.
 






Dropping like flies

....and then there were two.

Gerald, it looks like we will have to uphold the good name of Ford at Tellico.

I just looked at the list of folks coming from the CNC group and the list is up to 5 vehicles, mostly Jeeps and at least 1 Toy Runner.

Call me tomorrow on my cell and I'll give you the cabin number.
 






hey.. i'm not packing it all up yet. i've got your cell number from above just in case. i would just slow you guys down anyway. maybe they will decide to stop somewhere else on the way in. that's what i'm hoping for. and i thought there more than us 3 anyway!
 






Call if you can make it. We are staying at Pine Creek Cabins outside of Murphy.
 






from the post i just read on the jeeper forum... unless your bigger than 35 and locked.. dont do #2!!! man they sure as hell flame each other a lot on that site.. later
 






ok.. don't count me in for good now. they just called today and left a message that they would be in friday night.. not saturday morning. wonderful.
 






Hey guys. To all that are going this weekend. I hope ya'll have a blast. I wish I were able to go. I have been wanting to go for a while now. Have fun and don't break anything.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year or try it out for $5 a month.

Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





Holy Mother of God

:eek:
I don't know what to post.... I'll have to think on it a day or three. Rick "Bionic Marshmellow" Morris and I were the only Explorer/Navajos that showed up for the run with CNC4x4 club. Rest assured, we held up the baton for the Ford/Mazda emblem quite well during the outing.

I cranked out my experience another notch and went FAR beyond ANYTHING I would ever have believed my Explorer could do. I followed CNC4x4 (central North Carolina 4x4) BigDawgs up trail 12 at Tellico. That's SchoolBus, guys: the famous trail out here that makes the magazine photo ops where Helicopter Pad and Guardrail are. "Bionc Marsh" has a 250 lb front bumper/winch assembly and you can tell by looking that it's a pretty tough rig but as you know mine still looks mostly stock so I got a lot of funny looks trying to keep up at first.

I admit; I'm speechless along with all of the rest of them. I conquered yet another trail that scared the everloving !!!****!!! out of me. If I had known what I was getting into when we bailed off of trail 3 up onto Schoolbus, no amount of money would have coerced me there. But it was one of those trails that once you get there, it is too late. Gotta go for it because there is no turning back. With a small capable group, we still didn't get back to town from that trail until nearly 9pm. Every one in our group suffered damage of one sort or another - some got major damage - before we got off that trail.

Body panels, doors, and paint jobs creamed; TerraFlex J**p solid trackbars snapped in two, grenaded birfield, Toyota tierods snapped in half, etc. We met the guy that built the original Scorpion. He bailed out at the top and muscled through the Gap down trail 11 by exiting via sheetmetal sacrifice on his gorgeous highly-custom early Bronco. You get the idea. This was one of the more brutal runs I've ever been on. By far, I was the most incapable vehicle. We had a good mix of a fullsize Blazer on 40" tires, Rick Morris's Bionc Marsh, a Toyota 4Runner locked front and rear, heavily built Jeeps, etc; and then Herc. Hell Yeah I was in way over my head but I survived and I am here to tell the tale.

Rick's Bionc Marsh took on several more hits on the run and his door panels on both sides now match :p Time for some doorskin popping and then a few coats of Herculiner to hide the rest of the damage :D

We did get to have some fun at Fain's Ford and put on a very impressive show in front of about two dozen college-age Jeepers at an obstacle in Tellico where everyone sips suds and hangs out in summer attire while watching the fun roll by. We walked right through it. :D The dumbstruck look on the audience's faces was priceless. "Geez, they make it look easy" "What is that? Is it a Jeep?" etc, lol. The fullsize Blazer in our group had to one-up my climb up the Wall by doing it in reverse, lol.

Suffice it to say that east coast fourwheelers look at Explorers differently now. My handle out here is made. "Sleeper".

That's all I need is a third nickname :rolleyes:

"Schoolbus" was so tough that once we turned up the hill to run it, no one at all thought to play with cameras. The fun started immediately at "QuarterPanel Tree" and got worse uphill from there. We were too busy being out of our vehicles spotting and helping. So there are no photo shoots of any of us going up it, though later we thought about it on the way down and got a few. But pics leaning down don't impress like those climbing up. Rick "Bionc Marsh" got a couple of good ones on his camera but all in all, for an entire day we came up pretty lame producing photos.

I have to tell you guys, Bionc Marsh is a fine rig. Rick M. has built it just right and it was a pleasure witnessing it work. Good driving, Rick.

Needs a little Herculiner after this weekend though. :D

Gerald
 






Back
Top