Winter Romp 2003 - January 2003 - Photos from www.authorizedvehicle4x4.com, story by Peter Vollers

Just back from the winter romp in Unity, Maine. My third romp and most definitely the best to date.

Started the weekend by picking up PKVjr from kindergarten after lunch on Valentines Day and heading out to York, ME, to meet up with Jesse Ware and his monster 110 and take advantage of his well-appointed heated garage workshop. We got to Jesse's shortly after 3:00 p.m. and changed out my Oasis compressor motor in record time (old one quit, Oasis sent a new one in two days, all under warranty, excellent company), then changed my spark plug wires, tightened up my alternator belt and hit the road for Unity.

Driving out of Jesse's neighborhood, my motor was sputtering and misfiring and we instantly knew we got something wrong on the wires. We must've gone a bit too fast on them because, after stopping at the local Mobil station and calling Chris Komar from DAP on the cell (who, amazingly, had the wiring configuration committed to memory!), we learned that we mixed up the wires for cylinders two and four. With that little conundrum quickly rectified, we headed for Unity.

've always camped at the winter romp, the first year in a two room cabin behind Bruce Fowler's house with a half dozen other BSROA members, and last year in the Stumble Inn, my early 60's Scotty camper. But this year, Jesse convinced me that, with the cold temperatures, a nice, cheap hotel room was the way to go. Thank God we made that decision. Turned out that we had almost 25 below temperatures both nights.

We arrived at the Best Western in Waterville at about 8:30 and called homeboy John Warme at his brother's house across town as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. We then were met by Mike Butterfield and his wife of New Brunswick, Ontario in their IIA 109 hardtop and decided that we would be too late to make the Unity Valentine's Day Dance (that evening's scheduled entertainment) so we headed over to the local Appleby's with Warme, his brother and friend and the Butterfields.

After dinner, Jesse, Peter Jr. and I decided to hop over to Unity to see how the nightrun was going. We looked around at the usual trailheads and found no tire tracks and then stopped by at Bruce Fowler's. Bruce was hanging with John Cranfield and some other usual romp castmembers at his farmhouse and told us that everyone had bailed on the nightrun due to the sub 20 below temperatures. A wise move, we agreed.

After spending a luxurious night at the dog friendly (yes, Gretel, my 7-pound dachshund, made the trip as well) Best Western, we got up, started the trucks to let them warm up, bought some "monkeydung" claylike material from Home Depot to plug up some draft holes in Jesse's firewall and headed over to Big Gs for breakfast. Saw Ed Bear and a bunch of folks we haven't seen for awhile at Big Gs, ate some enormous omelettes, filled our thermos with java and raged in pack formation over to Bruce's to prep for the day's adventure.

We arrived at Bruce's house to find another BSROA homeboy, Jason Wachtel, in his newly acquired SIII 109 truckcab being pulled down Bruce's driveway by a friend in a classic RR only to be thrown sideways into a snowbank. Jason, incredibly, had braved the phenomenal cold the night before and camped in a tent on Bruce's property and his truck was frozen solid. After I winched him out of the snowbank, we decided to tow him to Bruce's under-construction workshop attached to his house to fire up the Salamander jet heater under the truck and throw a tarp over it. Even that didn't work, so I towed Jason behind my RR out onto the main road, got the 109 up to about 20 mph, Jason popped the clutch hard and the truck finally sprang to life, all followed by cheers on the CB from everyone watching back at Bruce's.

From here, Bruce lead us out to the Dickey Road and then to the old powerline trail. It always amazes me how much winter wheeling can be affected by cold and snow conditions. In two years of romps, we've never been able to make much more than 100 feet into the power line trail before getting hopelessly stuck in the boggy quagmires lying beneath the snow on the trail. This time, however, Bob Vail and his daughter, Halley, drove right through in their SIII 109 SW and arrived at the base of the steep, open climb in minutes. However, their luck quickly turned when Bob, bravely attempting the climb, lunched one of his Salisbury axles at the drive flange (not an easy thing to do, mind you, braking a Salisbury axle) and was quickly sidelined.

After this, a lot of the other Series trucks thought it better to head back out and proceed further down the Dickie Road and Jesse, John Warme, myself and a new buddy, RJ in his beautiful Jeep XJ tried our luck on the hill. Jesse, with event co-organizer Jeff Berg and Atlantic British's Eric Riston hitching a ride as passengers, climbed first. With his 37" swampers, dual Co2 tank driven lockers and a goodly amount of vitamin right-foot, Jesse topped the hill with relative ease. I went next and was entertained by, I think it was Jason back on the Dickey road on CB, spewing Caddyshack quotes as I approached the climb. Things like, "Be the ball, Peter" and "Take drugs, Peter?...Every day....So what's the problem". A little unnerving to say the least. I had aired my swampers down to an almost flat 6 lbs in the front and 8 lbs in the rear and with my Detroit locked rear and tru-tracked front end, had a smooth run up the hill. RJ also romped right up the thing in his open-diffed XJ showing us what "a jeep thing" is all about.

Then it was the moment of truth, Warme and his brandnewly-acquired, fantastically huge 35x14.5 boggers making his truck look just like one of those Iceland rovers. It appeared that John had the sneaks, but, with that kind of meat, you also need a lot lower gearing than his stock 3.54 diffs or, no change that, AND, a #$%*load of power. Well, the 3.5 in Johnny's RR is of the "lastlegs" variety and his gears are as the Solihull gods intented them to be, but after a few failed attempts, Warme dumped it in low first, kept the revs as high as possible and cleaned the hill in one shot.

After we crested the hill, we chased down the others on the Dickie Road and arrived at an astonishing sight, especially for a Vermont resident like myself. When we found the rest of the bunch, they were parked at a group of camp cabins in the woods occupied by a snowmobiling club. To my eyes' wonderment, I witnessed something I had never seen before: snowmobilers and 4x4 enthusiast socializing! Not only socializing, but actually hanging out, having a good time. I've become so gun-shy from meeting up with furious snowmobilers while winter wheeling that I approached the scene with no small amount of trepidation. I didn't let my guard down until I saw a very attractive blond woman emerge from one of the cabins and put a cold Budweiser longneck in Warme's hand (what is it about Warme and blonds anyway?). So, here we are, in the middle of the woods, it's a beautiful sunshiny day and we're shootin' the bull with a bunch of friendly snowmobilers. I'm still not sure I didn't dream it.

Anyway, from here John Cranfield headed down to the infamous river crossing with Jason, the Butterfields and some other brave Canadians while the rest of us, having visions of seeing 2:00 in the morning and that river crossing both at the same time like two years ago, decamped to Bruce's. To keep things interesting, especially for Jeff Berg and Eric Riston, I drove Jesse's 110 and he drove my RR (with Gretel on his lap, of course) back out of the trail. Jeff and Eric were a little leary, especially when I couldn't figure out how to turn on the headlights on Jesse's dash, which dash bares a close resemblance to that of a Boeing 737. After we clicked on and off the airlockers and just about everything else in truck, we found the lights, the foglights, the rear worklamp and the interior hella reading lamp and proceeded out of the woods Christmas-tree style and back to Bruces. We weren't there long before the river crossing party returned, almost disappointed that the river had frozen so solid that they almost missed it when they drover over it!

Sunday morning arrived again bright and sunny but also deeply cold. We had another belly-stuffing breakfast at Big Gs and headed over to Bruce's for Sunday's wheeling. While waiting in Bruce's cleared rear field, we got a little antsy and started playing with our trucks on the snowbanks. Warme and RJ pulled some cool angled poses in their trucks and Jesse, never to be outdone, just puched it right over a snowbank into the unplowed field on the other side. That's when Halley Vail had to get involved. With their 109 busted, she asked her dad if she could tackle the snowbank with their now chained '97 RR. After Bob explained that he prefered not to have divorce papers filed on Tuesday, she turned to Warme. Johnny resisted the brown-eyed 18-year-old for all of about, oh, a third of a second and said, "Sure, you can take my truck," and it wasn't long before Halley was airborne on the snowbank with John's rackmounted spare also airborne about 2 feet above his truck. Luckily, Halley landed smoothly and so did the spare, all to the cheering delight and, if I'm correct, a few marriage proposals, from the peanut gallery watching this amazing stunt.

After a day's great wheeling winding our way through the maze of trails we had attempted the day before, but now under Bruce's able guidance, and an afternoon lunch in the sunshine at a cabin clearing, we decided to call it a weekend and head home. Oh, but not without one more challenge. While driving home, Bruce and John Cranfield were hearing some creaky creakies down in their front ends and decided to take the easier way out over the Bessie Road which parallels the Dickie road, crossing over the power line trail which bisects both roads and ends back at the main road. I decided to go with them to keep them company and help out if anything happened en route. When we arrived at the power line trail, which is not far from the main road, I bid Bruce and John farewell and called Jesse, who was leading the main group, on the CB. From my vantage point on the Bessie Road, I could just see Bob's RR parked at the top of the hillclimb near the Dickie road and wondered if anyone in previous romps had ever made it from the Bessie Road along the power line, down into a serious gullied ravine and back up the other side of the hillclimb and then down to the Dickie Road. I knew the other group would be coming back up with Bob to pick up his RR (wisely parked to avoid the inevitable branch scratchage that day in the tight woods), so I asked Jesse on the CB whether they'd wait for me up there and come get me if I got stuck bad.

Jesse, of course, replied that he'd leave me there to rot like buffalo carcass and I punched it to the floor in delighted anticipation of the last challenge of the weekend. Driving half on one set of snowmobile tracks and half in virgin powder, my single digit pressured tires adhered amazingly well and, having had my tranny mounts fixed (been broken for quite some time) the week before, my tru-track locker in the front was working the charm up front. I made it through in no time flat and asked Bruce if it had ever been done before. Bruce explained that there's an impassable bog in the ravine that was frozen solid and that it'd never been traversed until now. Completely enraptured by this news, I proceed to tell all the others of my feat. Well, at least Peter Jr. and Gretel seemed to care.

After group pics in front of the trucks at the hilltop, we piled back to Bruce's, said our goodbyes, thanked Bruce and convoyed out of town. Thanks to Bruce Fowler and Jeff Berg for hosting and organizing this event. Great event, great trucks, great people.

- Peter Vollers