2nd Annual Official Tree Cutting Exploration-Expedition Adventure, Extraordinaire (Weekend Edition), Part 3.

December 7, 2010 10:16 pm Sir Haxington Seattle

Let me take a moment to give proper thanks to Pit Boss for his elite driving skills.

Let me also take a moment to give a shout out to the designers of the The Element for making a truly awesome piece of machinery.

You see, this is all you need. You’re looking at it. You want a tree up in the mountains? Well here you go. Slap some chains on and press the gas. Lightly. Bring a saw.

Pit Boss muttered to himself a lot. We go way back. And we’re used to this whole 4×4 thing. Lots of people assume you need a truck or an SUV. At certain elevations, all you see before you are lifted trucks and the occasional jeep. Most people are too scared to put their shiny new Mercedes to the test. There’s always the odd Subaru that somehow made it up this far.

Pit Boss was having what I call ‘clearance envy.’ All those tall trucks are pretty cool looking, no doubt. They are lifted much higher off the ground and have large tires, which gives them more ground clearance, and subsequently allows them to traverse deeper, ruttier terrain.

Awesome for them, bad for us. Because they dig giant ruts, our situation becomes statistically worse. We now have a high chance of becoming ‘high centered’ which means the bottom of the car is now touching the ground and the tires are no longer involved in scientific phenomenons, like friction. Gravity is a harsh mistress and she demands to be obeyed.

I mean, look at that ground clearance. What’s that, six inches? There’s dudes up here with a few feet of clearance! And that’s just the normal road we’re sitting on there. Seriously, we could be fucked in multiple ways.

But guess what ladies, it not about size, now is it? Nope, it’s all about how you use it. Luckily, we are comfortable with our snoxuality. We’re in touch with our colder side.

And come on, The Element looks bad-ass, you can’t deny it.

So here’s what I want you to do. Turn off your music. Now play the video below at high volume.

Hear that? That scraping sound? That’s the sound of The Element driving in deep ruts without enough clearance. That’s pure ice and snow scraping along the bottom of The Element. For miles. That’s also the sound of victory, and don’t forget it.

…

Part 4 proves that I keep my promises.