A Guy A Girl and a Trail: Adventures in a 4Runner Limited

Next up was working on a plan for what to do with the tent for winter. I needed a convenient way to store it and I wanted to be able to park in the garage for winter.
Here's what I came with: a simple lift platform, steel cables wound around a bar used to raise or lower it with a gear reduction box I can spin with a drill. I built a 6'x6' platform, loaded it up with a bunch of random crap and let it sit overnight to verify it would hold. Spin the thing up and still have over 9 feet of clearance under it. I put a few heavy duty anchor points and put a couple ratchet straps for redundancy, just a little extra safety.

Testing it under load




Lock snaps in so it cant move




Final result

 

My little man helping knock out some maintenance.


He wanted a ladder to see what was going on up top.

 

Nice..! gotta start em young.

 

Love all the pics you're posting! Fun stuff to see for those of us that don't get out and about as much (we're getting old)! Thanks!

 

I’m starting to feel like I’m getting old (I’ll be 35 a week from today.) The key to my adventures is my work schedule. I’m off about 14 weeks throughout the year. My job is 100% travel so I rotate between being gone and have time off at home.

 

Speaking of getting the little guy involved...
https://youtu.be/Cd9WzxfC4Sk

 

Out with the old yellow 20” full size spare.


In with the current full size matching TRD Pro/Ridge Grappler spare. The tire is actually a 33.3” tire, that extra half inch over a typical 285 makes it a really snug fit. It fits but the side by the diff doesn't quite sit as flush as the stock full sized spare did. Overall though I’m happy.

 

Just before Thanksgiving we got up skiing for the first time for the season. It was my 2 year old's first powder day lol





Mom came too

 

After going with the family I took a Wednesday solo trip so I could rip around all day long. It was phenomenal! Zero lift lines, I skied right onto every chair, parking lot was empty, the snow was in great condition for any point of the season but snow like that in November just doesn't happen! I can not overstate how awesome of a day it was. that day was the motivation I needed to start getting my ass back in shape. My legs and lungs were burnin'.

 

So I know I said it before but this is the first time I've bought a used vehicle. It already had some minor bumper damage, the underside of the drivers side mirror is cracked, and it has lots of little scraps and chips. It was nice not having a brand new vehicle to try to keep meticulous. I used to wash, clay, polish, and like 4-5 stage wax my cars regularly and I've never bothered to do that with this thing. It looks great from 10 feet away but, seeing as it gets used properly, its absolutely covered in flaws. The first week of December after coming home from skiing it was in the 60's, so I decided I'd give it a wash with actual soap rather then just power washing off the crap. The next day my wife was leaving to go on a week long business trip so I figured I'll just throw it in the garage, let it fully dry, and give it a coat of wax before winter, no rush because I could just drive one of the other cars in the mean time. I have a hard time halfassing things so it kind of snow balled into a week in the garage with a few days worth of on and off cleaning. I washed it and clay barred it top to bottom. Its flawed enough that it wasn't worth the effort to try to get swirls and flaws out, but I want to protect against rust and things like that. The easy answer is NuFinish once a year polish. Its not actually a polish, or a wax, it has no cleaning properties, its just a simple proven inexpensive, easy to apply, easy to remove, and easy to find anywhere paint sealer that holds up well. It more or less poor man's ceramic coating, a few bucks a bottle and its been shown to hold up for a for months. I went over the exterior, light assemblies, and door/hatch jambs, and then a second coat 3 days later on the whole exterior again. I started cleaning the inside but ended up pulling the seats out to really get in there for a deep clean and detail. Cleaned the carpet, headliner, cleaned and conditioned all the leather with an addition heavy application to the front seats. I used some stuff to restore and condition all the plastic and finished it up with cleaning all the glass. The weather tech mats are notoriously hard to clean, I can hit them with a power washer and scrub them with soap and a brush and this still dry stained brown and shitty looking, so after doing that I tried some plastic interior spray and they came out looking like new.
It ended up being a lot of work but I'm glad I did it. The truck hasn't been this clean since it was new.














That's cracked windshield number 4 or 5



Of course it only stayed clean for a day or two because its ski season

 

Is that stock or did you paint it yellow? I have never seen that before. I can see having some government regulation (hate these) of needing a donut spare yellow but not a real rimmed spare.

 

That’s what the Limiteds come with stock. I was not expecting that either. I check the pressure regularly but I don’t need to drop the whole down so I never saw that before.

 

That's interesting cuz the Trail comes with a black rim, complete opposite color, and I'm pretty sure the SR5 does also. What was/is Toyota thinking here???

 

My assumption is that the primer is that ugly yellow and they save some production costs by just not finishing the painting process.

 

Don't mean to keep derailing your great thread on this but you are most likely right about the saving of the paint process. Still begs the question, if the goal was to save money by not painting it, why even put an aluminum rim there? Just put the steel black painted rim like the other models have.

Anyway, looking forward to your next adventure.

 

Well ok then....

















So much for being clean

 

From the week of Christmas

Sunday - Little man ready to shred.

 

Monday - No liftlines

 

Tuesday - Hiking the Betasso Link Trail in Boulder, one of my favorite mountain bike trails.

 

Wednesday I decided to head up to Copper to ski... the official snow total was 2 inches lol


The roads were a shit show and I've been waiting for these types of conditions to try out the Ridge Grapplers, they actually fared really well.
I've said it a million times buts always Subarus that seem to be the first thing to wreck when it snows in Colorado.
Click pic for vid.


Volvo not doing real well either.
Click pic for vid.






Again, 2" was their official number....

 

Thursday - Breckenridge Part 1.

To the surprise of nobody, Breckenridge had the first and only lift lines I’ve come across anywhere this season so far and clogged up unloading ramps on every lift. Breck still sucks, but Thursday was one of, if not the single best day I’ve ever had on skis. The groomers were groomed, the bowls were soft and steep, the trees were nice and deep. It was soooo good! The official Thursday morning was 12" most of which had fallen Wednesday throughout the day (snow totals are announced at 5am every day when the snow stake is cleared.



Hurry up and wait, that's the Breckenridge way.

 

Thursday Breckenridge Part 2.























It's windy at 12,000'+
Click pic for vid










I'm rarely in pictures because im always the one taking them but my buddy got 2 pics of me before his phone battery froze up and powered off.

 

Driving home Thursday night as it got dark I thought I had a problem with my headlights. I couldn't see shit, the headlights of the cars behind me were leaving shadows of my vehicle on the road in front of me. Turns out it was just severely crusted over headlights. Since it was in the 60's Friday my son and I had a car wash day. I swear I hit this thing with the power washer once a week.

 

That was a pretty epic week

 

I'ld say..!
Looked like great snow at Breck.. I do hate those lift lines tho...
thanks for sharing.

 

I’m general I very much dislike Breck. The town is awesome, the resort sucks. I get the Ikon pass every year (technically this is the first year of the Ikon pass, previously it was the Rocky Mountain Super Pas). We do go to Breck from time to time though because we have a good friend and a family member that are both time share owners, one on peak 7 one on peak 8. When we’re staying there and getting owner perks we’ll ski there, otherwise Coppeer or Winter Park.

 

My SSO rack get delivered today! I’m out of town on business until next Friday. I have the rack and a couple other goodies waiting for me to install.

 

This one is kinda semi off topic-ish maybe. But whatever, it’s it’s relevent to our adventures.



My chair lift project. Chair number 116 is my small piece of Boulder Colorado local history.

This 1971 triple chair was manufactured by Hall Ski Lift Company out of Turin, New York. It was originally installed on Bald Mountain at Sun Valley in Idaho where it ran as the “River Run” lift through the 1970-1992 ski seasons before being relocated to Eldora in Nederland, Colorado where it ran as the “Challenge” lift from 1992 until 2017.

April 9th, 2017 was its final day of service before retiring after 47 ski seasons! On May 5th, 2017 I picked up my chair from Eldora and brought it home to repurpose it. After a brief stay in my backyard while pondering exactly what I wanted to do with it work started on it. The chair was welded into a single solid piece, the brackets for the non existent lap bar got cut off, and bench height legs were added, it was media blasted and powder coated bright red to tie it in with the front door of the house.

After getting it right off my local mountain it was important to me to not change the character of the chair so the welds were not clean up and ground down, dents and dings were not fixed, imperfections and inconsistencies were not corrected, the mounting arm was not cut down and shortened to accommodate a regular height ceiling, the original brass bushing and grease fitting were cleaned up, reused, and reinstalled

Once the metalwork and powder coat was complete I brought this almost 11 foot tall giant home and started on the finishing touches. I replaced the warped and swollen plywood seat base with a new piece I cut from 3/4” birch and painted it black. I shaped the seat bottom to get a more secure and precise fit and made some brackets for a neat clean installation even though you’ll never see it. The final step was a new cushion heavily inspired by the original but hand made by my mom (a former seamstress) with a much higher degree of craftsmanship and detail in the fit and finish from very high quality Crypton upholstery.





Taking her home.


Sitting in the backyard.


It was in need of some TLC.


The legs are on.


Picked up from powder coat.


In the house.


shaping the seat base for nice precise fit.


The seat base in place.
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4732/27410893889_5bc40493f1_c.jpg[/img

Left to right was my process of making/modifying brackets to the mount the base.
[img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4688/38311962315_1ef257be4e_c.jpg

This guy was very interested in what dad was doing.


Painted seat base mounted.


The underside and mounting mechanism of the seat cushion.

 

From here things got a little out of hand....


At that point the chair was done but what started with the bench, an entryway bench, spiraled into a major home remodel because, well, you can’t have an entryway bench on carpet right?!


My wife was going to be heading out of town for a business trip, she'd be gone Wednesday to Wednesday and since I a few months notice I started planning to do things while she was gone. Originally I was thinking I'd just install laminate in that front room and surprise her with that. Well 3 different floor surfaces on one level would look weird, so I might as well do the whole floor and if I’m going to do the whole floor. If I’m doing the whole 1st floor I might as well do actual hardwood and add some value to the home. But the main floor bathroom had a big ugly vanity that sits empty and eventually I'd like to replace it with a pedestal sink. I figured I should pull that vanity out before the floor goes in rather than flooring around the vanity and then changing it later. Since the bathroom sink is coming out I might as well just gut the bathroom and do everything in there. If the bathroom light fixture is going to be replaced with a nice brushed nickel one I might as well to all of the light fixtures and the ceiling fan on the main level. The baseboard has to come off to do the floor so I might as well replace it with more modern 5 1/4" hard pine. With the baseboard off that's the perfect time to paint. Adding some color with paint means it’s time to change up the window treatments. Since there is new paint and window treatments we need to add in decor pieces like some throw pillows and an area rug to tie it all in.


It just snowballed and a bench turned into an entire main floor remodel.


I left to take my wife to the airport and the flooring crew was at the end of street, as soon as I drove off they got to work. I decided to go with red oak hardwood. They had a crew of guys that were going to demo, install, fill, sand, fill, sand, stain, seal, buff, and reseal the floor plus cut and install all the baseboard. They had 4 guys and a week to try to get it done, in the mean time I was going to paint at night and work on the bathroom. It was getting close to Christmas so some decorations went up before we had I had a chance to get everything buttoned up but here's the completed pictures.











And a couple of the remodel while on the topic

 

Christmas Eve we had a half day at Winter Park. I got to park ski in ski out slope side on Mary Jane. My wife and I got the 6th chair up the mountain and fresh snow all morning. We also had perfect timing with getting the 2nd chair up when Panoramic opened, it was right as the clouds briefly split and the sun poked out for some absolutely incredible views! We covered 17,000 feet of vertical and 20 miles on skis and still got out of there before noon.

North side of Berthoud Pass had some flurries.


Coming down the other side of the pass the snow was coming down pretty good.


Selfie while we wait for the drop the ropes and start letting people on the lifts.










The only 2 people who got up Panaramic before us, the sun us starting to break.


Speachless...




Making our way up the bowl.


Above treeline