Getting out and exploring is an essential part of life
Find your inner peace
Finding that place to clear your head is monumental.
Getting out on the lake is an essential form of relaxation
I love exploring “off the beaten path” finding unexplored places appreciating nature for its true value and meaning
Make it stand out.
Whatever it is, the way you tell the story, sometimes after dark with a portable LED light, stands out among others
Florida Everglades 7 day canoe trip in 2015
Having fun is the priority regardless of where you call home.
Making something from nothing is refreshing. Like anything in life. I pull up with our small trailer that means a lot to myself, along side others, and having the same if not a better time with family and friends which means the most to me!
Getting off the beaten path exploring new paths, new challenges, adapting, problem solving, root cause and being prepared to execute
Like when my Friend and I would take out his 1995 Chevy Tahoe 2 door with 5.7L Votec, off roading on trails in the mountains and desert in Yuma, AZ. You can never be too prepared with “Off Roading”, rocks are very sharp and pop tires... Being prepared and having a support web to catch you when you are least expecting it, is critical for solving problems for unexpected outside factors that you cant always prepare for. Like not being able to jack up the lifted vehicle when we unfortunately popped a tire just a little too far off the beaten path. It shouldn’t have popped on that rock, but it did. And the environment we were in was not “normal” conditions where it happened and we need to call for some help due to the ground being too soft to support the jack and tools we had brought with us.
Overseeing the bigger picture,
Take a step back,
Appreciating what you have,
Making the very best out of it!
- May 11, 2020: Everything was shut down in Michigan, on Mandatory stay at home orders. I couldn’t register my new project truck because the infestructure for registering vehicles on line was not there yet, and the Michigan DMV was closed, to allow me to legally drive it on the back dirt roads. So I took a step back to see how I could still have fun and my available resources I had at my disposal and made the best of it! I began exploring and “Off Roading” on my families property at the house, appreciating what I have and learned how to be grateful for all of this trying to not get stuck when the 4wd didn’t want to engage.
Temporary fixes to bigger problems to help keep things moving is a essential
I had the opportunity to travel all over Michigan, driving where were my car was physically able to drive due to the limitations of front wheel drive vehicles pose.
One problem I had to mange with this long trip was a slowly failing solenoid inside the transmission for engaging/disengaging gears 3 & 4 out of the 4 gears this transmission has. Due to the complexity of the fix, I was in no spot physically to have to drop the transmission to get to the side cover based on the packaging of the system components. However due to the code thrown and the vast research I did on this issue, it could also have been the wiring harness due to the P0472, but being a vague code it could mean electrical or mechanical. No other codes were thrown
I found a solution that I was able to put around 30,000 miles while I was still trying to diagnose the issue and get more data and information to begin tackling this problem. The temporary solution was by doing “Hard ECU full power down resets.” To do this I would pull the main battery fuse, located on the battery terminal wiring in the trunk of the vehicle, and this would allow the slowly failing component to continue functioning properly to get me by for the time being. The quick fix if i was not in any safe area to do this hard reset was, turning the car off and opening the door for roughly 5 seconds, then closing the door, waiting a second, then turning the car back on. I went through this process probably a few hundred times keeping my car operating properly until I could get it fixed.
I did a lot of testing to find the limits of what causes the GM Limp Home Mode programmed into the ECU and understanding why its happening. High load, high rpm shifts seemed to be the main causation of the internal code that would get thrown that I was reading on my OBD2 code scanner (Zurich ZR13 Pro) while watching the Live Data display to watch the sensors my reader was capable of reading, that other more expensive readers have access to.
To fix this I would accelerate from stops or while driving very slowly and I was able to continue driving the car with everything functioning within the new limitations my system had
Getting into the hobby of model aviation
- May 11, 2020: Everything was shut down in Michigan on Mandatory stay at home orders, I couldn’t register my new project truck to legally drive it on the back dirt roads, so I took a step back at the opportunities and resources I had available to me at my disposal and made the best of it. I began exploring and “Off Roading” on my families property at the house, appreciating what I have and learned how to be grateful for all of this.
Tom Dobies
Taking on the responsibility of adopting a cat of my own has taught me a lot about responsibility and life. Having to take care of something of my own, is very good practice for my future plans of having a family of my own. Having roles and responsibilities like buying food, cat litter, Litter boxes, cat food, cat toys, Gps trackers, and most importantly vet bills. Especially when the vet bills are unexpected and expensive, but that is part of the responisbilites that are taken on with kids, pets, etc.