NextStepDesigns

Skidmore, Owings, and Merril (SOM), is one of the largest and most respected architect firms in the world. Their website sucks, and they know it.

Recently, a very interesting article was published about the work involved in their site’s total rebirth that is going to be launched at the end of the year (the article includes a couple of interesting screen shots also). The article is online at the recently launched Architect Magazine.

Yesterday a few friends went down to our local ORV park, known at Wildomar in the Cleveland National Forest. It’s right off the Ortega Hwy (74) between Lake Elsinore and San Juan Capistrano beach. Wildomar is along the same ridge line as Main Divide.

While not difficult, Wildomar provides ample opportunity to practise getting familar with the various 4×4 systems on our Land Rovers, such as Hill Decent and Traction Control. I shot a few photos…

Wildomar photo gallery (19 imges on SmugMug)

November 11, 2006 - John Bull Trail in Big Bear, CA (2.5MB pdf). We had a total of 21 trucks, including FJ’s, built up Tacoma’s, Disco I’s, Disco II’s, D-90’s, Range Rover Sport, LR3, P38, Classic, and H3, one beefed up Ford 4×4 cargo van, and two very cool Pinzgauers. Pretty wide assortment of trucks and personalities, but it all worked. Overall, everything went went pretty well, though it was a little chaotic at the begining. We had 4 groups of people at four different staging areas. Not quite sure how that happened? It was compounded by sporadic cell phone coverage in the area, but eventually we all did get rejoined on the trail.

The Toyota Trail Teams guys worked their tails off stacking rocks and giving assistance to everyone, so big thanks to them.

The weather was weird. Sunny, but very windy, and cool, temp gauge said 52, but felt like 40. On the last third of the trail, the temp plummeted rapidly and it began to snow!

Amazing, with all the various trucks, no one broke anything. There were a few bits of plastic that got dinged on many of the trucks, but I didn’t see anything serious. The 4×4 van did bend his rear bumper pretty good, but he had an awsome attitude and was thrilled to get his truck through there. (Doug at Adventure 4×4 of Big Bear)

Sadly, my little low rider LR3 was not ready for the Bull. Just too darn low. Thankfully Adam Spiker was there to represent the modern Rovers

Photos of the John Bull Trail run (47 images on SmugMug)

My thoughts on the FJ
The FJ’s are very capable vehicles. The 2007 models are going to be even better rock crawlers, because you can enable traction control and the rear locker at the same time. The 2006 model you have to chose one or the other (it has both, but they will not work at the same time). Rumor has it there is a patch you can download….

The stock FJ’s did struggle on the trail, and one of the factory FJ’s could not make it through the Gate due to a faulty A-Trac system. However, the 3″ lift kit is relatively inexpensive, and does not invalidate the Toyota warrenty. Pretty cool! With the lift, the FJ’s seem to make it through without undue difficulty.

Check out this neat little panorama shot of a portion of our group at the trail head: