Toyota FJ Cruiser Forum - Blogs http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blog.php A community dedicated to the Toyota FJ Cruiser - Forums, Pictures, Photo Gallery, Media and more. en Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:59:53 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/../forums/images/misc/rss.jpg Toyota FJ Cruiser Forum - Blogs http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blog.php <![CDATA[Toyota's killin me with all of their "thinking"]]> http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/bigbaddwolf/76-toyota-s-killin-me-all-their-thinking.html Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:31:31 GMT I work as a shipping and receiving supervisor for Toyota Texas. You would think that since this company has been around for decades that the "higher-ups" would have a grasp on things. The Japanese partners that work here along with ther American counter-parts have no clue of what they are doing. This place is being ran like some mom&pop operation. They put on a professional appearance for the media and other outsiders but behind closed doors, these guys are continuously making bone-head decisions. No wonder our plant is shutting down for "temporary suspension". We should only have 600 tundras in the staging lot. We have 3527 in the lot and none of them are moving, all of the dealers are full and nobody wants them. We're supose to be down for three months in order to get the 09' Tundras going and trashing all of the 08's or canibleizing what we can from them. What a waste. There's more that happens that doesn't get out to the public, but I don't think that would be wise to go too far with this. So I'll just end it here. :boohoo: Oh, by the way...love my FJ. Best late model truck/SUV on the market. Wish they built them here.:cheers: ]]> BigBaddWolf http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/bigbaddwolf/76-toyota-s-killin-me-all-their-thinking.html the LOVE http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/fjeffcruiser/75-love.html Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:40:32 GMT Gosh! I didn't think anyone read blogs. LOL I certainly don't. Thank you for all your encouragement regarding my comments on my blog. I am having a great time with this forum and I am looking forward to leaving this Tuesday for Ouray. I guess jotting down my thoughts has paid off. I've come in contact with some very fun and positive people. Thank you for replying. See you in Ouray.

FJsuz ]]> FJeffCruiser http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/fjeffcruiser/75-love.html Wedding Poetry http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/74-wedding-poetry.html Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:28:09 GMT I have a daughter, Kelly, who is getting married July 12, the day before I leave for the Summit. In thinking of weddings, I am continually drawn to my favorite piece of literature on the subject.

The Post that Fitted - Rudyard Kipling

Though tangled and twisted the course of true love
This ditty explains,
No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve
If the Lover has brains.

Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry
An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."

Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.
Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters--
Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's daughters.

Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,
But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.

So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.

Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry--
As the artless Sleary put it:--"Just the thing for me and Carrie."

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin--impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.

[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather:--
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]

Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour--always in the Boffkins' sight.

Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.

Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy,--
Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ,--
Wired three short words to Carrie--took his ticket, packed his kit--
Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read--and laughed until she wept--
Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept." . . .

Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits. ]]> uphill http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/74-wedding-poetry.html New Member From Bakersfield http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/awsm-fj/73-new-member-bakersfield.html Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:47:57 GMT jUST JOINED HAD A NEW FJ SINCE APRIL FULLY CUSTOMIZED 6" PRO COMP LIFT, PROCOMP RIMS WITH305/70/18 TUFFY BOX ON TOP, WARN 8000LB WINCH WITH WARN BUMPERS FRONT AND REAR NFAB LITE BAR WITH 5 KC DAYLIGHTERS ,BUSHWACKER FENDER FLARES COBRA CB 75WX , ARB REFRIGERATOR/FREEZER 60' HIGH LIFT JACK GEAR CHANGE IS NEXT PITCURE WILL FOLLOW AS SOON AS I FIGURE THIS SITE OUT :wave: ]]> AWSM FJ http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/awsm-fj/73-new-member-bakersfield.html YAHOO: Not feeling the LOVE at all from this group. http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/fjeffcruiser/72-yahoo-not-feeling-love-all-group.html Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:42:03 GMT So, we've paid our money to be part of what seemed to be a fun group of people.
I do not receive responses to my posts and I have asked if anyone Yahoos to get acquainted before the event. I have received NOTTA. Is this a clique of people that do not accept no comers?
I'd love to hear your response.:boohoo::boohoo::boohoo: ]]> FJeffCruiser http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/fjeffcruiser/72-yahoo-not-feeling-love-all-group.html Subwoofer http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/rdpeder/71-subwoofer.html Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:23:06 GMT I recently purchased a used 08 FJ and have no need for the stock subwoofer. Any ideas on how much I should ask for it? I recently purchased a used 08 FJ and have no need for the stock subwoofer. Any ideas on how much I should ask for it? ]]> rdpeder http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/rdpeder/71-subwoofer.html This Suburban Dad is Totally Stoaked About His FJ http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/golden_fjtt/70-suburban-dad-totally-stoaked-about-his-fj.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:52:44 GMT Gas prices at $4, two kids with potentially three in the future, uncertain economy, doubting wife... Doesn't that equal a used hybrid minivan or something? Luckily it doesn't for me.

I'm usually not an impulse buyer and I know the adage of never buying a new car, but all of that went out the window with the new Trail Teams Iceberg White FJ Cruiser.

I'm a sucker for Limited Edition stuff. No offense to all other colors (I like them all), but it just seems that there are quite a few of each of them out there. Unless I put an 8" lift, front and back winches, and a gunner's turret, I'll look like the rest of them in the neighborhood. That's why the Trail Teams was perfect for me. Unique, cool, but not super flashy.

Someone had posted on a forum that the Trail Teams tried to be too many things to too many people. Rugged with the shocks, tires and skid plates, but convenient with the audio controls, 6 disk changer and accessories. Debatable, but for me it was perfect. I've always been one of those guys that over spends to get all of the features. I bought (Santa brought me) the top of the line Nintendo Entertainment System with ROB the Robot because it was the deluxe kit (ROB collected dust). I bought the top 32" Sony XBR tube HDTV, paying $200 more for some random function that I never used. I can't buy the low end digital camera, I have to get the one that has so many options, the only thing I can do is shoot on Auto. Our latest car was the 2008 Nissan Armada which is super cool in itself, but instead of buying an '06 or '07, I needed the '08 b/c they redesigned the interior, 20" wheels, touch screen NAV, etc.

How does that relate to the FJ? Well, I pretty much do have all of the the options and I'm not sitting there wishing I would have paid $500 more for auto-climate control, or $2000 more for heated leather seats or any other stuff. Granted, I did pay $4500 or so more for the Trail Teams, but it still kept the car under $30k. Its basic yet functional, cool yet retro, and I will never have buyer's remorse for not spending more money on an available option (limitless amounts of after market upgrades not included :lol: )

Next in the thought process was the children issue. Luckily for me, my oldest son (4) absolutely loves cars, trucks, motorcycles and anything on wheels. He could pick out an Audi or a Jeep when he was just about 2 and could name every Monster Jam monster truck about the same time. Anyway, he loves the FJ and was all for getting one. Although his color choice changed daily. Even with as much influence that he has over my wife, she was reluctant. Fair enough, it isn't the perfect family mobile. Her argument was that if we were going to buy a newer car, it would be for a good reason, not to basically stay at the same functional level as the current car, an Audi A4. What that meant was that I needed to be able to get 3 car seats in the back. She found a link of some chick claiming that she can't get 3 car seats in the back, which pretty much ended my hopes. That was until I test drove it again, got excited and talked my neighbor into bringing his FJ over for a sanity check. Lucky for me I was able to safely install a booster, toddler seat and rear facing infant seat. Although I lost some skin buckling the booster and they're packed like sardines, it can be done in an emergency and that's all that I needed. The standard curtain airbags also helped the cause.

So, with weeks of incessant whining about how there is only a handful of Trail Teams available on the entire planet, my wife finally caved. Although she won't admit it, I know she likes it. Not as cushy as her car, but tons of fun. The next order of business is to get it dirty in them there hills that I live right next to...

In conclusion, I pose this riddle: What has two thumbs and can't stop thinking about throwing money at truck upgrades?

This guy (with thumbs pointing in).
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]]> Golden_FJTT http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/golden_fjtt/70-suburban-dad-totally-stoaked-about-his-fj.html ARB Awning http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/mickmc/69-arb-awning.html Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:40:47 GMT I've added the ARB awning this past weekend to the passenger side. Very cool. Now I can bring the shade with me. ]]> MickMc http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/mickmc/69-arb-awning.html I brought lunch http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/pokerdawg/68-i-brought-lunch.html Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:04:16 GMT With gas prices climbing and the fact I don't have an economy gas car. I decided to start bringing food from home. I spend $10 a day buying coffee and lunch. I can't stop putting gas in the car but maybe I can lose some weight and save some money being more conscious about my lunch.

:indifferent:

:boohoo: ]]> pokerDawg http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/pokerdawg/68-i-brought-lunch.html Thailand Expats http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/67-thailand-expats.html Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:30:18 GMT Thailand: about twenty years ago. I was in and out of country. One particular thing I did required me to hang out a lot. People get used to seeing you and very soon you begin to blend into the background.

Everyone called him Pete but that was probably short for Peterson. I never asked and never found out.

He had the look. Thinning dark hair with a cheap dye job, the belly, and the face, that one associates with late nights and long hours in bars. He stood about half way between five and six feet and looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes that were more than thirty years behind fashionable. More than any other feature, his shoes gave him away. They marked him. They were always spit shined the way military men keep their shoes.

Friends showed up from time to time. Their conversations rarely varied and were all centered on good times in Japan and the Philippines and Vietnam during their younger years. It seemed they had known one another on various Air Force bases at various times—Tan-son-nhut, Yakota, Ashiya, and Clark. To hear them reminisce it seemed they had never spent much time in the United States. Had they not been so old, one could have mistaken them for a bunch of master sergeants on R&R. Each day seemed to be a mini-reunion.

Their conversations rarely contained anything current in them. Common threads included the heat, how much they were paying for rent, or when they would be traveling south to Penang to renew a visa and return by overnight train to Bangkok.

Naturally they sat at Pete’s table or at the bar next to Pete. The friends from another life drank hard liquor until their retirement checks wore thin when they would switch to draught Singha beer or get a quart of the cheap Mekong whiskey the Thais drink with soda water. Pete would let them keep their bottle of Mekong in his bar and let them drink “free” but only during the last few days of the month. After all, Pete and his wife, Thip, were in the business of selling booze and serving food to paying customers, of which I was one.

While they were a pack, they didn’t travel as one. They were loners where it counted. Not one of them could speak Thai with any fluency, so the conversations were a mixture Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Japanese, and English, but never full sentences—it was a brand of GI pidgin one hears all over Asia—“Number Ten, Number One, and Number Ten Thou, You go my how me?” And so forth. The girls learned the entrepreneurial language of the trade as all bargirls in Asia do.

Pete’s wife, Thip was from the Klong Thuey area of Bangkok; its a port actually. She got her start working as a kind of servant girl in one of the many seedy bars supported by merchant marines and local Thais who attended the Thai boxing area nearby. Eventually, at the age of fourteen, a well-heeled Chinese merchant took her virginity at an exorbitant price and she joined the ranks of the working girls in that bar.

After about two years she decided to take her chances at the Thai Heaven on New Petchaburi Road. She was pretty, business was brisk and she saved a nice bundle of Baht from tea and sex. She, like all the girls, lived in a dormitory on the top floor of Thai Heaven, which also provided short time rooms for the girls and their clients in the building. She preferred the American GI customers to the people she had to deal with in Khlong Toey who often demanded “Three Kinds of Chicken” (Kai Sam Yang: oral, anal, and vaginal sex) from her. The GIs, on the hand, either wanted oral and/or vaginal sex. Occasionally one would ask for a hand job and nothing else. Later, one of her girlfriends explained that some married Americans felt they were being true to their wives if they only got a hand job. Thip thought that was very strange thinking, because she thought the hand job was harder to perform than either of the other two.

Though he never said so, I guessed he married Thip because he could think of no other way to stay in Thailand. It was truly a marriage of convenience for both. Pete wanted to own a bar, but as a foreigner, he could not. The bar was in Thip’s name and they ran the place together as co-owners. His marriage also provided a residence visa, so he didn’t have to leave for Penang every three months to get a new tourist visa like most of his buddies. Her marriage got her out of the life she would have lived until she was to old to be attractive.

Though Thip was probably in her late twenties or early thirties, I couldn’t tell. No matter how old she was, she still looked young and vibrant. She had that wonderful humor about her that most Thai women possess, along with an innate business sense. She ran the bar, Pete was more like a “Meeter and Greeter” than anything else. Thip’s younger sister took charge of the cash register and all sales receipts. They had two waitresses during the day that served the ten tables and booths that lined the surrounding wall. At night the place became more active. Some of Thip’s old Thai Heaven buddies would show up and pay her to let them cruise the crowd for customers. So what looked to be a respectable restaurant bar during the day became a wild and wooly sex bar at night like most of the bars on Patpong I and Patpong II. By that time of day old Pete had gone upstairs to sleep. He didn’t care one way or the other what happened down there at night.

A new customer to Pete’s bar would mistake him for a customer since he never stood behind the bar, but rather stationed himself at a corner bar seat near the entrance. He drank scotch in a small glass with a splash of water and two cubes of ice, only two. He always looked freshly bathed and groomed when I saw him. I guess he never left the air-conditioned comfort of the bar. He smoked Thai cigarettes, unless one of his buddies brought him a carton of Marlboros or Camels from the PX. He had an old Zippo lighter. He opened and closed it until he realized what he was doing and put the lighter on the bar. The lighter free of his grasp, he would start tapping the bar lightly with his right hand. He smoked left-handed.

I cast a careful look at the bottles on the bar and, for the first time, discovered they had a shabby appearance—not new—and realized he must have been refilling those bottles to avoid the local tax. I guessed he still had contacts in the Class-Six store on some base in Thailand.

Pete was a careful drinker. I watched with fascination as he picked up the glass, examined the contents and put it back down on the bar without sipping. He would instead light another cigarette, flick-flack the lighter, put it down, and tap the bar. Pete knew how to pace his drinking, but not his smoking. No matter how careful Pete was with the scotch, he was usually out of there by late afternoon, drunk and incoherent. Thip would help him up the stairs to their apartment. She cared for him as she might for her grandfather in the old village.

The food at Pete’s bar was geared toward the American who came there to eat. He offered hamburgers and cheeseburgers, a kind of Lasagna, and an occasional steak as a special, usually on Sundays when they showed American movies. They served no Thai or Chinese food at Pete’s. Most of Pete’s friends ate the hamburgers or cheeseburgers and never ordered out.

He had an irregular, but constant, crowd for lunch and I have no idea of what it was like at night, because I chose to spend time away from Patpong during the hours after lunch. I’d sit and watch the street action while drinking a beer and eating hot pepper roasted peanuts as a snack. This dish is actually fried with prik ky nu (rat-sh1t peppers), peanuts, and garnished with sea salt. Sometimes they added dried garlic for additional kick. I loved the stuff.

The more regular customers were guys who decided to live in Thailand because it was cheap and sex with young girls was available and reasonable, and they had no place else to go.

They were not even enamored of Thai culture. Most had never been to a temple or a festival unless a young bar girl dragged them out for the event. They did not go to movies, choosing rather to visit Pete’s on Sunday or the Gran Prix for a televised football game. The Ex-Pats gave up on America for their own reasons and rarely examined why. Most felt alienated by the changing scene in the States and they felt betrayed.

I left Thailand and had no chance to return for at least nine years. My first stop after checking into my hotel room at the Ambassador on Sukhumvit Rd. was Patpong and Pete’s bar.

It was still there. I entered and looked to my right. Pete wasn’t in his normal place at the corner of the bar. Thinking Pete and Thip might have sold the place, I almost left, but then I saw Thip coming into the bar from the back. She looked as she had when I last saw her, maybe a few white strands in her hair, but the smooth skin and the passion in her eyes were the same. I took a seat at mid-bar and ordered a gin and tonic. When it arrived, I was about to inquire about Pete when I looked up and over the liquor bottles over the back bar to an altar.

There among the incense, three glasses of wine and three small bowls of rice, was a picture of Pete. It was a black and white picture taken some years earlier. He was smiling and looked quite happy. Pete died in my absence.

I waited until the time was right, and then I spoke to Thip in private, I asked out how he died. Thip looked at me and replied, “Pete old man. He go upstairs, go take sh1t—bad heart—he die.”

The place looked the same, but there was a new type of clientele, the German Sex Tours had invaded Thailand. All of Pete’s old buddies had found another place to drink, or maybe they too had died on the throne like their old friend Pete. I left some money for incense with Thip, paid my bill and left. ]]> uphill http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/67-thailand-expats.html SpeedwayBlue here. http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/speedwayblue/66-speedwayblue-here.html Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:01:48 GMT SpeedwayBlue was here!:bigthumb: SpeedwayBlue was here!:bigthumb: ]]> SpeedwayBlue http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/speedwayblue/66-speedwayblue-here.html Rubithon?? http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/chris-sandstorm-fj/65-rubithon.html Sat, 31 May 2008 20:10:49 GMT Hey whom is going to Rubithon? I am going. need advice on skid plates. Hey whom is going to Rubithon?

I am going. need advice on skid plates. ]]> Chris Sandstorm FJ http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/chris-sandstorm-fj/65-rubithon.html Question?? Cb Radio?? http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/lzdiva/64-question-cb-radio.html Tue, 27 May 2008 21:14:44 GMT HELLO, WHERE IS A GOOD PLACE TO INSTALL A CB RADIO IN MY FJ? I'M WANTING TO LOOK AT SOME PICTURES, TO GIVE ME SOME IDEAS.:wave: ]]> LZDIVA http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/lzdiva/64-question-cb-radio.html Memorial Day (5/26/08) http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/63-memorial-day-5-26-08.html Sun, 25 May 2008 04:11:45 GMT A few neighborhood kids came by this morning. They wanted to look at some of the framed photos in my office and hoped for a homily on military service.

I said, "It's not like you think it will be." And I flashed back to a situation I was in about three decades ago.

It's impossible to communicate the nature of physical exhaustion to those who have not experienced it. I was with two friends who are dead today. We were sitting in the mud, eating small, baby water snakes who were squirming in the mud by the hundreds and washing them down with water from our canteens. We had not eaten or slept for four days. We were in a state of starvation-enhanced exhaustion that caused us to have vivid dreams that we experienced while wide awake. The snakes broke the hunger as they wiggled in our stomachs until the stomach acid finished them.

So I told the boys that when you hear the pitiful screams of the wounded and dying, smell the butcher-house odors of feces, blood, roasted flesh, rotting and decay, and feel the last shiver of life ebb as a friend dies in your arms, you will wish that you were never there.

Their eyes were bright, they hadn't heard a thing I said. "Tell us a war story," they urged.

I told them that I just did. ]]> uphill http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/uphill/63-memorial-day-5-26-08.html This is Primitive http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/zoddette/62-primitive.html Fri, 23 May 2008 04:50:27 GMT Does this actually work. I need to post a photo of my last trip off my puter... how do I do that? Does this actually work. I need to post a photo of my last trip off my puter... how do I do that? ]]> zoddette http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/blogs/zoddette/62-primitive.html