Love my FSJ (Full-Size Jeep)

A couple days ago, the neighbor kids approached and asked if I could pull them out of the driveway. I thought they were talking about that really steep side spur that goes up right behind their house (and that has been neglected and is severely eroded).

As it turns out, the neighbor lady's oldest son's itty-bitty pea-picking kinda sporty Chevy was stuck in the sand close to the culvert. We drive there all the time, but I think that little sporty econobox has about two inches of ground clearance, and it didn't occur to the driver that he should keep his wheels out of the rut.

Anyhow, I backed up to the front of his car and prepared the yank strap. He told me that he just wanted to get out of the driveway, though.

So, how do I get around him and pull him from the other side?

There is a power line running parallel to the road perhaps 100 feet into the property (our house is about 500 feet from the road, by the way). I drove the Jeep along the power line to the snowmobile staging area that's behind the Bristol Store, then out to the road.

I had one end of the strap attached to the Jeep's hitch (no, not around the ball. It's a receiver hitch, so I removed the ball assembly.) He couldn't find any place to attach the strap to his car, though. What do they make cars out of nowadays, anyhow? Plastic?

He finally figured out how to get it through the license plate frame and around the back bumper. I wasn't too sure about that, but it was worth a try.

I got into the Jeep, took the slack out of the line, and gave it just a bit of gas. I barely got the engine off of idle when the little car started moving. I pulled him out, disconnected, and drove off so that he could go out the rest of the way.

But he got stuck again.

So I extracted him again.

I haven't seen his car there since then, so I guess he decided to park it elsewhere.

So that's why I love my big Jeep. When all else fails, we can get out of the driveway. If the van gets stuck, we can extract it. If we have to haul something heavy, it's up to the job. It's roomy and comfortable. The only downside is that it gets about 16 miles per gallon (but hey, that's better than most of the big modern SUVs). I really want to convert it to run on propane. At $1.65 per gallon, we can actually afford to run that big beast.



Sometimes, it's fun to take it to out-of-the-way places.