The @Curators are happy to announce that @pip-bip is now also a Curator! Pip is a welcome addition to the team and will provide much needed moderation when the rest of us are generally asleep!

Just a reminder, @jminer does more for this site than anyone else and he's a saint.

My Dad sold his Corvette last night. Sad to see it go. The two guys are paying....a lot... in cash, no test drive, which is suspicious but whatever. My dad has his heart set on replacing it with a Mercedes Sprinter overlanding van. That should be interesting.

Also last night, I became a dad. You can't see it, but he's actually wearing the same little blue jumper that I wore home from the hospital in 1992.

Pretty happy

OK, I had posted this once before, but deleted it. Personal life stuff still remains.... complex, but improving.

Here is my new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Willys edition (Rubicon Suspension, offroad tires, rims, limited slip diff). Pentastar engine with the Etorque mild hybrid option, 8 speed auto, all the options.

I bought this without ever going to the dealership other than to pick it up. I met the sales lady once and the whole process was seamless and great. Total dealership time: 1 hour.

I've not really driven it much yet, but stay tuned. Taking some friends (hopefully) for a campfire this weekend in the mountains.

I really am incredibly happy so far.

Sold the ST to someone off Facebook. Turns out, he works in insurance as well and sits literally next to one of the girls I've been off-roading with lately. Crazy small world.

I couldn't be happier with the buyer, 21 years old, really into cars and very excited that it was in such great shape.

Overall bittersweet, I already miss it. So many fantastic memories of great drives and Oppo meets

I told the girl about who bought it and she said "great I'll still have to hear about your car even though you don't own it anymore"

I've seen some mentions of this and with the recent influx from Drivetribe, I thought it might be fun to share Mergio's story again. I've even done some additional research and tracked down instances of Mergio's influence on the web.

Fortunately, the Wayback machine snagged a couple iterations of the story, so I don't really have to do much work. Unfortunately, the links to the kinja comments kinda don't work as well. You have to scroll down a lot.

I decided to make a Kinja account for Sergio Marchionne at about 9:00am on Thursday August 31st to defend his honour and essentially post what he would post, including shilling for products.

I then was contacted by Patrick George who told me that FCA’s head of PR had contacted him to complain. I found that tremendously funny and sincerely hoped that real Sergio had read my comments about selling FCA to Fancy Kristen and turned purple with rage.

After that, I changed the account to read “deleted” and stopped commenting for a bit. I then came up with the idea of the fake nose/glasses bit and switching the letters of the name around.

The rest, is history. I had tons of fun being Mergio and it was cool seeing the Jalopnik staff and commentariat play along. After Sergio got ill, I ended the joke and after he died, I never really logged back into Mergio's account. But, it is kinda neat that for a brief time, some 24 year old sitting in an insurance claims department in Vancouver got onto the radar (and under the skin) of FCA's corporate bigwigs.

When you google Mergio today, there's a couple references out there on social media to him. Cool to know he made a bit of an impact.

Some of the COTD's on Jalopnik from Mergio:

Comment of the Day: Shameless Plug

Comment Of The Day: Alpha Mail Edition

Comment Of The Day: Breaking The Bank Edition

Life is....complex these days and I find myself with much less Oppo time than I'd like.

Lots of personal dark spots, but one of the brightest spots for me got a little brighter today. My wife is pregnant (2nd trimester now) and today we recieved confirmation that the genetic test came back clear and we learned that it's going to be a baby boy.

Cheers Oppo.

Sooo.... That was a trip. As previously posted, what was originally a "snowfall warning" quickly changed to a "winter storm" with high winds and extremely high snowfall. I'm glad we made the choice to bail on camp, but it was probably a decision made an hour or two late.

Headed out Friday morning, went up to Squamish, gassed up, bought firewood, filled our thermoses with coffee.

Headed to Whistler, walked into the train wreck site. I last visited here in 2019 with the Whistler Oppo meet.

Attempted Northair, the goldmine I visited last summer, an idea quickly abandoned due to flood damaged roads.

Went to Alexander Falls, the snow was over a foot deep here already and the storm hadn't yet started. Ran into a guide there, she and her client chatted with us a bit, shared some info on trails.

From there, we retreated back from our original plan to push into the Callaghan Valley, we would have certainly needed search and rescue had we continued with that plan.

We moved down back into the Cheakamus River valley along Highway 99, then into Cal-Cheak. Found a site and set up camp, moving it back about 30 feet after an hour into a clump of trees to stop snow blowing into our enclosure.

Around 9:30pm, we received a push alert about the winter storm warning and decided that the expected snow load on top of what was already in place would be very dangerous, so we hurriedly packed up and moved out.

I almost immediately crashed, failing to make it up a steep hill and sliding back and sideways.

I was very, very lucky that my dad (@carsofwalnutgrove) was there and not only had a winch, but had binge watched enough Matts Offroad Recovery to know how to use his snatch block and tree strap to form an "L" shape with the winch cable to provide horizontal force on the front/rear of the Jeep, pulling me sideways and out of the brush.

We then drove 3km back through deep and blowing snow to close to the highway and a lower altitude. We made camp yet again at 11pm. I basically tossed everything out the back and covered it with a tarp. I was tired.

This morning, we drove back down the highway into Squamish and had breakfast at a beautiful restaurant at a little resort near the mountains in Brackendale.

And now I'm home, hands a little worse for wear, a few bruises and a lot of unpacking/cleaning to do. Thanks for reading!

@carsofwalnutgrove

Kent (COFL)

It's a shame I'll have to ban my own father for doxxing me.

@CB said in One book read, eleven to go:

I’d better figure out what to read next.

@facw Let me know if you have time for a beer in Vancity or something and you can sign the mythical Oppo flag

@TheHondaBro

Unacceptable changes, RIP Oppo, it was better in the old days

@jminer said in OPPO Maintenance tonight at 2000 PST:

I'll be doing some general system maintenance as well as an upgrade to the underlying engine.

I don't want to panic anyone, but Oppo does run on a Kia Theta II engine and it's not holding up well.

@M-T-Blake amazing, jealousy level 1000000

@Huzer Looks great!

It's a great car for someone who just wants a nice car

@jminer you beat me by a couple days haha.

Man Google Music over my Chromecast in 2013 was one of those moments where I felt "this really is the future".

Aw man, memory lane. My "fleet" circa the same time...

@Someoneatacura I think the coffee spot is just a rally point, mostly because that's where I live haha

@jminer YES, so much this. Youtube music suuuuuuucks

@EssExTee

So it looks like Carplay, got it.