March/april 2007

Ige & Mike's Ultimate Cruiser Adventure

by Ige Gustavson

The following feature is an excerpt from Toyota Trails, the official publication of TLCA. To read the entire article, join TLCA now!

 

For one week, Mike “Treeroot” Davidson and I took off on the Ultimate Cruiser Adventure. It started a week prior with preparations to the trailer, Mike’s Duramax and his Cruiser—and with making travel reservations and shopping. The Ultimate Cruiser Adventure required 216 gallons of diesel, covered 2,638 miles and included six stops that a Cruiserhead couldn’t pass up…

Sunday, October 29th
Bearings packed... check; oil changed... check; fifteen tires aired up... check; truck packed... check. Pre-road trip inspections, elicit anxiety and giddiness… check. Mike and I are anxious. We’re down to the wire and we lost a day of prep to five inches of snow. Yesterday I went shopping for munchies, drinks and a whip flag. Today I’m bonding with my animals, who I’m sure that upon my return will say “We missed you so we completely destroyed the house.”

Monday, October 30th
Swap diff covers on the 40 to put on the new Blue Torch cover, change front axle fluid in the 40 and rear fluid in the Duramax (neither of which required me being dipped in 90wt), drive all over the Denver metro area looking for one lousy quart of Transynd and swap the tranny filter. Oh yeah—and sell a Cruiser to pay for the trip.

Tuesday, October 31st
Halloween—the Ultimate Cruiser Adventure begins. I don’t like leaving my dog home alone but the trip soon takes my mind off of that. We head to Grand Junction, then south to what appears to be the end of the civilized world before we end up at our first stop: Proffitt’s Cruisers. We drool at the sweet FJ25, the beautiful FJ45 they’re building for some Texan, an HJ61 inspired 60 series, and every other Cruiser model known to the Americas, both north and south. We even get to chat with the boys for a while but with a lot full of rigs awaiting diesel conversions, restorations and custom suspensions, we leave them to their work while we wander both the customer lot and the junkyard in back. A few hours later, we head back to Junction to stay with some fellow Cruiserheads for the night.

Wednesday, November 1st
Breakfast at the IHOP and we’re on the road for stop number two, the Mecca of tradeshows. SEMA!

We roll in later than we expected and I am afraid we might not get our passes before they close, but with a half an hour to spare, we head up to the OHV section. Not long before we hit one of the Toyota booths and run into Bill Van Beek, Regional Rep. for Toyota and fellow Rising Sun member... cool. We chat with him while standing next to a cool looking FJ Cruiser. Toyota lists it as a soft top but it’s more of an H3 looking concept with a full soft moon roof. Somehow the mix of two funny looking rigs comes up with a cool offspring. Bill says that this FJC was built for Toyota and there isn’t any intention of producing them... yet. I need to start the letter writing campaign now. Bill also points out that we have changed time zones... D’oh—we have an extra hour to enjoy SEMA.
Feeling cool that we know someone here, we head off to see what other vendors are around. It isn’t long before we find a familiar sight... the Revtek FJC. We rehash memories of Cruise Moab 06 with Randy Haflich from Revtek, now starting to feel a bit less like out of place tourists, before the announcement that SEMA is closing for the night. We say our goodbyes and head outside to try to find the Trail Team.

In the glow of the overhead lights, we see another familiar sight—TLC’s Icon. As we stare under the hood, someone coming up alongside catches my eye—Christo Slee and his crew! How bizarre! We are hooking up with Cruiserheads all over the place! We’ve officially gotten past anxiety and moved on to giddiness.

A visit to some more Toyotas outside and off in the distance we spot the holy grail—Rod Millen’s retro Cruiser (rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated). If only the security guard standing next to it would go get a doughnut or hit the bathroom so we could steal the cool 45—but no such luck.

At the monorail station, we run into Slee and the gang again and comfortably chat back and forth like businessmen on a commuter train. As they head to their hotel, Mike and I exit in search of food, slot machines and free drinks.

Now imagine yourself in a major city, far from home, walking through a crowded casino (in this case, the Bellagio), and hearing someone calling out your name... what are the chances? But it’s true—some sort of Cruiser force is pulling fellow Cruiserheads to us. We are barely in the door when Kelly Coberly-Waggoner spots me, and she and husband Gary are calling out to us. We are in shock for most of the conversation and the trip to the hotel afterwards. This is just too cool!

Thursday, November 2nd
Horrendous traffic and a nasty brown cloud over Vegas can’t ruin our only full day at SEMA. A chance to check out the retro Cruiser in the daylight, along with an array of restored Toyota pickups that are doing their fair share to keep the crowd attracted just by looking like really cool rigs. It’s neat to see guys walk past muscle cars to check out a 1967 Stout 1900.

Upstairs, we come across Mark Hawley from Metal Tech, then Dave Zartman from Toyota 4WD Owners Magazine. Yep, that’s right, we know people—we belong here at this exclusive tradeshow. We are no longer just a couple peons who build Land Cruisers in our driveways... we are important.

After lunch we check out the new product display shelves, tour the hot rod alley, check out some FJCs, see some scary Scions, some more FJCs, hand built Ford rods, FJCs, the Trail Team at work and more FJCs. No other vehicle is as well-represented as the FJ Cruiser. They are chop topped, dropped, lifted, packed full of stereos, body armor, interior storage, trail gear and junky accessories.

In typical SEMA fashion, we even get to see some stars. Ian Johnson from Extreme 4x4 is wandering around by the OHV course (sorry guys, I don’t see Jessi) and the bald dude from one of the other Horsepower TV shows is upstairs at the Dick Cepek booth talking with a few guys. Another guy must be from one of the shows also because the bald guy thinks I am waiting to get the other guy’s autograph. It would be rude for me to say, “No, actually, I’m here to talk to the Dick Cepek rep.” And in one tent, they’re filming an episode of Overhaulin but no sight of Chip Foose.

The closing call comes again. 8 hours of walking is wearing thin and cold 90 Schilling Scotch Ale at the hotel is calling. The beer is sufficient to rejuvenate us enough to head down to one of those fancy restaurants where the waiters put your napkins in your lap and talk too quietly to be heard for a pre-Surf ‘N’ Turf dinner. An overpriced step above cheap sirloin and canned brown gravy with imitation crab meat and we are off to bed.