A mobile pet groomer servicing Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, Woodinville, Issaquah, Sammamish and the greater Seattle area.

So I made the first river crossing without a problem, it’s probably about 18 20 inches of water and the FJ made it through in 4 high with no real effort. I came to the second crossing wicth leads into the river bed trail it’s self and noticed there was a unsettling amount of water there. I debated on going any further at that point since I had been to the river before and knew that it was almost entirely loose sand on the bed. But like the idiot I was that day I decided to trudge on through. I made it to the first bend on pretty solid ground which instilled a false sense of security in me as I plowed into the 15 or so inch deep water. Again, I got nervous and toyed with the idea of pulling completely out of the water on to a bank in the middle of the bed. I decided that the bank was too loose and I would probably just sink into and get stuck – bad decision. I plowed further into the river and hit a bed of quick sand which sank the FJ instantaneously up to the bottom of the driver’s side door. I opened my door and watched it scrap across the top of the sand.

I knew I was not getting out of that by myself so I got out and took the long walk of shame through the quick sand, randomly sinking up to my knees in certain places and started begging the locals for help. I introduced my self as the latest idiot to get his rig stuck in the river bed to a nice elderly guy named Dick and he agreed to help me out with his Jeep Wrangler Sahara Unlimited. Dick came down the river bed and we both realized we needed more chains or tow-straps so he called up his friend Dave who brought a 30 foot chain and his own Jeep Wrangler Sahara. Dick warned me that Dave was going to give me some sh!t but he was a nice guy. I told Dick that I deserved anything Dave could dish out especially if he could help get me out of that river bed. Dave told me it was one of his long time dreams to “bail out one of these new Toyotas” and I told him I was glad to make his dreams come true. Anyway, we got the two Jeeps hooked up to the FJ in tandem and pulled it out without any issue at all. I thanked Dave and Dick for their help and offered to buy them dinner but they turned me down. But Dave did request that I not come back until he was on vacation later in the year – lol. I told them sorry for the inconvenience brought on buy my mental lapse and Dave told me not to worry and now I can help pull someone out some other day. We all had a good laugh, they told me not to worry about inconvenience my temporary mental lapse provided and went our separate ways.

On my way out I came to the first crossing and what do you know – instant karma – there’s a group of kids stuck in a 85ish Chevy 4×4 pickup. I turned back around to Dave’s house and got his tow chain and made my way back to the Chevy. When I got there the kid’s father had shown up with his own 2WD truck and chain but was unable to pull them out. So I threw the chain on our trucks, pulled up on the sandy embankment, put the FJ in 4-low, put the rear locker on and eased them out without issue. I finally took Dave’s chain back to him and thought about my lessons learned on the way back:

#1: Don’t drive in the Hassayampa river bed when there’s water. Water + Sand = quicksand.

#2: If you don’t have a friend or a winch to pull yourself out with at least carry something like 50 to 100 feet of chains and straps to ease the pain of others trying to help you.

#3: If you’re not sure about a water crossing get out of your vehicle and walk it – if you get stuck you’re going to get wet anyway. And this way at least you wont be a wet asshole begging locals to bail you out.

Well it finally happened. After years of avoiding blogging I’ve gone and made my own. For years I preached the evils of blogging: “You realize the overwhelming majority of the world does not give a sh*t about what you have to say”, “Isn’t a little presumptive to put your thoughts on the internet?”, “Do you really believe yourself to be so interesting that you deserve storage space on a server, a URL and the bandwidth present your halfbaked thoughts to the rest of the world”, and the big lebowski – “Only douche bags have blogs”.

Then more and more of my friends started writing blogs, a few even wrote their own blogging software, and then I realized something – if only douches blogged and so many my friends do it then I must be a douche by association. So from this day henceforth all of you I accused of being douches can be comforted by the fact that I’ve succumbed to your d-bag ways.