Another spring has sprung upon us and as always, I have procrastinated on projects just like everyone else. You put stuff off then you realize it is going to take you much longer to finish than you first thought. I watched Todd at Aqualu working furiously on his new big block Caddy-equipped four-wheel independent snow machine (yes, it will be an upcoming feature) to get ready for Winter Camp, as I myself was furiously working on my own engine transplant. At the same time, I was helping a buddy get his fuel injection tuned and getting a set of Smurfields in for another snow wheeler. Then we ran into a power steering box problem on the YJ and PSC was great in sending a new box to us in Washington so we could tow the YJ down and install it in the wee hours of Monday to be able to take part in the Trail Tour in Oregon that day. I also had the Warner Boys waiting for coils at my Washington parts drop location a day before they too headed for Oregon for the DTT tour.

So despite having six guys working on his Land Cruiser, and I working to all hours, Todd went off to golf in the USA and I finished off some paper work before heading to the DTT in Oregon. Both of us missed Winter Camp for the first time in years - a very sad thing.

I have no idea why at times we all wait so long to get our projects together in the spring - but at times it does take a glaring deadline for us to bust our asses and get our rigs ready. Most of the time that is Moab for me - but I skipped this year to attend the Oregon trip - guess I should have pretended I was still going to Moab and I would have made Winter Camp - oh well.

Let's change gears...

Recently there was a special day at the Vancouver Sun newspaper. David Suzuki was the guest editor. I bought the paper on the ferry on the way to Victoria without a thought as to this "special" day. I was very dismayed by the entire tone of the newspaper and I wish in protest I would have bought another paper.

I think I need to crawl under a rock, as the world is apparently coming to and end! It seems it doesn't matter what we to do - enviro-nuts like David Suzuki, Western Canadian Wilderness Committee, Greenpeace and the rest - think it isn't enough.

I think along with the hundreds of pages of doom and gloom they could have focused on some of the good things that are happening. There are plenty of positives in all corners of the globe. I fly over this country all the time and from 30,000 feet there are vast, seemingly endless areas of green while these groups want you to think BC is one big clear cut with no fish in the lakes and oceans and giant spews of pollution at every turn.

I hope we work our way out of this mind set and continue to work on some positives. We can all do better, but we still can have fun, enjoy the back woods, eat fish, hunt and be proud to be Canadians.

Oh, and have a look at the picture above the Suzukis of the world. This was what the Parks department in the Okanagan calls "stopping off-road destruction". Local wheelers crossed a park to reach Little White Mountain, which is a popular trail used for years, not far from Kelowna. The top of the mountain is not a park but the park surrounds the mountain. They complained wheelers were digging up mud (one small patch, by the way), so they tore down hundreds of trees, dug huge, deep ditches for hundreds of yards to stop a few trucks from crossing the park. Give your heads a shake! Yeah, we paid for that with our tax dollars too.

Albert Vandervelde
Editor, 4WD Magazine