Other Hobbies?

[cataclysm80]

Yal can come out here any time

That sounds awesome, I'm sure my wife would LOVE it!

I grew up by highway 50 in Kansas, East of you a ways.
We were up in the area around 2009 and visited the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center West of Colorado Springs, and it was pretty amazing.
It's a bit of a drive from Florida, but we've been tossing around the idea of taking the Jurassic Jeep to Colorado, and then North a ways to the Badlands sometime after it's done.

[Rev-It-Up]

I've wanted to get some bees, but not sure how to keep them alive in winter?   

I play with bees ... does that count? 

I've seen folks up in Maine keep their bees warm during winter by wrapping the boxes with tar paper...anything that is weatherproof and can be used as insulation. There are some great videos out there about it. Of course the main thing is to make sure they have enough food and water. Our neighbor also keeps bees and had about 14 hives at the beginning of winter. He has lost 7 of his hives already and it hasn't been that cold of a winter. We believe he just didn't feed them enough. 

[XeGnome]

I've wanted to get some bees, but not sure how to keep them alive in winter?   

I play with bees ... does that count? 

We believe he just didn't feed them enough. 

Bees can survive some horrid cold (more so than we can) if there are enough of them and they are kept dry. The can't handle wet cold.  They shiver together and keep each other warm (think of a penguin huddle).  Rev is completely right, we keep our bees over winter by feeding them.  Fat bees are happy bees.

[Cuda Cody]

It's something I'm going to do someday.  Thanks!   

I've wanted to get some bees, but not sure how to keep them alive in winter?   

I play with bees ... does that count? 

We believe he just didn't feed them enough. 

Bees can survive some horrid cold (more so than we can) if there are enough of them and they are kept dry. The can't handle wet cold.  They shiver together and keep each other warm (think of a penguin huddle).  Rev is completely right, we keep our bees over winter by feeding them.  Fat bees are happy bees.

[MOPAR FANATIC]

  I Got stung waaaaaaay to many times when I was young,i'm deathly afraid of them.keep em away from me 

[usraptor]

I used to run but then COPD and a full knee replacement stopped that.  Rode ATVs (Kawasaki Brute Force 750) all over Utah but then two major back surgeries put an end to that.  I still ride my 2000 Harley Heritage.  My primary passion, besides restoring my 70 'Cuda  is Long Range Fishing out of San Diego and building/wrapping fishing rods.  Here's a picture of my Harley, my personal best Tuna (247lbs) caught last Nov and two spinning rods I just finished for my twin grand daughters upcoming birthdays. BTW, there are no decals or paint used on these rods.  It's all thread work; either wrapped or weaved.

[Cuda Cody]

That's a lot of time and love in those rods!   

[Rev-It-Up]

Those rods are gorgeous! Wow!

[usraptor]

Thanks Cody and Rev-it-up.  Considering I'm just a hobbyist when it comes to rob building, you're right about the time involved in them.  But it's worth it.   

[cataclysm80]

I'm an amateur paleontologist.   

That's really cool!
Is there any particular region that you focus on?

My wife loves dinosaurs.
One of the multiple Mopar projects we're working on currently, is building her a screen accurate Jurassic Park movie Jeep.
1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara with some custom painted red stripes, BF Goodrich tires one size larger than stock, Ramsey REP6000 winch, Mopar tow eyes, modified Mopar light bar, Jabsco motorized lights, KC Hi-Lites amber fog lights, and a whip antenna with CB radio.
It's a pretty straight forward build, but there's no reproduction parts, and a few things are difficult to find after 25 years.

Sounds like that is going to be a really cool project.  Please post up pictures when the project is coming along.  First I have heard of someone doing a jurassic movie look alike.     

Since I was posting pictures of another one of our projects, I thought I'd add this picture here.
The Jeep on the left is what we started with last November.
The Jeep on the right is one of the actual movie Jeeps, located Nearby at Universal Studios.
It's great to have an actual Jeep nearby for reference.  Enough years have went by though that it's sadly missing some parts, and Universal had it repainted by someone who didn't put the Jurassic logo back on, or the red stripes and numbers back in the correct location, or even put the same numbers back onto the Jeep!  This is Jeep 12 from the movie.  The one Nedry tries to escape in when he's eaten by the procompsognathus & dilophosaurus.  It doesn't have the screen used tires on it anymore either, so it took some effort to determine the correct tire size.

We have a ways to go still, but we've made some progress.  We're still in the parts gathering stage.
We have the Sahara Jeep with the aluminum wheels, which is what's really needed to start.  A lot of the interior parts are specific to only Sahara models.
Luckily, the Jeep we found had a Mopar Performance light bar.  These have been discontinued for years and tend to rust, so they're hard to find.  It needs shortened 1 inch, and a special plate fabricated to mount the bigger lights on top.
The Mopar Performance Tow Eyes are another discontinued part that's hard to find.  We had a friend remove the originals from the real Jeep at Universal and make duplicates.  He put the originals back on the Universal Jeep afterward.
The KC amber fog lights have also been discontinued for years, but we managed to track down a pair.
We don't want to ride around on 25 year old tires, so we got the current version of the correct tire, which looks about the same from the side view, but has a slightly different tread pattern.
The winch is another part that's been discontinued for years.  By combining parts from two similar models of winch, we're able to get pretty close to the right thing.  A lot of the winch parts were used on multiple winch models.  Replacement winch decals will be difficult.  We can always swap to a more accurate winch if we ever manage to track one down.
The Jabsco motorized lights are still readily available, but we haven't bought them yet.  Been focused on the difficult parts.
The Jabsco lights will require some custom trim parts that Universal manufactured.
We also still need the whip antenna.  Have to figure out what is the correct one to have.  It's not a stock Jeep part, and it's missing off the Jeep at Universal.

Plus we have some regular Jeep parts that just need replaced or fixed after all these years of use.
I need to figure out what gears to use in the differentials to get the best gas mileage.  This will be a show Jeep and used for some daily driving, so my wife doesn't really need off road gears in it.

Once we're done rounding up parts, we'll do a full disassembly / restoration / repaint, and put it all together.

[Cuda Cody]

Going to be a cool Jeep when you are done.  Never seen anyone do that yet.   

[cuda hunter]

It's a first for myself as well.

That's gonna be an awesome jeep.  I love how much knowledge you have about the jeep, the movie and specifics of things Universal did to the jeeps for the movie.

Please make a thread for this jeep.  This would be a cool build to watch.  Are you on any jeep restoration sites?

procompsognathus & dilophosaurus,  Both very cool dino's.  And actually period correct for "jurassic" park.    would hate to run into either of those.  Let's hope we don't bring that dna back to light.
You know they found pliable dinosaur tissue in a T rex leg bone in the last year.   SCARY

[Marc70challenger]

Weapons.  Firearms, knives ... I like them all.  Most were lost in boating accident few years back though.

[cuda hunter]

I love some knives and firearms.  Swords and spears included.

What is your favorite firearm? 

Weapons.  Firearms, knives ... I like them all.  Most were lost in boating accident few years back though.

[ChallengerHK]

I love some knives and firearms.  Swords and spears included.

I used to know a blacksmith. One day he showed me this spear he made, about 8 feet long or so. I asked him what he was going to do with that, and with a perfectly straight face he said "I'm going to hunt bear." So I told him that was crazy, and asked him if he at least had somebody with him for backup. He said "Sure. There's a guy behind me with a bow."