April 2020 – Montie Roland, NPDP

Many of us are working from home. Some of us are still going to work everyday. There is a lot of uncertainty on jobs, liberty, and health. I have friends that are asking me what to do next. How do they prepare. So I’m putting together some of those thoughts on what you can do to thrive in the coming months.

Let me start out by saying that I can’t predict what is coming but there are four areas that concern me. It is best to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

My biggest concern is the loss of liberty because of often illegal government overreach in response to the Covid-19 virus. That is a bigger topic than I want to address this morning, so lets look at the other three topics.

Jobs

The number of people unemployed is astronomical. And none of us right now know when our jobs will be in jeopardy or end. Layoffs are are a real threat. Now is definitely the time to reduce spending and pay off an debt. What debts can you eliminate. Do you really need that nice car right now? Could you sell it and buy something less expensive? It may get more and more difficult to sell an expensive car if the economy spirals downward, so it would be better to downgrade now while you still can.

Food

I have two pieces of advice here.

#1 – PLANT A GARDEN! Right now is the time to plan beans and veggies. There is a very real possibility of food shortages over the next 12 months, including meat. Plow up that beautiful yard and put in a garden. There is a good chance that you will be very happy that you did

#2 – Add backyard chickens – having a few chickens gives you eggs everyday. Its easy to do and a great learning experience for the kis.

Security

Make sure you are armed. If people are desperate from layoffs and a family going hungry (possible food shortages) then, they may want what you have. That could put your family at risk. There are three steps to keeping your family safe:

#1 – have the firearms and ammo you need, not just for one person but also for your spouse. Don’t listen to the media, but all the ammo and guns that you want and can afford.

#2 – training is necessary. There are tons great videos online. Take advantage of them. Learn to do what is called dry fire training at home safely. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn.

#3 – planning – Create scenarios and teach everyone what to do in those scenarios. Scenarios include someone kicking in the door at night, someone kicking in the door during the day and someone approaching a family member while you are working in your yard. Failure to plan is simply planning to fail.

Other Things to Do

Get your concealed carry permit. It makes traveling with a handgun so much easier. It also means you don’t have a wait time to buy a handgun. Finally it allows you to carry your handgun in public while concealing it.

Get a pistol permit from your local sheriff. You will need that to buy an handgun in most states.

Bottom Line

The window for preparing for whatever is coming next is closing, so move fast. Grow a garden! Be prepared.

The teardrop trailer has been a work in process. We’ve wanted to add more capability and storage, but I didn’t want to have a big impact on ground clearance or break over angle. Moving water, propane and the spare tire to the trailer means more space in the tow rig (either or Wrangler TJ or 4Runner).

Another challenge is the 200 lb tongue weight limit on the Wrangler. Once we get everything loaded on the trailer, I can check the tongue weight. I had relocated the battery to the rear of the trailer and that will help off set some of the additional tongue weight that we are about to add.

Items for this round of upgrades:

propane tank for use with the oven and especially the shower water heater (which can use a good bit of propane)
2 jerry cans for water or gasoline
winch for the spare tire – wanted to tuck the spare tire between the structure so it didn’t have a big impact on the ground clearance and breakover angle
go to a larger jack on the tongue so i could use a two wheel roller (this part didn’t turn out like I hoped)

First step was to trip check that the bumper on the tow vehicle wouldn’t hit the jerry cans at the minimum turning circle. That also required a Bojangle biscuit since I was already in the Bojangles parking lot. This was just before the virus hit.

Last check of the clearance when the tow vehicle steering is at the maximum travel

Ready to start the fabrication process after touching up paint that wouldn’t be affected by welding or grinding

Once we had the lower guide plate for the jack removed we could start verifying the layout of the can holder, tongue jack, propane tank and spare jack.

Important to test fit the location of everything before welding

Next step is to fabricate simple brackets to attach the tank holder. Then the brackets were attached to the tank holder and squared up before welding the brackets to the trailer frame.

Test fitting and aligning the mounting bars for the jerry can racks

One of the challenges was attaching some sort of frame to the front rail of the trailer frame without getting the weld bead too close to the blue skin and causing heat damage to the skin finish.

We also found a structural weld that was not adequate and could have caused a failure on the trail. The tire winch mount is bolted along the top and welded along the bottom. The weld pattern also addressed the frame weld issue and fixed the weak spot with the bad weld.