How does a native Englishman make a difference in America? He falls in love with the natural habitat. Tim Green shares his love for all things Rubicon in this latest episode. Tim is the owner of the Rubicon Gazette page on Facebook, he collects and shares history of the Rubicon Trail over there and shares some of that with us. Give it a listen.
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3:50 –You heard it here first, “America is the best country on the planet!”
6:48 – Hooked on a feeling…
9:04 – Stainless Steel Dave to the rescue
13:58 – Why YOU matter to the trail
17:17 – Spider Lake was an awakening
21:59 – Steaks and Stories
26:41 – the purpose of the Rubicon Gazette
30:39 – protecting a piece of the Trail
35:43 – there’s no substitute for true friendships
37:40 – what we’re missing on the trail (p.s. we see this a lot)
41:21 – Snow wheeling on the Con
52:07 – HAM radios save lives
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:20.190] – Big Rich Klein
All right. Today on Conversations with Big Rich, we have Tim Green from Northern California. He runs the Rubicon Gazette Facebook page and he’s been collecting the history of the Rubicon.
He’s also a property owner in the area. And we’ll talk about all the things that have to do with the Rubicon. So, Tim, before getting into the trail, let’s get in a little bit about Tim. Who is Tim? Where did you grow up and how did you get involved in four wheel drive off road?
[00:01:50.490] – Tim Green
All right, I’ll keep I’ll keep this as short as possible, All right. So long story short, I was actually born here in Sacramento, California, in 1969. My parents, my mother was from England. My father was from the States. My parents divorced when I was two years old. And I ended up back in England with my mother and pretty much grew up there until I was 21 years old.
And then that’s when I came back. That’s when I came back to the States. I’d been back a few times summers here and there. I would come back and visit my father. And if we’re going to get to that, I can tell you 10 years old was the first time I saw South Lake Tahoe and coming from Essex, England, which is just outside of London. And I guess you could joke and say, I grew up a poor boy and just outside of London, coming to see a South Lake Tahoe for the same time.
I’ll never forget it as long as I live coming over the coming of the Hill of 50 and looking down. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. And I honestly think that is probably where my love for the Sierra started. Oh, yeah, no, it was amazing, it was it was just amazing thing to see coming from where I grew up. You know, I imagine it’s London, Essex it’s kind of, it’s big city stuff and everybody’s on top of everybody and come to California.
I mean, I remember the drive over from San Francisco from the airport to Sacramento. I’d never seen such a thing. I mean, it was just it was almost overwhelming. So that honesty was where I think my first love of the Sierras really came into play. And then after that, I came back to the States a few times here and there. I think I was 15. And then I came back again when I was 18. And things in England really, you know, the economy there.
I don’t want to get off into a political thing here. But let’s just say I truly believe America is the best country on the planet. And I know that from experience. And when I turned twenty one, I decided to make the decision to come back and I actually came back and started working for my dad for a while and then kind of got into my own things. So that’s how I ended up back back in the States.
[00:04:12.390] – Big Rich Klein
So how did you get involved with Off Road?
[00:04:12.390] – Tim Green
When I first came back to the States, the first thing when I first came back to live here, I was living with my grandmother at the time. And first thing I did was get in a pickup truck and I just took off. I just had to go see all of this stuff that was around me. I’d never seen such big spaces. I met a couple of friends, had some fast friends. A couple of them were ex Marines.
And we went out and they took me hiking. And the first place I one of the first places I ever went hiking was Horsetail Falls on Highway 50. And I got up in there and again, just absolutely fell absolutely in love with the Sierra Nevadas. So, it didn’t all start with off road. I saw a lot of the western United States hiking around and seeing things. And then we were out there hiking around up in Desolation. And ironically enough, I heard some motors and was talking to some friends of mine and, you know, what’s this all about?
And I saw the jeeps out there. And that’s that was my first taste of the Rubicon. I didn’t even know what I was looking at. So, that’s kind of, so fast forward and a little bit. I met my wife. We got married in ninety six, but we got together in ninety three and Heidi had always wanted, and Kurt Schneider will like this, Heidi had always wanted a Jeep Wagoneer. And when I say Wagoneer I mean the old school woody Wagoneer type thing and a friend of mine had a CJ7 for sale and I thought, well hell, a Jeep’s a Jeep. Right? So I bought the CJ7 for twelve hundred bucks and that vehicle is still currently sitting on my driveway. That’s been my only wheeler. It’s been modified. Just it’s that’s all I’ve ever owned and that’s, that’s morphed into what it is now. But so we had the Jeep and Heidi and I spent a lot of time up in the Bowman area, Bowman Lake, just off from Highway 20 and Blue Lake in there. And then I’d heard about this Rubicon thing and we went out there was just going to be around 95-96 somewhere that we went out there had no idea what the Rubicon was and no idea what to expect.
And I remember going through Georgetown and driving out. We got to the spillway and I started up Hot Rock there and my clutch linkage fell apart.
And it was it was just an overwhelming feeling of, oh, wow, this is embarrassing. I mean, there’s Jeeps everywhere. I don’t know anybody. And so that was my first time. 1995, putting my tires on the Rubicon. And from then it just it just kind of morphed from there. I, I met some friends, met some people from the Rough and Ready Jeep Club and they, they offered to take me out. READ MORE
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