Former land use officer for Red Rocks, history buff and teacher, video star, David Adams has an impressive resume that includes handling wheeling with grace and notoriety despite his mobility issues. David shares his life history, his addiction to wheeling and Jeep grills and the accommodations necessary to stay out on the trail. It’s a great listen!
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4:16 – “if you get shot down, here’s $10K to bribe your way out of the country”
7:41 – my wiring sucks
12:35 – you’re never going to be a construction worker, you’ve got to do well in school
16:26 – I wanted a Jeep so I could still get out in nature
25:17 – I was the land use officer for 13 years
37:50 – Pritchett Canyon is just iconic
50:37 – the way you reduce damage is to expand the number of trails
1:00:51 – …I literally bent my steering wheel with my face
1:17:37 – I keep the old girl, she’s cantankerous, she breaks down and has issues, always need something, but that’s what all Jeeps are,
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:47.770] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s conversations with Big Rich, we have David Adams. David is out of southern Utah. I’m not sure exactly where he’s from or where he got his start. Just like you guys, you’re going to learn a lot of information. You may know Dave from Truck Night on America and he’s been in a lot of videos. He’s a disabled wheeler, he has a hand controlled vehicle. And Dave has been a friend for a long time and done a lot of stuff in Moab, but now he’s a sand hollow native, you might say, or one of the sand hollowites. I don’t know how you guys call each other. Anyway, David, thank you so much for coming on board and sharing your story with us.
[00:02:33.670] – David Adams
You’re welcome, Rich. It’s my pleasure. Glad to be here.
[00:02:36.540] – Big Rich Klein
Excellent. So Dave, let’s find out all about you. So where were you born and raised?
[00:02:43.390] – David Adams
So I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My dad was a military back during the Vietnam war and that was the last place that he was stationed in and they liked it. And so my parents stayed there and so that’s where I grew up, on the front range in Colorado.
[00:02:58.450] – Big Rich Klein
Awesome. I know a lot of people from the front range, especially from Colorado Springs, because we raced out there at Ram off road park for a number of years.
[00:03:07.030] – David Adams
Right? Yeah.
[00:03:08.330] – Big Rich Klein
So how are things when you were a kid out there, you’re of that age to where things are probably still pretty rural, is that correct?
[00:03:18.560] – David Adams
Right. Yeah. When I was growing up in Colorado Springs. It was still a fairly small little town. I mean, you go back and you look at it now, and town has just changed so much. Where I grew up, I mean, it was all fields up north of that, actually. When you would drive up the Air Force Academy, you’re driving in the middle of nowhere, and now it’s staying near full solid all the way up to Monument, Colorado. So it’s changed a lot.
[00:03:45.650] – Big Rich Klein
Right. So your dad was military. Was he with the Air Force or was he with the army base down there? Okay.
[00:03:53.580] – David Adams
He was Air Force. He actually had just graduated from college in 67, and he got a draft notice. And so he showed up to the local army recruiter, and they said, infantry or artillery? And he said, no, thank you, and went next door and joined as an officer in the Air Force.
[00:04:10.610] – Big Rich Klein
Perfect. What was his duties in the Air Force?
[00:04:16.990] – David Adams
He was an accountant. He was an accountant. That was his career. So he was actually spent a year in Thailand working with a lot of the personnel that were over there as they would fly missions over into Vietnam. He was one of them was responsible of giving them basically their bribe money. So you get shot down here is $10,000 cash to try to help bribe your way out of the country. So he did all that kind of stuff and got some interesting stories. He was one of the last few in country as basically an accountant, making sure that everything was accounted and taken care of. As the Viet Cong, we’re literally coming into the streets in Vietnam.
[00:04:54.380] – Big Rich Klein
Oh, wow. Okay, that’s wild. So he was there at the embassy then? Probably, yes. Okay, interesting. So then growing up, did you get to see your dad a lot as a young child or with the yeah, okay.
[00:05:13.490] – David Adams
Yeah, by the time I was born, he’d gotten out. He got RIF’d after the war, so he’d been in for nine years, and then he got into the civilian world as an accountant and various different office manager and stuff like that.
[00:05:26.920] – Big Rich Klein
Okay. What was your life like as a young child in that area? Did you guys get outdoors a lot?
[00:05:37.830] – David Adams
I was always really into the outdoors. I grew up very active in the Boy Scouts of America, all the way from the old Cub Scout at age eight and then working through all of that as a teenager. Through high school. I was very active in Boy Scouts. I worked at a bunch of different summer camps up in the Colorado Rockies. We’re going camping every month. Obviously, with my disability, I can only do so much, although back then it wasn’t as bad as it’s progressed now. So I can never run and jump and stuff like that, but I could ride a bike, I could hike, I could do things like that. And so I was very active in the outdoors. I’m the youngest of four by a significant margin. My nearest sibling is six years older than me. Well, so kind of as I got to high school, I was almost like an only child. And so my friends I had in the scouting and stuff like that were huge to me. And I just loved every opportunity I could to get out in the outdoors and enjoy that opportunity, especially growing up there in Colorado.
[00:06:40.330] – David Adams
I loved it.
[00:06:41.120] – Big Rich Klein
Right? Yeah. And right there in the Front Range like that, I mean, it’s pretty amazing. You come down out of the mountains and yeah, you’re still at a pretty high elevation, over 5000, 5500ft there at the base. But you get into the real high elevations and the change is really dramatic. I remember that going up onto Pike’s Peak and looking out and going, holy. I mean, it just like it’s a wall drop right there. So you guys, your camping opportunities and everything, we’re really close, but up at high elevations.
[00:07:20.130] – David Adams
Yeah, the summer camp that I worked out there in the Pikes Peak Council, I mean, I think our base camp was at like, 9200ft or something like that. READ MORE
