The jeep is a beast. Its the straight 6, which will run forever. I really like mine, its just that without a garage, and the spare time to work on it, its just been sitting there for a few months now (hence the dead battery). I've had it for...7 years now, and its been great. Its had some "fun" repairs (replaced a timing chain in an open parking lot during a snow storm in january at school, distributor cap/rotor/plug wires/radiator/Water pump), but also had lots of fun times, and helped a lot of people out.
A photo from a few years ago (the white one on the left).
Full discloser, I make my own hammocks. I actually finished a new one last night.
I decided to make my own instead of buy, mostly because I like to learn skills, rather than just buy things if at all possible. Making a hammock yourself isn't much cheaper than buying a "normal" sized one, but can be about half the price of a "wide/two person" hammock. The main thing you get with a home made one, is the ability to make what you want. Most commercially sold "single person" hammocks run about 4.5ft wide, and ~8-9 ft long. I find those very uncomfortable (the trick with hammock camping is to lay at as much of a diagonal as you can, which makes you lay flat, instead of being curved like a banana). My "homemade" single person hammock is 5 ft wide, and 12 ft long. The one I completed is 6ft wide and 12 ft long.
If you're looking to get into hammocks, I'd say you might look at an
Grand trunk double parachute, or
Eno Doublenest. They're fairly competitively priced (~$50-70), and give a good idea of what hammock camping is all about. They are "two person" hammocks, which means they're about 6ft 6in wide, and around 10ft long, which IMO is much more comfortable than a single person one (I'm ~6ft and ~200lbs and still feel that way). They'll also easily hold two people, so they're "safe".
And the real benefit isn't just the comfort. Its the being off the ground, which means that you can hang where ever there is space, and it doesn't need to be flat/etc. As long as the trees are the right size and far enough apart, its "perfect" enough
.
Anyway, this is a knife forum, so I won't get into too much more (I can be really wordy at times), but if you have more questions about hammocks, feel free to email/etc. I'm not an "expert" yet, but feel that I've got a pretty good handle on things at this point.
Welcome aboard
.
Oh, and I'm a dog person as well, but don't have one at the moment. Here is the last one, who died a few years ago.
EDIT: Imageshack is now charging for the service, and since I didn't pay (I was originally a free customer there), they are deleting my account, which was why the images didn't work :/.
