OverKill Jeep Thoughts

On Sunday, Oct. 2nd, the Jeep club, northern Illinois Jeep Alliance (www.jeepalliance.org ), that we're members of participated in the parade at Autumn on Parade in Oregon, IL.

We had to be there for line-up at 11am with the parade not starting until 1pm. Not too big of a deal since there were quite a few Jeeps and friends until about 11:30 when it started raining. Of course most of us were not prepared. No rain gear no tops on some of the Jeeps, including ours! We parked them under some huge pine trees and put the floor mats on the seats and a friend of ours, Chris, bought some trash bags to cover the backs.

About 1pm they had us pull out from under the trees and line-up. Great, now we were sitting IN the rain with no protection. At least OverKill had the steel plate on top still, so there was a little protection from straight on rain. We got pretty wet! Then just as we started pulling onto the road at the start of the parade, the rain stopped and the sun came out!!! It turned out to be pretty nice once the parade started going!

During the parade, we climbed up Greg's tires quite a few times. Greg and a couple other big Jeeps forgot to lock in their front-ends so they couldn't do it back but the crowds loved it. OverKill has an air locker. With wet pavement a few of the Jeeps did little burn outs, they loved that too. The club did win the Novelty 1st place trophy for the parade and we didn't even know that there were trophies! That was cool!

What's great about participating in the parades as a club is that people become more aware that off-roading can be a family sport. There are families of all kinds involved. We have our daughter in her custom car seat ( http://www.overkilloffroad.net/14928/index.html ), Another couple had their 2 small daughters, there were others with their teenagers and there were a couple of older teenagers driving their own Jeeps.

It's also fun to watch the little kids' faces when we pull up with a bright big Jeep! They point and their faces light up. Our Jeeps look like big tonka toys to them and they loved it.

The picture on top was the only picture I got and kind of bummed about it but it was too wet to get out the camera. I'm going to have to look into the waterproof set-up that's available for it! The yellow Jeep is Greg's (president of the Jeep club) and of course OverKill is the other one! Here's a couple other shots of Greg's Jeep... http://www.overkilloffroad.net/14901.html