About 10 years ago, Chuck Coble told me a story from his motorcycle days in the 70’s. He and his buddies would go out into the desert at night and one of them would go hide. That person would shoot up a flare or a rocket and everyone else would race to see who could…

When I became a member of Idaho Off Road, I bet 80% of the members were into rock crawling. There were tons of lifted, locked Jeeps and buggies with V8s and it seemed that everybody enjoyed it. All I wanted to do was get my Jeep ready for rocks. Now, 12 years or so later,…

Muti-Club Run, March 25–27, 2021 Friday For this year’s joint club run, Lynette and I were taking James, our grandson, on his first camping and wheeling trip. We over-packed the motorhome because we didn’t know how this was going to go with a three-year-old. To quash the suspense, he did awesomely. No problems. He will…

One of my earliest memories is coming out of my bedroom before sunrise. My dad was hard at work at the center island in the kitchen. He had a blazing fire roaring in the stove, and his tongue stuck slightly out of his mouth as he focused on writing something. He was making a list….

March 13 is my birthday. Last year, the world ended on my birthday — schools canceled, work suspended, no sports, the beginning of this bullshit “new normal.” If you need a review of how shitty last year was, here is the story I wrote about March 2020. So besides the normal, existential feeling of getting another…

I’ve been bad at blogging. My goal after football season was to publish once a week, and I had done well since November. The last month or so, I have completely failed. I do think I have a good reason, or at least an excuse, so I thought I would write about that today. It…

January 31, 2021 Gabe, Howard, Harvey, and I met to run some rocks. The wind chill was brutal and Harvey and I joked in the parking lot about how smart we were to leave our doors on for today. We decided to run Gatekeepers and then Meatgrinder and Dirty Little Secret. Once headed up Reynolds…

“I’m sure glad I have a brand new, 10” LED lightbar sitting on my workbench,” I grumbled out loud to myself. I knew it was bright as hell because I had hooked it up once to my Jeep’s battery, and I remembered how blindingly bright it had been, which, at the moment, would have been…

January 1, 2021 Thirty-one rigs met at Albertson’s in Emmett for a High Desert Off Road Hangover Run. We went up Sheep Creek and cut over to 2nd Fork. Unfortunately, the entire way had been plowed, so it was little more than a dirt road drive. Since Howard, Gabe, and Harvey were going, I took…

All week long, I have been ruminating on the events in Washington, D. C. and my reactions to it. I don’t want to write about that. I want to write about why I’m a football coach. Football is the ultimate team sport. It takes lots of little guys, big guys, slow guys, fast guys, and…

I had an excellent year off road. I keep a journal and track when, where, and with whom I go wheeling. At the end of the year, I count up and remember my off road year in review. Here are the highlights. No names have been changed to protect the innocent. Some dates and runs…

Look, we both knew this was coming. It just isn’t working out. 2020, you’re a bad girlfriend. 2020, it started off fine. I envisioned our relationship as some form of the 1920s. I was especially looking forward to flappers, fashion, and speakeasies. The Roaring 2020’s sounded cool and I was ready to Jay Gatsby myself into…

These are truths I have learned as a 23 year Varsity football coach. ALL decisions — every decision, every time — is made with the following decision-making paradigm: Program first, Players second, Coaches third. There is no exception to this rule. Parents have NO idea how much time high school football coaches spend trying to help their sons. And…

I remember sitting in a conference room in a random Best Western hotel somewhere outside of Portland, Oregon. The scratchy, fabric chairs were arranged in rows before a lectern. The team lounged around, listening to coaches review the game plan before heading to our rooms for bed check. Jeff Olson, our head coach, was talking…

Pivot has become the educational buzz word of 2020.  I hate it. When I think of a pivot, I think of a center pivot in the field, providing water for agriculture. It’s a nice, solid, timed mechanism that moves in a predictable arc on a schedule, doing its job. Tuesday at 12:30, I found out…

Brock came up to me after class, the way students do when they have something they want to say to a teacher. “Dad, thanks, that was really inspiring.” “Thanks, but explain. Which part? What are you talking about?” “When you talked about the AP Test and how we were going to score well on it…

Winning, at anything, is not normal. There can only be one winner from all the teams who start. This seems like a simple concept, but the more I think about it, the more it matters. Winning is not the status quo. Of all the teams in a conference, only one will win the conference. Only…

Drinking my coffee Birch trees swaying in the wind A lonely leaf falls

The Last Week of July Nathan White Aug 2 · 7 min read Leaving the pavement for a week of dirt (Photo by the author) Every year, for almost all of my life, I have had plans for the last week of July. Nothing gets scheduled during this time. Nothing gets talked about or planned for this time….

(Photo by Lynette White) Lava rocks sound different than other rocks under your tires. I have put my Jeep tires on lots of rocks in lots of places, but Rim Butte OHV Park has rocks that sound almost hollow. When they roll out from under you unexpectedly, they sound like they have space inside of…