Do You get frustrated ?

Hi Robin,
Jeep is a four letter word that means trouble, keep well away from them. As for the radio issues, well you are a radio genius so you can't really blame people for bringing their radios to you. Installed a new radio/cd/bt the other day. To early to tell what its performance is like, but if the light show it puts on is any indication it should by great.
Cheers, Chris

My last trip was a kayak trip down the upper Clarence. The station we were staying on had a 10 k.m. 4wd track into the place. When booking, it stated that high clearance SUV's can make it, but not towing. My friends were running a bit late for the Friday afternoon rendezvous so I had a couple of settlers while waiting. Some time later I heard a racket and looked up to see my mate's sister pull in in her mitsubishi lancer towing a camper trailer. I swear rum and coke came out my nose.
Suffice to say she didn't read that bit on the web page, and I had to drag the trailer back out a couple of days later.

Good one Robin

I organised a group of four cars, us included, for a Nth to Sth Canning Stock Route drive. Ours was the ONLY car to get past Stretch Lagoon near Billiluna. Despite them being asked to get a thorough check done by a good 4wd mechanic before leaving, not one of the three others did and guess what . . Simple things went wrong. Not leading another group. That's it. Fini!!!!!

Maybe then we will be able to completely relax on the last night at home and have a good nights sleep with an early, on time, departure.

I'm told that if folk aired down properly there'd be no corrugations outback.

I'd like to see that.

Trip Coordinator might be a better term to use than Leader.
Besides potentially having a legal responsibility when 'leading' people anywhere, sometimes people expect the leader to wipe their bot bots a bit too much !!

People on forums who like to lead trips from time to time have this problem for sure.
Sometimes participants are unknown to them, so I guess you should really only take people who you know are up to the task of preparation and execution of trips if these are more extended or remote.

I like to say, I'm doing this trip, here's my plan, if anyone wants to come along, then you're welcome to do so.
Rarely do I drive up front, at least not all the time.
Usually we have a different person up front route finding, and swap tail end too, so everyone gets a little experience of those positions.
Both are optional, some just like to sit in the middle and plod along happily enjoying the drive there.

For the most, I can suss out people pretty well by the way they talk (or not talk) about various matters, and as long as people participate in the preps, pre trip meeting(s) etc, and show a little more than a vague interest in being totally organised / prepared for a trip, then it usually works out fine.

I don't even like passengers let alone other cars. There are a few people I like to travel with but coordinating times and dates is an issue so not always possible. Trip leading is a bit like herding a flock of aggravating sheep, do you really want company that badly?

Shame but true. We tend to be solo travellers more often than not because it is hard to find folk who have the same interests and attitudes. My pet hates in fellow travellers:
1. those whose first request over the radio when we are first setting off is "can we stop by the nearest supermarket so we can stock up on supplies?"

2. those who just want to cover the max distance in the day and complain when we stop to look at some interesting view/bird/plant/animal

3. want to wash their vehicles down whenever they come to a river

4. need to find a shower/campground in preference to bush camping

5. do not keep track of their fuel/water/supplies and then get huffy when others are not keen to share

6. do not want to take their turn in being the lead vehicle for the day

7. stop off somewhere without letting others know and then complain that we did not wait

8. have not done any homework about the history or geography relevant to the trip and constantly ask questions

9. don't take care of books/maps etc which you lend then - never do now

Have experienced all the above when travelling in a group.

as you can see I am a grumpy old man, too set in his ways and am best on my own

G'day Robin
Frustration seems to emerge from a gap between reality and expectation. FWIW I would not organise or try to organise a group of more than two or three vehicles - and for all sorts of reasons beyond the likelihood of frustration.

But getting back to that gap and reading the posts to this thread, the expectation seems to be that people will take personal responsibility, contribute to the collective responsibility of their group and avoid imposing unreasonably on the (collective responsibility of the) group by being ignorant or inept. Back in my day (insert blahs) it was known as being considerate of others. These days reality is somewhat different, and maybe it always was.

Some of what's missing is knowledge and experience, but for my $0.02 that's not really the issue. Given awareness and will ignorance is curable, and experience can be acquired. The big problem, from my POV, is the lack of consideration for and the immature dependence on, others.

As the americans say, there are people who you would ride the river with and people you wouldn't. It's one version of a "no bleep s" policy. Depending on "the river" in question there can be room for the inexperienced as long as they understand what that entails.

In a couple of months I'll be a novice again when I go fiy fishing for bones on Christmas Island (the mid pacific one) and I'm looking forward to it, understanding what means and requires of me.

Cheers
Mark

I belong to a 4WD Club where all the members are retired, they are sometimes referred to as off-peak clubs. Now if you are retired these are great as members have time and have many common interests. Club trips are usually organised by one person who invites others to join them as their guests. When you join the Club you go through a DA (Driver Awareness) course where you are shown the basics of 4WD driving and on how trips are run and what is expected of participants. On trips there are two rules 1. The organiser/leader is always right. 2. When the organiser/leader is wrong, refer to rule one.
For extended trips one or two meetings before hand where the organiser/leader sets out his/her/their plan and what the requirements are in the way of equipment and what is expected of everybody. This usually leads to great trips. I have been on extended trips of over 12 vehicles and while they are different to a small group everyone I have been on has been great. There are nearly 300 members in our club and there is not one member I would not go away with. One of the best parts of a Club trip is you can tackle places that are to difficult and remote to do on your own safely. It is a sight to see a 80 something year old in a non-turbo troopy on skinny tyres driving east to west over huge sand dunes in the northern Simpson Desert and making them look like mole hills.
If you are not retired it is much harder to find travelling companions who you can get along with and have the same timetable and so the issue that are being highlighted here can become issues.

Firstly, I rambled on about being told all the time to "drive to the conditions" and what a "safe speed is". Then I deleted it all because of the risk of upsetting those who say it at every opportunity, yes every opportunity, and even when it's off topic.

I wonder how many feel the same. I also wonder how many will respond. Interesting.

I will risk it and will be interested in peoples thoughts.

Phil

PS Got a flack jacket on

In planning trips I have developed the following theories / rules

1)Always make sure that members of every car have similar experience & attitudes
2)Everyone ignores all planning until 1 - 2 weeks out from the trip, then they want to add their thoughts and side trips, even though the planning has been 12 months and all agreed 3 months out and this will mean rethinking food, water and fuel.
3)Planning complexity, and the probability of trip issues are proportional to the N squared rule, where N is the number of cars on the trip.

1 Car = 1 complexity unit.
2 Cars = 4
3 Cars = 9
4 Cars = 16
5 Cars = 25 ( TILT!)
Double those numbers if one or more cars are inexperienced. Multiply them by 4 if there is a family that hasn't done remote camping / trips before.
4) 3 cars is a good limit and 4 cars is an absolute limit.
5)Email isn't a very good tool to plan trips. Side conversations screw it up. Wiki's such as google are a great way to organise a plan in one place.
6)Some people can't be made to share the workload, no matter what. "Oh, I'll have a coffee too since you are already making it" while sitting in their chair is the most frequent thing you will hear from that type.

And yes it does drive me nuts when we agree to set out on the first day from say Broken Hill at 7AM on a date 4 months away. Then on that morning, someone has to wait till 9AM to do some last minute shopping. "Don't worry, I'll catch up". Right. We don't even know where we are going to camp that night, so we all just have to wait 2 hours, which turns into 3.