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- Jack Kerouac, 1949. - On the Road. |
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What is the Hazard Assembly? The Hazard Assembly is a community of dirtbag adventurers. People who are, pretty much, anything-goes travelers; adventurers; thrill seekers and life-livers.... On this site they on a wide variety of platforms, in cars or on skis, in kayaks or their hiking boots, whatever... Maybe the dirtbag thing is sort of a compliment? Dirtbags are down with most destinations and on any budget. Any method of transportation, any activity, and even most levels of skeeze provided it's honorable. The dirtbag adventurer usually sees beauty in all life and in all places. It's often in all situations regardless of how hot, ugly, or unappetizing it might be to the average being. Dirtbags are outside-the-box thinkers, when the shit hits the fan, they can be problem solvers and are usually calm under pressure... Their most valuable commodity is their time, the experience, and good friends and they put this above all else. Dirtbags often have an acute understanding of the world, life, and nature. A lot of it comes from being in the environment, living it, understanding it, letting it wreck you as much as you enjoy it... Why's it called the Hazard Assembly? Inevitably it's a little dangerous, out there, here and there... Part of dirtbag adventuring is sometimes risk-taker activity. No harm wished on anyone --get out there and do it safe-- but we figured it'd be a good assembly of all of you out there and all the hazardous shit you do... Where'd the name come from? The answer to that's a little dorky. We put "dirtbag adventuring" into something called nameboy.com and among all the other ideas it spat out "hazard assembly." This one caught our eye as there are neat places all over the world called 'hazard' or sometimes 'hazzard.' Because of all of that, we thought it'd be a good fit... What's up with the 'building stuff' mantra of the site? And what is "Farm Show?" From time to time you'll see some references to Farm Show around the site. They're one of our supporters now but we wrote this first, and then we called them and we honestly had no idea what they'd say about a bunch of dirtbags in mountain towns and deserts (or lusting to be) that are way into the stuff farmers create. There is something about farmer ingenuity. Farm show is possibly the best magazine ever. It's a little rag (with about 200,000 subscribers!) out of the midwest by farmers mostly for farmers. They go under the guise of "the latest products and innovation for farming" but the core of the magazine is the farmers who send the photos and write-ups of all sorts of crazy stuff they build for a variety of missions. It's is so good that they even have something called The Encyclopedia of "Made it Myself Ideas" with about 1200 crazy contraptions farmers have come up with from over 5 years of submissions to the magazine. Things like beer or biodiesel brewing contraptions or maybe even a furnace that runs on corn. The Farm Show web site even has information on how to get a patent... Part of dirtbagging goes along these lines. It's about maybe not having the $$ for some crazy $3,000 contraption for the purpose of dirtbagging (like, maybe even a working car), or maybe making something yourself that someone else hasn't thought of, or repairing something, if you have the skill set. To some, part of dirtbagging might be spending hours or days in a shop perhaps, tediously building something, for the purpose of dirtbagging or just having fun. Well, post up about it, in our stroganoff section. The strog is where it all comes together. And if you don't have the skill set, maybe you can gain it by paying attention to some of the various stuff these guys are doing in the strog. The idea is: post up misc stories and adventures in our forums, usually in the strog. And from there, it's a community. All sorts of people will usually ask questions and jibber-jabber about it and we all benefit. That's basically the idea... Maybe even root each other on... We figure, if you're going to be wasting your time on the Internet, you might as well be doing it with interesting people who are doing the interesting things we all love to do... That, and you can learn a lot of stuff from hundreds of people in one place at one time, even on the internet. What we're talking about: maybe the location of that killer trailhead somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that preferred skeezy hotel in that random town in Mexico. How to put together some crazy contraption for the purpose of dirtbagging. Or maybe some killer surf spot. And hey, we figure you might as well have fun while you're at it. We're basically an online forum community. But we're a unique in that we have a front page that's a blog. The blog basically covers the best of what's happening in the community. We also did some fancy-schmancy software syncing, to make it less annoying, so the login works for both. Yes it's all free. We have a premium membership to help pay the bills but that's optional. You can post on both sides of the site (comment on blog postings and have free reign of the forums). But we only have a few people who actually write blog postings to keep it from being a free-for-all. That said, maybe one of the bloggers should be you. If that's a the case then shoot us an email and we'll take a look. Some writing experience helps but particularly strong participation in our forums goes a long way... We have a network of maybe 10-15 bloggers (or that's the goal eventually) who are a wide variety of adventurers or even legendary dirtbag adventurers. Many are even professional journalists. They cover some of the stuff they do but spend most of their time reading what all of you are up to, in our forums. So our blog is mostly about you. Well, this place is positive! Seriously! We're here to root each other on. That, and provide good info. Share info, photos, stories, that killer margarita recipe, and the other usual crazy-ass shit. Because of this we have little or no tolerance for assholes, and particularly serious assholes. Really, that's the only rule of this place... It's not a competition, it's a support mechanism. Don't be that guy who does down in a blaze of glory especially in a place that at it's root is fairly chill... Also, buying a premium membership, as much as we appreciate your support, unfortunately doesn't buy you any lee-way on being an a-hole. So be positive, try to behave at least a little, try to contribute to this place rather than only take away, and with luck you might even walk away an enlightened person. Or at worst at least know where the trailhead is. Well, to tell you the truth, that's a good question... There's three versions: the long version, the short version, and the really long version. The short version is New Mexico is sort of funky. It smells weird, that delicious and tasty smell of scented cedar all over the whole damn state. The wood they burn there. That, and there really is no substitute for the experience of funky old New Mexico. A couple of us met the famous author John Nichols once at a cheap burrito place in Taos once. He is the guy who wrote The Milagro Beanfield War that Robert Redford made into a movie. Have you ever read that book or seen that movie? It has soul... He rolled up in an '83 Dodge Pickup and looked like he'd been wearing the same jeans for a week. His 4th wife, a hot Mexican 20-something, had just taken him for everything he owned... And he didn't care.... That sort of funky New Mexico. The idea of making a whole web site based off an old license plate, we thought, would sorta be cool. Not sure if you caught that -- this whole site is based off the old New Mexico USA license plate. The cool yellow one (obviously) with the Zia in the middle that I don't think they've made in years. Where it says on this site, above, "The community for dirtbag adventuring," it usually says something like "Bernalillo County" (the county that Albuquerque is in), or it might say "Get Your Kicks Off Route 66." How cool is that? - if you have that neat Route 66 collector edition plate. Route 66 was the old road from Chicago to LA through the hot-ass desert. Old Neil Cassidy and his buddy Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac) zoomed through the desert countless times, once in an old '48 Hudson, before air conditioning in cars, before automatic transmissions, and before they put the Interstates in. "Get your kicks off Route 66" was an old Ella Fitzgerald song that your folks or your Grandfolks might know. You can imagine it was popular enough to put on the plate:  The long version of it all is written up here, about an old '72 Toyota Land Cruiser station wagon I once found on the side of the road in Taos. $225 later I ended up owning it and that old POS saved a doomed-from-the-start month-long ski trip frought with lack of snow, torn ACLs, and food poisoning. Since then I've always had a fondness of New Mexico. If you've made it this far down this page then chances are you probably will too... And the really long version is, well... ...go to New Mexico, and maybe you'll understand. This is where we're serious... The Hazard Assembly & it's members are strongly committed to respect and preservation of the environment and our natural resources. We strongly believe in keeping the places we adventure as pristine as possible and continually looking for ways to minimize human impact to our planet through direct effects and indirect effects (pollution, global warming, etc). Us dirtbags do this by supporting smart environmental initiatives, strong emphasis on renewable energy, and practicing what we preach as much as possible. When using a car or a mountain bike or even your feet, take every possible step to Tread Lightly!  Hazard Assembly participates in various activities related to both preserving our environment as well as keeping trails open with low impact use, and we support and plan to support a number of organizations related to it. Stay tuned shortly as we establish what groups we're supporting as our site grows. Update! We're now a member of 1% for the planet! More on this later.... Thanks for tuning in. Now, go out and enjoy! Hazard Assembly PO Box 1974 2 Wilson Ct RC#2 Park City, UT 84060 Contact us via email (435) 649-0316 or (435) 631-0021 Mobile |
