EP105 Creating the Impossible: The Stories Behind Rick Dobbertin’s Legendary Builds

About the Guest:

Rick Dobbertin is a renowned engineer, fabricator, and entrepreneur known for his groundbreaking work in the field of custom car building and vehicular engineering. He gained fame in the 1980s for his work on high-performance pro street cars, including the iconic Nova and J2000 builds. Rick’s inventive spirit led him to create the Dobbertin Surface Orbiter, an amphibious vehicle made from a 1959 milk tanker that logged 33,000 miles across 28 countries. Currently, Rick runs Dobbertin Performance, a company specializing in high-performance automotive components.

Episode Summary:

In this riveting episode of "Becoming UnDone," host Toby Brooks interviews Rick Dobbertin, a legendary figure in the world of engineering and custom car creation. Known for his incredible innovations and transformative approach to vehicular design, Rick takes us on an exciting journey through his career – from his early fascination with mechanical objects to the creation of the legendary Dobbertin Surface Orbiter, and his radical shifts into various engineering territories. Engaging and insightful, the conversation illuminates how Rick's relentless curiosity and inventiveness propelled him into crafting vehicles that pushed boundaries and redefined possibilities.

Rick's journey is a story of awe-inspiring achievements and personal trials as he narrates the challenges and triumphs of building some of the most audacious machines known in the automobile world. His ventures include the pioneering hot rods of the 1980s pro street movement, like the J2000 and the Nova, which featured cutting-edge designs and innovative engineering. The episode delves into Rick’s relentless pursuit of pushing the envelope, from the engineering marvel of his amphibious surface orbiter to his robust performance components business, imparting invaluable insights into the ingenuity and resilience that drive transformational life achievements.

Key Takeaways:

• Rick Dobbertin's transformative impact on the pro street car scene began with remarkable builds like the Nova and J2000, which pushed the boundaries of car engineering.
• The Dobbertin Surface Orbiter project demonstrates Rick's ability to merge theoretical ideas with practical engineering, culminating in an amphibious vehicle capable of traversing both land and sea.
• Rick shares how obsession and dedication can both fuel achievement and bring personal and financial challenges, shedding light on the labor-intensive creativity in automotive engineering.
• Through reflective anecdotes, Rick discusses the evolution of his work, underlining the importance of balancing personal passions with professional and familial responsibilities.
• Rick’s current venture, Dobbertin Performance, exemplifies his enduring commitment to innovation, offering high-performance automotive solutions worldwide.

Notable Quotes:

1. "I don't consider myself in the top… because I know what went into it, and I'm pretty much just an average person."
2. "This is just to say I did it. And now I can say I did it because I did it."
3. "If a little is good, then a lot is better and too much is just right."
4. "Everybody should travel out of their own comfort zone."
5. "Ignorance is blis

Transcript

0:00:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): This is Becoming Undone.

0:00:10 - (B): The Dobbertin Surface Orbiter. 17,000 pounds of aluminum and stainless steel. Able to navigate the roughest turf and the highest surf. Rick spent years cutting, welding and fabricating. With his task complete, Rick set off on a two year adventure. The orbiter crossed long stretches of open ocean. Rick's voyage voyage covered 33,000 miles in 28 countries. And his monster became the first car to transit the Panama Canal.

0:00:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): And there's a lot of guys and builders. I don't consider myself in the top, you know, top thing because I know what went into it and I'm pretty much just the average person.

0:00:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): My name is Rick Dobbertin and I am undone.

0:01:05 - (Toby Brooks): Hey there and welcome to Becoming Undone. I'm Toby Brooks, a speaker, author and professor. But maybe most importantly, a relentless learner fascinated by what makes high achievers tick. For over two decades, I've worked as an athletic trainer and strength coach. From high schools to pro sports and all points in between, I've seen the.

0:01:23 - (E): Wins, the losses, and the moments that.

0:01:25 - (Toby Brooks): Fall somewhere in the middle. The ones that break us down only to build us up. Becoming Undone is a space for those who dare bravely risk deeply and grow relentlessly. Each week, I bring a new guest to explore how life's toughest setbacks can become the fuel that drives us to success. Here, we don't shy away from failures, we dig into them. This show is my way of sharing insights into the mindsets that set high achievers apart.

0:01:51 - (Toby Brooks): Lessons that have changed me, but they're also helping me on my journey to understand and share what it means to truly become undone and come back stronger. I'd like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my role at Baylor University. But it's my attempt to apply what I've learned and what I'm learning and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers.

0:02:19 - (E): I'm glad you've joined me for yet.

0:02:21 - (Toby Brooks): Another episode of Becoming Undone, where we dive deep into the untold stories of those who push boundaries, taken risks, and refused to settle for ordinary. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with a true pioneer in the world of engineering and customization. The king of pro street. Someone who's been a master at transforming wild dreams into concrete realities. Rick Dobbertin. Rick's journey isn't just about building incredible machines.

0:02:47 - (Toby Brooks): It's about challenging the limits of what's possible, reinventing what a single person can accomplish, and pushing through relentless obstacles. From his groundbreaking nova and Pontiac J 2000,000 Pro street builds to the Dobbertin orbiter and his wild amphibious hydro car. Rick's life is a testament to innovation, grit, and the courage to blaze a unique trail. Today, Rick's an entrepreneur and an inventor, and his company, Dobbertin Performance, builds and ships high performance components all over the globe.

0:03:19 - (Toby Brooks): The same globe Rick once traveled by land and sea in an unprecedented adventure unlike any in human history. Whether you're a student of engineering, a fan of the unconventional, or just in need of some inspiration to take on your own challenges, this episode is for you. Get ready for an unforgettable conversation about resilience, reinvention, and the drive to make the impossible come to life. Let's get into it.

0:03:46 - (Toby Brooks): This is becoming undone. Episode 105 with Rick Dobbertin.

0:03:51 - (E): Joining me today is Rick Dobbertin. Rick, welcome to the show.

0:03:56 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, glad to be here finally. It's good we could finally mesh our schedules together and get together with it.

0:04:03 - (E): Absolutely. Well, this one's a special treat for me because it's not often you get to interview your heroes, and you're certainly in that category. I first encountered your work at the age of 10. I was big into the street machine national scene and you were prolific in that space, and so we'll get into that. But as we were talking before the show, it certainly escalated from there. You go from building world class hot rods to being a world explorer. So I want to start at the beginning, though. What did you want to be growing up and why?

0:04:34 - (Rick Dobbertin): As a kid, I always liked mechanical stuff and my dad worked with General Motors. He was in the finance end of it, so he was. To this day, I have never been late on a payment for anything anywhere, period. Because I know he'd come back and.

0:04:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): Say, you're late on that.

0:04:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): So there's two different ways people look at something, something that they really like. They'd say, I'd like to build something like that, or somebody just want to try something completely different. And both of them have their merits and their drawbacks because a lot of times I'm in the middle of a.

0:05:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): Project that's never been done before, and.

0:05:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): I think, oh, this is why nobody's done it before.

0:05:10 - (E): So take us back to the beginning. You grew up. I know you were in New York and Virginia, and when I first came across your work, the Nova and then the J2000, you were a speed shop owner in Virginia. So kind of talk me through your life up to that point when the street machine nationals became kind of front and center in what you were doing.

0:05:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, I let's See my first car.

0:05:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): Was a Renault, one of those little junk things. I bought it for 35 bucks, worked.

0:05:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): On it for half a summer and.

0:05:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): And sold it for about 40 bucks. Never, I never did get it running. And then I guess my first real.

0:05:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): Hot Rod was a 65 or 66 Corvair.

0:05:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): We bought one my dad and I, you know he kind of helped me with it. We ended up putting a turbo engine in it, the Corvair turbocharged engine and.

0:05:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): Fixing it up and striping it.

0:06:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): Then I found what they call a Fitch Sprint. I guess John Fitch was a racer and he built the these really cool.

0:06:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): Looking fiberglass add ons for the roof to make the thing look like a fastback and everything.

0:06:13 - (Rick Dobbertin): I got one of those striped it and then I was off and running. I'm from there to 427chevelle.

0:06:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then my, my biggest regret now is I had a 67 Corvette Coupe.

0:06:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): Silver with side pipes, all factory stuff. 427, 435 and this is, this is for a 16 or 17 year old kid.

0:06:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): So their back I'm still alive is a. You know I can't believe it sometimes but I was the typical 16 year old 427 vet.

0:06:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's a dangerous combination.

0:06:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): Never killed anybody that I know of.

0:06:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): Never actually wrecked it or anything.

0:06:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): But then I started, I worked at a place in a construction supply place.

0:06:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): And there was another guy there with.

0:06:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): A vet and he was the big guy.

0:07:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): You know everybody looked up to him.

0:07:02 - (Rick Dobbertin): For the vet get a C1 like a 60 Corvette or something.

0:07:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's a really nice car.

0:07:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): But of course when I came up.

0:07:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): With 427 everybody said ooh, that's really, that's really something. So I have no proof on this but I know what happened.

0:07:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): He loosened all my lug nuts on.

0:07:18 - (Rick Dobbertin): The one, the back right tire where I parked. Because on the way home that night.

0:07:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): The car started, started wobbling. It was with a friend and he, and it started to shake and he looked out the window and said wow, something's happening. You didn't even get the sentence out. The wheel came off and it took.

0:07:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): The whole rear fender and everything right off the car dropped it right on the ground. Yeah, it could have been a horrible thing but it opened up the door. I thought well I'm not going to.

0:07:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): Put it together stock.

0:07:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): I'm going to customize it. So it ended up with a four barrel, a couple four barrel tunnel ram flared defenders. So I'm actually one of the guys.

0:07:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): That made the 67s more valuable because.

0:07:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): I really butchered it looked good. And for the time, that's what everybody was doing.

0:08:03 - (Rick Dobbertin): You know, they'd say, a stock vet.

0:08:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh, but so I had that for quite a while and ended up selling it. And I had probably six other 427 Corvette Coupe Steve. I just really like them. And you could buy these things mint condition. That, that car had like 11,000 miles on it. I bought it for 2200 bucks.

0:08:25 - (E): Wow.

0:08:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): Today it'd be a maybe a quarter million dollar car, you know, so don't.

0:08:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): Don'T ever come to me with, you know, investment questions.

0:08:36 - (E): Well, it's like Warren Johnson used to say, if you want to become a millionaire in drag racing, it's easy. Just start with a billion dollars.

0:08:43 - (Rick Dobbertin): Right, I, I have heard that, but.

0:08:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): It'S been years and that is a good one.

0:08:51 - (Toby Brooks): For Rick, it was an early fascination with all things mechanicals that pointed his life in the direction of cars from the start. In a previous interview with him, he recounted to me how he can vividly remember the first time he felt a wrench in his hand. And he liked the smooth, cool, polished steel. His exact quote was something along the lines of, I suspect if I'd felt that and thought, ooh, yuck, that my life would have been completely different.

0:09:18 - (Toby Brooks): Indeed, while a custom classic vet was nothing to sneeze at for a 16 year old, it would pale in comparison to the mechanical creations he'd build in the future. Starting with an IMSA style Monza.

0:09:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Next, I saw the IMSA Monza cars.

0:09:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): That, you know, were racing on the track. They had that flares in the back and the front, the front's about 8 inch wider than a regular one and the back's about 20 inch wider than a regular one. And I thought they were really cool. So I had just idea to build a Monza, you know, custom car, but.

0:09:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): Using only Chevrolet parts.

0:09:51 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I ordered a brand new Monza, which was only about 5,000 bucks.

0:09:55 - (Rick Dobbertin): Then it came with a V8,262, I think.

0:09:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): So the engine swap was simple.

0:10:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): We put the 350 in it.

0:10:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): I found an old cross rim out of a 69 Camaro, put that on.

0:10:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): I think it was 69.

0:10:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): Got the fender flare kits, got all.

0:10:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): That stuff, and built the whole car.

0:10:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): Using only genuine Chevrolet parts, basically, except for like the wheels, I had American.

0:10:15 - (Rick Dobbertin): Two hundreds on it stuff.

0:10:17 - (Rick Dobbertin): And it was really, it was a neat, neat car, you know, and of.

0:10:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): Course it still sat up like, like.

0:10:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): It was a four wheel drive vehicle.

0:10:24 - (Rick Dobbertin): Which I look back oh my God.

0:10:27 - (Rick Dobbertin): And in fact, moving on to the.

0:10:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Current time, I'm jumping a lot of.

0:10:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): Years, I own that car again.

0:10:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): Out of the blue, this guy a.

0:10:34 - (Rick Dobbertin): Few years ago said, hey, I own your own car. Your old car would be interested in buying it.

0:10:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I thought, no.

0:10:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then it was like, oh my.

0:10:41 - (Rick Dobbertin): God, that's my first born. I gotta. I've gotta have it. I gotta have it. So I bought it.

0:10:46 - (E): So talk to us a little bit about the Nova and how it burst on the scene in the early 80s and really kind of brought you into the spotlight in the magazine scene.

0:10:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): When I had my speed shop, I wanted to have the speed shop kind of, we're gonna push turbocharging, supercharging. Not that I knew that much about.

0:11:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): It, but it was a pretty easy swap. And there was a guy from Rotomaster that were trying to set up shops.

0:11:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): To do the turbocharging.

0:11:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): So we got involved with that program.

0:11:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then I built a couple turbocharged cars.

0:11:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): We had a 78 Monza. Kept the body stock with the V6 emblems and all that stuff, and dropped in a 350 with a turbo and everything. And it was just a. It was just a cool little sleeper. I mean, it was fast and, you know, it was so unassuming. And it just. You just drive around and then somebody.

0:11:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): With their 240Z or their Corvette or.

0:11:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): Something, we just cruise down both at the gas, and I'd just pull away from him like he would stop.

0:11:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): So it went from there to the Nova. I started a speed shop called AA Speed and Custom discounters.

0:11:53 - (Rick Dobbertin): So we got the business going and we wanted to specialize in superchargers and turbochargers. So we had some shirts made up and on the front it said for the best blown jobs in town. And then on the back it said.

0:12:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): Double A speed and custom and turbo dynamics. And so I had those shirts just hang up.

0:12:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): And they sold pretty good.

0:12:21 - (Rick Dobbertin): Sold quite a few of them. And I was looking at the shirt one day and I thought, turbocharged superchargers. Why don't I put both on one car? I mean, there's no reason you can't do that. Everybody still thinks it doesn't work, but it does work.

0:12:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's just like a two stage air.

0:12:35 - (Rick Dobbertin): Compressor in a gas station. One cylinder pumps it up to a certain pressure, then it goes into the next stage and it pumps it up again. So you actually have to be careful that you don't overdo it or you'll blow the head Gaskets right off.

0:12:51 - (Rick Dobbertin): Anyway, I built, I thought a 65.

0:12:53 - (Rick Dobbertin): Mil and then the 65 Nova. I always had it. I love those cars because when I.

0:12:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): Was still in high school, there was.

0:13:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): A guy down a few miles from.

0:13:02 - (Rick Dobbertin): My house that had this gasser. It was like a 62 Nova raised way up.

0:13:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): And it was called Animal Man. And I wanted to buy.

0:13:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): He put it up for sale and.

0:13:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): I wanted to buy it. And he didn't have any other buyers. I almost talked to him into co signing a loan with me, but he didn't want to co sign a loan on his own car. So he did not know my background. He really got paid every penny, but that didn't work, so somebody else bought it. But I always loved the Nova, the.

0:13:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): Boxiness of it and stuff. So I found this.

0:13:34 - (Rick Dobbertin): I started looking for Novas in Hemmings. Motor News, I guess it was, was a big thing back then. And I, and I went as far as Maine. I lived in Virginia, went as far as Maine. For all these people saying this is cherry, there's not a bit of bondo. And if you drive for eight hours, you get up there and the rust bucket, I mean this happened a dozen times. Then I went to Hershey, the big swap meet. And sitting in the parking lot, not in, not in the corral or anything, was this pristine, perfect 21,000 mile little old lady car, literally.

0:14:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I didn't want much for it, so I bought it and that was it.

0:14:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): So the way I decided to lay.

0:14:13 - (Rick Dobbertin): Out the engine was to have the butterflies work, even though there was a block off in the back because the air was already pressurized at that point from the turbos. So the air would come in through the turbos, get pressurized, run up to the blower, and then get pressurized again and down into the engine. And I didn't want the turbochargers to show. So with the hood down, it looks.

0:14:35 - (Rick Dobbertin): Like a 671 blown car.

0:14:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): And everybody comes up and looks at it and then you open the hood and there's two turbos under there to boot. And that was the thing. I had never been to Sweet Machine Nationals, but tried to do it every. Everybody really liked it. So it won pretty much everything at the, at the event that year. And the next year we went back and it won again.

0:14:58 - (E): Yeah. And so this to me is really kind of the genesis. You don't get into this level of building without having cut your teeth on some other projects. But a project of this magnitude certainly put you in elite company and you're kind of known by this spirited competition that sprouted up. But with that Nova, was it premeditated? Like, you knew from day one what you were going to end up with as a finished project, or a lot of builders just kind of start and just kind of work away at it, and one thing leads to another, but that's really not your MO.

0:15:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): No, I. I did mainly when I was doing the J. 2000 years later, I made this list officially, but I guess with Anova also, I tried to decide what made makes.

0:15:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): A pro street car a pro street car. It's the small front tires, the huge rear tires, the engine sticking out of the hood, the roll cage, all that stuff. So I wanted to look at cars in the magazines and see what they.

0:16:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): Had and then try to say, okay, this is where it's reached. What would make it a little more.

0:16:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): Updated, upgraded from these cars?

0:16:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then I really wanted to go.

0:16:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): After that street machine of the year thing. And then when Scott Sullivan is an.

0:16:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): Incredible builder, built that blue Nova and was street machine of the year, I.

0:16:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): Thought, oh, that's just great, a blue Nova.

0:16:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I've got a blue Nova that.

0:16:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): I want to go to do the same thing. Fortunately, it was okay to do that.

0:16:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): People used to come up and make.

0:16:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): Jokes like, what do you got to.

0:16:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): Build a blue Nova? I'll tell you. One time, these three guys came up to me at an event, and they.

0:16:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): Said, oh, my God, it's him. And I.

0:16:43 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I looked over and they said.

0:16:44 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh, my God, you'd like a God to us.

0:16:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then this one guy goes, blue Nova.

0:16:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): I was not with the car. He said, blue Nova? And I said, yeah.

0:16:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he said, crow street all the way. And I said, yeah.

0:16:54 - (Rick Dobbertin): He says, street machine of the year.

0:16:55 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah.

0:16:56 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he goes, oh, we're so happy to meet you, Mr. Sullivan.

0:17:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then they all laughed. And I thought that was. That was so excellent. It was just so funny, you know.

0:17:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): That they planned that, you know, well executed. Yeah, that was funny.

0:17:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): But I did find today, it's just like drag racing.

0:17:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's not a participant sport anymore. It's a spectator sport, because who can afford to build these cars?

0:17:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): You can't afford to put in, you know, 4,000 hours to build them, and you sure can't pay labor in 4,000 hours to build them.

0:17:29 - (E): Right?

0:17:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's too bad. But it's, you know, it's the way everything goes, it seems. I mean, who knew basketball players would get millions of dollars a game?

0:17:39 - (E): So that raises a great point. So The Nova. I mean, the fabrication in this build is unlike anything we've seen up to this point. Custom plenums and polished this and you know, full roll cage. Where did you learn and discover and reflect, refine your fabrication skills along the way? I mean, a speed shop back in the day is known as a place to go to buy bolt ons. This was not a bolt on build.

0:18:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): No, no.

0:18:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): But you know, there were so many.

0:18:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): Things coming out for turbocharging and back.

0:18:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): At that point you go to BBS for the blower setup.

0:18:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): I mean that, that was pretty much.

0:18:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): A stock setup from them, you know, with the blower and everything and just combining. It's got a lot more components.

0:18:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's got components from both worlds of the turbocharging and the supercharging.

0:18:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): And that's what kind of did it for the car. I mean, everybody remembers it for that. And I still get people that say.

0:18:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): There'S no way I can work.

0:18:37 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I said, okay. And when I used to take it on the show car tour, I remember one time the car didn't get the.

0:18:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): Engine award and stuff. And the judge afterwards, I said, why? Just curious. Just curious. And he said, I ain't going to give the best engine to some car with a fake supercharger on it. It's not fake, so we'll prove it. So I took the, I took the top off the thing and said, there's the rotor. And he goes, well, I'll be. You're right, I apologize. So then I went out in the parking lot and meticulously burned his car to the ground.

0:19:11 - (E): In your mind?

0:19:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): In my brain.

0:19:13 - (E): Yeah. Right, right, yeah.

0:19:18 - (Toby Brooks): Now, I wrote an entire book about Rick and his contemporaries and the incredible times that were the street machine nationals. In my book, Sensory Overload, available for purchase on my website tobyjbrooks.com by the way, shameless plug. Anyhow, this group of five or six guys started building progressively wilder and highly styled pro street cars, which if you're unfamiliar, it's a street legal car or truck. Built to look and perform like an all out drag race vehicle.

0:19:44 - (Toby Brooks): Rick's Nova was a hit. But as the guys in the group started competing every year for the highly coveted street machine of the year award, the stakes kept getting higher and the bar kept getting raised. So Rick, being the fabrication expert and detail obsessive craftsman that he was and is a next build, seemed inevitable. But what and how, that wasn't yet settled.

0:20:10 - (E): A lot of times on this show we talk about how failure can lead to success. But in your case, you have resounding success. And the curse sometimes of success is, well, what are you going to do next? And so you've spent thousands of hours and countless dollars on this car that is in all the magazines, it's known coast to coast. And in the midst of this arms race of pro street, you've got builders coming out with new things and you get in your mind that, well, I'm going to up the ante. So talk me through how you went from the 65 to the J2000.

0:20:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): So after the nova stuff died down.

0:20:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): I got a call from John Asher.

0:20:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): Who was the editor of carcraft magazine.

0:20:56 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he said, if you build another.

0:20:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): Car and it's up to snuff, I will put it on the COVID of.

0:21:03 - (Rick Dobbertin): Car crack and maybe even make it.

0:21:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): A two month article because I hadn't seen that before.

0:21:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I said, okay. So then the ball was in my court. I thought, what am I going to do?

0:21:13 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I figured I'd start with the frame, do the full roll cage and everything, and then I'd paint it.

0:21:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I thought, wait a minute, I'm not going to paint it. I'll build the frame out of stainless steel and polish it. Little did I know that would ruin my life for about a month and a half just polishing that thing. I mean, even though the stainless is great, but to get to the points where the welds could be drowned and stuff, everybody says, oh, you can't grind the welds.

0:21:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, these welds were like three or four layers deep.

0:21:44 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I never got anywhere close to.

0:21:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): The actual weld that made, you know, that held the parts together.

0:21:51 - (Rick Dobbertin): I don't think I could run nhra.

0:21:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): With it because you can't see the wells. But there's pictures in the magazines and stuff of these. So I decided to go with the stainless frame. And then little John Butera, remember him?

0:22:06 - (Toby Brooks): The godfather of billet?

0:22:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, yeah. He, he had gotten down and looked under the back of the Nova and he said, wow, wall to wall tires. And I got down under there and I looked and I thought, there's still, you know, 16, 16 inches between these. We can do better than that. So I got these, I got these really short axles made.

0:22:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): In fact, that's kind of a funny story. When I, I decided I could get by with.

0:22:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): They're about 11 inches.

0:22:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): The axles themselves are 11 inches. And I was a dealer for strange axles. So when I put in an order one day, a guy had a Camaro.

0:22:41 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he wanted to get some shorter axles. And I ordered the axles, I don't know, 20 or 24 inches.

0:22:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I said, hey, when I got.

0:22:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): You on the phone, can you build, can you build like 11 inch axles?

0:22:51 - (Rick Dobbertin): And the guy says, yeah, but what.

0:22:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): Would you use it on?

0:22:53 - (Rick Dobbertin): I said, well, I'm just curious how, how? He says, yeah, we could do anything you wanted, but you gotta, you gotta.

0:23:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): Make sure you're getting those measurements right, you know.

0:23:02 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I said, yeah, that's fine. So six months later, when the business.

0:23:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): Was going and the car was going, I called them back and I said.

0:23:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): I'd like to order some like 11 and a half inch axle for a Dana 60.

0:23:16 - (Rick Dobbertin): And the guy said, hang on a minute.

0:23:18 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he comes back and he says, we have some of those in stock.

0:23:21 - (Rick Dobbertin): I have no reason, I have no idea why, but we've got some and we've had them here. And I'll tell you what I'll do.

0:23:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): I'll give them to you.

0:23:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Don't say a word.

0:23:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): Don't say a word. I said, really?

0:23:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, thank you.

0:23:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): So you send these things in.

0:23:35 - (Rick Dobbertin): They'll both fit in a shoe box. I can put those in there.

0:23:38 - (E): Yeah. If I remember right, you didn't just narrow the rear end. The actual pumpkin was narrowed as well.

0:23:44 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, it had to be narrowed because. Yeah, I had to grind some of that off because it just, it was too wide.

0:23:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): Just part right.

0:23:52 - (E): So you're thousands of hours deep on this custom chassis. And I remember seeing build photos of it in the magazine. People were anticipating this thing. And I've heard the stories of the car and certainly seen the finished product. What was it like for you as a human being during the fabrication of this car?

0:24:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): I don't know.

0:24:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): I take everything too personally. I think I'd get up in the.

0:24:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): You know, in the middle of the night. I think there'd be a problem. My speed shop was only about 4 miles away, so I'd. I'd go, oh, my God, did I do this? I'll be, I'll be right back. And I get in the car and look at it, play around with it.

0:24:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): At, you know, from 2 to 3:30 in the morning. And it was.

0:24:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's obsessed. It's obsessive. And I was obsessed. And that, that, you gotta.

0:24:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's something I should tell people.

0:24:37 - (Rick Dobbertin): I mean, you know, don't let your.

0:24:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): Marriage suffer and everything else because of a car.

0:24:43 - (Rick Dobbertin): If you're single, let it ruin your life.

0:24:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): You don't have to drag your whole.

0:24:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): Family business down the drain with it.

0:24:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): I didn't, you know, I got obsessed with the car.

0:24:53 - (E): Yeah. And I remember reading the story and again, I'm 10 years old and I'm like. The author says something like, you know, how many hours you put in? And once you grow up, you realize, wow, you were fully invested.

0:25:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah.

0:25:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): I won't say anything about how I ran my credit cards up.

0:25:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's what it did.

0:25:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): I always.

0:25:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): I did pay them off, but it took.

0:25:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): It took a couple years after the car was done to still pay off for credit. And I sold.

0:25:17 - (Rick Dobbertin): I sold a couple of other things. I think I sold the Mandrake.

0:25:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): I still had that.

0:25:21 - (Rick Dobbertin): I sold that.

0:25:22 - (E): I do recall, though, they did a. So I. Where I grew up was 30 minutes, 45 minutes from the Du Quin State Fairgrounds where the show was.

0:25:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh, wow.

0:25:32 - (E): And they did a television feature on the local ABC affiliate to kind of promote the show. It was like a half hour special. There was a local guy who had a Corvette and you were interviewed, but I remember you rattling off statistics like an analytics professional. Wood talking about baseball stats today. You knew the hour down to the hour and down to the penny of the investment. I was like, wow, this guy's like a mad scientist with a tig welder. And, you know, like you had a level of, dare I say, fanaticism to understanding every aspect of this build from start to finish.

0:26:11 - (F): My name is Rick Dobbertin. I'm from Springfield, Virginia. And this is 1980 Pontiac J2000. We've done a little bit of work to it. It has a stainless steel frame. It's an aluminum small block Chevrolet 350 cubic inch. It's got aluminum Brodex heads, two turbochargers, two superchargers.

0:26:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): Nitrous oxide.

0:26:28 - (F): It runs off a Holley 1050 carburetor. All the frame itself is stainless. The exhaust is stainless. All the running gear components are stainless steel. The rear wheels are 15 by 20s with a 15 inch dish on the front to give a real deep looking thing. The tires measure 23 and a half inches wide, 33 inches tall. There's only 8 and a quarter inches between them. Front wheels are 15, 3 and a half's riding on Barossa front tires and Firestone rear tires.

0:27:02 - (F): How long did you spend in its making? I spent three years. 4,720 hours logged in and cost of $37,000. $37,025, but who's counting?

0:27:19 - (E): You might have a car next to you where it's been in the family. We just Kind of tinker on it every once in a while. That was not how you were operating.

0:27:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): Right, right. Everybody compliments me on the welds. Oh, it's the best weld I've ever. I'm not the greatest welder in the. Once you put on three or four layers of welds and get a die grinder in there to smooth them out.

0:27:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): And sand them and stuff, you can.

0:27:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): Make any kind of weld look wonderful. Mine aren't horrible, but they're not. I look at some of these guys that weld headers up drill tin wall tubing, and I think, how in the hell do you do that?

0:27:49 - (E): Yeah.

0:27:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): And. But the finished result, you know, was what we want. What I wanted. I wanted to. I wanted to blend them all, because it's just something. And there's a lot of time that goes in, like the crossbars and the doors to where they line up. You can't look at those crossbars and.

0:28:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): See which one is this one that.

0:28:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): Goes all the way down and which one is split in half or it crosses over. I'm not even sure which one's which, but that's what I wanted to do. Not, you know, because a lot of times it's real obvious.

0:28:19 - (E): Yeah.

0:28:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): But, you know, that's just. It's obsessive compulsive disorder. Probably.

0:28:24 - (Rick Dobbertin): Probably something.

0:28:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): If I taking the right kills, I.

0:28:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): Wouldn'T be doing it.

0:28:28 - (E): Well, I think I can speak for hot rodders everywhere and saying it was just an example of. It's almost like what you see in an Olympic athlete. Like, that's an example of someone who absolutely was obsessed with getting out every ounce of performance they could. You, on the other hand, were kind of showing what that could be in the artistry of an automobile and taken to its absolute extreme.

0:28:54 - (Toby Brooks): And that was kind of the thought.

0:28:55 - (E): Process behind the build. If fat tires are good, get the fattest tires you can. And if a tube chassis is good, make it look like it's chromed because it's all polished stainless. Everything about it was the next step. And some people would even say that it was the end of pro street because it was the car that you couldn't top. What would you say to those critics that said that the J2000 killed the pro street movement?

0:29:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): I do remember one thing that I used through the years, and that's, if a little is good, then a lot is better and too much is just right. I mean, that's an old saying.

0:29:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): I didn't make it up.

0:29:30 - (E): No, I'm Looking at photos on your website as you're talking. And it's just everything about this build is just, it's like, it's the extreme that you, you couldn't make this any more wild. And this is a car, right? This is not aircraft, this is not a boat. You're a car builder at this point in your career. And those skills that you're honing, polishing this stainless steel chassis and building an articulated body and all these things had never been done to cars before.

0:30:02 - (E): But before I get too deep down that path, I mean the J2000 literally goes around the world. You travel to Australia, you're seen coast to coast at major shows and magazines. You and your contemporaries are, are recognized as kind of rock stars of this scene. What was that like for you personally coming from humble beginnings? You know, you're a speed shop owner and now all of a sudden you're the recognized celebrity around the world in places.

0:30:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): I feel like I'm a manager maybe. No, I see, I don't see myself that way. I see some of the other guys that way. Like good friends. I think we're all good friends. This is back still when the cars weren't million dollars investment and stuff and people could be friends. They weren't corporation to corporation building these things.

0:30:48 - (E): Yeah.

0:30:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I think that might be one of the last things to where people got away from doing themselves. And the rich guys still, you know, well, I'll take one of those and one of those and put them in that.

0:30:59 - (E): So the car goes to Australia and back. And you've been down this road before where you build this game changing car. And as you're showing it now at this point, this is number two. Instead of appreciating the thousands of hours of fabrication time and the blood, the sweat, the tears, the innovation that went into this, people are like, well, what are you going to build next? Where are you at psychologically during this time? Like, are you thinking, yeah, I'm going to build something to top this? Or are you like, I'm out.

0:31:29 - (E): This tapped me out. I've got to go another direction.

0:31:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): See, this was during my shock therapy sessions. Just kidding. Well, I talked to people and they wanted me to take the car to Sweden. I had a guy to Sweden and another guy wanted it. Oh, I mean, we're German. We put on this great show. I'd like you to have it there and all that stuff. And I thought, hey, why don't I build a car like an amphibious car and I could just drive it to Nicky shows. I Could drive across America. I could get in the ocean and New York and go over to England and all that kind of stuff, which today you'd just be shot. You know, you can't do that.

0:32:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): I mean, of course you could stay.

0:32:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): Right here in the States and be shot.

0:32:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's terrible. I don't want to get political with anything, but it's. Back then it still wasn't mega dollars. The J2000, I think all total. I don't know if I have my list here, but it was in the, I believe it was in the mid $30,000 range. And the Nova was a lot less than that. But you're not paying $100 an hour for labor.

0:32:35 - (E): Right.

0:32:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): You know, that's the thing that.

0:32:37 - (E): And that's 80s dollars. Yeah. I think I did the research for the book and adjusted for inflation, I mean, and I mean you have sponsorship deals and things like that, but it was a sizable investment in parts. But the vast majority of the value in that build was the expertise and the fabrication skills that you put into it.

0:32:56 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, I'm depressed.

0:32:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): I'm gonna have to call you. Tell me that part about fabrication skills.

0:33:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): Please tell me once and then I'll let you alone for a week. I don't, I don't see myself as that. I see somebody that, for whatever reason, I found the time to do this. A lot of the people are a lot better money managers and, and had their priorities straight, straightened out better than I did. I got obsessed with this thing.

0:33:26 - (E): So you go from, I really haven't put these pieces together like this. I know I've interviewed you in the past, but if I'm really kind of tracing the progression here, you go from a T shirt to a world changing build to the next step, which involves a polished stainless steel chassis, to you look at a 1959 milk tanker and think I could turn that into a vessel that might be able to circumnavigate the globe.

0:33:59 - (E): So that, that's quite an escalation, sir. From a T shirt to a milk tinker.

0:34:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, right, true. I think this is the perfect time to insert the phrase ignorance is bliss. If I had any idea what was, what it would take or cost, you know, I probably wouldn't have done these things like this.

0:34:23 - (E): Yeah. So I'm looking at a picture of the milk tanker right now and I look at this and I see something that I've seen, you know, thousands of times in my life. I don't think what might be, I think of what is. But you looked at it and you thought what might be. And coupled with the volume of stainless steel fabrication that you had just removed yourself from, you weren't daunted by the possibilities or by the magnitude of what it would take to turn this into a drivable and seaworthy vessel.

0:34:57 - (B): Dobbertin's neighbors may think he's an astronaut, especially when a giant, gleaming spaceship like monster rolls out of the garage. The Dobbertin Surface Orbiter. 17,000 pounds of aluminum and stainless steel, able to navigate the roughest turf and the highest surf.

0:35:19 - (F): I like to look at something not.

0:35:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): What it is, but what it could be.

0:35:22 - (F): So a milk tanker seemed like an obvious starting point because it's stainless steel, so it'll hold up to the saltwater corrosion problems. And I figured if it'd hold £30,000 of milk inside, it would damn well keep the water out.

0:35:36 - (B): Rick spent years cutting, welding, and fabricating. Then rick's voyage covered 33,000 miles in 28 countries. He survived a rickety bridge crossing in Costa Rica, was seized by Colombian gorillas who just wanted their pictures taken with the orbiter. And his monster became the first car to transit the Panama Canal.

0:35:59 - (F): This is just to say I did it. And now I can say I did it because I did it.

0:36:04 - (E): Talk me through how you look at a milk tanker and start to think, hey, I could make something out of that.

0:36:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): No, I don't. I don't know. I don't. I don't remember the name of the drug. You can cut that out there. I don't know. It was just another. It was just another step. It would be. You know, when you really think about it, anybody that does this kind of stuff is not mainstream. You know, they're not.

0:36:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): There's something wrong.

0:36:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): There's a screw loose, a nut missing, or I mean, a nut and bolt type thing.

0:36:38 - (E): Right, right, right.

0:36:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): Because that wouldn't probably change your. Okay, we can cut that out, right?

0:36:44 - (E): I may. I may.

0:36:46 - (Toby Brooks): Turns out I didn't, Rick. It was too good to cut.

0:36:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah. Anyway, I'd like to say something that a lot of people don't, and this is embarrassing to me, but I have been married three different times. The wife I am with now and forever is great. He puts up with all my stuff. But the Nova J 2000 and orbiter never would have been possible without my first wife, Lonnie, standing behind me on this thing and helping and understanding. And then the orbiter and my second wife, Karen, we spent too much time together in a confined space with life or death situations all the time that just Wasn't going to last.

0:37:35 - (Rick Dobbertin): What you're looking at behind me is one couple's idea of marriage therapy. It's the Orbiter, a half car, half boat that Rick and Karen Dobbertin planned to take around the world. They hoped the voyage would spice up their marriage. But as Jamie Colby explains, the two of them got more than they ever bargained for.

0:37:55 - (G): It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, a romantic voyage around the globe. Africa, India, Australia, the Caribbean.

0:38:04 - (F): He only lived once, he might as well experience everything.

0:38:07 - (G): The exotic trip was this man's dream. Rick Dobbertin hoped it would put the spark back in his marriage. But Karen, his bride of one year, was certain it was just that, a dream.

0:38:18 - (Rick Dobbertin): Initially, you know, you think, oh yeah, this is a great idea, sure, honey, you know, whatever.

0:38:23 - (G): But the 46 year old master car craftsman wasn't joking and he already had a plan. Rick and Karen would try to become the first couple to circumnavigate the globe. Not by boat, not by hot air balloon, no, in this Rick called it the Orbiter. Once a milk tanker, rick would spend four years, 14,000 hours and the couple's life savings transforming it into a high tech land and water vehicle.

0:38:52 - (F): People would say as a joke, it's got everything but the kitchen sink. And I'd say it's got the kitchen sink too.

0:38:56 - (G): With no specific course to follow, on December 19, 1993, the Dobbertins bid a cheering crowd goodbye, embarking on the first leg of their trip, a drive from Syracuse, New York to Miami, where the Orbiter would be launched into the Atlantic.

0:39:13 - (F): There were about 5,000 people there and I think 4,000 of them were there to watch it sink.

0:39:18 - (Rick Dobbertin): But I've toned down a lot and I've made a business out of this now out of automotive stuff instead of just spending time on a hobby. I did get some money out of these cars when I sold them, that was put back into the joint funds and all that kind of thing. But it's still, you really need to watch yourself and get a happy medium in there on what you're doing for the people around you. I mean, it's not, it's not fair for them because they're not, you know, getting all the positives out of the thing at the far end of it.

0:39:51 - (E): Right. And I think that's a great point, is that the things that you're aspiring to do are at a level that people that don't have the drive to see them through to completion. It's hard for people to understand that sometimes. And I've certainly encountered that with high achievers. Like I said, whether it's an Olympic or professional athlete that's training in a way or fueling their body in a way, or un artist maniacal in pursuing their craft to the point that they're isolating themselves from their friends and family. I mean, this is a manifestation of that same kind of drive to be the best. And in a lot of ways it's, it's fantastic. It's what leads to artwork like we've never seen and achievements that mankind has never witnessed. But at the same time, there's a darker side to that where you're so driven that you're neglecting other things, right?

0:40:41 - (Rick Dobbertin): Mm, yeah. Neglect is a good word. I mean, it's a horrible one to be filed under. Yeah, everybody to a certain point is like that.

0:40:49 - (E): Yeah.

0:40:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): You know, as soon as anything becomes an obsession, just try to back off a little bit. Right now I've got my old Monza back, as I mentioned earlier, and I've got it down more on the ground. Different wheels and tires stuff, so it looks pretty good. People, especially the younger generation here, cannot say the word Monza. They say, wow, what kind of car is that? It's a Monza. A Mazda. No, in their, in their lips. They're like looking down at their mind.

0:41:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I have my wife's hand me down car. It's a Mazda 3. I've got a couple kit car mantas and then I've got the Monza. So I've owned three cars. They have five letters that start with the letter M and end with the letter A. It's just weird. I have to buy a Lamborghini Mira next to have a.

0:41:42 - (E): That sounds like a fantastic justification to add that to your stable.

0:41:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, let me write that down.

0:41:52 - (G): There were internal fuel spills, radio malfunctions, and while they set a record as the first car to drive the Panama Canal, Rick and Karen did run into.

0:42:01 - (Rick Dobbertin): Trouble in Puerto Rico.

0:42:03 - (F): We were stopped by the dea, the FBI, the Coast Guard. They thought we were Colombian drug smugglers. In the frontier of Columbia, we were stopped by gorillas who came out of the woods and flagged us down with their AK47s.

0:42:15 - (G): Their one year trip turned into three and a half years of grueling togetherness. By June of 1996, Rick and Karen were out of patience and out of money, leaving them no choice but to come home. The Orbiter was in pretty good shape, but the same couldn't be said for their marriage. Shortly after they got Back, Karen filed for divorce.

0:42:38 - (E): So Project Earth Trek, this is. I do remember reading about this in the magazine. I'm a little older and still reading car magazines when I should probably be studying my homework. But we go from this king of pro street to this guy who has the ambition to build an amphibious vehicle to circumnavigate the earth over land and sea. And so this trip is obviously ambitious. I don't think that's a good enough word for it.

0:43:10 - (E): But where did the idea come for something this big? I mean, and we're not very many years removed from putting turbochargers on a supercharged car to building a milk tanker into something that is capable of driving and sailing around the world.

0:43:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, it didn't. It fell short on that. It worked, but it fell short on that. Well, that started with all the pro touring cars. The J2000, as you said, maybe kind of. People said, I don't want to do anything like that. It's all for show. It doesn't drive. And I've got about 600 miles on the take. 2,000, most of them are street cruises and stuff like that.

0:43:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's.

0:43:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): That shows it's drivable. But I get all these people that would say, ah, you can't drive that thing.

0:43:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): You get this blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff.

0:44:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I said, oh, yeah, well, I'm.

0:44:02 - (Rick Dobbertin): Going to build something and you're going.

0:44:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): To be able to drive it anywhere you want. You'll drive it on the land, you'll.

0:44:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): Be able to drive it in the water.

0:44:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, that's it, you know.

0:44:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah, that's the ticket.

0:44:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): And so I wanted to do something completely different.

0:44:15 - (Rick Dobbertin): And it just seemed kind of like the time was right to, I don't know, do something like that.

0:44:21 - (Rick Dobbertin): I got a job in Pittsburgh. This guy wanted a Corvette built for the show circuit. And so I lived in a Motel 6 type environment for about three months. And we didn't part as buddies because he had some really strange ideas.

0:44:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he was just plain wood.

0:44:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): If he said, I want to do.

0:44:41 - (Rick Dobbertin): This, not a good idea, well, this is what I want to do.

0:44:44 - (Rick Dobbertin): He wanted to put glass floors in the car all over. Not electric glass ring, but real good tempered glass so you could see the road go by when you went down the road. But the orbiter, I worked at this place with this guy and next door to his place was a tanker distribution thing. And I'd watch these tankers go in.

0:45:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): And out and all that kind of stuff.

0:45:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): That makes a cool starting point for something. And you've got really the basic vehicle already done, front to back, stem to stern, whatever you're talking about a car or boat. And the problem I didn't really address that I should have was these tankers are really heavy because they're double walls and they're heavy. So the orbiter ended up weighing like 16 to 18,000 pounds.

0:45:30 - (E): Wow.

0:45:32 - (Rick Dobbertin): Yeah. Well, it didn't really affect it too much in the water. You know, the frame being open to the water and stuff, that was a lot of drag. And, you know, it worked good. It would go 10, 12 miles an hour in the water. And that's just at a high. That's just at a high idle. Because I didn't want to break anything. The first time it went across from Florida to the Bahamas, it did. It broke the input shaft on the transmission. I had to get towed back in.

0:46:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): And while we're waiting, there's like eight sharks circling the orbiter. I'm thinking that's probably not a good time to dive off this thing. But they were just curious. They were sand sharks. I mean, they weren't, you know, vicious, you know, jaws coming out, snapping his thing.

0:46:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): And they were cool. Hey, look over there.

0:46:16 - (E): There's an orbiter still. Eight sharks are still not something I'm looking to put myself in the middle of.

0:46:24 - (Rick Dobbertin): No, no, that's.

0:46:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): And you're always thinking of that, especially.

0:46:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): If you're not used to the ocean, you know.

0:46:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): And ignorance is bliss is another good example of this. I could have done it a lot.

0:46:34 - (Rick Dobbertin): Differently and been more successful. Plus, you know, got it. If I had had this thing to go 25 or 30 miles an hour on the ocean, that would have been really nice because you get. You just pointed in the direction you want. And a wave can come along and turn you 90 degrees. Instantly you gotta swing it back forward.

0:46:53 - (E): So the trip ends up covering 30,000 miles on land, 3,000 miles at sea. I'm looking at a picture of you navigating this thing you built through the Panama Canal. And I've heard you tell this story more than once. And there's almost regret I hear in your voice. Like, I didn't do it. Like you didn't circumnavigate the globe, but you did something that no other human before or since in the history of mankind has ever done.

0:47:20 - (E): And yet you view that. I think. I think I'm accurate in saying you view that a little bit as failure. Talk me through that thought process.

0:47:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, there was an Australian guy that tried to go around the world. He took a World War II jeep, that was an amphibious jeep. And he went, he got further across than I did, but it's nothing he built. And it was called Half Safe and.

0:47:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): There'S a book on it.

0:47:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): I have the book and I didn't even know about it till I was done and said, oh, another guy did that. No, don't tell me that now. But he had to get, he had to get picked up out of the water and put on a freighter once or twice. I think it might be just once, but. So a lot of his trip across the big open thing was on the back of a freighter. I'm not putting them down because that was a hell of a thing to do anyway.

0:48:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): But it wasn't a home built Beverly Hillbillies kind of fed up, you know.

0:48:17 - (E): Yeah, there it is again. It's that humility and that self deprecation. Like I want you to recognize the scope and the magnitude of what you've done, Rick. It's truly remarkable and in many ways it's. I mean it's been an inspiration to me and things that have nothing to do with what you did, but it shows that if you work hard, I mean there are, there are evidences to the contrary in our world today. Like you said, If a rich YouTube influencer wants an awesome new build, they just pull out the checkbook and they pay for it.

0:48:51 - (E): There aren't many people that are still doing these types of things on their own. And you're a testament to the fact that hard work is a great equalizer. You can do things and accomplish things just by teaching yourself these skills or investing all. You weren't an aeronautical or nautical engineer, but you built a seaworthy vessel and that's pretty doggone awesome.

0:49:15 - (Rick Dobbertin): Like I said, I'm going to have to call you when I'm depressed. Tell me, tell me how. I just don't see it because I'm.

0:49:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): At the level of where I'm at.

0:49:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): Awe with stuff people can do. I mean it's just.

0:49:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Especially the stuff now. It's just, you know, I mean the.

0:49:33 - (Rick Dobbertin): Car that won the Riddler this year.

0:49:35 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh my God. The 53 vet.

0:49:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): I, I wouldn't know where to start on something like that. And there's a lot of pro street.

0:49:41 - (Rick Dobbertin): Guys and builders and that are just, I mean, you know, I don't consider myself in the top, you know, top.

0:49:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): Thing because I know what went, went into it and I'm pretty much just an average person.

0:49:58 - (Toby Brooks): Let that last quote sink in for a sec, would you? This guy who has built not one, but two genre defining world renowned iconic cars that still draw a crowd to 30 years later. I mean for me as a kid you could literally go to Walmart and buy a 1/4 scale model kit of Rick's J2000. A largely self taught fabricator who managed to engineer, build, wire, plumb and otherwise complete a stable of incredible builds and then not yet satisfied with just that recognition, decides to hand build and convert a 1959 milk tanker trailer into a fully operational, road and seaworthy vehicle and attempt to circumnavigate the globe with only his then wife on the journey.

0:50:48 - (Toby Brooks): That guy just spoke to me with all humility, a straight face and deep conviction. Quote, I'm pretty much just an average person, unquote. If Rick Dobbertin is pretty much an average person friend, then I think it's safe to say the rest of us better get to work. Because despite my above average work ethic, I'm sure as heck not accomplishing Rick's level of pretty much average things. End quote. As remarkable and accomplished as Rick is, and as outrageous and outlandish and almost too crazy to believe as his stories of exploring the world like Magellan with a Tig welder are, it's this, this humility, this deference, this willingness to see himself as just another guy that makes me not just inspired by Rick, but absolutely love, admire and respect the heck out of him.

0:51:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): I think anybody that puts their mind.

0:51:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): To something, it's kind of like where there's a will, there's a way I.

0:51:53 - (Rick Dobbertin): Might have been able to accomplish something.

0:51:55 - (Rick Dobbertin): But maybe a real professional could have.

0:51:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): Done it one third the time at half the money kind of thing.

0:52:00 - (E): So you wrap up the orbiter excursion we'll call it. I don't view it as a failure and I know you learned lots of lessons along the way. I do remember the news story and they point out that like as soon as you exited the vehicle, you end up with a divorce. I mean it took its toll on you as a person, physically, emotionally. What were the months after the conclusion of the orbiter trip like for you?

0:52:27 - (Rick Dobbertin): We went to Oshkosh with the orbiter and went to the EAA Show Experimental Aircraft Association. It's the busiest airport in the world for that week. And it's Oshkosh, Wisconsin. You should look into it and look at all the cool stuff. Now the big thing is these drone type vehicles that'll, you know, you can fly, you know, like flying cars and all that stuff. But she really lost interest in this kind of Stuff and really got into airplanes when we went to that show.

0:52:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): And.

0:52:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then stuff just kind of went.

0:53:00 - (Rick Dobbertin): Downhill and I don't know.

0:53:03 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's just. Obviously it's a lot my fault because I'm the one that had this overwhelming thing in a.

0:53:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): In a marriage.

0:53:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's. It's not a good idea, kid.

0:53:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): And put that in there.

0:53:12 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's a threesome with.

0:53:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's.

0:53:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): A threesome is more fun if it's. If one of them is not a car or a car boat. In fact, I used to.

0:53:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): I've got a lot of.

0:53:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): I've got. I've been breaking down the orbiter stories when I was fabricating the car in the driver's compartment in the cockpit of the Orbiter. There's a window on the bottom and I needed back to be able to look down and verify if the drive shaft in the front was still turning because there was a. With no drag on it. When you're in the water, when you launch, you're launching off front wheel drive in the prop.

0:53:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): And then you turn the transfer case to neutral for the front so the wheels aren't turning and the drive shaft and all that stuff. So I wanted to put a window in there. It was like 12 by 16 inches. You could pop it open. There was a white stripe on the drive shaft. It would tell you if it was.

0:54:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): Still turning or not.

0:54:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I got the thing cut and.

0:54:09 - (Rick Dobbertin): I was getting ready to put the.

0:54:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): Frame in and I thought, I wonder if this thing could be a good escape hatch if you flipped over and.

0:54:15 - (Rick Dobbertin): You couldn't get out the top hatch.

0:54:17 - (Rick Dobbertin): If you could unbolt this and climb out.

0:54:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I'm in there, I'm all alone.

0:54:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's the middle of the day and I drop down through this hole and I get about to the middle of my chest and I'm stuck and I can't go any further. So I come back up and now I'm filling up the hole and my belt is caught on this outside of the orbiter and I'm trying to get back in so I can get out of the damn thing. So I can't do it.

0:54:44 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I reach my belt buckle and.

0:54:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): I undo my belt and I drop my pants. And just then the UPS guy shows.

0:54:52 - (Rick Dobbertin): Up and here's the Orbiter of these two naked legs sticking out.

0:54:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): And he says, did I come at a bad time?

0:55:04 - (E): It's been better.

0:55:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): I knew I knew him.

0:55:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): So we were laughing about it. And I am stuck in this stupid thing because, well, I hope you're not looking to me for help. But it was stuff like that that made it fun. We pulled up into the Dominican Republic and I got stuck trying to come out of the water, I mean, up to the axles. So the town got together and got a giant rope and they had like a 60 man tug of war pulling the orbiter out of this muck and up in the whole underside of it was just five inches thick of muck and. But this group of people just came out of nowhere. Well, we'll help you. We'll help you.

0:55:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): They were really nice, poor as they could be, but they were just really nice and nothing made any difference. We weren't Americans, we weren't anything else.

0:55:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): We were in there, we needed help.

0:55:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): And they jumped in and helped us. So when we're approaching the Dominican Republic, there's a P3 airplane buzzing around over top of us, going around in circles with three engines running and one off. We figured, you know, we didn't know what it was, but we figured it was not a US plane, but actually it was a US DEA plane looking for us. They made an experiment to see if they could track us from where we were before here.

0:56:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): And we, we had lost them. So we spent some time with them, showing them our route and everything else. But when we were getting ready to leave the Dominican Republic, an official from the government came up and took us to the American embassy area. Not to the embassy itself, but to.

0:56:43 - (Rick Dobbertin): An area that had corded off, got.

0:56:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): Us in there, took our passports, which was kind of scary, and then said.

0:56:50 - (Rick Dobbertin): Follow that guy and he'll take you out of the town through back road.

0:56:54 - (Rick Dobbertin): So they took us out, got us on the highway, gave us passports back, and we headed together into the country where we ran into an American pizzeria of all things. Guy was from Philadelphia.

0:57:05 - (Rick Dobbertin): We parked out front and then the.

0:57:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): Newspaper came the next day and he said, I remember him saying, it's time to get out of Dodge. These guys are protesting an American attack sub doing maneuvers in their waters.

0:57:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I thought, you gotta be kidding.

0:57:22 - (Rick Dobbertin): He goes, no, and there's a picture.

0:57:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): Of your car right there.

0:57:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): And we weren't, we were just. So we left.

0:57:29 - (E): Yeah, right.

0:57:30 - (Rick Dobbertin): But everybody was nice, you know, I think everybody should travel out of their own comfort zone. The States, now's not a good time.

0:57:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): Time. There's too much turmoil.

0:57:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): But people are the same everywhere. They want their kids to have the.

0:57:42 - (Rick Dobbertin): Most they can do. They want to eat well, they want a home, they want a job they.

0:57:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): Like and that's it, you know, it's.

0:57:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): Too bad other stuff has to get in the way.

0:57:51 - (E): Yeah. So you mentioned the orbiter is going 8 to 10 miles an hour at sea. You're a guy that's been in the drag race scene, so I think I see a connection here where you've spent countless hours going really slow in the water and you decide, hey, I want to build something that'll go a little faster in the water. What was the genesis for the amphibious vehicle, the hydrocar that you built?

0:58:17 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh, I had built up a bit.

0:58:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): Of a bank account. I wanted some place to throw it all away.

0:58:24 - (E): They say the happiest two days of a man's life are the day he buys a boat in the day he sells it. And the same could be said of sports cars. And you found a way to roll those together.

0:58:34 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's right, yes. Yes.

0:58:36 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's crazy. The orbiter was so slow. I wanted to build this thing, and it would have worked fine if I had not had such a steep angle on the front of the vehicle. So it was more of a displacement haul, pushing the water in front of.

0:58:51 - (Rick Dobbertin): It and around it, than getting up on plane.

0:58:54 - (Rick Dobbertin): Some of my friends wanted to hook a rope on the front of the.

0:58:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): Hydro car and then tie it off to another boat and pull it to.

0:59:03 - (Rick Dobbertin): Where it gets up to speed and gets up on plane and then cut the rope loose.

0:59:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I never wanted to do that.

0:59:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): Because I figured that'd be the only time, that'd be the only thing that anybody ever saw was this thing being towed by a boat to go. It just was. I don't know, it's just a bad desire. It's funny, a lot of people don't. Don't hold me to that, and they think, oh, that's so cool and all that, but I really don't have a real affinity for that, for that vehicle.

0:59:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): Right.

0:59:32 - (E): I mean, I'm looking at pictures, it's beautiful. And it kind of speaks to the fact that it's really difficult to do one thing really well. It's almost impossible to do two things really well. I think about this all the time. My car is low to the ground and it looks great, but, man, it's hard to pull out of parking. You know, there, there are, there are drawbacks to these things we do to make things perform better or, you know, the whole idea behind lowering a car center of gravity so that it handles better on a perfectly flat racetrack. Well, I don't get to drive around a perfectly flat racetrack around town.

1:00:03 - (E): So there are compromises to taking things to Their extremes and prices that we have to pay. I want to be conscious of your time. I mean we're on an hour here and I don't want to keep you all day. I know you've got other things going on. So since the hydrocar you've been involved in entrepreneurial pursuits and you've got a business today. So what's your day to day look like in 2024?

1:00:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): Let's see. I check my email and there's usually nothing in it. And then product I've come up with is a Corvette suspension adapter.

1:00:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): If you want to put like a.

1:00:40 - (Rick Dobbertin): Corvette C5 or C6 suspension in your 65 Impala or something, you can buy the complete suspension on ebay. It's all aluminum. And then you buy one of our kits which bolts on top of the cradle of the Corvette suspension and it'll give you a spot to put a tube by four frame right up front and there's no brackets you have to put on. It's actually easier or easy as putting like a 4 link or that sort of suspension in a car.

1:01:13 - (Rick Dobbertin): And they're selling really good. I've never had a return. That's, that's a good thing. But yeah, that's our shop. It's Dobbertin Performance and we sold about 600 of them.

1:01:25 - (E): Yeah, you have the, the 90s S10 that.

1:01:29 - (Rick Dobbertin): All right.

1:01:30 - (E): So that's made the show car scene with, with the Corvette engine mid mounted and now I'm looking at a picture of a go kart with a Corvette engine where you've adapted that same application to something that weighs next to nothing and 500 horsepower. It's got to be a blast.

1:01:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's not finished yet.

1:01:48 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's what I'm.

1:01:49 - (Rick Dobbertin): That's my current project. It's a simple one. What I'm doing is since the adapters are so adaptable, adaptable to different things. I'm going to widen it about 10 inches and make a two seater out of it. And I bought one of the, the new GM V6 double overhead cam engines which they've got a real bad reputation like from the 2020, 2010s are junk. But the new ones are pretty good engines. So we're going to put that in transversely in the back.

1:02:20 - (Rick Dobbertin): Still have 310 horsepower. The thing will weigh about 16 or 1700 pounds. So it'll be quick.

1:02:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): We'll have it.

1:02:26 - (Rick Dobbertin): I believe we can make it convertible. So it can be a two passenger or four passenger because the one passenger one nobody's interested in doing it you at least want to grab your wife or your friend or buddy or somebody and go somewhere with two seats. So it'll be two seats and it'll be available with the LS thing. Like that thing, only wider. And this V6 that we're trying now, it's really weird. This V6 has no mounting places for putting motor mounts on it. It's just been driving me nuts. And I've talked to.

1:02:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): I've gone down to Chevy dealers and they let me get under one in a lift and stuff. And it's so overly complicated. You don't just put a pad on both sides and you're done.

1:03:06 - (E): Yeah.

1:03:07 - (Rick Dobbertin): So. But that's. That's my day to day right now is that. And we've got a couple other little inventions. I've got one I can't talk about yet, but it fits the genre of Spencer's stores. I don't know if you've ever been a Spencer store.

1:03:24 - (E): Yeah.

1:03:25 - (Rick Dobbertin): So you can, that's. I can, I can tell you.

1:03:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): But not right now.

1:03:29 - (E): Okay.

1:03:31 - (Rick Dobbertin): But a couple of different things I like to. We have a place now in Canvas, Minnesota, New York, and we ship all over. A lot of. A lot of customers are using our adapters in Australia, Sweden, Germany, you know, a lot of. A lot of places, South America.

1:03:50 - (E): So the website is Dobbertinperformance.com. i'll leave links to that in the show notes for people to check out. I got two questions left.

1:03:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): Okay.

1:04:00 - (E): What advice would you have for younger Rick? Knowing what you know, having gone through, what you've been through, what advice would you give?

1:04:08 - (Rick Dobbertin): No matter what you're building or what.

1:04:10 - (Rick Dobbertin): You'Re doing, keep the perspective on what it is. It's a project.

1:04:14 - (Rick Dobbertin): It's.

1:04:15 - (Rick Dobbertin): It shouldn't over compensate for your family's most important thing and friends and being healthy and stuff. And try to. If you don't get the thing done for this street machine nationals and you.

1:04:27 - (Rick Dobbertin): Got to wait another whole year because.

1:04:28 - (Rick Dobbertin): You got to take it easy with that extra year. I know that's. That's easy to look back on and say now. And at the time you say, no, no, no, I gotta get this done, I gotta get it done. And then of course there's that one in the. Your day starts out in the morning and yeah, like one time with JP Thousand, it's almost done a day starts.

1:04:46 - (Rick Dobbertin): Out in the morning.

1:04:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): I drop the distributor in the back and I go to turn it and it's galled to the block. I can't move it. I can't get it to come out. I don't want to beat on it. I got to take the. Get the car up in the air.

1:04:58 - (Rick Dobbertin): Take the whole oil pan off and.

1:04:59 - (Rick Dobbertin): Take a little stick and bump it from the bottom. And it's like there's a day, you know, and it's. Of course, I let my moods get a hold of me too much, but just don't lose sight of what's important, I guess is right.

1:05:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): One thing.

1:05:11 - (E): Well, Rick, to your credit, I want to personally thank you because I read the magazines and I was motivated by you and Matt Scott and those types of things. And I did bite off more than I could chew. And I wanted to do a modern tribute to the work you all had done. And at some point, I really just realized I was in over my head. And the same person that inspired me to take on the project, your counsel was spot on. You said, you can't let this take over your life.

1:05:42 - (E): My finances were struggling. It was taking a toll on all my rock relationships. And it does to this day, it feels like failure because it was. I didn't finish the task I set out to finish, but I emerged with some other more important things intact. And that was advice that you had given me. And so you're to blame and to thank for.

1:06:04 - (Rick Dobbertin): Well, it's easier said than done when you're right in the middle of something and then some stupid thing or a part shift up, it's the wrong part or the. You know, should I take a break from this thing? Maybe things will look better.

1:06:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): And I, you know, now I'm. I'm older.

1:06:23 - (Rick Dobbertin): I'm 72 and. But I don't. I don't look it. I have to you totally honest. I look. No, I look like I'm 80. But, you know, it's. It's great ride. And I do have the business now, which is. It's keeping us afloat. My wife works at Carrier corporation, so she's, I guess, the breadwinner here. And she's just a great person. I mean, she puts up with me for. We've been married or we got married in 2000, so we've been married 24 years.

1:06:57 - (E): Yeah.

1:06:57 - (Rick Dobbertin): So.

1:06:58 - (E): Well, shout out to her. I will leave an open invitation. Sir. We. We did. We barely scratched the surface of the fantastic stories that you have from whether it's shipping, the J2000 and the belly of an aircraft to all these. I mean, you are welcome back anytime, my friend. And I will plant the seed of. What remains undone for you is we need a book about your life, sir. And I mean that with the It's a bit of an assignment, but it is also a bit of an encouragement that your life and your stories, they need to be on paper for posterity sake.

1:07:38 - (Rick Dobbertin): I appreciate it.

1:07:39 - (Rick Dobbertin): I have come up with a title. I like to be challenged when I build these things so it's not run.

1:07:45 - (Rick Dobbertin): Of the mill, you know.

1:07:47 - (Rick Dobbertin): So I thought mechanically challenged.

1:07:52 - (Toby Brooks): It's perfect.

1:07:53 - (E): It's perfect. All right. Well Rick, I can't thank you enough for stopping by. Like I said, I'll drop the links so that people can go to your website. Last little bit. I always stitch this in. Just introduce yourself. My name is Rick Dobbertin and I am Undone.

1:08:06 - (Rick Dobbertin): My name is Rick Dobbertin and I am Undone.

1:08:09 - (E): Awesome. I'm thankful to Rick for drop and.

1:08:20 - (Toby Brooks): I hope you enjoyed our conversation. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com ep105 to see the notes, links and images related to today's guest, Rick Dobbertin. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it. Surf on over to undonepodcast.com click that connect tab in the top top menu and drop me a note.

1:08:48 - (Toby Brooks): Coming up on the show, I've got a great new mini docu series in the works about the Starter Corp. I'm thrilled to admit that this week I actually found one of those cool Charlotte Hornets new jackets and it wasn't a scam. Supposed to arrive tomorrow.

1:09:04 - (E): I'll let you know how that ends up, but if all goes well, I've.

1:09:07 - (Toby Brooks): Got Carl Banks, the owner of the Starter Corp, former number three overall NFL draft pick, member of the New York Giants Ring of Honor, and two time super bowl champion on deck. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. Becoming Undone is a nitro hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. Tell a friend about the show, follow along on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becomingundonepod and follow me at tobyjbrooks on X, Instagram, tick tock and LinkedIn.

1:09:44 - (Toby Brooks): Check out my link tree at linktr de backslash. Tobyjbrooks. Listen, subscribe and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Till next time.

1:09:58 - (E): Keep getting better. What I'm wishing you built right now is a noiseless leaf blower. I want to chime in. And every time I do, this guy is right outside my window cranking up this.

1:10:11 - (Rick Dobbertin): So what? Why is he there so long?

1:10:14 - (E): Well, they mowed. They weeded first. Now he's got the. The leaf blower going to. To blow it all up.

1:10:18 - (Rick Dobbertin): Oh, okay.

1:10:19 - (Rick Dobbertin): So hopefully yell out, shove that thing up your.

1:10:25 - (E): As soon as he. I think he'll head. Yeah, he's almost done by me here.