About OFO
The newspaper article below
appeared in the Fort Leonard Wood Guidon Oct 30th, 2008. The article does
a great job of explaining how our club was started.
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Off-road
club seeking fellow enthusiasts
Thursday,
30 October 2008
By
Matt Decker
Leisure/Sports editor
If you’ve got an all-terrain vehicle and you’re looking for a place to
challenge it, the members of the Ozark Freedom Off-Road club want to talk to
you.
Formed in
June by a small group of off-road enthusiasts who couldn’t find a similar type
of organization in mid Missouri, the club has between 20 and 25 members and is
looking for more.
“We started the club here, because we couldn’t find one that was already
going,” said Staff Sgt. Tom Shearer, an emergency management instructor with
Air Force Detachment 7, 366th Training Squadron, and a founding member of the
off-road club.
“We want to make it a regional club — there really isn’t one along I-44
between Springfield and St. Louis,” Shearer said. “Officially, we started
the club back in June, but we’re still trying to get off the ground.”
Shearer said all types of off-road vehicles are welcome to join the club, which
counts a number of servicemembers among its membership.
“We aren’t exclusive to one type of vehicle, like just ATVs or just Jeeps.
We accept anything that goes off-road,” he said. “We take anything from dirt
bikes to ATVs to side-by-sides, which are like the Yamaha Rhinos or the Polaris
Ranger. We have a lot of 4x4s; folks will take their trucks down and take them
over big rocks. We also have one guy who drives a sand rail, which is like a
dune buggy.”
“We are not just for servicemembers, either,” he continued. “Our goal is
to get more civilians involved in hopes of keeping the club going once (the
servicemembers) PCS from here.”
The club often holds events at the Flat Nasty Off-Road Park near Jadwin, Mo.
Owner Ron Maximoff built the park in 2005 to give off-road enthusiasts a place
to ride away from public lands, which now often prohibit ATVs and similar
vehicles.
Courtesy
photo
“We have 850 acres here, and three different levels of trail systems: easy,
intermediate and extreme,” Maximoff said. “We relieve a lot of the illegal
(riding). Guys have the toys, and they need a place to ride them.”
On Nov. 15, the club will hold an ATV Poker Run at the Flat Nasty Off-Road Park
for $5 per hand in addition to regular park fees, which are about $15 for a
rider and vehicle and $5 for a passenger. Club members will also take part in
the park’s annual Moon in the Boonies run, which starts at 8 p.m. that evening
and continues, Nov. 16 at the same location. Registration for the two-day event
is $35 per person.
Shearer said a portion of proceeds from the poker run will go to charitable
causes.
“Our hope is to raise money for Wounded Warrior projects and other causes,”
he said. “We’re geared toward that right now because our members are mainly
military, and we’re kind of supporting our own. But we’re open to other
projects as well. We’re still a new group, and we’re not narrowing ourselves
down.”
Like many leisure activities, the costs involved in off-road recreation vary
widely. On the high end, enthusiasts can spend as much as $14,000 or more for
the latest side-by-sides vehicles, or, as Shearer explained, “you can buy an
old four-wheel drive truck for a couple grand and go out and play.”
You can also soup up what you already have in some cases. Several club members
modify their trucks, Jeeps and even golf carts to take on tough terrain.
“If it’s a Jeep or a four-wheel drive truck, especially, they’ll heavily
modify them with roll bars, roll cages — you’ll see big mud tires,”
Shearer said. “The more you build them up, the more they are capable of
handling the more extreme trails.”
Shearer said he got involved with off-road vehicles several years ago when he
was deployed.
“I started riding over in Iraq, although I had ridden off and on for several
years,” he said. “The last time I deployed, my wife hung out with some
friends of ours in Florida who were into four-wheeling. When I got back we found
out we were both really into it, so I bought a couple of ATVs for my family.
We’ve been riding for about three years now.”
Shearer said four-wheeling has become a favorite pastime for his family.
“Now my daughters, who are 8 and 10, have their own four-wheelers, too,” he
said. “We go riding about every other weekend. In fact, I volunteered to come
here in part because of the terrain.”
Shearer said the Ozark Freedom Off-Road club meets once per month. Joining the
club is relatively cheap. An annual membership is $15 for an individual, or $20
for a family. Individuals must be 18 years of age to join.
“Our meetings aren’t like business meetings — it’s more like a
barbecue,” he said. “We’ll get together and ask the membership where we
want to ride next and what we want to do. It’s about getting more folks
involved who enjoy the same pastime, and hopefully doing some fund raising for
some good causes.”
For more information about the Ozark Freedom Off-Road club, go to
www.ozarkfreedomoffroad.com.
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