ambitionstrikes

Will it Start?

One of the many "treasures" from the abandoned homestead adjacent to our property is the 1983 Chevy K10. One of Riley's projects for an upcoming sunny winter day is to see if he can get it running and driving!What do you think, can Riley get it started?

Favorite Snow Blower?

We now have THREE ways to blow snow off our road: the skid steer, the Army Truck, and the electric UTV. Which one is your favorite?

Spoiler Alert! You bought a WHAT!?

That's right. If you've been watchingthe channel lately you've likely noticed the new truck in the background. We bought an F150 Lightning, all electric pickup truck. This is the first new car either of us has ever purchased. It's the most bare bones version Ford offers with a whopping 90kwhbattery pack, and a 7200w inverter on board. Shockingly, thetruck cost less (per kwh of capacity) than many of the plug and play home backup energy systems!We're going into this somewhat blind and hope you bring you along for the ride as ...

Helping Hands - Meet Riley's Parents

Riley's parents have made guest appearances on our channel before, from the DIY Sidecar and Firewood Processor to Riley's recent shenanigans in this Short with the Mall Train. Years ago when we filmed our Army Truck Road Trip, Riley's mom helped out by driving in the chase car with Boone and Bailey.Riley credits his passion to building cool stuff to his parents. As a kid they provided him with space, time, and materials to experiment. Riley's first big vehicle project was restoring a Ford GPW with his dad. We've included som...

Shop Interior Upgrades

Off camera, we've been working on upgrades to our shop since we filmed our full property tour and wanted to share some work-in-progress photos with our patrons.In the back of our shop we've created a wood accent wall that we hope to use as an indoor filming studio. Next up we'll add a workbench/desk for Riley so the space can double as his office. Along the stairs that lead up to the mezzanine we've added closet doors and under the stairs Boone loves chilling in his new little nook.You might remember us racing against the clock ...

Some Silly Christmas Cheer

We hope you enjoyed Sunday's video featuring the Oliver Express and our Christmas Toy Drive. Here's a little extra holiday spirit just for our patrons.We hope you all have a warm and safe Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Easter Eggs or Red Herrings?

In Sunday's video we tidied up a bit (okay, a lot) and shared a full home and property tour.Along the way we featured clues or Easter eggs for future projects . . . but perhaps we included some red herrings as well. We want to hear from all of you, what did you see and what do you think is coming up next on our channel?

Cozy up in the Patreon App

Recently Patreon launched a chat feature in the App. It took us a while to get on board, as you all remember you we had a busy summer! Now that the weather is getting cozier we are looking forward to using chat more to connect with all of you.If you have a smart phone, we encourage you to download the Patreon app and take a look at the the new community chats. We've made two, one for all Patrons to join and one just for our Dozer-level folks. With the Dozer chat we'll schedule times to go "live" so we are available to answer que...

To Rent or To Buy?

Theroad project required us to invest in two very large pieces of equipment in order to move the amount of materialwe needed to move. The first was everyone's favorite, the famous Caterpillar D8H. The second was the big Caterpillar 330 excavator. Surprisingly, both of these machines cost us roughlythe same amount of money. We spent $21,600 on the dozer and roughly $24,000 on the rental of the excavator (half on the hammer, half on the machine itself).So, which machine do we feel like was money better spent?In regards to the dozer, we purcha...

Updates and a Teaser from Ambition Hill

It's been a scramble to finish our new container shop and to get our equipment and firewood under cover before it starts snowing. Sunday's video will featuring the rest of the roof install.We have one last "powerful" install planned before the weather turns that will make living off grid much simpler this winter! Any guesses on what it could be?Oliver continues to be a fantastic team player, you can see him in these photos busy with his tools at his workbench in the container shop. He makes a great hiking companion and does thor...

Sunday Sneak Peak

Catch a Bigfoot sighting in tomorrow's video, Part 4 in our container workshop build series.

Building With Shipping Containers

Shipping containers are an instant, strong, secure, weathertight storage solution that come in at a great value. In fact, I don't think it's possible to build 480 square feet of shed space for what a shipping container costs. Does this mean thought that it's a good idea to transform a shipping container from a metal storage box into something else?Our first experience building with shipping containers involvedtransforming a 40 foot high cube (9.5' tall exterior height) into a tiny house. All said and done we were able to build a...

So what's the window for?

Last week in our video "Cutting Holes in our SHIPPING CONTAINER" we teased that we have some pretty exciting plans in store for one side of our new equipment shed, plans that would make good use of the natural light and the great view.Want to take a guess at what we will be making?

"Shocking" update and photos from the vault

In Sunday's video we installed new Bilstein remote reservoir bypass shocks on Courtney's Lexus and it made us feel a little nostalgic for our roots. Here's a short rock crawl down Memory Lane:We met in our college off road club and loved going on camping trips to California's best rock crawling spots: Fordyce, The Rubicon, and Johnson Valley. These first two photos are from trips to Johnson Valley. You can see that the roll cage worked! Our dog Boone's name is taken from the road leading in Johnson Valley, it's a special...

We're Going LIVE (Right Now!!)

See you at 6PM PST to chat all things Ambition Strikes!

What should we build with the wood?

In Sunday's Video we took the trees we cut down for our road project and milled it into lumber.Most of this wood we donated to our local bike club. They are building a youth mountain biking skills park and they'll be using the milled lumber to build a fence around the perimeter of the park.What should we build with the rest of it?

Livestream Thursday 9/14 6:00 PM PST

Hello Dozer Patrons! Please join us for an end-of-summer livestream this Thursday, September 14th, at 6:00 PM Pacific Time.We'll post the link to the livestream in this feed right at or a few minutes before 6:00 PM on Thursday.We hope you can join us!

Boat Ride with Uncle Chris

Sometimes our family comes to visit and we put them to work on a project . . . other times it's much too hot up on the mountain and we have fun on the lake instead.During a recent visit from Courtney's brother Chris we took our new boat out on the water for a relaxing afternoon complete with a pizza picnic. During the ride we are pleased to report that the boat did not break down and Oliver was able to get in a good nap - he's lulled right to sleep on the boat.

Solving Complex Problems

How do we solve complex problems?In recent months Courtney and I havebeen faced with an overwhelming number of challenges that all seemed so complex therewas no hope in ever solving them. So how do we do it?We've noticed a pattern in our problem solving: the hardest part is getting started. Although this problem solving pattern has been quite relevant to our most recent projects, for today's post I want to go back and give some context to the problem solving we went through when we first built our shop.We knew we needed to clear and lev...

What's Next with the Road

This summer we've made major progress with our Road Build Project and we wanted to give our Patrons an overview and a sneak peak of what we'll be sharing on the channel in the upcoming weeks:- We're taking the steepest stretch of the road from about a 25% grade and trying to get it closer to a 12% grade. This involves using the dozer to level and move earth and rock from one end of the road to the other.- We bought our new-to-us Hitachi excavator and rented a Cat 330 excavator with a rock hammer to get this job done.- One part of th...

Secret Abandoned Cabins

In next week's video we'll be giving tours of an area of our property that we haven't shown on camera until now . . . not one but TWO abandoned homestead sights.We don't know anything about the people who built these structures or the story of why they left, all we have to go by are the clues from what has been left behind. We hope you tune in on Monday and help us do a little detective work, maybe you will notice a something about these cabins that we've missed.

Helping Hands - Meet Sarah

If you're an especially observant follower (or if you've already watched today's video), you might have noticed there's an additional member of Team Ambition who's been behind the camera.Meet the talented Sarah Johnson who is home from college for the summer and doing an outstanding job filming our road project. Sarah is no stranger to off grid building or Youtube. You can check out her family's channel Off Grid Living or Sarah's Indonesian Language Channel.Having Sarah on the team has made a huge impact on our stami...

Excavator Purchasing Decisions: Used vs New?

The decision to buy new versus used is always a complicated one without a clear answer, but it was especially complicated when it came time to buy a piece of equipmentto help us develop ournew property.I'm going to focus this writeup on the decision to buy new versus used, although there were hundreds of other decisionsthat needed to be made as well such as: type of equipment (tractor, backhoe, skid steer, excavator, etc), what brand to buy (price considerations, local dealer support, financing incentives, lifetime cost of ownership predict...

Dozer Magnets in the Mail

Hey Patrons, check your mailbox for a piece of Patreon-only swag from us to you!We sent them out to all Patrons who have their shipping address in their contact information. If you would like a magnet but have not added your shipping address, please add your address and send us a message so we can send one to you.

Happy Independence Day!

Helping Hands: Meet Tyler!

In Sunday’s video we shared the arrival of our college friends Tyler, Karla, and toddler Charleston. You might recognize this crew from a camping trip in the desert we took last year. Tyler, who we have jokingly been referring to as Riley's "stunt double" is giving us a hand with the improvements to our road this summer.Riley and Tyler met in the campus offroad club and bonded over their shared interests in engineering, mountain biking, rock crawling, and driving as many different vehicles and machinery as possible. We'll be s...

Updates to Patreon Coming Soon

In 2021 we bought our first excavator. It was an intimidating purchase for us, but we knew it would be a vital piece of equipment as we began to clear our land and build our shop--and we were assured in our ability to purchase it because of the ongoing financial support of patrons. To the patrons who have been supporting us since we made that purchase, and to those of you who have joined in recent months, thank you so much for the support.Now two years (and two excavators) later, we want to show gratitude to the patience of our long term patron...

Oh Baby...

In typical Ambition Strikes fashion, our baby boy just didn't want to wait any longer to get started on his next project! He arrived 3 weeks early on March 31st, weighing a hearty 8lb 8oz. We are so thankful for his good health and are enjoying these bonus snuggles over the next few weeks.We had been working hard to pre-film several weeks of content so that we can continue to share our lives with you while we take some time off work. We've got some really fun videos coming your way, including more building projects and an update on our ...

It's As Cold As It Looks...

This week we mixed things up and went on a (mostly) fun adventure. Winter is going to be over before we know it and Riley talked me into enjoying the snow in a new way. While I'll admit it was fun, I think I'll stick to sleeping in my warm bed for the rest of the winter.This week's video follows our snow biking adventure and will be going live on Monday morning (instead of our normal Sunday morning slot)!-Courtney

Homestead Updates!

We've spent the beginning of the year planning and getting all of our ducks in a row and we're finally back to building things! The next few videos are going to be fun to share because they are wrapping up a project we left you all hanging on... the deck build! Spoiler alert, we finished the deck staircase and railing and they came out amazing. It has been so nice the past few days to be able to go in and out out of the living room. The dogs are now allowed unattended on the deck and we are all enjoying the additional living space.Mud s...