Welcome to “The Backyard” – I’m baaaaaack!

Hello dear reader, it’s your old pal Doug. You may remember me from posting under the Everybody’s Scalin’ For the Weekend blog years ago, or more recently (up until a month ago) the weekly Monster Truck Madness post!

At the end of August, I said my goodbye. It took me about a week of twiddling my thumbs (perhaps to be more accurate, my typing fingers) to realize that I wasn’t really burnt out or anything like that….I just wanted to be able to talk about more topics on the reg than just r/c monster trucks.

That leads me to The Backyard, my new weekly Friday post. To best describe what it’s about, I think I should share some backstory.

I became an r/c car nut back in the early 90’s when I was around 10 years old. Like many hobbyists back then, the R/C Car Action Magazine was where it was at. I would go to the public library to check out back issues. Hey, with no Internet, this was as good as it got!

As time went on, I found that I would quickly flip to two sections upon opening a new issue- I’d scope out the Reader’s Rides, which was where folks would send in pics of their vehicles, and then I’d turn to the last page. On said last page was “Chris’s Back Lot”, which was written by Chris Chianelli (RIP!). It was always a mystery as to what you’d find there, as Chris apparently had carte blanche to write about whatever he wanted, and he had A LOT of different interests within the hobby.

Sometimes you’d find pics of a home-made track. Sometimes random event coverage. Sometimes he’d be talking some hyper-niche segment of the hobby. Sometimes he’d go on a mini-rant.

As someone who also had (and still has) a lot of interests within the hobby at large, it was always fun to see what Chris would talk about next.

As I’ve detailed on this site over my previous years here, I’m a big r/c monster truck and scaler guy. But I also enjoy a lot of other stuff. Traditional and niche forms of r/c racing. Slot cars. Static scale modeling. I’ve dabbled in trains. I REALLY like r/c semi trucks and I’m getting the itch to get into construction equipment. I’ve always dreamt of building an r/c battleship.

One of the best compliments I’ve ever received is from the manager of my local hobby shop. He said “You know Doug, I never know what you’re going to come in here for. You’re a well rounded hobbyist.”

I took that as the highest compliment.

Point being to all of this, I wanted to have a space to write about whatever subject I wanted to write about on any given week, as long as it pertained to the hobby at large. When I brought the idea up to boss-man Brian, he said “Have at it!”

We are calling it The Backyard for several reasons. For starters, I wanted to give a nod to Chris’s Back Lot. The name was also fitting because at Big Squid RC, we are all hardcore backyard bashers before anything else. It just made sense.

Yeah, there will be plenty of monster truck and scale crawling talk, these will always be major passions of mine within the hobby….but be prepared for a lot of random other stuff as well. Maybe even a guest appearance from other Squids from time-to-time.

So, welcome to The Backyard. As mentioned, this post will run weekly on Friday, usually Friday afternoons, so as you wind down your work week playing around on the internet, make sure you stop by here to waste some of your time with me! It’s great to be back!