By Jon Maib
While most of the Jeep community headed to the coast to celebrate the May 19th, Go Topless Day, a small local group of Jeepers had another idea in mind. The plans been simple, get together with other Jeepers that were not headed to the beach and just hang out together, play games, eat food, and even have a raffle. But more importantly, this group of Jeepers wanted to show their support of the police and fire departments in their community by collecting comfort bears for the local departments to hand out.

This was the 3rd annual Go Topless Day event that has been put on and this year, one of the local club members had a large enough property to host the event. Some 120 Jeeps showed up to support the event and brought more than 900 comfort bears.

During the day, Jeepers had the chance to check out other rig modifications, ask questions about products installed and even play around by stacking Jeeps, playing yard games and the kids even got to swim on the fairly warm Texas day. Later in the afternoon, local law enforcement officer and fire department joined the party in order for the group to present them with the comfort bears. This gave Jeepers and kids the opportunity to thank them personally for their service and grab some pictures together.

Upon entrance to the event, each participant was given a goody bag and single raffle ticket. This allowed each participant the chance to win some of the cool swag that was provided by many reputable companies in the off-road industry as well as local businesses. Who doesn't love a good raffle? This group pulled out no stops on raffle prizes that ranged from T-shirts to a 9mm Ruger pistol. That's right, you had a chance to win a hand gun (This is Texas after all) and to win any of these sweet raffle prizes, it cost participants nothing! (Note: Hand gun was not given out at event. Winner was required to go to the presenting shop (Bradford Ballistics), be 21 and be able to pass a background check in order to win).

For a few lucky folks, they had the opportunity to jump in the massively built 'Junkyard Dog' to take a jump off a large dirt mound on the back of property. After several practice attempts to see how the 'ol dog would do, owner Dustin began giving rides, buckling participants into the 4 point harness and then 'sending it'! After I had the opportunity of videoing and grabbing some pics, I got the chance to ride. This propane powered vehicle was a beast and the landing was soft due to the massive ORIs mounted on it. On one of our jumps, my action camera went flying off the Jeep and could have been a funny video, however the memory card came loose and didn't save the video, but check out the video I did get:

It was a great day of spending time with likeminded people and gave participants the ability to support a great cause. After the event, the 900+ comfort bears were packed up and divided between several local police and fire/rescue departments to be given out to comfort those in difficult situations. So be sure and check out the event next year! You should be able to find it and others like it at www.allthingsjeep.com/news.html or check out their Facebook page.