Ron Hollatz in his 1994 Jeep Wrangler on the Golden Crack in Moab, Utah. Photo by Janet Nutter.

My name is Ron Hollatz and I'm a Jeep addict. My wife Laurie has been trying to find a program for me to enter to get rid of this addiction, but I hope she never does. Even though I've only been involved with Jeeps since 1996, I've always had a love for vehicles and owned quite a variety including a restored 1957 Chevy pickup and a 1963 Plymouth Valiant. My love for anything mechanical began as one of the kids who had to take everything apart just to see how it works. I'm currently a member of the Minnesota Trailriders which is part of the Minnesota 4-Wheel Drive Association.

Our current vehicles include a 1994 Jeep Wrangler fondly referred to by my Wife as "the money pit" and a 1996 Land Rover Discovery. The Wrangler has been heavily modified for both on and off-road use. The Discovery remains stock, at least for now. We use the Discovery as a tow vehicle for the various off-road events we attend across the country.

Our travels with the Jeep last year took us to Utah for the Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, the Black Hills of South Dakota for the Dakota Territory Challenge, and northern Minnesota for some local wheeling. If you ever see a white Land Rover Discovery flat-towing a white Jeep Wrangler it's probably us on the way to an event somewhere.

The rest of our lives

On the way to the 1999 Dakota Territory Challenge. Photo by Laurie Hollatz.

I guess we do have a life outside of Jeeping. Both my wife and I are from the Madison, WI area and remain devoted Wisconsin Badgers and Green Bay Packers fans. That's not an easy thing to do when you live across the border in Rochester, MN. We do not have any children since I don't share my toys very well, but we do have a cat named Fred who is more than a handful.

I attended the University of Wisconsin Madison and studied Landscape Architecture with an emphasis in land planning and management. Between stints in college I traveled the Western United States living in such exotic locations as Grand Canyon, AZ and Leadville, CO. While in school I discovered a talent for computers which is my current profession. I work for an Atlanta based company, Client Server Labs, that specializes in performance testing. I am currently contracted to the IBM AS/400 Customer Benchmark Center in Rochester, MN as a Benchmark Analyst. I also collect live recordings of bands such as the Grateful Dead and Phish.

My understanding wife Laurie (she's the one with the real job) received her Masters from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater and works for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as a Bank Examiner. She is currently the Field Office Supervisor in Rochester and her job is the one which took us from Madison to Seattle in 1996 and from Seattle to Rochester in 1998.

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