Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Interviewing Duncan Barbour, Camel Trophy Coordinator and Global Overlander

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Interviewing Duncan Barbour, Camel Trophy Coordinator and Global Overlander · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal Podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Scott Brady, and I'm here with my illustrious co host
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Matt Scott.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm here in the corner.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we are not only at the Overland Expo West,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: but we are in because of the gracious consideration of
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Mike mcmaud. We are in his beautiful Earth Roamer LTI
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful vehicle and it gives us the chance to have
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a little more space. So we're recording it here at
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the event, and we have Duncan Barber with us. And
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Duncan is someone who I have looked up to for
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: well over a decade since I heard his story and
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I learned about his involvement with the Camel Trophy. He's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: known as one of the true gentleman's within the space.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I've never heard a ill word spoken about him because
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: he's really built a reputation of not only experience, but
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: global travel. Duncan was the global event coordinator for the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Camel Trophy and now he's part of the Seven P
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: team and he has literally launched vehicles like the Jeep
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Wrangler in Africa and other events around the world, traveled
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: around the world Duncan. Thank you so much for being
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: on the podcast.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much Scott that the introduction is way
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: way beyond what I would expect, and I feel ready
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: honored that you say that.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Start Yeah, I mean we can start over and be
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: more insulting. Yeah, well no, please please nobody.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Oh and now a word from one of the supporters
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of our podcast, red Arc at Overland Journal. We go
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• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I am fascinated to learn
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit about is what events happened in your life.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: What decisions did you make in your life that led
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: you to the point of being able to be a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: global event coordinator for the Camel Trophy.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Talk about that.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I suppose it's kind of a it's a long story,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: obviously because I'm sixty years old now, But what.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Led up to that.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, the first thing that happened was I mean,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I come from a family of petrol heads anyway, so
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: I've always had an interest in vehicular travel and that
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: kind of thing. My great great uncle was the first
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: person to drive a vehicle up ben Nevis, which probably
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: you could almost describe as one of Ford's remote off
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: road pr exercises. Not that Ford had anything to do
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: with it, but that part to My family ran the
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Ford Dealership in Edinburgh during the war and stuff, so
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: they had a lot of military vehicles coming in and
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: things like that, and in the board table one day,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: my I suppose he would have been my great great
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: great uncle turned round to his seven sons, who were
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: also part of the business, and said, we need to
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: do something to promote how good the model t Ford is.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: I want you to drive it up ben Nevis and
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: how tall has ben Nevis is. It's not tall compared. Yeah, yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: you're mountains, but it's the highest mountain in the UK. Wise,
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I can't Actually I should know how high. I know,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I've driven by it.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's at least a couple hundred feet is
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: at least a dozens and dozens of feet? Yeah, yeah,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: so about the height of this earth rommer that we're in. Yes, yes,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: not the price, but anyway, it's a pretty major feet there.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: There is a track that goes up or at that
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: time there was there was a other still a track
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: goes up it because lots of people walk up it.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: But sure there was a kind of horse track that
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: went up to the top because there was an observer,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a meteorological station up there. Okay, but a vehicle had
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: never done it. Vehicle had never done It's always been
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: horse and car going amazing.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: So my uncle Harry was was tasked with that and
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: he went ahead and did it, and it was pretty
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I mean even today, I mean there's only been a
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: handful of people done it. He was the only person
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: to have done it twice because ten years later they
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: decided to do it and lay for incredible. Yeah, so
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: I can't that's kind of my you know, I kind
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: of feel I've got off roading in my gene based
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: on that pedigree. But it was a major feat. It
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: would be a major achievement. Now in a modern day
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: vehicle you would still have quite a few problems in
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: a few areas. I mean, he made bridging ladders to
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: get across bits of the burn. They were blowing up
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: pete hags to try and create a route through them,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: and obviously you couldn't do that now. But sure, there
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: is some archive material on YouTube which is one in
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: one of the BBC archives, and you can actually google
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: it and see them doing it. And there is a
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: shot looking from a distance looking at some guys poking
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: booking into the shelf of this peat hag and the
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: next thing scuddying away. It's all like it's all on
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: high speed, scutting away and then they blew it up
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: the next vehicle. But well there you go. Yeah, and
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: that's how you get to the top. Yes, he was
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: using traction aids. They weren't max strengths. I'm sorry to.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: See, but I'm sorry we weren't there at the time. Well,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: if you had been, that would have done the job.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: They wrapped up briand the red reels of the thing
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: as an extra traction aid.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: And there was places where I remember Dad telling me
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: some of the story, there's places where it was so
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: steep they reversed up because reverse gear was lower than
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: first gear.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Sure, so they reversed up at some pieces.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and that would also help get traction essentially to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the front, which is where the weight would be as well.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so they loaded up the back and didn't
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the model ty of a hand throttle like they're they're
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: they're different to drive than Yeah, a modern car.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: I've never driven one, but I've heard they're really complicated,
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: actually hard to drive.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Quite hard to drive.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to adjust the points and stuff as
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: you're going along. I think it's quite Yeah, it's quite
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a fee. That's amazing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that's kind of genetics. But that kind of
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: get away from your question was was what led up
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: to camel trophy? And I guess that, you know, my
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: first experience in a four wheel drive was back in
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: when I was ten years old, my dad taking me
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: out in a land Rover Series and old Series three
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: that we had in a field and I'm just ragging
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: it around there and gradually because he worked in the plant.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: He had a plant higher company. You know, I had access.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: I used to go in on a Saturday morning and
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: work with mechanics in the in the workshop there doing
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: all the you know, kind of grotty jobs, scraping rust
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: off chassis and powerwashing things. But I had access to
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: seeing them rebuilding engines and we were putting tracks on
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: machines and all sorts. So and as an a side of that,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: I was able to drive whatever was in the yard
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: at the time. You know, That's where you know, a
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: lot of that driving experience came from. Then moved on
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: to working on farms and driving tractors, sending up to
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: you know, combine harvesters, pe viners, that sort of thing,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't until I mean, you know, I was
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: doing all roading in my job. But I mean, the
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: UK isn't a big place to go off roading, especially
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: in Scotland because all the land is private, so we
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: don't have access to the kind of amazing spaces and
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: drives that you guys can go on in the US.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: We just don't have that in the UK. Don't you
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: have like a green lane, Well, there's green lane stuff
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: in England but not in Scotland. Interesting in fact, the
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: last one, which was the Kodiak Pass, which was an
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: old part of General Wade's military roads that was eventually
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: closed down, and I think my brother was one of
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: the last people to drive that. There's really nothing left
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: to do unless it's on private land. But nineteen eighty
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: five I saw an advert in four Will Drive magazine
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: in Scotland and it was a full page advert with
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: a camel trophy lozenge at the top, which, of course,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: in its own right, immediately puls your eyes to it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: And it was an advert looking for applicants to apply
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: for the first British steam On Trophy in nineteen eighty
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: six in Australia. So that kind of caught my eye,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I thought, because of course it all started off thousand
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: miles of adventure, you know, the ultimate off road challenge
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: kind of thing, and I thought, oh, I quite like
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: to try that. So I applied for it and was
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: lucky enough to get chosen to be one of the
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: final well not the final one, but I got down
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: to the last I think it was about forty of
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: us and the information came back. All they gave you
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: is a map reference. You have to be at this
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: map reference at this time on the state and cool.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: And I remember I mentioned it to a farming friend
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: of mine, a guy who I used to service for
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: an israelly car and I knew the family. They were
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: a big farming family in the Slothian And I said, oh,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: I've got I'm heading off to the thing called Camel
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Trophy and he said, what you mean the selection thing?
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I went, yeah, he said, I applied for it. Well,
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: he hadn't applied for it, his wife had applied for
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: a forum. And so off we headed. We headed that together,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: and actually that was for the eighty six event. And
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: actually Ronnie and I I found out afterwards when I
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: was working on the event, that they were looking at
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: Ronnie and I as quite a strong team. Sure, and
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: we both got down to the last six, but never
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: made the cut of the final two members or the
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: two standby members of the team.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't until many years later, when I actually
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: was working for Camel Trophy I found out that part
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: of the reason was that they felt that they couldn't
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: from an advertising and PR perspective, they couldn't have two
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Scotsmen in the British team.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, that was that was a different time even. Yeah, yeah, interesting.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of how I ended up on trophy.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: I was a finalist for the British team three years
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: on the trot, each time getting down to the last
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: the last cut of six Sure, and eventually I kind
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: of said, well, you know, three times if I can't
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: get into the team, now, I don't think I'm going
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: to get that far. I knew they would keep it,
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: asking me back if I wanted to apply, but I felt, no,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: it's time for me to step down and let someone
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: else have that chance. Because that's the way I looked
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: at it. I said, well, if I'm getting I'm getting
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: this far but not making the final cut, then someone
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: else might be able to make that and actually get in.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: So Sure, and I said to them, you know, I'll
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: step back from this, but if you ever need any
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: help with you know, selections or training or anything like that,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: because by this time I've been through three rounds of
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: training with land Robber and all the guys there, and
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Sure obviously been learning more and more about the basics
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: of driving properly off road, and I thought, well, you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: I think I'd have value for them as part of
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: the selection process.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: What was your first job would they hire you to
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: do first?
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean after that, I ended up heading out
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: to South America. I went out to the midd Least
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: first and then South America working for a company called
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Exodus Expeditions, and I was driving an overland truck for them.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Actually probably what you could describe as the first overland
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: vehicles like this.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So it was a Bedford.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Truck, probably about ten twelve ton rated. It had a
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: big box on the back, really primitive compared to what
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: we're sitting in today. Sure, big box in the back
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: with bench seats, windows like this. There was up above
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: there was kind of just hanging nets for soft stuff,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: and under each of the seats, each passenger had some
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: room to put their bag and their belongings, and then
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: the other boxes were taken up with dried goods for food.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: When you went outside the truck, at the front of
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: the main passenger compartment or maybe I should call it
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: the habitat as we do, I it had what we
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: call the dog box that was full of tents which
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: the crew, the people on the truck were using to
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: sleep in and then we went to the side. There
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: was also a water tank there, which proved very useful
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: once when we were getting shot at down a nasty
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: track and somewhere in Argentina or it might be in Venezuela.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: It's went back a long time. So you had a
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: water tank there for pottable water. And then down below
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: the truck, hanging alongside the chassis, we had a cookbox
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: which you opened out that had all the pans in
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: it and the door out, four burners on the cool gas.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: That was it, you know. So you you were the driver.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I was driver and guide.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, driving around South America amazing.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: So we did.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: We started in Bogota, Columbia, and we would do I
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: think it was nine countries and you'd start one trip
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: going clockwise and the next trip you go anti clockwise.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: And each trip was about four months. And how long
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: did you do that for? I did that for just
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: over a year. And then I got to call from
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Ian Chapman, who was one of the guys that I
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: had been I'd been through selections with who's now working
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: on the event. He was the event manager, and he'd
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: asked me if I could help with bringing in the trucks,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and he knew I was out in South America and
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: asked if I could help with bringing the land Rover
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: vehicles into Manaos, which is where the event was starting
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: from in nineteen eighty nine. And I said, well, yeah,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: I'd love to help you in, but I'm in the
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: middle of a trip and I can't really just I
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: can't just step off the truck and leave these passengers
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: in Brazil when I've got to get them up to Columbia.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: And he said, well, listen, we're looking for we're looking
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: for someone to assist me. And he said, I think
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: you'd be ideal for the job. When you're back in Columbia,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: when can you be home? And I said, well, if
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: you think there's definitely a chance of a job, I'll
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: put my resignation in now to exodus and I said,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: I'll be back in Columbia whenever it was I'll book
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: a flight home and come straight into the offices in
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: London for an interview.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Wow. So and that was that.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: That in itself was strange because I remember you and
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: saying to me, he said, you know when when you
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: first arrived, because beer in mind, I've been I've been
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: out on the road for over a year. So I
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: arrived at the backpack kind of had a you know,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: a Uenezuelan style cowboy hat on. I was probably looking
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: pretty scruffy. And that was me walking into R. G.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Reynolds Tobacco R G R. Tobacco in London in a
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: place called Midian House, which was right next to Clarence
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: House where the Queen Mother was staying. And I walked
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: in and I said, I'm in for an interview with
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Ian Chapman and Uncle Lee. And the secretary looked at
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: me and went really, and she phoned up. She said
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: there's someone very scruffy at the front. I wanted to
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: see you, and he said, oh, that'll be Duncan. So
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: I went up, had my interview and Duncan Lee, who
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: was in charge of sponships and special events, said yeah.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: And that was that was me starting a weekly fantastic
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: literally probably a fortnight later, I'd gone home, seen the family,
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: and a fortnight later I was stepping onto a plane
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: heading out to Moscow and then out to Accuts and
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Brats in Siberia to start working on setting up the
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: event for nineteen ninety amazing.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And there was mentions of KGB at that event.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well yes, because that was right at the start
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: of the whole Para Striker and Glasnows thing happening in
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Russia or the Soviet Union as it was at that time.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Because we kind of, as we the event progressed, we
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: went through that whole cusp. It was a difficult event
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: set up as well, because the Russians obviously saw us
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: coming in as an American tobacco company. There was dollar
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: signs there for them, and we clearly had money to
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: spend to set the event up. It was the first
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: motorsport event ever to happen there. We were really in
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: journalists from all around the world, which was completely alien
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: to the Soviet Union as well. We're bringing all our
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: comms equipment, satellite, the communication stuff, radios, so naturally there
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: was quite a big interest from the KGB. And we
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: know for a fact that there was there were KGB
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: people that signed that were there with us, although nobody
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: ever said you know so, and so you know uri
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: there is from.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: KGB, but you expect it.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you knew because he was packing a gun and
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: it was for the bears. Yes, that's what he used
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: to say, actually, but that was that was a really
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: interesting event, and it was going up. The permissions and
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: stuff were going up as high as Boris Yeltson at
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: that time. Incredible. So yeah, yeah, we had some very
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: strange meetings.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: I remember the Russians trying to charge pencil fees for journalists.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: So they want to charge for everything. Oh yes, journalist
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: have pencil to write with, so we'll charge you a
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: pencil fee for that, and then there'll be a camera
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: fee for that. And I remember some of the negotiations
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: starting off at millions and millions of dollars and we
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: kind of ratually worked them down two lower figures. We
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: secured things like we hired two and off one two
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: fours to move all the vehicles from from the UK
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: out to Rats where the event started, and that was
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: a major number in itself. When they arrived at Farmberry
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Airport and that was the first time Russian military aircraft
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: had ever landed on British soil.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Incredible. Yeah, I mean.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: We need to get you a T shirt. I've hired
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: an antsmap. Oh yeah, you've done that. Apparently I'm the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: only one that had. Yeah, soon enough. So look, it's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: raining for the people outside of the earth roamer. Oh yes,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: we didn't even notice. So yeah, I mean that was
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a major achievement. They brought their own brass band with
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: them because it was such a big thing for them
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: as well. It was piloted by top brass from the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Russian military. Of course in Russia the military run the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: air force as well. They were virtually brand new aircraft. Wow,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: so we're all spick and span. And when they arrived,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I mean at that time, they had no credit cards
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: or no mobile phones. In fact, I didn't even have
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a mobile phone at that time, and they weren't even
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: around and ninety if I remember.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: It's going a wee bit later, the bricks peered the
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: big shure of the box.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they arrived, and we put them up in hotels,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: We gave them money. We took them to a supermarket
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: and that was apparently that I wasn't there when they
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: did it, but the PR company took the supermarket to
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: spend some of the money that they'd been given. And
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: when they opened the doors went different directions. They thought,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: oh my god, actually what some of these folks decided defect?
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Sure there was there was that that kind of concern,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: no question.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting, Yeah, they just would fade into the distances.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they all came back fortunately. Wow. But that
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: was that was that was a hell of an event.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I have to say, I can imagine interesting and what
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: was What were some of the high lights of the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Russia event that you can think of competition, things like
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: staging all the teams and we did all the vehicles.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: By this time we're out in Bracts because we'd flown
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: them there, but the teams came into Moscow before going
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: out to Brats for the start.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Of the event.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: I think having that whole we managed to close off
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Peter Square where that big churches with all the beautiful
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: balls on the top.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Of Red Square. That's it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: So we closed that off and we're able to have
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: a big function there and I.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Think I've seen that photo with all that you will
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: have done. Yeah, yeah, cool, So that's you. That's cool.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: That was pretty special.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: And then as far as dramatic starts, it wasn't quite
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: the same as lights of Tanzania, where we drove for
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: two hours out of the city and the roads were
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: just lined with they reckoned. There was millions of people
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: lining the roads as we drove out of the city
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: for the Dara Slam for the start of the event.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: But Russia was just no one kind of ever dreamed
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: that you could go and do that in Russia that time.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: So from an event organization perspective, that was that was
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: pretty incredible, especially mean the thing it was just it
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: was you know, it was quite a really small core
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: group doing it all and setting it up.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: And what area of Siberia was that, Well, that was
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: eastern Siberer, I think it was.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: So we went out, flew out to Brats and then
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: we basically went it was Lake Bikewa Lake, Yeah, so
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: we could we started in Bracts and basically worked our
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: way around Lake Lake bikew to our coots.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you flew them back out of your
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: coots and then we flew them back out of it,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: and you would have had taken the ferries across across
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the River Aldan at that point.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Well, we never actually that. We didn't go that way.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I think we took the southern it's a long time
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: ago now, which the southern route around bike Ow and
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: it kind of followed existing tracks and then we used
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of the old kind of gulag roads that
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: had been built by prisoners of war. So at one
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: point we're driving along tracks where you know, you could
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: see the remains of the wood that was underneath there,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: and and part of that was really difficult because normally
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: no drives in those areas because they're called winter roads
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: because they're all frozen. The winter, you can travel them,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: but come the summer they're not great. I mean, we
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: did spend two days driving a river at one point
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: to try and avoid a section that was that was
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: almost impassable. But true camel trophy style, we always managed
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: to find a routeline the most difficult bits, so that, yeah,
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, that was that was quite good. There's pictures
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: of long streams of camel trophy vehicles going down a
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: river with people sitting on the bonnet spotting the big
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: rocks and things underneath the water.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: So you just couldn't do that now, No, absolutely, And
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: it's crazy. It's just like perfect time in per place.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: And in fact, you know, recently I had a question
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: posed for me, posed to me by a manufacturer, which was,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: if you were to run a camel trophy event now
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: or in twenty twenty two, for instance, what would it
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: look like. So you think back to all those classic
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: pictures on trophy and the things that made it look spectacular,
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: like you know, vehicles on a side slope with you know,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: a big banking on one side and everybody hanging off
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: the side of them to try and keep them on
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: four wheels. We couldn't do that now because of health
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: and safety. You know, sure, you'd all those kind of things,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: you know, people jumping on the top of the roof
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: racks and things like this.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: You can't.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: You can't do that, even the closeness of winching operations
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: and stuff like this, and where we're trying to move
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: vehicles quickly through through areas. Because of health and safety,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: you'd have to be going, well, you can't really do that,
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: or you, as the organizers would have a duty of
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: care to ensure that nobody got hurt. And of course
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: we had that duty of care back then, but the
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: health and safety side of it wasn't as robust as
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: it is now. So you wouldn't you know, someone jumping
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: onto the side of a one ten and holding onto
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: the roof rack. You just couldn't do that. Right at
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: the beginning of the training, you'd be able. You'd have
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: to say, well, you can't jump on the side of
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: moving vehicles.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: But I would also submit that you had some of
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the most accomplished drivers and athletes in the world. Did
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: you really have that many bad injuries?
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: No, we didn't actually, and I do think that was
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: down to the training that we got we got from
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: land Rover, so the drive training side of it, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: also the training that was done by all the individual
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Camel Trophy markets, and the training that we did at
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: the international selections where we brought them all into one
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: place and put them through various selection processes to assist
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: each of the markets to work out which two out
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: of the four that had come would be the actual
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: team members. And safety was what we did. Drum safety
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: in there all the time, and awareness and trying to
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: make sure that a bit like what we do with
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: the seven P training as well, is trying to get
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: people to make good decisions about what they're doing. We're
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: also talking about good decisions about what equipment they're buying
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: as well. You know, with regards to seven P side
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: of training on Camel Trophy, you didn't have to worry
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: about that because all your equipment supplied to you. We
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: didn't have the majority injuries on an event would be cuts,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: some lacerations which would be you know, would be stitched
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: up at the time, lots of bruises, you know. I
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: mean the guys were fit because they had been training
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: for it. And you know, I even remember going back
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: to when I suddenly realized that getting selected for Trophy
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: you had to be you know, you had to you
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: had to be an all rounder on a variety of things,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: but you also had to be fit. So I would
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: do a lot of running training and stuff like that
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: or a selection the teams. The teams were generally, they
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: were pretty fit, and they were looking out for each other.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the one thing about Trophy was
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: this this brotherhood almost people were looking out for other
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: people on the trail, you know, so we were you know,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: in between competition time, everybody on Trophy was one big team.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: And that's how you know, Camel Trophy was able to
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: get through some of the conditions that we got through.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: You know, whatever nature through at you, whatever that country
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: through at you, with regards to how difficult the roads
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: could be, we got through because we had the manpower
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: to be able to build bridges or rebuild bridges. We
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: had the manpower to pull vehicles. I mean, I remember
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: on the Tanzania event, we started off the rains hadn't come,
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: and within twenty four hours of starting the event, the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: rains came. They hit that black cotton soil and that
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: just turned to you know, massive amount of g loop.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: And I remember on this I think it was this
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: second or third day of the event, We're going through
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: a section where there was no there was nowhere to
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: put winches out to, you know, no proper anchor points.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: The ground was really too heavy, and the thing to
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: be built digging ground anchors in and plus you would
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: be doing it all the time.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: We didn't have the likes of you know, the pole
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: pals or anything like that, although I think the US
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: team carried a pole pal okay. And I remember coming
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: across the Canary Islanders and I saw these feet sticky
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: out of the windows because they'd been trying to drive
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: through the night. They were absolutely an ackered and allowed
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: to saying achered. I guess I've said it now, and
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: they I got up to the Garsid much worse. I
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: got up to the car and I said, what's going on, guys?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: And they went, oh, well, you know we're a bit tired.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: We can't there's nowhere to winch toon. There's not another
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: vehicle there. I said, but you know, you've got straps
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: and ropes in the car. What can we do with them?
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: I said, You're going to pull it? And that's what
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I did. I got, you know, all that there was
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: quite a few teams kind of stuck back to back,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: and I got I rallied them all together and I said, right,
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: the only way through this is you're going to have
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: to pull your cars.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: And that's what they did. Amazing.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: So, you know, but that was at the beginning event.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: By the end of that event, you know, we went
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: from all these fresh looking, fairly pale looking folk who
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: had not been in a jungle environment like that, and
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: by the end of the three weeks of that event,
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: when you came out at the other end in Urundi
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: at Buschimbura, they looked completely different. The transformation was amazing.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: You had a really cohesive group on the team, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: you know, further on they wouldn't have thought twice about
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: we'll just get those those ropes out and we'll just
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: pull these vehicles through this. Oxen Yeah, they were oxen exactly.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Camel Trophy Oxen.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Matt, there's got to be some questions burning in your
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: mind after loving the Camel Trophy. Yeah, I mean, how
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: did you choose the route for that? I mean, you know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: camel Trophy was I was alive, but very very little,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: fairly young, very very young, so a lot of it
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: for me.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I never got to like follow it necessarily. Yeah.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: I was more like G four that I could follow
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. So when you're going to
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: country like let's say Tanzania, what did you look for?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, were you going on roads where you you know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: cross country, you know, no road travel, like, what were
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the objectives?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: How are you well landing that?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: I mean obviously you know it was a pr event
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: for you know, originally for cigarettes, then latterally after nineteen
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: ninety two when they went through the whole trademark diversification
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: thing because of the ban on cigarette advertising in Europe.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: It was an event to promote camel Trophy, Watches Adventure
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: where Boots, Banks clothing, et cetera.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Adventure Watches Adventure Watching named by cigarettes.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, I know, I know, but they were quite clever
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: and they what they did because they knew the Camel
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Trophy itself. I mean even when the first event started
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty, which was run by RGR Germany. As
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: soon as that Camel Trophy brand came out, as in
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: the lotenge there came out and that was put on
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: clothes and other items, people were desperate to get hold
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: of it because they knew if I have this badge
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: on my you know, on my T shirt, people are
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: going to associate me with that great adventure that out there.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: It was subliminal advertising obviously for the company, but and
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: some of the people wearing it probably didn't even smoke.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but certainly there was a hunger for
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: being associated with the laws.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And for the longest time, I had no idea that
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the Camel Trophy was a cigarette thing.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I had no idea.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I thought it was just like, I don't know, like camel,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: like it's like, yeah, like it was in Africa. I
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: was a kid from the Midwest, like, I don't know,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: there's like camels there, right.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: So anyway, they saw that value in it, so choosing
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: where the event went, obviously it had to be a
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: challenging route. The countries themselves had to want Our first
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: point of call when we started thinking about where would
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: we take it would be to phone the to try
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: and get go through the tourist side of things, because
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: obviously the promotion of the event would promote the country
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: as well. So you'd go straight into the tourist department
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: at government and try and get to the whoever it was,
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: the director or whoever it was arg tourism, and then
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: it would be a matter of looking at where it
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: looked remote. I mean quite often it was literally it
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: was just a map on a desk, and you know,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: where could we go? You know that looks interesting, what's
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: going to take it three weeks? You know, go out
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: and start wrecking the routes. Tanzania Burundi was actually quite
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: a rushed event because prior to that we'd been looking
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: at going to India up into the Himalaya type area
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: up there, and they went out and did a wreki
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: and it just proved to be too busy. There's just
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: too many people about and it was difficult to get
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: that feeling of remoteness although it is there. Of course
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: it's there, but it just didn't work for the event.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: So India was kind of knocked on the head very quickly,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: and I remember Ian going going straight literally he came
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: out of India back to UK for less than a
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: week and straight out to Tanzania to look at a
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: route rout there.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Where did you guys go in Tanzania?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: We started off in Darisalam and went through the Sulus
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: game reserve and then we went up into another one
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: that kind of headed north northwest up towards Burundi, and
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: we just kind of kept on going in that direction.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just returned from.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: All right, Okay, Yeah, fantastic place, so many events, a
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: lot of animals we didn't you know, there's times where
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: we saw animals, and certainly in the morning after camps
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you would see lots of footprints and Tom Collins got
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: some great stories about elephants walking through camp.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: But that was a challenging event because because the rains
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: hit so hard and then the convoy became split up.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: We spent literally days and days winching getting through and
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: at one point we kind of passed fairly close to
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: a railway track, which was quite handy because one of
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: the we had a gearbox going on a vehicle and
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: that had to be brought out from Darrisalam a sphere
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: of gearbox which we changed in the field. They brought
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: it out in one of those little kind of carts
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: that you know inspection cards the world it is, it is,
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: that's incredible, guys. That made a cat scrape in the ground,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: pulled to be a clover the top, dropped the gearbox
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: out underneath we got the spear one in.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Did you make the team responsible for swapping that out
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: or did you have technicians there toy.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: We there was always there was a workshop vehicle which
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Landrover had certain kit in. You know, we didn't expect
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: to lose a gearbox, otherwise they might have been carrying
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: one with us. But then again we could always fly
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: one and if we could, but a helicopters and Tanzania
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: was a difficult one. And in fact, the last time
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: I saw the helicopter there, he'd come in I think
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: dropped the en chapman off, who was well well in
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: an advance of all of us. He'd come in for something,
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: went away again, and then that helicopter threw off and
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: then crashed. So that was quite a close one, you know,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: from the perspect of losing you know, a major member
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: of the team yes, there was going with that one.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Oh the good stories. So yeah, we got split up completely.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, winching.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: We were in a big marshy area, but there was
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: a railway track running alongside it and that was really
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: the only place where we could get an anchor point.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: So everyone kind of pulled themselves up to one side
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: of it. We're hooking onto the ties on the railway. Incredible,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: winching themselves along the side incredible. Eventually we got some
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: firm or grind we were able to carry on driving,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: but you ended up in a survival situation there.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Water.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: We ran out water ironically so wet. I remember filtering
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: water through socks and t shirts to get all the
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: stuff out of it, and then we'd cat to dine
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: into our and that was just water running down the
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: trail and then we can cata dine into our Jerry
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: cans to keep this going.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Incredible. Thanks to this week's sponsor, GCI Outdoor. Whether you're
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: heading out for a weekend of adventure in the woods
• 31:40
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• 32:16
  Speaker 1: their email list. Thanks again, GCI. There is a story
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: that I have heard about the Camel Trophy that I'm
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: sure you can verify or not to verify or dismiss.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: There is a technique that I heard that was used
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: for a river crossing where you have all the vehicles
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: on one side of the river and the river is
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: essentially too deep to drive us, and so they would
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: they would get a boat or they would get people
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to get across the river to a big pulley block
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and there'd be a huge rope. And then so the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: rope would be now through a pulley block on a
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: tree on the other side of the river, and they
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: would hook three or four land rovers together. They would
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: connect to the front end of one land rover, they'd
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: all haul but away from the river, and that would
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: essentially ski the land rover across to the other side.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And I'd love to know if that actually happened. Yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I do, it could have done.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: And certainly that's the technique that you well, not so
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: much to ski it, but a technique that you could
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: have used to ensure that you got your first vehicle across,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: because you're using a much bigger anchor on this side. Yes,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: but certainly we were on really deep crossings where there
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: was a risk that you might not get across, or
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: or you're worried about the vehicle beginning to float off
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: down the river. We would certainly have one vehicle going
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: through with a line attached to another one at the
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: back to either pull it back sure we had a problem,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: or for it to be an anchor. Okay, I never
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: saw that system of a pulley blood being put on
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: the other side and then say, attached to three vehicles
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: to pull the first one through. But certainly, if you
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: think about it, that actually is quite a good idea
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: if you had no other option of being able to
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: get your vehicle through, because.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: If you got it low enough like on the front
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: axle for example, it would actually kind of pull like plates.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I suppose you could almost across it just conceptually.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I remember those vehicles were so heavily they were so yeah,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I mean four people on them, Yeah, all the food
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: for you know, up to three weeks water, some spare parts.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: They were.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: They were heavily loaded vehicles, well over what they should
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: have been. Really, how much weight would be on the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: top well top, Actually we didn't have a lot. They
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: looked like it though, yeah, it looked like it.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Well, there was.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: It was a pretty heavy roof rack because the whole
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: thing was designed that we potentially could pick the vehicle
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: up by the roll cage and roof rack because that
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: all went through to the roll cage underneath and the
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: rollcage went through to the chassis. So it was it
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: was designed specifically like that, so as if you had to,
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: you could pick a trophy vehicle up by the roof
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: roof protection.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: But the roof rack itself just had four palkan cases
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: in it, a spare tire, a kind of caged area
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: with a bit of a tarp over it that held
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: that you could put some of your recovery gear in
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: like your the hook ropes that we carried, so we
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: had propeline ropes with hooks on the end which were
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: designed as for towing or for using round a tree
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And find our recovery gear was
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: pretty pretty basic when looking at what we can get now.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the innovations in the last ten years even.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Exactly, and none of it rated. I mean I'd look
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: back on it now and go, oh my god. You
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: know we were using unrated equipment.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll work.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: I mean it did work, and we didn't have well.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Tanzania was another one. We did break quite a few
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Winch wires and I remember afterwards sending the wires back
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: to super Winch and saying, can you some of the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: ones that had broken? Can you check these? And they
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: all checked out okay. They then did a test on
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: the Husky super winches we were using, came back and said, actually,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: our winches were pulling way more than what the cables
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: were rated for and that's why we ended up breaking
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: interest in the event.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: So they did they upgrade the wire after that immediately.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Super Winch were fantastic to work with them. Yeah, the event,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: that's quite a winch that husky. Yes, it's great, it
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: really is. It's worm drive, right, it's a worm drive winch. Yeah,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: so they were they were good.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: They was slow.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I mean the you know, previous to that, we'd been
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: using Warn eight to seven fours, which are fantastic as well,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: but a very last winch and actually for what we
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: needed we you know, especially with so many hands going
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: into so many areas and so many people using the winches,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: having something slower is really better. Other times, I can
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: remember one one section it seems to always going back
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: to Tanzania, Burundi. We were winching across an area probably
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty two hundred meters long. It took
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: us the best part of twenty plus hours to get
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: the whole convoy through there. Incredible, you know that we
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: managed to get the first vehicle across, and as that
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: started moving across, you'd move another one in attached a
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: winchwar to him. He would then pull that out, you know,
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: once that vehicle stop driving, he'd pull that out. Then
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: you'd engage the winch, winch yourself up to that. The
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: next one we'd winch forward and it was kind of
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: a whole piggyback operation to get to get everyone through.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: The vehicles were in the convoy well roughly, so you
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: had roughly eighteen to twenty competitor vehicles. Then we had
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: to film because we were filming it on sixty millimeter
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: for advertising purposes and cinemas and stuff like that, so
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: you had a film crew those two video vehicles. So
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: that was all the PR and press release stuff that
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: was going out immediately from the convoy. We had the ambulance.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: We had the communications vehicle which was you know sackcom
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: and HF and VHF radio. We had three coordinator vehicles
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: so one, two and three lead scout, event manager PR vehicle.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: We had two photographer vehicles as well, so we had
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: the basic PR photographer leaf aren was at that time,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: and then we had one for advertising photography. So there
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: was a Tanzania Brundi. It was a guy called Tannis
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Schmidt who's he still is a high end fashion photographer wow,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: and his assistant in that car. I kind of lost
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: count there, so it's some of the region of twenty eight.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: And then you'd have your raft unit vehicle if you
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: needed a raft unit, So that was another vehicle, and
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: on later convoys they had.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Two of those. Wow.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: So and then the workshop vehicle which had the landro
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: mechanics and so Yeah, I mean it was a it
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: was a big circus.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting to me is people
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: can get so focused on heavily modifying their vehicles, but
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: when you look at what was accomplished with the Camel Trophy.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Now it's often said that the Discovery one and vehicles
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: like that were this kind of perfect combination of wheelbase
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and the way that they designed the body and everything else.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: They were just very effective from the factory already for
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the technical terrain. But they had essentially changed the springs
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to take the load yep, but not really to lift
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it only a little bit, as I understand it. They
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: swapped out to the xCl tires, they fitted safety equipment
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and winches, and they went on some of the most remote,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: rugged tracts of the world basically as a stock vehicle.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So the question that I have for you is what
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: do you see as the most essential changes. If someone
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: goes out and buys a new FOURD or geep Wrangler,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: or if they go buy a new Forerunner, what would
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you say these decades of experience you've had traveling around
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the world. What should people consider, if anything, doing to
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: those trucks.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: That's a really good question.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're absolutely right our vehicles were They weren't
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: heavily modified.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: It was a stand thirty inch tires. No, it wouldn't
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: even be thirty inch.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I mean early that it was seven seven inches seven
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: inches wide seven seven point zero or sixteen's Yes, it
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: was a sixteen inch rim and and a skinny tire
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: sixteen plus fourteen. Yeah, that's that is thirty or thirty
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: inch tire.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so maybe maybe it was thirty inch. So yeah,
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: they had exils on them. They had front skate guard
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: for the steering. There was no no armor on the
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: axles or anything like that. Standard heavy duty shocks built
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: for a normal, you know, heavier duty cycle in the
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: UK on roads and whatever Lander would consider someone buying
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: that vehicle would use off road, which wouldn't be very
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: much underbody protection on the fuel tanks, nothing, nothing really
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: elsewhere on the on the vehicle. The roof rack, a
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: roll cage, safety devices, roll cage, the bow bar and
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: winch and that was it.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: A roof rack.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you talked about, you know, could you do
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: this this this event, could you do a Camel Trophy
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two or something like that, and would
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you be able to get those iconic images because you
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: know you had to put those vehicles in those precarious
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: situations to get them through.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: And now like, well we did take a Ford or
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Jeep and it's i mean compared to a it would
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: be very Ford or Jeep would be much more capable. Yes, yeah,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: although although I'll say this is something that you were
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: famous for. Is that launch of the Ford or JK
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: in Africa? Oh yes, the number of journalists that still
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: speak in hush tones about the about your your trip
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: because they said it was unbelievable, really so challenging, so technical.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Well for a journalist's trip, it was really unbelievable.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Well, we were The brief that was given to us
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: super discipping down another revel I like that. The brief
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: that was given to us was we want a camel
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: trophy type trip for this pre production launch of this vehicle.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: So we went, we can get where was? It was
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: in South l angua National park in Zambia, which is
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: this beautiful, beautiful remote area which is almost it's almost
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: the same as if when Livingston walked through it, and
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: it's just beautiful. And we started up on the Machenji escarpment,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: drove down from there, did some off roading on the way.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: They were flown in a private plane, picked the vehicles
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: up straight down to we headed down the escarpment. We
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: did some off roading on the way, and then headed
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: to a river camp on the lu Wangua River which
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: had been set up, and then that camp moved the
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: next day. And then we got to the game lodge
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: where we then did more well, we off roaded all
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: the way down. It was amazing, It was amazing, and
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: yes it was. It was challenging, and we had some
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: instances and yeah, but that's that's what they wanted. They wanted,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: you know, a tough event.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So I guess to answer your question that if the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: if the OEM has enough fortitude to ask the question, yeah,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: it can be done. And Jeep is, as far as
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I know, Jeep is really the last one to have
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: asked that question.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, I mean I haven't had another manufacturer
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: ever say that to me. And Jeep where you know,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: they wanted to prove that that vehicle is good. And
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I did the previous launch that vehicle in Argentina actually,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: which I know there's run across journalists who are on
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: that trip and they still talk about that one as well.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: But it was a great trip. I mean anything in
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Africa like that is just I distracted him from that
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: important question. Yes, okay, if you were to take a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: fore Runner or a Wrangler, what would you do, what
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: would you recommend as seven P what would you recommend
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: people consider, if anything at all, or you'd just say
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: go see the world?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you to go.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: You know, you know we're kind of keep it simple team.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, look at our own vehicles. None of them
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: are really really heavily modified. You know nixt Range Nick's
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: land Rover ninety for instance. I mean it's lifted, probably
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: got a two inch lift on it. Maybe he's got
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: different he's got diff locks on it. On Trophy, we
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: didn't have any differential locks. There was no there was
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: no slippery differentials in them or anything like that. They
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: were open differential vehicle. You know when we ran, we
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: were old school left foot breaking. You know, you want
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: to stop that wheel spinning, use the brake with a
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: throttle off you go and we still teach that technique.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Now no one knows how to do that. I have
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: not heard of that technique in it. So I've heard
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I've done it. Yeah I had to do.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: You want you never hear that stuff anymore.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: We don't know.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: You don't because you don't have to. You've got traction control.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Most vehicles have got to flock in them at least one,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: you know. I think people can go out in the
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: most basic of vehicles. I mean, yes, you have to
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: prepare it. You want to make sure, you want to
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: make sure your running gear is good, you know, and
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: you don't need it. You know, probably the people at
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: the expot hate me for saying this. You don't need
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of the jingly jangles that we see out there.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, we see so many trucks coming through and
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: you sometimes think they've just gone through the vendor of
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: the veltrode over giant magnet giant magnets, just trapped everything on.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure I saw a truck come in
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the other day sing what looked like it was a trailer,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: and it looked like it was a shower unit with
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: a there was an air cone thing in the top.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: It was kind of square. I'm sure.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it was a shower unit or a sauna
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: or maybe a Turkish bath. But does this earth roam
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: or have a Turkish bath? I don't believe, so check
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: that door.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: But going back to your question, I think for me,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: the most important thing is training. Get trained before you
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: get out there. You've got to be able to make
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: You've got to have some information there to be able
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: to make the right decisions when you're on the trail,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: and be able to make the right decisions about the
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: equipment to buy as well. So that for me is
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: the most important thing. The vehicle itself. The running gear
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: has got to be good, you know, make sure that
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: you know tires, wheel bearings, differentials, you're engine, gearbox, et cetera.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's what moves you, or that's what
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: moves you. Once the floppy link is sitting between the
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: seat and the steering wheel, and really you know, the
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: vehicle as it stands there, you know, looking out the window.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: We've got lots and lots of capable vehicles around us,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: but they're only as capable as the floppy link in there. Yeah,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: and actually thinking about it, some of some of the
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: vehicles we see now are so capable that they can
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: get you into they can get you quite far, but
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: then into really difficult positions. And now you've got to
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: work out how you know, I'm halfway up a hill
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: now because this vehicle with great trash control or differential
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: locks has crawled me all the way up here, and
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: now I'm sitting sideways on this slope and I can't
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: go any further. How do I get back down safely
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: without rolling it? You will only know that if you've
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: been taught the correct procedure to do it, you are
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: lucks on your side when you actually decide to come
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: off the clutch in the break and you've forgotten to
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: put in gear in your career like a toboggan all
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: the way down the slope.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: And that is the evidence from camel trophy is well
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: trained individuals in a solid stock vehicle on some of
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the most remote and technical tracks in the world. Yeah,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and so that's evidence of that. And then it's also
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: just more reinforcement of the fact that if you can
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: get good training like what you offer at seven P Overland,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: then people can do so much more with less. They'll
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: they'll understand what left foot breaking is. They'll understand what
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: to do in a failed hill climb. They'll understand what
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: to do when they need to actually put that winch
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to use in it to get themselves out of something.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: We talk about that, Matt and I talk about that
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: a lot on the podcast. Is that's why we talk
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: about seven P a lot on the podcast. Is that
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: people need to get trained, and you're one of the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: few organizations that has multiple trainers available. That means you've
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: got this broad spectrum of knowledge. I was talking with Nick,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: your partner in the business, the other day and I said,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I said, Nick, even though I've done this for so long,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I only know five percent of what I want to know.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so but.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: If you take a bunch of five percent and added together,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: and you add it together, you have a very powerful team.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: So you have Nick that has all this experience in
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the Sahara and in the sand dunes, and then you
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: have you with all this experience with teams and people
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and technical challenges with stock vehicles, and you just add
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: up all of this wealth of knowledge and you put
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: all these guys together and ladies as well. You have
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: many ladies on your team as well. It's an impressive result.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: I think, No, it is, and it's it's kind of
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: that whole thing that some of the whole ponts. You know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: I feel very honored to be working alongside so many
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: people who've got so many varied skills. I think is
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: the US.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: World it's nice yeah, well yeah, I mean when you
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: let the ego go a little bit, yes, yeah. I mean,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: like I know a lot of for world drive trainers
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and most of the really nice people, there's some that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: are just like not the nicest people to be around.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Like they're very creachy, they're very yelly, and I feel
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: that can be intimidating to a lot of people. I
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: think that's one of the things I appreciate so much
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: about seven P that you're all just friendly, nice, you
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: know in sense people.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: I always say, treat people the way you want to
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: be treated yourself. Number one, you don't you know, we're
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: not a military organization. You don't teach people well by
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: yelling at them, pussing at them, or anything like that.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: We potentially already in a high pressure environment anyway, trying
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: to solve something. You're not achieve anything by getting mad
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: at them.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: That's how we kind of look at it. And also
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: we also looked at it, you know, for me every
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: days at school day, you know, I was. I was
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: in a class yesterday doing Bush Advanced Bush Mechanics. And
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: actually as soon as I started the class. As soon
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: as I started the class, I was asked a question
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: about pairing cylinder head gaskets. Do you know about doing
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: it with Savannah grass? And I went, no, I don't
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: actually tell me.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: More So, the class started off with one of the
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the the pupils actually talking about something he'd read in
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: an old I think it's a series three in Africa
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: manual and manual pairing cylinder head with grass.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Now I've never seen that. I'll have to go out
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: and have a look at it. How would that work?
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: You just like kind of like cut it up and well, well.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: I think I think it would be about weaving rings,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: weaving around yeah, yeah, and then just pulling the head
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: down tight on those rings, separating your combustion chambers or.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Through any of the grass that was the side.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it probably works. Someone's done it, I bet.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: But that's how the class started. So the class started
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: immediately with me learning something new And that's the other
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: thing about all of us within seven P is that
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: all our instructors look on it, you know, every day
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: as a school day week and also learn from you guys.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: There's no question in our world that's a stupid question,
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: because very often that question that's sitting in the back
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: of someone's brain that they want to ask and they think,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to ask that because it's stupid actually
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: leads on to, you know, questioning what's going on or
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: could that work? Or you know, what is that piece
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: of equipment for. So you've got to be open to
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: all these things, and you've got to be able to
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: debate them and go through the pros and cons and
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: well maybe that work fine for you.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: You know, there's always this this feeling that people get
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: that they just had this god given ability to drive right,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: like they don't need training.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: No, I grew up on a farm or this or that.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: And I was talking with Chris Walker last night, you
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: know about even me doing some more training, continuing education.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, you just Scott.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Just did trek right, and how long had it been
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: since you used a high left jack? And then I realized,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: oh god, it's been it's been like years I've used
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the high left jack. I've forgotten so much about that
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And even if you are somebody that
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: has been overlanding for a while, has been for wheel
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: driving for a while, it's been a lifelong hobby, you
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: can always learn more. Yeah, absolutely definitely. I hired a
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: trainer to show me how to use a map and compass. Again,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I used to know how to do that, but to
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: triangulate and how to pull a bearing on a map,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: and I needed to relearn all of those things and
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: it was totally a joy for me to retune those skills.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: We all get rusty with stuff, you know. Well, you
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: know I felt coming into this show, having not done
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: any off roading and teaching for nearly two years, I
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: kind of felt a bit rusty coming into this show,
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: you know, And as we went into the first classes
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: of the day, I was I was actually really nervous.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of awkward handshakes when everybody got in, like, ugh, hi,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: uh are we shaking hands? Were we fist bumping? Uncomfortable?
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's not true. Yeah, I mean there is a
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: lot to that. There is people still a wee bit
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: stand off. Stuff like that. And that's fine, But no,
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: I found nervous going into the first class because I
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: done it for two years. Fortunately, kind of it feels
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: like jumping back onto the bike. And because because the
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: people who come to the show as well are here,
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: they're here for one reason, that's to learn, so we
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: don't kind of get numpties in the classes, and you know,
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: they're they want to learn, and and you know, again
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: we're very honored that they're coming to us to learn
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: about it as well. And that means that when generally
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: when you go into class, you know you're going to
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: get questions. And the more questions that come out of
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: the class the better, because we just, you know, we've
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: just got so many rabbit holes we can disappear down
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: and then pop back out of and back onto the
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: main subject of the class, and everybody goes away with stuff.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, at the end of yesterday's Advents Blush Mechanics class,
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: I said to my I said, oh, guys, one hack
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: that I must tell you about, which is the super
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: glue and baking soda one, and and several of them went,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: oh my god, the money I've spent on this alone
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: has been just worth learning about that superglue and baking soda.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: Hack, you got to tell us the have.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Well, you don't know it's it's so you know sometimes
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: when you use super glue, you go, oh god, it
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: should fill that space a bit better, or I wish
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: I could build it up.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: Well, if you take a drop of super glue. The
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: first time I saw it was someone repairing the little
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: nodule that holds the arms on Oakley sunglasses. Okay, all right,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: you know how that wears and then finally the leg
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: just falls off. Well, this guy took drop a super
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: glue onto where that peg was, drops super glue, and
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: then he drops some baking soda on top of it.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: And then he did it again. And as soon as
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: the baking soda touches it, it goes rock hard, and
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: I mean rock hard. And so he built up it,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: just built up a little column of superglue and baking
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: soda and then he filed it down to a peg
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: and clipped his the leg of his sunglasses back on.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: So you can build plastic essentially, Yeah, you can build
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: plastic with it. It is absolutely genius. And I said,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you know, because we were talking about you know, what
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: would you put in your kit? To go along with
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: your tools.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: So you know we're talking about self a malpifying electrical tape,
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: electrical tie wire, you know, so it's you know, engineer's
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: THI wire that use for rolling through bolts and holding
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: them in place, cable ties, plastic and stainless steel. Gaffe tape.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Of course, everybody's got to have gaffa tape in there.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: All those bits and pieces. And I said, I now
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: carry a small pill bottle with super glue in it
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: and some of this baking soda.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Incredible, so now we know, yeah, now you know it's
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: all over, It's all over YouTube, a pill bottle of
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: baking So it could be a little bit awkward. Well,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you know, military inspections behind because I normally keep it
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: in my in my day pack. And funnily enough, as
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: I was going through the day pack prior to getting
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: on the plane, I pulled out out went white powder.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I know, you could also roll it up in like
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit of cellophane that would that would never go.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. But the one thing I thought it
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: would further reinforced the scary white powder in the pill
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: box is because I keep a bit top in there.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Because you can use the end of the big top
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: as a tiny wee spoon, okay, to drop it onto fine,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're doing something really fine. And of
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: course that in itself a bit sketch, So I thought, no,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to leave that homecause customs and excise. So
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: it's me on this, Matt. What other questions you got
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: for Duncan. Man, I've just been to flying the Wall here.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, so cool, it's been amazing. Gee, I don't
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: even know. Well, maybe maybe we asked the one that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: we love to ask, which is if someone is about
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: ready to go out on an overland journey let's call
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: it down to ushwaya yep, and they don't have a
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: lot of experience, and they came up to you to say, Duncan,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: you've been around the world. You've been doing this for decades.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: You've taught people to travel around the world. What couple
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of pieces of advice would you give me before I left?
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: I would say, be ready to go with a sense
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: of humor. You've got to have that take people away,
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: treat yourselves, and that's really important when it comes to
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: like some border crossings and things like that. You've got
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: to remember that, you know, these folk probably aren't getting
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: paid a lot of money. They sometimes get out bed
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: on the wrong side, or maybe something's happened at home
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: when they might not be very pleasant when you meet
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: them there. So you've got to be able to work
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: with that. You've got to be flexible. You've definitely got to.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Have a plan. You know, Plan A, Plan B, Plan C,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: maybe Plan D. Be aware.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: You know, not everybody's nice, but the majority of people
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: in this world are nice people and want to help.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: But you do need to have a bit of awareness
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: about you. Speak to other travelers on the road because
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: they've always got current information. Engage with the locals, that's important.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: Try and learn about of the language. You know, start
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: off and you know, good morning, good night, good afternoon,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: some of the numbers. Try and get that, you know,
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: try and immerse yourself in that local experience if you can.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: I be prepared. Yeah, expect the unexpected. Get trained, get
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: some training if you can, be so true right, and
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: learn about your especially if you're traveling a vehicle, learn
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: about your vehicle. Get down to I've said this quite
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of times over the last few days. Get
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: down to your to your local garage. You know, who
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: would let you get underneath the vehicle If you don't
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: have a lot of mechanic knowledge, you know, go and
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: do a service on the vehicle with them.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: How look, get bits and pieces underneath.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, duck, but this
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: was twenty twelve, and we had the expedition seven trucks, yes,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: at the Overland Expo at Mormon Lake, and we were
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: about ready to leave. We were ready to we had
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: already gone down from Prudho Bay, but we were ready
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: to head off to Saint John's and start shipping the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: trucks around the world.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: And I asked you that question, I said, I said, Duncan,
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: what advice would you give me?
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: We were standing there right in front of the land cruisers,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and you said, be good with the locals. And you
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: said make sure that you have a good time.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: All right. Those are the two things that you told me.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And what it made me realize was I had spent
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: so much energy in planning and so much energy training
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: all of these things. I had focused so much on
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: execution of a plan that what I really needed to
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: hear at that moment, And that's what you told me,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: And it's probably because you knew that you knew me
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: well enough that you said, make sure you have a
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: good time, make sure you stop and like they say,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: smell the roses, take a look at that sunset and enjoy,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: enjoy the adventure. And I was very grateful for that
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: advice because it was something that I needed to hear
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, you had a lot of responsibility
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: in the trip. Yeah, and you do get bogged down
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: with the planning. I think even on solo travelers heading
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: out can get bogged down in the planning of it
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: and wondering, you know, how are we going to manage this?
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: How are we going to manage that? Sometimes you just
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: got to go with the flow of what's happening. And yeah,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I think something overplan, yes, you know, and I definitely did.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: And and I just remember you.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Just saying, I think you put your hand on my
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: should and you're like Scott, he just remembered it.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: Got some fun, you have a good time. Yeah, and
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: that you started looked like you had We did that. Yeah,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: it was an amazing and it was.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: An amazing journey for sure, And I'm so grateful for it,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and we are. We're so grateful for you having been
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, we could I think we could have
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: about eleventy seven more more this again next year.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We always happy to do that. I know.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: It's been great fun and it's you know again, it's
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: it's just fantastic to be able to take my experiences
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: and hopefully, you know, through the podcast, people are going
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: to listen to this and they'll they'll think about Camel
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: Trophy and but by the way, it's a great book
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: just being produced, yes, Nick Dimblebee, Yeah, yes, yeah, or should.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: Be at the office by the time we get back.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: I think that's also, Yeah, I kill it for I
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: actually helped Nick sent me the proof of it, and
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: I kind of did the bit from or are read
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: through and added more detail and corrected a few things
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty six, eighty five, eighty five, eighty six
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: onto ninety four or ninety five, which is kind of
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: when I left the event, and I put in touch
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: with some of the old competitors like Beppi Guilini, who
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: I'm hoping to bring to the Overland Expo next year,
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: who was on the eighty five event. And also Beppy
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: stands in two camps because he's a four wheel drive expert,
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: but he's also a motorcycling expert, having done he's got
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: the world record for having competed in the most African Safarian,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: Most African Safari rally on bike and he's on ten
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: dakars back to the ten back in the day when
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: it was mapp You still have knees, Yes, he does,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: and he's still he's still instructing.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: He does a lot.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: He's uh, he's a kind of brand am bastard and
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: he works for Ducati. He also runs his own company,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: but he helps the development of the overland bikes.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: You know one that's coming out from Jacati. Did you
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: see that? Yes? I did. I saw the TS That
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: looks really interesting.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: So Becky would have been heavily involved in developing that bike.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: It looks good. Yeah, it looks like a dackhard.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: And what's the name of Nick's new book, I think
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: something about it has camel trophy in the tay.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: He's got camel trophy in the title. Is it camel
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: trophy through the years? Might be? Yeah?
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Or is that just we'll put that in the show
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: notes just to make sure that people can look it up.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: It will go hereat, We'll put it on a title
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: right about there.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: It certainly got Camel Trophy in the title. Yes, it's
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: out now. I think you can pre order it on Amazon.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: But it's got a whole load of photos in it
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: which I've never been seen before. I mean, I've found
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: stuff in kind of my archives of things that I
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: picked up when I was at Camel which are even
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: I doubt I don't even think that the negatives still
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: exist for them. Wow, So I sent them down to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: next So there's a whole load of unseen photos there.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: I've heard stories because Nicks interviewed a lot of the
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: older competitors are not the older competitors, you know, sure
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: people who haven't been interviewed, and including interviews of people
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: like Duncan Lee, who is my boss boss at Camel Trophy,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: who's looking after Formula one and Camel Trophy. So some
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: behind the scenes stories from there. How do people find
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: out more about you Duncan? And how do people find
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: out more about seven P Overland Our website basically just
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: seven P dot io or just Google seven P Overland.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: The information will come up there. I think we're revamping
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: quite a lot of the website at the moment, but
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: any information on our trips and our training and stuff
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: like that are there. You know, from a training perspective,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: we do anything from really basic to advance. We can
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: tailor make training for people or companies. Same with holidays
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, or expedition style trips. So yeah,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: the information is there. Are just you're listening to us
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: here and we're writing.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Show. Yeah, that's the best way to And then how
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: do people find out more about you? Do you?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Do you have an Instagram? Or are you a much
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: wiser soul than I am and not have one?
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I am on Instagram, but I haven't trained to kind
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: of work to use it properly.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Good for you? I do? I do more reason more awesome.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: I do Twitter, and it's just I think my Twitter
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: handles just Dunk and Barber. Okay, it's usually quite often
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: it's the view from my office today, is I love it?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: I think last one was a picture out of a
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: Caterpillar D four as we're making the track.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: That's good. That's good.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I do Twitter stuff and obviously some of
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: that's film related, and sure that's off road related, but
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: not Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: It's finding found someone out over the nexpo is not
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: on Instagram.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just he's the original influencer right here. Well
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and if you all didn't think Duncan was already extremely
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: cool just based on this conversation. He also was part
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: of the film crew or a Game of Thrones, so.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: That's one of them.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, what an amazing life you have lived.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: And this will be the first of many conversations we
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: will have with you on the podcast. Duncan, You're such
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: an inspiration. You're two gentlemen. You you encapsulate so much
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: of what we want this industry to continue to be,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: which is people being good to each other, not buying
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: too many things jingly janglys for their vehicles, and going
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: and seeing the world. And you've done that for a lifetime.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for being on the podcast.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely my pleasure, guys, thank you very much for having me.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: And I feel very humble with the words so you said,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I really do, thank you, and I just
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: want fool to go out there, have fun, be trained,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: making good decisions as to what you're doing, and have
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: fun there you go. Thank you for that welcome. Thank you,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Duncan, and we will talk to you all
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: next time,