Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Tina and Dave Payne on Family Travel and Seizing the Moment

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Tina and Dave Payne on Family Travel and Seizing the Moment · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: your host Scott Brady, and my guests today is Tina
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and Dave Pain. Not only are they good friends of mine,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: but they are also exceptionally well traveled. They have also
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: brought in some really interesting products into the North American market,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: including front Runner and most recently the C six Outdoors
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: rev Tent. But what we talk about in today's podcast
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: is really about their travels throughout the Americas. As a family.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: They travel with themselves and their two sons in a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: land rover Discovery. So please enjoy my varied conversation with
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  Speaker 1: Tina and Dave Pain. This content is brought to you
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: by Overland Journal, our premium quality print publication. The magazine
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: was founded in two thousand and six with the goal
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of providing independent equipment and vehicle reviews, along with the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: most stunning adventures and photography. We care deeply about the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: countries and cultures we visit and share our experiences freely
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: with our readers. We also have zero averatorial policy and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: do not accept any advertiser compensation for our reviews. By
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: subscribing to Overland Journal, you're helping to support our employee
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: owned and veteran owned publication. Your support also provides resources
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  Speaker 1: and funding for content like you are watching or listening
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: to right now. You can subscribe directly on our website
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: at Overland Journal dot com. All right, hello, and welcome
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to all of you to the Overland Journal podcast. I
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: am your host, Scott Brady, and I am here with
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: my good friends Tina and Dave Payne, and we have
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time together in very as parts
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of the world, including Africa. We've traveled together as well,
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  Speaker 1: and you guys have an absolutely fascinating story and I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: think so many lessons that can be shared with our audience.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm so grateful that you two are on the
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  Speaker 1: podcast with me today. Thanks for having us. Thanks Scott
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  Speaker 1: absolutely and I would love to start it with you, Tina,
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  Speaker 1: because you grew up in South Africa. This is a
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  Speaker 1: place that so many Overlanders aspire to visit and in
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: many ways it was the birthplace of overlanding along with Australia,
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  Speaker 1: and there's so many lessons to be learned with how
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Africans travel overland and the experiences that you've had, so
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what it was like to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: grow up in South Africa and to grow up with
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  Speaker 1: an adventurer as a dad.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so my dad is a big adventurer and
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  Speaker 2: loves the African bush and so a lot of our
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  Speaker 2: vacations as kids were bush vacations and rooftop tents and
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: things like that were just something that was the norm.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And why did South Africans use roof tents? This
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  Speaker 1: is the thing that I think a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: don't understand. What do you even use them to begin with?
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  Speaker 2: I think just the remoteness of the places you were camping.
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  Speaker 3: It wasn't this in America.
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  Speaker 2: I feel like you have a lot of national parks
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  Speaker 2: and you're never i don't know, more than thirteen clicks
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  Speaker 2: away from gas and everything else. With a rooftop tent,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I feel like you had your entire You basically had
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: your daily driver become your RV and so you could
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: sleep there and you could set up camp in very
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  Speaker 2: remote areas and do primitive camping, which is a lot
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: of what that was, because there are still places in
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Africa where you can go where there's no one.
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  Speaker 4: How much I think what Scott's asking is, how much
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  Speaker 4: does it have to do with lions?
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  Speaker 3: You know?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how much it has to do with
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  Speaker 2: and to be completely fair, I think, you know, if
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  Speaker 2: I look at how my dad used to go camping,
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  Speaker 2: he used to do a thing with ten friends, would
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  Speaker 2: go for ten days to the middle of nowhere in
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  Speaker 2: the Cocoa felt or somewhere, and I think they just
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  Speaker 2: slept in sleeping bags on the ground. I mean there's
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  Speaker 2: stories of elephant tracks in between the sleeping bags the next.
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  Speaker 3: Morning, so I don't know.
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  Speaker 2: I mean I do remember also sleeping in a rooftop
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  Speaker 2: tent with my sister on one of these trips and
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  Speaker 2: waking up to like crunching and elephants were eating in
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  Speaker 2: the trees that were our.
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  Speaker 3: Tent was in. So I don't know that being up
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  Speaker 3: high was.
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  Speaker 1: That elephant mouth height.
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  Speaker 3: And that's elephant mouth height, so like they don't eat people.
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  Speaker 1: I think you're right, and I think that that's part
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  Speaker 1: of the misconception is that South Africans use roof tents
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  Speaker 1: because of lions. I think that it's probably more relevant
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  Speaker 1: for like a black mamba, for example, like those the
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  Speaker 1: snakes in Africa are extremely deadly.
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  Speaker 4: That's true, And can't they climb up trees?
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  Speaker 3: They can?
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  Speaker 2: They can I mean, I think also it was about
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  Speaker 2: the compactness of it was a way to travel where
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  Speaker 2: you had, where you would sleep, you had everything you
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  Speaker 2: needed in one.
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  Speaker 4: I think, having traveled to South Africa a lot due
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: to my lovely wife, I think South Africans know it's
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  Speaker 4: nice right, like with food and with how to entertain
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  Speaker 4: with their brides. And I think they're like, if I'm
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: going to go out and sleep someplace, I want to
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  Speaker 4: sleep comfortably. I think the tent was a way to
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: move a mattress around the rooftop tent.
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  Speaker 2: And for us, I mean I remember with America and
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: rooftop ten camping not even being a thing. I mean
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: when we first had I think Frontrunner was one of
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  Speaker 2: the first two companies to sell rooftop tents in America.
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  Speaker 2: When we would go camping on the beach, I mean,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: people would come up to us and climb into the room.
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  Speaker 2: They'd never seen anything like it before. But the downsides
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  Speaker 2: for me was if we went to a national park
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  Speaker 2: or we went camping, your campsite was not where your
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: vehicle was. So you'd set up your campsite, but your
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: fire and everything else was so far away.
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  Speaker 4: Unless you're dispersed camping, then you can make your nice
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  Speaker 4: little compound.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the beauty of the rooftop tent was the mattress,
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  Speaker 2: which is like, Okay, you're going to sleep comfy. You
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: don't have to sleep on an air mattress.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: In the morning. They don't work, and they're.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Little warmer if you're off the ground, those kinds of things. Ultimately,
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  Speaker 2: I think that's also how the rev tent was born.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Dave and I were like.
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  Speaker 2: Well, what if you wanted to go camp by that
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: waterfall right there, but now your tent is stuck on
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  Speaker 2: your truck and your truck can't go there. What if
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: you set up camp and now you want to go
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: three miles down the road to go fishing, But now
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: you've got to put everything back together just to go
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: down the road. So I think rooftop ten camping in
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: South Africa was a convenient thing and also because you
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: were so far from anything else. And now rooftop ten
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: camping for me is all about the mattress. I'm all
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: about the mattress. It's the reason to sleep up high
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: as the mattress.
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  Speaker 1: You make a good point, Dave. I think that when
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I go traveling with South Africans they camp so much
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  Speaker 1: and it's such a part of their culture. Like I
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: think about you know, just from easy On or like
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  Speaker 1: your dad Stanley. These guys have camped for decades and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: they kind of got it sorted out. They want to wait,
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  Speaker 1: they want a way to make a great barbecue or
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  Speaker 1: bry like you call it, yep, and they want to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: have a comfortable place to sleep. And also you just
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: never know what your campsite's going to be sometimes, and
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  Speaker 1: then you always know that your your tent's going to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: set up on your roof. So I think that there's
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: some flexibility with that too. But it is interesting that
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  Speaker 1: there are so many South Africans that don't camp in
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  Speaker 1: roof tents. They camp in ground tents as well. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: and they've got these really beautiful you know, canvas or
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: thicker walls, but they travel with a cot they do.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think I think also it's
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  Speaker 2: not a big deal to go camping. Yeah, Like I
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  Speaker 2: think we grew up with it not being other. It
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  Speaker 2: wasn't called overlanding what we were doing, and we were overlanding,
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  Speaker 2: Like Dave and I went on honeymoon and we went
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  Speaker 2: all through Botswan and Namibia, and we had a truck
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  Speaker 2: with a rooftop tent. And at that time, I mean
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  Speaker 2: we're talking about nearly from twenty twenty years ago. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't they didn't have a name. It was just
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  Speaker 2: how we were traveling. And sometimes, yeah, we went camping
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  Speaker 2: and sometimes we'd stay in lodges. That was the other
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  Speaker 2: thing I think also, we're not I don't think South
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  Speaker 2: Africans feel like you have to camp. You know, if
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  Speaker 2: there's a beautiful lodge, you'll stay in the beautiful lodge.
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  Speaker 2: And then you'll camp out of necessity if you you know,
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  Speaker 2: making your drive and you've hit a place where okay,
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  Speaker 2: there's no town nearby, and you're tired and you don't
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  Speaker 2: want to keep driving, and so you have the capacity
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  Speaker 2: with your setup to be able to pull over and
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  Speaker 2: go a few hundred meters into the bush and set
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  Speaker 2: up your camp. And even in some sort of national parks.
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  Speaker 2: I think we'd do that and yeah, if someone came by,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: yeah it got later, got dark, we set up here,
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  Speaker 2: and there was like an understanding sure, okay, yeah, you're
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  Speaker 2: not meant to camp here, but okay, I mean there's
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: a bit of the wild West there where it's not
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  Speaker 2: as regulated, so that's possible. But it was just more
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  Speaker 2: of a way to vacation than a big expedition type
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  Speaker 2: serious thing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just a part of life ye in Southam.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: The way you yeah, the way you went on holiday.
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  Speaker 1: Are there some are there some funny stories that come
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  Speaker 1: to mind of when you were growing up and camping,
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  Speaker 1: like just the crazy What are some of the craziest
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: things that happened to you and your family when you
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: were out just trying to go camping for the weekend.
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  Speaker 2: My dad always had this thing where he was like,
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  Speaker 2: you have to be organized. If you're not organized, you're
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: not going to have a nice time. His organized meant
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: if you're not organized, you're going to be cold or
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: you're going to be hungry. He had very specific rules,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: like you were never to bring eggs. You were never
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: bringing eggs. That was just a stupid thing to do.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Like you were never going to bring eggs or tomato day.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: We are not allowed to bring eggs camping.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: No, we don't bring eggs or tomatoes because they just smash.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I think my dad had had some really interesting things.
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  Speaker 2: I think I remember when they were doing one of
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: their trips. They had a friend who fell asleep where
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: he woke up and he was like, well, the ground's moving.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: It's moving slowly, but it's moving. And he turned and
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: his sleeping bag string had hooked onto the back leg
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: of a hippo who was grazing, and he was just
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: the hippo was just completely unaware that he was dragging
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: France while he was grazing, and he was like, Okay,
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: how do I get out of this? And you got
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: it slipping slipping the string off of the back leg
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: when it was lifted up. So crazy things like that.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: But I think also when we went there was actually
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: another France, France Bendick, who also he was a German guy.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: He's since passed away, but he was amazing. He would
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: not travel with anything other than Perier. So he needed
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: his Perier water. And this was back in the time
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: when it came in glass bottles, and it would drive
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: my dad crazy because he's like, who takes glass on
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  Speaker 2: a camping try.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Don't even take an egg.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: You don't take an egg? Who takes glass? So he
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: had his and this is a brilliant story. So they
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: were up in the middle of nowhere. I think it
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: was northern Namibia, somewhere like that, and they had camped
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: by a river, and France was so excited because now
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: he could take this bottle of perier and he could
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: put it in the river and it could cool overnight.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It was going to be spectacular the next morning. And
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: he did that and they woke up in the morning
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: and some Koi bushmen had come down and there were
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: women who were just you know, washing things in the river.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And she saw this bottle and she opens the bottle
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: of perrier and she sniffs it and she's like, oh
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: my god. She pours a whole bottle out and fills
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: it with river water, and she was like, there's something
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: very wrong, but that water what it is not good water.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: That's such a great story because it is so much
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: about perspective.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So for her it was like, why but now
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: that is very much an overland thing, bubbly water. It
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: is now a thing, bubbly water. Really, yeah, it appears
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: to you.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And would appreciate, eat, would appreciate look at what he started,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: exactly that he started.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: Do the earth roamers have soda streams built in?
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's an option. I'm sure that's an option.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about how you went from living
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in Johannesburg, traveling around South Africa and now you're sitting
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: here in Prescott. We're married to an American. How did
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you get from South Africa to America.
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  Speaker 2: So I was very excited to leave home, not because
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't have an absolutely charmed childhood. I was just
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: one of those independent people who was just dying to
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: do things on my own. I left South Africa when
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: I was nineteen. I went to a drama school in London,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: where my dad thought I'd meet a lot of strange
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: people and then eventually go home and do something sensible.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And then I landed up in la basically for work.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: I had finished my drama school in London and there
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: was a director to meet you, and I was meant
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to come for two weeks, and then I applied for
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: my green card and it was literally back in the
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: pre nine to eleven days, so I applied for a
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: work permit and a green card, and I got the
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: green card before I got the work permits, so I
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: ended up moving here. My training was all in classical theater,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: so I was very interested in film and TV and
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: learning about that. So I was interning and stuff while
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I was in LA and then Dave and I met
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: at a party and I took him a bet, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: then I last and I had to marry him.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: We met before smartphones, and she insisted that she was
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: correct about something we couldn't instantly check, so it was
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: a good excuse to me. It was a good excuse
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: to exchange numbers because we had to go back home
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: and then tunnel through AOL to the World Wide Web
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: the answer.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, actually, I think I had a playball that we
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: had the answer and it was at home, and so
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I looked at the playble and I lost the bet
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: and I was like, dang, I've got to pay him,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and I don't have the money. And I phoned him
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: and I was like, oh god, he's going to think.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: He's going to think I'm going to want to date him,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and I don't know how to do.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It was happy for her to work.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It off, and I was like, I don't know how
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: to date, Like this dating thing. I'm a serial monogamous,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Like if I kiss you, I'm with you for six months,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Like this isn't going to happen. So I called him
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: and I was like Okay, I owe you the money.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I don't have the money. I can pay you an
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: installments and they was like, well, we can start with
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the dinner. And I was like, okay, but it's not
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: a it's not a date, it's a settling of a bet.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And he was like, absolutely, I do not date actresses.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So that's how that all happened.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: So I groomed Tina into becoming a producer.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: And then he married me. He wouldn't marry an actress.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: So the acting thing is so fascinating too, So talk
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the acting that you did.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So in the beginning, it was a lot of voiceover.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I guess I was in my accent. And there was
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: a big thing in a lot of the PlayStation games
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: where they were looking for what they called like mid
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: atlantic or transatlantic kind of accent, and so I did
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of like PlayStation voices for games. Sure back
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: in the day, Dave and I ended up actually making
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: a movie together that I acted in and Dave wrote
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: and directed and composed the music. It was a horror
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: film and we had great success with that.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: And what's the name of the film.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: It's called Reaker. It's about a Smellie Monster. Okay we
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: did that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: I think during the process I kind of realized that
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: the acting part of it wasn't what I loved about acting.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I think if you had asked me at drama school
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: like or told me that you know, you would you
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: know eventually not want to be an actor. I think
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: as an actor, you coming from insider story and you're
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: you know, you're it's very sort of insular, and you're
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: the character within the story. And when we made Rica
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and I got to produce, I was really excited by
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the fact that you could be involved in the whole
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: story and you could put the whole thing together. I
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: also did have an acting agent in South Africa who
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: always said to me, you're too bussy to be an actress,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: and I was like, you know, you are my agent,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: so it's not so good that you don't feel like
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: I should be an actor because you're my acting agent.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I think she was right. I didn't like other actors.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I felt like people were so self absorbed. I really
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: found a means to be involved. And I think it
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: also depends on why you're an actor.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: I think how my initial wanting to go into acting
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: was my love of storytelling. I love stories and storytelling,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: and I think that the producing gave me a much
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: better or sort of coming at the story from a
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: lot of different angles rather than from just inside that story.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Well, and you're really good with details, and you're good
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: with coordinating people and find it.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: And I love the people's stuff exactly. I love the people.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: So it seems like a natural transition. Yeah, Dave, Yes,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: where did you grow up?
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: I grew up in Chicago, made my way to Iowa
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: for college, okay, and then made my way to California
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: because that's where movies are made or were made.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And talk about about your time making movies. I mean
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: it's just like for me, I've never watched one of
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: your films because a Harry Potter is an eleven. For me,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: it was like, I cannot watch scary movies. I'll never
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: sleep again, is the problem.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: And horror movies are like marsi Pan. You're either in
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: or your house.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: There's no in between, Like you either love Marsipan or
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: you don't.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: There's no like, ah, yeah, I can do a little
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: bit of marsi Pan.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: I rolled into La on A around midnight on December thirty,
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: first and in the neighborhood I was moving to, there
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: was a film being made on a holiday, you know,
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: late at night, and it turned out it was Roger
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Corman's studio. And Roger Corman is known as sort of
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: the king of the B movies. He's produced probably over
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: five hundred movies. And talking to some friends about what
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: I was going to do for work. You know, some
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: people in the neighborhoodyre like, you should just walk over
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: to the studio around the corner. They're always looking for people.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: So I walked in and they you know, I gave
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: them my my student films and it won some awards.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, I'm looking for directing work, you know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: I don't know how it works. And they're like, we
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: don't have a directing job for you, but we are
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: looking for interns, you know, to pa and I'll take it,
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: you know. So I worked for free for a while,
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: and I worked my way up through that company from
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: working for free to doing craft service. When I did
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: craft service, I would put the breakfast out, put some
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: snacks out, then I'd take a two hour break and
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: watch one of Rogers movies, and then I would put
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: the lunch out go shopping, Take a break, watch another
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: of Rogers movies. Because what I was trying to do
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: is figure out the formula for what he what kind
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: of movies he wanted to make. So after doing that
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: for three or four months, I wrote a script that
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: I sold to him, and then eventually I went basically
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: from craft service to directing movie for this guy.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And I made.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Twelve features for this company, all different genres, and none
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: of them were horror. There was a sci fi thriller.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: There were a couple of comedies. There was a tough
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: cop noir thing, there was a stripper movie. What was
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: your favorite of probably this cop noir thing called it
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: ended up being called Urban Justice. But yeah, but it
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: was a fun place. It was basically like grad school
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: for filmmaking because you got to play with a bunch
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: of different genres. So they made maybe fourteen movies a year,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: and towards the end it kind of got maybe my
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: pick of what I wanted to do, so I always
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: made sure I was doing a genre that I hadn't
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: done before. But there's fun stuff like I put Will
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Ferrell in his first movie and Jason Sideikas in his
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: first two movies.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: So yeah, there's a lot of people that kind of
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: went through that factory. And then after that, I made
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: some independent films, work for some other people, and I
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: met Tina and we decided to basically start our own business,
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: which was making our own independent film. So it was
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: more or less raising the money, hiring the team, you know,
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: your employees, creating a product in this case is just
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: one product, one movie that all the money and time
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: goes into, and it takes about a year, year and
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: a half to get the whole thing done. Then you
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: have this one product you have to sell. It's like
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: do or die, the one product. You're all in, all
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: in the whole investment, all the investors, all the people
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: this one and there's only like seven people to sell to.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: So it's not even The odds are so crazy, but
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: we looked out. We got in a bunch of big festivals,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: were in south By, Southwest, and we did Tribeca. Anyway,
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: we sold the movie, we made money, So we made
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: a couple more independently and you know, made money. It
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: was good, but it was still super super risky. Every
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: time we did it, we were like walking on eggshells.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: Like this, we are not big gamblers that way, And
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: I think neither of us love the art of it
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: enough to risk everything on it, like to risk the
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: house and the livelihood. And you know, we wanted to
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: have a family, We wanted to We're like, well, how
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: artsy are we that we want to continue taking these risks.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: And at that point I didn't really want to work
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: for anybody else. We had we had the independent bug,
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: you know it, like it's an entrepreneurial thing, Like, how
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: how hard would it be for you to go to
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: work for someone else totally unemployable? It would never happen, right,
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: you wouldn't do it. You'd rather just live out of one.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Of your trucks. That actually happened to be homeless for
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the rest of my life.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry, right, the same, same, same, but different.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: So we decided. So we were we weren't literally looking
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: for a way out. We were just seeing like the wind.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: And also piracy was super bad, so before Netflix was streaming,
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: Netflix was just still sending DVDs in the mail, and
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: we were running out of places to sell stuff too.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: And as we were selling our movies, they were being stolen. So,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: for example, we sold a movie to Russia Russia gives
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: you an advance. They say, hey, we're gonna give you
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: this money and we're gonna and we're gonna make our
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: film Elements for the movie theaters in Russia, and you're
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: supposed to use that money to make the film Elements.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: So they give you the deposit, and then they call
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: a month later and to say stop stop making the
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: film Elements because we don't need the movie anymore. Like
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: what do you mean, Like, well, you can keep the deposit,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: but it's already released here, you know, like this just
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: pirate yea. So we lost our two thirds of the money.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: And but that was happening in territory after territory, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: so the windows for where you could sell we're closing,
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: and the people that were stealing the movie weren't getting punished.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: You can find our movies on Google by typing the
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: name of the movie in free And you didn't You
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: didn't need bit torrent, you didn't need all this crazy software.
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: You could literally press play watch like a Tide Detergent commercial,
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: and then our movie would play and we couldn't get
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: it off. The internet couldn't do.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: It was easier to steal it than it was to
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: buy it.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: So we're making a living and not a bad living,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: but we're like making a living of school teachers or whatever.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: But we're making these movies that are quote unquote you know, successful,
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: but we just can't monetize them properly. So we started
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: thinking about this concept of, well, what if we made
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: something that was like a widget, like something that was
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: tangible that you could hold, that couldn't be digitally stolen
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: with the press of a button, with the you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: the flip of a switch or the move of a mouse.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: And so right on that time, Tina's dad, who had
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: a piece of front Runner in South Africa, was like,
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: we're looking for some help in America. You guys interested,
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: Like no way, Like why would we do that? That's crazy,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: that's you know. A year went on, were kind of
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: like that could be the widget we were talking about.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: We had the entrepreneurial bug because we raised money, we
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: sold products, we were telling stories, you know, hiring people.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: We started the day with nothing and made this tangible
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: thing at the end of the day, and we realized
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: that that's what we got a lot of joy out of,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: not the fact that it was actually a movie maybe
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: or not the fact that it was writing the music,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: but the fact that we had nothing and at the
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: end of the year we made something for the world.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah you know, so I think we started wrapping our
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: heads around this concept that maybe that would work with
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: a roof racking business.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, But what be creative about building a brand.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: Buildings starting with nothing and saying here's we can make something.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: It wasn't a movie, but it was a brand.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Right, No one would come in on the third act,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: no one would have a problem with it, like it
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: is what it is, it's made out of aluminum.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Little did you know that people will still find they
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: will still always yeah, there's always somebody something to complain about.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You mean, you used a twelve millimeter? Who would use
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a twelve millimeters? I don't.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: But we spent about a year, like just doing a
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: study of the market, like who else is out there
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: and what are they doing and how are they marketing?
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: Why would we be able to step into this market
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: and create something with it. So we did a lot
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: of those swat analysis of like whatever. You know, we're
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: not business people, by the way, we think we're pretty
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: practical and we have common sense enough to maybe a
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: mirror like what some successful people are doing, you know,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: so you can kind of look at the market and say, like,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: that's cool, that makes sense, but they're very successful doing that.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: And so we kind of pieced together this idea of
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: what we could do with front Runner in America. And
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: basically it was pretty simple at the time. It was
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: maybe a little revolutionary now it seems so common, but
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: we basically took a roof rack accessory company and made
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: it a lifestyle brand. That was the goal. We're going
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: to get people using this gear. We're going to tell
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: people that you need this piece of auto hardware to
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: have the life of your dream. No one was doing yeah,
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: and that was even before Instagram was even sort of
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: a thing. So we were at the beginning of all
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: the social at the beginning of saying, let's tell a
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: story with a roof rack, which no one was doing
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: at the time.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you guys did it. You guys did an
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: app lutely fantastic job of that. And everyone that's listening
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: knows of front Runner, and they know of the brand.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: They probably have seen a lot of your advertisements, and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: front Runner, to its credit, always made really practical good well.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it was easy because you had a product
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: that you could really get behind it.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Honest, this is the best roof.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I actually felt it was the best it was.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: And you know, with our new business when we had
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: to get some other roof racks and try them out,
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: I kept im just like, oh my god, this is terrible,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: Like the front Runner really is the best, Like just
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: reminding myself that as I try to assemble these other
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: things or look at these terrible fitment guides or missing pieces.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was not difficult to get behind to that.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Well. And you guys did an incredible job with that,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and you built the business up, and then you guys
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: as a family. This is such an interesting thing for
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: us to talk about in the podcast today, is you guys,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: you build up the business, everything's running. You guys did
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: a great job, and then you decide we are going
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to take some time for our family and we're gonna
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: go see part of the world. And you guys loaded
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: up a land Rover l R three is there of
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: all things and Knob well, no, it's not that. It's
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: great bravery, courage, courage. What inspired you guys to make
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: this decision that we have this moment in time to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: go see this part of the world with our family
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and our kids.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: There are three things I believe. So one was, you
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: know what, we're selling this gear and you want to
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: sort of live the live the brand a little bit.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: And while we would travel to Africa that way, and
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: we took you know, we took our two young boys
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: on like a dinosaur themed you know, overland trip in America,
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: you know, just camp for three weeks and went to
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: all the dinosaur places in Wyoming and you know, so
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: that was fun. Did a lot of dispersed camping. But
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: we keep on hearing about these trips that everyone's taking,
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: and we're like, we didn't get into the business to
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: take a vacation. We know a lot of people are
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: in let's say the overlanding space to have an excuse
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: to take vacations. But we also felt like we need
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: to use the gear and like really live it. So
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: that was one reason.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: I think we'd always also wanted to do something like
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: that with the kids, like our long term kind of
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: trip and show them other normals. We didn't at that
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: time really have the plan to do it or know
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: where we wanted to do it. I think we felt
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: at that point in time, oh my gosh, like, if
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: we do do this, we're going to have to do
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: it soon. They're old enough now where we can take
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: them on a trip where they'll remember, but they're also
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: young enough where they still kind of want to be
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: with their parents and we won't be tearing them away
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: from their friends and schools not that demanding because they're
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: in elementary school. The timing of it spoke to that,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: and then I think all this.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Digital nomad talk was kind of like, well, we set
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: up the ship, the ships sailing with Frontrunner, we could
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: probably step away, run our meetings, put in two full
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: days digitally, and then stay connected digitally. So we felt
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: that wouldn't be a huge problem. We wanted to build
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: that life for ourselves. That was part part of working
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: for yourself, right Scott, you know, eat taking a trip
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: for work, you know, And so that kind of felt
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: like it was justifiable. Then the fires happened in Malibu. Yeah,
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: so we were kicked out of our house for almost
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: ten days, and we thought our house was maybe going
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: to burn down. So this is a house we had
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: just built, It was all our possessions. We thought, really
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: thought that we were going to lose everything. And so
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: when we came back, we were kind of like, who cares? Like,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: what about who cares about this stuff? We don't need
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: this stuff. We let you know, we this.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Become a lot less precious, yeah about things.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: And we were less precious to the point where we said,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: let's just rent this house out, like, let's do it now,
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: because there's six hundred families that lost their homes in
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: the Malibu area who could use a place to live.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: And we talked to a brilliant real estate Asian friend,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: and right away she brought a couple over who had
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: just had a baby family and they were super cool
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: and they were front Runner customers.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: And they saw me very much sort runner crazy.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: And they had just purchased something the week before, and
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: so we rented the house to them for six months.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: The insurance company paid for everything upfront. So basically right
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: away we're like, oh, we got the trip is covered yea.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Because they were a budget They said to us, they said,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: we can give you the whole six month lease upfront
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: because the insurance is paying well. We rebuilt and Dave
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: and I looked at each other, We're going to do this.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: We have to do this now. And that was like
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: a push out the door.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: I don't think it.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: We had one month to prepare, So that's one of
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: the reasons we took to l R three. It wasn't
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: like we were going to go shopping for a truck
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: and build it out. And we had a tundra we
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: could have taken, which I think would have been two
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: big in the colonial cities. Yeah, we had a very
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: old series we would not have taken.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: That's driving us saying with Nancy.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Scout that would not have made sense on the road.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: And yeah, those were our choices.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: So the l R three was the choice.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: And we had a month and we were like, let's
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: go south. We're going to do We're going to do Americas,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: and let's go south.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I remember you said that you didn't know where you
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: were going to go.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Help weally, no, no, and and Dave had like picked
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: out a couple towns along the way in Mexico and Guatemala,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Nicaragua and Central America and then South America a little bit.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Places we wanted because we wanted to actually live in
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: these places and not just pass through for a few days.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: So the plan was to actually live in some of
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: these cities that we thought would be great to explore
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: for at least a month at a time. So we
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: planned it for like six months. We're going to go
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: south to see how far we get. We had a
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: loose plan of we're going to probably ship the vehicle
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: back from Panama just because of the Darien Gap, and
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: if we want to do you know, South America, we'll
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: do that another way. So the plan was to get
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: to at the time. I mean we were like Ecuadoral
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: bust I think right.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: We took the l R three, We put front runner
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: gear on it, nawning a tent, we had a fridge,
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: we had a toilet, we had expanded chairs, we had
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: a drawer system. We had our four Duffel bags, our computers,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: you know, some camera gear, and that was pretty much it.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: One of the drawers in the drawer system they were locking.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: We had our computer and camera stuff and one had
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: camping gear. And we lived out of it just fine. Yeah,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: for well four four and a half months was the trip.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: So we lived in Wahawka for a month, which is fantastic.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: It was the highlight of the trip.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: My heart is there.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I think if you had asked me before the trip,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: like where do you think you're gonna, you know, just
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: connect with all love the most. And I had the
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: sense that the further south we went and the more
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: exotic it got, that's what would appeal to me the most.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: But having lived in Wahaka, I have to say, my
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: heart is in Whaka and it is just the most
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: the food, the people, the culturally.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: It actually got more music, it actually got more generic
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: the further south. Yes, you go, you end up in
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Panama and you're like, I'm in Florida. So the best part,
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: the best part is the closest to us, and it's
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: the least sort of explored, are almost known about, or
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: seems the most foreboding. Everyone will gladly hop on a
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: plane to Coasta, Rica, but people not going to hop
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: on a plane and go to Juanajuato, which you should,
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: by the way, a city or you know what I'm saying.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Like, so will help people know where Wahaka is in reference.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: So south of Mexico City maybe about a five hour
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: and it's on the coast. Well, so Wahaka is like
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: a state based part of it's on the coast. But
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: we stayed in Wahaca City. Okay, that's where what's the
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: movie Coco. Yes, it's sort of like that Pixar movie,
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: like if that's sort of that's basically where like Coco,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: all it's the fountain of all the culture in Mexico.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: So all the great food, the.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Nievis that they have this ice cream there that is
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: off the hook nuts that that that doesn't exist in America.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: It's street to ice cream.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: It is unbelievable. We figured our tour was all about
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: the people and the food. Yeah, you know, the camping
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: was like almost a second or a third or a
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: fourth even you know, as a priority.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: That's the key thing about overland travel is that you
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: can overland around the world and never camp and still
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: be an overlander. You don't have to four wheel, you
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: don't have to go off road, you don't have to camp,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: and you can still very much be overlanding.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: And we actually felt the gear. It wasn't a hindrance
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: if we never got robbed because of the gear, but
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: we definitely felt like we stood out or we definitely
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: looked like hair the tourist because you pull up and
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: even though the l R three is small and didn't
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: have a ton of gear hanging off of it.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: And we weren't particularly flashy looking.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: No, but it didn't have two Jerry cans and we
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: never touched one had fuel one head water, which is
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: I guess. I think when you head out into an
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: unknown you want to feel sick, of course, right, feeling prepaid. Well,
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: we never once even began to reach for either of
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: those things. And then there's good infrastructure. Yeah, and then
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: if you looked in the car it kind of peered
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: in you'd see some Duffel bags, but you couldn't see
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: drawer systems. We were pretty low low key, yeah, I think.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: But you're right. We uh did you guys do some
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: language immersion or did you try?
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: So I went to Yeah, I went to Spanish classes.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: I took the kids to Spanish classes. I was convinced
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: I was gonna come back. I bless Spanol like brilliantly.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: I'm so embarrassed. It's so bad.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: It's so easy to travel with apps, all right, so
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: you can book anything. You can use your eye overland
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: er to just see if that place is safe, if
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: you want a camp in the way.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Many people speak English, and so when I would say
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: you know your ne sco practical Mespanol, and they'd say,
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I need to practice my English, and you're like no, and.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: You default to the easy thing, which is sure, English yeah,
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: English Yeah. And it's so easy to travel in a bubble.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: So the important thing for us is how to get
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: out of the bubble, Like, how do you just not
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: stay with us and our kids in our little car,
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: and how do you get out and try to It's
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: hard to try to actually people because you are a tourist, right,
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: so you can't go to the museum and like befriend
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: the ticket taker at the museum and have them invite
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: you over for dinner, because that's actually what you really want, right,
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: So it's important for us to kind of figure out
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: a way to meet people.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: And what helped that was the duration in the places, right,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: so that if you're there not just for a few days.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: And like in Mohaka, we were staying just in a
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: little neighborhood outside of Ohaka City and we had met
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: this family that was the extended family of the guy
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: who was owning the airbnb that we had chosen. And
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: this airbnb was this beautiful little hacienda that he was
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: from Mohaka. He had medical who was American. They lived
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: in Washington, Washington State, like outside of Seattle and had
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: this beautiful family home that he'd built there. But when
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: we arrived, it was his sister, her kids, his brother,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: the grandmother. Everyone was there when we arrived at the Airbnb,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: and they became family. Whost family and we need to
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: have Robert cues Men's house down the street. And he
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: introduced the kids to the cultural center where they took
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: trumpet classes or marimba classes or art and we got
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: to be immersed in this. And I think that's a
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: large part of why my heart's in Wahaka is because
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I feel like I have family there to a degree
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: in that they were so welcoming, and it also reminded
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: me a lot of the South African mentality, Like South
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Africa is a place where I really feel like people
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: open their homes to strangers. They do and you don't
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: have to call ahead or you know, you drop in
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: people in South Africa and that's just completely expected and
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: you can, you know, drop in and people can drop
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: in on you. And I felt like Mexico and Wahaka
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: particularly had the same.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: It felt it felt very much like home to me. Yeah,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: because of that, it's.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: A family structure there is so impressive it's.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: So impressive then, and it's also that whole sort of
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: mother to one, mother to all, so you know you
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: are instantaneously family. Like I remember Jack had his eleventh birthday,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: our oldest had his eleventh birthday there and Chamin came
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: over and he was laughing at where I'd put the
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: pinata and he was like no, no, and he went
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: and like tied it to a lamp post and stood
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: on the roof and he was like, that's all. And
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: he was like, oh, and what a gringo party just
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: the one pinata. He's like a Mexican party. We've got
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: like ten pinada. It's like, what's wrong with you people?
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: And they were super embarrassed because we purchased a fly
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: and we couldn't find We love flying, we couldn't find
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: a place to get flwed and Tina found were at a
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: Walmart and then our sort of friend host family, they
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: were very judgment Yeah, we didn't ask him where to
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: get the right fly, so somehow we ended up at
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: a Walmart.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: And then I got one at the Clacalula market.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Is that the one that fell out of the fridge.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was so sad.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: So yeah, like I said, our trip was based on
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: food and food disasters. I'll remember like the day Kennedy
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: was shot when that floor that fly hit the fridge floor.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: It's like nine to eleven in our house, crying over
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: spilt milk.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: We stayed in Mereda, which apparently we read a stat
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: that it's the second safest city in North America after
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: Quebec City. And we love Mereda. It's not on the ocean.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: It's the capital of the Yucatan and fantastic.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: And then when we asked why Mereda is so safe
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: a friend who we'd made, they explained to us that
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: all the cartels send the children and the grandparents to Merida,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: and as you know, you don't mess with the family,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: so no one misses with Mereda.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Mereda is like the place there's.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: A couple of private schools and you know, nice neighborhoods.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: It's like the safe zone. It is interesting. So you
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: went from there into Belize. We did. We did that.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Then our land rover broke down. Had we had the
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: air suspension, which we didn't swap out to coils ahead
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: of time. We just thought, well, if it happens, it happens,
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: we'll deal with it. And it happened, and we were
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: stuck riding with the truck you know on the on
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: the stumps are not comfortable, but we yeah, Belize, which
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: we didn't love. It was very felt not scammy. It
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: just we know the stories of like McAfee and like
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: it just it just felt like everyone was running from
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: something and it didn't.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: It was very strange.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: We didn't we didn't go there to die, We didn't snorkel,
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: we didn't do any ocean things. We were just we
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: were in the build.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Also a country surrounded by Latina countries, and yet they
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: speak English there and that's the language.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: And they do transactions with the dollar.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: It didn't feel it just didn't.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Culturally, I didn't know, like you couldn't glob on to
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: like what is Bilize. It felt very touristy almost it is,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you know, and it was it was just strange, like
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of women in like burlap blondes with blonde children,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: and a lot of men nights.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: A lot of orphanages. It was just a weird culty.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: It felt culty and it felt strange.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: Well, we met a cool land rover guy from South Africa.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: Who had a shop who couldn't fix our trucks. So
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: we start we're starting on our journey now of meeting
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: people through having to get our vehicle.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I should also was by the order, right, yeah, yes,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: in sant Agnoh yeah.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been there. And that guy, that guy is
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: so funny because I'm talking to him and he's talking
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: about the Camel Trophy and he was very judgmental of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: our vehicles, right, they weren't they weren't land Rovers it
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I know this guy from somewhere and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I said, man, I said, I know I have met
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: you somewhere, and I'm expecting him to say I was
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: in the Camel Trophy or I was whatever, And I'm like,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: did you ever work at a land Rover dealership in
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: southern California? Yes, And it was like I just like
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: took like the nail. Yeah. He was like a service center.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: He was like a car salesman for forty years, you know,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And at least it helped me understand like the context
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: of yes, you know, yeah, no.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: He was very helpful.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: And then actually when we were broken down, we broke
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: down in a beautifully picturesque place. It's called Punta len
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: It's passed to loom right at the end there, and
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I mean if you were going to break down anywhere,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: that was the place to do it. We actually got
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: a hack a trick from Justin at Luckier. Yeah, I
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: called him and he was like, Okay, you're going to
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: be able to trick the suspension in order to get
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: out of there without the drug.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: Because that way basically remove a certain fuse and you
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: jack up the front in the back and you trick
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: the computer to thinking it's fine, and then basically you
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: have as long as the leak is until it like
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: lowers again and they have to do the trick again.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: So we'd get like, you know, three or four hours
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: of driving out of it until it was kind of
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: undriveable again. Then you basually do the hack jacket up
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: in the front in the back, you know.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: So the choice at the time was either to go
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: back to Merida backwards or to carry on and get
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: to Guatemala City where there was the Landrober dealership there.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: We ended up doing the bumpy ride to Guatemala. I
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: must say, like we saw I mean throughout Mexico, we
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: saw all the ruins and it was little spectacular. My
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: children will say they were ruined with because we saw
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: all of them. And then to car in Guatemala is
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: just so it's so Indiana Jones, where you literally walking
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: through the jungle and happened upon a temple.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: It's just incredible.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: And yeah, and then we got to Guatemala and we
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: got to Guatemala City and the Landrover dealership was just
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: so expensive and they and when I told them the
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: trick and I was showing them and that they had
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: to jack it up from the chassis, and I mean
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: all these mechanics just were like fainting with this idea
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: that you could trick the electronics. We actually met another
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: friend of a friend. We met a guy named Byron
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Sanchez who was friends with Angelaine James Brown. Sure he
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: put us in touch in Antiqua, Guatemala with the most
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: phenomenal dude named Bill who has I mean, if anyone
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: loves landrovers, he has a Landrover heaven.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: He would say, well, it's a shop, but it's almost
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: like a graveyard. But they probably all work, but it's
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: maybe thirty forty land rovers of all sorts.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Sure, and Bill was he took one look at the
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: l R three and said, yeah, I don't touch the
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: ones with computers. That'll be my son Willie will do that.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to touch anything with electronics.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: Will We had just taken some air suspense mentioned whatever,
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: the pods or whatever out of another truck a guy
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: who was converting to coils, and he sold us those
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: super cheap and put him in.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: It took a week or two, but Antigua for a while,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: whatever it is exactly.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: We were Antigua, which was amazing. We were there during
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Samana Sante, which was insane, insane religious festival. Bill's daughter
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: actually did these tours where she take you on a
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: defender to Pakaya volcano. Wow, and we then you get
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: on horseback or you can walk it. Dave walked it.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I went on a horse and you go up to
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the lava and we roasted marshmallows, not lava, which I've.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Ruined my children. I mean I've definitely ruined them, Like
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: big cart.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: We're camping now and they're like, where's the lava?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Who would this perfect crispiness, right, nothing like a lava roasted?
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: And then you guys continued south and what did you find?
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Were some of the highlights after you left Guatemala, you
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: went into then you went in to Honduras. Did you
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: go through Copon? Did you do this?
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: But then we popped that out and then went back
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: through Guatemala into L Salvador.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we met with three borders in one day. That
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: was an interesting day.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: So so if you were to drive, if you wanted
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: to drive from Los Angeles to Panama, it's like a
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: little bit further than driving from Los Angeles to New
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: York City. So you could probably do it in three
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: or four or five days, you know, if you were
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: putting these eight ten hour days. But we always tried
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: to keep the days to four or five hours. We
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: didn't want to make it like we're doing this long
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: haul trip edition. We always tried to drive in daylight.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: We never did a from city to city at night.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Never. We just were like, there's no reason.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: To that point.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: We found that that was our biggest day. It was
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: an eight hour day, which for us at that time,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: that was huge, you know, to get through the three
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: borders and or yeah, the in and out and in
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: L Salvador, we stayed in Eltunco, Plaia Eltum. We also
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: found that a lot of the surf towns where there
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: were ex pats, you know, who were there for the waves.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: They always usually had the right blend.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Of culture, the authentic like there's a local, authentic kind
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: of us to a place. And then there's also an
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: ease of navigation where where there's a little bit of
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: because it's a surf town, there's a little bit more
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: you can access the local people much more than not.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I think, I don't know that we'd have the same
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: opinion of l Salvador if we weren't in this little
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: surf town.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: So we're at this hotel and we're out by the
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: pool and a guy runs to the pool and he's like,
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: who is the truck with the California plates, like speaking very.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Really good English.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's El Salvadorian.
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, it's us, Like if you don't ever
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: forget it in trouble or if he's gonna rob us,
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: And he's like, I'm Oscar, I own the hotel. It
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: turns out Oscar used to live in Los Angeles. Oscar
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: used to run a neon signed repair company, but he
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: has since moved back and started a family in his hometown,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: so he owns this hotel and a coffee shop. But
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: he was awesome because we got now a firsthand sort
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: of El Salvador in experience about the Civil War, about
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: how he ended up in La when he was fourteen.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: And he took us out spearfishing the next day, the
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: boys and I and then an amazing time. We caught
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: so much fish and Jack was underwater with a spear
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: and just like just a friend, like just a dude
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: we met. So that was that was actually one of
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: the highlights.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Of the trip, and collect become a good friend, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I think also the boys. They got a goliath grouper.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: The fish was literally bigger than Ford. It was bigger
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: than our younger kid.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: No, it was a spectacular time. And again it was
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: that sense of just that you felt like you had
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: family or friends they like I feel like Oscar's just
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: a part of our family. And we shared so much
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: and it was such a short time, but it was
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: intensely meaningful and memorable. And a son who was the
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: same age as Jack.
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: Right, we have friends that are experts on neon science
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: or scholars in that in that space, and they just
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: wrote a definitive book about neon science. We just sent
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: that to ask last week, so we're you know, we
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: maintained these try to maintain these friendships around the world.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: In Wahaka, one of the reasons we wanted to stay
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: there was for the mess call. And we tried all
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: the different distilleries and at some point I was like,
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: I got to find what people consider the best mescal
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: while we're here. And I looked online and there was
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: a list of like Brooklyn bartenders say this is the
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: best mescal. I'm like, Brooklyn, that must be good. And
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: then we decided to drive to the ranch. Because they
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: had no website or something. It wasn't open to the public.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: But we drove there and we parked and we saw
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: them brewing the mescal. We saw the big vats, we
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: saw them burning the cactus one of the roots. Yeah,
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: but none of them spoke English at all, and our
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: Spanish is so terrible. I didn't even know how to say,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: a dude, do a tour or tasty mescalo, you know how,
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: we want to taste it. And so we walked around.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: The kids were playing with the goats and the chickens,
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: and we hung out there a little bit, and at
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: some point a woman came up, who said, oh, do
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: you want to try mescal? And broken English? And we're like, well,
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: we would love to thank you. And she brought us
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: into the house, like the residential house on the property.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: And a guy walks out and his named Eduardo, but
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: they call him Lalo and he spoke perfect English. Also
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: lived in La was a gardener for five years, saved
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: up all his money so he could take his family's recipes.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: He does ancestral mescal and started this distillery. So he
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: proceeds to feed us mescal.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: And then also tortillas that made from the corn on
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: his farm, and a coffee that I've never tasted, such
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: an amazing coffee that he was brewing just on a fire.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: There was like a sweet with cinnamon and spices. It
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: was one of the most magical to this day.
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: Are our favorite sipping mescal is this Lalo Kira which
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: you can find La Lookira. You can find it very randomly.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: He said.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: One restaurant in La we can walk out with.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Als a Wahaken restaurant called Madre, and they actually sell
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: the bottles and they sell and I think they even
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: have like an exclusive on one of because his big
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: thing and what we learned with him was he was like, yeah,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: the smoky taste of mescal is actually just a marketing
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: ploy and it really shouldn't taste me.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: That's a he.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Says, it's a mistake for it to taste smoky, because
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: then you won't be able to sell which margae, which
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: cactus plant you're sipping, because it masks the taste of
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: the plant. And so it should be clear and it
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: should not have a smokey taste. You should be able
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: to taste that cactus like that mcgae. You should be
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: able to taste it.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: And so it's super upset because I love the smoking.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it was very like the smokiness.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, that's like my new jam is like a
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: like a mescal negroni nice. It's kind of it's kind
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: of magic. Yeah.
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: We so in Nicaraga. We stayed in San Juan del
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: ser for a month. That was fantastic. We have friends
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: there that own a cigar James Brown, right, and.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Then they've been in the community for a long Yeah. Yeah,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: they lived.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: They were in Antigua for a while and we met
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: them at the first Overland expo that we participated in,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: like the third or second Overland expo there ever was. Yeah,
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: we met an Jine James. They've been friends almost as
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: long as.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: You and our kids. Our kids, Jack, our oldest, and
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: their son Parker were I think about four or five
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: years old when they met, and so it was great
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: when we were staying there. I mean Jack and Parker
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: could hang together and it was one of the first
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: places where they could actually go to school. Boys went
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: to school in san Juandolcer for I think it was
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: maybe a month. That was just a lovely time. We
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: got to see Angie and James have a factory in
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: s Ly where they have of a Hannegra which is the.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Shout out to black label. That's the name of their.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Black Labels, the name of their their cigar brand.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: But they also have a tobacco factory where they roll
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: cigars for other labels, and so Black Sheep is actually
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: their tobacco company and their factory in st Le. Yeah,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: it was interesting too because Estely is obviously very very
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: different from san juandol Serf. San Juandolsur is a little
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: surf town. There's a lot of expats there. It's on
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: the ocean. Estle is very much a working town and
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: it's where a lot of the tobacco stuff and factories
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: are sure, So that was that was fascinating.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: And then you guys complete this trip, you get to
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: you get to Panama, also known as.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: The Yeah, we were a little I wouldn't say we
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: were overlanded out, but being the male responsible member of
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: the vehicle and keeping everything thing from being let's say
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: stolen or whatever, I was worried about or breaking down.
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: You know, I just I was a little stressed out,
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: like there's always I wouldn't say it was worrying about
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: the truck, but the truck was, you know, it was
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: the heart of everything. So when we got to Panama,
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: we were we could have shipped it into South America
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: we had we had not six weeks left, or we
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: could have shipped it back to Los Angeles, and the
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: prices were kind of the same to ship it to
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: South America or ship it back, and we just felt
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: at that time, let's just bail on the truck, let's
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: just finish, let's let's let's just the things we wanted
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: to see in South America. We're kind of far apart also,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: so to do that sort of in an overlanding way,
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: we would have needed another any three months.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we only had six weeks, so we didn't
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: feel like we would be able to see everything we
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: wanted to see in that time if we were driving it. Yea,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: so we we also, I will say this Panama was
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: a huge surprise to us.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I did not think I would like Panama. I did not.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I loved Panama City. I loved Casco Viejo,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: the Old Portal. It is so beautiful, rests I love exactly,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: great restaurants, great food, great people. And so Panama is
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: actually a little bit of a surprise because you are
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: expecting it to.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: Be more of a Miami.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: While there is that aspect to it, and it's very
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: easy to navigate, of course because of that.
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: But at the same I think it's very Western. So
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: after four and a half months of not being in
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: a mall or something, suddenly that was like.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: There a mall. They're like, really, well, they're squared away
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: in the Panama Canal has to be organized, squared away,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: and I think that permeates to the society in that
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: region of Panama. It's like it's just pretty squared away.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: We took the old timey train from Cologne to Panama City.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: It was fantastic. We were the only ones on this
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: turn of the century train. It was the train that
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: was more or less built to go along with the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Panama It was magnificent.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: And yeah, it was great. And then Panama. We'll go
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: back to Panama. Yeah, it's easy to get around, and
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: there's pockets you can get lost in, you know, like
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: the Bocus del Toro region in the north past.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: It's fantastic.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so yeah, so we decided to fly into
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: into South America. We did Carta Henya, we did Bogata,
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: we did Lima, we did Cusco, we did We had
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: a great time in Alentate Tombo, which is a little
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: village near along It's like a train stop away from
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: Machu Pichu. We ended up spending an extra few weeks there.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: We really yeah, we were meant to be there for
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: like three days. But this town, it has running water
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: like through the whole.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Town all this time in the streets.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: In the streets it's like a little i don't know, aqueducts.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: It's the only actually the only Aztec village that's like
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: still pretty much happening as a working village, as a.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: Very very narrow streets, cars can't fit them.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Old cobblestone.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: And also we met someone there, and then because we
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: befriended Wendy, it felt easier to stay there. So Wendy
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: is an American who came there in the seventies and
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: started a little backpacking tourism business with her husband and
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: she ends up now she's owning her owns the kind
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: of the fancy hotel that's built into the train station.
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: And so Wendy was fantastic. She's an artist now.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: And she lives in Lima most of the time. But
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: her son has an amazing restaurant in this little town
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: in the Sacred Valley which arel Anta Tambo, and it's
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: called Tuncho, and it's all authentic, homestyle Peruvian food. Because
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: what would happen is, because everyone's going too much Epicchu,
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of the restaurants in this little town would
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: make pizza, terrible, terrible pizza for the tourists. And her
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: son was like, you know, we all go home to
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: these amazing Peruvian home cooked meals that our mothers make,
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Like why are we feeding these people pizza? We should
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: be showing them that food. And that was what was
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: amazing about his restaurant, and yeah, she they have a
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: distillery in the hotel at they have a little farm
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: and a school and a distillery and there's a guy
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: making gins and things but from and Dean plants Bittana. Yes,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: so it's all indigenous ingredients and he's making like a
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: mark gin or a mark. It's unbelievable what these people
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: are doing. They're so special, just special.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me ask you this trip, a trip like
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: this with your family is usually pretty transformative. So what
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: did you feel like that you guys learned as a
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: family at the end of this What did you take away?
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Well, what was really interesting is when we got back
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: six months later in California, we had luckdown for COVID.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: So Dave and I looked at each other and we
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: looked at him and we're like, no, no, no, no, no,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: We've done this.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: We've done the homeschooling, We've done the close quarters and
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: family time.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: We're like no, because when we got back, everyone said,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: you know, how was it in such close quarters for
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: so long and the homeschooling and everything else, And we
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: didn't know we'd get to say, you'll see for yourself
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: without exotic travel.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: It's not all that.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: In hindsight, we wouldn't have done the homeschooling.
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: So we were very we were very like structured, like,
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: all right, they have to they have to follow along
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: with their friends back home. They have to get through
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: with this math by this week. So academy, a lot
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: of the days were pulling aside where there was good
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: internet and just having them get through their homework and
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: making sure they were reading stuff. And there were fights
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: and tension and just sort of like it just.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: Which in hindsight, like a lot of the days couldn't
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: start until they'd finished their school work, and really we
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: should have tossed that from the start, Like they were
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: learning way more of course that they would have in
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: a classroom. They would have caught up just fine. My
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: advice would be, like, just ditch the school side of it.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: The school's just a part of their life education for
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: that amount of time, for six months at that stage,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: I mean fifth grade and second grade. You know, if
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: they can count to one thousand and read a book,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: like just get over yourself, they'll catch up, you know.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: And so I think we would have ditched that.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I also feel like, because you know, we ended, we
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: actually we also got to do the Amazon, we got
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: to do the Galapagas. Things on people's bucket lists and
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: our own bucket lists. But what happens is, I think
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: while you're doing it all at once, become super complacent.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Like we're like, oh, and another beautiful colonial town, or
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: we were sitting in the Glapagaus and I'm.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: Like, guys, we're in the Galapagas. Like most people, this
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: is the destination, Like this is part of our trip,
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: but this is the destination, like we need to know, say,
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: but we're in the Galapagas.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: And so I think even my advice would be why
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: do it all at once? Maybe it's better, you know,
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: in America with kids, they get three months off during
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the summer.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: Go live somewhere for three months at a time each year.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: You could go and really take advantage of a place
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: for a good month or two months or three months
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: and not have to because even even though we gave
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: ourselves the time of staying in these places for longer
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: than a month, I think you probably get more value
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: out of breaking it up so that you're not just
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: getting complacent or get you're not it's not special enough.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know, how would you explain it? Then it's good.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: You guys have you've been together a long time and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: you've traveled together a lot. Tina, what do you find
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: most impressive about Dave as a traveler? What have you
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: learned from Dave?
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's number one. That was an amazing thing. I
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: think I'd never really thought about it. But looking back,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: wherever we were and whenever we decided we were moving on,
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: Dave and I will never add odds that way, like
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: we were both ready to like Okay, we're done here,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: or we're on to the next thing. It was never like,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: oh no, I really want to stay much longer, why
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: do we need to go?
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: We were totally in sync.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: I think the whole trip, we always felt like enough
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: time was spent where it was spent. Dave is an
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: incredibly mature and patient human being, and I have none
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: of that. I am the most impatient person I think.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: But that's the joy about traveling with Tina. She's not
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: afraid to ask Usians if there's a line. We were
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: in Paris once and uh, there was like we're going
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: to Notre Dame or something. There was like one really
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: long line and then one really short line. I walk
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: right into the long line, like this is where I
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: belong the long line. And Tina's like, why why would
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: we don't even know what the short line is.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Let's go to the short line. And I'm mister American
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: nice guy, like I I think we should stand in
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: the long line.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: We go up to the short line and it was
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: just a short line, but literally it was like there
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: are four hundred people in one line and five in another,
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: and and a lot of people would think, well, that
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: is for special people, right, The five person line is
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: for the people who have the tickets that are more money.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: And I just mind, my travel sense is like I
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: belong in that line. And Tina believes she belongs in
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: that line, and actually that that's a that's a metaphor
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: or it's a real story. If I'm saying it, it
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: is a she's easy to travel within that. She's happy
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: to not not cut in line, but get to that,
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: you know, like like don't be a don't be a lemming. Yeah, yeah,
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: don't be a lemming.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Like you have to follow, you don't have to follow,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: you can try something new. And I think that's also.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: Like we would always find like amazing, Like this is
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: the best taco place. So this is the best place
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: for Flaan because I'm just never afraid of the hole
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: in the wall.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: In fact, that's actually the attraction. Like if it looks
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: too sort of there's not enough locals in here, that.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: Food's gonna suck r.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: So, so I think we we compliment each other that way,
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: And I think that's why we work together well, is
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: because we are so different. I shoot from the hip
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: to answer your questions, Scot about what have you learned
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: from Dave? Oftentimes, sleeping on it is a really good idea.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Sleeping on it is a really really good idea.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Any big decision, yes, just give it, give.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: It the night, give it the night, give it it's time.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: You don't have to answer right the second. And so
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: I think that's that's something I've definitely definitely learned from
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Dave's temperament.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: And how about you, Dave, what has Tina taught you
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the most? And all your travels together, well, just get
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: in the short line, get in the short line. Don't
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: be afraid to question the norm.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, Tina walked around in Mexico. She's not
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: shy about giving people nicknames, she's not shy about trying
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: out her Spanish, so she ran around the first half
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: of our trip telling everyone she was horny, and she
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: didn't realize that she was using caliente wrong.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's exactly what happened. I went, I went
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: to a Spanish class and married on my first Spanish class,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: and I walked in and I said, you're.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: So caliente, and she said, I don't think you mean
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: to say that. I was like, yes, I do. I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: am really hot. It's like boiling, aren't you. And she's like, here,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: and you would say that by saying your tango color
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: I take heat because when you say you're so caliente,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: what you're telling people is that you are horny.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: And I was like, oh my god, I in the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: last four weeks have told the lady at the ice
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: cream shop.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: And the thing is, I'm the cuck standing next door
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: with a big smile on my face and my wife
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: is telling her when she's horny. Apparently I'm not satisfied.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: It also didn't even look like I was just some
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: crazy gringo didn't know what she was saying, because by
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: that stage I had quite a good tan on. I'm
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: dark head, and I was really working on like a
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: really good Spanish accent, so I literally looked like a
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: girl who was just telling everyone how horney I was.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: Ta's not shy to die then to any experience, which is.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: Great, but sometimes it would be better to sleep or
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: take the Spanish class first.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: But it's so good to learn those lessons from each other.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: And speaking of lessons, were going to come into the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: last couple of questions and some comments as the podcast
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: comes to a close, But one of the things we
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: really love to ask is what advice, then would you
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: give to the listeners. What have you guys learned in
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: all of your travels. If someone was coming new and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: a family wants to go do what you guys are
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: about to do, what would be the couple pieces of
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: advice that you would tell them. It sounds like, don't
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: worry about the school work too much.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: That and I would also say to be open and
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: optimistic and to there's you know, we had a lot
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: of questions during the trip. Oh my god, you're taking
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: your family through Mexico. How dangerous? Isn't it dangerous? We
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: were never met throughout the trip without hospitality and warmth.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: That's how we were met. And I think it has
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: a lot to do with also your attitude to it.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: If you're going to be skeptical, if you're going to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: be really weary or leary, or if you're going to
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: be super flashy. I mean, Dave and I joke all
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: the time with some of these enormous rigs. I'm like,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: some of those countries, I don't think you can go
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: there because they're going to think you're coming to take
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: over the country.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: I mean you literally the trust.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: We saw it over an next month. I'm like, Nicaragua
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: wouldn't even let that into the country.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: That just looks like you're overthrowing the government.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: To take a drone into Nicaragua. You can take one
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: of those trucks into Nicaragua exactly.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: And I think that openness gave us all the amazing,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: the meaningful experiences we had was that we were not
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: afraid and there was nothing to be afraid of.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, of course, be sensible. We didn't drive at night.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: We didn't need to go and spend three days in
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Tepic or in places that you know have a reputation for.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: But I saw a good one on Facebook while we
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: were traveling. Someone said, you know, is it safe to
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: drive through Mexico? And someone said, are you joining a cartel?
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Because if you're not joining a cotel, yes, it super
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: safe to drive through Mexico. So I think that would
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: be My advice is to you just need to get
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: out the door. I know how hard getting out the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: door is, and we had that push with the fires.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: And there's no perfect time to buy a house, there's
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: no perfect time to have a kid, and there's no
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: perfect time to just start driving. I mean, you're never
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: going to get it all lined up. You just gotta
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: know that. Like I mean, maybe if you have children,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: you have to know that if they're a little old,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: if they're in high school, they're not going to want
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: to sit in a vehicle with you. The trip that
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: we did, we did some off roading stare, but we
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: never purposely planned on getting lost. You could do it
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: at any vehicle, any two wheel drive vehicle. I mean,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: we drove down to La Pause, it's all paved. We've
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: got on a ferry to most Lawnd. It's the ferry
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: will take any vehicle. Mexico is all paved and every
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: road you need to get on between all the major
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: cities Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: And once we were in South America. I mean we
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: didn't even have a vehicle, so and we managed to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: do a lot of that.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: You might pack a tent and some water and a
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: SAT phone for emergencies because you are in another country,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: don't even really need to camp in between an app
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: and you know airbnbs and they're sis everywhere.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: And they're so cheap, so cheap, and that's where the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: great food is. Yeah, like nothing that I can cook
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: is going to match what you're going to now, which
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: you're going to get in a little shop in Mexico.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: You could take that.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: You could drive in four days or five days of
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: reasonable driving and be in Ohaka, stay there for a week,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: and drive back in five days. It's a it's a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: it's an overland trip, but it's not this trip where
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: you're like on an expedition and you're there to save
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: the world and go into villages and cure cancer or whatever.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: You're you're gonna you're going on a cultural trip and
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: you're gonna see a lot be because you're driving, but
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: you don't need to have the perfect vehicle.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the lesson is don't wait.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: No, do it when you're when you ever you can.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: Like in our case, the opportunity was someone's going to
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: rent our house. We felt comfortable renting it to them,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: and we suddenly had a budget that made sense. You know,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: the work thing wasn't perfect. To step away. We found
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: that being a digital nomad is not exactly what it's
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: chalked up to be.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the world that's very difficult.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: That the starlink has changed.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a huge sells.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Another question we love to ask is or actually I
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: love to ask because I always find new books to read.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: But for the two of you, has there been any
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: books that you've read about travel or about anything else
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: that that you have really resonated with that you'd like
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: to share with the audience.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: If I'm traveling to a region that Paul throws written about,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: I'll read one of those books. So when I met Tina,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: I think even before the first time I went to Africa,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: I read Dark Star Safari, and I've been obsessed with
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: this idea of traveling from Cape Town to Cairo by vehicle.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: And we've almost gotten close to figuring out that we
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: you know, we were going to do this trip. But
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: it's also one of these things it's just hard with
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: the with the kids and with the and also it's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: it's a hard trip. It's a lot, it's a lot
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: of time and dangerous if you do the East Coast.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: You know anyway that that Dark Star Saphari is fantastic.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: We were supposed to go on to Tahiti at the trip.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: The plans changed, but I read his book about Oceania
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: and the Pacific Islands and he kayaked between all these islands.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: But yeah, he's great. Yeah, amazing writer for sure.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: And Graham Bell's book.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: You just finished Graham Bell's book.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: I think if you're taking any of these trips, you're
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: going to do a longer overland trip, definitely try to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: suss out a book written about that trip. It'll just
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: help dial in. Just go get a real feel of
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: it even before you go, and get the real feel
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: of it.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: And I like that that Graham always has a sense
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: of optimism and he sees the place from a like,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I think, a really fair perspective. And yeah, he's a
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: funny writer.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: And yeah, Graham's books are great because he'll he'll kind
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: of break down what the kind is all about, what
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: currency they use, how much gas costs, a leader, so
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: you kind of go into it like almost like a
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: lonely planet. But then he tells a story about his
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: family and where they camped and if the vehicle broke down,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: a little bit of history and politics. It's a nice,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: a nice blend. Yeah, I would say so. And how
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: about for you, Tina.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: I often relied on Dave's researching reading because Dave has
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: always done this.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I remember we were going to Tanzania and
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: he was reading The Green Hills of Kilimanjaro, or what's
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: it called.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: The Havingway Book, the Hemingway Book, The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, thank you close. There's something with green Hills too.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: There might be another short story of the book. Yeah.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: Anyway, yeah, I'm not I'm not big.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: On Tina's a listener and a talker.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: You're a storyteller, so reader, it's better for Dave to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: tell me about the books. Dave tells me about the books.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: I like, I was joking earlier. Today, I'm in a
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: book club and my group of book club girls we're
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: reading something called The English understand Will. It's about sixty
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: five pages long. When it arrived in the mail, Dave
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: was like, is this a book for one of the kids,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: because and I do.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Like an audiobook. I do because of Yeah, I'm not
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: a big reader.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: And a lot of time driving, so it's fun to
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: listen to an audio rook.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: And I don't retain the information the same way if
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: I'm because I think I'm an auditory processor. If I
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: hear it, like I can remember a joke for one
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: hundred years, sure, but if I read it, it's often gone,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: like just a few weeks later. I don't have the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: ability to really hold on to the written stuff as
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: much as if Dave tells me what the book's about.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. In these podcasts, it's we intentionally avoid
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: talking much about what you guys do professionally, but I
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: think that it is important to talk a little bit
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: about the tenth that you guys have come up with.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: And I think the way that you guys relaid the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: story to me is that you've you've camped in all
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: of these different ways, roof tents and ground tents and
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: sleeping in the vehicle and everything in between, unicats, even
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: all of all of it on an airstream. Yes, exactly.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: So you guys have experienced a lot of these different
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: ways of camping, and so I'm going to pitch it
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: for you because again there's no sponsorship in this podcast
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: of this product. But I like the tent that you
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: guys made. You guys happen to be close friends. But
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I do feel that this C six rev tent that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you guys have come up with is very It's very unique.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: It can be used as a roof tent. There's an
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: accessory that you guys produce that allows it to be
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: used as a fold open roof tent on a rack.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: It can be attached to a full length rack like
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: a front runner rack. It can be used in the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: back of a pickup bed. It can be used on
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: the ground. And our team here Paula, our producer, and
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Caleb next door, we lend out your tent all the time.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I use it personally anytime I'm in a test vehicle,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: so a lot of times I need to go camping
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: in a test vehicle, I just chuck your tent into
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the back of it. So it's a It's a twenty
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: five pound tent that folds up into its own case.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: It's got a what is it a four inch thick
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: mattress ye with a quilted cover on it. You know,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: it's eight hundred bucks. I think it's a really unique product.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: We've done a video on it. You guys can check
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: it out on our YouTube channel. Talk for just a
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: quick second, because again we don't want this to be
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: a sales pitch. But what inspired you guys to make this,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: because it's accumulation of a bunch of experience.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: Is traveling for eight years with a traditional rooftop tent.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: And we, you know, like anyone when you're camping and
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: you think you're smart, you're just like, wouldn't it be
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: great if you know? And you just have these ideas.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: And at some point we just started, when we started
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: having relationships with factories overseas and started finding some good factories,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: we just thought, well, let's start. Let's just for fun,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: see if we can make this dream tent.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: I think also, you know, if you think about what
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: is a tent used, primarily, there's like three things. It's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: a shelter, it's for privacy, and it's for sleep. And
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: I think Dave and I thought, wow.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: Everyone has really addressed the first two, but no one
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: addresses comfortable sleep in a tent.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: In that you're just like it's a given. Oh, you're
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: going camping, You're going to have a crap night sleep.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: You just need to resign yourself to the fact that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: you're going to have a cab or.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: You're in an RV, or you're in a fancy clamshop.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: But as far as a tense, concerned air mattress or
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: whatever else, it's just you've resigned, you've settled. It occurred
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: to us, why should you have to settle on not
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: having a comfortable night sleep out in the middle of nowhere,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: Because if you're going mountain biking the next day, I
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: think a lot of people would not camp the night
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: before some big sort of adventure sport because they know
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: they're going to have a crap night's sleep.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: That shouldn't be the case. You should be.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: Able to camp the night before that cycling thing or
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: whatever surfing you're do, like, you should be able to
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: do your adventure sport that next morning, and you should
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: be able to sleep coffee and not with a ruck
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: in your butt from an air mattress.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is. It is a super comfortable mattress.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: But I think for me it's the utility of it
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: because I'm constantly changing how I'm traveling, and so it's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: it's totally self supported in its own footprint.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Right, So there's a freedom to that, Scott, which I don't.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: Think you have resell to a lot of people. They'll
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: be like, I have a pickup and I have a defender,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: and I just want one tent that I can move around,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: And they might put our platform on one of the
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: vehicles and then just use it in the bed of
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: the other. We have five vehicles and we camp. We
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: actually camped out of all of them, including the Tesla,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: and we can bring the tent on any of them. Yeah,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: as opposed to carrying five rooftop tents. And this is
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: sounding very privileged, but we because of work, we have
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: different vehicles for different things. By we using the pickup,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: we use it on the LR III, we use it
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: on the Scout.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: And frankly, I don't mind sleeping on the ground as
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: long as I have that four inch mattress.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: And I think it's worth people looking at because I
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: think that you guys have taken a risk as a
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: family to make a product that I think a lot
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: of people in the industry can use. It comes from
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: a place of a lot of years of travel as Overlanders.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: You guys have been a member of the community for
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: a very long time. For those that are listening, this
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: is a small business. Dave and Tina owned it themselves.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: They put all of themselves into this, So I just
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for people taking that kind
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: of risk and it's a product that I use. So
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: this ended up being a pitch and didn't I.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: Didn't appreciate the kind words.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Well I didn't. I didn't. I didn't mean it to
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: be that way. But it is a product that that
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I appreciate myself. So I just want to congratulate you guys.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you took the short line. You guys decided you
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: aren't on the short bus. You took the short line.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: It feels like the shorts you guys. You guys took.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: You guys took the risk, and you you put your
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: heart and soul into creating something, and I just have
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of respect. We are always reinventing, keeping it
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: in a state.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're so grateful that you guys were on
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the podcast.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: I'm we're so glad to finally be here. I listened
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: to every episode. It's nice to be in the chair
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: for once.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we we've had so many wonderful adventures together,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: including that first trip that we did together in Africa
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: which was just absolutely magical, and.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: We'll do it in the Grand Canyon one.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was another really one, spectaculous wonderful adventures. So
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: thank you both, Thank you Scott on the podcast, and
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: we thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: you next time.