Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Steve Edwards on Being an Overland Journalist, Living Abroad, and Buying Defenders on a Whim

Transcript

Steve Edwards on Being an Overland Journalist, Living Abroad, and Buying Defenders on a Whim · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: host Scott Brady and I am joined today by Steve Edwards. Now,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Steve is one of the team members here at Overland International.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: He's one of our associate editors. He produces a lot
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of the content on Expedition Portal, but he's also very
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: well traveled in his own right. So we talk about
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: his explorations in Africa, how him and his partner spent
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: many years living on the continent and finding ways to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: give back, and then we also go into some detail
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: on them selecting an old Defender in Ethiopia, flying to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Addis Ababa, purchasing the vehicle off of some other travelers,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and then slowly driving and making their way back to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: South Africa before shipping at home. This is a really
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: interesting conversation with Steve. There's a lot of lessons around
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: that he has learned in his travels around the world,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: but also spending so much time testing the newest equipment
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: on the market. So please enjoy my conversation with Steve Edwards.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: And a special thanks to Real Truck for their support
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: of this week's podcast, Find Your Freedom and Follow your
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Own Trail and the Fresh air of vast uncharted places,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: introducing the exclusive Real Truck lineup of overlanding accessories designed
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: to take adventurous explorers like you into the furthest reaches
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: with gear for camping, off roading, and more, including the
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: all new Real Truck Go Rack, Go Tent and Overland Awning.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And here's to those inspired, self actualized souls brave enough
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to unplug and check into pure wilderness. Bring your truck
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to life at real truck dot com. Thanks again, Real Truck.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Well, Steve, thanks so much for being on the podcast
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: with me today. And I thought it would be really
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: interesting to not only discuss the notable achievements that you've
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: had in your life as a traveler, you know, as
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a land rover owner and everything else along the way,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: but I thought it would also be interesting for people
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to learn a little bit about what it means to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: be one of the editors for Overland Journal and Expedition Portal.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And since you work with so many contributors, maybe helping
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: people understand how they can contribute, how they should contribute,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: maybe some tips and tricks that you can give them
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to have a better outcome, things that would make your
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: job easier. And I suspect, given my own experience in
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: this place, is if people make your job easier, you
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: tend to use them a lot more often. So it's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the ones that make your job hard, yeah, for sure,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that you tend not to go back to the well
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: with so often. But before we get into that, let's
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: get started with what was the first memory that you
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: have of overlanding that kind of spurned your excitement for
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this topic.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: I think I think like a lot of folks who
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: have found themselves in the overland world. And that's kind
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: of how I describe it from my own experience is
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: sort of one day I kind of woke up and
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, I guess this is kind
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: of what I'm doing right now. I grew up in Wyoming.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: I grew up in the American West and big open spaces, yeah, exactly,
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: high plains, big mountains. I love to fish. I was
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: in the Boy Scouts, and you know, a lot of
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: these landscapes in these places, the outdoors, you know, you
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: need a four by four right to to access. And
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: actually I should qualify that oftentimes we accessed a lot
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: of places in the outdoors in Wyoming where we probably
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: should have had a four by four, but didn't right,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: whether that it was with my parents in their station
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: wagons or as as a as a as a young man,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: myself and a Volkswagen Beetle, you know, throw a tent
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: in the back, throw a cooler in there.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean the Beatles will finish the Baja one
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: thousand course. Oh yeah, which for those who haven't done that,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: like it's legit, like a.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Class eleven Beetle is a wild machine.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and the fact that they can finish that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: course because there's a lot of places where you want
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to fool drive and fortunately they're light and they're rear
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: drive and they have a lot of weight over that
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: rear axle. That helps a lot.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, it's amazing where you could take a Beetle.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it really is. And I still have I
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: still have my Beetle from my high school days and
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: it doesn't do the hardcore, you know, out roading anymore.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, this is cool. We're gonna hit pause for
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a secure so you have Is that was that your
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: first car?
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Yes? And actually my grandfather bought it brand new in
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one and a family and my father commuted
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: to work in it every day, and I learned to
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: drive in that car, and my brother did. I drove
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: it in high school, I drove in college, and it's
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: just managed to stay around. It's one of those vehicles that.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: That is so cool. Yeah, so it is. You said
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it's a seventy three seventy one seventy one, So it's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a nineteen seventy one standard Beetle. Was that thirteen hundred ccs?
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: What was the ccs on it?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: I know that was a I think the sixteen hundreds
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: came out in nineteen sixty eight, so it was a
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: sixteen hundred Beetle and it's probably on its fourth engine
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: at this point.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: But still, I mean that car is basically almost free.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Do you think about your I mean, your grandpa paid
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: it off a long time ago. Yeah, and then and
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: now you just and then the parts are still so available.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah. You can literally build a Beetle from
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: the ground up out of a catalog if you have
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: kind of like a land Rover exactly.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I can now I can understand your affliction. So have
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: you done any fun trips in that car? Uh? No,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you thought about it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Not recently. I've actually been talking a little bit with
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: h andrews Abo who runs the Booted Pest to bomb
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: Co Rally, that big European rally, and he has a
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: has a class called the like Classic or you know,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: Spirit of the Event class, which is bring the wildest,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: you know, stupidest car you can possibly drive from Hungary
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: to West Africa, And thinking, Wow, wouldn't it be fun?
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't be fun to ship the Beatle over and run
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: that rally? That's so cool and something that's kind of
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: floating around the back of my mind.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: But I can see that.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: But mostly, you know, it's sort of a little a
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: little run around.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So you still use it on a regular basis.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right now it's kinda it's got a little
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: bit of an engine problem, so I don't I don't
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: drive it so much recently, but yeah.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It's plus winter in Montana is like not the kindest
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: in a Beatle. They didn't they never really had air conditioning.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, didn't they have like some kind of like
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a cyclonic cooler that would go into the wind indow
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: of the door or.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Something like that. Yeah, it actually you get them from
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: like the like from the nineteen sixties. Yeah, but yeah,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: I own two of the vehicles with the worst heaters
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: in the history of.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Lah Yeah. Yeah, when you're when you're driving the Defender
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and went, I mean even here in Prescott it gets
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: pretty cold. I mean we get down into the single
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: digits and sometimes negative. So yeah, when I'm driving the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: one ten, it's like by the time you're wherever you're getting,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: your feet are now defrosted. And that's the extent of it.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, because it takes so long for it to
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: warm up, it just takes a long time for them
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to warm up.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: You're scraping the inside of the windshield. Yes, it's a
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: part of the adventure.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is all part of the adventure. Yeah. Yeah,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: you're you're wearing uh, you know, thicker jackets inside the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: car than outside the car.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: It's grat Oh that's cool.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So you so you still have your first car. That's
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: an awesome story. That's one of the coolest car stories
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I've heard on the podcast. So it sounds like as
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: if you, you know, growing up in Wyoming, you had
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you were exposed a lot to the outdoors, But when
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: did you first get a sense like I want to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: see what's beyond. I want to I want to see
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: what's much further away, maybe even on another continent.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think one of the things, and I think,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: like you mentioned before, we'll get into talking about how
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: to tell good stories, how to uh to create good writing,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: how to convey your experiences and your ideas and in
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: a way that inspires other people. I joined uh sort
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: of an online group that was an offshoot of the
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: old commenting system on jelopnick, you know, jelopnik dot com
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: right back in the days when it had a really
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: vibrant contributor community through a platform called kinjab where you
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: could I.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Did a couple of articles through that at one point
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in time.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: So you could create sort of your own sort of
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: blog platform, and you could create your own sort of
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: community on that on that platform. And I think this
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: was probably in the sort of twenty thirteen twenty fourteen range.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: I had a cheap x Jay jerokee, and I was
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: just getting more and more interested in the in the
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: like overland travel aspect, the like traveling part of it,
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: gaining those new experiences, not necessarily the off road stuff,
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: which is super fun. I really enjoy it, but using
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: the vehicle as a vehicle for you know, having these
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: these experiences in different places. Yeah, mostly North America is
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: keeping my scope, you know, smaller, and having that small
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: community of people that we were writing short blogs and
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: we were sharing photographs and we're talking about our experiences
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: and there's a lot of interesting people on that on
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: that site. Him and Kelsey, You were right, they're off
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: on a new adventure now at their new sailboat. But
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: they kind of launched their sort of world as overlanders
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: on that on that website, and so we would share
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: all of these all these ideas and stories and it
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: was just super inspiring to see these people who are
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: planning different trips from around the world. We had a
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: couple of people on the blog who are from Australia
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: and from the UK and so like all over the
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: world who are having these amazing adventures.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: In twenty fifteen, my wife Julie, who sort of my
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: partner in adventure and always has been. We love travel.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: We are early days when we were dating in college,
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: our favorite thing to do is pile into the Beatle
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: and go for a ride around flat Head Lake in Montana,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: or you know, drive down to Idaho or whatever, just
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: to get on the road and just sit in the
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: car and just be together, listen to music and drive
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: really slowly across across Montana. And so we've always like,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: we've always loved travel. And she was an academic, as
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: was i. That was my previous career. And we went
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: to South Africa for a conference and a cape town
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: and there was also sort of a it's called like
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: a pre conference, like a satellite conference that was going
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: on in Botswana. So we went to Africa in twenty
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: fifteen and we thought, well, it's silly to fly ten
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: eleven thousand miles all the way to right southern Africa
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: and not do something interesting, sit in a conference room
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: for a week and then come home. Right, sure, So
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: we were looking at safaris, Well, it's going on safari.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: It's Africa, right, and right sort of they're so expensive, right,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: like a guided, fully catered safari experience. They're amazing if
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: you can do one, and we we were fortunate enough
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: to do one eventually, but because there, yeah, the the
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: expertise that comes along with that experience.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: The animal trackers and the.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Trackers and everything. Right, it's it's unlike anything. But you know,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: obviously we just couldn't afford couldn't afford that. So then
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: I was I was talking to the folks in my community,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: said well, why don't you just do a self drive?
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: What's a self drive? And so I started doing some
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: research and I was looking around and it's like, wow,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: we could we can do this for like eighty bucks
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: a day. We get a high lox with a tent
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: and a fridge and a couple of chairs and they
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: throw in a fork and you know, and you just
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: go right and you can rent it through Avis right
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: in southern Africa, right. And so, with a little bit
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: of trepidation, I sort of pitched this to Julie. I said, well,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: what do you think about this idea? You know, we like,
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: we loved to camp, we love to like travel around.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: And I said, well, what if we just rented one
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: of these self drive Toyota's. She was like, yeah, let's
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: do it. So we flew, we flew into Namibia, into
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: vin Hook and we rented a you know, rented this
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: truck and they had this old, yanky GPS unit on
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: the dash. Hopefully yeah, I think so, I think so,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: and you know whatever, they shook our hands and said
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: have fun. And when we left the you know, rental
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: counter and we booked the whole thing through a company
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: called Drive Botswana. Uh. The guy who runs that company
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: is called Andy Raggett, and he's still like a good
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: friend of mine and this company is still in in
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: in business. Uh. And they gave us an itinerary and
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: we just took off into the wild NBA right. And
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: then so that was kind of the moment to get
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: back to the original question. That was kind of the moment
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: where I was like, Wow, maybe this is something that
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: I want to do with my life right, just in
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: capital l life right.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: And and the fact that your partner enjoyed doing it, well, yeah,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: made it probably made it very additive.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe even more than me. Yeah, I think I
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: think if if if I if I went home tomorrow
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: and said, hey, we're going to move back to Botswana.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: We lived there for a couple of years, so we'll
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: talk about that, she would drop everything and just do it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: You know, we love it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that first night we were at.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: The now you can't you can work remotely?
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, right. The Namid Brand Nature Reserve was
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: our first camping night in Namibia, and we woke up
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the night and there's a giraffe
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: like eating the tree, you know, sure, and just that
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: moment it was it was over. It was over for me.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: It's totally transformation.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And then so we drove for two weeks, you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: across Namibia and Botswana, Central Calorie, Central Kalahari Game Reserve
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: and we ended up in own and yeah, and then.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: What a little outposts that place. I love.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: The town is great. That airport is one of my
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: favorite airports in the world because it's just full of
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: all these people from all over the place. But you know,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: the terminal is about as big as this root that's right, right,
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: and people have their bags, you know, piled up, and
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: you know, there's all these different people and everyone is
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: getting ready to go on an adventure, they're coming back
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: from an adventure, and the vibe in that airport is
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: is like nothing else.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of like the Everest
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Base Camp of Africa in many ways. Yeah. And it
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: used to be, I mean, Mound was even more of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: an outpost where you just basically had this one gas
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: station service center and it was all dirt roads to
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: get there. Now, of course, you can get there on
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a paved paved road. But you know, Buttswana is incredibly
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: safe and so is so is Namibia. So for those
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: that are thinking about traveling in Africa, those are two
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of the best possible countries that you could go into.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Rwanda is of a similar scope if you want to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: be in the jungle and you want to have the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: experience with the gorillas, but there's fewer overlanding experiences in
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Rwanda because it's so much smaller country.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm much more densely populated. But Newonda is pretty
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: good for that as well. That's true Central Africa.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. But certainly the the infrastructure of vin
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Took is excellent. The airport's great. Yeah, it's super super safe.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. And this is a I teach classes
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: on self drive Adventures in Africa at Overload Expo is
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: coming up in a couple of ye and it's that
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: is my main message in those in those classes is
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: that you know, if you have a little bit of experience,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: if you come armed to it with some knowledge about
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: how to operate a four wheel drive vehicle, sure, particularly
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: in like sandy desert conditions. If you know how to
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: travel in bear country, for example, po in North America.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: You can do a self drive you know, overland safari
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: experience in Southern Africa and really can you know as
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: all the animals that you have in East Africa, right,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: but you can see them on your own. It's because
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: we say, for example, of the national parks in Botswana
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: and then the game reserves have more of an American
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: national park sort of situation where you don't have to
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: have a guide, You book your campsites, you drive around,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: you do what you want to do, and the infrastructure
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: is fairly primitive. Yea, I got to be prepared for that.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: But it's also much less expensive.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's far less expensive.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: You can you can drop twelve hundred dollars in a
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: day in Tanzania. Yeah, and you don't have accommodations.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And you like you want to go to the
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Goro Goro Crater.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was nuts.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: It was super expensive, you know, and you can't even
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: you have to go with the guides, you have to
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: go with the drive. You have to it's all like
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: very very structured and very rigid.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: They have it now where you can self drive, which
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is what I did, and it was an additional two
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: hundred and seventy dollars for the vehicle and an additional
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty dollars for each person per person
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: top of her day being in the in the national park,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: so just to get into the crater, so it is
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: it's twelve hundred bucks for the day to go into
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and gore and Goro. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, it's insane.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: So whereas and the prices have gone up in Botswana,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: I think the landscape of self drive adventures in Southern
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Africa's is shifted a little bit, especially post COVID. The
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: camp sites are a little bit harder to book. It's
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: just a little bit more opaque in terms of like
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: how how it gets planned. Yeah, and when we lived
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: in Botswana, it was easy for me. I could go
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: to the Wildlife and Parks office in Haborone where we
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: lived in the capitol, and just I could walk into
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: the office and book the came sites.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Sure, and.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: But if you're planning the trip from overseas or from
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: a long ways away, it's a little bit more difficult.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: But I mean that's part of what I talk about
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: my class. It's like how to approach that process. Sure,
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: but you know, once you're on the ground in those countries. Yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: these are some of the most spectacular places in the world.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: And no question, you know, the travel experiences are incredible.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: You get all these different types of experiences. You get
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: the cultural aspects, you get the wildlife, you get the
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: you know, off road four by four driving part.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: It's just incredibly the sunsets, the food, all of it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember being camped in the Okavanga Delta
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and I just had this moment of like, this is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: as close as I can think of to the Garden
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of Eden, Like it just feels like you are in
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: this otherworldly, untouched and nearly perfect place. I mean, it'll
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: kill you in a hurry too, But I also like
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that part of it. I like the fact that you
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: move down the food chain a couple of notches.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes the it makes the whole experience. I
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: think in those early days when we were traveling Southern Africa,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: I think one of the things we were most excited
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: about seeing an elephant, right, and we were geared up
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: for this majestic, you know, magical experience. And mostly elephants
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: are terrifying.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: They're huge, they're huge, and they're also and they also
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: are majestic and they and but I find that.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: But it puts you in that content or that place.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: It really does. Yeah, I found a giraffe to be
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the most majestic.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's our favorite.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And I just didn't I didn't think that would be
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the case, but it is now for me, Like every
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: time I see one, it's like it never gets old.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: They're just the way they move and it's just yeah,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: it's just it's a journey of giraffes and it feels
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: like it's appropriate. Yeah, that's right to my life. So
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the collective now, yeah, well let's let's shift the topic
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a little bit and we'll come back to your time
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: in Ethio and driving the length of Africa. But I
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: think it would be good to talk a little bit
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: about your role as an associate editor and for those
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that are listening, you may have always wanted to contribute
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to Expedition Portal or Overland Journal. We do have a
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: podcast that we did a year or so ago between
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Ashley and Tina Overaker are editor in chief, and that
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I think was a good place to start as well.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But for this conversation, I'd like to focus a little
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: bit more on Expedition Portal because We do produce a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: lot of content on that site, dozens and dozens of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: articles a week, sometimes more, sometimes a little less. But
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: if someone wanted to contribute to Expedition Portal and start
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: to get some compensation and some experience around that, what
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: are what are some of the first ways that they
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: So I think this goes back a little bit to
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: how sort of I arrived in this industry, and they
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: thinking about the kinds of stories that inspired me to
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: get out and travel and take a flyer and go
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: to Africa and drive into the unknown. Sure came from
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: a lot of the folks that I shared travel stories
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: and ideas and information with on that on that blog,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: on the old Jelapnic site, like I was talking about,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: I think to preface this, I'll say that particularly for
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Exhibition Portal, which is still i mean, one of the
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: most important sort of sources for news in this industry
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: that exists, uh, And we have a kind of two
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: pronged approach to the to the site. We do a
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: lot of sort of breaking news, We do a lot
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: of gear review, and we do as much as we
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: can storytelling about travel and hoping to inspire folks right
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: to get out there and do this thing. The place
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: to start is if you're thinking about contributing, there's a
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: couple of ways to do this. One. We have a
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: submission form on the Overland Journal dot com website, so
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: and we have a link on Exhibition Portal exhibition portal
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: dot com. There's a link in the in the menu
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: at the top that says right for us, I think
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: is you know what it says, but that will bring
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: you to the Overland Journal website, which brings you to
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: a Google form that allows you to submit a pitch.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: And I think you know, when we post this podcast
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: episode up, if you can link back to Tina and
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Ashley's discussion from from from that episode will be good
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: just to have the baseline understanding of like how to
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: approach this. Ashley also wrote a really great article on
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Exhibition Portal a couple of years ago, I believe about
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: I think she called it the perfect pitch, like how
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: to submit a pitched Overland Journal or Exhibition Portal, and
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: that had contributions from I think Tina and then also
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Stephanie Brady, who's our our photo editor or later editor,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: and I think maybe you have even contributed to that
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: I might have, but it's a it's a really competive.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: So, uh so that's the place to start. And when
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: you were talking earlier about like how to make life
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: easy for editors like myself, we have really specific instructions
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: on that submission form. If you have an idea, it
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: doesn't really matter what it is. Maybe you want to
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: talk about a piece of gear that's like really interesting
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: to you and that you've used and has helped your travels.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe you want to talk about your travels themselves. Uh,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: and you've got a story to tell. Maybe you want
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: to discuss a news item, something that's you know, important
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: for travelers or for overlanders. Could be international, it could
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: be domestic. Maybe you have some expertise in photography and
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: you want to share some images. We have really detailed
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: information on that submission form about how to submit those
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: concepts or those ideas to the website and to the
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: editorial team. And so the best thing I can say
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: on that structural front is just follow the direction. Yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: you know, read like carefully read.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It's surprising how often we receive submissions that are incomplete,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And depending on the degree to which they're incomplete, we
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: may or may not still consider them, but it starts
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: off with it's just showing respect to the process. You know,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the editorial team is very busy and there's a reason
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: why they have the process can figure the way that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: it is, so it shows just like if you are
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: hiring someone for any other job. It shows initiative, It
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: shows attention to detail, It shows respect towards the current
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: system and processes, and so the more thorough that submission
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: is and the more it aligns with the requirements, the better.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And there's some really good information on how to do
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that in both that podcast with Tina and the article
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: from Ashley, and then in the form itself provides a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: lot of information. But I think from what I've seen
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: over the last twenty years or so is that if
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: you take the time to take great photos, which means
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: taking the photos at the right time during the day,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you can take great photographs with an iPhone fifteen. You
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: absolutely can, but it requires even more attention towards the
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: lighting and making sure that you have good composition and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that you're taking into consideration all the other core fundamentals
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of photography. But you don't need to have a ten
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars camera. Now if you want a cover shot.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: It's good to have a really great camera, really great lighting,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: really great subject. You got to have all that stuff
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: if it's going to get through. Stephanie's you know, very
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: discerning eye. So but submitting great photos, not submitting too many,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: not submitting too you having some variety of the imagery.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: No one wants to just see fifteen photos of the truck.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: People want to see photos of the locals. They want
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: to see photos of the food that you ate. They
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: want to see the truck stuck. They want to see
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: they want to see people, you know, smiling and not
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: looking at the camera. So we or you want to
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: see people looking at the camera and not smiling. So
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: we're not looking for the selfie. We're looking for like
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a visual form of storytelling that requires a degree of
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: discipline around the photography, and that's what sets us apart.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: So I think that that's really important. And the other
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: thing that I think is really important, It's part of
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: the reason why I wanted to have you on the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: podcast today, is that as Overlanding continues to grow, it's
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: important that people know that our standard is that the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: people that write for us are well traveled. There's a
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: lot of confusion in the marketplace at times where you
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: have individuals that are either not well traveled, or they're
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: traveled in a very small area geographic area, or they've
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: traveled extensively as a journalist, but never leading their own trips,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: never conducting their own adventures. We're really wary of that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: because it requires overlanding, requires a degree of experience that
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: just comes from making mistakes, and it comes from learning
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the hard way and getting you know, get struggling at
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the border and fixing your vehicle and everything else like that.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: So the further that someone is removed from those real
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: world experiences, we find the less discerning that they are
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: around their advice. They can tend to recommend too many
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: pieces of fear, they don't tend to focus on minimalism,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: or they tend to overdramaticize maybe what the experience. So
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: for us is really important that our editors are experienced
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: like yourself. And a quick announcement of our new Tires
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: for Overlanding educational series that is going to be brought
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to the Expedition Portal YouTube channel here in the next
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: week or so. This is a six part series that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: is going to be released over the months of May
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and June, and it features detailed insights on mud tires,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: all terrains, airing, down driving insand vehicle preparation, tread lightly
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and more. And we're grateful to Handcook Tire for helping
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to support this new series. So take a look at
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the Expedition Portal YouTube channel for more details.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: I think this is really important, I think for just
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: in general our approach, our sort of journalistic approach and
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: our editorial approach, both for the portal and for Expision
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Portal and for Overland Journal. Just to go back to
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: your your imagery, your photography point, the standard of photography
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: on Overland Journal is one of the highest in the industry.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: Just just to get that out there, Like if you're
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: thinking about submitting photos for for the journal, you know, uh,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: we really have a super high bar for that exhibition
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: portal because of the format, because of the vehicle for
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: which those images are displayed on the web. It's a
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: little different, right and get away with a little bit,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: yeah exactly, Uh, and that's fine. And we don't do
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of like photo essays, for example, on Expedition
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Portal just because it's not the best, you know, way
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: to convey that you know, the journal is this you know,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: high quality print magazine, and you know the way that
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: photos are rendered in that in that magazine are totally
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: different experience as a as a reader, right, and then
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: than than what you see online. And of course, particularly
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: in our field, the Internet is saturated with images of
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: trucks and people doing stuff with trucks, right, I mean,
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: you know Instagram, and you know everyone has a blog
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: or YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera. So you know,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: we realize that Exhibition Portal plays in that you know
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: field and so, and Exhibition Portal is a good opportunity
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: if you want to get into this idea of writing
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: about your experiences and writing about vehicles or writing about gear.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: If your goal is the journal, Expression Portal is a
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: great place to start because.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: You're interacting with a lot of the same team members
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: and you can get that feedback exactly and you can
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: make you can learn like, oh, well, this pitch was
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: rejected for these reasons. It's never personal, No, it's literal,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: it's it's and and here's the thing, I get my
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: stuff rejected too, So like there's times that I fall
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: short and I need the team to tell me where
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I need to improve.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: And that's why it's sort of like Exhbission Portal is
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: sort of a lower takes sort of context because yeah,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: we were a small team at this company, but uh,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: we're always so we're always looking for contributors. We're always
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: looking for content, like high quality content. We have no
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: prejudice against anybody, just in general. If you're gonna send us,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: you know, a high quality pitch, you know, we'll probably
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: publish it. Uh, and if it doesn't quite meet our standards,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: we will give you substantive, real feedback. We're not just
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: gonna reject you out of out of hand. And it
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: happens a lot in various different publications and all kinds
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: of industries. And I've written a lot in different lots
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: of different areas, particularly like in academia, where you just
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: get a no and that's it, right. Sometimes you don't.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: You don't get any kind of like constructive criticism. And yeah,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: we may come back and say like, well, this is
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: not up to our standards, the imagery or the writing
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: or the its bent like you were saying, you know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: we're not We don't deal with advertorial. We don't deal
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: with you know, and.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest difference is that we we
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: still don't do any advertorial We can't have presented by content,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: but it would never it would never include any any opinion.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Then we would never have any opinion associated with any advertorials.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: So and I think our advertisers and I think folks
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: in the overland off road travel industries like recognize and
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: respect us for that. And you know, I've had products,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: for example, that I've reviewed and the manufacturer has come
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: back after my critique of their product and made changes. Yeah,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: and so that's great for the consumer because then you
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: get a better you get a better product. And that's
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: the whole point of doing those kinds of articles, right,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: and doing that kind of writing is you know these
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: are you know, we're a gear focused industry. Whether we
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: like it or not.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: We don't we don't need to be, but unfortunate the truth.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Right, and that's okay, and you know it's okay to
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: have a a focus on gear, but uh, you know,
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: we try really hard to to make sure that we're
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: we're as sort of open to all the aspects of
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: of of gear that we can that we can be
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: because if we can help you know, manufacturers, for example,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: improve their products and that makes your life better as
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: a traveler, right if if that if that piece of
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: gear is on your rainar. So yeah, and like and
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: like you said, you know, if we come back with
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: a pitch and say we can't take this at this
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: time or we can't use this for these reasons, like
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: you said, it's not personal. It's literally not personal. We
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: just want to help you improve as a writer. We
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: want to give you the opportunity to are a photographer,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: to to to reach that to reach that standard. And yeah,
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: like I said, we love contributors, We love having different voices.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It's really important.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: It's super important. Like I said, we have a all staff,
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: we have a small number of writers that are regular contributors.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: When we get outside voices, outside perspectives, different ideas coming
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: into the to the website or in the magazine, that
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: improves our our reach and and our our content as well.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So absolutely, yeah. So if you're if you're someone that
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: has travel experience and someone that loves taking great photos
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and enjoys either writing a good story or sharing a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: very clear set of insights on a product, WED sure
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. And again you can go
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to that kind of write for us page on either
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Expedition Portal or over Lend Journal. So we look forward
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to seeing what comes out of that.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Don't be afraid. That's the other thing, right, just don't
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: don't don't worry about it too much. Read the instructions
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: as closely as possible, follow follow the map the roadmap
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: as closely as possible, and uh, you know will help
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: you along.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, absolutely, and it for us, there's
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: too much to cover. The industry has gotten so big, yeah,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that we can't have we can't have experience with all
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of the products, and that's where we really do rely
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: on those contributors to come in.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: We're coming up on overland expone. I think there's like
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: five hundred exhibitors this year, right.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: It's really difficult to even see them all over three days.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's just a snapshot of the industry, right,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: but it's indicative of where it's at for sure.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Well that was that was great feedback, Steve,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you for that. And let's go back to kind
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of where the next level of your travels go. How
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: did you end up moving to Ethiopia, which in my
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: mind was one of the most wild countries in Africa.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: So we actually we moved Aboutswana. So we lived in
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: Botswana for two years, and that came on the heels
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: of my wife's conference that I talked about. In twenty fifteen,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: she received a full Bright fellowship and at the University
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: of Botswana, so who was So we moved to how
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: own A and she taught in the in the library
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: science department there and uh, the I mean the story
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: of our big African adventure, it's it's sort of twofold one.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: We were fortunate enough to have a lot of time
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: and resources to travel around Southern Africa extensively. I think
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: we we traveled to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, I
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: think seven times. It's our favorite place on the planet.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: I have the coordinates, the longitude and latitude of Deception
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Valley written out on the on my dash and.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: The land rubber I thought, as it was a tattoo,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: considered that.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: It's just absolutely, you know, our favorite place in the planet.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: So Namibi A but it's one of course South Africa
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: and Mozambique. We traveled extensively in those countries. The tiny
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: little nation of Swati, beautiful, fascinating little place. And but
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: our big like African adventure was one of these again
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: sort of a random happenstance. Uh. We had a Mitsubishi
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Pagero that we were driving and we were living in Botswana,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: first off, which is a great truck actually I think underrated,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: totally truck. It was a this a two thousand and
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: one model, I believe.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Pagero's and Troopers and stuff that they were competitors
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: to land cruisers. So they were these companies were doing
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: their best to be competitive with the land cruiser and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of times they turned out great and they
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: were way cheaper.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: And I that's probably another story, but I managed to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: destroy that that that Pagero, And like you're saying, learning
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: right and learning learning from experience, that that particular vehicle
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: had a sort of heating and cooling system that ran
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: to the rear of the vehicle. Oh got it, sure,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: And so there was some cooling pipes you know, to
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: kind of go underneath the car to the back. And
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: we were off road in a remote place outside the
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: center call Harry Game Reserve, and it was getting dark
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: and I was driving too fast for the conditions because
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: we wanted to get to the campsite where I got
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: dark and we were behind schedule, and you get that
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: tunnel vision right, and I ran over a stump of
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: acacia tree or something and it ripped those coolant lines,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: like completely out, and like the car lost so much
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: coolant so quickly that I didn't even know it was
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: happening until the engine just shut itself off because he
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: reaches that that moment where the engine computer says, oh,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: I think it's time to We don't know, there's no
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: more cool who we needed and I couldn't get it
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: started again and what's going on? Finally we figured out
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: what had happened. But you know, our big, our big trip.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: We found this Landover Defender that I have here in Arizona.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: I drove it down from Montana on a Facebook group
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: and it was an American couple who had been driving
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: around Africa and they were getting ready to come back
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: to the United States and they needed to sell their
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: vehicle and they happened to be an oddis wow and Uh.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I was looking at the Facebook group and I was like, oh, wow,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: that's kind of cool defender. Huh for selling a nice
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: price good price, you know, wow, it's interesting. Kind of
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: filed it away and twenty minutes later my wife texted me.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: She's like, hey, did you see a defender from the
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Facebook group? I said yes, I did, yes, right, so
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: then so I messaged them and we came to a deal.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: And that's how we bought a thirty year old land
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: road from strangers on the internet in an amazing third
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: country that we'd never been to. So we got an airplane,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: flew one okay, got it.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: So you weren't living in Ethiopia bought the truck in Ethiopia.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, So we we got a one way ticket, were
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: from Gabs to out of Subuhabbah and we're like, well,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: hopefully these people will pick us up at the airport
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: and they're not going to run away with our money.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: And it was hilarious because they were also like are
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: these people going to show up? You know, you never know,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: but it was great.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: And how did you deal with the paperwork? Because it
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: would have probably come in under a carne maybe it
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: temporary import.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, So this truck had made two laps of Africa
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: at this point, or lap and a half, so it
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: originated in the UK and the British couple drove it
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: from London and Cape Town, kind of typical you know,
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: North South trip, and then they sold it to this
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: American couple and then they sold it to us. But
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: the entire time it was only ever under temporary import
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: permits wow. And it remained registered in the UK because
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: the UK has these very lax sort of registration processes.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: So the classic V five V five So if you've
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: got an address in the UK, whether you live there
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: or not, you can kind of register the car in
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: your name, right. So we contacted Sam Manicum and uh said, hey,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: can you help us out with this like registration process.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: He's like, oh, yeah, I got a buddy. So we
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: used his friend's address in Liverpool as like our address
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: in the UK, and so we just transferred the ownership.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: And so we were driving across Africa on UK registration
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: and a UK you know V five and we just
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: did t ips all the way on the way back.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: But it was tricky because when we got to Malawi,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: when we're doing our TP, the customs officer said, you know,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: this truck came through here a few months ago. You know,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: obviously it's on the computer system. Sure, And He's like,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: you're not the same owner as the people who drove
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: it in. He said, oh yeah, well you know we
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: we're borrowing it or why I don't I can't remember. Sure, well,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't know what kind of song and
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: dance I did, but you know they got it stamped through.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it was t Ip's the whole way through.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's interesting, and that's become more and more
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: feasible now. I think, you know, Dan Grek even was
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: able to pretty much go through the whole It was
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: a South Africa.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: It was a sweet spot during his time there, that
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: three years he was there, and then the two years
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: that we were traveling. It was a real sweet spot
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: for African travel because most of the borders were open,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: the levels of sort of political violence were low. There
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: wasn't any there were any big wars or you know,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: civil conflict, and the t Ip situation was like wide
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: open essentially. But it's I mean, you've you've been there
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: more recently than I have, but I feel like in
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: some ways it's closed a little bit. For Kenya is
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: more difficult now, Tanzania's more difficult. Ethiopia is extremely hard
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: on the West coast Nigeria is very difficult right now
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: to go across a land border, KINI fasso like it's
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: just and this is the typical of African travel. Those
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: those things go in cycles, right in terms of the
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: ease of travel. When we were there, it was we
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: had no issues.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, so yeah, the bureaucracy was complicated there,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: but but it ended up being okay. It just you
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: just got to do the research too to be able
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: to get through.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: And that's where those Facebook groups come into play, right,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: and with the WhatsApp groups and really you know, sort
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: of getting getting those contacts from people who are on
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: the ground.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: So so you you chose a Defender because it looked cool,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: sounds like, and you've heard about defenders, but it wasn't
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: like you always wanted a land Rover, Is that?
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean, you know, we we'd seen because it's
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: southern Africa. We're living Aboutswana there there everywhere, right, they
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: just look amazing. They just exude adventure and and you know,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I met some people who had them, and you know,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: I kind of knew the sort of typical stories about
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: you know, whatever, reliability and so and so forth. But
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I think something really appealed to me about this particular truck.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: But then you know, like two hundred TD or three
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: hundred t D land rovers, it's just the simplicity, right,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: thing has ten fuses, you know, the engine is completely mechanical, right,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: except for the alternator and the glow plugs, like the
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: fuel injection. Everything completely mechanical. You can get away with
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: a barely basic toolkit. There's some specialty tools that are
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: helpful to have, but those are easily acquired and otherwise.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: And mechanics are fairly familiar with them. Yes, that's the
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: other thing, right, and parts are somewhat available.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Yep, I think they're getting less so, you know, as
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: Toyota has sort of become the de facto sort of
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: four by four on the continent, but Lend rivers still
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: have a you know, a huge following and everywhere.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Depends on the cut. If it's an ex British protectorate
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: then it usually has pretty good interest.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and everywhere we went people loved it, right, And
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: the other thing was appealing to me about it is
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: it wasn't too fancy, right, So it's a it's a
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: rough looking truck, right kind of, and you know, but
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: but you know nowhere conditioning. No, there's no, very very
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: simple but also sort of low profile, right, you know.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: We had a roof tent and a fridge, a dual
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: battery system, a water you know pump system. That was it,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: you know in terms of our our build, right build,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: and that got us across you know, all of Africa
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: for you know, for an entire year.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: And was it because it was old enough that you
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: were able to ship at home.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in nineteen ninety two, so I were able
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: to just get it in, just get it in. Yeah,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: by the time we left in twenty nineteen.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: And that's a it's.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: A two hundred. I'd like your truck and uh yeah,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: And there's just something about that. There's you know, people
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: love them, right, and they're just it's there everywhere we went,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: no matter what country we were in, and we were
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: always people are always coming up to us or stopping
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: and sure, we love your truck.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: We love your truck.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: And also you just get that that opens channels for communication,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: opens channels for having those experiences and those like cultural moments. Yes, right,
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: you're not like enclosed in a you know whatever, a
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: big fancy two hundred series land cruise or whatever. You know,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: you're like in it right when you're driving a tractor.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: It's almost like riding the motorcycle.
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah you could.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: You could be wet inside the Defenders. You could be
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: hot inside the.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah we're hot a lot and wet.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Actually, it's pretty funny, pretty funny how it all works.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it always it always makes you smile. And
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I was surprised with how many of them were actively
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: traveling through Africa, of more so than even land cruisers.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: If you're in Southern Africa, you're definitely going to see
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of land cruisers. But I was surprised like
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the further you got away from South Africa, the more
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Defenders I actually saw traveling around the continent, which was
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: very cool. So one of the things that I like
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: to ask, and you know, I know that you're well read,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: So do you have some favorite books that you'd like
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: to share with the podcast listeners? Oh?
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: Sure, there's I mean, holy cow, there's a lot of books.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: I think maybe i'll just talk about what i'm reading
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: right now. So I know I'm reading biography of Rolled Aminsen.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: Oh well yeah, and I think it's uh, I think
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: it's just called Aminsen and.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: It's how's that really well written?
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: It's an excellent it's an excellent book.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: What a life that guy led.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, really fascinating, very modern person from the time that
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: he lived in, sort of fascinating care.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: In some of his mindset and his political beliefs and
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: scientific beliefs were very, very contrary to the times. Yeah.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: And I've been falling really closely right now the Trans
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Global Car Expedition. Yeah, you know, and they've they've completed
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: the you know, the the traverse of the North Pole,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: just a vehicle and they've just landed in Greenland. And
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: so I was like, oh, I need to I need
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: to read more about these polar explorers, and so Alminson
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: and then I read I read a book called about
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: the Belgica, which was the first sort of major sailing
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: expedition the Antarctica. Oh wow, and it's called, uh, it's
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: called the Madhouse at the End of the World, and
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: it's all about this overwintering of this Belgian expedition in
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: Antarctica in eighteen It was a eighteen ninety seven I
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: think it's unbelievable. Yeah, remarkable. Stop. So I'm reading a
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: lot of polar stuff right.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Now didn't and didn't Amanson, didn't he just like disappear,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: He like got in a plane to go do a rescue. Yeah,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that's right, and they like they never found him, right, Yeah,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: that's right. I love that. Yeah, Like I think he
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: kind of pulled that. I can't imagine that guy not
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: being intentional about even how he died, right, right.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: There's always there's also a lot of like mythology about it,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: like did he really die? Like is he up there?
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: You know? Was he living in a you know, in
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: an igloo, you know, above the eighty seventh parallel.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like any of that is totally possible. Yeh, yeah,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: it's totally possible.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's that's an excellent book. And then uh,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: I'm also I do uh there's one book I read
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: every single year, and that's Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey,
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: and I read it every spring. And if you don't
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: read books repeatedly, it's it's an interesting exercise to choose
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: one or two books or in your life that you
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: really love and like inspired you and sort of informed
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: your world views. And you know, I read this book
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: for the first time, you know, many years ago, and
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: I just started making it a tradition because in the
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: spring I live in Montana, and then spring my mind
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: turns to the desert, right, because it's a long, cold,
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: dark winter, and and you're ready, exactly, and so I
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: always break out Old red ed Abbey. And that book
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: is interesting because it has changed in my mind as
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: I have gotten older and as my worldview has changed.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: And you know, when you read a book repeatedly it
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: sounds maybe tedious, but particularly a well written book, every
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: time you come to it, you're a different person, right,
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: every time you read it, you're a different person, and
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: you don't see the same ideas the same way as
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: as you grow older and as you as you move
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: through time. And you know, there's a lot of stuff
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: about that book that really inspired me when I was
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: much younger, but now I find like I don't really
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: agree with at all anymore. Yeah, exactly. But on the
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: other hand, the writing is beautiful, right, and you know,
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I find myself, yeah, attracted these passages that I love,
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: like individual passages that I just like know in my mind.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: And is there is there a couple that come to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: mind that has stuck with you throughout the years?
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's I think. So the book is written as
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: like a essentially a the subtitles called a Season in
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: the Wilderness, and so it's a it's a series of
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: vignettes about one year living in what was then Arch's
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: National Monument is now Arch's National Park near Moab, and
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: he was a park ranger essentially, And I think it's
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: just the sort of arc of the book, this sort
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: of cyclical idea about coming into a place, being in
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: a place for a really long time, and getting to
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: know it intimately and then sort of going back to
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: your quote unquote regular life at the end of the
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: end of the story. And so you know, it has
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: these multiple levels of cyclical sort of understandings of the world,
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: and I just I really love that part of it.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: But I think his writing about the sort of natural
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: world is I think the best part of the book.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: And he's a good he's also a good sort of
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: he understands people in interesting ways, but his sort of
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: grasp of what it's like to be a snake. There's
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: a hole in the sort of second chapter of the book.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: There's a whole passage about these snakes that live under
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: his trailer and arches and how they become sort of
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: his friends, but not really because snakes aren't your friends, right,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: They're just snakes. And so this, uh, this tension between
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: having a relationship with a snake and what the snake
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: sees and does in the world and what you do
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: as a human in the world.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: You know, in terms of it's such a common, great
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: common human activity to kind of ant pomorphize, Yeah, something
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: like a snake. Yeah, you know, the snake's view of
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: you hasn't changed, but your view of the snake has
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: absolutely changed. Yeah.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh yeah, so so his like his his
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: writing about the desert as a as an ecosystem, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: it's just magnificent. It's among the best in the world. Uh.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: And so that those are the kinds of things that
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: stick with me from that book. But yeah, like it
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: changes from year to year. You know, it's it's a
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: it's like a familiar friend, but uh, you know, it's
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: a it's a different experience.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Are there read it? Are there other books that have
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: kind of taken that same role where you've read them
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: more than once that you that you really like.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Another one is it's called The Plague. It's a
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: novel by Albert Camu And this is a book that
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: I uh read I think the first time way back
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: in college, you know, freshman year of college or whatever,
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: and I read it again during the pandemic, and.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: It's it's appreciation.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super interesting because it is it's about essentially
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: the lockdown of a of a North African city are
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: on and in Algeria during during a plague, and all
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the human drama that goes along with that. And so,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: you know, I returned to that book during the during
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: the pandemic because yeah, it really resonated. Yeah, and you know,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Albert Camuy philosopher or whatever, but he's you know, really
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: adept at yeah, describing the human condition and so of
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: the choices that we make given the constraints of of
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: the world around us. Yeah. Yeah. And you know the
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: hero of the book, uh, you know, he's a doctor.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: He's just known as Riha, and he's treating all these
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: plague victims and sort of this in the face of hopelessness.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: Basically everybody's dying. It's you know, this, it's a it's
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: a completely hopeless situation. But he continues to do the
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: work right in the face of hopelessness. And that you
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: know that I think that resonates in a lot of
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Camu's philosophy. But this idea that what makes us human
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: is our you know, our continuing in you know, in
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: continuing embrace of humanity and of being human, like every
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: day choosing to you know, be in the world intentionally
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: and too, you know, to to act in ways that
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: are responsible and moral and and every day we have
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: we have to make those choices. And maybe it's not
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: as dramatic as you know, a city it's been shut
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: down because of the plague, but you know, these are
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: choices we make every day.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: But every every era has its own version of that.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: And if you look at AI and if you look
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: at virtual reality, and if you look at and I'm
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I don't have an opinion about any of those things.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I have my own my own views of them or
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: my own way that I interact with them. But you
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: can see that that we do have to be reminded
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: that it's the actual human activities. It's interacting with someone, right,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: calling a friend, sitting down and having coffee, Yeah, going
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: out into the world and seeing an elephant or a Yeah.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: That brings us back to the original conversation, right, is
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: why we traveled or the experiences. It's for yeah, meeting
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: those people's or yeah, making those decisions to do that
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: for sure.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: So if you were to sit down either with your
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: younger self when you first hopped in that beetle and
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you were looking at the initial road trips, or if
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: you were to give some advice to a young couple
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: that was getting ready to travel somewhere in the world,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: what would be your top you know, two three things
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: that you would give them as kind of feedback about
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: how to look at going forward.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I think I think one of the sort
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: of common answers to that question is, you know, just
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: do it, you know whatever, get behind the wheel and go.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: I kind of temper that a lot just by thinking about, Yeah,
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: my own experience is my own approach to travel. Sometimes
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: if you just get in and go, it's a recipe
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: for being miserable. It's great to have that sort of
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: inspiration and that motivation to hit the road. But it
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: pays to do some preparation. It pays to do some research.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: It pays to get a little bit of knowledge or
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: to build your skills, to talk to other people who
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: are doing it, and to you know, kind of frame
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: why you want to travel, right, and how you want
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: to do it, and to be intentional about it. Yeah,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: Like the adventure is great, Hop in the car, go
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: do it, but you know, if you whatever, forget the
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: tent and if you you know, yeah, if your tires
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: are like overinflated and you're stuck in the sand, you
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: know whatever. Right, with a little bit of information, a
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: little bit of you know, experience, maybe maybe hop on
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: expedition portal you you know, search or some articles about
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: you know, travel and how to prepare yourself skills that
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: are useful. Uh. You know, you don't have to be
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: rolled Amansen, you know, you don't. You know, you don't
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: have to to have that level of expertise. But if
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: you are a little bit more prepared, you're gonna have
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: a better time and you're gonna want to do it again, right,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Because sometimes I think folks, yeah, they whatever, they you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: spend thousands of dollars on gear, load down a car,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: hit the road, and then they don't have any fun
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: and then they never want to do it again, which
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: is the exact opposite. Uh. But yeah, if you yeah,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: if you have a little bit of information, a little
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: bit of knowledge in your head before you go. You're
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: gonna make mistakes, of course, I have, you have, we
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: all have just about I know. So if you're open
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: to learning right, And this is another I think a
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: great uh tip for for potential authors is be open
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: to learning. You know, you don't have to know everything right.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: Nobody does. And I think some of our best writing
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: comes from authors who recognize that, who are willing to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: approach the world in a way that says, I'm going
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: to learn about this rather than oh, I know everything right.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: To have that sort of to be humble in that sense, right,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that's I mean, that's for like a young
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: couple to hit the road. I mean, that's that's my
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: record station.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: That's a really interesting insight though, Steve, and it, you know,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: when you were talking about it made me think that
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: maybe this impetus by the people that have been on
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: the podcast to say just go it comes from a
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: place of a little bit of survivorship bias. So they
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: have learned all of those lessons, sure that they that
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: they gained along the way. So for them, the answer
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: is to just go because they've already learned all of
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: those things and they've made it to this point of
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: a degree of expertise and comfort with travel, even with
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: uncertainty and adventure and breakdowns and everything. It's like that.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: But you're right, maybe someone that's that's new to it,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: the advice of just go maybe does need to be tempered,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: or maybe it's just go on a really short trip,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: just go for the weekend, but make sure you can
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: come back and make changes. And I certainly wouldn't tell
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: somebody not to just go drive around the world. But
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: you're you're right. I think that there is a survivorship
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: bias that comes from having made all the mistakes and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: now feeling comfortable enough with the chaos and the uncertainty
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: to say let's go.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or even the love of the chaos, which is.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: You know, which I admit to, which I totally admit
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: to myself. Like when Brian Bass and I were stuck
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: at the border of Jabooty, he looks at me, He's like,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: you're actually having fun. I'm like, I'm having so much fun.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: So like I haven't died, so like this is all great, Yeah,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: this is all really great. So but but yeah, you're right.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: Take a short trip close to home and if you
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: forget the tent, you know, whatever, you go back home
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: and you try.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: It again, you're not the right or that the tent
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't work or you can't set it up, or you
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: get in an argument or whatever. You learn a lot
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: along the way.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, you know, And that's the other thing too, right,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: I think that was the other Maybe the second one
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: is sort of to be intentional about your like communication
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: and you're if you're going as a couple, if you're
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: going with your friend, your friends, or yeah, your partner, whomever,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: are you going to travel with more than one person
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: other than yourself, is to be super communicative about what's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: going to happen, what the goals of the travel are,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: what the intentions are, how are you how are we
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: going to deal with you know, different aspects of the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: of the journey. But to have be like super super
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: open about that communication and and really honest about it.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I've fallen into traps in the past, will fully
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: admit this. So it's sort of the well, how far
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: is it, you know, to the next thing, And I'm like, oh,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: it's not that, it's not that far, when actually it's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: all really long ways.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Or we don't know or we don't know. But to like,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the mileage, but you certainly have no idea
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: how long it's going to take you exactly.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: It's so to be like open and honest with yourself.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Also you're say like leading a trip or you know,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: de facto kind of like organizing you know, these journeys
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: with with your partner, with your your friends, to be
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: open with them and honest with them, but also honest
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: with yourself in order to be okay, well, actually I
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: don't know what's happening right now, and it's important that
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: we all are on the same page with that stuff.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: So that's the other good that's such good advice. And
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: then put the phone down. You know, you can go
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: on to Instagram and do all the cool posts when
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: you get back exactly when you're on the trip, you know,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: be there with the people, with the people that you're
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: with and have those experiences together, you know, the engage
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: with a little bit of humanity. Yeah, right, So you know, Steve,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: I'm just so grateful for you to be a member
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: of the team. You've been such an incredible addition to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the organization. You're writing. Bran is a really unique voice
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: and a really really a level of quality that that
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: we really wanted to have on Expedition Portal and in
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Overland journal. I think you've just been You've been such
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: a support to Tina and myself and you know, it's
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: been great to get to know you as a friend
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: and also you know, look for the look forward to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the opportunity and we finally get to go on a
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: trip together. So but I really appreciate you being on
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the podcast now, how.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: Do you I appreciate that, Thank you very much.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome. How do people find out more about you?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: How do they follow you on Instagram or Yeah?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: Sure, So obviously the main sort of point of contact is,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: you know, hop on Exhission Portal. I'm on there every
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: day and so I got my contact information on there,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: and I'm not like a super intense social media user.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: I kind of you pump the brakes on that.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have, I have good But I am on
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: Instagram and I do check out because it's part of
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: the job, you know, and uh, you know, you know,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: sort of keeping our presence as an organization, you know,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: going on those platforms is important and it's important for
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: lots of people. So I am on Instagram. You can
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: contact me through there too, as well it's at adventure
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: some overland so v E n t U are s
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: ome overland and.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Does that have some of your trip?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, we posted pretty regularly when we were
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: in Africa. That was our most intense period of posting
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: for both me and my wife on that account back.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: But that was in you know, twenty seventeen through twenty nineteen,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty, and so like I post less frequently now,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: but but I am on there. And there's some like
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: really really good photography that I'm not a photographer, but
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: my wife Julie is and she's really good. And there's
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: some some really incredible photographer areeah. But yeah, and then yeah,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: and like I mentioned this before, I think a little bit,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: but I'll emphasize it again. Don't you reach out, say hi,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: throw main idea if you want to write, you know
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: for the website. If you've gotten a particular pitch, maybe
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: it's not well formed in your mind, I can help
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: you structure that and you know, get it through the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: formal channels for for pitches. And like I said, we
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: want voices. We want all different kinds of people writing
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: about all different kinds of things, and and the more
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: and more diversity we have on that front, the better.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, well, thank you, Steve.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: This is really fun.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks, I appreciate it. Steve, thanks so much, and we
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to you
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: next time.