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Four Wheeled Nomad on the Pros and Cons of Four Wheels Versus Two · The Overland Journal Podcast

0:04
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your host,
0:07
Speaker 1: Asha Drnano, and today we're going live from the Isle
0:10
Speaker 1: of Sky in beautiful Stolid. Today I'm joined by Lisa
0:13
Speaker 1: Morris and Jason Stafford, a four wheel nomad, and we're
0:16
Speaker 1: going to talk all about their experiences going from two
0:19
Speaker 1: wheels to four and back again. I hope you enjoy
0:22
Speaker 1: this episode of the Overland Journal podcast.
0:26
Speaker 2: And a special thanks to on X off Road for
0:29
Speaker 2: helping to support this week's podcast. Going further on your
0:33
Speaker 2: adventures is about having the right tools. The on X
0:37
Speaker 2: off Road apps Intuitive maps make it easy to find
0:40
Speaker 2: trails and disperse camping, and their offline maps give you
0:44
Speaker 2: full GPS navigation capability without cell coverage. I'm also really
0:49
Speaker 2: excited about their new route builder for planning and sharing
0:53
Speaker 2: custom trips. It's got a snap to trail tool where
0:57
Speaker 2: you can just drop points where you want to go
0:59
Speaker 2: and route automatically connects to the closest road or trail.
1:04
Speaker 2: You could build, save and ad routes to folders and
1:07
Speaker 2: share your entire trip with your buddies. You can find
1:10
Speaker 2: out more information on on xmaps dot com. You can
1:13
Speaker 2: also find their apps in the Apple Store or whatever
1:17
Speaker 2: other device that you use. Thanks again on X.
1:21
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm
1:24
Speaker 1: your host today, Ashley Jordano. We're doing this podcast in
1:27
Speaker 1: the field today and I have two special guests with me,
1:31
Speaker 1: Lisa Morris and Jason Stafford, and they are four wheel
1:34
Speaker 1: nomad on the interwebs. Yes, and I'm very excited to
1:40
Speaker 1: have them here today. They are a couple from the
1:42
Speaker 1: UK that's traveled all over the world and really cool
1:47
Speaker 1: because you guys started as adventure motorcyclists and now you
1:50
Speaker 1: have four wheels.
1:51
Speaker 3: That's right.
1:53
Speaker 1: So yeah, welcome, Thanks, thank you very much, thanks for
1:55
Speaker 1: having yeah, thank you. Yeah mee. We'll start out with
1:59
Speaker 1: just telling the OJ podcast listeners a little more about
2:03
Speaker 1: yourself and your background.
2:05
Speaker 3: Lisa and I met on a scuba diving holiday many
2:09
Speaker 3: years ago, back in two thousand. We are passion for
2:13
Speaker 3: diving sort of occupied our time for a good ten years,
2:17
Speaker 3: and that's where we got our passion for travel from
2:21
Speaker 3: because we traveled to many places scuba diving and we
2:24
Speaker 3: had a great time. And then after about ten years
2:27
Speaker 3: we sort of hung the fins up, but we needed
2:29
Speaker 3: something else to sort of focus our minds on and
2:33
Speaker 3: we still had that hunger for travel. So having watched
2:36
Speaker 3: Charlie Boorman and you McGregor do their trip, you know
2:40
Speaker 3: on the long way round and the long way up?
2:42
Speaker 3: Was it long way down? No long way down? We
2:45
Speaker 3: decided that oh, they inspired us to you know, think
2:49
Speaker 3: about travel again or on motorbikes. Me personally, I thought
2:53
Speaker 3: logistically it would have been a nightmare to try and
2:55
Speaker 3: own a bike and then travel with it all over
2:58
Speaker 3: the world, all these different countries. But they showed us
3:02
Speaker 3: that actually it was possible. So this idea was formed
3:06
Speaker 3: and we were going to go and do the Americas
3:08
Speaker 3: on a motorcycle, but Lisa couldn't ride a motorcycle at
3:12
Speaker 3: the time, so she had to learn to ride just
3:15
Speaker 3: before and then from there we sort of decided we'd
3:20
Speaker 3: do Africa, but with the experience that we'd had through
3:23
Speaker 3: the Americas, we decided that maybe four wheel drive would
3:26
Speaker 3: be the best way to attack a country, a little
3:30
Speaker 3: wile continent like Africa.
3:31
Speaker 1: So there's a fun story about how you learned to ride, Lisa.
3:36
Speaker 4: There is, okay, So I was more than happy being
3:40
Speaker 4: Jason's pillion, eating sandwiches occasionally falling asleep, which wouldn't advocate you,
3:45
Speaker 4: pointing stuff out to him, and generally having a really
3:47
Speaker 4: nice time on the back. It actually never dawned on
3:49
Speaker 4: me once. It didn't hit my radar that I could
3:51
Speaker 4: ride my own bike. I was just content. And one
3:54
Speaker 4: day we attended a bike event at the NEC in
3:57
Speaker 4: Birmingham and I ended a few competition and I never
4:00
Speaker 4: won anything. So when I won a runner up prize
4:03
Speaker 4: to experience some sample sessions on a fifty cc automatic, I.
4:08
Speaker 1: Thought, hey, brilliant, I've won a prize. I'm going to
4:10
Speaker 1: do this.
4:11
Speaker 4: Jason even had quite great reservations at this point for
4:14
Speaker 4: me just to redeem my free sample lessons taste of sessions.
4:17
Speaker 4: So off I went just for two hours and had
4:20
Speaker 4: an absolute blast on this fifty cc automatic.
4:24
Speaker 1: It just looked like a toy.
4:25
Speaker 4: Bike, if I'm honest, I didn't even know really where
4:27
Speaker 4: the engine was, it was so small and brilliant. So
4:30
Speaker 4: I had a blast and said to Jason, well, you
4:33
Speaker 4: know this is easy. What's all the fuss about riding
4:35
Speaker 4: a Bike's easy on a.
4:37
Speaker 1: Fifty cc automatic.
4:39
Speaker 4: So then I signed up for the full bike course,
4:41
Speaker 4: miraculously passed my test first time and went from a
4:45
Speaker 4: one two five to a six fifty. And Jason meanwhile
4:50
Speaker 4: had more reservations growing just because new rider had no
4:54
Speaker 4: clue what I was doing. But passing your test on
4:57
Speaker 4: a one two five doesn't necessarily qualify you for you know,
5:00
Speaker 4: a big trip from the southernmost super Argentina to the
5:03
Speaker 4: top of Alaska. A long story short, I went again
5:06
Speaker 4: station's advice and bought myself a bike on eBay, a
5:11
Speaker 4: VMW six fifty gs Pearl because she was beautiful blue,
5:16
Speaker 4: slightly older lady needed a bit of nursemading, and well
5:20
Speaker 4: the color of this bike matched my helmet, which was
5:23
Speaker 4: just the qualifying criteria for me to buy this bike.
5:27
Speaker 1: And Jayson spent three days and very.
5:29
Speaker 4: Three you know, three very long nights taking this bike
5:31
Speaker 4: from very ugly duckling to beautiful Swan and this bike
5:35
Speaker 4: got me from the bottom of the planet to the top.
5:37
Speaker 4: And of course as soon as I then, yeah, we
5:40
Speaker 4: adventurized this bike and got it, you know, bike ready
5:43
Speaker 4: for the Americas. Jayson suddenly it suddenly dawned on him
5:46
Speaker 4: that these reservations flew out the window, and he thought, right, okay,
5:50
Speaker 4: we can obviously use your bike, Lisa as the pack mule,
5:53
Speaker 4: and I can take way more tech. I can take
5:55
Speaker 4: all my cameras a drone, all the lenses, way more
5:58
Speaker 4: than he anticipated to take.
6:00
Speaker 1: Of course my bike.
6:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, she performed a charm on the whole more or less,
6:05
Speaker 4: and yeah got us. We would then side by side,
6:08
Speaker 4: And honestly, riding beside your partner on your own bike
6:12
Speaker 4: is you know, the most empowering thing I've ever done
6:14
Speaker 4: to date.
6:15
Speaker 1: Wow? Truly, it really is. Wow.
6:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, to ride my own to explain
6:20
Speaker 4: why we both ride, just how I'm lighting up just
6:24
Speaker 4: just just thinking back to, you know, the four and
6:26
Speaker 4: a half years that we spend astride those two bikes.
6:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, why do you ride? Oh, it's the best fun
6:33
Speaker 1: you can have with your clothes on.
6:37
Speaker 4: It really is the most fun that you can I
6:39
Speaker 4: just feel so well connected, I guess, to the environment,
6:44
Speaker 4: my surroundings, and the activity that really defines the day
6:49
Speaker 4: the trip. It's not just yeah jump jumping in a
6:52
Speaker 4: car where you feel like you're perhaps less well. For me,
6:56
Speaker 4: I feel a lot less connected when I am in
6:58
Speaker 4: a car. Now that I've done both, I can definitely
7:01
Speaker 4: I feel that, Yeah, I can opine on both of those.
7:04
Speaker 1: When I'm actually ride a bike, I'm outside.
7:07
Speaker 4: Constantly, permanently appreciating everything that's going on around me. And
7:12
Speaker 4: I feel like I can do that better on a
7:13
Speaker 4: bike than I can inside.
7:16
Speaker 1: Are inside White Rhino, our Chuck car high looks with
7:18
Speaker 1: your windows rolled up and your acy on and your
7:22
Speaker 1: music on ye coffee court.
7:25
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, all of that. Yeah, not disputing any of
7:29
Speaker 4: that at all is good. So why do I ride?
7:33
Speaker 4: I just love it. I just love it.
7:35
Speaker 3: That's a cool question.
7:36
Speaker 1: Because you started when did you start writing?
7:38
Speaker 3: I was seventeen when I passed my test, and I
7:41
Speaker 3: been riding for years before this trip started, and it
7:45
Speaker 3: was on sports bikes, and I enjoyed the speed and
7:49
Speaker 3: you know, the way the bike moved into corners, and
7:53
Speaker 3: the whole biking scene and the camaraderie, and you know,
7:57
Speaker 3: I had friends that rode bikes. But then for a
8:00
Speaker 3: while it was for me it was I wasn't going anywhere.
8:03
Speaker 3: The activity wasn't enough, so to just ride the bike
8:07
Speaker 3: wasn't enough. I wanted another element to that, so I
8:10
Speaker 3: sort of got out of bike in for quite a
8:12
Speaker 3: few years. And then, like I said previous, with watching
8:16
Speaker 3: you McGregor and Charlie Boorman ride their bikes, and I
8:20
Speaker 3: had this love for travel, so I thought I could
8:22
Speaker 3: connect the two together. I could, I could travel on
8:24
Speaker 3: a motorcycle. So then my I rekindled my love for
8:28
Speaker 3: bikes through my travel.
8:31
Speaker 1: So very cool. They've inspired a lot of people. Yeah,
8:35
Speaker 1: they really have.
8:36
Speaker 4: I think they really did pave the way, didn't they
8:38
Speaker 4: think they just opened up loads of people's eyes and
8:40
Speaker 4: almost to the people responsible for creating this adventure motorcycling arena,
8:46
Speaker 4: you know that some of us now find ourselves in.
8:48
Speaker 1: I just think they're brilliant. You know, they did a
8:50
Speaker 1: really good job. We literally have I think it was
8:53
Speaker 1: Long Way Around on a DVD in our storage back
8:56
Speaker 1: in Canada, and it was one of the first, I
8:59
Speaker 1: guess shows that we ever watched. And we had no
9:02
Speaker 1: intention on overland travel. We had no intention on driving
9:07
Speaker 1: anywhere right around the world or to South America or whatever.
9:12
Speaker 1: We had no intention of getting bikes. But yet this
9:14
Speaker 1: story and the relationship and the way that they documented
9:19
Speaker 1: it was, it seems like it it's so far reaching.
9:22
Speaker 3: So it's really yeah, and I think I think they
9:24
Speaker 3: also showed that, you know, the world's not a scary
9:26
Speaker 3: place like we all imagine, you know. I think we
9:29
Speaker 3: all watched too many news shows, you know, and we
9:32
Speaker 3: get this probably an unfair idea of what the world
9:36
Speaker 3: is like. And we just found that whilst traveling on
9:40
Speaker 3: bikes that everybody was warm and welcoming and you know,
9:45
Speaker 3: and it certainly opened up our eyes to you know,
9:48
Speaker 3: in this whole.
9:49
Speaker 4: World of people that had already gone and done it
9:51
Speaker 4: well long before you and Charlie as well. It's just
9:54
Speaker 4: because they have such a huge platform to showcase their trip,
9:57
Speaker 4: then the whole world, you know, had access to looking
10:01
Speaker 4: and discovering what they had done.
10:03
Speaker 1: You know people.
10:03
Speaker 4: I asked him, Vince, he'd been doing that, you know,
10:06
Speaker 4: decades before and having a blast. It's just we didn't
10:08
Speaker 4: know about that until we discovered che chawin you and
10:11
Speaker 4: then then you know, you kind of enter this world
10:13
Speaker 4: and you're suddenly exposed to all these amazing people and
10:17
Speaker 4: riding on bikes for us through the Americas. It kind
10:20
Speaker 4: of magnetizes people to you and you've got this vulnerability,
10:24
Speaker 4: haven't You've got this? It just I think attracts people
10:28
Speaker 4: to just to come up and say hello, you've got
10:30
Speaker 4: you're outside, you're on your bike. You know, you're very
10:33
Speaker 4: approachable when you're you're just right there. And for us, yeah,
10:38
Speaker 4: the people that we met, the spirited people we met
10:40
Speaker 4: on that trip. In the Americas, it's just not quite
10:43
Speaker 4: the same. We don't seem to draw that same incentive
10:46
Speaker 4: for people to come up to you when you're locked
10:49
Speaker 4: in your Yeah, your cage on wheels is not quite
10:52
Speaker 4: the same.
10:52
Speaker 1: It's just different.
10:53
Speaker 4: And you know, we just found that was one of
10:56
Speaker 4: the biggest draws for me, the biggest incentives to keep
10:59
Speaker 4: riding and keep riding was just the other people that
11:02
Speaker 4: we met along the way. It is everything. It was
11:04
Speaker 4: totally part of the essence of why I rode my bike.
11:08
Speaker 3: I think, sort of adding to what Lisa was saying about,
11:12
Speaker 3: you know, this approachability, I think I get the impression
11:16
Speaker 3: that you know, people see you as not only as
11:19
Speaker 3: a bit of a normalty, because you know, it's not
11:21
Speaker 3: every you know, you don't see many people traveling around
11:24
Speaker 3: the world on motorcycles compared to like people liking cars
11:28
Speaker 3: that you know, you'd see vans. You'd see you've got
11:31
Speaker 3: cars and vans, and everybody's used to that. But particularly
11:33
Speaker 3: if you had a foreign number plate and you're on
11:35
Speaker 3: a motorcycle, people like gravitate. They're curious, they want to
11:39
Speaker 3: come up and they want to talk to you. So
11:41
Speaker 3: we found that being on motorcycles, we had that interaction
11:46
Speaker 3: more with local people because we I don't know, maybe
11:49
Speaker 3: that with vulnerability that these guys are on motorcycles and
11:53
Speaker 3: you know, and a lot of people I think in
11:55
Speaker 3: particularly developing countries, they're curious, is why somebody would possibly
12:01
Speaker 3: want to travel on a motorcycle when there's a perfectly
12:03
Speaker 3: good car, you know, that you could travel in. Why
12:06
Speaker 3: would you ever want to travel on the motorcyfice? So
12:08
Speaker 3: I think this is an element of that as well.
12:11
Speaker 4: And as well to have the whole world, all your
12:14
Speaker 4: essential belongings, you know, stuff inside two paniards and a
12:17
Speaker 4: rollerbag really made me learn the whole idea behind light
12:22
Speaker 4: and tight packing. You know, to have your whole world
12:24
Speaker 4: on your bike, you know, to be able to do
12:26
Speaker 4: that and all that other stuff that you've got back
12:28
Speaker 4: home in a few boxes in storage, you won't think
12:31
Speaker 4: about once. You didn't miss that at all. So that
12:34
Speaker 4: is so liberating, you know, to just go everything I need.
12:37
Speaker 4: It's just behind me.
12:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, my back and expert at minimalism. We should be
12:42
Speaker 1: sure I've still got room for development everyone.
12:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think it makes you realize what you
12:51
Speaker 3: truly need and when you when you're forced to scale
12:55
Speaker 3: down to, you know, something very small, you realize, actually,
12:58
Speaker 3: you don't really need a lot.
13:00
Speaker 1: So tell me about moving into the vehicle. Because you
13:04
Speaker 1: went from well, I guess four wheels, but separately to
13:07
Speaker 1: four wheels yeah together, yeah, yeah, yeah, So you went
13:12
Speaker 1: away from the bikes and you went to your That
13:15
Speaker 1: was a big travel light.
13:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one thing I found with traveling with bikes.
13:21
Speaker 3: So you do get that feeling that you're more connected
13:24
Speaker 3: to your environment. You're outside, you get you're getting the
13:28
Speaker 3: smell as you're getting the wind in your face. You know,
13:30
Speaker 3: you getting the difference in temperature. You do feel a
13:33
Speaker 3: lot more and we felt a lot more connected than
13:35
Speaker 3: being inside a car. Somebody once said to me that
13:40
Speaker 3: they equated traveling a bike to a car as a
13:44
Speaker 3: bit like in a car you're watching the movie. When
13:48
Speaker 3: you're on a bike, you're actually in the movie. So
13:51
Speaker 3: in some ways I can I can relate to that.
13:53
Speaker 3: The decision to move from bikes to a car was
13:58
Speaker 3: when we were traveling to these and in places, we
14:01
Speaker 3: realized that the limitations are traveling our bike, you can't
14:04
Speaker 3: carry enough food and you can't carry enough water. So
14:06
Speaker 3: you'd go out into the desert and you go to
14:08
Speaker 3: these amazing places. But then you knew that you had
14:11
Speaker 3: to be close to civilization because hey, you know, we
14:14
Speaker 3: can only carry six liters of water each, right, So
14:17
Speaker 3: we'd go to these places and go, really, we really
14:19
Speaker 3: want to stay a bit longer, but we can't because
14:22
Speaker 3: we physically can't, because we need water and we need food.
14:25
Speaker 3: So the idea to move to a truck was to
14:27
Speaker 3: be a lot more self sufficient, so we could carry
14:29
Speaker 3: water for a week or maybe ten days. We could
14:32
Speaker 3: carry food for a week ten days, so we could
14:34
Speaker 3: stay out in these environments a lot longer.
14:37
Speaker 4: Be selffehouldn't be off grid, have that the fridge, have
14:41
Speaker 4: some solar and on board shower, and all the other
14:46
Speaker 4: comforts and amenities that you can now Wi Fi and
14:49
Speaker 4: all the rest of it on our truck. Yeah, we've
14:52
Speaker 4: kind of wanted to embrace all that and you know,
14:54
Speaker 4: and experience being off grid for a lot, lot longer,
14:58
Speaker 4: for substantial periods and you can just really sink into
15:02
Speaker 4: a place.
15:03
Speaker 3: So your vehicle is a it is a toyo to
15:06
Speaker 3: high looks twenty.
15:07
Speaker 1: Fifteen two point five litre diesel turbo. Yes, it has
15:12
Speaker 1: a it's a white one. Wait right now. Yes, it
15:17
Speaker 1: has a canopy on the back. Yes, and the rooftop
15:21
Speaker 1: tent yes. And what are some other things you added
15:23
Speaker 1: to it so that you could So we have.
15:25
Speaker 3: A draw system by a company called gear Mate. They're
15:29
Speaker 3: a company in the UK. They make draw systems for
15:32
Speaker 3: the police force and the army. The draw systems are
15:36
Speaker 3: quite robust, made of metal. And on top of that,
15:38
Speaker 3: we've got a demetic fridge. Behind that, we have a
15:43
Speaker 3: forty six liter front Runner water tank along with a
15:47
Speaker 3: twenty liter life saving jerry can which comes with its
15:51
Speaker 3: own water filter built in. We also have on the
15:55
Speaker 3: we have a roof rack, which is again a front
15:57
Speaker 3: Runner roof rack. On top of that we have our
15:59
Speaker 3: Max tracks. We have a box where I've fitted a
16:03
Speaker 3: cheap Chinese diesel heater which on cold days we can
16:07
Speaker 3: put hot, hot air into the tent.
16:09
Speaker 1: Oh that's a game changer, right, yeah.
16:12
Speaker 3: Particularly when we went on to the Arctic, you know,
16:15
Speaker 3: like minus twenty celsius and then inside the tent plus
16:18
Speaker 3: twenty celsius. For us, it was the difference between having
16:23
Speaker 3: a miserable time and having quite a comfortable, nice time
16:26
Speaker 3: being in a tent with no insulation whatsoever, and then
16:29
Speaker 3: which is a.
16:30
Speaker 4: Nice camper Okay skycamp for birth tent with memory foam
16:33
Speaker 4: mattress and a bit.
16:35
Speaker 1: Of floor power and doing lights.
16:38
Speaker 4: It's really comfortable in there because it's an accommodate four people,
16:43
Speaker 4: you know, it's so spacious for two of us to
16:45
Speaker 4: spread around, not be on top of each other and
16:48
Speaker 4: just yeah, have.
16:49
Speaker 1: A spacious environment up there to live, sleep, work.
16:54
Speaker 3: And then we have a shower unit by a company
16:57
Speaker 3: called Jolka, and that's great because as long as we've
17:02
Speaker 3: got a water source close by to the truck, we
17:04
Speaker 3: can shower, which again was an issue we found sometimes
17:10
Speaker 3: when we were out in the middle of nowhere that
17:12
Speaker 3: we have to then go back to civilization to get
17:14
Speaker 3: the shower. Now we can stay out for longer periods
17:18
Speaker 3: as long as we've got some kind of water source
17:20
Speaker 3: of river, stream, lake, something like that. So that was
17:22
Speaker 3: a great addition that we've just added to the truck.
17:25
Speaker 3: We have the shower cubicle as well, which again we
17:28
Speaker 3: need for the shower, which also acts as a privacy
17:31
Speaker 3: tent should we need to go to the toilet and
17:33
Speaker 3: these people around.
17:34
Speaker 4: That's a direct for by four, a UK company that's
17:39
Speaker 4: given us the tent.
17:41
Speaker 3: Then there's a guzzle h Yeah. So water filtration again,
17:46
Speaker 3: if we are close by to a water source and
17:50
Speaker 3: we can now pump the water directly from a river
17:53
Speaker 3: or stream directly into the water tank. Whereas before we'd
17:56
Speaker 3: have to carry the water in the life saving jerrycan
18:00
Speaker 3: then filter it through that and transport it into our
18:03
Speaker 3: main water tank. Now we don't have to do that.
18:04
Speaker 3: We can pump it straight into the water tank, which
18:08
Speaker 3: is a lot quicker.
18:09
Speaker 4: The canopy is RSI Smart Canopy, a South African company,
18:13
Speaker 4: and they've and they've given that this is a kind
18:15
Speaker 4: of whole installed plug and play with two gul wings,
18:19
Speaker 4: and one of the gull wings is like a plug
18:21
Speaker 4: and play installed kitchen. There's a hole fully equipped kitchen
18:25
Speaker 4: that comes in one of those. I think you thought
18:27
Speaker 4: initially we wouldn't use that, and we've used that.
18:29
Speaker 1: We use that daily. Looks very well organized.
18:32
Speaker 4: Some place to completely store all those you know, all
18:36
Speaker 4: your pots and pans, all your utensils and things like that.
18:40
Speaker 1: But one section is almost like a foam cutout. Yeah,
18:45
Speaker 1: portion really interesting where the glasses have their own little
18:50
Speaker 1: cutout and the plates and the pods and it's pretty genius.
18:54
Speaker 1: G and T glasses very important. All the essentials now
18:58
Speaker 1: on board.
18:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great because then they're not going to rattle around.
19:03
Speaker 3: It's a great system. We have also the wheels. We've
19:08
Speaker 3: upgraded the wheels from the original wheels, which meant that
19:12
Speaker 3: we could actually have larger tires on the vehicle, which
19:16
Speaker 3: also helps with being off road. Larger circumference tires make
19:21
Speaker 3: you know, those pumpy roads a little less bumpy. We
19:24
Speaker 3: have we have good Ridge tires. And then we have
19:26
Speaker 3: a winch on the front by a company called good Winch.
19:30
Speaker 1: Just good Winch, isn't it.
19:31
Speaker 3: It is good. It's a very good winch.
19:33
Speaker 4: We've used it way more to help with the people
19:36
Speaker 4: who get stuck in perhaps like the black sand in Iceland.
19:40
Speaker 4: We've rescued a ton of people in their higher cars
19:42
Speaker 4: than we've actually ever needed it for ourselves.
19:44
Speaker 1: We've never needed it, really touch would, but it's nice
19:47
Speaker 1: to pay it forward.
19:48
Speaker 4: Though, isn't it have things like that? Yeah, you can
19:51
Speaker 4: just get many family out of a scrape for sure.
19:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this build when you I don't want to
19:57
Speaker 1: say finished it, I'm assuming you know there's always a process.
20:00
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyways, you have this four whel drive vehicle. Now,
20:03
Speaker 1: how does that change how you go forward and where
20:06
Speaker 1: you go with it and which trips you planned?
20:09
Speaker 3: Well, for example, Iceland, we went in the fall, which
20:14
Speaker 3: on a motorcycle would probably be quite challenging because of
20:18
Speaker 3: course the snows are starting to arrive, particularly in the interior,
20:22
Speaker 3: you're further away from civilization. As I said earlier, we
20:25
Speaker 3: can then stay out for a lot longer, which means
20:28
Speaker 3: that we can actually explore further into places like the
20:32
Speaker 3: interior of Iceland, Whereas on a bike, particularly at that
20:36
Speaker 3: time of year, it would be pretty challenging, if not impossible.
20:39
Speaker 3: So because now we're in a four x four with
20:42
Speaker 3: all this capability and the fact that we can sustain
20:46
Speaker 3: ourselves out in the field for longer, which meant that
20:50
Speaker 3: we could go and then explore further into these places
20:53
Speaker 3: which would ordinarily well you couldn't really do realistically on
20:57
Speaker 3: a motorcycle.
20:58
Speaker 1: Tell me more about that train because is that part
21:00
Speaker 1: of an Arctic separate that.
21:03
Speaker 3: Was separate, So that was before the pandemic. Yeah, so
21:08
Speaker 3: we decided at the time that we would do a
21:12
Speaker 3: trip from the bottom of Africa to the top of
21:15
Speaker 3: Norway and we called it Cape to Cape so Cape
21:19
Speaker 3: Town to nord Cap. Because of the pandemic, that got canceled,
21:24
Speaker 3: but when things started opening up, we then did the
21:28
Speaker 3: trip up nord Cap up to the top of Norway,
21:31
Speaker 3: came back down again, went across to the Pharaohs for
21:34
Speaker 3: two weeks and then carried on to Iceland for two months.
21:39
Speaker 3: So we traveled on a ferry, so it took four
21:43
Speaker 3: days to get to Iceland with the truck, so two
21:45
Speaker 3: days to the Pharaohs and then another two days to
21:48
Speaker 3: Iceland and then they're same on the way back again.
21:51
Speaker 3: But Iceland was just incredible. It was it was amazing.
21:55
Speaker 3: It's certainly a place I would love to go back again.
21:58
Speaker 4: So I don't know why we start actually going up
22:01
Speaker 4: to nord Cap when we did want to start in
22:03
Speaker 4: Cape Town, didn't we but we decided well, being in
22:06
Speaker 4: the UK, it just made a little bit more sense
22:08
Speaker 4: to get that European leg out of the well, just
22:11
Speaker 4: to start with that leg, really, I suppose, so, yeah,
22:14
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen before COVID hit, we then, yeah, ventured
22:17
Speaker 4: off because we'd finished our bike trip in twenty nine eighteen,
22:20
Speaker 4: and Yeah found then, being in the truck, why not
22:23
Speaker 4: just go up to nord Cap first and then ship
22:27
Speaker 4: the truck out to South Africa to Cape Town, And
22:30
Speaker 4: then we were just going to mix the whole trip
22:32
Speaker 4: up on its head and then ride up through the
22:35
Speaker 4: African continent back to where we started. However, he only
22:39
Speaker 4: got as far as nord Cap and then when we
22:42
Speaker 4: took the truck back to the UK to swap out
22:45
Speaker 4: the cold layers for the warm layers and make it
22:47
Speaker 4: Africa ready, that's when COVID hit. But unfortunately, by that
22:51
Speaker 4: time we'd already shipped our chuck to Cape Town. COVID
22:55
Speaker 4: hit round end of March, didn't it, twenty twenty, and
22:58
Speaker 4: our truck was honest it making its way to South Africa.
23:02
Speaker 1: That was an expensive exercise, you just chalk it down.
23:07
Speaker 4: Stuff happens, right, and so we had to turn that
23:11
Speaker 4: truck around as soon as it made its way on
23:13
Speaker 4: to South African soil. We turned it around to get
23:17
Speaker 4: our property back. It came back to us later on
23:20
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty.
23:21
Speaker 1: I think Cavid hit our. Thetle logistics getting it back
23:25
Speaker 1: to you was that complicated during that time? Not?
23:27
Speaker 4: It just took longer. Sure, yeah, I think everything just
23:31
Speaker 4: took longer, didn't it. But it was as easy to
23:34
Speaker 4: bring it back as it was I guess to send
23:36
Speaker 4: it out. It just yeah, expensive, Yeah, it was expensive.
23:41
Speaker 1: Your vehicle went. Yeah, it had a great time.
23:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, it didn't send a postcard, but it still had fun.
23:48
Speaker 1: It made it. It did cake to cave, didn't it.
23:50
Speaker 1: Actually it did do that. We didn't but it did.
23:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was sat on somebody's lamp for
23:55
Speaker 3: two months, and I think, like all of us, we thought, oh,
23:58
Speaker 3: you know, this is going to be two or three
24:00
Speaker 3: months and everything's going to be back to normal. And
24:02
Speaker 3: when I realized that this wasn't going to go away
24:05
Speaker 3: anytime soon, I rang up the guy who was looking
24:09
Speaker 3: after the truck on.
24:11
Speaker 1: His lands overland.
24:13
Speaker 3: No, it was a guy, a guy called Duncan from
24:15
Speaker 3: African Overlanders.
24:17
Speaker 1: African Overlanders all right.
24:18
Speaker 3: And I said, look, you're going to have to ship
24:21
Speaker 3: it back, and he was going to U, sure this
24:23
Speaker 3: is going to be over soon, you know. I know, no,
24:26
Speaker 3: that's not the impression I'm getting. I said a lot,
24:29
Speaker 3: you're just going to have to ship it back. So
24:31
Speaker 3: he shipped it back unfortunately, but you know it's still there.
24:35
Speaker 3: It's still a trip that we still intend to do.
24:38
Speaker 1: I was going to ask about your Nordic trip and
24:42
Speaker 1: what things stood out to you or were unexpected or
24:46
Speaker 1: that you learned while you were in that region that
24:49
Speaker 1: you didn't anticipate.
24:50
Speaker 4: So that was this year, then January and February taking
24:53
Speaker 4: the truck to the Nordic's Norway, Sweden, Finland. Start out
25:00
Speaker 4: shipping you know, from the UK over to Hertshill's in
25:04
Speaker 4: Denmark and then taking it spending the majority of the
25:07
Speaker 4: time in Norway.
25:07
Speaker 3: One thing I did take into a fact was in
25:10
Speaker 3: winter they only plow the roads, which means that we
25:13
Speaker 3: couldn't physically get the vehicle off the road. So camping
25:18
Speaker 3: was a problem, particularly.
25:19
Speaker 1: In Finland more than Norway. Actually, yeah, particularly in Finland.
25:23
Speaker 3: So you'd see these beautiful places, but you couldn't get
25:27
Speaker 3: off the road because there's always a big snow bank.
25:31
Speaker 3: So that that was not something I was expecting to
25:34
Speaker 3: be honest, But yeah, that would you know.
25:36
Speaker 1: I got Yeah, you end up camping, then, like, how
25:38
Speaker 1: did you pivot from We.
25:40
Speaker 3: Camped in places that we would probably not have ordinarily picked,
25:44
Speaker 3: like car parks in small villages or towns, or or
25:50
Speaker 3: on one time when I really out of my own
25:52
Speaker 3: frustration for not being able to get off the road,
25:55
Speaker 3: I decided I would punch my way through a snow
25:58
Speaker 3: bank because it looked like there was a flat space
26:02
Speaker 3: for me to camp by a lake, and I went
26:05
Speaker 3: straight into a ditch and I had to get local
26:08
Speaker 3: to So that was the first and only time that
26:13
Speaker 3: I tempted anything sort of off road. So I learned
26:17
Speaker 3: my lesson that you know, really I should be testing
26:20
Speaker 3: where I'm going where I'm going to drive first by
26:23
Speaker 3: getting out and check in before I just commit. But
26:27
Speaker 3: luckily we did it in a village and there was
26:29
Speaker 3: local help, so it wasn't a problem.
26:31
Speaker 1: Good. You guys seem to really like to travel in
26:34
Speaker 1: the winter time.
26:36
Speaker 4: Which isn't how we built the truck Atol. We built
26:39
Speaker 4: really the truck for Africa in warm climate, and yeah,
26:42
Speaker 4: you're right, we have tended to gravitate towards cold places,
26:46
Speaker 4: including Scotland when it's not always the war miss is
26:49
Speaker 4: it cold, wet, windy conditions and with our chruck you
26:52
Speaker 4: can't cook inside, you can't do anything inside, just too
26:57
Speaker 4: many jaws and things.
26:59
Speaker 1: You know.
26:59
Speaker 4: There's no indoor living space apart from the rooftop ten
27:02
Speaker 4: which we find when it's too windy. You can't even
27:04
Speaker 4: go in there either. So we have had quite a
27:06
Speaker 4: few nights where I've just been forced to camp in
27:09
Speaker 4: the double cab, rolling the seats back, which is like
27:12
Speaker 4: being on an easy jet flight but rubbish. We climbed
27:15
Speaker 4: the seat like this and we've slept quite a number.
27:18
Speaker 1: Of nights doing that.
27:20
Speaker 4: That would not suit most people with the great, big
27:23
Speaker 4: whopping sleeping bags to stay what it's been warm enough.
27:26
Speaker 4: It's just not the most comfortable night sleep, is it's.
27:29
Speaker 4: So it's a bit more okay for me, I can
27:31
Speaker 4: just curl up into a fetal position, but for Jason,
27:34
Speaker 4: and he's always you know, sleeps on the driver's side,
27:37
Speaker 4: so he's got staying wheel and pedals in the way.
27:40
Speaker 4: And I once wapped with him to try and be nice,
27:42
Speaker 4: and I thought, never again, that was awful.
27:46
Speaker 1: So you have really good sleeping bags. It sounds like, yeah,
27:48
Speaker 1: we're assuming well you have the heater.
27:52
Speaker 4: Really excellent making hot meals. I was going to in
27:56
Speaker 4: a half minutes and we're done in justin back in
27:58
Speaker 4: the truck, you know, when it's like minus twenty six. Yeah,
28:02
Speaker 4: that was interesting on that architicture. It when you know,
28:05
Speaker 4: we oftentimes be outside around five o'clock in the evening
28:09
Speaker 4: of the afternoon and all the oil, all cooking oil,
28:11
Speaker 4: had frozen, the milk had frozen, all the food, and
28:14
Speaker 4: you know, there's no point in keeping the fridge on
28:17
Speaker 4: because you're living in a fridge and then everything freezes eventually,
28:21
Speaker 4: even inside the fridge, so that it is Yeah, that
28:24
Speaker 4: was a challenge, so.
28:25
Speaker 3: You don't even switch the fridge on. In fact, the
28:27
Speaker 3: fridge is actually you need to keep your food warm
28:30
Speaker 3: right or warmer surrounding outside temperature, so you wouldn't even
28:35
Speaker 3: switch it on.
28:35
Speaker 4: You have to keep brand of items in your fridge
28:37
Speaker 4: because that was the insulate. Oh, you know, just pull
28:39
Speaker 4: things into the double cab. We soon we soon dialed
28:43
Speaker 4: in and thought what should we travel with inside the
28:45
Speaker 4: day so that it's not rock solid frozen at night.
28:48
Speaker 1: Water, your tea towels you oh yeah, just you.
28:52
Speaker 4: Know, drying your pots. You can't dry pots with kind
28:56
Speaker 4: of blocks of ice. Mass rating is a tea towel? Well,
29:01
Speaker 4: what do you call them? Ttels?
29:03
Speaker 1: Yeah?
29:04
Speaker 2: Clock, Yeah, and a special thanks to on X off
29:11
Speaker 2: Road for helping to support this week's podcast. Going further
29:15
Speaker 2: on your adventures is about having the right tools. The
29:18
Speaker 2: on xof road apps Intuitive maps make it easy to
29:21
Speaker 2: find trails and disperse camping, and their offline maps give
29:26
Speaker 2: you full GPS navigation capability without cell coverage. I'm also
29:31
Speaker 2: really excited about their new route builder for planning and
29:34
Speaker 2: sharing custom trips. It's got a snap to trail tool
29:39
Speaker 2: where you can just drop points where you want to go,
29:41
Speaker 2: and a route automatically connects to the closest road or trail.
29:46
Speaker 2: You could build, save and add routes to folders and
29:49
Speaker 2: share your entire trip with your buddies. You can find
29:52
Speaker 2: out more information on on xmaps dot com. You can
29:55
Speaker 2: also find their apps in the Apple Store or whatever
29:58
Speaker 2: other device that you use. Thanks again, on X.
30:02
Speaker 1: Do you guys have any life hacks for winter camping?
30:05
Speaker 3: Don't go.
30:07
Speaker 1: Stupid idea, but you keep going.
30:13
Speaker 3: Don't rely on your technology for sure? Electronic yeah, because
30:17
Speaker 3: of anything fails I mean, it's great having a diesel
30:19
Speaker 3: here too, but if it fails, you really do need
30:21
Speaker 3: like seriously, you know, for you know, in case you
30:25
Speaker 3: get into trouble, you need it. You need a sleeping
30:27
Speaker 3: bag that you know is going to you know, be
30:29
Speaker 3: good enough for those temperatures. So we would always have
30:32
Speaker 3: the best sleeping bags we could afford, the ones that
30:35
Speaker 3: went down to the lowest temperature. So you know, if
30:38
Speaker 3: if the paparial pooh hit the fan, then you know
30:41
Speaker 3: we're not going to die out there, because you know,
30:43
Speaker 3: if the deals heater packs up with a car stops
30:46
Speaker 3: working and you know it's not the heater in the
30:49
Speaker 3: car is not working, we could at least, you know,
30:52
Speaker 3: be comfortable to a lesser extent. It'd just be nice
30:54
Speaker 3: to be comfortable as well, even if things don't.
30:57
Speaker 4: Foot warmers for me and hand warmers inside your gloves.
31:01
Speaker 4: Foot warmers were just this time. I wish I'd had
31:04
Speaker 4: those in Iceland and Pharaohs. But this time, you know,
31:07
Speaker 4: in Norway, when it is mine a silly foot warmers
31:10
Speaker 4: and hand warmers that you know stay hot.
31:12
Speaker 1: For eight hours.
31:13
Speaker 4: Oh, I was just happy this time, you know, I
31:15
Speaker 4: wasn't thinking about the cold and not being present because
31:18
Speaker 4: I was too cold. I was really there, you know,
31:21
Speaker 4: I was really enjoying this. It was brutal but beautiful.
31:24
Speaker 4: And because I was warm, my extremities are warm. I
31:26
Speaker 4: could keep functioning and really really absorbing what was around
31:30
Speaker 4: me and enjoying where we were. Yeah, that helps a lot,
31:33
Speaker 4: just taking it did. Yeah, you know, and obviously we
31:37
Speaker 4: had the right gear as well. We had some arctic
31:39
Speaker 4: gear so we could stay really comfortable. What are the
31:43
Speaker 4: winter hacks did we discover?
31:46
Speaker 3: Well, water was always a problem, keeping it from freezing.
31:49
Speaker 1: And then felling up sometimes. I don't know if that
31:52
Speaker 1: was an issue.
31:53
Speaker 3: Ye, so that's the problem because of course where we
31:56
Speaker 3: were going, all the legs are frozen. So we went.
31:59
Speaker 4: Outdoor sharing on that trip, swim pools, leisure centers and.
32:04
Speaker 1: Just paid for.
32:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. So wet whites five five is a shower as
32:11
Speaker 3: a bath apparently, But when they're phrasing.
32:15
Speaker 1: Which they often were, because I used to keep it
32:16
Speaker 1: out of the back in the jaw, no, Yeah, you
32:21
Speaker 1: learn quickly on.
32:22
Speaker 3: Those tea unless you want to be I want to
32:25
Speaker 3: do it the Swedish way and jumping off frozen lake.
32:29
Speaker 3: Then you're going to rely on you know, swimming pools,
32:32
Speaker 3: leisure centers, that kind of thing that provides showers. We've
32:35
Speaker 3: often done that where we've gone to these places, paid
32:38
Speaker 3: a few euros to have a shower and then you
32:42
Speaker 3: just don't shower between those.
32:44
Speaker 1: You know, you're not sweaty.
32:46
Speaker 3: No, that's a great thing, so you know you don't
32:50
Speaker 3: need a shower some you know.
32:52
Speaker 1: So you guys are from the UK, how much adventuring
32:55
Speaker 1: do you do in your own kind of backyard because
32:59
Speaker 1: obviously scott seems to be a really special place for
33:01
Speaker 1: you to keep coming back. Obviously good reason. Why What
33:04
Speaker 1: about we're.
33:05
Speaker 3: Lucky because we've got the whole of Europe as well, true,
33:09
Speaker 3: very close. So we've just gone back from a trip
33:11
Speaker 3: from down to Spain and Portugal France.
33:15
Speaker 1: How do you get out of here? One of two ways?
33:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's the there's the Eurotunnel.
33:22
Speaker 4: The Eurostyle, which is a train just takes you through
33:25
Speaker 4: the tunnel with your vehicle with minutes.
33:28
Speaker 1: Wow, I know, how much.
33:30
Speaker 3: Is it you are you looking between? No, it's a
33:35
Speaker 3: little bit more than that. I think maybe one hundred
33:38
Speaker 3: and fifty pounds or maybe two hundred US dollars something
33:42
Speaker 3: like that roughly what with truck, with the truck and
33:45
Speaker 3: two people, yeah, okay, yeah, and then of course there's
33:49
Speaker 3: several ferries that will get you across to the continent
33:51
Speaker 3: depending on where you you want to.
33:53
Speaker 1: Get off right straight to Spain, so you can go.
33:57
Speaker 4: To Spain more and then it was a two night crossing,
34:02
Speaker 4: so yeah, we paid a bit more just to cut
34:04
Speaker 4: out a little bit of driving that we didn't want
34:06
Speaker 4: to do, and went straight to Santa.
34:09
Speaker 3: Death, which is on the north coast of Spain. But
34:13
Speaker 3: this ferries over to France, this ferries over to Denmark,
34:16
Speaker 3: this ferries over to the Netherlands. We've got easy access
34:20
Speaker 3: to Europe.
34:21
Speaker 4: Yes, do you keep returning to Scotland, and especially as
34:25
Speaker 4: restrictions were starting to become lifted, we're starting to lift
34:28
Speaker 4: through lockdown. Then yeah, it was just a really great
34:32
Speaker 4: place to naturally socially distanced by coming up here. It
34:35
Speaker 4: was an easy place to come to and just skim
34:38
Speaker 4: off into the highlands.
34:39
Speaker 1: For a bit.
34:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, dramatic landscape, so hard to get out across.
34:44
Speaker 1: The living room whilst World War bug role was going on. Yeah,
34:48
Speaker 1: it's interesting because in this area there aren't necessarily a
34:52
Speaker 1: lot of off pavement trails, except for green laning, which
34:56
Speaker 1: if you guys have I'm sure you've experienced green laning.
34:59
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I don't know too much. The thing with
35:03
Speaker 3: England and Wales is if you come up to Scotland
35:06
Speaker 3: you have this thing called the right to roam, which
35:09
Speaker 3: means that you can you can camp anywhere in Scotland,
35:14
Speaker 3: not in a vehicle, but you can walk anywhere. You
35:16
Speaker 3: can campaign it anywhere, and as long as you're not
35:20
Speaker 3: making yourself a problem, you can part your vehicle by
35:24
Speaker 3: the side of the road. Nobody's going to bother you. You
35:26
Speaker 3: can camp anywhere you want.
35:27
Speaker 4: You leave a respectful distance from, say, the residents who
35:31
Speaker 4: are in their houses. As long as there's a respectful
35:33
Speaker 4: distance between you and the houses, it's generally fine.
35:38
Speaker 1: Unless there's a specific area where there's a sign, because
35:43
Speaker 1: there are certain areas in Scotland. Yeah yeah, land Lowland
35:47
Speaker 1: very specific rate.
35:48
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Unless there is a local restriction, you have
35:53
Speaker 3: this right to roam. It obviously doesn't comply everywhere if
35:57
Speaker 3: you've got a vehicle, but if you want to walk
36:00
Speaker 3: across any even private land in Scotland, you're allowed to
36:04
Speaker 3: actually travel across by foot and you're allowed to camp,
36:08
Speaker 3: not obviously in people's gardens, but you know, private estates,
36:11
Speaker 3: they can't stop you traveling across their their estates by
36:15
Speaker 3: foot and campaign are unlike England, which you know, it's
36:19
Speaker 3: not possible, So it's a lot harder to camp, whether
36:22
Speaker 3: that be in a ground tent or in a truck.
36:26
Speaker 3: In England it's it's less accepted. So that's one of
36:30
Speaker 3: the unique things about Scotland, which is the reason why
36:32
Speaker 3: we come up here a lot, is this accessibility to
36:36
Speaker 3: be able to just park up somewhere and camp and
36:40
Speaker 3: people aren't gonna they might they might actually to move
36:43
Speaker 3: on politely, but legally you are allowed to, you know, camp.
36:49
Speaker 3: And of course it's so beautiful, so why wouldn't you
36:52
Speaker 3: come up here? Yes, and it's so close to where
36:55
Speaker 3: we live, so six hours up up the motorway and
37:00
Speaker 3: and you're in this amazing.
37:01
Speaker 4: Landscape with you know, a population that is such a
37:05
Speaker 4: massive disparity between how many of us are living in
37:08
Speaker 4: England versus how many people are here in Scotland.
37:11
Speaker 1: It's a real jaw.
37:12
Speaker 4: It's really incentive to be in Scotland because it's hardly
37:14
Speaker 4: anyone here in the rural areas, it's just so easy
37:18
Speaker 4: to get away from people Like England, it is much
37:21
Speaker 4: more difficult.
37:22
Speaker 1: It feels overpopulated there. The landscapes are quite stunning, and
37:27
Speaker 1: not just stunning, I don't know, it's quite dramatic.
37:29
Speaker 4: It's dramatic, Yeah, quite more dramatic compared to our beautiful,
37:34
Speaker 4: pretty pockets in England.
37:36
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel it's a bit more dramatic here in Scotland.
37:39
Speaker 1: And even though there's not as much of an off
37:43
Speaker 1: pavement culture in this area, I haven't felt like it's
37:48
Speaker 1: been lacking in any shape or form. You know, we're
37:51
Speaker 1: perfectly happy driving on the pavement because you're in it.
37:55
Speaker 1: There's so much going on and so much to see
37:58
Speaker 1: and learn and experience here that yeah, you know, it
38:02
Speaker 1: doesn't bother me at all.
38:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you've got this wild landscape and you just
38:07
Speaker 3: happen to have a sealed road running through it, so
38:10
Speaker 3: you still get that feeling that you are in this
38:13
Speaker 3: amazing wild place. Down in England, where obviously it's a
38:16
Speaker 3: lot more developed and a lot more built up, you
38:19
Speaker 3: certainly lose that sense of being out in somewhere special.
38:23
Speaker 3: There is likely was saying there is beautiful pockets of England,
38:27
Speaker 3: but it doesn't have the drama that Scotland has, which means.
38:31
Speaker 1: The weather.
38:34
Speaker 3: And the midges.
38:35
Speaker 4: Yes, this time of year, when any day now they're
38:39
Speaker 4: just going to descend in the masses. So usually around
38:42
Speaker 4: the first of June and nowhere on the twenty fourth
38:45
Speaker 4: of May, racing ourselves.
38:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, it hasn't been too bad yet for the North
38:52
Speaker 1: American listeners. I midges are kind of like no sums.
38:58
Speaker 4: Fight and oh they bite in the massive year in
39:02
Speaker 4: their hundreds and thousands, it just had experience of midges.
39:06
Speaker 4: The midge repellent, which is like a natural blend, is
39:11
Speaker 4: already stuff.
39:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, midgets.
39:14
Speaker 3: Midges are I mean I've never seen one, not close,
39:17
Speaker 3: but they must have the largest jaws in relation to
39:21
Speaker 3: their body size of any animal on the planet. They
39:26
Speaker 3: but the great thing is is they're so small and
39:28
Speaker 3: they can't fly against relatively light breezes. Light breezes, yes,
39:33
Speaker 3: thank you, So anything above two three mile an hour
39:37
Speaker 3: and they go to ground. So it's not a problem.
39:39
Speaker 3: And Scotland is usually pretty windy, yeah on the whole,
39:42
Speaker 3: so most days you don't need to worry about them.
39:45
Speaker 3: But on one of those rare occasions when it's a
39:48
Speaker 3: beautiful evening maybe and there's no way do you want
39:52
Speaker 3: to sit outside? Then they can be a bit of
39:54
Speaker 3: a problem. Yeah, only only in the spring. In the
39:57
Speaker 3: summer months after that they die off. And so my
40:01
Speaker 3: tip for anybody coming to Scotland is get here before may.
40:05
Speaker 4: Effect people in spring is kind of like June on,
40:08
Speaker 4: which isn't it for the summer.
40:10
Speaker 1: What are some places in Scotland that you would recommend,
40:14
Speaker 1: like your favorite spots slash highlands on the west side.
40:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
40:20
Speaker 1: We want to give secrets away.
40:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, did we want to give them all away?
40:23
Speaker 1: Should we just say Scotland a few places?
40:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few places obviously. The Isle of Sky
40:30
Speaker 3: is beautiful, the island Maula.
40:33
Speaker 1: What are some things on these islands that you love
40:35
Speaker 1: the most? Like, what are the things that bring you
40:38
Speaker 1: back here over and over again?
40:39
Speaker 3: I think there's dramatic landscapes, the wildlife. You know, we
40:42
Speaker 3: have sea eagles now up here that have been introduced
40:45
Speaker 3: that were that were extinct but they've been reintroduced over
40:49
Speaker 3: the last few years into Scotland and they're doing really well.
40:52
Speaker 3: So these huge eagles, if you look enough to spot
40:55
Speaker 3: one really impressive deer, red deer. We've got lots of
40:59
Speaker 3: red deer.
40:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, stag and we even have red squirrels over in
41:02
Speaker 4: the caning worms.
41:04
Speaker 3: Really rare because because their American cousins got introduced to
41:08
Speaker 3: the UK and they carry a squirrel pox fortunately decimated
41:15
Speaker 3: the red squirrel population, so we have them in little
41:18
Speaker 3: pockets and this Scotland is one of their strongholds. So
41:22
Speaker 3: you know.
41:25
Speaker 1: The wolves in Scotland.
41:26
Speaker 3: No wolves and bears unfortunately.
41:29
Speaker 4: So if you're you know it from a badge, a
41:33
Speaker 4: lot of Highland cows later yeah, yeah, my kin.
41:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, they look like something that's been left over from
41:41
Speaker 3: the ice age.
41:42
Speaker 1: The morning after the night before.
41:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, they look quite medicine with their big horns, but
41:47
Speaker 3: actually they're quite dose and quite sweet, especially the cobs.
41:50
Speaker 3: But we get lots of them.
41:51
Speaker 1: Here on a bird life not just spilled of prey.
41:54
Speaker 4: But yeah, it is a really biodivice.
41:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, here in Scotland.
41:59
Speaker 3: Lots of lots of whales, dolphins, otters. Yeah, so if
42:03
Speaker 3: you're into wildlife, this is certainly the place to come.
42:07
Speaker 1: So a lot of the things you're describing have shown
42:10
Speaker 1: up in your stories and your photography, and you guys
42:13
Speaker 1: are regular contributors to Overland Journal and Expedition Portland, have
42:17
Speaker 1: been for quite some time, and in fact you guys
42:20
Speaker 1: are Overlanders of the Year.
42:22
Speaker 3: Ah. Yes, we were really excited to receive that. I'm
42:25
Speaker 3: very surprised as well, very.
42:28
Speaker 1: Well deserved you. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about
42:32
Speaker 1: So Lisa is most of the writing, maybe all the
42:35
Speaker 1: writings perhaps, and you're specializing in photography.
42:39
Speaker 3: Yes, real, yes, yeah, we we have an exclusive division
42:44
Speaker 3: of labor individuals.
42:47
Speaker 2: Yes.
42:49
Speaker 1: How do you work together as a couple while also
42:53
Speaker 1: working together creatively? What does that process look like?
42:56
Speaker 4: I will usually not chase to just a certain type
43:01
Speaker 4: of image, set of visuals for a story that I'm
43:05
Speaker 4: thinking of writing. Now we're going to go here, Jace,
43:07
Speaker 4: I really wanted to write a story about this in mind,
43:11
Speaker 4: get your camera out, off you go.
43:13
Speaker 1: Those a pretty general great direction. You love your drone too,
43:17
Speaker 1: so you'll get that.
43:18
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've never attempted to put pen to paper. Maybe
43:23
Speaker 3: maybe maybe I'm really good at it. I've never I've
43:25
Speaker 3: never really tried, but I think it works for us.
43:28
Speaker 3: It's where my passions lie. Lisa loves to write, so
43:32
Speaker 3: we've never felt the need to sort of cross pollinate
43:35
Speaker 3: if you like.
43:36
Speaker 4: I don't think I could spot really a good composition
43:38
Speaker 4: if it jumped out and gave me a haircut. I'm
43:40
Speaker 4: really not visual at all. I'm way better writing about something.
43:46
Speaker 4: That's where my skill set lies, my strengths, my interests,
43:49
Speaker 4: my creative outlets, my brain going to mush. And Jason's
43:52
Speaker 4: all about you know, he wants to be behind the
43:54
Speaker 4: camera use and abuse me for scale, and I'm fine
43:58
Speaker 4: with that as long as I don't look at the camera.
44:02
Speaker 1: Doing that, Lisa. No one wants to see you looking
44:04
Speaker 1: at the viewer. Are there things that you guys have
44:07
Speaker 1: learned over time with shooting and writing that have been
44:11
Speaker 1: the process easier for you now and maybe a little
44:14
Speaker 1: bit quicker or more efficient.
44:17
Speaker 4: I think because I've learned patients over the years. I'm
44:20
Speaker 4: happy to stand in one spot, not look up at
44:23
Speaker 4: the northern lights, stay stock still, and be a statue
44:27
Speaker 4: for you however you need me for as long as
44:30
Speaker 4: you need me to. I think two hours is about
44:32
Speaker 4: my limit. And then I'm like, we're done, We're so done.
44:35
Speaker 4: Well whatever you haven't got now, so I think that
44:37
Speaker 4: that helps. I'm prepared to do that for you, and
44:40
Speaker 4: you know, do that throughout the day, all throughout the night.
44:43
Speaker 1: Lisa is two am, We're in Alaska, nights on, come on.
44:48
Speaker 3: I think Lisa now knows exactly what kind of shot
44:52
Speaker 3: I'm looking for, so there's less direction if you like, which,
44:58
Speaker 3: especially if we're longer sense away. I mean, maybe we
45:01
Speaker 3: should invest in walkie targets we have done.
45:03
Speaker 1: In the past, and that really helps, doesn't it.
45:05
Speaker 3: Left the Yeah, so I mean, if I want to
45:09
Speaker 3: put Lisa in a landscape, then you know, generally she
45:12
Speaker 3: might be quite far away and then communication can be
45:15
Speaker 3: quite difficult. But if Lisa knows exactly what I'm looking for,
45:18
Speaker 3: then she can just It saves a lot of time.
45:21
Speaker 3: I think that maybe you know, over the over the
45:24
Speaker 3: course of the years we've been producing content, it does
45:27
Speaker 3: make Lisa sort of knows what I'm looking for and
45:30
Speaker 3: makes makes life a lot easier.
45:31
Speaker 1: And spreading off that as well.
45:33
Speaker 4: Knowing that me and shot is one type of shot
45:36
Speaker 4: and then meet out of shop the exact same shot
45:39
Speaker 4: is also just as valuable. You know, for various publications
45:43
Speaker 4: such as Overland Journal that don't need a person in
45:46
Speaker 4: the shop for all of you know that to tell
45:48
Speaker 4: the story right, So yeah, to do.
45:50
Speaker 1: It twice, do that kind of shot twice, have a
45:53
Speaker 1: variety yea of angles and.
45:56
Speaker 4: Getting out of that vertical portrait shop mindset for Instagram,
46:01
Speaker 4: getting out of that mindset and going, I don't want
46:04
Speaker 4: to do this for INSTAGRAMM. This is for me, This
46:07
Speaker 4: is for personal, this is for a certain publication to remember. Also, yeah,
46:11
Speaker 4: do not take anything a portrait. Yeah, you know, that's
46:15
Speaker 4: I think a valid point.
46:16
Speaker 1: Do you usually do a trip? I mean this is
46:19
Speaker 1: going to be different because you've done long term trips
46:21
Speaker 1: and shorter term trips. And while I'm assuming on the
46:25
Speaker 1: long trips you're writing throughout. But I guess my question
46:28
Speaker 1: is when you have an idea about an article, or
46:31
Speaker 1: are you thinking about it ahead of the trip if
46:33
Speaker 1: it's a shorter trip, or is it usually happening after
46:35
Speaker 1: you've already done it? Did be both? Yeah, Yeah, that's
46:38
Speaker 1: kind of what I thought.
46:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, to have a notebook on me at all times,
46:42
Speaker 4: or to just push the notes into the phone and
46:45
Speaker 4: just to keep keep jotting down those ideas as there,
46:49
Speaker 4: yeah emerging.
46:50
Speaker 1: And is it usually a place that you're inspired by
46:53
Speaker 1: or could it be I'm sure it could be anything
46:55
Speaker 1: but or something that has happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
46:59
Speaker 1: can go for both.
47:01
Speaker 4: Really, just to write up a travel story about interesting
47:04
Speaker 4: place with some history, or if some unusual occurrence might happen,
47:10
Speaker 4: so some drama takes place and you know it has
47:12
Speaker 4: done in the past many times. That then becomes the
47:15
Speaker 4: story is the very unexpected turn of events and how
47:19
Speaker 4: things just go from good to bad to ugly, and
47:23
Speaker 4: then then how you've reacted to that situation and all
47:26
Speaker 4: the drama that comes with you know, travel, all the
47:28
Speaker 4: high highs, low lows, whole kaboodle.
47:31
Speaker 1: What are some things about this way of travel that suck?
47:35
Speaker 1: Four wheel drive or two wheels both? Oh, like, what
47:40
Speaker 1: are some hard We tend to be like this is great. Yeah,
47:44
Speaker 1: we have this freedom and we're doing this and seeing this,
47:48
Speaker 1: and of course on Instagram people are seeing beautiful shots
47:51
Speaker 1: and you're out in nature and you're like, well, you
47:54
Speaker 1: don't know that I've pooped in a bag or you.
47:56
Speaker 3: Don't know that.
47:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:01
Speaker 3: I think as we know that there's no perfect vehicle.
48:04
Speaker 3: So as I said earlier, you know that the drawbacks
48:07
Speaker 3: of being on a motorbike or that you can't stay
48:10
Speaker 3: out in these wild places as easily as if you're
48:14
Speaker 3: in a truck that you can carry more supplies. The
48:16
Speaker 3: bike makes you feel me personally, makes me feel more
48:20
Speaker 3: connected to the environment, just you know, the vibration through
48:25
Speaker 3: the bars. You know, for example, which you know maybe
48:28
Speaker 3: some people have not considered, is the connection to the
48:31
Speaker 3: ground that you're traveling on. You know, there's less there's
48:35
Speaker 3: less stimulation to the environment that you're in when you're
48:38
Speaker 3: in a truck. But on the flip side is when
48:41
Speaker 3: you do get off your bike or out of your truck.
48:44
Speaker 1: You're a human tuning fork.
48:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a human fault.
48:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like this all night, just tingling on you.
48:51
Speaker 1: As a person who's never ridden a bike, I would
48:53
Speaker 1: never have thought about And I wonder I feel like
48:56
Speaker 1: I'm getting flashbacks to the podcast with Jeremy and l
48:59
Speaker 1: where they were saying they're on their bike holding on
49:02
Speaker 1: the handlebars like this for hours and hours and hours
49:04
Speaker 1: and hours, and I never thought about that. The physical
49:07
Speaker 1: act of riding.
49:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, because all it's all your sensors. They're feeding you
49:12
Speaker 3: information all the time. It's not just about you know,
49:14
Speaker 3: the wind on your face, the temperature, the smells is
49:19
Speaker 3: also like you know you're connected to the ground you're
49:22
Speaker 3: traveling on through the bike, the vibrations, the kind of
49:26
Speaker 3: ground you're traveling on.
49:27
Speaker 4: And in the early days on our first bike trip,
49:29
Speaker 4: when I was a brand new rider, I would hang
49:31
Speaker 4: on way too tight, white knuckle type scenario.
49:34
Speaker 1: And I remember one stint of riding one.
49:37
Speaker 4: Day, maybe maybe maybe got two hundred and fifty off
49:40
Speaker 4: road miles under our belt on really good dirt. But
49:42
Speaker 4: I found it really challenging because I've just not done
49:44
Speaker 4: it before. And I actually developed these muscle here on
49:48
Speaker 4: each arm, and it was like this bump, this new
49:51
Speaker 4: muscle I'd never seen before on my pipe cleaner for
49:54
Speaker 4: an arm, and I was so proud of this little
49:56
Speaker 4: muscle that just popped up on both of these arms.
49:58
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of it.
50:00
Speaker 4: But actually I was exhausted, totally broken myself. I was
50:03
Speaker 4: riding all in all the wrong ways possible.
50:06
Speaker 1: Jason's like, why are you holding on this tight?
50:09
Speaker 4: And I was wearing my own handlebars smooth clean, like
50:13
Speaker 4: they should have been gripped to them by just wall them.
50:15
Speaker 1: Off because I was just holding on for dear.
50:17
Speaker 4: Life, scared as heck, you know, on the really good dirt,
50:21
Speaker 4: on really easy.
50:22
Speaker 1: To ride a compacted dirt. I know you were tired.
50:25
Speaker 1: You could just loosen up and let her let it go.
50:28
Speaker 1: Experience just took a long time.
50:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not the most natural rider, which is probably
50:34
Speaker 4: why Jason used to call me Captain Slow the whole
50:36
Speaker 4: time and oh, come on, princess, I can't ride your
50:39
Speaker 4: bike for you. I'm like the motivational school of Jason
50:42
Speaker 4: that was that was a challenge in the beginning, just
50:45
Speaker 4: letting go and yeah, like you're saying, wild, taking care
50:50
Speaker 4: of your morning ablutions while in the wild, that's the
50:53
Speaker 4: thing you have to just get over yourself with and
50:55
Speaker 4: just take care of oh, an ar truck as well,
50:58
Speaker 4: because you can't be inside. Then we have to cook, drink,
51:01
Speaker 4: and eat outside permanently. And we're still working on trying
51:05
Speaker 4: to find a really good tenth awning solution, which means, yeah,
51:09
Speaker 4: it is absolutely persisting it down.
51:12
Speaker 1: You've still got to cook outside so that yeah, the elements.
51:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think we've just about found now and
51:19
Speaker 4: a way to get ourselves under cover so that we
51:22
Speaker 4: can take care of that one.
51:23
Speaker 1: Nice. It's really tough with wind, especially.
51:26
Speaker 4: Wind the other day, I was packing, chopping my pack
51:29
Speaker 4: choy and it all just flew off into the distance
51:31
Speaker 4: and say we must spinach.
51:32
Speaker 1: And what a waste of time watching my spinach fly away.
51:37
Speaker 1: I'm like, what we're looking forward that spinach like confetti
51:40
Speaker 1: spinach small struggles really overline travel. Yeah, your spinach flies away? Yeah,
51:49
Speaker 1: well sucks. Oh. The constant companionship. That is the best
51:56
Speaker 1: and the worst thing.
51:57
Speaker 4: We we've been trying together on more than off since
52:00
Speaker 4: the year two thousand. We've been together the whole time.
52:03
Speaker 4: So that is the best and the worst thing. You know,
52:05
Speaker 4: when you're hungry, you're just tired, you're starving, and automatically
52:11
Speaker 4: it's not my fault.
52:12
Speaker 3: It's going to be the only person.
52:16
Speaker 4: You have to remind yourself, I might tried and a
52:18
Speaker 4: hungry Yes, it's not him, it's not all him, because
52:21
Speaker 4: he's there.
52:22
Speaker 1: Yeahmstration someone.
52:25
Speaker 4: Yeah that is tough, isn't it. You just don't get
52:28
Speaker 4: a break from each other. So you have to have
52:30
Speaker 4: a certain number of strategies to go off. Take yourself
52:33
Speaker 4: away over a walk off a snack bar that's somebody
52:36
Speaker 4: else's look strategy. The other person offers a snack bar,
52:41
Speaker 4: that's the code for saying you're being a challenge right now?
52:45
Speaker 1: Would you like a snackbar? Stop being a challenge? Thank you?
52:49
Speaker 1: I love that and the delivery. Yeah that, yeah, bar
52:53
Speaker 1: has to be it speaks volumes. Yes, because you don't
52:57
Speaker 1: want to make somebody just more challenge because you've told
53:00
Speaker 1: them that they be challenge you.
53:03
Speaker 3: Yes, that is a tricky one. How do you get
53:05
Speaker 3: around that?
53:05
Speaker 1: One good question.
53:08
Speaker 4: By really positive byproduct of when I was really when
53:11
Speaker 4: I got overly frustrated on the bike, is i'd actually
53:14
Speaker 4: start caring a whole lot less in the technical, in
53:17
Speaker 4: the loose stuff, on the rides that you.
53:20
Speaker 3: Know were so you'd be angry and she would loosen up.
53:25
Speaker 3: I'd write like cro and she would ride better when
53:27
Speaker 3: she was angry.
53:28
Speaker 4: You'd be sometimes struggling to keep up with me. But
53:30
Speaker 4: only those times when I was really annoyed, just at
53:33
Speaker 4: anything or something. I was just tired and I just
53:36
Speaker 4: wouldn't care, and off I went. And you know, it
53:38
Speaker 4: was really frustrating for days because he's you're questioning, why
53:41
Speaker 4: God I ride.
53:42
Speaker 1: Like that all the time. That would be a brilliant woman,
53:45
Speaker 1: just crack on.
53:46
Speaker 4: But no, only when I was a bit frustrated. It happened, right, Yeah,
53:51
Speaker 4: So if you learned to add a motorcycle and got
53:52
Speaker 4: really annoyed, you'd ride like a pro. I'm sure it's
53:55
Speaker 4: all emotional and emotionally driven though, which isn't good as
53:58
Speaker 4: I'm not consistent.
54:00
Speaker 1: So speaking of writing, you have a grand new plan.
54:04
Speaker 1: So you've gone bikes four wheel.
54:06
Speaker 3: Drive and now and now we go back to bikes.
54:10
Speaker 1: So exciting.
54:11
Speaker 3: So we're just giving White Ryan how a bit of
54:14
Speaker 3: rest for a while. We've decided that we want to
54:18
Speaker 3: go back to bikes for a while. It's nice to
54:20
Speaker 3: mix it up a little bit. We're going to go
54:22
Speaker 3: back to North America, back to South America, across to Africa,
54:26
Speaker 3: and then back up into Europe, so basically a rough square.
54:30
Speaker 3: And we're going to call it the Mega Transect. And
54:32
Speaker 3: this time we're going to video it. So we are
54:35
Speaker 3: we have been a bit late to the party, but
54:37
Speaker 3: we're going to do a YouTube series starting when we
54:40
Speaker 3: arrive in North America, which should be about the middle
54:44
Speaker 3: of July, so we will start producing a fortnightly video
54:50
Speaker 3: from mid July onwards and then that might then go
54:54
Speaker 3: to a weekly video and.
54:55
Speaker 1: The YouTube channel is called four wheeled nomad. Technically two bikes,
55:01
Speaker 1: it's still four wheels. It still makes sense totally. Yeah,
55:06
Speaker 1: four wheeled, no mad all spelled out. So what made
55:10
Speaker 1: you decide to go back to the bikes after you
55:14
Speaker 1: have all these creature comforts.
55:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a difficult one because there's no perfect vehicle.
55:19
Speaker 3: So there's going to be times on this bike trip
55:21
Speaker 3: when I'm going to be thinking, I wish we had
55:24
Speaker 3: the truck.
55:24
Speaker 4: I think that we said about yeah, four wheel drive
55:29
Speaker 4: and the reasons why we started to ride in the
55:31
Speaker 4: first place.
55:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, we love both.
55:34
Speaker 3: We love both, and there's aspects of riding on bikes
55:38
Speaker 3: being connected to where we are, being out in the
55:41
Speaker 3: environment more which we really enjoy. Sleeping under the stars
55:45
Speaker 3: next to your bike, no tent in the desert, just
55:47
Speaker 3: having the coyotes yipping in the background is my piece
55:51
Speaker 3: of heaven. So and that simplicity, just not having all
55:55
Speaker 3: the stuff, even though it's almost like a I'm almost
55:59
Speaker 3: like a contra addictions. Sometimes I love all the tech,
56:02
Speaker 3: and I want all the toys and everything else in
56:04
Speaker 3: the comfort a longer, and then sometimes I want the
56:07
Speaker 3: simplicity of just having two pans and a roll back
56:11
Speaker 3: a few items and living really minimally and traveling really minimally. Yeah,
56:17
Speaker 3: so we're just mixing it up a little bit.
56:19
Speaker 1: What's going to be different about this trip than the
56:22
Speaker 1: last one in terms of your experience because you have
56:25
Speaker 1: so much more experience from the first way more Tina, Yeah, we.
56:31
Speaker 4: Put our teeth already now, haven't we. We know what
56:33
Speaker 4: we're letting ourselves in for. I, in theory should know
56:36
Speaker 4: how to ride a bike. I should be able to just.
56:39
Speaker 3: After four and a half years hit the after.
56:42
Speaker 1: A warm more period.
56:43
Speaker 4: Well you'd think so in theory we will see and
56:47
Speaker 4: you know, we just ache now for our bikes. It's
56:51
Speaker 4: been six years since the end of the last bike trip.
56:55
Speaker 3: We went on bigger bikes, so we went on much
56:59
Speaker 3: heavier bikes that then dictated where we could go. Even
57:03
Speaker 3: though we were told about this.
57:06
Speaker 4: Issue you're never going to wish you back, were still
57:09
Speaker 4: opted for an a week.
57:11
Speaker 3: We still opted for a bigger bike. And if I'm
57:13
Speaker 3: honest with myself, my ego probably got in the way
57:16
Speaker 3: of it. The decision making little bit and the thought
57:20
Speaker 3: of going back to or going on a trip with
57:23
Speaker 3: really small bikes didn't appeal. But now from the lessons
57:27
Speaker 3: we've learned been out in the desert, being in situations
57:31
Speaker 3: where the bikes were too big, too heavy, the bikes
57:34
Speaker 3: were falling over, we're having to pick them up. We're
57:36
Speaker 3: doing this at elevation. We didn't have the energy.
57:39
Speaker 1: And you know, and the difference in our riding abilities.
57:43
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I've closed that gap, but at least
57:46
Speaker 4: it isn't as extreme as it was going to be
57:49
Speaker 4: as it was on the last bike trip. You know,
57:52
Speaker 4: in theory, I should have more confidence this time, and
57:54
Speaker 4: a level of confidence that I never had, you know
57:57
Speaker 4: for the first two years. After four and a half
57:59
Speaker 4: year a bike trip, you know, it just took me
58:01
Speaker 4: a while to get the hang of it, gather rips.
58:04
Speaker 3: So yeah, with that, with that in mind, we're going
58:07
Speaker 3: to smaller dirt bikes or dirt orientated bikes, which means
58:12
Speaker 3: that the bikes won't dictate where we go this time,
58:16
Speaker 3: because there has been occasions where we've got to, you know,
58:19
Speaker 3: a trailhead somewhere and I've looked at it and gone,
58:22
Speaker 3: that's far too technical for you know, the bikes. We've
58:27
Speaker 3: got the way, and you know, at the end of
58:31
Speaker 3: the day. We're apt to enjoy ourselves. You know, yes,
58:34
Speaker 3: it's nice to challenge yourself, but you don't want to
58:36
Speaker 3: put yourself in a situation where you just making life
58:38
Speaker 3: hard for yourself, because then it becomes unpleasurable. You know,
58:42
Speaker 3: you're not enjoying the trip.
58:43
Speaker 1: So Jason has been kind as well.
58:46
Speaker 4: I've seen him riding sand on his eight hundred, and
58:48
Speaker 4: you know, he's a pro, he's a master.
58:50
Speaker 1: He can handle himself.
58:51
Speaker 4: He's not a dak or rider, but he knows what
58:53
Speaker 4: he's doing. Whereas because he had me in tow, then yeah,
58:56
Speaker 4: he can't ride slowly, but like I like to ride
58:59
Speaker 4: pain really slowly. So yeah, it's a whole We've thought
59:03
Speaker 4: about it much more carefully this time, and we learned
59:05
Speaker 4: from our hard lessons last time, haven't we.
59:08
Speaker 1: We're just going to put all those lessons.
59:10
Speaker 4: Learned into practice time and I really hope it already
59:12
Speaker 4: feels like a much more smooth and seamless endeavor to
59:16
Speaker 4: approach this trip and get a little bit of support
59:19
Speaker 4: that we're looking for. You know, we've got connections from
59:22
Speaker 4: the first trip and all that inside intel, you know,
59:25
Speaker 4: having done it before, you know, not knowledge is King,
59:28
Speaker 4: isn't it. We're doing exactly what we intended to do,
59:31
Speaker 4: what we've already done before again, but with the knowledge
59:35
Speaker 4: of having learned all the lessons. You know, we've reflected
59:38
Speaker 4: and we're evaluated, and we can take all that best
59:41
Speaker 4: practice and incorporate it into this trip. So I really
59:45
Speaker 4: hope that is just going to stand us in good
59:47
Speaker 4: stead and gosh, visiting all those people that we've met
59:51
Speaker 4: as many as we can, you know, when when the
59:53
Speaker 4: universe aligns to reconnect and reunite with all those fantastic
59:57
Speaker 4: people as well in the Americas, YE going to ask.
1:00:00
Speaker 1: If you've had anything that you're really looking forward to,
1:00:04
Speaker 1: places that you'd like to go back to, or places
1:00:06
Speaker 1: that you didn't go to last time that you like
1:00:10
Speaker 1: this time that might be revealed on the tip.
1:00:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's one area in the Atma
1:00:18
Speaker 3: Desert that's actually I really wanted to go and see.
1:00:21
Speaker 3: We couldn't go and see it purely for the reasons
1:00:25
Speaker 3: that I described earlier. Because the trail was.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: Too technical, you had a captain slow, and.
1:00:32
Speaker 3: Obviously consider Lisa's riding ability as well, because I couldn't
1:00:36
Speaker 3: obviously if we got into difficulty I can't ride both
1:00:39
Speaker 3: bikes at the.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: Same time, just trying take one for the team.
1:00:45
Speaker 4: So yeah, so you can tell me though he has
1:00:47
Speaker 4: told me before, I like to buy a piece of
1:00:50
Speaker 4: rope several occasions. You have told me when my bike
1:00:54
Speaker 4: is broken. Yeah, oh gosh, that was never again.
1:00:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another story. Well, turn a bike, you know, I.
1:01:03
Speaker 1: Can describe it and great and gravel.
1:01:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not something you want to do. It's turn
1:01:13
Speaker 3: a bike from bike to bike can go wrong pretty fast,
1:01:17
Speaker 3: but you know, sometimes it's the only option you've got.
1:01:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have some bikes you have your eye on?
1:01:22
Speaker 1: Is there anything you really.
1:01:26
Speaker 3: So we've not We've got our eye on one bike.
1:01:30
Speaker 3: It might not be the bike, but it's definitely up
1:01:33
Speaker 3: there as a strong contender. And that's the KTM five
1:01:37
Speaker 3: hundred ex F. I wanted something that was light enough
1:01:41
Speaker 3: but had enough power that I was happy with, but
1:01:45
Speaker 3: not something that I felt that it was unmanageable for Lisa.
1:01:50
Speaker 3: It's a very tall bike, so it's definitely going to
1:01:52
Speaker 3: take a little bit of practice, especially for Lisa to get.
1:01:59
Speaker 4: Put my girl pants on. Oh and I can put
1:02:02
Speaker 4: my seat concept in, which is lowering the bike with
1:02:04
Speaker 4: a custom seat, and I can, if Jason will allow
1:02:08
Speaker 4: me to lower the suspension, get that whole thing lowered
1:02:12
Speaker 4: a little bit.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: During your last long term trip, you had different bikes,
1:02:16
Speaker 1: same brand, same brand, which work.
1:02:18
Speaker 3: The BMW eight hundred GS is what I wrote, and
1:02:21
Speaker 3: Lisa had the six fifty.
1:02:23
Speaker 1: GS, And now you're riding the same bike.
1:02:27
Speaker 3: Yes, why I.
1:02:29
Speaker 4: Think we can share tools, share parts, rape and pillage
1:02:34
Speaker 4: each other's parts on each other's bikes, perhaps to get
1:02:37
Speaker 4: one bike out of trouble. And you know, you can
1:02:39
Speaker 4: also take off a part of my bike put it
1:02:42
Speaker 4: on here is to see if that's the problem you
1:02:44
Speaker 4: can problem solve as well. That way we can ride
1:02:46
Speaker 4: each other's bikes.
1:02:48
Speaker 1: I mean I could.
1:02:48
Speaker 4: Technically I did ride Jason's eight hundred on a couple
1:02:51
Speaker 4: of occasions, but I never would have wanted to in
1:02:54
Speaker 4: an emergency situation or really would have just had to.
1:02:57
Speaker 1: Whereas on bikes that we.
1:02:59
Speaker 4: Can both because we're riding the same bikes anyway, it just, yeah,
1:03:03
Speaker 4: seems to make.
1:03:04
Speaker 1: So much more sense. It's smart. Yeah, we should have
1:03:07
Speaker 1: done this time with couples that they read the same
1:03:10
Speaker 1: yeah style, Yeah a model. Sorry, we know.
1:03:13
Speaker 4: Quite a few couples that ride the same bikes, you know,
1:03:16
Speaker 4: and then you can set up your bike individually to
1:03:18
Speaker 4: how you each like to ride it at the end
1:03:20
Speaker 4: of the day. Yeah, you can share parts and tools.
1:03:22
Speaker 3: I guess yeah. I think that's one of the main
1:03:24
Speaker 3: advantages is if you do have a breakdown that you have,
1:03:29
Speaker 3: you can basically scavenge parts off the other bike to
1:03:32
Speaker 3: at least test it to see whether that's the part
1:03:35
Speaker 3: that you need to replace.
1:03:36
Speaker 1: Consistent as well, there's no conflict of interest. This has
1:03:40
Speaker 1: been fine. I have one more question. What are your
1:03:43
Speaker 1: favorite books? Each of you?
1:03:45
Speaker 3: Number one favorite book?
1:03:47
Speaker 1: Number one bookook.
1:03:48
Speaker 4: My favorite fiction book is Where the cow Dads Sing?
1:03:52
Speaker 1: What's that About? It's about a lady who lives in
1:03:54
Speaker 1: the swamp. It's amazing and it rocked my world. You
1:03:58
Speaker 1: need to read it.
1:03:58
Speaker 4: Non fiction, he loved New Earth by Ekot totally really
1:04:02
Speaker 4: opened my eyes from a spiritual perspective and just working
1:04:07
Speaker 4: out a few things about yourself when you're looking at
1:04:10
Speaker 4: yourself introspectively. Then New Earth by Echot Tollly is my
1:04:15
Speaker 4: favorite nonfiction, but I also love books by Sad Guru
1:04:19
Speaker 4: as well. He's really up there. He's my spiritual leader.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: What does he write about? Most topics are about what
1:04:28
Speaker 1: he reading.
1:04:28
Speaker 4: He's writing about how to stay consciously aware, if from
1:04:33
Speaker 4: a spiritual perspective, how to stay present, becoming a realized being,
1:04:38
Speaker 4: all those good things.
1:04:39
Speaker 3: I think for me, another one of books echo totally
1:04:44
Speaker 3: is The Power of Now. Oh good one. So the
1:04:48
Speaker 3: power of Now is basically looking at you, know, this
1:04:51
Speaker 3: is the only moment we truly have, and if we
1:04:54
Speaker 3: stay in this moment, then that's the end of all
1:04:56
Speaker 3: you're suffering. So that is the essence of the book.
1:05:00
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously he goes into it in a lot
1:05:02
Speaker 3: more detail and a lot better than I could ever
1:05:05
Speaker 3: explain it. But I would say that was probably my Favorableok.
1:05:08
Speaker 4: The book I'm reading right now is Jordan Peterson's Twelve
1:05:13
Speaker 4: Rules of Life.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: Also really good, fantastic. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so
1:05:18
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come onto the Overland
1:05:21
Speaker 1: Journal podcast and chat with me. Thank you for having
1:05:25
Speaker 1: them your experiences and your hot tips for camping in
1:05:30
Speaker 1: the Nordic countries in the winter, going to Scotland, and
1:05:34
Speaker 1: your new adventures on your bike. And I'm really looking
1:05:39
Speaker 1: forward to following along on your new adventure on your
1:05:42
Speaker 1: new bikes and watching your YouTube videos and continuing to
1:05:45
Speaker 1: read your beautiful pieces and enjoy your captivating photography. And yeah,
1:05:52
Speaker 1: if anybody wants to check out, we send Jason's work
1:05:55
Speaker 1: quite frequently in Overland Journal. I don't know what the
1:05:58
Speaker 1: last I don't know what the last artist was, but
1:06:00
Speaker 1: I think there are quite a few photography focused ones
1:06:04
Speaker 1: giving a lot a whole series on capturing photos in
1:06:09
Speaker 1: different landscapes and conditions, so like in the dark and
1:06:13
Speaker 1: photographing water, and lots of good tips.
1:06:16
Speaker 4: There got a few more in the works, perfect pipeline
1:06:22
Speaker 4: content in there as well.
1:06:23
Speaker 1: And then if people want to find you online, where
1:06:26
Speaker 1: do they go to find your website or.
1:06:28
Speaker 3: Social So our website is www dot four wheel nomad
1:06:32
Speaker 3: dot com.
1:06:32
Speaker 1: We'll spelled out numbers so you are.
1:06:37
Speaker 3: With an ed and the same on Instagram four wheel
1:06:39
Speaker 3: Nomad and the same for Facebook.
1:06:42
Speaker 1: Fantastic great and soon YouTube well will great, very looking
1:06:49
Speaker 1: forward to all of that. So yeah, thank you guys again,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: and thanks for listening to the Overland Journal podcast and
1:06:57
Speaker 1: watching if you're on YouTube. Thanks for taking the time
1:07:01
Speaker 1: to join us, and we hope to time. Thank you guys,
1:07:06
Speaker 1: Thank you M