Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Graham Jackson: At the Beginning of American Overlanding

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Graham Jackson: At the Beginning of American Overlanding · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overlain Journal podcast. I'm your
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: host Matt Scott and I'm with my co host, Scott Brady.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: We have a super special guest here today, Graham Jackson.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Grand's been around the overlin world in the United States
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and abroad for basically since inception. We have a cool
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: little momento here. This is the very first issue of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Overland Journal. I remember seeing this when I was seventeen
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: years old. When it came out, I was a few
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: years older than that. Yeah, and I'm the cover God.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Here we go.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: It's Graham's defender.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: How old we are?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. So we're going to talk about his
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: trans Africa trip that he did in two thousand and four.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the inception of the overland
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: community and industry in the United States. We're going to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: talk about the Tripsy's done since then, and then he
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: also has some really cool things happening in the future.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: A special thanks to Hunekook Dina pro Tires for supporting
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: this week's podcast. Visit expedition portal dot com to see
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: our content series in partnership with Hankok, where you learn
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: about this year's jeep Beach event in Daytona, Florida, get
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: tips on exploring the O'calla National Forest, and take a
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: tour of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America at
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: the Daytona International Speedway. We also take a close look
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: at how to choose a mudterrain, all terrain or a
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: hybrid rugged terrain tire using the Hankok Dina Pro tire
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: lineup as examples.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: And I have to say that, like when I got
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: started in all this stuff, there was three things that
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: inspired me before I even really got into overlanding. The
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: first one was the Camel Trophy. That was the first
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: thing that I encountered when I was still kind of
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: a multi sport athlete. And then the second one was
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: Gary Amnico Westcott that I would read in four Wheeler Magazine.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: And then the third one was Nathan Hinman and Graham
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: Jackson and the stuff that you guys were doing with
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: Pangaea and your trip. I was wide eyed because the
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: one thing that made you guys really stand out was
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: the quality of the content. It was like it was
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: the imagery that was it was very up to date,
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: and these are other Americans that are doing this, and
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: it just showed me that this was possible, Graham, you
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: and Nathan who I still get to talk with Nathan
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: on occasion. Just so grateful for you guys, both inspiring
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: me in the ways you did so.
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: I came from a very similar background, right, So I
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: was looking at camel Trophy obviously because I applied to it,
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: and then Tom Shepard of course sure, and Chris Scott,
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: all of these people who are my heroes, and now
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: I consider them like people I can just email and
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: talk to, and I like lots of my questions, which
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: blows my mind to this day.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's craziness.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: It feels like the matrix sometimes does.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Doesn't it?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Yet all these things coming down, Yeah, it's like different
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: generations because I was watching you guys, I know.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: But isn't that the neat thing about a community is
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: that you they're by nature, the passage of time happens.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Tom Shephard just turned ninety, I know. Yeah, bless him
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: because he's such a legend, such an inspiration to me too.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: But when I'm in my early fifties now and Graham's
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: thirty six, stuck in time somehow because he looks exactly
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: the same.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: You to say, but.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get some photographic evidence.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Baby faced Scott, I know, I know ye, and you
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: haven't aged I was.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: I was actually like the poster child for the Dunning
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: Kruger effect at that during that photo because I thought
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: I had figured everything out and I knew nothing.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: That's where we all were, right.
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: So back in two thousand and three, I think I
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: met you, and it was the two thousand and three
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: or two thousand and four at a station. That's right,
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: I'm feeling up the.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Deficient guys both have snorkels and you're like, wow, let's
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: be friends.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: No, he comes diving across the highway and comes skinning,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: come up.
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  Speaker 4: It was.
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  Speaker 1: It was so heavy.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: Oh geez, that more truck, that more truck.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: But yeah, and that's when we first met.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: We were like wow totally.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So what was really that the first kind of event
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  Speaker 1: or community thing that brought people together in this space
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: because I wasn't around them, I can't even talk about
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: this stuff. The community event that I know that there was,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like the there was like the Expedition Trophy.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was probably that.
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: It was probably started with the expert in trophies.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, probably at scale, But even before that was four
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: whel Drive Trips, which was a forum that was very
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: early and that brought a lot of people together, and
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: there was some little gatherings.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Off of that.
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  Speaker 4: Certainly the land Rover National Rally was a place that
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of travelers would come to.
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  Speaker 5: So that was the Sully Hill Society and a lot
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: of people came to that.
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  Speaker 4: But you were in the Toyota space, Yes, that's right.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: But you still came to that. Yeah, yeah, No.
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: It was probably those little events like that, and then
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: from that it exploded into that other things came along,
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  Speaker 5: Like you started Expression Portal Overland Journal came out of that.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Ol trophy was that before expedition trophy. Sorry, it was
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: only two words in this industry, So the expedition trophy,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to trip it was starting. That was I
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: guess that was like trying to be a little bit
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of a Camel Trophy because its competition.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. That was what it started as was all of
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: us really wanted something like the Camel Trophy to exist again,
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: and Expedition Portal had really started to grow, so I
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: knew that we needed a place to get together, for
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: all of us to get together, and that was probably
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: two thousand and five was the maybe two thousand and five,
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: the first year start two thousand and.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Five, okay, because I think when that popped up, I
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: was like, I was fifteen, lurking, like I didn't get
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: myself a land for my first car. But the Camel Trophy, Yeah, yeah.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: We were all like that. We were all like that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: It was so innocent. So talk me through what the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: concept and the format of the Expedition Trophy.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it really was my very poor attempt
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: at trying to do Camel Trophy. Some of the things
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: that were fun of about it that I'd love to
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: at some point do again, maybe even just like a
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: like an invite kind of a thing for a bunch
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: of the ogs. But what we would do is we
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: would give a waypoint of where you had to meet
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: for the Expedition Trophy. So that was one thing that
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: was unique about it, and people would get lost for hours.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Look, you didn't just plug that into Google Maps back.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Then, No, No, Like you had to go character by
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: character into your early Magellan or Garmin, and there was
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: no yelling, there was no base there was no base maps,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: so you're actually having to take out topo maps and
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: figure where you were at and sometimes people would never
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: make it liked they would get lost and give up,
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: and so it made it a little bit difficult to
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: get there. And then we would do things like building
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: bridges over crevasses and climbing up sand hills and having
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: to swap your front tire to your back tire with
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: only one jack. We did all this crazy fun stuff.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: And then from that I was actually contacted by the
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: Marines to start to do some training, and that was
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: when we actually started to make a little bit of money,
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: and Graham was involved with that. So Graham and yeah,
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: Graham and I did overland training together and we trained
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: the Marines and a bunch of the Special Operations teams
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: like CAG and everything else. But I wouldn't have a
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: business at all if it wasn't for those early training things,
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: because that's actually how I paid the bills. Yeah, because
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: like Expedition Portal made no money, the Expedition Trophy made
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: no money. So if it wasn't for the US government.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And that was all under it was that So that
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: was under overland training, yep.
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  Speaker 2: So that was underland. Yeah, that was expriss West.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: They were both the same, They were one and the
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: same at the time.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we and actually what I'm going to talk
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to you that event sounds really fun and I want
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to do it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Well, it was fun. Maybe people will give us some
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: feedback that they'd like to do it again.
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  Speaker 5: So I've been talking to Scott Jensen then he said
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: maybe we should go and do that and just give
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: people a way point.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that.
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  Speaker 4: If you guys need the expedition Trophy domain, let's do it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: We loved it fun.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: Actually it was more of us a thought of just
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: getting the those people all back together in the same
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: Who were.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Some of those people that are still around this space.
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: Certainly, and Jonathan and Roseanne Hansen were key to all that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: Mario Paul May was there. Wow.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Justin Pierin.
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Justin still shows up for goose gear and he does.
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  Speaker 4: I still have this photo of him jumping his jeep
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: and his at Overland trailer. Also, that was six wheels,
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: all six wheels were in the air. I didn't think
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: that was possible, but we actually have it documented. Yeah,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: James and Stacey Roy you just Andrew Moore, Ye, Andrew
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: was another one.
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  Speaker 2: There were a bunch of people who were still on
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the chuck. Yeah, Chuck Hathcock, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: I think what's so cool so many cool was this
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: was twenty years ago. Yeah, twenty years ago, that's not
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: an insignificant amount of time ago. And how many of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: these people are are genuinely within a couple hundred feet
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: of us right now. Yeah, it's towarding this.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I would say a goodhoff does of them, Yeah for sure.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. I think it says a lot to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the character of the people and the community that people
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: are still engaging and doing this.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a passion for It started out as a passion.
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  Speaker 5: It was never I don't think i've I have yet
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: to make any money out of it. It's always been
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: a passion project. It's always been something on the side,
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: and some people have made a run of it, like
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: Mario's made a run, may have made a run of it,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: and they've they actually have built businesses around it and
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: created this passion for overlanding into something bigger, which has
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: brought together a much larger community. And it's grown and grown,
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: and then it's I guess it's scaled to industrial level
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: at one point, and I think that was a topping
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: out point, and I think maybe COVID had something to
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: do with it was at that peaky point where I
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: was thinking, do I even still want to be part
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: of that? Because here it became a sort of an
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: identity crisis thing.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And then after COVID, we had a whole lot of
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: people jump.
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: Into it, and then training them and then introducing them
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: just how it used to be and how the past
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: and things like that was really actually cool and I
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: think that invigorated me back to the teaching side of things.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the stuff that you did was seven P.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That was awesome.
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that was awesome, and it was unfortunate we couldn't
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: make a run of it because I think there is
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: now even today a hole in the training.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: Space that's right, and you guys were the ones that
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: filled it. A number of times on our podcast we
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: talked about seven P as the place that people needed
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: to go.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Such a collection of.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: Nick and just Dunken, unbelievable human beings.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yep, awesome people.
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: And but we made it a tenant of that company.
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: That friendship came before the company. So when we realized
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: that the tensions were because it was a side gig
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: for everybody, when the tensions were getting to the point
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: where we were like, this is great, this might break friendships.
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: That's when we called it, and I think that was
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: a smart thing to do, but it did leave a
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: hole behind because I even today or and yesterday, I've
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: been talking to people at the Ovland Expo who they
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: missed that they want that they still want to be
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: able to go out and build bridges and pontoons and
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: trucks across the river, stuff like that.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not a shortage of four wheel drive trainers. You
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: guys were just so different because you had all of
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: this travel experience. The people that wanted to go travel
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: right and really do this stuff, they would have geez,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: consider the names you just mentioned that there's like hundreds
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: of years of experience. I think international vehicle life.
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: I think for seven p we calculated out one time
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: it was one hundred and seventy five years worth of
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: ex addition experience that we had. That's crazy people who
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: owned it, and it was really we're very pragmatic. We
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: were very and I think there's a pragmatism to it
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: that is very accessible to people. They realized that there
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: are a bunch of rules and there are a bunch
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: of things that you can throw out there as rules,
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: but you've got to know when when we're out in
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: a really remote place, you can't just throw everything away
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: and die. You've got to you've got to take a
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: pragmatic approach to getting out of it, which I think
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: is one of those keys.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: There's definitely been times that I have taken everything that
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: I'm not supposed to take out of the recovery kit
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: to get out exactly. Nope, that's not rated. Oh no,
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: that's not supposed to be use for that. But that's
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: sometimes it's what you gotta do to get out.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So we had all this training that kind of came
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: out of the Expedition Trophy.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: And Overland Experts is another good example. They're East Coast base,
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: so I thought they were a pretty good parallel to
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: seven P on the East Coast.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But I want to I want to drag us back
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: to the formation of a lot of this community industry.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Overland Expo happened, I guess after so Expedition Trophy.
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: So we had a time frame what we had Overland
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: Journal and then Expission Portal and then the Expedition Trophy
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: and then Overland Expo.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: The first year for Expo was and that was in
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Prescott at the little Horse Tracks and there were like
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: four hundred people that showed up total.
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And then we moved that to south of Tucson
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: A motto a motto and then it was there for
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: two years, I think, and moved up to Mormon Lake
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: and Mormon like days were legendary.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: But we were building gnarly. Yeah, we were building.
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: I mean, Landrover came in and was spending almost one
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars to build a driving course and we
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: had a great agreement with them, and it was amazing.
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: And that's when Duncan and Andy and the Camel Trophy
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: guys came on board with Bob Burns, and that was
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: just a legendary time because that's when we were building
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: pontoon bridges and I.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Guess that's all that kind of extension of the things
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: that you guys are doing on ext edition Trophy in
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a way.
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: Oh, for sure, it was an extension of it, but
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: it wasn't quite the same. It wasn't competitive. It was
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: we turned the corner front, you.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Guys, you know it was.
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: It was more it moved from us all trying to
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: recreate the Camel Trophy too. There's a whole bunch of
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: people here who want to be involved, but they don't.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: They are itching for training because nobody is born with
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: the knowledge of how to drive one of these trucks
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: across the Sahara.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I wasn't born with it. You weren't born with it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: We learned from somewhere and a lot of us learned
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: from the v D Egg from Tom Shepherd, and then
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: we realized that the training side of it was just
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: a key component, and that sort of became the focus
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: for Overland Expo at that time, and it was amazing.
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: And then we as a group of people who were
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: doing the training at Overland Expo decided we could do
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: this when Overland Expo's not happening. So we created That's
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: what that was seven P and seven P grew out
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: of that whole thing.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just it's weird just to dig in a
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: little bit of where it all came from, because this
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is now like we're sitting.
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: At over the next bone, it's about five hundred vendors
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: like Toyotas, thousand people, you know, Firestones.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: There, Lexus is here.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, it's crazy, but it's cool to see still
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: how many of the same faces are so Now what
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I want to do is I want to bounce. I
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: want to go. I'm going to go on the way
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: back machine here, oh boy, because I want We've never
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: talked about your trans Africa expedition, okay, and that just
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: had to happen at an absolutely crazy time because the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: world is so different now, it's so interconnected, it's so
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: comparatively easy to travel.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: Much easier now than when you did it.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And I'd love to kind of maybe use that as
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a guide of like how do
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: we do that. I've always been doing this with an iPhone? Yeah,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I mean it's frankly like I had an iPhone in
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: high school. That's just exactly how it was. There were
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: no iPhones in two thousand and four in Africa.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Nope, nope.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: So we used the Horizon's unlimited bulletin board, which came
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: actually before expedition report. The motorcycle focused totally more motorcycle.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: That's where they've gone.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: At least they were motorcycle focus.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: Then, but Chris Scott, real travelers, real travelers, just a
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: lot of moto travelers.
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, still are they're a bit esoteric. So motorcycle people
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: by their nature are more that they're you're by yourself
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: on the bike usually or it's just you and somebody else.
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: And back then there wasn't help and all of that
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: kind of thing, so it was a little bit more
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: I think a solo thing.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: And rough and tumble travel and tumble travel and minimalist.
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: But you couldn't take all this stuff with you didn't.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: That was like your big planning resource.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: That was the big planning resource. But we were doing
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: it by truck, so Chris. That's where I met Chris Scott,
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: and I was just lucky enough to run into people
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: like him and Tom Shepherd who were willing to give
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: advice to some young kid who decided that buying a
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: land rover and driving through Africa was a great idea.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: And that came out of my parents.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: Because you were born in the UK, but you did
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: grow up in Africa, didn't you know?
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I was born in Africa.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: I was born born in Africa.
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: I was born in Lsutu, that's right, and grew up
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: in South Africa. I've never lived in the UK. I
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: had a British passborn my parents, and my parents always
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: wanted to drive from South Africa or Southern Africa back
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: to Europe when they were done with their time in
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: Southern Africa, but they immigrated to the US instead and
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: we never did that trip, and it was always in
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: my head. I was like, this trip is in my head.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I have to do it. And that's the weird thing
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: about me.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: I get trips get stuck in my head and then
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: I have to go and do them. And that might
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: come up later on for the future stuff. But yeah,
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: in two thousand and four, it took me a couple
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: of years to convince my wife Connie that it was.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: A great idea.
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: As you can imagine, Africa's a very far off world
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: to a lot of people, particularly the places that you
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: were going for now, West Africa is no joke.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Some of the places that you went on this trip,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like are effectively inaccessible.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Molly is right now to go you can.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: It wouldn't be advised, Yeah, if you go into the
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: State Department website, absolutely is not advised. But I think
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: that's one of those things that people It's one of
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: those education things.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: People think of those places as hard to get to
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: because of what they see on the news, But the
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: human beings on the ground in any country on the
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: entire earth are just looking to do the same things.
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: They're looking to have a good day, educate their children,
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: find a better life for their kids, and just move forward.
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: And that's what they're there to do. And that nine
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: of the people you meet on the road to just that.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: And they'd be willing to help you if you've broken down,
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: or you need food, or you need to find out
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: where to go to here it across the border, they'd
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: be absolutely happy to help you. And it's not a
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: bunch of it's not a bunch of evil.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: People out That's the great thing about triving to land rivers.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: You do need help. Oh come on, So you started
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: in London.
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: We started at my parents place in the UK and
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: then drove down, went across the Channel into France, drove down,
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: stopped in Paris, went all the way down to Spain
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: as fast as we could.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: We were just like blazing, Yes, I was blazing. I'm like,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I've got to get to Africa. I've been through Europe before, all.
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: The people to Morocco, Fairy to Morocco, and then yeah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: started going down through Morocco, Mauritania, Molly Nijer, Chad.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Although there's still like like Perry to car times, Pery
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: to cart times, that's so cool. And then wow, so
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: was it even Western Sahara?
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: Then it was still like it is now. So there
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: was a Morocco still controlled Western Sahara. So the people
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: the Saraha, we called it Western Sahara, where's the Moroccans
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: called it Morocco. And it was just one of those things.
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: And so you traveled through it and you had to
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: be cognizant of that there was a political thing happening.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: There, but you you.
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: Just had to had But again we had no problems.
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: There was the minefield going between Morocco and Martina, which
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: was for me like a big pinch point because I've
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: heard about it and online I'd heard about it and
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: people talked about it, and I talked to Chris Scott
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: about it and he was like, you need to get
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: you probably best to get a guide and just a
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: guide to guide you across that through the minefield. And
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: I was like, oh, And I didn't want to say
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: too much to my traveling companion. The stress level in
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: me it was like skyrocketing. And that's the thing I
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: didn't think there was so literally I did not think
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: there was that's crazy.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That's like it was even like a concept of part
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of the journey.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: It's still a problem in a lot of Africa there
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: are mind but like that, you would have to get.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: It right a guy.
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: Cool though, But then I got to that border and
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: realized that there's a ton of truck traffic driving.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: Back and heavy trucks.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I just followed the heavy trucks and so we drove.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: We followed the heavy trucks and went past a bombed
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: out land drover, which is legendary at the time, and
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: just drove on through.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: And the people there are just like.
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's their mind's over there. But we have to
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: cross this border every day we do the thing. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: that was massive education to me that suddenly it's not
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: as people live in these places.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: They cross these.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Borders, they make dinner at night, manner their.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: Kids, they have friends, they do the same creatures exactly where,
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: the same everywhere, And so it was awesome and I
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: realized it was like, Okay, massive, big pinch point number
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: one didn't turn out to be so bad.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: So more ten today is that's pretty tough to it
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: into it, how much trying to say this Mauritania.
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: Is wild it is wild, it's a.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Lot going on there, like it's it's very even today
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: it's remote. There's I don't want to say, I don't
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: want to use the word primitive back then.
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: Back then it was, but it is. It hasn't come
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: quite as far as you might think of other other
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: countries in Africa.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: Did you make it to No, so we didn't because.
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: The GSPCC, I think, is what they were, which became
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: al Qaeda in North Africa. They were actually kidnapping overlanders
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: at that time and we were really cognizant of that
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: and realized that maybe going to Timbuck two wasn't a
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: great idea.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And one of the biggest.
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: Regrets of my life was the day we were on
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: that highway not a highway, on that track and deciding
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: whether we're going to turn left and go up to
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: Timbuck too or not, and we decided not to.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And I think everybody has read that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: I wish we would have done it, because at the
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: time you could have done it, and I've talked to
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: people who did do it.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: At the time, a risk analysis was not.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: That didn't didn't Chris, didn't Christian do it in like
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: a Las Vegas limo that they shipped over.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: To exactly, and.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: That limo is still in Timbuktu as I recall.
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was just one of those but you make decisions.
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: And the GSPC c of the people who closed down
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: door for at that time sure, because our plan had
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: been to go all the way across to East Africa
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: and come down in the East coast. And that's when
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: we realized we can do it. And then literally that
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: was going into an internet cafe in Niger and finding
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: out this border's closed. You're not going to get through there.
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: And so we're like, well, you just have to turn
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: right and go down the West coast and figure that out. Yeah,
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: And we just had to figure it out on the fly.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: And that is that is the West Coast is still
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: the West coast of Africa is still one of the
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: most challenging overland routes in the world of any length.
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: And you did it. So you did it so early.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: What is there there's at least twelve crossings, maybe a
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: few more than that. And then and you're getting at
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: the time, there was no evisas, so you had to
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: go into every capital city, you had to get a gett. Yeah, gnarly.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So we had the bit.
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: One of the biggest problems was crossing the Congos and
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: then the other one was Angola and.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Basically just come off of war.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah sure, oh yeah, there you go, look at that map.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: You buy this issue.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you can still buy the first issue of Overland
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: during Oh man.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It's so cool. It's so cool. But just to it's
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: their journey back time and I'm just I'm going through
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: this and what man, Like you went to Chad? People
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: just don't. People don't really go. They don't go to Chad.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And they should.
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: It's gorgeous, it's amazing. But yes, that's tough. But the
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: great thing was then I came out of that and
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: then gave my track log to Chris Scott and he
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: published it and it's a Overland issue too. I was like,
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: holy shit, this is my hero and I've just contributed
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: to his second edition of his book. And I was like, wow,
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: I'm blowing my own mind.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, But like, how neat is it? Like you
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: think about a guy like Chris Scott and every time
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: I get to talk with him, I do feel such
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: an honor because he has never departed from who he was.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: He's so down to earth.
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: Tom Shepard's the same way, incredible, down to earth people
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: bend over backwards for you don't have a massive ego.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: It's just one of those things. And I think, honestly,
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: in this industry you come with the people who have stayed.
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: Of those people's amazing.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: So you obviously finished this trip in Southern Africa and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: South Africa, but then recently you did a trip with
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a troopy with I believe, with Jonathan and Roseanne. And
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that was you bought troopies in Australia, traveled around there
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and then shipped them to southern to Southern Africa, and
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: then did you ship back or did you drive?
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: No, we shipped back, So it was it was one
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: of those weird things to just buy a troopee online
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: sight Unseen flying to Australia.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: How did that go?
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Whip it? Awesome? Bizarrely awesome? Right?
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: I thought, what version of a Lancas did you say?
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: Seventy series seventy five troop carrier I got in nineteen
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: ninety four? Enough, Yeah it's old enough, but yeah, Sight
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: Unseen turned out to be rust free. Turned out to
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: be a truck that was owned by a guy who
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: worked for Caterpillar and was a diesel mechanic and had
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: taken immaculate care of it.
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: Winning yeah, total total spoof.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: But it had four hundred thousand kilometers on it or
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: four hundred and eighty almost five hundred thousand k and
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: we just drove it down the Madigan line, did the
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: Simpson desert, stored it for a year, went back, drove
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: all the way across from Sydney to Perth, and then
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: shipped it to South Africa. Left it there for a
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: year or possible years, I think, and then flew into
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: Darathan Roseanne and did a whole Southern Africa trip like Botswana, Namibia,
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: and then realized, so this is a caveat there we
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: owned we were going to leave it in Southern Africa,
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: and then realized that it's an Australian truck. It's in
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: South Africa. We are in North America. How do you
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: do the paperwork for that?
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: How does that paperwork?
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: And I have a Kanye, and I have this big problem.
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: We get emotionally attached to the vehicles and then we
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: can't let them go, and so then we had to
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: import it in the US. And so now we're building
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: it up and I love that. Brian from Goose has
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: just offered to do the interior a fantastic.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: He's going to start doing some like a production troopy.
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: System system, which is fantastic, and so he's going to
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: do that in the next couple of months and then
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: we'll probably ship it back and it'll be our vacation
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: home living in South Africa.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: I love that, which that's awesome. How did you renew
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: your carnae? I've never had a carne long enough that
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: I had to renew it, so help people know that
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: it was because you had to have brought it in
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: under a carnae to ship it in right from Australia.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: From Australia, No, we didn't.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: How did you work that out?
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: He didn't actually use a carne. How did you work
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: that out in Australia. It was a native car so
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: it didn't. But into South Africa, the South an African area,
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: the SABC, I think to include South Africa and maybe
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: a Botswana, Zimbabwe, they have their own sort of temporary
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: import permit and we just used that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, so that must be fairly recent.
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: Then it was fairly recent, I think. And then we
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: just stored it with friends and the friends took care of.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: All of that stuff.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: Sure, so we didn't need a permit. We didn't need
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: the carne to go north. Well we would have if
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: we'd gone north.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Dan Grek did all of Africa without a because he
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: came into Morocco first, which you can do on a tip,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: and then he just did a tip, a temporary.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Import all the way all the way around.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: That's pretty and he was the first one that I've
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: been aware of across to do that.
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: And good for him an adventure to do that.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: I'll say though, that a karne is actually a really
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: easy way to travel. The problem is if you do
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: it on a new car, it's a ton of money
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: or you're putting hosting a huge bond or big policy
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: on it. But it's fast, Like you come up to
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: the border, they opened the carne, they stamp a tear
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: off the thing.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: And you're on your way. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: So a carne is pretty easy for but for an older.
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: View that doesn't have that isn't value that high and troopy.
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: I think we paid twelve k for it, like street value.
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: So you get a carne on that.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: It's nothing, nothing bad.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: How cool is that? So you did it. You were
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: able to ship it into South Africa on a tip. Yes, okay,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: so that's on that bombshell. Okay. I don't know if
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: anybody else cared about what just happened in this podcast,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: but that's pretty awesome.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And it is easy for a non resident to buy
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: a vehicle in Australia too.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: It was completely on Gumbo.
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: So Gumbo's like a like almost bring a trailer white
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: and yeah, just found a truck emailed. The guy talked
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: about it actually got in touch with oz to USA,
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: guy who ran that website, and he happened to be
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: in oz at the time, and he just drove it
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: for me and he recommended I didn't buy it. I
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: was like, yeah, but I need to. I need to
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: pull the trigger on something. And so I pulled the
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: trigger on and lucked out absolutely like that. And here's
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: the thing, complete.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Lack of the draw. Yeah, you can't.
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: I can't recommend it necessarily as a great way to
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: do things because some people would have a bad experience
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: with that.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: But how would you register it in Australia.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: You don't have to have any residency. These things, you
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: don't think you don't.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: Just signed over the title and you kept the same
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: plates and.
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: Kept the same plates, had to register it twice because
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: it was there for that long, and then that was
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: the thing that became a problem because then it became
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: non registered while it was in South Africa.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Where there's a will, there's a way.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right, And honestly, people are terrified of rules and
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: regulations and governments and things like that, but honestly, they're
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: there just to do their job. It's like people at
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: border crossings. People get paranoid about that they're out to
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: get you.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: No, they're there to do their job. They're there to.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: Get people across the border. That's the whole point. That's
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: why they live there, that's why they have this job.
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: And maybe they don't enjoy it as necessarily like an
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: absolute joy to pass people through the border. But if
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: people are excited about crossing the border and excited to
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: come to their country, they'll be like really nice to you.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: And a lot of those folks or those are high
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: status jobs. So you show them a little respect and
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: give them a smile, the hand them a copy of
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: your magazine.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: That will help.
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, totally, absolutely, just show some joy be there, and
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: that's something that they don't get very often.
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: That's some gratitude about the opportunity to see their country.
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: Sure, because people are proud to be from the place
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: they're from.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: And in Africa they have every right to be because
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: Africa is amazing.
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: It's one of those places that I didn't realize it,
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: but you you land in Africa. I didn't realize until
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: I went back. You land in Africa and you fundamentally
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: feel like you're home, and it's one of It's one
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: of those things that even people who weren't born there
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: land there and they're like, there's something, there's something about
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: this continent that.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: That's where we're all from. The genetics on the genetic way.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Back, it's like there's something out the environment, the temperature,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the surroundings totally are just like very optimal for and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: it's very core.
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: It's very you feel it in your core when you
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: step off the plane and suddenly you're like slapped in
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: the face.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: There's some kind of genetic memory totally, something that goes
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: back there totally.
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: I've actually had people I've guided on trips in Southern
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: Africa who have cried getting under them.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: I believe.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: I believe it like that I was meant to be.
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: Even though it's scary as hell, that's part of it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Be here, Yeah, it's part of it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: Out of your comfort zone, right, Yes, exactly.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: That's a beautiful The first time that I heard a
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: lion roar, it was unmistakable. I didn't know what a
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: roaring lion sounded like, but when I heard it, it
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: was unmistakable what it was, and the hair that I
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: don't have on the back of my head all stood up.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: I stood up.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: It was unmistakable like that was a lion, and I'm
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: about to get at It's pretty cool.
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: Suddenly you're not on the top of the food chain
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: no longer.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Long.
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: Yes, but it's I think that sort of visceral experience
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: is something every human on Earth needs to feel something
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: like that at some point. It's so grounding, it's it
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: gets you, i don't know, get into a whole different
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: space of appreciating what it is to live.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: On planet Earth. And I love it. I absolutely love it,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: and that I love taking people.
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: To those places, which is why I was a guide
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: for a long time. I just love taking them out
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: of their comfort zone and seeing that spark. You can
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: do that in Central America too. You take them to
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: a Mayan ruin and they climb up a pyramid that like,
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: only twenty people this year have climbed up this pyramid,
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: and they're like, holy crap, there.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Was a whole civilization. There was a whole because that
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: was why. Yeah, that was your most recent big trip.
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: Was big trip was was twenty twenty three when I
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: made the film and Belief.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Let's talk about that. I'd love to because I haven't
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: heard the details on that story. I'd love to hear
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: about that.
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: So what it was is I used to guide trips
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: with No Limit expeditions back in Central America, and one
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: on the very very first trip, I was actually there
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: with Nick Taylor and we were going to try to
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: do this trip.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: This road called.
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: Camp six which land over it had used for the
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: launch of the.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: L R three.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: I think familiar with that.
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we figured out where it was, We went to
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: the entry port, we drove in and it was just
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: dense jungle and we're out there with machetes in front
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: of these trucks hacking away and we get one point
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: seven k We're like, all right, we're gonna have to
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: camp because.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: It's getting dark.
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: So we camped and we had what we thought was
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: a week's supply of alcohol with us, and we finished
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: it that evening.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: As you might.
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: And then like I'm in my hammock between two trees,
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: and at midnight, like the rain started coming in and
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: it was just full on heavy rain and it did
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: not stop. We got up in the morning and we're complete,
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: everything soaked, and we look at the track and it's
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: just a wash of water going down and we're like,
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: there's no way we can carry on. So we turned
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: around and we winched our way one point seven k
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: back out eighty foot at a time. And again, like
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: I said, with the trip in Africa, where it was
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: in my mind I had.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: To do this, Yeah, sure, that was now in my mind.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I had to finish that track.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: You had to come back.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: I had to come back and do it. So in
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty three, so thirteen years later, came back and
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: brought a friend of mine who's a Josh White, who's
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: been in this industry since two thousand. Yeah, filmmaker, filmmaker,
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: an awesome guy, and we you knew him, I am,
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: and took him back and he filmed it and we
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: went back to complete the trail.
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: Ye know, how amazing is that one vehicle or two vehicles?
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: No, we had so we had three. Three had two
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: trucks who were on camera and then basically a backup
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: truck which was actually a JEP Grenadier which was Nathan's.
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: So it was Nathan driving his truck with Josh Wow.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Being the film crew, and they filmed.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: Nathan brought his render down there too. No, it was
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: just his gee.
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: So Gladiator not grantedy Gladiator, I get the gen numbers.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: That's okay, there's lots of crossover there. Yeah.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: So anyway, yeah, the Gladiator and the Two Defenders and
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: they filmed it, and we've made a fifty five minute
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: film out of it, and that is now up for
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: sale in Hollywood.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I love it, and it's.
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: Getting a lot of tractor. It's getting a lot more
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: traction than I thought it would, so I'm sure it's awesome.
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: And so I made a pitch deck out of it
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: to sell a series, and the series is basically going
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: to be my passion now, which is to I've seen
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: a lot of these places that we go to that
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: we overland in especially in North America, and get closed down,
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: get degraded because there's so much traffic there and the
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: conservation of those places has become like my passion. So
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: I want to sell the series as competent people doing
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: amazing things in remote places, people who are This isn't
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: not a reality show. This is whatever happens on the
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: ground happens on the ground. We didn't reshoot anything for
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: that film. It was just a one take the entire thing.
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: It was awesome, and.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I think that's like it's core selling point.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: So you just brought up a really important point, Graham,
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: which is like, how do we preserve these plays for
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: future generations? So for those that are listening, maybe you
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: can give some advice on ways as overlanders that we
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: can preserve the places that we visit, leave them better
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: than we found it. How else can we give back
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: as members of the community.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: So yeah, just to just to reiterate on the base points,
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: they are going to be like leave no trace, tread lightly.
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: Those principles are out there, so look them up, follow
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: this practices when you go out there. But there are
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: the ways you can collect data. For the scientific community,
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: there are ways you can They're apps out there, like
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: I Naturalists, Dark Skies, there's one for just looking at
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: preserving waterways. Whatever your passion is, you can probably find
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: some way to contribute data to that to preserving that thing,
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: like dark skies or quiet places or something like that.
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: And I've been doing CO two measurements like ground level
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: CO two just as an atmospheric I have found an
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: atmospheric scientist at cards at Universe was just interested in
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: remote area CO two levels, like the respiration of the forest.
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: It's not necessarily climate change, just the respiration of how
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: the trees are breathing and how it's going. I'm taking
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: instruments to go and do that on the ground and
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: then preserving just documenting where wildlife is, what plants are there,
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: what animals are there.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: And what birds are there.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: There's an app where you can identify animals just by
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: switching on the app and it will listen and it
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: will identify.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: Just and there's one called Myriad or something like that
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: it does something similar. And just look into the thing
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: that you're passionate about that you'd like to preserve, and
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: go out there and contribute to it. And I think
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: that's one of those things that it's a little bit
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: and misunderstood that overlanders in general terms, it's all about
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: the journey. But if we can bring in all about
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: the journey to preserving the places that we love to go,
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: it's driven and then comes something bigger than you and
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: more visceral for you, just like we're talking about with
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: seeing lions and things like that.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Itation.
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, and I think that resonates. I'm teaching a
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: class about that here at Expo and really resonates with people.
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: And you're you're a chemist by education education.
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: And Graham for those that are listing. Graham has done
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: some of the most epic main gear reviews for Overland
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: Journal that we've ever done, including the water filter tests
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: that included me getting having to deal with a whole
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: bunch of lawyers because your tests were so good.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: And people relaxing.
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: Some of the companies are like, what that didn't work?
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: We said it worked. Yeah, that was a good one.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: That's epic stuff.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: But I think that's what what's what grounds people right.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: They love this stuff.
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: And again the people in the community who just that
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: brought reality about international travel and even traveling in North America.
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: Two people just like you, Matt. You know that you're
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: following our trip. Now you do that same sort of thing.
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: It's just following in and being inspired by people. And
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: the inspiration that people like Scott and Jonathan and Rozanne
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: and Tom Shepherd and Chris Scott and all these people
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: that we've mentioned, the inspiration that they've bought to people
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: is just it just keeps us alive, and I think
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: it makes us want to keep traveling and giving back. Yeah,
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: that this thing is amazing. You're writing a book about it.
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: It's just it's so cool.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: You're a big part of that.
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: No, that was part of writing it. I think that
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: was all I need.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: It was, but.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Sharing of knowledge.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: It's a knowledge that we have right now.
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: And I think one of my taglines that I'm trying
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: to get out there is that training takes no payload.
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: The more you have in your head, the less you
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: have to take with you because you've learned about it.
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: You can't actually take these things with you.
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, isn't it the message? I don't know if this
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: is actually the attribution is correct, but I've heard a
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: few times, but the MESSI say, a warrior carries his
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: experience on his back. So the less experience you have,
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: the more stuff you're going to have to carry.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: With you.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: So start with training and you'll be surprised how little
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: you need to go around the world.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Jeuz.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: It just seems to be a common theme that we
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: talked about.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: Come along, yeah, yeah, toxically.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: And then you're working on some other stuff too. Yeah,
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: let's talk about the future. What's coming up for Graham Jackson.
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: So the film thing that I mentioned right is hopefully
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: if that sells, then I'll be doing a whole bunch
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: of expeditions in remote areas, doing really cool stuff. But
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: in the interim, while I was waiting for that to
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: go on, you thought, and quite rightly, that writing a
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: book about this stuff, getting your knowledge down is a
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: great way to do it. And I thought, how can
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: I do that for me? And it was to make
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: an app. So I've got an app now that's full
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: of checklists and guides. It's going to be coming out
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: this summer off the Overland community.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: What's it called.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: It's called Overland Glove Box Guide. I love that and
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: it's just just like a little thing you can have
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: on your phone, a whole bunch of information in there,
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: and it's going to be a going to be a
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: curated but growing load of information about overlanding and products
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: that I like, products that I recommend, and one thing
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: that I love about it that I keep popping into
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: my head, like a new idea that might work well
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: in an app like your I was at a Grenadier
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: rally and people were trying to didn't know what like
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: the off road button actually does.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: In the Grenadier.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: So I'm like, put that, put that so, and it's
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: now in the app. You can select in your Grenadier
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: is my vehicle, and it will tell you what off
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: mode does, like.
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: Over how to activate the lockers, how to activate it
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: super into.
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: Superintuitive, and why does the light keep flashing? One idea
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: active and why does it flash for a long time?
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: That info is in there and you can read it
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: and say, oh that's awesome. And actually there are videos
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: in there too, yeah yeah.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: And if I remember you have a Granadier, is that right?
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I do?
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: So tell us what you think?
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: All of my friends are buying Grenadiers.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: It's all you, Matt.
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: What we call is we're all grid nerds.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: Grid nerds.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: So what do you think? I mean, You've owned land
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: rovers your whole life, and now you have something that
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: looks like a land Rover. But drives more like a Toyota.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: What do you think I'm torn?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I have to tell you, yeah, tell us.
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: I'm torn because I've loved the thing from the very beginning,
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: which is why I was an early adopter, why I
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: consulted with them on accessories for the vehicle, talked to
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: Aeneos about.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: It when it first came out.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: I threw down my four hundred and fifty bucks when
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: they sent me the build sheet.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: I built one.
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: Unfortunately, I was a little inebriated at the time. I
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: didn't actually build what I wanted. But then a couple
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: months later they sent me this thing saying, your truck's
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: on the water, prep up to drug cash, and I did,
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: and I've owned it for over a year and I've
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: I feel unfortunately like they maybe over promised and underdelivered,
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: And I would have preferred they'd gone the other way
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: and over under promised and over delivered. But I feel
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: as a mechanical platform it is phenomenal as a as
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: a as a driving experience, I find it a little aggressive,
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: like it's aggressive towards the driver, and I would I'm
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: the sort of person who, like I mentioned, solid axles, cloth.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Seats, all that sort of thing.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: I like to feel like my vehicle is my is
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: my partner, whereas I feel a little bit combative with
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: the Grenadier.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: But that's maybe got some examples of that.
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: That's a personal experience. That's like when the you're saying
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: the alarm goes off. The alarm goes off. It's the steering.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: You've got to work it right. It's it's got these
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: little quirks. But again, quirks a while. I love defenders, Yeah,
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: of course, I just have not fallen in love with
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: the quirks of the Grenadier yet.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Maybe I will.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: That's something I feel like the Grenadier community who I've
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: actually interacted with, I feel the people are actually engaging
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: with that and the feeling like it is like a
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: quirk of a vehicle that they might like. But yeah,
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: the speed the fuel alarm just drives me. It almost
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: killed me the first time it went off because it
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: was so loud, and I'm like, what the why do
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: you have to yell at it so much? I just
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: need a light that shows me that the fuel is
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: getting low.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: That's all I know. All my defender gives and that's all.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: It's so aggressive. It's like you've just below half a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: tank and then it starts yelling at it could change color.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: That's fine, that's totally fine. But the thing is to
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: know it's not. You can see it. I'm looking right
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: at it's right next to the foot up.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: It's not just you're sitting in the seat and it
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: goes off. That happens. But then you park, you go
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: in and get your food whatever. You're still at like
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: lower than a quarter whatever, and you come in and
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: you unlock the car and you open the door, and
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: immediately the alarm goes off again, and you're.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Like, what, what are you yelling at me about?
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and that is the fuel alert going off again,
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: and I'm not even sitting in the driver's seat and
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: the engine isn't switched.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I was just talking those little things.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I was just talking to the service guy for the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: local Ineo Steeler where I bought mine, and he was
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: saying that they have the new software downloaded. Okay, they don't.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: They cannot upload it, so it's like very imminent. But
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I'm very curious as to how much of this feedback
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: because they're pretty clear things that people are like, why
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: are you doing this? There's no reason to do it.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: It will be interesting. I think there's a lot of
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: hope for this software update.
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of hope, but it was they did
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: say that it was going to come out a year ago,
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: so I think that's one of those things.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's been a lot of that kind of stuff. Yeah,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: it is next week, it's next week, it's next week.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: So we've been hearing that for so long.
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: But again, I love it, and I don't want to
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: say bad words necessarily about INAS on a podcast, but.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: It's important for us to be honest with the listeners
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: so that they know.
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: But my encapsulation of the Grenadier actually I came I
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: think was last night in a discussion with you, Matt,
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: was it's British arrogance in a metal box. As a
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: brit I can say that I see it in there,
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: and it's just, yeah, that's they have a bit of
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: a dismissive attitude about all the problems that the little
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: people are having with our car. But we are telling
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: them how it should be. Actually, we're the community of
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: people who drive this thing for real in the real world.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Well, hopefully there's some things that they'll listen to a lot.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I assume in the next couple of months. I think
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: that really helps, and that's great. If they listen to
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: the community, that'll be gold.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: They do care about what the community thinks.
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: I think they do, and I know Lynn put out
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: a response to a letter on the Grenadia Forum forum
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: saying that they were going to listen to the community
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: more and.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: She appreciates it.
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: She's been great, and so that's great, and that's fantastic.
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: If the head of the company is willing to do that,
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: then you know that they're coming into the place that
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: I think we've been talking about in this entire podcast
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: is that it is a community, right, It's a community thing,
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: and we're the people that they were aiming at. And
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: I think maybe they thought maybe we weren't the community
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: they were aiming at, But now they've come to realize.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: That these are the ones. These are the people that
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: buy the car.
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: These are the people who adopted the car, these are
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: the people who have a passion about the car, and
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: therefore these are the people they need to listen to.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: And I think they're coming. They're turning the corner.
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: To realize that that is the perfect place to be.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: That's great, and I agree.
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: I think it's a bright future for the Overland world
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: in general. And I think it's a yeah, there's a
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: lot of companies out there who are in that mode.
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: They're making this world of ours a better place.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: I agree, I love it.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. You've been such
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: a such an important part of this community, of this
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: industry for such a long time. You're a formative component
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: in its in its formation.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: I feel like a speca dust in the on, a
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: cogg and a Wheeld, a bigger of a bigger things.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: You and me both. And it's grown well beyond us,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: which is what we always wanted. And you've contributed so
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: much to the health of this community, the authenticity this community, Graham,
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: and I'm just I'm grateful for everything you've done for
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Overland Journal and Expedition Portal in the community in general.
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: And I appreciate the end. I think it is a
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: great place.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: It is a great place to be awesome.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for being here, Thanks for listening to the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Overlain Journal podcast. We'll catch you next time.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll talk to you soon.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: M HM.