Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Kurt Williams Shares His World Expedition Travel Experiences and Lessons

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Kurt Williams Shares His World Expedition Travel Experiences and Lessons · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: your host, Scott Brady, and I'm here with my longtime friend,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and you've been on the podcast many, many times, Kurt Williams.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: We're gonna do a little different today. Kurt has been
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: on the podcast at least three, four, maybe five times,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure by now, but it's always been something technical,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: something around land cruisers. Your very first podcast, we did
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: go into a bit of your history and all that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: other stuff, but we haven't even touched the surface on
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: your experience as an adventure traveler. And you've been around
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the world and you've just now crossed nearly the entire
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: length of West Africa. You've been with me crossing Russia.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: You've been with me in South America. We've traveled together
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: in Africa before that. I'm trying to think of dross
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the US Australia trips.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So you've done extensive expeditions on six of the seven continents.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We crossed Greenland together on the ice sheets. So you've
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: had a lot of experience in the polar regions, high
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: latitude travel. So we're going to talk a little bit
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: more about you as the traveler and the lessons that
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you've learned in what's now decades of expedition travel experience.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to get to
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: be on the podcast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Always take away the opportunity and what a fun place
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: to get to do it as we travel through Africa.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: After the podcast, head over to Expeditionportal dot com and
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: watch our recent visit to the Great Smoky Mountain Bronco
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Stampede with Honkok, Dina Pro tire Ford Bronco Fans from
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: all over the country You met in pigeon Forde, Tennessee
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: for a great community building event. And thanks again to
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: Hankook Dina Pro for sponsoring this week's Overland Journal podcast.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Let's start off by talking about some of your most
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: favorite memories of all of these places that you've been
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: in the world. What are maybe your top one, two
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: or three places that you've traveled and why was it
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: so special for you.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: That's always a hard one because those memories kind of
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: ebb and flow a little bit, right, and you agree totally.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: You kind of reminisce about places you want to go revisit.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: And I look at a lot of the travel we've
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: been fortunate to do, and certainly this trip as well
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  Speaker 3: as kind of like a wet the appetite of places
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  Speaker 3: you want to go back and spend more time at sure,
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  Speaker 3: because this was a very mission driven trip, as were
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: many of the Expedition seven ones, which were at across continents,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: so we didn't always have time to just say, oh,
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: I'm going to spend a month in this one little area.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: That's right, well, it would be really nice, it just
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: didn't fit the schedule and the needs and the kind
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: of what the goal of the trip was.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So I always look at it that way.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: But places that I have been very fortunate to go
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: back to Australia is always just like holes in my
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: heart all the time. Very remote travel. And I love deserts.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I'm a desert rat. Yeah, very easy to like fall
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: in love with the outback.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Of Australia And what are some regions that you've been
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to in Australia that you really liked?
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  Speaker 2: Love the Simpson Desert hard to beat.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful desert, very remote, legitimate travel, so preparations
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: of vehicles, which is we're not gonna talk about land cruisers,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: but that's why you see so many land cruisers in
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: those areas. Oh, we can talk a little bit about it,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: we touch on it, but that's what you see those there,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: because that's a very reliable platform. And there are many,
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: but that is one that lends itself so well to
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: like the Simpson Desert, which is an area of love.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I would love to get back and do the canning again.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: We had such an awesome canning exit.
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  Speaker 2: I love it. I love it, and so that's that's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: on my bucket list.
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  Speaker 3: And then so I'd say one would be Australia and
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: been fortunate to travel there. My wife Cannice and I
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: and some dear friends spend about six weeks there a
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: handful of years back and have since been back with
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: E seven and did an Exo trip there as well.
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  Speaker 3: So I've been fortunate to do some really fun Australia travels.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Number two for me the and they're really tied as
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I love Latin America, I love Central and South America. Sure,
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  Speaker 3: then fortunate to do trips with Exhibition seven. We in
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: that case we started at the bottom and worked our
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: way at the top sorry is, down to Ushuaia and
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: then worked our way north and then we got to
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  Speaker 3: go do that a few years later with exhibition overland,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: and we did it the opposite direction, started in the
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: north and traversed all the way to the bottom and
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  Speaker 3: in between there and along the way. I've been back
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: to Peru a few times and a few of the
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  Speaker 3: other countries.
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  Speaker 2: Peruvian desert is cool.
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  Speaker 3: Amazing, Yeah, the Atacama deserts to the north and Chili.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, like some of the deserts down there are
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: just amazing.
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  Speaker 3: Peru's got beautiful deserts and of course high mountain, gorgeous rainforest.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Jungle too. Ye. And then is there a third or
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: is there another spot?
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  Speaker 3: I means yeah, I mean plenty I love and so
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: many more I want to go see an explore more.
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  Speaker 3: Africa is an easy one. Of course, we're still like
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: absorbing this one. This is gonna take a couple of
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: months to remember everything we did over the last two months.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Here we've crossed how many countries I'm roughly saying about
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: three hundred please checkpoints?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, at least not including borders. I mean we hit
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: two hundred in Nigeria lowe.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred and eighty one I think was our
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: final Nigeria borders point count, which is incredible, and I
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: just bring that up saying like I need some time
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: to absorb all those countries. But I definitely made some
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: mental notes of countries I would return to.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: And one big one.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Is and Gola really liked our time in Angola, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: there's so much It's a huge country.
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  Speaker 2: We just carved this.
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  Speaker 3: Anytime you travel by vehicle, you usually carve like a
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: little one kilometer wide path down the course you're going
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  Speaker 3: bestusef I.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Think about it that way to really see a country.
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  Speaker 3: You've just got to do so much travel and then
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Gola's got lots.
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  Speaker 2: Left to do well.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I thought would be interesting
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to chat on is, you know, you're so well known
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: in the industry for your expertise around toyotas and land cruisers.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You've raced land cruisers in the Baja five hundred, Baha
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: one thousand, you and your team won the Baja one thousand,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So along the way you've had these parallel experiences of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: being a subject matter expert on land cruisers, which we
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: dove into deeply on those podcasts, and then you've also
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: had a career now racing land cruisers. But also during
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: that period of time, you've now done significant expeditions. But
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: in addition to that, you have also become an educator.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: You've gotten International Fold Drive Training Association certified. You and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: your partner Jackson. Through your company, you guys provide very
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: detailed trips and expeditions for OEMs. You provide OEM support
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: to companies like Toyota and Lexus. So in addition to
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: being a subject matter expert on Toyota's you've also become
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: an educator and certainly one of the most traveled overlanders
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: in North America. So I'm going to kind of stress
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: your answers here a little bit around how do those
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: all work together? What are those core principles that you've
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: come to now that you've got so much knowledge in
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: all of those areas of discipline.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the racing really came up as a group
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: of guys, many of which you know that I have
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: traveled also done a lot of really fun international travel
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: and a lot of cool Utah trips.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Many mutual friends.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Like Paul May's, Dave Connors, Ryan Davis, and Danil Webster,
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  Speaker 3: awesome gentlemen that we've been able to do a lot
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: of really cool adventures over the years, and we got
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: into racing so we started with the Baja one thousand
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  Speaker 3: and some local Utah races. Haven't done the five hundred yet,
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  Speaker 3: but we've done Vegas, Dorino and the mid four hundred
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  Speaker 3: and really fell in love with actually how many parallels
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  Speaker 3: are with overlanding.
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  Speaker 5: And prepping a race car, fuel logistics, where's the fuel
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: need to get bet and like, for example, for the
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: one thousand, we were just using our overland prepped vehicles,
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  Speaker 5: the same vehicles that we would drive to do a
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  Speaker 5: big Baja trip or a trip up to Canada.
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  Speaker 3: All the fuel, all the gear. That's what we used
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: is our chase vehicles. We didn't have these big, traditional
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  Speaker 3: race team full sized trucks with big fuel tanks and
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: rows of tires on them. We just used our off
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: road vehicles to support our racing. So that was always
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: like an adventure that we had. We really spooled up
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: when we're out in the desert hanging out together doing
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: off road trips and overland trips, thinking wouldn't it be
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  Speaker 3: fun one.
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  Speaker 2: Day to do the Baja one thousand.
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  Speaker 3: That's kind of how that all spooled up and got
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  Speaker 3: to the level this and we're still got actively racing,
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  Speaker 3: taking a little bit of time off now as many
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: of us are doing different travel and different pursuits like you.
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  Speaker 2: Do in West Africa. Like, dude, like being in West Africa? Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: that did. Where were you at? Where you were in
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Dakar when the waha?
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  Speaker 3: We were actually like somewhere between Nigeria and Cameroon and
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: then one thousands happened, So I was like getting real
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: time fortunately and starlink was working. I was able to
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: get real time updates and see how our team was
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: doing there and how everybody was getting along. And they
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: had a great run and a great finish in a
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: GX with the team from Japan, and Japan.
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  Speaker 2: Had a great run well.
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  Speaker 3: Along the way, I really had had a great opportunity
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: with Cruiser Outfitters and it's blessed my life and allowed
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: me to meet some amazing friends customers around the world,
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: and through that really started getting into the opportunity to
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: spend more time with OEPs. Some of that was through
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the Land Cruise Museum in Salt Lake, and Jackson and
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: I started getting the opportunity out to take engineering teams
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: out to go do off road travel, to go put
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: together journalist trips as well.
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  Speaker 2: Like you've been a guest on trips that we hosted
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: several over the years, just recently, so that's one of them.
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  Speaker 2: In Colorado.
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  Speaker 3: I did a Colorado one I think we did, came
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: to the land Cruiser launch there in Utahs. We've been
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: fortunate to get to do those, and I guess through
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: that path personally, I really looked at this training industry,
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: the whole idea of offering that training and sharing best
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: practice and best knowledge with others, and through that found
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: the International Floral Drive Training Association, which is just celebrated
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: its twentieth year. But I didn't know a whole lot
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: about it leading up to that. But many like high
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: caliber folks men and women that are in the training industry,
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: a lot of mutual friends you and I have, Nina Barlow,
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: John Marshall's down at Moab, and Bill Burke and the
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Colorados right Chris Cole, like you just can name so
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: many that were like the people I looked up to
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: when it came to their knowledge and their ability to
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: teach pass along good information. They were all members of
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: this organization. So Jackson was was also involved. So through
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: that I really hunkered down and studied and spent a
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: kind of a year preparing myself to be going that
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: process a little bit, you'd be like, you know, it's
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: considered quite difficult.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: To get to get, you know, through the through that
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: entire process, including kind of the capstone test and everything
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: else like that. You know a lot of physical test
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: demonstration of skill, not just a book knowledge, but physical
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: demonstration of skill. How did you prepare for that? What
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: were some of the ways that you learned? Did you
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: attend trainings yourself or how did you prepare for that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: over that year?
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so part of that was, yeah, just attending any
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: training I could fit myself into. There's a group, well
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: known group Overland Experts OEX that does a lot of
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: military and mobility based training, both recreational but primary military
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: side in Utah. I was able to help them set
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: up their Utah operations, kind of set up their permit,
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: get their routing, and help them on a first handful
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: of trips they did to get a big basically the
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: guide and help put the routes together, and helped with
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: some of the program training. Sure through that got to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: be a fly on the wall through the other training
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: and really got to see just how intensive and how
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: much they offered as far as different kind of curriculum
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: throughout a five day course, which was fun to see
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: and that really will help me prepare for the things
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: I knew, but more importantly all the things I didn't know.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: You know, you don't know what you don't know.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Sometimes until you go then and so yeah, through that
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: process really identified a whole bunch of weak links in
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: my knowledge base, both just true knowledge book knowledge things
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: you can study up on, but a lot of that
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: hands on practical knowledge you just have to go do
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: and do repetitions and spend time doing that. So with
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: some other mentors, I was able to really study up
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: on that and then go do what the process is
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: called it TFC a Testing for Certification. It's a one week,
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: hands on, practical week long test. Basically, it's not a
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: training for certification, it's a testing for certification. You come
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: to the event. In the last ten full of years
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: it's been done in New Mexico and all the there'll
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: be anywhere from twenty to forty trainers certified members already
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: that are there hosting that. They all do it as
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: volunteers because they just love to see the organization grow
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: and continue, and it's everything from adult education presentation in
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: front of a group, driving spotting, and certainly a lot
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: of recovery and just good overall knowledge mechanical systems, vehicle
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: walk arounds. You know, nobody comes out of that or
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: it goes into that being an all knowing expert, and
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: we all learn so much during the process. But it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: just expected that you could come into that course and
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: present yourself and show that you are kind of a
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: subject matter expert. In off road training there that could
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: mean a lot of different things depending on who your
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: customer is. Sure many of them areered guides, and like
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: the recreational world, many are in the military world. Probably
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: a good chunk of our trainers and members of the
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Association are in the military training world, which is a
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: very different type of mindset and different skill set than
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: those training or doing like recreational guiding in MOAPP, for example. Sure,
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: a lot of parallels, a lot of OVERLAPP, but can
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: be quite different. So it's it's not that you have
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: to pass it with one hundred percent know everything and
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: a solve it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You'll learn a lot along.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: The way, but it's just showing that you use best practice,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: can adequately demonstrate and share and instruct others how to
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: do that as well.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: What I like about it is it's.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Created some standards for safety and for education, and it's
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: helped to remove a lot of the disparity from one
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: training to the accident. Makes it really easy for like
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Overland Journal to recommend, hey, go get a trainer from
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the International Fold transist issues and of course there's some
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that are the best in the world, and there's some
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: that are still learning, but generally you're going to get
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the right kind of curriculum, which I think was really good.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I really like about the International
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Fold Right Trainers Association is they have they've begun to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: ask questions around the way things have always been done,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: and that has been interesting to watch, and I think
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Chris Cole has been a big part of that of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: do we really always have a static winching recovery or
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: do we start to introduce some dynamic components to that,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: which was quite groundshaking and controversial, I would think in
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the beginning, because traditionally you would never want to introduce
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: more energy into the system than necessary. But to his point,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: there are times when the recovery itself is very dynamic,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: vehicles needing to move and stay under power, and by
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: introducing something like a KUR a kinetic energy recovery rope,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you're able to take up some of that slack and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: reduce the likelihood of that extreme shockloading that can or
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: when the vehicle maybe slides back or gains traction and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: moves forward and then the winch catches up or whatever
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: is happening in that scenario. So it's been really interesting
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: to see some of the best practices change and a
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: ball over time. I think that's that is an indication
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of a very healthy organization. Yeah, that I absolutely will
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: second that that.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: That's been one of the neatest parts about it as
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: far as being from a member aspect.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: One is that you can always lean on the other members.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: If you have an.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Event coming up, you know that, hey, I could hire
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: so and so and so and so and they'll come in.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: We have a standard, vernacular, standard kind of teaching approach.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Everybody does it differently, but you know that we can
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: present and adequately like pull off a good event and
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: provide people with good information because everyone's kind of got
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: a very standardized system and that it'll be safe. But
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: it's sick exactly. Everyone has safety in mind, you know,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: first and foremost. But along with that, yeah, is the
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: challenging maybe kind of the stereotypes looking at gear, the
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: off road recovery world. As you know, gear is changing
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: so so quickly, like day by day there's a new
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: product launch. Some of it is an answer in search
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: of a problem that others are going kind of be like,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: why did that not happen years ago? That's an amazing
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: piece of equipment, right, you mean like the recovery board
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: that's also a fuel bladder.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I don't know that anyone need those.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: I've never thought about driving on my fuel camp, you know,
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: like on a hot day in the desert, spending a
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: tire on that.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It's a great idea. Never crossed my mind. Yes, answer
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: in search of a problem.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: On the flip side, there's a lot of really cool
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: gear from great companies around the world, and a lot
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: in the United States making some really high quality gear
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: and and kind of chattering those old stereotypes of only
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: using certain equipment, you know, like we saw you've been
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: in it long enough. When Witch just went from wire
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: rope to synthetic group, there were many that said, like,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: no way, will I ever use a soft robe or
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: synthetic line on a witch, Like there's no way that
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: on working.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Out fast forward.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Call it fifteen years, twenty years even since that really
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: started taking place. How many wire winch ropes you saying,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: that's not bad. We still train with those, still use them.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: There's still there are applications where they're about absolutely yeah,
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: you know, like one that comes up all the time,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: you'll you'll resonate.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: With this is firefighting education.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So like you don't use a synthetic line if you're
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: a brush truck and wildfires. Right, So it's all about
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: like the right part for right application, the right tool
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: for the job. But yeah, it's been neat to see
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: and that information sharing is a great part of the
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: International Fold Trainers Association out that TFC week, but then
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: also throughout the year and different there are different meetups
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: and different opportunities to get together with trainers, and a
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: newsletter is somebody that is testing the new piece of
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: gear will say hey.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Here's what I found, like just FYI, this is working
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: really well.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: I think this is a better practice than what we've
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: come what we've met using.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Or there's no one brand that anybody is required to use.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: In fact, quite the opposite. We encourage everybody to use
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: everything because it doesn't and that's what your students will
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: show up with. Just because you don't like X y
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Z brand item doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: adequately and safely teach how to use that because that's
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: what they have.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And you know is especially a new member.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: To the overland community that gone and bought this gear,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: they don't want to show up to a class to.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Be told junk you need to go buy something different.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Rather show them a pro and con their gear, but
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: how to safely use it because the reality is there's
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: a lot of really good off road equipment on the market,
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: particularly in the recovery room, a lot of great gear.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: There's some bad stuff, but there's a lot of religoussodes
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: long it could be safely used.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Why not embrace that?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: What are some of the you know, if someone was
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: looking to buy a recovery kit, is there one one
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: or two or three that you have really leaned towards.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: You know, you're not endorsing it, but maybe it would
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: help the listener that says, hey, you know, I should
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: really update my recovery kit or there's is there one
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: or two that you have really come to like.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: Thanks to Hankok Dina Pro Tire for supporting this week's podcast.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: Head over to expeditionportal dot com to learn more about
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: all trained tire design as we interview their tire experts
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: and take a close look at the diner pro at
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: two Extreme as an example of the all train tire category.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there's a few brands you can't go wrong with.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: You know it's going to be a good, vetted, tested product,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: and they're a little different each other from like price points,
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: so like starting with like an ARB and they still
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: make good recovery gear. They've got different price levels and
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: some of it is very mudget friendly for a modest
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: weekender kid.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Factor fifty five is definitely has.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: A very wide varie range, huge range between their Factor
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: fifty five branded gear and their warm gear. Yeah, all
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: great components. I'm kind of like the upper e schelot
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: would be, Like Safe Extract makes some amazing gear too,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: and I own a little bit of all of those
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: and some others as well. So those aren't the only
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: three by any means, But if you looked at the
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: offerings those three have, you'd find anything you would need
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: and kind of at a few different price points, all
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: of which you're good. You really need to look at
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: your use case. And I wouldn't say use case because
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: ultimately you're using a kinetic energy recovery rope or a
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: strap traditional strap to get unstuck.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: But how often are you doing that?
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: That's kind of maybe where you start spending a little
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: more money if it's gonna be something you plan to
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: do a lot, and making sure that they're good placarding
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: on the equipment so you can see what the working
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: load limit is, what the minimum breaking strength is.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: These are things that you need to know about the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: equipment that you're buying. Some of them even have wear indicators,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: have strained indicators that can let you know if the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: if the product is in service or not. Buying from
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a reputable company I think is the most key component
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of it because it's very I've seen tree straps that
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: were made out of nylon and that's a no no.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I don't want the tree strap to stretch. There's certain
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: things that you want to have behave in a certain way.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I've used the AEV recovery gits a lot recently, great
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: stuff as well, because I've got really good placarding on them,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: you know, really good quality components, which is great. Yeah,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I think I think that uh now more than ever,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it's a great time to be buying recovery recovery here
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and getting good training news important.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, get great products out and they're not to make
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: it all thumbs up because there's.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Some bad stuff out there. Now.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: When you bring up like working load limits and MBS's
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: and mts is, there are companies out there advertising maximum
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: breaking strength down because that number looks a lot bigger
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: on their box or on their packaging than a true
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: working load limit or an MTS which you know, with
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: including a safety factor in there to get.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: To the work unload limit.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Well, that's really dangerous because I don't care what a
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: sample with the maximum of bat just samples survived.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I want to know where the very bottom of what
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: minimum breaking string is.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I know we're getting kind of granular there, but that's
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: an important differentiation.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: There is something very you know to distill that into.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: How you purchase your gear, and I think that's a
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: big part of any training and I know there's a
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: lot of great trainers out there that definitely cover this,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: whether they're members of.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: The International Forward divet Trainer Association or not.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Many are teaching this, this whole idea of looking at
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: your gear and identifying if it is properly rated and
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: properly rated for the type of recovery you're going to do,
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: and that's is important to do.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Before you even go purchase. Any year, we did a
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a quick example of that.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Jackson and I and Chris Walker, another great trainer, did
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: a kind of an advanced recovery class at the Big
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: Thing event at the Overland ext Overland Ranch this past year,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: which was a ton of fun. Had a great group
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: and the only We've got a lot of feedback about,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: you know, things to do and they had everyone seem
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: to have a really good time and covered some great basics.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: But the one.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: That really kept coming up is I wish this class
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: was in the beginning of the event, so then I
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: could have gone and asked those questions to vendors a
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: year for my vehicle. I thought, that does make a
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: ton of sense because all too often you can walk
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: around an overload expo or any off road event, pop
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: on a manufacturer's website and you're gonna be you know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: you can look at numbers and kind of have a
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: rough idea for what works for you. But if you
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: have a little bit of a concept of how much
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: the Meyer factor can really affect a vehicle.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: We dealt with the very mid on.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Just a few days back right here, right right, the
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: very stuck semi truck, and we were successfully abel to
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: get it removed with the care But if you were
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: to get the math out on how stuck that vehicle is,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: it can be quite surprising how much load and how
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: fast those loads can ramp up when you start getting
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: vehicles stuck to like will depth and certainly frame depth buyers,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: like we're talking two or three times the week in
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: the vehicle, and then you add any broken components or
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: radient slope to that, things can ramp up very high,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: well above what a lot.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Of generally accepted recovery gear will had. And that's where
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: you want to have the right kit.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: That way, you can introduce schooling blocks, or you can
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: do bridling things to help spread the load out during
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the recovery process.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: And all of that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Plus some good training training is the most important. You
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: could probably even get a hold of a trainer and say, hey,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I don't want to buy anything. Yet I would love
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to spend some money to attend year class. They'd probably
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: let you borrow gear and then you can make You
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: can make the right purchase decision when you're done, or
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: ask the trainer what you should buy.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: But the most.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Important thing, just like with emergency medical care in the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: back country, we want to get training right.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: It's more important than the medical kit.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It's the understanding of how to assess the situation and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: to provide definitive backcountry care that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Keeps someone alive.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting point. You bring up the training
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: when it comes to medical training. I think as Overlanders
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: were quick to say, yes, we should all have that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Everybody should stay current on some level medical training.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: And look, it gives us a feel good knowing that
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: you went through medical training before this trip. As Ded
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: I s, something happens. Stuff happens every day half in
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: the back country. We kind of all have none of
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: us certain crazy medical professionals, but we have a little
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: bit more knowledge than we had before. We're building upon
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: that and can at least make some safe decisions and
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: know some answers along the way.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: But often when it comes to driving skills, recovery skill
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: or mechanical skill.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: We often say no, no, no, I know that, or
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't need a paid and somebody teach
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: me that. And that may be the case.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Maybe a promit like you're not going to learn anything,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: You're you're doing great. But many, most myself included, have
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: I learned something.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I've learned something every time? Every time?
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Right, I learned through that whole I Ford TFC process.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: How much I didn't know, Like we had our notebooks
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: you're in. It's kind of a bit of classroom. Mostly
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: outside of it, I had the last page of my
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: book with like Kurt Spix list like all the things
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: like holy I knew all about this or she even
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: answer to all how that all works?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And I don't.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: So it was fun to expose those leaks, but expose
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: the additional training I'd love to have. And we've talked
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: a little bit in the podcast about what's called the
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Dunning Cruger Kruger effect, and one of the best examples
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: of the Dunning Cruger effect is driving. They use it
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: as an example that if you were to pull you know,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: the the pool of drivers that eighty six percent of
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: them would say that they're a good driver, which is
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: statistically impossible and not possibly. It's unpossible because there's there's
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: a thing called a Bell curve, which means that about
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: twenty percent of the drivers are going to be really
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: poor drivers, and you know, about about sixty percent or
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: so of them are going to be average drivers, and
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: then about twenty percent of them are going to be
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: great drivers. So it's interesting to me how few people
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: get driving training when it is related to overlanding, because
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: they already think they're a good driver, but the number
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: of rollovers, we've had some tragic incidents happening in recent
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: years within the overland space where someone is driving outside
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: of their skills. So we really want to make sure
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: that we're all getting training and that we're getting refreshers
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: on that training.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: When I went through the Rally driving school, I was shocked.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: At how many of those things I didn't know or
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: didn't or couldn't perform them properly until I got through
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the training.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Here we are on this trip, We've done a whole
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: lot of driving, you know, very hospitable conditions, very rough roads,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: but also very dangerous traffic conditions, and we were all
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: talking about, like we should go to a rally driving
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: amer success just an area that we all acknowledge can
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: spend more time learning.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: And I would love to do something. And it's been
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: too long since I did it. I mean it was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: probably ten years. So you're ready to go back. Yeah,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I need to go I need to go back. I
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: need to get that refresher and tune up those skills.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And so I think training is such an important part.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the podcast before, but there's
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: a great Massiah Warrior saying that a man carries his
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: experience on his back. And you'll notice that the most
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the more over built a vehicle is, the more likely
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the person doesn't either have travel experience or extensive training.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: The more training you get and the more experience you
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: have in the field, the less likely you are to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: overload your vehicle or to bring a bunch of unnecessary stuff.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, that makes such I think ends up saving you
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: money and time at the end of the day.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: And a little bit of a tangent, but on that note,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: it is a parallel. I truly believe those that get
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: out the most, those that will pick up on a
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Friday after work and say, hey, let's burn out for
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: a four day overland trip. Go do some cool trail,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: or go do some longest ones have simple systems and
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: there they do, because if you're completely inundated by how
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: much you have to pack each time and where everything
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: stows and is this charge is that plugged in?
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: If it's a very complicated process, you.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Get overwhelmed by loading that up on a Friday afternoon,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: and it's too easy to say no, I'm not gonna go.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: But if you have a simple but adequate system, you'll
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: find yourself saying like, yeah, I can be ready in
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: thirty minutes, let's.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Do this, let's go.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: And I think that goes with the I agree, the
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: danger of an overloaded vehicle that's too heavy, the having
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: too much stuff, so you're like task saturation. You got
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: too much going on to use on your trip, but
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: certainly the knowledge base of how to use all those
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: items too, it's a lot going on.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the gear gear rarely solves the problem in the field.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: It's really gonna be it's gonna come down to knowledge
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and some basic equipment. So if you've got your basic
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: recovery gear sorted, if you got your basic medical gear sorted,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: then you're fine. You know, you don't really need anything else.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: It's not necessary. And now let's talk a little bit
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: about that about gear selection. Obviously it's gonna be very
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: vehicle specific. What works for a big heavy sprinter man.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Is it gonna make sense for the same folks that
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: are out there with a roof top ten on their jymney. Sure,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: we're seeing all over here in Africa, they're different vehicles
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: out a jymney too long time land Beca still want
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: a jymney. But yeah, the different need sets. But if
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: you're traveling with groups here we are in a three
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: vehicle convoy, the EXO trucks, we don't have to have
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: the exact same gear in every single truck. There's things
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: that need to be redundant. Medical kits right that needs
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: to be redundant. Every vehicle needs to have fire extinguishers,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: even a tool kit, things that are very fundamental. But
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: when it comes to recover for a gear, we don't
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: need a pull pal on all three vehicles. In this case,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: we made the decision to have a winch only on
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: one vehicle and the others would plan on using that
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: as the winch truck. Where we've got some other means
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: of recovery, you know, like traction extract using bax tracks,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: using a lift jack to can we do a jack
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: and stack?
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Are there ways to get out?
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Look at that with your group of travelers, the friends
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: you travel most with, other couples you go out with,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: if you have some of those in your group, why
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: don't you have that conversation ahead of time?
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Hey all carry this, you carry that. You all should
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: have the basics.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: You know, everyone should have some basics that pinetic energy
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: recovery roll, a couple of attachment options such as a
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: saft shackle or a scoop in bowshackle. I'd like to
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: see everyone with the static extrappe even for just doing
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: a toe extraction of a down vehicle or a broken vehicle.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: Of course, if you have a winch, a lot more
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: goes into that. But does everybody need to have all
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: the gear all the time. Now we start getting into
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: those trucks that are the catalog build with things falling
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: off the outside because they have too much air, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: then yeah, that you can't possibly know how to comfortably
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: use all.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, every vehicle's got a pulley block in it. Now
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you've got three bully blocks. You don't need to have
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: one vehicle with three and the other one's got two
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: you can really easily.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Or you don't need to bring three above ground fire pits.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Right, exactly, there's a great except where three welders, right,
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: they don't need three portable welders.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: We don't need. There's things we don't need that many.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I'll put a big asks out of the No.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: You agree, if you're doing a lot of remote solo travel, well,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: then you need to be prepared to solve problems by yourself.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I'll let you decide what that means based on the
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: places you're gonna go, the vehicle you have, and the
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: positions you put yourself in.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And I think usually that starts with buy the right
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: truck for the trip. You know, if you've got a
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: really light duty vehicle and you plan on going super remote,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: it may not be the right choice.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: You're better off. That's the reason why they sell a
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: lot of land cruisers.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: So if you want to go really remote and solo,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: you're better off starting with a pinnacle over land vehicle
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: like a land cruiser. In my mind, you're also going
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to include like a gew wagon, You're going to include
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a rended ere now or certainly you're going to include
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: something like a Defender or Nissan Patrol. But other than that,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna go really remote and solo, you probably.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Want to be careful with the vehicle choice. Yeah. Absolutely agree. Yeah,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: it's a big one.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: I mean when you get into spare's planning, I mean
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: we're looking at these trucks and.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: What spares could we have used, What spares did we
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: have and needed?
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Fortunately, these are fantastic vehicles that we're traveling and haven't
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: needed in spark. You know, the longer you travel, the
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: longer you push it, every vehicle will need a spear
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: something in ne this review start with a spare tire.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Everybody should have a full size one of those. We're
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: seeing a lot.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: There's some products in the market and even some advertising
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: and marketing about like literally leave.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: The Spirit home because there's kids to fix those.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I love some of those kids as an option to
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: fix an existing tire or head, but I would never
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: advocate anyone leave a tire behind or leave a tire home,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: particularly for overland now lolication it's like if it's a
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: rock crawl trail, the trailers at the bottom of a
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: two point one mile rock crawl. Worst case you had
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: to do is hike down there and roll it back
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: up or send a buddy down to a rabbit.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Not the end of the world. We're at out here.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: We went days without seeing a tire store for its right,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Like we weren't hetting a tire fix. They don't even
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: have our size a tire anywhere or not at all.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: So it's fundamental we had in spare tires. Maybe it's
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: maybe it saves you from having the twin spares. Those
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: kinds of things would agree with that, you know, so
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: you can just go with the tires are so good anymore,
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: but you definitely do want to full size size spare.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: I look at tires, and this is one of the
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: many tangents we can get into as we talk about
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: all these fun overland subjects, but that as soon as
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: you use your spare, well now you don't have a spare,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: and it's no longer to have a spare, So you
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: really should be turning back or changing your trip plans
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: and look for a tire store. Sometimes that's not gonna
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: be a mega inconvenience, right, Like you're gonna be in
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: areas that have lots of tire stores. A tire size,
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: a common tire brand. You can have one that afternoon.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: There's gonna be other places, including in North America, where
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: a tire store could be a solid one day detour
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: or more and you're probably gonna end up overpaying for
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: a tire that's not even the brand you want.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: We're a matching tire, right, and.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: So having the full sized spare is key, and having
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: a way to fix a tire so that you can
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: prevent having to use your spirit. So I'm a big
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: fan of using a good having a good tire repair
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: kid on board and a sideball patch kid is They're
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: great kids, and their consent could save you from yeah,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: or it helps you put your spare back in the
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: service or the punctured tire back in the service.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Right, and now you're back to heaven. You have apt
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: that makes such a difference.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about a travel in general.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Now that you've been around the world so many times
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: and across so many continents, how do you feel like you've.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Changed as a traveler.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: What are some of the ways that What are some
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of the advice pieces of device you could give to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: a new traveler. Things that you've learned along the way
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: that's made travel either a little more enjoyable or a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: little easier for you.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: We touched on keeping things simple, the simplicity of vehicle builds,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: and I think that I can't stress that enough that
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: I have just seen it through customers and friends and
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: clients that I've spent time on the trail with that
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: there is a direct correlation between an adequate but not
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: over the top build, meaning you just don't have so
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: many gadgets, you're in a dated by it, and actually
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: comfortably getting out.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: And using your view. It's easy to set up your camp,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: it's easy to get into bed.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: You know, you're not like overly complicated sleeping systems that
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: require super flat ground or super soft ground or just
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: things that don't exist everywhere you go.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Easy cooking systems, something that's easy.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: We've been talking about how well the systems we have
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: on this trip are working.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: The fact that we can be heating.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Up water for coffee in about thirty seconds, so from
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: the time when the vehicles put in the park drive
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: so all of those items up. That's been a big
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: learning curve for me and I still and I repeat
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: a quote from you all the time, Scott and a
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: lot of these classes we offer and a lot of
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the coaching we do is that your vehicle build is
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: not done once you've bolded the last thing on.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: It's only done when you remove.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: The last unnecessary item because and that's part of that
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: Dunning krew a crew as well like you. If you
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: look at it that way, you build your vehicle up
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: and up and up that you add things, you buy
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: more things. New product comes out when you built that on,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: But then you need to go use it a handful
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: of times and say I've never used that thing.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: I'm taking it up. I don't really need that to take.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: Up a third of the space in the back of
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: my cargo area.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Leave. You start leaving at a home and you know what,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: you never miss it once you feed the back.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Right and the vehicles handle so much better, they stop better,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: they get better fuel economy, they're more reliable when they're
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: not overstrained all the time.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's a big one is just learning how
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: to they're the travels, learning how to just properly outfit
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: the vehicle that covers all the bases you need safe,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: rely a little comfortable, have the necessary spares and recovering
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: here and the event things do happen, but don't get
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: too over the top on it.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Don't.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: The worst thing for me, the most heartbreaking thing to
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: hear is when I have X y Z, then I'm
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: gonna go do that trip. When I have a tent,
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: I'll actually go do this, or when I have you know,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: a freezer fridge, then I'll go do this trip.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Because here we.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Are traveling, and we've been in very remote places in
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: West Africa, and there's just people also out there in
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: a stock Toyota pickup truck that's got a million kilometers
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: on and bounce around a dirt road. Right, So don't
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: ever let those be invisible friction points and visible hurdles
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: to stopping you from actually going out and doing and
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: experiencing what you really do need to have to be comfortable.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying don't buy a fridge.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: I love fridges, right, I love the ability to have
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: fresh food, cool drinks out on the trail out on
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: these long trips, and frankly, for where we've been traveling,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: they are mandatory.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Ut Like, there's not.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Food options in many of the places we've met. Didn't
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: see others for days in a time, right, we have
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: of frozen meat in the freezer.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have mills on board to be able to
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: have actual sustenance there.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a big one.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Another lesson from the road that's always still learning this
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: lesson every day is just the patience of travel. It's
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: very easy to get frustrated and inundated with the process
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: at orders, particularly and even the police checkpoints. Some would
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: be so frustrated are with slowing your travel to go
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: through one hundred and eighty one checkpoints in Nigeria. It's
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: kind of you think, man, I got so much more
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: done today or made a few more plombers.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: But the reality is is we are guests in their country.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: That's how the system works, how they want smile and
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: not and you know what, rolling down the window and
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: giving a smile and nod and a big dumb thumbs
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: up from us.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: They were like, who are these dumb smiling people? Go on?
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: You know, it actually was the best, the best way
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: to get through a.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: Police checkpoint when you have armed people, there kind of
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: could be an otherwise a little bit of tension, right,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: little friction for some like oh man, they've got guns
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: and why are they stopping us. But you roll down
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the window and you give them big hello and smile
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: and usually they're like yeah go. You know, like totally
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: they could see your tourists, they could see your tourists.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: They can see you mean no harm.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: We weren't coming at them from any kind of yeah,
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: an a threat position. So yeah, but that was a
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: patient thing, right, learned the patients. This is the process
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: every border. We actually planned on more time at the borders,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: just because we knew they could have the preponderance of
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: slipping time wise on us, so we planned on about
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: one full day per border. That means exiting the country
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: entering the next because you know, that's multiple steps you
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: dealt with this the carnes that's a vehicle has to
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: leave a country, that's its own paperwork. The people have
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: to leave the country, that's the passport immigration. But then
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: usually there's like a customs process as well. You have
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: to leave customs, which is inspect the vehicle for what
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: you may have purchased or leaving the country, or a
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: health inspection or yellow fever or whatever.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Yellow fever. Yeah, like all these steps.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: Well, then you get to the very next country, which
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: is sometimes what ten meters away and you get you
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: get to repeat all those steps in the exact opposite
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: or exactly right, and that could be trying from a
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: patient standpoint, And particularly in some of these countries. Now
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: the further we've moved off, it's changed, but we saw
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: a lot of that in the North, where they like
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: so much redundant paperwork. We had a copy of our
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: passport that we gave them, but then they still needed
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: the passport to like write everything in the passport downright.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And you're looking at these.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: Log books they have, these folks have that are their
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: stacks of them behind their desk.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: They're covered in an inch of dust, like nobody ever
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: looks at that information.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: So it feels a bit redundant, feels a bit useless
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: to us. But I always step back and say, this
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: man or woman has a good job, a government job.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: That's the process they do. They're not going to lose
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: their job to make it more convenient for us. That's
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: just it's the system. We smile, we nod, we thank them,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: and we abide by that's just the rule of traveling
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: in their country. And don't you think that makes it
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: that much easier On the next overlander that shows up,
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: you know, like I think we all have a responsibility
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: to each other as fellow travelers, try.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: To spread some good will.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: That way, when the next traveler comes up, they're not like, oh,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: here's another one of those.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, they're gonna be impatient, or here's something one
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: hundred percent I think, yeah, spot on.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the easier you can make it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: For the folks at the border, have all your paperwork ready,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: have everything dial then and then just be friendly with them.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Then the next group that comes it's just gonna be
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: that much easer.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: And we've seen that in borders where they've told us
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, we just had some travelers come through last week.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: They were from somewhere, They were from here, and here
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: where are you from? You know, they were uniquely curious.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: Never did we have anybody upset we or going through
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: the border.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: We're just like, hey, big long line. Here us wait
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: in line like everybody else does.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: So Han kok Dinah pro Tire welcome to you to
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: visit Expeditionportal dot com and enjoy a series of adventures
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: from the Jeep Beach event in Florida, the Broncos Stampede
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: and Jeep Invasion in Tennessee to the Off Road Expo
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: in California. Thanks Han Cook.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: Well, And one of the things that I think you
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: add so much, I mean you add a lot on
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: these trips.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're a world class driver. You have tons
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of experience with driving in complex situations, a lot of
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: recovery experience. You have a lot of experience as a
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: traveler with orders and processes and even trying to learn languages,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: communicating with locals and all that other stuff. But one
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: of the things I love so much about you, Kurt,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: is your attitude every day you come into each day,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't mean that you haven't had bad days,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: but I could hardly tell.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: And I've known you for twenty years.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: So what are some of the ways that you have
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: learned to be able to come in with such an
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: open mind and the kind of an open spirit and
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm every day that can get hard on a two month,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: three month trip. How have you found that you're able
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to bring a little bit of that curve magic with him?
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm still learning, and we all have down days
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: on these trips, you know, like stuff happening back home or.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: Loved ones or we're all missing right, Miss and I.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: Loved ones and this was a tough one for all
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: of us because we missed Thanksgiving.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a tough holiday.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: I know it's a big holiday for you and your
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: family and your dad and your sisters senior that your
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: your niece and nephews. Likewise, for myself, that's usually been
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: one you spend time. But you know, any being down
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: about it or being a drag on the group because
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: that's where we were today, wasn't going to change anything, right,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: So what did we do? We decided we're gonna have
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: a great Thanksgiving dinner meet Paul's chicken strips and French
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: from you too.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: It was a great thing. Dude, in that camp was
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: awesome camp.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: And uh, that is a rat cap, very Southern Utah
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: like so I felt right at home.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: I just try to keep it up beat. I mean,
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not, by no means perfect.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I definitely have days where I'm dragging to especially those
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: long slog days. We've got a lot of clombers to make.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: You have a lot of pressure. Being out in the
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: lead vehicle like you are. You're calling out all these
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: potholes and you're taking hits because you didn't know they
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: were there, and I think we decided at some point
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: we're gonna quit calling out potholes and just call out
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: smooth pants for everybody.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Assume there's potholes unless we tell you otherwise. That's right,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: because it was that padge. It's so nice down here,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Like we haven't said the word. I know it has
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: been beautiful assphole, but yeah, just trying to keep it positive.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: And like I said, I'm still reconciling that on a
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: daily basis. But we're here.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: We're getting to do an amazing adventure with all friends
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: we love and people that we love spending time with joy. Yeah,
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: we miss our families back home, We miss our loved ones.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: But they're supporting us. That's huge. The fact that we've
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: got the support from home.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: They're willing to let us come do this right and
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: hold down everything while we're gone.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: That's big for all of us to have that ability.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: And uh yeah, just knowing we're doing something pretty amazing
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: and it's great to do tough things and we were,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: yeah we should be doing tough thing.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: We should be doing tough things.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: I've heard you say it over and over on this trip,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: like how you know, like doing hard things definitely makes
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: this better.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: People.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: We're not learning anything unless you're doing something hard. And
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: actually shared that with my wife Candace about three four
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: months of go now so well before the trip started.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: She was like, Oh, yeah, you're excited about it or
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: you're nervous about it, And I said, no, I'm of
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: course nervous. But there are a lot of a lot
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: of weird border things and travel and just just the
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: sheer logistics of getting the tire I had to carry
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: through the airport you through.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I was worried about that. I knew the team needed.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: It right, but overall I was like, but it's fun
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: to do hard things, to put yourself to the test,
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: push your limits. Like I didn't know any a lot
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: of languages. We've tried to learn one or two words
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: long way. That's fun to do and try and remember
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: those like keep trying every day to learn a little
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: bit and take takes the edge off of the stressors. Uh,
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: you've got your own kind of personal kit with you.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: What are some things that you brought along that you
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: think have really made the trip better for you?
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Some little pieces of kid Yeah.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: Like a little I bring I've got an iPad just
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: running my mapping systems, and I keep a few different
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: mapping systems on there because there's no one that's like
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: perfect for the entire world, right, and traveler everywhere. I
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: love keeping we're doing this with X so we get
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: the Powerman run and we got a Guya running.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: But I love running my daily block track.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: Everywhere I ever travel, and have been doing that for
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of years.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: So I can go back and look at that device.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: It's an all iPad.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: I've subsequently moved it along to a few new ones,
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: but I love seeing our travel.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: And you've heard me say this.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: At night when we get to camp, we play a
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: little contest, right, like can who knows how many kilometers
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: we did today? How many hours are driving? I'm like
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: a numbers guy. It's the engineering me. I like to
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: look at our daily moving average, our daily total moving time,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: look at those numbers and see how they were really progressing.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: And we were using that information in our gant chart,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: really nerding. We build the gan chart of our traveler
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: get chart that became our bible. It was awesome, Yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: it was awesome, and we use that to really say, like,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: here's kind of how many days we need to plan
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: on for end goal.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: And here's how many days we have for ROC. You know,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like this is it'd be great if we had more.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: It'd be great if the drive times can be lower
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: so we can spend more time in camp and enjoying
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: the outdoors and enjoying the places we get to stop.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: It's not always practical, right, Sometimes we just had to push.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: But having those numbers and playing with those kind of
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: was my sanity of our progress.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I think that you between Richard and you and the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: detail that you went into on that game chart, it
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: allowed us to make decisions or let play to make
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: decisions like yeah, we're gonna spend two days and go
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: see the gorillas. Yeah, because we knew that we were
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: gonna make it. We were gonna we could. We had
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: started to bank some days back.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: We had that ability with an atotion like Play said, hey,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: we have the in the count is it schedule?
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Can we make that work? And we look at it
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: this here, Yeah, we can do that.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's go to Atoti, right, spent two days there
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: the river trip, Hey, yeah, I think that was it's
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: getting it tied on our schedule again.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: But I know we can do this.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Going up to Ozzie's place, Like, it's a little of
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: it out of the way, but it's worth it.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: It's so so yeah, having.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: That schedule I did, that's over a couple month period trip.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: There's no reason at all you can't make a little schedule,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: even for shorter trips.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: Don't get buried by the details like that you're annoying
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: your travel companion's Hey, lunch was supposed to be over
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: eight minutes ago.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: We gotta get to the next one.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Don't go to action in detail, but just have some
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: goals and understand if you're doing a week long trip
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: through southern Utah, northern Arizona, or you're heading out to
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: the deserts in Nevada the mountains of Ura area.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Like, have a little schedule, no reason not to put
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: it on paper and share it.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: Get buy in from the other travelers in your group
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: that're going. You may find they really embrace and appreciate knowing, Hey,
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: where we're supposed to be tomorrow?
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Right, Like some crave that.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Not intense planning, but at least some organization of are
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: we on task?
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I can help reducingnxiety for people on the trip that
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: are a little bit more of a planner.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: You know that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea and it allows you
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: to say, like, oh, I've got a little bit extra
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: time to go see this national park, or I don't
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: have the time because we had to spend the morning
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: doing a field fix on something.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, make those decisions on the fly and be
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: able to adjust.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I agree, try to have that throughout the
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: day just to go buy and hey, everyone's got different
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: roles on this expedition, and that's true for our personal trips,
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: like people fall into different roles and not everyone has
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: the time to be looking at the maps and studying
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: more annoyments because if they're in charge of filming, or
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: they're worried about cooking or really about getting the currency exchange, well,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: then they don't have the time to also be worrying
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: about looking at a map and where we're stopping for
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: the night. So it's good to have a couple on
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: that looking at that and then sharing that information with
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: the group. So everybody kind of has an idea, here's
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: how many kilometers we're trying to drive today, or here's
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: roughly where we're looking to camp to time.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Having that chart kind of is a good way to
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: share that information.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: And I am overwhelmed by this spot we're driving through
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: right now. It's called Bond Bond Courage and it's I mean,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: it's beautiful, Like this part of South Africa is stunning.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: The data has been just coming down that mountain. Unbelievable,
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: that GODMP site like it was a four world drive
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: low range track going in and out of that campsite. Yeah,
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: it's just And are we luckier? We're pretty fortunate that
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: fortune that to we do extremely fortunate.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Current.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: It has always been such a joy to have you
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: on the trips. I mean we started traveling together in
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Earnest during Expedition seven. You were involved with that entire process,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: with prepping the vehicles and selecting what we were going
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: to do with modifications, and you even built one of
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the expedition trucks. In Australia, you built a BDJ seventy nine.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: You went over weeks earlier to get that vehicle prepared
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: for the crossing of Australia. You've been involved with. Yeah,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: let's let's think about all the stuff that we did
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: in North.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: America together, and then Australia and Russia and Greenland and
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: South America and now doing a crossing of Africa together.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Has been such a joy to travel with you and
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: to be your friend and have the experiences that we've
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: had in the laughs that we've had through the years,
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: and so much that I've.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Learned from you.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: You're such an important part of the community, and I
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: still remember even when I started Expedition Portal in two
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: thousand and five, you were one of the very first
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: people to sign up, and you just came in to
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: the process with an open part, and you shared information
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and you provided people with good data to make decisions
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and maybe something's wrong with their land cruiser, to help
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: them out. And you know, that was twenty years ago now,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: so I think it is unbelievable to think. And now
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: that the overlaying collective exists and Clay and Rachelle are
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: now running the whole show, we all get to maybe
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: even specialize a.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Little bit more and what we get at, yeah, which
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: is which is exciting. It's fun to see how it's
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: all progressed. And likewise it so thoroughly enjoyed our friendship
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: over the years. Amazing travel, a lot of fun conversations
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: and it's yeah, so many great times. I think of
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: all the road trip time we've had together, a lot
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: of camp fire times, you know, whether we even had
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: a fire doll and when there's chairs out at campers
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: camp fire times.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of really good times.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: And I look up to you as a mentor and
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: what you've done in the overlanding world and all you've
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: shared over the years too with both myself and the
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: community as.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: A whole, and thank you for that. Well, it's it's
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: been such a joy man.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: So let's go through your The name of your training
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: company OLT, is that right?
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: It's off Road Logistics and Training OLT four by four
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: and that's Jackson, Philmy and myself and as you mentioned,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: primarily work with oees, but we definitely do personal training
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: and group training as well.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: There's opportunities there. Yeah, like you did that at the
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Big Thing we did Yeah, yeah, most of training and
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: the Big Thing. We always loved doing that.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: Jackson I both come from recreational worlds, ourselves and clubs,
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: so we love sharing that information.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And if anybody has a Toyota or a land cruiser,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: or you're just looking for components from companies like ARB,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: take a look at Cruiser Outfitters. Cruiser Outfitters is one
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: of the oldest importers of ARB in the country. You
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: guys have been bringing stuff in from ARB from before
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: they even had aarv USS. Incredible legacy with when when
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: was Cruiser out visits ninety two and then you purchased
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: it in early two thousands.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Ye January one of two thousand and two, I took
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: over ten years in I took it over.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: That's incredible.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: So what a career, Kurt, And thank you so much
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: for spending the time on the podcast with me today,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and we thank you so much for listening, and we'll
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: talk to you next time.