4-Aug-2011 – For immediate release

Are you ready to see the country like never before with an incomparable Land Rover Adventure? From August 29 through September 5, 2011 you can join Land Rover to drive off-road in Moab, Utah; Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and Telluride, Colorado.

You’ll be met at the airport in Grand Junction, Colorado to begin your adventure. It all starts when you get the keys to a Land Rover you’ll drive while following the Colorado River. And this scenic tour is just the opener.

More technical driving follows at the ultimate “slick rock trail” Hell’s Revenge as well as other trails. You will drive Land Rovers over Entrada sandstone, climbing and descending slopes approaching 40 degrees. The challenging trail culminates with a vista framed by the Colorado River, overlooking Arches National Park.

There’s more to the world of Land Rover than scaling rugged terrain. We’ll rest your driving muscles as we make you a special guest of the 2011 Telluride Film Festival. Relax and enjoy the town and sponsors’ gathering for a director’s review at the Sheridan Theatre in downtown Telluride.

Your experience in the country steers toward the city as we introduce you to the newest member of the Range Rover family, the all new 2012 Range Rover Evoque. You will be one of the first to drive this latest offering from Land Rover, before its official fall 2011 debut. Drive your own Range Rover Evoque for the remainder of the weekend as we explore historic mining towns of Colorado.

Land Rover Adventures will provide all meals, 5-Star lodging, vehicles, driving instructors and transportation for the 7-day journey. You are only responsible for your flight into Grand Junction Airport, Colorado and a departure flight from either Telluride or Montrose, Colorado. Everything else is up to us. Start your adventure by reserving your spot today.

Exclusive Offer: $13,000 per couple, $9,000 per single (attendees limited to 12 people; first come first served).

To book now, contact our rep at 828-225-1541 or email sandy@landroverschool.com.

When we’re not testing out $600 camp chairs whilst sipping on gin and tonics in the shade of our safari tent, we love to roll up our sleeves and get dirty! We here at Overland Journal are excited to be experiencing growth in the publication to the point where we are expanding into the rest of the building. This will, in effect, triple our square footage, and allow for more office space and more shop space. There will be more warehouse space to store back-issues of the journal, a clean vehicle bay for photographing and filming, open work space for the creative design team, as well as more quiet office space. There should also be plenty of room to roll out a nap-mat for that mid-afternoon siesta.

This expansion has truly been a community effort. Gavin Ferguson, long-time subscriber and Expedition Portal member, put his Construction Management degree to good use by framing, dry-walling, plastering and building wooden table and desk tops. Dave Argust of Adventure Trailers is an expert welder, and welded the bases for all our new tables and desks. Stephanie Brady, President and Designer of Overland Journal, ensured that all interior design elements were held to a high standard, as well as sanded, painted and stained the new desks and tables. Chazz Layne, our new graphics designer, enlisted his expertise in network administration by pulling cable for the new network, in addition to configuring the new phone system. Dani (Chazz’s wife) assisted with sanding, along our accountant Andre, and subscribers Rex and Carrie. We had four electric sanders going simultaneously on the day dubbed our “sanding party,” and it sounded like the drone of a hive of bees! I (the Director of Operations) had a hand in just about everything mentioned above. Each of us have definitely been wearing a lot of hats recently. And all of this on top of all our regular day-to-day duties of running a business. We had just enough time between the completion of the Spring 2011 issue and starting the Summer 2011 issue to do all of this, although it made for some very long days and weeks! Quite a journey since the humble beginnings in a guest bedroom in a single iMac (see page 12 of the Summer 2011 issue).

We all have the same dream, it’s why we are here.

Sure it may look a little different for each of us, but the essence of it remains the same.

For overlanders, we dream of taking our vehicle, be it truck, car, unimog, bike, or skateboard, and traveling to distant locales. Having our vehicle symbolizes independence, the ability to go where we want to go, on our own schedule, and to try whatever we like. It also gives us a feeling of empowerment, to talk to local people not as tourists, but as travelers.

Alas, not all travel is overland travel. For many of us, much of our travel is work travel.

Usually work travel means you fly into a foreign city, get to meet the friendly local immigration officials, compare how efficient the baggage-claim is to other airports, find a car/bus/cab to the city, check into a hotel, and spend a few days in business meetings. Then you reverse the process, and find yourself back at home.

Of course, most of the time the local people you are meeting with will want to treat you to lunch and dinner and show you a few sights, but often you see the sights that they think you should see, not the places they would hang out at if they didn’t have you along; and you eat at the fancy restaurants, not the places where your local hosts would go for a quick lunch or a cheap dinner.

So you end up having the business-class-version of a package tour. And that is what overlanders usually try to avoid. We want to see the real country, not the one that is packaged for international consumption.

So how can we travel with the spirit of a overlander, when we are not overlanding? First of all, don’t be afraid to get a little bit lost, to ask directions, and to try things.

It is easy to rely on a host to take care of us. But if we say “that’s ok, I think I’d like to walk around tonight and try some food on my own” – suddenly the entire experience changes.

Walking into a corner market, trying to order dinner with hand-signals when nothing on the menu looks familiar, and then trying to pay for it and figure out the local currency will often give you a better feel of the local culture and connection to the local people than a night looking at the local famous landmarks.

Leaving early for a meeting, and figuring out how to take a city bus or train (or tri-shaw, or water-taxi) from your hotel to the office, rather than a cab, will suddenly give you a sense of connection to many of the people you are meeting with in the local office. And when the locals hear that you took a bus to work, or went to “that” market for dinner, suddenly they will look at you a little differently, and maybe they will decide to take you somewhere else, somewhere a little more local, for dinner that night.

This is how connections are started, and how we can start to see the real city, not the prepackaged one, even when we don’t have our vehicle along.

Note – Images via creative-commons-licence.

We ran a motorcycle jacket comparison article back in the Spring 2009 issue of Overland Journal (pg 80-81).  Although no awards were given (Editor’s Choice and Value Award), in my opinion this jacket should have received the Value Award.  Not only was it the least expensive jacket reviewed, it received a glowing review by the author, as well as withstood all of the abuse I sent its way.

After the article was printed, Fieldsheer sent me an appropriate size of the Adventure to review.  By chance, UPS delivered the package just minutes before I was about to leave for a ride with some friends.  We headed out to a single-track area for motorcycles near town, and within 30 minutes I had washed out my front tire, flew over the handlebars and hit the ground.  But thankfully both rider and jacket were unscathed, albeit a little dustier than before.  And that was just the beginning. I would later have many more uneventful wipeouts in the dirt in which this jacket protected me well.

Over the course of two years, I must have put well over 5,000 miles of dualsport riding on this jacket throughout all 4 seasons.  Only on the very hottest days of desert riding (100+ degrees F) was the Fieldsheer Adventure uncomfortable to wear, even with all vents open.  Most likely a combination of the black color and thick materials.  But this is a good tradeoff to have given that it is a sturdy and durable jacket.  During the spring and fall this jacket was a pleasure to wear as it kept me warm on the chilly mornings and evenings, and breathed well during the warmer days.  During the snowy winter months, I did have to wear a few extra base layers even with the liner zipped in.  The optional neck cover came in very handy for blocking most of the cold air from blowing into the jacket around the neck.

I was very glad to be wearing this jacket on a 3,000-mile trip to Baja, which consisted of interstate highways and lots of technical dirt riding.  I found the overall usability of the Fieldsheer to be great, with plenty of big pockets that are easy to open with gloved hands.  It was a bit bulky and cumbersome to carry around under my arm, but that is by far my biggest complaint about the Adventure.  During the time I was testing this jacket, I know of at least 3 of my friends that purchased a similar Fieldsheer based on my report (and the low price).  I now look forward to giving this jacket a proper washing and using it for many more years to come!

Book review:

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

I recently completed the book The River of Doubt by Candice Millard – the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s expedition to descend and map an unknown river in the Amazon in 1914. I had never heard of it, but happened across it when I was browsing the “expedition” section at my local library.

Candice Millard is a former writer and editor for National Geographic, and you can tell when you read this book. She puts a lot of time into researching not only the individuals on the journey, but she also takes the time to give you a good sense of context for the book, so you understand the social and political implications of the events as they unfold.

She also spends a lot of time describing the jungle ecosystem that the team is traveling through, an environment where as she puts it the “men were more often prey than predator”.

The most fascinating thing I found when I read this book is that it is the opposite of the story I expected. Teddy Roosevelt is such a legend that it is almost unthinkable to portray him in anything less than heroic terms. And he is such a huge figure that anyone next to him automatically is in his shadow.

Yet in the book, Millard candidly talks about the personal issues that Roosevelt was facing and how that resulted in an expedition that was a textbook example of “how NOT to plan and execute an expedition”. Three men died on the trip, and it is sheer luck that they didn’t all die. Also interesting is how she portrays Colonel Candido Rondon, the Brazilian co-leader of the expedition, as the true driving force on the trip.

Many of us enjoy reading about epic adventures and famous historical expeditions as a way of learning about the world, and also for inspiration, and to learn best-practices for expedition preparation. Usually the men we read about who lead these expeditions have 20/20 foresight, always make the best decisions, and are prepared for anything they will encounter. This expedition is not like that.

In fact, I think I learned more from this book than many of the expedition-themed books I have read in the past, because it reads like one of those Harvard Business School case studies I had to read in college, you know the ones, they show you how a company was ill-prepared for the situation they found themselves in, and then made a series of bad decisions, which made the situation worse. You are supposed to learn from these case studies and not make the same mistakes in your own business. If you apply the same logic to this book, you can learn a lot about how NOT to plan and lead an expedition.

And throughout the book, you also get a good sense for the people involved. Roosevelt’s resolve and good character is very evident throughout. Some of the other members of the expedition do not come across so favorably.

So to sum up: Was it a riveting page turner? No.

Would I recommend it to anyone thinking of planning and executing an expedition into unknown (to them) territory? Absolutely!

Overland Journal participated again in this year’s Epic Rides mountain bike race event called the Kona 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. It is one of the largest 24-hour mtb events in the world, and takes place just north of Tucson, Arizona. We had two sponsored teams entered in the race: one 4-man relay team, and a solo rider. The 4-man team consisted of Scott Brady (of Overland Journal & Expeditions West), Travis Schanafelt (of Safari Pacific), Jim Feehan (of Here be Dragons Adventures), and Mike McMaude (fellow adventurer & all-around good guy). Christophe Noel (of Raven Singletrack) was our overall organizer, team captain & solo rider. Supporting the teams were Zach & Jonathan of Overland Gourmet, Jeremy Edgar of Overland Journal, and Expedition Portal members Heidi, Dave & Tim.

The event had over 1,800 riders this year, and probably a total of over 3,000 people camping in “24 Hour Town.” We started arriving on Wednesday evening to get a good camping spot for Overland HQ. Parked in the camp was the Jeep J8, two Earthroamer LTs, and a few Toyotas & Land Rovers. We used the Zero DS from Zero Motorcycles to get around and see the rest of the campground without creating any noise-pollution. The electric motorcycle drew a lot of attention—mainly because of how quiet it was.

The race started at noon on Saturday with a Le Mans start. Christophe the solo rider took part in the fray, as well as Jim who took the first lap of the team relay. It was great weather for the first few hours of the race, but then a ferocious storm blew in with high winds & plenty of rain, causing many riders to seek refuge in their tents for the night. Travis was out on the trail during the majority of the storm, suffering 3 flat tires and getting completely soaked. The team ended up doing a total of 7 laps (about 119 miles), and Christophe rode 8 laps (136 miles).

We encountered many cool expedition rigs at 24 Hour Town, aside from those parked in the Overland HQ campsite:

Overall it was a great weekend, spent with good friends. Overland Gourmet prepared some delicious meals for us, and we all shared some great stories around the campfire. Even though the rainstorm put a slight damper on the race, we got to witness some beautiful southern Arizona sunrises & sunsets. Until next year!

A huge thanks to Tim Huber and Heidi Van Camp for helping to contribute photos for this post!

Aside from driving and sleeping, eating is one of the things we spend the most time doing when overlanding. So much of the time we are thinking about the new places we are going to see, and hoping to take great photographs of great vistas, flora and fauna. However I (like many people I know) enjoy taking photos of meals while traveling. I do so because many times they look absolutely beautiful–in addition to tasting wonderful–but also because it will remind me of a good memory.

On a recent trip to Baja I encountered many delicious dining experiences; two of which stand out. The first was a meal that I prepared, both with something I brought from home and items sources locally in Mexico. I made elk tacos, with an elk that I had hunted, along with ingredients I had purchased in Baja: fresh vegetables, a habanero pepper, corn tortillas and a margarita. At home I had eaten elk many times in different forms, but never as a spicy taco! The next meal that really stood out were fish tacos served to me at the restaurant Alfonsina’s in Bah­a Gonzaga. These are classic “Baja-style” fish tacos which are deep fried and served with Baja sauce along with many other toppings. The cold cerveza made for a perfect side dish. They have a lovely outside patio right on the beach which made for the perfect scenic lunch stop!

Should I stay or should I go?

I often find myself asking this question on both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border. Getting caught up in the day-to-day grind of life, and seeing headlines piling up about the unrest to the south, sometimes it takes a little kick to get in gear and head that way. Once there and under a warm blanket of sun and then a canopy of stars, immersed in substantial life-experiences, it’s hard to leave. I love the people, the food, the landscapes, and the soul of the country.

New Year’s Eve was my fifth trip to Mexico for 2010, and being there with friends on the coast of the Cortez was a great way to let go of the past year and raise a toast to the new one. Here are a few images from the journey.

I’ve just finished an editor’s project column for the Gear issue that deals with quality tools. The importance of that subject was brought home to me this morning.

For nine years I’ve been using and abusing an excellent Bosch cordless drill, the batteries for which finally died a few months ago. To my chagrin, I discovered that that model drill was one of a very few Bosch made with a battery no longer available. So I put it on my list to buy a new pro-level drill, and until I had the money figured the Sears cordless model someone traded me for construction work a while ago would suffice. It was a nice-looking 18-volt model, and brand new when I got it. Not one of Sears’ professional models, but it should do, no?

No: This morning as I was holding up a panel of sheetrock to secure to the shop ceiling, and driving a drywall screw through the panel and into an ordinary 2 x 6, the gearset on the drill stripped itself of every tooth it possessed. Inconvenient enough that I was balancing sheetrock on my head, and now have to drive 40 miles to town to get a new drill. What if I’d been in the middle of nowhere using it to repair a broken-down vehicle?

It pays to buy good tools.

Update: Mark Weiss sent me a link to voltmanbatteries.com, a battery rebuilding service. I already bought a new 18-volt lithium-ion Bosch set, but now I can have my old Bosch batteries rebuilt so that drill can serve as a backup or loaner.