Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
Speaker 1: host Scott Brady and my co host Matt. Scott is
Speaker 1: not with us today because it's his birthday, So happy birthday, Matt.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such an awesome co host and friend.
Speaker 1: You have made such a difference in this podcast. So
Speaker 1: thanks for being you, and happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: And I have a good friend and a wonderful guest today,
Speaker 1: Dave Sosa. Dave has been literally my neighbor next door
Speaker 1: runs a company called turn Overland and they bring in
Speaker 1: windows and doors and other accessories for vans and campers,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I really look at Dave as a polymath.
Speaker 1: He's really one of the few that I have met
Speaker 1: in my life that has managed to create mastery in
Speaker 1: so many different levels of his life. And as we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today, that has really come from
Speaker 1: his experiences, and that's going to be kind of a
Speaker 1: thread that we're going to have through this conversation.
Speaker 2: So David, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3: God, it is really an honor to be here. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you, I've been a fan of the podcast since
Speaker 3: the very first episode, so I never thought that I
Speaker 3: would be sitting here in this seat, but it really
Speaker 3: is an honor.
Speaker 2: To be You're so happy. Yeah, you're so welcome.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I just so appreciate you being on the podcast.
Speaker 1: And we were just talking right before we started recording
Speaker 1: about what are you drinking today?
Speaker 3: I'm drinking Egyptian licorice tea. This is actually given to
Speaker 3: me as a gift. I like lyric teese. Oh nice,
Speaker 3: this is really good stuff. He keeps my throat clear.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, now that makes sense and my voice clear.
Speaker 3: Because you also seem to enjoy coffee too, so maybe
Speaker 3: you have your coffee, and you have your coffee in
Speaker 3: the morning and.
Speaker 2: They moved to teas after that.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what.
Speaker 2: Oh that's smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I first started the business, Jeremy Edgar was one
Speaker 1: of my first employees and he had grown up. Part
Speaker 1: of his youth was in Argentina, so he drank mate
Speaker 1: tea every day and he wouldn't drink coffee. He would
Speaker 1: walk around with this little bowl with a and they
Speaker 1: called it a bombijia, which is the straw, and he'd
Speaker 1: be walking around drinking his mate tea for most of
Speaker 1: the day. And he and what he liked about it
Speaker 1: was he never really had that kind of caffeine crash. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's smart. And so many travelers tend to drink tea
Speaker 1: over coffee they've maybe learned in the long hauls.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and it's also easier because they don't have
Speaker 3: the cleanup and so forth. Yeah, that's true. Tea bag.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's so tre it's easier to clean up. That
Speaker 1: makes that makes a lot of sense. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a brief break and we will be right back.
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Speaker 1: believes that the best times are those spent traveling discovering
Speaker 1: the world with those you love most. You can find
Speaker 1: out more about their quality tents at icamper dot com. Well,
Speaker 1: what I think it would be fun to make the
Speaker 1: listeners aware of some things that you have done, and
Speaker 1: one of the ones that many of the listeners will
Speaker 1: know of is the Top Truck Challenge, and maybe give
Speaker 1: us the background on that. I can't remember if you
Speaker 1: were in the first year or one of the very
Speaker 1: first years of the event, and so tell us what
Speaker 1: you drove and how that experience was for you.
Speaker 3: So I was in. I was in the very first event,
Speaker 3: which was really something. And what had happened was just
Speaker 3: to back up a little bit, I'd taken a trip
Speaker 3: around the US and a little Honda Civic, and I
Speaker 3: came back in nineteen eighty seven and I decided that
Speaker 3: I really wanted to do more of this, right, so
Speaker 3: I wanted to build a vehicle that was even more capable.
Speaker 3: So I started this in late nineteen eighty seven, and
Speaker 3: I finished the vehicle I think in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 3: or ninety three, so many years it took me to
Speaker 3: build this. But some friends of mine had taken a
Speaker 3: photograph of the t and they'd send it to Four
Speaker 3: Wheeler Magazine because they had heard that, you know, they
Speaker 3: were going to have this new event. They were looking
Speaker 3: for contestants and all this stuff. So this was unbeknownst
Speaker 3: to me. And there was something like there were three
Speaker 3: hundred and some applicants, I guess, and out of the
Speaker 3: three hundred and sun they chose ten that they wanted
Speaker 3: there and I was one of them. So I get
Speaker 3: this letter in the mail from Four Wheeler Magazine about
Speaker 3: something that I wasn't even sure what it was about.
Speaker 3: And in the beginning, I wasn't sure that I wanted
Speaker 3: to do it because it didn't seem like the right
Speaker 3: venue for me, you know. I mean this Four Wheeler
Speaker 3: Magazine was a magazine that I liked to read, and
Speaker 3: I was into four wheeling for sure. Yeah, but what
Speaker 3: I built really wasn't a four wheel drive vehicle in
Speaker 3: that sense. It was an expeditionary vehicle, is what I
Speaker 3: called it. And you would call it an overlanding vehicle.
Speaker 3: Now the word didn't exist.
Speaker 2: Then, certainly wasn't properly used yet, no exactly.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, you know, this doesn't make a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. It's like taking a motor home to
Speaker 3: an autocross rate. What the hell am I going to
Speaker 3: do with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So, but I did decide to go because I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a chance for me to really
Speaker 3: test that aspect of the vehicle. And so it was
Speaker 3: an opportunity. And I had just gotten the vehicle running.
Speaker 3: I'd hardly had a chance to drive it, so I
Speaker 3: hadn't had a chance to shake it out, and I
Speaker 3: was just you know, I wasn't even used to driving
Speaker 3: it yet. You know that's a big deal. Yeah, being
Speaker 3: able to drive the vehicle, being really accustomed to.
Speaker 2: The vehicle is sure.
Speaker 3: So I took a vehicle that I was unaccustomed with,
Speaker 3: that had never been tested to a contest with some
Speaker 3: of the best in the country. Yeah, And so it
Speaker 3: was kind of a gutsy, maybe a stupid move, but
Speaker 3: I really felt good about that.
Speaker 1: So and you, as I recall, you won Best Engineered
Speaker 1: on that event, and that had to have felt really
Speaker 1: good because I would certainly, as one of your many talents,
Speaker 1: I would certainly describe you as an engineer, and I
Speaker 1: believe that that is what you started your professional career as.
Speaker 1: And you worked with Intel for many years. So how
Speaker 1: long did you work with Intel?
Speaker 3: I worked for Intel for fourteen years.
Speaker 2: Fourteen years, well, and I.
Speaker 3: Worked in the tech industry a total of about eighteen years. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: so a long time in the tech industry.
Speaker 1: And then when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: Intel was giving people sabbaticals and you took some time off.
Speaker 1: And what was some of the first things that started
Speaker 1: to change for you as a traveler from those maybe
Speaker 1: the early backpacking trips and that early sabbatical that you made.
Speaker 1: What were some of those lessons that you drew from
Speaker 1: those experiences.
Speaker 3: I think that I was really starting to question my
Speaker 3: life's direction by seven years into my profession, and I
Speaker 3: really started to see that the things that fed my
Speaker 3: soul I really wasn't getting from my work. And so
Speaker 3: the trip that I took at the seven year point
Speaker 3: was the chance for me to really kind of evaluate
Speaker 3: those things. I'd always been very comfortable in nature. I
Speaker 3: liked the outdoors. I love to travel, I love the
Speaker 3: sense of adventure. And even though I was very successful
Speaker 3: in what I did and it was very interesting and
Speaker 3: I was working with some of the most intelligent people possible,
Speaker 3: I just wasn't finding the satisfaction in sure. So Yeah,
Speaker 3: the trip around the country was a little over three months,
Speaker 3: a little over fourteen thousand miles. Else it's a lot
Speaker 3: of driving in three months of driving well, And it
Speaker 3: was in a little Honda Civic that I had actually
Speaker 3: set up for autocross racing because I've always liked vehicles,
Speaker 3: and I bought a Honda crx Si. Those are fun,
Speaker 3: and I had it set up for autocross racing and
Speaker 3: it was a blast. But that was the car that
Speaker 3: I took around the country, tiny hatchback, perfect and I
Speaker 3: just I lived out of the car. I didn't spend
Speaker 3: a single night in a hotel. I did spend a
Speaker 3: few nights with friends around the country that I knew,
Speaker 3: but other than that, I was in the car the
Speaker 3: whole time. Wow. And it was a very sparse existence.
Speaker 3: And it was some of the best time of my
Speaker 3: life and certainly one of the most transformational times in
Speaker 3: my life, because over the period of those months, I really,
Speaker 3: I really was able to nail down the things that
Speaker 3: were important to me in life. Yeah, none of them
Speaker 3: were material. Yeah, And so when I came back, I
Speaker 3: was pretty much committed to making changes and it took
Speaker 3: a long time, but I did make those changes and
Speaker 3: I incorporated them into my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been fascinating to hear some of those other
Speaker 1: stories that came later. And it seems like that you've
Speaker 1: had these moments of time where you've either been able
Speaker 1: to be involved with a company like Intel, and then
Speaker 1: you go through this, through this journey maybe in the
Speaker 1: wilderness to a degree, right, Yeah, and then you come
Speaker 1: up with another idea that consumes your creative efforts, and
Speaker 1: then it seems like you come back into the wilderness again.
Speaker 1: And as I remember you mentioning that you spent quite
Speaker 1: some time in the wilderness of Wyoming, is that is
Speaker 1: such an interesting story. What brought you to decide to
Speaker 1: literally go solo off the grid completely into the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere? And then what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 3: So there again, and you're right about that. I have
Speaker 3: gone through these cycles, and that was, I guess the
Speaker 3: second major cycle that I went through. I'd done some
Speaker 3: engineering consulting, and I'd had a couple of businesses at
Speaker 3: that point, but I was really at a turning point
Speaker 3: in my life where again I was searching for meaning,
Speaker 3: if you will, and I decided that I needed to
Speaker 3: take a time out and I needed to do something
Speaker 3: really solitary. Yeah, a large extent. So I got involved
Speaker 3: with this rebuilt property care tape. And there are people
Speaker 3: out there that have these large tracks of remote land.
Speaker 3: They want somebody out there to kind of keep an
Speaker 3: eye on things. And these are jobs that nobody wants
Speaker 3: because they're hard, they're scary, they don't pay anything. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's a miserable deal. So I got
Speaker 3: those jobs easily. Yeah, so as I'll take them.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the thing in Wyoming, there was a guy that
Speaker 3: owned a twenty one square mile ranch. There was an
Speaker 3: old homestead on it that was at the bottom of
Speaker 3: a valley. The homestead was built in I think eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety or eighteen ninety one. You know, none of the
Speaker 3: buildings were habitable at this point, but he wanted to
Speaker 3: start to do some restoration on him and I said
Speaker 3: I would work on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I lived out there for an entire summer. I moved
Speaker 3: in early May in the middle of a snowstorm. That
Speaker 3: was the beginning of it for me, and spent the
Speaker 3: whole summer out there.
Speaker 1: And did you find that, I mean maybe it's the
Speaker 1: combination of that. But what did the physical work do
Speaker 1: for you? Was that something that you enjoyed, and what
Speaker 1: did you learn from that? And then I would suspect
Speaker 1: that you probably had a lot of time for stillness
Speaker 1: and my personal thought and what you learn from that
Speaker 1: quiet time?
Speaker 3: Right, Well, it was a lot of physical work, for sure.
Speaker 3: I was pretty exhausted at the end of each day.
Speaker 3: And it was also the most solitude that I'd ever
Speaker 3: experienced in my life. I mean, even the times when
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of solo traveling and I've done
Speaker 3: a lot of backpacking solo, but they've been for a
Speaker 3: few days at a time, or a week, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe even up to two weeks. But we're talking about
Speaker 3: an entire summer without with hardly any human contact, and
Speaker 3: that was a much different thing. And you really you
Speaker 3: really get inside your own head in that time. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a period of time where you don't feel it
Speaker 3: so much. And then beyond that, you really you really
Speaker 3: have to learn to live with yourself, and you really
Speaker 3: have to understand yourself. You have to understand your fears
Speaker 3: and face them. You have to understand your anxieties and
Speaker 3: face them. So I think that it gave me confidence
Speaker 3: actually in myself. And it could have gone either way.
Speaker 3: I suppose I could have gone screaming into the night,
Speaker 3: you know. But I found that I could count on myself,
Speaker 3: and I found that I wasn't the worst company, and
Speaker 3: it gave me a chance to really sort through a
Speaker 3: lot of things that I was out there to do.
Speaker 3: And you know, by the way, where I was, there
Speaker 3: was no communication of any kind. There was no cell phone,
Speaker 3: there was no internet, there was no anything. And so
Speaker 3: not only was I without human contact, but I was
Speaker 3: without any sort of safety line. Yeah, so if a
Speaker 3: rattlesnake got me, or if an animal got me, or
Speaker 3: if I fell and broke a leg, it could be
Speaker 3: weeks before I was found, if I was ever found.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, you may have just gone back into the
Speaker 1: environment in a.
Speaker 3: Way, right might have. I might have just gone back
Speaker 3: into the environment.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: When I first got out of the Air Force, I
Speaker 1: knew that I didn't want to move back to California
Speaker 1: where I grew up, and I moved onto my aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle's ranch, and it was a fifty six thousand
Speaker 1: acre ranch and there were people there, my aunt and
Speaker 1: uncle were there, and my wife at the time was
Speaker 1: there and everything else. But it was some of my
Speaker 1: best memories because you would wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and you'd put a saddle on a horse and you
Speaker 1: would ride fence line and it was just it was
Speaker 1: actually a very beautiful existence. And I knew it was
Speaker 1: not what I wanted to do with my life, but
Speaker 1: to do that for a year and a half while
Speaker 1: I was going, all I was doing was working on
Speaker 1: the ranch and going to college, and that was I
Speaker 1: learned a lot about myself during that time.
Speaker 2: So I think it's good for it.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's what draws so many of us as
Speaker 1: overlanders to the outdoors, to the back country, is this
Speaker 1: idea of let's get remote, Let's get some stillness, even
Speaker 1: if it's with just the people that we love, but
Speaker 1: get some stillness, get some time in our heads, and
Speaker 1: figure out that we actually like our own company, and
Speaker 1: we build some confidence that we could then apply to
Speaker 1: life after that fact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's really I think there's really a
Speaker 3: couple of aspects of that. One is that you need
Speaker 3: to change the scenery because you need a change of
Speaker 3: reference frame for your life. You know, if you wake
Speaker 3: up every morning, you look out the same window, you
Speaker 3: see the same things, and after a while, you know,
Speaker 3: your brain just naturally doesn't see anything. Yeah. But if
Speaker 3: you wake up every morning and you look at it,
Speaker 3: and you look out a different window and you see
Speaker 3: something different than it forces you to assimilate things in
Speaker 3: a new way. It will bring things to you that
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have ordinarily learned. And then the stillness is
Speaker 3: the other part of this, and that is the assimilation
Speaker 3: of what you've learned. In other words, you learn a
Speaker 3: lesson and then you have to internalize it, and that
Speaker 3: comes through the stillness. Yeah. So travel allows us both
Speaker 3: of those. It allows us a new frame of reference,
Speaker 3: and it allows us the time and the luxury to
Speaker 3: assimilate those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oftentimes we don't.
Speaker 1: We're so bombarded with communications and entertainment and a distraction
Speaker 1: that we really don't have that time to be still
Speaker 1: and learn the lessons and realize that we've gained a
Speaker 1: lot of confidence as.
Speaker 2: Travelers or whatever else.
Speaker 1: Now, coming back a little bit to the top truck challenge,
Speaker 1: what were some of the things from that vehicle that
Speaker 1: you realized worked really well and you would want to
Speaker 1: incorporate into future projects, and then maybe what were some
Speaker 1: things that you realize that you wouldn't incorporate into future projects.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, even back then, I had a real
Speaker 3: appreciation of the value of keeping a vehicle light, keeping
Speaker 3: the center gravity low, and those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: And what was the vile that you had for that.
Speaker 3: Started out with a started out being a seventy three
Speaker 3: Ford f two fifty. But I mean from there, you know,
Speaker 3: it went down to a bare frame. The frame got
Speaker 3: severely modified. Parts came in from all over the place.
Speaker 3: I mean, it almost was a handmade vehicle by the
Speaker 3: time it was done. Wow. Only the only things I
Speaker 3: used off the original vehicle were I think the cab itself,
Speaker 3: the doors, and the frame. Wow. And that's about it. Wow.
Speaker 3: Everything else came from somewhere else. The motor came from
Speaker 3: somewhere else. The transmission, a lot of the suspension I
Speaker 3: designed and built myself, a lot of the chassis work
Speaker 3: I designed myself. A lot of engineering in that truck. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of time, a lot of handwork. And the
Speaker 3: funny thing was they didn't have a lot of money
Speaker 3: at the time, so I built a lot of that
Speaker 3: using very crude tools. You know, I didn't have like
Speaker 3: a big machine shop and all this capability laser cutting,
Speaker 3: this and that. Everything hand cut and you know, stick welding,
Speaker 3: which I mean, it is amazing that I was able
Speaker 3: to put together what I did, but but I did so. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I think that, you know, just the balance of everything,
Speaker 3: just the fact that it was a balanced vehicle sure
Speaker 3: in terms of the suspension, the engine and everything. That
Speaker 3: nothing overpowered anything else, right, And I think some of
Speaker 3: that came from I've done a lot of different automotive ventures.
Speaker 3: Like like I mentioned, I autocross raced and did some
Speaker 3: other types of racing. I raced motorcycles as well. I
Speaker 3: learned a lot from all my other automotive ventures and
Speaker 3: I incorporated those into my truck because I wanted my
Speaker 3: truck to handle well, I wanted to drive well. It
Speaker 3: needed to be a multipurpose type vehicle. Ultimately, I wanted
Speaker 3: it to be able to endure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, survive something like the top truck challenge.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly, right, because there were a number of challenges
Speaker 3: and they were, you know, they were very very difficult.
Speaker 3: A lot of the things were very difficult and certainly
Speaker 3: not suited for something that was specialized this mind. Here's
Speaker 3: the interesting thing about it. I completed every challenge except
Speaker 3: for one. There was only one challenge that I decided
Speaker 3: not to account and that was a really steep hill climb,
Speaker 3: and I was my carburetor really wasn't able to function
Speaker 3: on that steep of a hill. If it had been
Speaker 3: a little bit shorter hill, I would have made it.
Speaker 3: But it was a long hill, it was pretty technical
Speaker 3: and it was very steep. Sure, and I saw one
Speaker 3: vehicle nearly roll on it. It was a guy in
Speaker 3: a Unimog that got halfway up and couldn't make it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he tried to get down and ended up sideways, and
Speaker 3: we started clear now I mean people run it because
Speaker 3: we thought that damn unimog was coming down. It was
Speaker 3: going to clear a wide path. But so after that,
Speaker 3: I decided, you know, it just wasn't risk. It wasn't
Speaker 3: worth resking my vehicle.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, something you'd work so hard to build, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly right. I wanted to live to fix that and
Speaker 3: go another day. And by the way, one of the
Speaker 3: first things I did when I got back was I
Speaker 3: ripped off that carburetor and I engineered a fuel injection
Speaker 3: system for it. Yeah, so that's one thing that I
Speaker 3: learned for sure mechanically. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, that's funny.
Speaker 1: One of my first off road vehicles that I had
Speaker 1: was a nineteen fifty three M thirty eight A one
Speaker 1: jeep and it had a two eighty nine V eight
Speaker 1: swap in it, which is common for that vehicle, and
Speaker 1: I had carburetors on it in the beginning, and it
Speaker 1: just I was constantly climbs and getting stuck because of
Speaker 1: the I mean, I wasn't a very good driver either,
Speaker 1: but you know, I was learning so much, but the
Speaker 1: vehicle wasn't helping. And when I went to fuel injection
Speaker 1: on that, it just totally changed the way that I
Speaker 1: could operate operate the jeep. It really made a big difference.
Speaker 1: But it's funny how some carburetors, though, work great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a nineteen eighty four Toyota pickup that had
Speaker 1: a carburetor on it and it never gave me any
Speaker 1: trouble on climb. So I think it's probably has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with how the carburetor is designed, and
Speaker 1: probably the orientation of the fuel bowls and everything else
Speaker 1: like that. But plus it being a really small displacement
Speaker 1: for cylinder. It probably wasn't getting flooded as easily, but
Speaker 1: it worked fine on climbs, most climbs, most climbs. But right, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that top Truck Challenge for me, was one of my
Speaker 1: first exposures to this kind of stuff. I remember reading
Speaker 1: all of those early four wheeler magazines and just being
Speaker 1: completely wide eyed and wanting to do the top truck
Speaker 1: Challenge and wanting to and ultimately I believe that that
Speaker 1: event lost its way because they were no longer street
Speaker 1: legal or they were very loose interpretations of being street
Speaker 1: legal vehicles, which I think stole so much of the
Speaker 1: charm of the event. And I even suspect that Rick Paiway,
Speaker 1: who was so involved with designing the event, I think
Speaker 1: he would have preferred to it have kept that spirit
Speaker 1: of those first couple events. I mean, maybe like the
Speaker 1: first four or five years. Once they were kind of
Speaker 1: a loose interpretation of a car, then you realize that
Speaker 1: you were no longer looking at individuals capabilities or individuals innovations.
Speaker 3: It was just it was a bunch of truggies, Yeah.
Speaker 1: A bunch of a bunch of two frame vehicles, which
Speaker 1: is too bad, but hopefully they consider doing something like
Speaker 1: that again. But keeping it back is a door slammer.
Speaker 1: All the safety systems have to be in place and
Speaker 1: certain limitations. Because that was such a neat and inspiring
Speaker 1: event for me, and it was that, paired with the
Speaker 1: Camel Trophy, that formed so many of my early inspirations
Speaker 1: towards you know, vehicle projects and vehicle performance and and
Speaker 1: all of that, and that ultimately led to my passion
Speaker 1: for travel.
Speaker 3: So it was a really grassroots thing and it was
Speaker 3: neat in fact. You know, in that very first edition
Speaker 3: there was me. There was a guy named Sonny Honeger. Yeah,
Speaker 3: who's been you know, active in the sport legend. Yeah, legend.
Speaker 3: He was in the very first one with a samurai right. No, No,
Speaker 3: he was. He he had a war wagon.
Speaker 2: Oh but didn't he end up becoming like a samurai guy.
Speaker 3: He was, Well, he was a samurai guy. And he
Speaker 3: also had a thing called a rock spider that he
Speaker 3: built with the very first really high articulation rock climbing. Sure.
Speaker 3: I mean he was a he was really a leader innovator, Yeah,
Speaker 3: very much an innovator. And I was an innovator. I
Speaker 3: mean a lot of the things that were on my
Speaker 3: truck actually showed up other places after that. Sure, But
Speaker 3: and then there was Rick Payway. He was one of
Speaker 3: the original competitors. Yeah, he wasn't with the magazine at
Speaker 3: that point. Oh, just a guy with a GPW with
Speaker 3: a four hundred and some cubic engineer.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, what a neat guy.
Speaker 3: Oh. Rick was so cool. And you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things about Rick is that jeep. He was almost
Speaker 3: like a cyborg with that jeep.
Speaker 2: He was one with the machine.
Speaker 3: He was one with the machine. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 3: could absolutely handle that thing in any circumstance and he
Speaker 3: could control every aspect of that vehicle. Yeah, really fun
Speaker 3: to watch him drive that. Yeah, he's a he's such
Speaker 3: a such a character. I've always enjoyed getting a chance
Speaker 3: to travel with him when I do. But you know,
Speaker 3: I haven't spoken to him since the event. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: love to meet him again.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I think he's back in I think
Speaker 1: he's back in Arizona now. Yeah, so maybe we'll find
Speaker 1: a way to get him up for lunch.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, do that absolutely, because I'd love to talk
Speaker 3: to hyeah time. That would be great.
Speaker 1: Speaking of innovation, you at some point in your journey,
Speaker 1: you started producing products for the archery industry. Talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about what you were making and what was
Speaker 1: different about it and what makes those bows still desirable today.
Speaker 3: Well, I had been involved in archery since the seventies,
Speaker 3: so it had been a long time ash of mine,
Speaker 3: but it was one that i'd kind of set aside
Speaker 3: because of life demands and so forth. I kind of
Speaker 3: hit a lull, a lull in my life, and I decided, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a chance for me to pick up
Speaker 3: archery again. So I went back to shooting my old bows,
Speaker 3: and I just realized there were a lot of shortcomings
Speaker 3: with them, and a lot of really a lot of
Speaker 3: the basics of what I needed weren't there. So I
Speaker 3: just went back and started redesigning these bows based on
Speaker 3: just the fundamentals of what makes an arrow fly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I just went back to the very most basic, essential,
Speaker 3: first principles of what makes an arrow fly out of
Speaker 3: a bow, and I designed a bow up from that,
Speaker 3: and that bow pretty much revolutionized that part of archery.
Speaker 3: It was a metal riser. It used it used the
Speaker 3: limbs off Olympic bows, which were already highly developed. So
Speaker 3: I had the best limbs in the world, and now
Speaker 3: I had the best riser in the world. And I
Speaker 3: put the two of them together and it was it
Speaker 3: was magic. And of course, you know, like anybody that
Speaker 3: upsets an industry like that, I had my detractors for sure.
Speaker 3: I had, you know, people that loved me and people
Speaker 3: that didn't. There's no question that it redirected the entire industry. Wow.
Speaker 3: And now there are lots of offerings around those lines.
Speaker 3: My bow still after all these years, the bow that
Speaker 3: I designed is still at the top of the epquact.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine won the senior men's World Championship
Speaker 3: IBO I think last year, maybe the year before with
Speaker 3: my bow.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's still out there. There's still people shooting.
Speaker 3: It's very sowed after sure, a way more now than
Speaker 3: I ever sold it for. I wish I had a
Speaker 3: couple of dozen. Yeah. Yeah, what a neat thing.
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to one of this week's sponsors,
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Speaker 1: Their story is interesting. They were on a surf and
Speaker 1: ski trip through California and the founders of Rumpel were
Speaker 1: sleeping in a van several miles up a dirt road
Speaker 1: near a secret hot springs. It woke up the next
Speaker 1: morning and sub zero temperatures in a car that wouldn't start.
Speaker 1: They were outside of cell reception and confronted with the
Speaker 1: real possibility of a long walk into town. So instead
Speaker 1: they decided to bundle up in their sleeping bags and
Speaker 1: drink whiskey while they waited for someone else to show up.
Speaker 1: And that turned into hours, and the conversation extended on
Speaker 1: to the subject of bedding, and they came up with
Speaker 1: Rumpele blankets. Their most popular product is the original Puffy blanket.
Speaker 1: It is their flagship product and it's available in a
Speaker 1: one person, a two person, and a junior size.
Speaker 2: I have used the two person for many years. I
Speaker 2: keep it as part of my.
Speaker 1: Kit at lives in the vehicle just in case I
Speaker 1: run into a situation similar to what they did where
Speaker 1: I'm stranded and need some additional warmth and insulation. It's
Speaker 1: also really useful for around the campfire when you want
Speaker 1: that little bit of extra comfort. I'll also use it
Speaker 1: when sleeping in the vehicle, and then they are just
Speaker 1: the right size or a roof tent as well, so
Speaker 1: these are really high quality blankets that are weather resistant,
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Speaker 1: very durable fabrics and construction, which makes them ideal for
Speaker 1: overland travel. Check out rumplex blanket. And when you talk
Speaker 1: about your travels, I noticed that you have this theme
Speaker 1: of kind of simplicity and minimalism and kind of bringing
Speaker 1: it back again to overlanding, you have recently been designing
Speaker 1: and manufacturing your interpretation of what a fully enclosed expedition
Speaker 1: camper should be. I think it would be good to
Speaker 1: talk about that as a subject with the listeners, because
Speaker 1: one thing that I have found in this industry is
Speaker 1: that people get away from, or they don't prioritize the
Speaker 1: things in campers that are actually the most essential attributes
Speaker 1: of campers, and they focus a lot on the things
Speaker 1: that are not essential or if they stop working, isn't
Speaker 1: the end of the world. So, for example, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I see oftentimes done poorly is either
Speaker 1: the insult of properties of the camper or the weather
Speaker 1: protection of the camper. You and I were talking earlier
Speaker 1: today about Maslov's hierarchy of needs, and we somehow are
Speaker 1: more interested in the LCD placement of the TV than
Speaker 1: we are in the r value of the camper, or
Speaker 1: where the water lines run in the camper, those are
Speaker 1: water lines, or if they're even our water lines, which
Speaker 1: the absence of water lines is actually better than water lines,
Speaker 1: I think for those that are listening, when you look
Speaker 1: to buy a camper, start off with what is the
Speaker 1: most What is the first principle of what this thing
Speaker 1: should do, which is protect you from the weather. It
Speaker 1: should be a retreat from the storm. Now, that can
Speaker 1: be easily determined by where you like to travel. If
Speaker 1: your travel is ninety nine percent in the southwest in Baja,
Speaker 1: then maybe that camper can have some fabric sides to it.
Speaker 1: And it's not a primary consideration, but if your plan
Speaker 1: is to travel from from Prudho Bay down to Ushwaya
Speaker 1: in any weather, then you're going to want to minimize
Speaker 1: those mechanical moving components and those wear points. Just the
Speaker 1: number of fabric sided campers that I've seen fail just
Speaker 1: due to high vibration frequency on corrugations. Those wear points,
Speaker 1: they show up very quickly. So from your perspective, having
Speaker 1: traveled so much and built your own campers and everything
Speaker 1: else like that, what do you see as being those
Speaker 1: first principles and those core maybe three to five elements
Speaker 1: that people need to look for in a camper before
Speaker 1: they even consider if it has a TV or not.
Speaker 3: So I think the things that are most important for
Speaker 3: me are I think number one, the ability to sleep well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because sleep is a fundamental of life, and you start
Speaker 3: losing sleep, things are going to go downhill, going to
Speaker 3: go downhill for you very quickly. So you have to
Speaker 3: be comfortable enough to sleep. You need protection from the
Speaker 3: most severe weather for sure, and you need a way
Speaker 3: to prepare food inside in the event that the weather
Speaker 3: doesn't allow you to do it outside. And after that,
Speaker 3: the list starts getting a lot thinner, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's just really basic stuff. You need to carry a
Speaker 3: little bit of water, you need to have a way
Speaker 3: to filter it. But that's really kind of it for me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Then everything after that is luxury. I mean, the things
Speaker 3: up to that point are things that you really need.
Speaker 3: Everything after that I think is a luxury.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that that after those basal components are satisfied,
Speaker 1: it actually becomes more of an emotional decision. And I
Speaker 1: think that and I can understand why because in the
Speaker 1: times that I've looked at campers and trailers and things
Speaker 1: like that, I have found myself being very emotional about
Speaker 1: things like, Oh, it's got this really comfortable shower, and
Speaker 1: it's got this you know, it'll have one hundred gallons
Speaker 1: of hot water on board or whatever, and you really
Speaker 1: start to gravitate towards those luxuries, which I would not
Speaker 1: suggest for a moment that those are things that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't consider. It's just understanding that after those core attributes
Speaker 1: of lightness, because payload is always a consideration, and even
Speaker 1: if you have a one ton truck with a five
Speaker 1: thousand pound payload, any pound that you add will degrade
Speaker 1: the performance of the vehicle. So even if it has
Speaker 1: a payload, use a small percentage of it so that
Speaker 1: you gain back performance in the way that the vehicle
Speaker 1: works off highway, and how efficient it is economy that
Speaker 1: you get it's going to cost you less to ship
Speaker 1: the thing, all of that is going to be a
Speaker 1: factor in it. So I think it's that durability of
Speaker 1: the structure, its ability to protect you from weather, and
Speaker 1: the lightness of the camper which directly correlates to performance
Speaker 1: and payload, particularly on a vehicle like a Tacoma. That
Speaker 1: is something I think that's worth us talking about a
Speaker 1: little bit, because your original impetus for this camper was
Speaker 1: how do I build a camper for myself that will
Speaker 1: work within the very limited payload capacity of a Tacoma.
Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about how you achieved that
Speaker 1: in the ways that you can share with the public.
Speaker 2: But what were some of the core.
Speaker 1: Ways that you achieved fully enclosed camper that fits within
Speaker 1: the payload of a Tacoma.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the things that you need
Speaker 3: to be able to do anytime you tackle a project
Speaker 3: like this is due not let yourself get pulled down
Speaker 3: the road already traveled. You need to back up. You
Speaker 3: need to back all the way up to the beginning,
Speaker 3: and you need to ask the questions that we're just
Speaker 3: talking about, and then you need to look around and
Speaker 3: see what the best materials are that can achieve these
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I realized is that
Speaker 3: there were materials out there. You know, the materials had
Speaker 3: gone way ahead of the technology in this area. A
Speaker 3: lot of the technology in this area was really a
Speaker 3: set up back in the sixties and hasn't really changed much.
Speaker 3: So I looked at entirely new ways of constructing this thing.
Speaker 3: I found some materials, talked to a lot of experts.
Speaker 3: A lot of experts told me I could never do this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I talked to some three M engineers and so forth.
Speaker 3: They said, well, it's a great material, but you can't
Speaker 3: work with it, you can't bond, and you can't do this,
Speaker 3: you can't do that. Well I figured out how to
Speaker 3: do all that, and we figured out how to put
Speaker 3: together a shell using thermoplastic honeycomb. It's a fiber reinforced material.
Speaker 3: It's extremely lightweight, it's very thermally efficient, it's very sound efficient,
Speaker 3: it's incredibly durable. I mean, you can beat on this
Speaker 3: stuff with a ball peen hammer and not if I
Speaker 3: can work on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when you first got one of the small
Speaker 1: section of tests. Yeah, panel, you said, Scott, come over here,
Speaker 1: and you handed me I think the biggest crescent wrench
Speaker 1: you had, I think is what it was, and you
Speaker 1: just set this whale on this sale.
Speaker 2: We didn't even I mean.
Speaker 1: We left like the smallest cosmetic cosmetic mark. It was
Speaker 1: nothing structural, nothing structure, and I was hitting it as
Speaker 1: hard as I could.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and you know, there's nobody else you can take
Speaker 3: a ball being hammer to just walk around Expo and
Speaker 3: start hitting people's hammer campers with hammer and see what happened.
Speaker 3: It's not going to work out so well. But our
Speaker 3: camper can you know, except for cosmetically, you're not going
Speaker 3: to see any damage from that kind of that kind
Speaker 3: of very strong material, and.
Speaker 1: That translates directly to rush and trees and you know,
Speaker 1: trail impacts and things like that.
Speaker 3: All kinds of deflections. The other thing about it is
Speaker 3: that the methodology that we developed for joining the panels
Speaker 3: allows for flexible joints. The joints are actually designed to
Speaker 3: be flexible, as I was opposed to be rigid, and
Speaker 3: so they can flex almost indefinitely without failing. Whereas if
Speaker 3: you try to build a ridgid joint, no matter how
Speaker 3: rig you make it, it's eventually going to fail due
Speaker 3: to fatigue. So fatigue is the killer. But if you
Speaker 3: design something to move, then it's not it's not suffering
Speaker 3: that same kind sure, and that's what we done.
Speaker 1: And it seems like you're those long joints being able
Speaker 1: to flex and move, but you still have the strength
Speaker 1: of triangulation that's come from the angles that you've incorporated
Speaker 1: into the camper.
Speaker 2: And how much without adding a lot.
Speaker 1: Of accessories, I guess at its basic weight, how much
Speaker 1: does your Tacoma camper way excluding the flatbed, just the
Speaker 1: camper camper.
Speaker 3: Alone with everything in, it's going to weigh about four
Speaker 3: hundred pounds. But I've removed the bed in order to
Speaker 3: put it on because it's a flatbed and everything, and
Speaker 3: it's only added about two hundred and fifty pounds to
Speaker 3: the stock Tacoma weight, which is about the weight of
Speaker 3: a fiberglass canopy. Yeah. Right, So for the weight of
Speaker 3: a camper shell, I have a camper I can stand
Speaker 3: up in, and I can sleep in, I can cook in, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I can carry a certain amount of gear. So yeah,
Speaker 3: to me, it's a real luxury. And it's got a
Speaker 3: very low center of gravity. The entire roof of the
Speaker 3: camper can be lifted on fingertips. Four people can lift
Speaker 3: it on a fingertip. Yeah, So that's how light it is,
Speaker 3: so almost no weight high up. Even though it may
Speaker 3: look large, it looks tall, there's no way on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just air volumes, air volume, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just I'm going to repeat that one more time for
Speaker 1: those that are listening. So the net increase to the
Speaker 1: weight of the Tacoma after your camper and flatbed is
Speaker 1: only two hundred and fifty pounds. That's amazing, and I
Speaker 1: think that that needs to be what camper manufacturers start
Speaker 1: to look at more seriously. Is you can't put a
Speaker 1: twelve hundred pound camper on the back of a Tacoma
Speaker 1: and expect it to work because you're at one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the payload capacity before you even add water
Speaker 1: or a person or your dog or hair brush, not
Speaker 1: in our case, but you know, or whatever, hair, hair
Speaker 1: dryer or whatever, you know, Before you add anything to it,
Speaker 1: you've already consumed one hundred percent of the available payload
Speaker 1: of the vehicle. So the fact that there are campers
Speaker 1: like yours, and there are other manufacturers that are starting
Speaker 1: to make lighter campers as well, which is so encouraging.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you can have a net increase
Speaker 1: over the stock vehicle of over two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds and have a bed and a place to stay
Speaker 1: and in a place to cook and completely out of
Speaker 1: the elements, that's a new standard for the industry, and
Speaker 1: it's so encouraging to see. Another thing that I really
Speaker 1: liked about your camper is that you decided not to
Speaker 1: incorporate a whole bunch of complex systems. If you want
Speaker 1: to cook inside the camper, bring in a stove and
Speaker 1: cook inside the camper.
Speaker 2: But most of the.
Speaker 1: Time people cook outside, right because you don't want your
Speaker 1: camper to smell like salmon. You want, you know, the
Speaker 1: outdoors to smell like salmon, or you want to cook
Speaker 1: over a fire, or you want to you know, and
Speaker 1: certainly using a jet boil on the countertop to make
Speaker 1: coffee in the morning is an easy thing. So I
Speaker 1: actually think not incorporating a stove is smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well for my personal camper, I think people would
Speaker 3: be surprised at how smart it is because the camper,
Speaker 3: to me, is only a place to take refuge to sleep.
Speaker 3: If I can be in the outdoors, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be in the outdoors. That's where I'm going to make
Speaker 3: my coffee, is where I'm going to cook my breakfast,
Speaker 3: That's where I'm going to do everything. So I don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of built in stuff, but you know,
Speaker 3: there is the option to build those things into the
Speaker 3: shell if you're sure you're still going to end up
Speaker 3: with a lighter camper. You know, the less you can
Speaker 3: do with the more your mindset is a minimalist philosophy,
Speaker 3: then the more you're going to benefit from all this.
Speaker 3: And you know, the benefit for me is I have
Speaker 3: a tacoma that I could drive one hundred miles an hour,
Speaker 3: you know, down a washboard road with be able to
Speaker 3: control it. And you know, I would never try to
Speaker 3: do that with one thousand pound camper on my back
Speaker 3: and insane as something god sideways, I'd be rolling. So
Speaker 3: this thing is, you know, it's a phenomenal, a phenomenally
Speaker 3: good handling vehicle. As a result of it, capable.
Speaker 1: View and the use of the of the flatbed gains
Speaker 1: so much interior volume because you're not having that lost
Speaker 1: space with the wheel wells and the width of the
Speaker 1: bed construction and you're gaining all of that back in
Speaker 1: interior space. So it's and the way that you've designed
Speaker 1: the flatbed is also very clever with how it hinges
Speaker 1: and at where it has those triangulated load points and
Speaker 1: everything else like that.
Speaker 2: It's very very very clever.
Speaker 1: You know, it's good to see that it's good to
Speaker 1: see campers like yours coming to market. It looks like
Speaker 1: Scout Campers got you know, very simple systems in it
Speaker 1: as well, which keeps the weight much lower for tacomas
Speaker 1: and things like that. So and it looks like a
Speaker 1: lot of other manufacturers are taking note of the fact
Speaker 1: that you can't in good conscience sell a camper that
Speaker 1: is exactly equal to the payload of the vehicle, because
Speaker 1: who's going to drive it? You know, like as soon
Speaker 1: as you put a human in there, your way over payloads.
Speaker 3: So there's so many tacomas out there that are over payload.
Speaker 2: They really are.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's a testament to the durability of
Speaker 3: the tacoma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're amazing vehicles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but still, you know, it's I think of it,
Speaker 3: and I've heard this analogy of thinking of your vehicle
Speaker 3: as a as an animal or something, you know, and
Speaker 3: having some compassion for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, mechanical sympathy, right, mechanical sympathy. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a good way of looking at it.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't overload a horse and expect it to carry
Speaker 3: all this craft for me, you know, If I had
Speaker 3: to load a horse up I'd get off and walk myself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think having some sympathy and just having some respect
Speaker 3: for the fact that this thing is so well engineered
Speaker 3: that it's it's incredibly reliable. These vehicles that we have
Speaker 3: today are so incredibly reliable that we become complacent about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we shouldn't because they are still mechanical things that
Speaker 3: they can still fail.
Speaker 1: Well, it's something as simple as the fact that the
Speaker 1: back twenty percent of the Tacoma frame is unboxed. As
Speaker 1: you put more and more weight after the rear axle,
Speaker 1: it puts an enormous amount of leverage on that frame member,
Speaker 1: and so much so that there are aftermarket kits that
Speaker 1: you can weld on to strengthen the frame. Even once
Speaker 1: you start to deal with articulation loads and leverage imparted
Speaker 1: on the rear frame members. It's a really good idea
Speaker 1: to strengthen the hangarsar for the rear shackles, and so
Speaker 1: being very mindful about the fact if you keep the
Speaker 1: Tacoma light, it will last you a quarter million miles
Speaker 1: all day long. When we get it up. I think
Speaker 1: about my own Tacoma project. My first big project that
Speaker 1: I did was on a four door Tacoma two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. I loaded it up, and I'll admit it
Speaker 1: on this podcast. It was over seven pounds and that
Speaker 1: was totally wrong. I added so many things that it
Speaker 1: didn't need. I didn't think about the fact that it is.
Speaker 1: It is a light duty truck that needs to be
Speaker 1: treated kind of like a backpack, not a freightliner. You know,
Speaker 1: it needs to be treated like a backpack. And if
Speaker 1: I had built that truck differently, I know that I
Speaker 1: would have enjoyed it more and it would have performed better.
Speaker 1: But it's amazing the things that I had to do
Speaker 1: to the vehicle just to make it work. How low
Speaker 1: I had to go with the axle gearing to get
Speaker 1: it to move around, the changes I had to make
Speaker 1: to the brakes, the changes I had to make to
Speaker 1: the frame, and all of those things could have been
Speaker 1: avoided if I had just kept it much lighter and
Speaker 1: it was still a vehicle with a roof tent. It's
Speaker 1: not like it like I had a camper on there.
Speaker 1: I just added too much jump. Yeah, it didn't fundamentally
Speaker 1: change your experience.
Speaker 2: No, it didn't.
Speaker 1: It could have been so easy just to have a
Speaker 1: ground tent and I call it a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean shared a little story with you back
Speaker 3: from my backpacking days, you know. But started out with
Speaker 3: my backpacking probably around sixty sixty pounds something like that, yeah,
Speaker 3: which you know, a lot of people start out here
Speaker 3: and then you get lighter and lighter lighter as you go. Well,
Speaker 3: I finally got down to where I was below thirty
Speaker 3: pounds for a and I eventually got down below twenty
Speaker 3: pounds for a five day pack. But at one point
Speaker 3: I bought this little hammock and I thought, man, you know,
Speaker 3: what a great thing it is going to be to
Speaker 3: have this hammock at the end of the day. I
Speaker 3: had these, you know, visions in my head of swinging
Speaker 3: from a hammock. Sure a hard day, right, And I
Speaker 3: started carrying this thing around with me along with other stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, and I finally came to the realization that
Speaker 3: the real luxury wasn't having that hammock at the end
Speaker 3: of the day. The real luxury was not having to
Speaker 3: carry it forty miles. That was the real luxury. Now.
Speaker 3: I mean I could sit on the log, I could
Speaker 3: get in the grass, you know, I mean I could
Speaker 3: do all those kinds of things and I didn't have
Speaker 3: to carry them there. Yeah, and so those were the
Speaker 3: kinds of mental processes that I went through that I
Speaker 3: carry over into my vehicle philosophy as well. You know
Speaker 3: that sometimes the greatest luxury is the thing you don't carry.
Speaker 3: You don't have to worry about being stolen.
Speaker 2: Sure, you don't have.
Speaker 3: To maintain all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So, talking about your current Tacoma project, you've had since
Speaker 1: the vehicle was almost new. How long have you had
Speaker 1: your Tacoma ten plus years?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I bought it with thirty thousand miles on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you have done
Speaker 1: to that truck that you most appreciate that the changes
Speaker 1: that you made made the best difference for the vehicle
Speaker 1: for your kind of travel.
Speaker 3: I think, I think, and this is kind of true
Speaker 3: of any vehicle, but I think the tires and the
Speaker 3: suspension were the best thing. And then after that I
Speaker 3: did some chassis work. You know, I've done extensive work
Speaker 3: on that truck. Yeah, it's hardly recognizable at this point,
Speaker 3: but yeah, you know, the tires and suspension were really
Speaker 3: the biggest thing.
Speaker 2: And what is your current favorite tire for the vehicle.
Speaker 3: I prefer a two fifty five eighty five sixteen, but
Speaker 3: I also like the two thirty five eighty five sixteen.
Speaker 3: I like skinny tires, and I don't like large tires
Speaker 3: because the mechanical loads that they put on the vehicle
Speaker 3: are just way too great. I think one thing that
Speaker 3: you know where people go wrong with tires is that
Speaker 3: they don't really consider the weight of the tire. And
Speaker 3: when you go to a much larger you're going to
Speaker 3: get a heavier tire. But even with smaller tires, there
Speaker 3: there's a lot of a lot of difference between the
Speaker 3: weight and tire. Yeah, And what I typically try to
Speaker 3: tell people is that if you add if you had
Speaker 3: a pound to your tire weight, it's like adding ten
Speaker 3: pounds to twelve pounds to your payload.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like within the two fifty five eighty five sixteen,
Speaker 3: you can there's like a forty to fifty pound range
Speaker 3: over four tires depending on manufacture. Right, So that's four
Speaker 3: hundred and five that's four hundred and five hundred pounds
Speaker 3: of payload essentially that you're putting on the truck. If
Speaker 3: you look at it in terms of breaking acceleration and
Speaker 3: even things like the way the suspension.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: So the reciprocating because it's reciprocating mass, it has much
Speaker 1: more leverage on the system than some kind of a
Speaker 1: static load or even dynamic that's affixed to the vehicle.
Speaker 3: Right, it's all dynamic loads. It's either rotating mass or
Speaker 3: it's reciprocating.
Speaker 2: Yes, and in this case it's both.
Speaker 3: It's both.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to accelerate it, stop it, and control it. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're right having paying attention to the tires. And
Speaker 1: that's a good point if you have a lightweight vehicle, like,
Speaker 1: don't put an E rated tire on your Samurai because
Speaker 1: it's going to be hard to get it down to
Speaker 1: a low enough pressure to deform properly. And then you're
Speaker 1: hauling around a bunch of unnecessary weight, right that the
Speaker 1: vehicle just doesn't under any conditions need right, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's so lightweight to begin with. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really good point and something that's important for people to remember.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you've done on
Speaker 1: your suspension that you feel made the biggest difference on
Speaker 1: your tacoma.
Speaker 3: You actually alluded to it earlier, but the rear frame
Speaker 3: on the Tacoma's is pretty flexible, and so I've done
Speaker 3: a lot of chassis work back there, and I also
Speaker 3: have done some cross chassis work to strengthen the spring
Speaker 3: hangers in the rear because the way they're designed on
Speaker 3: a Tacoma, the spring hangers will deflect under load. So
Speaker 3: I have a system in there that keeps the spring
Speaker 3: hangers from deflecting. Okay, well, everything stays in alignment. But
Speaker 3: everything that I've done is very careful not to stiffen
Speaker 3: the frame in terms of this ladder type flexibility, because
Speaker 3: that's actually part of the suspension. And if you make
Speaker 3: if you do away with all that ladder type flexibility,
Speaker 3: then you're going to end up with a with just
Speaker 3: a board. You know, you're not going to have You're
Speaker 3: not going to have any kind of articulation vehicle because
Speaker 3: the actual suspension, the actual articulation from the suspension is
Speaker 3: not that much. Yeah, but I mean I can roll
Speaker 3: over an eighteen inch rock without deflecting anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you know, I still have all that flexibility in there.
Speaker 1: Well, that's an interesting point. And if we strengthen members
Speaker 1: of the frame that were designed by Toyota engineers to
Speaker 1: flex or to rotate, et cetera. Then all of that
Speaker 1: leverage is going to be put somewhere else, and maybe
Speaker 1: it'll be at a frame crack. And I actually experienced
Speaker 1: that in Greenland with the high Lux which Highlux frame
Speaker 1: is boxed all the way to the back, and these
Speaker 1: had been reinforced because they suspensions were changed from lease
Speaker 1: spring to coil spring to accommodate the forty four inch
Speaker 1: tall tires. And we actually had a frame failure on
Speaker 1: a Highlux well after it went into a crevass.
Speaker 2: But that's another story.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we actually had a frame failure because of
Speaker 1: the fact that it had been so heavily reinforced in
Speaker 1: one area that it actually broke at the area that
Speaker 1: it was most lightly reinforced. So yeah, you're right, it's
Speaker 1: just going to move those leverage points someplace else, those
Speaker 1: failure modes to some other place. Whereas a stock to
Speaker 1: coma frame is flexible enough where it'll take those inputs
Speaker 1: and it'll move and flex much like a spring would,
Speaker 1: and you want to allow it to continue to do that.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you get over payload, then you have to
Speaker 1: try to fix that because then you get this huge
Speaker 1: beaming effect and all these other changes and characteristics. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right keeping it light. Then you don't have to
Speaker 1: do too much on that because I remember when I
Speaker 1: looked at your what you did in the back of
Speaker 1: the frame. You you actually retained the ability for the
Speaker 1: frame to flex, right because of those joints that you incorporated.
Speaker 3: That's correct, Yeah, yeah, And I want to stress to
Speaker 3: you that a lot of these types of changes are
Speaker 3: serious engineering challenges, yeah, and they're not necessary intuitive to
Speaker 3: the average garage type modifier. So if you're going to
Speaker 3: make these modifications, be very careful, yeah, because like you said,
Speaker 3: you know, you stiffen one thing up, you're going to
Speaker 3: move the stress to somewhere else. There's that gone, and
Speaker 3: is that going to be you know, potentially hazardous or sure?
Speaker 3: Everything has a consequence, right, everything has a consequence. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's so easy to forget that. You know, we
Speaker 3: every time we change something on the vehicle, we do
Speaker 3: make it oftentimes less reliable. There are very rare occasions
Speaker 3: where especially in a Toyota, there are very rare occasions,
Speaker 3: and making a modifications to those vehicles make them more reliable.
Speaker 3: Like one that comes to mind is on the eight
Speaker 3: series there's a small heater hose at the backside of
Speaker 3: the block, and if you upgrade that to a much
Speaker 3: better quality heater hose, then you can reduce a failure mode.
Speaker 3: But there are very few of those kind of modifications.
Speaker 3: So with every time we change the vehicle, we're affecting
Speaker 3: those engineered systems and those redundancies and those offers that
Speaker 3: the engineers from Toyota incorporate that make them so reliable.
Speaker 3: So just being mindful of let's do less of that
Speaker 3: and keep it as close as stock as we can,
Speaker 3: or or only change the things that we really really
Speaker 3: need right to have changed for sure. And there again,
Speaker 3: if we keep things light, then the need to do
Speaker 3: those things becomes minimal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you really don't have to make
Speaker 1: that many changes. It all works together, you know. It's
Speaker 1: just like, you know, getting back to backpacking.
Speaker 3: You know, I carried an Arctics pack for a long time,
Speaker 3: fantastic pack, you know, carry huge amounts of weight in
Speaker 3: that thing. But I realized that, you know, when I
Speaker 3: got my pack down to nineteen pounds, I was carrying
Speaker 3: it around in a twelve pound pack. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: didn't need a twelve pound pack anymore, right down to
Speaker 3: a three pound pack. Yeah. Again, you know, if you can,
Speaker 3: if you can cut down to what you have to take,
Speaker 3: then then the means to carry it becomes far easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, expense is lower, fuel economy is better, driving experience
Speaker 1: is better.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: Along those lessons learned, I do like to ask this
Speaker 1: of our guests, what are some of your favorite books
Speaker 1: and all of your readings and that time that you
Speaker 1: were able to spend alone, you know, in Wyoming and
Speaker 1: maybe on a Sunday and reading a good book. What
Speaker 1: are some of your faie books that you've read in
Speaker 1: your in your life.
Speaker 3: That's a really tough question to answer because I read
Speaker 3: a lot of books. I read all the classics, and
Speaker 3: I've read almost everything from people like Hemyway, Stein, Steinbeck
Speaker 3: or well, all of these people. Abby. I really enjoyed Abby.
Speaker 3: I read everything they've written, and I've read a lot
Speaker 3: of other authors. I think if I had to pick
Speaker 3: one book, and this is just a disservice to everybody else,
Speaker 3: I mean, but it would maybe be Victor Frankel's Man
Speaker 3: Search for the Little Book, little paperback book. And if
Speaker 3: people haven't read that they should take the time to
Speaker 3: read it because it's it's it's a quick read, and
Speaker 3: it's pretty profound in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: For those that are listening. I read that book recently
Speaker 1: and it talks about this gentleman's experience in the Nazi
Speaker 1: concentration camps, and it by the time you get finished
Speaker 1: with his story, it was it was profound, and it
Speaker 1: was just extremely humbling, and it's a reminder of how
Speaker 1: life can change so quickly. And also it shows the
Speaker 1: possibility of the human spirit. What he endured and how
Speaker 1: he came out of the other side of it with
Speaker 1: his own humility and his own awareness around life and others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really powerful book. It's something that people should
Speaker 1: take the time to read. And I've heard that recommended
Speaker 1: by others as well.
Speaker 2: I would I would definitely second that recommendation for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, he makes the point in there that
Speaker 3: some of the strongest individuals were the first to go. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's the people that are the most.
Speaker 1: Flexible, Yeah, adaptable, adaptable, not the strongest necessary. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is so true. Yeah, the ones that I remember
Speaker 1: him saying that the ones that were sure they'd be
Speaker 1: out by Christmas or sure they'd be out by by
Speaker 1: whatever holiday. Those were usually the ones that would give
Speaker 1: up the quickest. Yeah, and I can't even imagine. I
Speaker 1: don't apply any experience towards those thoughts that I just shared.
Speaker 1: It's just what I gleaned from him. His insights into
Speaker 1: that experience is very, very profound. Sure, is there any
Speaker 1: others that come to mind?
Speaker 3: Well, if you want to read an author that's still alive,
Speaker 3: one that I read recently is Ryan Holiday's Silence is
Speaker 3: the Key.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Stillness is the key.
Speaker 3: Stillness is the key. Yeah, that's an easy read as well,
Speaker 3: great read. Yeah, but it's it's it's a very good read,
Speaker 3: and I think it has a lot of lessons for
Speaker 3: modern society. Yeah, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: are really suffering now. I mean, you know, you and
Speaker 3: I grew up in a time before so much noise. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and now there's this constant distractions social media
Speaker 3: and everything else. You know, But at least we have
Speaker 3: we have our roots in a time when there wasn't that,
Speaker 3: so we're a little maybe a little better at coping
Speaker 3: with it. But where a lot of people it's overwhelming. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they don't even know it. They know you realize
Speaker 3: the negative effects that it's having on them. But this
Speaker 3: book makes you think about that, and you know, maybe
Speaker 3: it'll change your habits a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a beautifully curated piece from the Stoics, and
Speaker 1: it's probably the book that I've gifted more than anything else.
Speaker 2: Is that book.
Speaker 1: So that's another wonderful recommendation. And yet, and I think
Speaker 1: it very much applies to travel. Yeah, we have such
Speaker 1: short periods of time to have these experiences. If we
Speaker 1: can find a way to get into the right mindset
Speaker 1: of just being open to those experiences sooner where we
Speaker 1: can uncouple from our devices and our day to day
Speaker 1: and our and our patterns and everything else and become
Speaker 1: the traveler. The more quickly we can do that and
Speaker 1: be open to those changes, the more profound our trips,
Speaker 1: I think are. So I really see that as being
Speaker 1: another great volume for people to read for sure.
Speaker 3: Well, and it really gets to the point that, you know,
Speaker 3: travel at its essence is in our head. We think
Speaker 3: about it as an external thing, but it really is
Speaker 3: an internal thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Travel is a chance for us to frame our life
Speaker 3: and ourselves and the world in a way that we
Speaker 3: haven't seen it and to internalize that. You know, the
Speaker 3: travel is I think a necessary part of it, because
Speaker 3: when we're wrapped up in our daily, mundane lives, it's
Speaker 3: very difficult to see it beyond that, and so when
Speaker 3: you're out there, you're able to see beyond it. But ultimately,
Speaker 3: the travel that happens, the journey that you're on, is
Speaker 3: in your head, and so you can have it fifty
Speaker 3: minutes from your house, so you can have it fifty
Speaker 3: thousand miles away. Yeah. Sure, I know the little story
Speaker 3: I'll share with you if you feel allowed. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love it. I'd love to experiment with these kinds
Speaker 3: of things with myself mentally. So I've done a lot
Speaker 3: of unusual things. But one thing that I decided to do.
Speaker 3: I was traveling through Moab many years ago and I
Speaker 3: was in a very remote area, was entirely alone. I
Speaker 3: didn't even have my dogs with me on this trip.
Speaker 3: I decided that I needed to spend one whole day,
Speaker 3: just one day of my life, without doing anything. And
Speaker 3: this is difficult for me. You know, I'm a you know,
Speaker 3: you're a busy guy. Yeah, a busy guy. I don't
Speaker 3: sit still. So I decided that I wanted to watch
Speaker 3: the sunrise and I wanted to watch the sunset, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to do nothing in between other than just
Speaker 3: be aware of everything that life brought to me. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to make anything happen at all. I made
Speaker 3: up a little bit of food, put it in a bag,
Speaker 3: got some water, got a little sitting pad, and I
Speaker 3: found a place up on a bluff with an extraordinary
Speaker 3: view around me. It's almost three hundred and six degrees
Speaker 3: off this little sand dome. You know, you just find
Speaker 3: a lot of those out Yeah. But I climbed up
Speaker 3: there in the dark, sat down, waited for the sun
Speaker 3: to rise, and I sat there all day long, except
Speaker 3: to get up to use the bathroom. Better than that,
Speaker 3: I didn't move. I tried not to think about anything.
Speaker 3: I tried to give my surroundings my one hundred percent attention.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to be aware at every moment of
Speaker 3: the temperature, the position of the sun, the sounds around me,
Speaker 3: the animals around me. And at first I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: about thirty minutes into this, I thought, I am never
Speaker 3: going to make it, because it's just not going to work.
Speaker 3: And then a couple hours in, I started getting into
Speaker 3: the rhythm of it, you know, and by three or
Speaker 3: four o'clock the hours were just flying by. Before you
Speaker 3: know what, the sun was on the horizon. I sat
Speaker 3: there the whole day and that was the most you know.
Speaker 3: It really opened my eyes to the fact that, you know,
Speaker 3: we can travel thousands of miles to have these experiences,
Speaker 3: or we can just sit still and pay attention. You know,
Speaker 3: you can get to the same place in your mind,
Speaker 3: but it really has to be through your attention, not
Speaker 3: necessarily your location, your location or your itinerary. Sure, I
Speaker 3: gets so hung up on that I want to see this,
Speaker 3: I want to see that. I want to stop here,
Speaker 3: I want to go there, you know, and they think
Speaker 3: the more they cram in, the more they're going to experience,
Speaker 3: when in fact they would experience more just sitting. I
Speaker 3: would venture to say that I experienced more of Moab
Speaker 3: in that one day than most people do staying there
Speaker 3: in a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, because you were open to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do an almost daily kind of quiet time like that,
Speaker 1: where it's meditative in my own way. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: really bad at it, but if I make it to
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. Well, I started at five and I got
Speaker 1: to ten after about six months, and now I'm at
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes. And it's amazing if you don't have
Speaker 1: any of those other inputs. I don't let myself look
Speaker 1: at my phone. It's all shut off and my monkey
Speaker 1: mind is going in a thousand different directions. But I
Speaker 1: think that has been really good for me because it
Speaker 1: makes me realize my mind is constantly going in a
Speaker 1: thousand different directions. And now after I've been doing it
Speaker 1: for over a year, maybe I'm only going in seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty different directions, or some days I might
Speaker 1: get to five hundred different directions. But I can notice
Speaker 1: the change. I can notice that I'm more productive during
Speaker 1: the day. It's helped me work through things that would
Speaker 1: occupy my mind, regrets or whatever. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's really powerful. So for you to do an entire day,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. That is really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and now it's something I want to do again.
Speaker 3: I want to start doing more of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I've kind of been you know, I go through these cycles,
Speaker 3: like you say, I've been wrapped up in my business,
Speaker 3: and you know how it is with a business, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it really intrudes in your time. I do meditate every morning,
Speaker 3: just as you do. I get up at four four thirty,
Speaker 3: so I have a long day.
Speaker 1: But that is totally uncivilized. Man, I'm kidding. Some people
Speaker 1: are early risers. I am not an early riser.
Speaker 3: So it's you know, it's brutal. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: when I meet people for breakfast, they say, well, when
Speaker 3: do you want to meet And I said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you need to pick when we meet for breakfast. I
Speaker 3: will be unreasonable.
Speaker 1: You're halfway through your day by the time you meet
Speaker 1: me for redfast, ready for lunch.
Speaker 3: By the time you want to meet. Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 3: I know it's unreasonable. I do get up early partly
Speaker 3: so that I have the time to do this, because
Speaker 3: it has helped to center me for the day. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's so good. And you know, this process of being
Speaker 3: aware of the fact that your monkey mind is going
Speaker 3: crazy and then redirecting that back that builds neural pathways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and it seems like it does.
Speaker 3: It does. Yeah, And so the more you practice it,
Speaker 3: the more those pathways become ingrained. Yeah, and it becomes
Speaker 3: a tool that you can use at any moment to
Speaker 3: bring yourself back from that insanity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the brink, right, Yeah, that's good. That leads
Speaker 1: me kind of to one of the things that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to ask you, because I think you'll have
Speaker 1: so many insights for the listeners. Is if you were
Speaker 1: to recommend or just have some suggestions or some thoughts,
Speaker 1: even for someone that was coming new into travel, new
Speaker 1: into overlanding, what would you share with them? What would
Speaker 1: be your top three to five piece of advice or
Speaker 1: suggestions that you would give to someone new to travel.
Speaker 3: Just to give a little perspective, I guess you know.
Speaker 3: My very first experiences in this were in a nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty five Oldsmobile Delta eighty eight, big giant car that
Speaker 3: I bought for three hundred dollars. But I was so
Speaker 3: glad to have it. You know, I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 3: and I immediately started driving at places. You know, I
Speaker 3: did a lot of traveling around southern Arizona, and I
Speaker 3: did a lot of traveling in the back country with it,
Speaker 3: which is ridiculous. I mean, it's got like six inches
Speaker 3: of ground clan like a five degree departure. So I
Speaker 3: drugged that thing through sand washes and everything you could imagine.
Speaker 3: But the point is I didn't have tools. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't have a winch. You know, it turns out
Speaker 3: nobody made a winnch bumper for an old zage, and
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't know when I bought it. But no,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any of this stuff, right, And it
Speaker 3: really was about it really was about overcoming my own
Speaker 3: gremlins in my head. You know, the fears of traveling,
Speaker 3: the fears of breaking down. And back then there were
Speaker 3: no cell phones. So if you broke if you drove
Speaker 3: fifteen twenty miles back into the desert, broke down, you
Speaker 3: were walking fifteen or twenty miles out that year. That's
Speaker 3: the way it worked. That's the way it worked. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there were no weather options back then. But you know,
Speaker 3: these days, there's not a lot to be afraid of. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I would say not to focus so much on
Speaker 3: the physical things past the things that we talked about.
Speaker 3: You do want to be You want to have some
Speaker 3: shelter for the weather. You want to be comfortable so
Speaker 3: you can sleep, and those sorts of things you wouldn't
Speaker 3: be able to fix. You want to have water, and
Speaker 3: you want to be able to fix food, eat, but
Speaker 3: beyond that, you don't really need a lot. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: work on the aspects of your character that would allow
Speaker 3: you to travel farther and more confidently. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: things like security, confidence, competence. All of these things are
Speaker 3: things that you develop within yourself. They're not things you
Speaker 3: build into a vehicle. And ultimately, if you try to
Speaker 3: compensate with the vehicle for the things that you lack,
Speaker 3: you're going to end up paying the price for that eventually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, pay the price in money and time to
Speaker 1: try to accommodate for that, and then mechanical things will
Speaker 1: always fail you. I mean I've I've had lank users
Speaker 1: not start. It's very rare that that happens. But I've
Speaker 1: had land cruisers let me down. You're right, I think that.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's because that's what we're reinforced in and
Speaker 1: that's what the messages oftentimes in the industry, and that's
Speaker 1: why we try so hard in this podcast to try
Speaker 1: to remind folks that it's not the stuff that's going
Speaker 1: to give you the great experience. It's the doing, it's
Speaker 1: the going, it's the seeing that's going to make you
Speaker 1: more and more confident. If you look at the early travelers,
Speaker 1: the early around the world explorers, they had a fraction
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we have available at our fingertips
Speaker 1: today on a phone, and it's just amazing what they accomplished.
Speaker 1: And they just did it from their own desire to
Speaker 1: see and to go and to do. So that's wonderful advice.
Speaker 1: Reminding people that let's work on ourselves first, let's make
Speaker 1: let's get some education, let's get some training. Let's go
Speaker 1: out and do it and get lost and get stuck
Speaker 1: and break down and figure it out, so that way
Speaker 1: we have the confidence in ourselves to explore a little
Speaker 1: further next time, right.
Speaker 3: And you know, try to see the world. Do the
Speaker 3: of a traveler as opposed to a tourist, you know,
Speaker 3: because there's a big difference. You know, you can have
Speaker 3: all the Instagram photos and all the videos, and you
Speaker 3: can have the vehicle and all the all the gear,
Speaker 3: and you know, you can visit all the fancy places,
Speaker 3: but if you never internalize any of it, then you
Speaker 3: really haven't traveled to those places at all, and you
Speaker 3: haven't taken advantage of the places that they can take you.
Speaker 3: In your own mind. That's really the essence of it.
Speaker 3: If you will. You know, there is an actually that
Speaker 3: brings another thing to mind. There was there's a movie
Speaker 3: called Walter Mittie.
Speaker 2: Great movie.
Speaker 3: It's a great movie. I love that movie. But and
Speaker 3: I'm not going to spoil it for people that haven't
Speaker 3: seen I think you know that. I think that any
Speaker 3: of us that have a yearning to go do that
Speaker 3: should watch that movie. But in the very end, you know,
Speaker 3: at the very end of the movie, they really show
Speaker 3: you what the most important thing is, and it's it's
Speaker 3: not the extravagant experiences so much as the small experience
Speaker 3: is fully experienced, if that makes sense. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: word this very carefully not to give away the ending.
Speaker 3: In the very end, you know that what they called
Speaker 3: the quintessence of life or something. Yeah, is this very
Speaker 3: very simple thing. Yeah, and the guy that thought that
Speaker 3: he didn't have any of it basically had it all. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a very interesting lesson. Yeah. You can travel all
Speaker 3: over the world and see nothing. Yeah, you can travel
Speaker 3: a few miles away and see it all, and you're
Speaker 3: a much better travel person.
Speaker 2: No, no question.
Speaker 3: Just remember that. And you know it doesn't take a
Speaker 3: ton of money. It doesn't take a fancy vehicle, it
Speaker 3: doesn't take a ton of year. Yeah, pretty much, anybody
Speaker 3: with the heart and the desire to do it can
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So thank you for that encouragement, David.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all of the great conversations that you
Speaker 1: and I have shared around breakfast here and Prescott. And
Speaker 1: that's really what inspired me to want to have you
Speaker 1: on the podcast, is that I have learned so much
Speaker 1: from you. And as I've shared before with the audience,
Speaker 1: I know less than five percent of what I hope
Speaker 1: to know about this subject, and I have learned you
Speaker 1: have definitely moved the needle for me and the things
Speaker 1: that you've shared and the lessons that I've learned from
Speaker 1: you and your travels and the way that you prepare
Speaker 1: vehicles and equipment. So really grateful for our friendship, and
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for you having been on the podcast today
Speaker 1: and for reminding people that it isn't about checking boxes,
Speaker 1: it isn't about how far you go. It's maybe about
Speaker 1: how much we learn about ourselves and about how much
Speaker 1: we learn about the place that we're in at that moment.
Speaker 3: That's right, It's a good lesson for life too.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: And I guess one last question, where can people find
Speaker 1: out more about you and about Turnoverland and some of
Speaker 1: these new things that you're bringing to market.
Speaker 2: What's your website?
Speaker 3: The website is turnoverland dot com and we also have
Speaker 3: Instagram accounts and so forth. If you want to learn
Speaker 3: more about what we're doing with the camper, you could
Speaker 3: also contact at Overland because they are partnering with us
Speaker 3: on the building of these campers perfect Man.
Speaker 1: That way people can see a little bit more of
Speaker 1: these amazing new products you're bringing to the market.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: It's very good. Dave, thank you so much. I appreciate
Speaker 2: you being on the podcast.
Speaker 3: Yes, there is pleasure.