Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2007 från Overland Journal

Keep it Coming I discovered your magazine at the Land Rover National Rally and I must say, what a pleasant surprise! The quality of your content rivals pre-90s National Geographic issues and I've thoroughly enjoyed the first issue of my subscription. I especially appreciate your refined, upscale take on off-highway travel, something that is missing from every other four-wheel-drive magazine on the newsstand. I would also like to commend you on your commitment to conservation and environmentally responsible travel. Encouraging minimal-impact tourism to threatened areas is the best way to protect them. Keep it coming! Chris Snell, 1994 Land Rover NAS Defender 90 Error My son gets your excellent magazine and I enjoy reading the articles. I would like to advise you of an error in the Subaru diesel engine…

Adam C. Jeske Adam Jeske is a genuine farm boy from Wisconsin. He grew up on an XR80, then a KZ750, and a CB360 that never ran, since it was older than he. Freshly married, he and Chrissy moved to a remote mountaintop in Nicaragua for a year. Then he commuted in the U.S. on a Kawasaki Concours, in temperatures often below freezing. After two years in China, he volunteered for a few years with a non-profit in South Africa. With Phoebe (4) and Zeke (2) on the scene, he’s thinking about getting a sidecar rig as the family car. He rides, thinks, writes, does good, and tries to have amazing days. His words and images have appeared in Farmer’s Weekly, The Gardener, Relevant, and a slug of bike rags.…

Baja 1000 Range Rover Classic Overland Journal does not typically cover off-road racing, but the idea of driving a lightly modified Range Rover over 1000 miles of the Baja Peninsula sounded like a true vehicle-dependent adventure to us. Gerardo Barragan and Richard Hopkins piloted their 1988 Classic with a factory motor, R380 5-speed transmission, a set of King Coil-Overs and KMC bead lock wheels in the 40th anniversary of the Baja 1000. Other than the required safety modifications, those were the only upgrades to the truck. The team made it farther than many in the field, even with a five-hour delay due to fuel cell issues. All in all, they traveled nearly 400 miles before the exhausted crew called it quits. Hopefully they took advantage of the extra time to…

Ergonomics • Symtec heated grips; Heat-troller controller for grips and heated vest (from California Sport Touring). Provide warmth on chilly days and extends the riding season. • Renazco Racing custom seat. Probably the single most-appreciated feature after a long day of riding. This seat is custom-made to fit the rider, and is covered in suede to provide better grip at the knees. • Rally footpegs. The OEM pegs were changed to larger ones from a KTM EXC. I also widened the pegs with Works Connection weld-on peg extensions. This combination provides a solid platform for extended standing. Suspension • Precision Concepts custom suspension valving and springs, front and rear. • Stenhouse Racing under-bar steering damper mount. For a tall rider, even high-bend aftermarket handlebars aren’t high enough to be comfortable…

Bringing shelter and comfort to areas in need: Overlanders’ favored destinations are the world’s most remote regions, but often these are sites of natural as well as manmade disasters, from flood to famine to war—Africa alone has more than 15 million displaced people, mostly women and children. Many of us have become cynical about the abilities of bureaucracy-laden governments and big aid groups to be effective, but once in a while you find a group that’s making a difference. Founded by Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard in Cornwall, England, ShelterBox has a simple mission: to provide humanitarian aid worldwide in the form of shelter, warmth, and comfort to people displaced by natural and other disasters. And their strategy is smart: Highly trained volunteers, led by local Rotary teams, rapidly deploy fully-equipped…

“We boys are the same all over the world. Lord, may I never forget the thrill of machines and how blessed I am to live this dream.” The sun had baked the mud house through the long morning of the South African summer. Mamu Shezi graciously lent her home for our weekly meeting of women who volunteer their time caring for neighbors sick with tuberculosis and AIDS. My black fleece wrapped me up, trapping my heat and stink, doubling for the motorcycle jacket left in the U.S., the only place I’d ever ridden. “Salani kahle, salani kahle. Ngiya ekkaya manje,” is my farewell to the ladies, hardworking pillars of their community. “Hamba kahle, hamba kahle,” they respond. Always, Zulu folks command each other to stay well and go well when…

A couple of stories in this issue—Scott Brady’s midwinter Arctic expedition, Lois Pryce’s epic motorcycle journey—spurred me to resurrect an old investigative hobby: survival kits. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept and design of a compact package containing the tools necessary to sustain life for a certain period of time in certain conditions. Some of my interest is purely practical. On my sea kayak’s rear deck I always carry what sailors call a ditch bag: a dry bag packed with items calculated to keep me alive and attract help should I become separated from the boat. On remote trips in the Land Cruiser I carry a day pack filled with everything I’d need to walk out of wherever it is I’m driving. But I also have fun looking through…

Napoleon Bonaparte said, “An army marches on its stomach.” Likewise, an expedition’s success can be influenced by the quality and ease of food preparation, as well as the ability to quickly boil water or melt snow. When reviewing a stove for overland travel, selections are typically separated into two functional groups: those suitable for lightweight vehicles with lower gross vehicle weight (GVW) or storage volume (which includes adventure motorcycles) and the traditional, higher-GVW, four-wheeled vehicle. The foundation for both groups remains the same: 1. The stove must run on readily available fuels for the type of journey planned; 2. The stove must run reliably and be field serviceable; 3. The stove must pack to reasonable dimensions and weight; 4. The stove must be designed to operate at varying elevations; and…

Prologue: In May 2003, Lois Pryce left Anchorage, Alaska, en route to Ushuaia, Argentina—a journey of nearly 17,000 miles and eight months. My journey through the Americas was going swimmingly, if you discount the near-fatal crash of a riding companion in Bolivia, a top-end meltdown (and rebuild) in Peru, and an oil consumption rate that was boosting the South American economy. In Chile, I had met a French girl named Rachel, who was exploring Latin America on her Kawasaki KLR250. We decided to ride together for the last leg of my journey—to Ushuaia, the most southerly town in the world, at the very tip of South America. My Yamaha XT225 had clocked 16,000 miles by the time we crossed the border from Chile into Argentina, and after eight months on…

The problem with a spare tire is, once you’ve used it, you no longer have a spare tire. I know—that’s not exactly Confucian wisdom. And for most trips, one spare is sufficient. But the rougher and more remote the journey—in other words, the farther away you are from Discount Tire—the higher the chance of multiple punctures or damaged sidewalls. You can, as some do, carry two spares, but that’s a lot of extra mass and bulk, and it’s still a finite number. A far better approach is to have the tools, materials, and skills needed to be able to repair your own tires in the field. With the right kit you essentially have an unlimited supply of spare tires, barring catastrophic damage. Tire repairs follow an escalating series of technical…

So it’s winter and downright cold outside. Forget Jack Frost nipping at your nose—fail to keep yourself warm in severe weather and Jack Frostbite could cut off circulation to your fingers or toes. Then there’s the blackened tissue, the gangrene, and a friendly surgeon wielding a stainless-steel buzz-saw . . . From my perspective, it would be better to be pro-active and prepared. The human body operates properly only within a fairly narrow range of core temperatures, from about 97˚F to 104˚F. Maintaining the minimum can be challenging when the air temperature or wind chill drops to 70, 80, even 100 degrees or more below what your body prefers as its ambient surroundings. As we learned in the heat-related illness article in the last issue, heat loss occurs primarily through…

“And nine . . . nine rings were given to the race of Men, who above all else, desire power.” —The Fellowship of the Ring (movie version) Let me tell you: A Ring of Power would be a great thing to have—invisibility and all that. But it won’t keep beer cold. Cold beer—or cold Coke, milk, steak, even ice cream—requires a different kind of power: a steady flow of 12V DC current sufficient to keep a portable fridge running without draining your vehicle’s entire electrical system. And that calls for dual batteries. One is reserved for primary duties, especially starting the engine; the other powers the fridge, interior lights, radios, GPS units, and in many cases the electric winch. For a dual-battery system to work properly, you must be able…

Volkswagen’s Rolling Diesel Showcase Volkswagen’s “Dieselution, The Clean Diesel Tour” began traveling around the country this October. The message is quite clear: Buy diesel, it is the clean fuel of the future. The tour consists of a large trailer containing interactive diesel and sustainability displays and, most importantly, a genuine German engineer available to talk about the finer points of the new engines. Several new clean diesel and Blue Motion VWs are also on display, including the new 345 hp, V10 TDI Touareg R50 that will likely never reach U.S. shores. The host of new technologies incorporated into these engines is impressive, as is the movement toward environmental sensibility. However, the focus is still on petroleum-based diesel fuel. The new engines cannot run on anything higher than a B5 (five…

“Other than walking on two feet, adventure touring on two wheels is the most immersive method of travel I’ve found. On a motorcycle you’re exposed, but with this vulnerability comes a truer relationship to your surroundings, a finer awareness of weather, terrain, and distance, and an elevated sense of self-reliance.”- Ken Reynar The reality that I had entered the middle phase of life struck with painful clarity on a sunny January day on a ski slope in Park City, Utah. Skiing moguls is a young man’s pursuit, or at least one reserved for those in better shape than I was at the time, something I pondered while waiting for the ski patrol to arrive with their toboggan. It seemed like a good time to refocus my attention on another passion:…

Really green fuel The viability of many potential sources of biofuel is questionable for mass-market consumption, but one, green algae, is getting its chance in the spotlight, largely due to the efforts of the fledgling company GreenFuel (greenfuelonline.com). Green algae is relatively easy to grow in large quantities, thrives on and sequesters a massive amount of carbon dioxide, is one of the fastest-regenerating forms of plant life on Earth, need not utilize productive farmland, is not a food crop, and loves to grow on barren sunlit land alongside power generation facilities whose carbon emissions actually enhance growth of the algae. New strains have been developed that contain up to 50 percent oil mass, and according to tests could produce upwards of 15,000 gallons of fuel annually per acre, over 30…

“In this day’s journey ten dogs had drawn my sledge a distance of forty statute miles since the morning, the weight of the sledge being about twelve hundred pounds and half of the road very indifferent.” Captain William Edward Parry, 1824 Impressed? In the long and rich annals of sled dog achievements, Parry’s boast is but a footnote. Consider the following anecdote, related by Lynn Peplinski, manager of the Iqaluit Research Center in Nunavut, Canada, in her article, The Dogs of the Inuit: Companions in Survival: “In 1975, Tatigat, a hunter, returned to Igloolik with his dog team after a month of hunting with his family. His qamotiq (sledge) was 1.2 by 6.5 meters (4.5 by 23 feet) in length. Forming the base of his tremendous sledge load were, lashed…