Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2008 från Overland Journal

Medical Kit Critique After reading Overland Journal for the past year, I believe it to be one of the finest publications available on the subject of vehicle-borne travel. Your publication, with its balanced blend of overland journeys and equipment testing and reviews fills a niche that no other publication can match. For example, Tom Sheppard’s article on desert driving (Overland Journal, Fall 2007) was simply superb in its surface terrain analysis. With that said, I was very anxious to read Andrew Moore’s overland medical kit review article. My motivation was based on the essential question all vehicle-borne overlanders face when preparing for a journey: “What type of illnesses and injuries should I expect?” The answer to that question drives what type(s) of medical kits an overlander should obtain commercially or…

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.…

One promise we’ll always keep: If you see us promoting a product, it’s because we have used it and found it up to the standards we demand, not just because we got it free or scored an ad. No one knows when in the mists of prehistory the first commercial announcement ushered Homo sapiens into the world of free enterprise. We can safely infer that early advertisements were merely spoken pitches for whatever product or service the person wanted to trade for another product or service. (Random thought: Did spammers of the day simply yell at everyone they saw?) With the advent of affordable paper came handbills that were mostly illustrated (since few could read). The first newspaper was printed in England in 1620, and the very first ad in…

Mondo Enduro is not your typical account of a polished, well-funded, around-the-world motorcycling expedition. What began as an idea tossed around between friends at a pub in Nottingham, England, became an adventure that took over a year to complete. In 1995, seven British chaps set off from London on Suzuki DR350s for a journey that would take them across Europe and Asia to the far eastern edge of Siberia, then from Anchorage, Alaska, to Santiago, Chile, and finally through Africa, the Middle East, and back across Europe. Mondo Enduro is their diary, told in their own words as it happened. It’s a hilarious yet utterly inspiring tale of bungling, fumbling, learning, cooperating, exploring, crashing, making friends (and, in one case, a wife), and exceeding personal limits. Most highly recommended. ISBN:…

I was curious to see what life would be like with the Editor’s Choice in our roof tent test (Overland Journal, Spring 2007), the Technitop. I’d always been ambivalent about the roof tent concept—attracted by the ease of deployment, the cool “treehouse factor,” the way-off-the-ground security, and the substitution of a 4,000-pound ground anchor for a bunch of stakes, but put off by the weight and CG (center-of-gravity) issues, and the high cost. For ten months I was able to carry, deploy, and sleep in the Technitop enough to become thoroughly at home with both its strengths and weaknesses. While a growing magazine meant I didn’t use it as often as I might have liked, I satisfied my curiosity about both the concept and this particular approach. I mounted the…

When I set out last spring to research a “green” overlanding vehicle, my goal was simple, or so I thought: a high-mpg, cleaner-emissions vehicle to replace my 2000 Toyota Tacoma, which I felt, for its size, was not providing me with adequate fuel economy or utility (see Overland Journal Summer 2007 Conservation column). The quest quickly turned complex, as my research revealed that choices in the American 4WD market had yet to include anything that met my needs or budget, including diesel or hybrid options. Finally, I opted for a very clean 1984 Toyota FJ60 Land Cruiser, a very straight all-Arizona vehicle, still pretty much stock except for a few nice extras (Old Man Emu suspension and 40-gallon fuel tank). I grabbed it for $2,500, and immediately planned to replace…

We’ve all seen them and most of us have one: point-and-shoot digital cameras with five, seven, even more megapixels (a megapixel is a million light-sensitive sensors). A top-quality digital SLR can net you up to 16 megapixels or more. Imagine, then, an imaging device with the equivalent of roughly 127 megapixels, so sensitive that just a few photons of light can trigger one of the pixels. It can produce an image in light so dim a digital camera records nothing. It autofocuses from a few centimeters to infinity, automatically adjusts exposure, has no moving parts, no batteries, and comes standard with not just one, but two sensors (a total of 254 megapixels) coupled to produce coordinated binocular images. To top it off, if treated properly they will last nearly a…

October 9, 2005 33º17’24”N, 109º15’25”W When the Jeep stopped moving, I had a hunch we were in trouble. I tried to restart it, but I knew better— I knew exactly what a dead fuel pump felt like. It was a little pointless hope, but hope was all we had—since Brooke and I were totally alone, and over 40 miles from the nearest town, on a solitary road that went nowhere. Based on the GPS, we knew we had at least a 10-mile hike to reach the nearest residence. While we hiked, it rained. Then it hailed. Then it rained harder. The only option we had was to keep walking, since we were limited to the food and water we carried. And after those 10 miles? A ranch house,…

The first thing you have to understand is that England lost World War II. Okay: That’s obviously an outrageous, patently false statement—at least on the surface. England, with tardy but massive assistance from the United States and other allies, was victorious against Germany, as all . . . well, some. . . schoolchildren know. Under the leadership of Winston Churchill, the British people staunchly withstood the most protracted siege in modern military history, from the opening waves of Heinkels and Messerschmitts to the last sporadic salvos of V2 rockets raining down on London. But that victory cost England more than we can imagine. Isolated as well as protected by water on all sides, Great Britain depended on imports brought by sea for many of its most basic needs. Before the…

It’s easy to assume that there are no blanks left on our 21st-century maps. No “Terra Incognita,” no “Here be dragons,” no regions filled in with fanciful inventions of the cartographer. After all, virtually every corner of the earth is now subject to minute satellite surveillance and computer-aided mapping honed to shrub-size accuracy. Anyone with a computer and Google Earth can zoom in on the most remote corner of the globe from the comfort of a study. But even maps provided by satellite, no matter how detailed, are just sheets of two-dimensional blobs and squiggles. Unless humans travel with some sort of regularity in that remote corner of the globe, it remains very effectively blank. Although I’ve been traveling in the Sahara since the early 1980s, the desert there stills…

The Beginning Delirious with exhaustion, I sit up at 1:13 a.m. and slap my ankles pink. I have slept maybe one hour of the four I’ve been trying. Mosquitoes pricked me all over until I lay sweating and hiding beneath my sheet. They continued waking me by buzzing onto the sheet over my ear, so I re-inserted the earplugs I wore all day. I can no longer hear the mosquitoes, but neither can I hear the ocean crashing on the Mozambican shore. I am frazzled miserable, and the second day of my vacation is starting in just over three hours. One day I’d been dreaming about travel to the countries neighboring my adopted home of South Africa. I pulled out the Lonely Planet and started scribbling in a notebook, made…

Retracing my steps over the scenic passes back to Horca, and past the campground with the old fuel pump, today brought Colorado and some of its land up high, way up high. I’m not a religious type of person, and believe that we all find true meaning in our own ways. It’s a very personal thing, and one that’s best learned by yourself. This country, so close to the sky and above most day-to-day life, gives me a special tingly feeling. No, it’s not from lack of oxygen, but thanks for your concern. At some point during this trip it finally hit me. It had been bugging me for a few days. Not dealing with traffic, being on many of these roads by myself, alone with my bike, traveling through…

Desert Lion Project's new wheels Conservation science is a tough gig, especially in places like Namibia, where the environment is as extreme as it gets. Dr. Philip “Flip” Stander has been working there as a researcher and conservationist since the early 1980s. In 1998 he founded the Desert Lion Project, in response to the increased human-lion conflicts in the region. All field researchers need reliable vehicles, and DLP's mainstay has been a Toyota Hilux bought new by Flip in '83 (photo, top). It has logged over 500,000 km, got a 'new' roof (nicked from a Land Rover) after rolling in the Caprivi Strip, and serves as filming platform, darting stand, and veterinary vehicle. “Hagar the Hilux” is chugging along (photo, right), but the project will be getting a brand new…

Preparing and training to survive unexpected and challenging incidents is not just the realm of men and women in uniform. It is an essential exercise in self-reliance and preservation for the overland traveler. Mark’s story came to a happy ending because he and Brooke are exceptionally fit and could travel quickly, and had a good sense of where help and shelter would be located. However, with a few additional pieces of equipment they could have communicated their problem to the outside world, set up effective shelter, and remained dry, warm, well-fed, and hydrated. One way to ensure this equipment is always available is to carry what sailors call (for obvious reasons) a ditch bag. But with all the gear and food we already carry in our vehicles, why should a…

Up until the early 19th century, if you wanted or needed to go out in the rain you essentially had two choices in outerwear: leather or wool. You’re right—neither one is very waterproof, and each gets heavier and smellier the wetter it is. (Of course, by this time Inuit sea kayakers had developed lightweight, waterproof, and breathable outerwear made from walrus intestine—but that’s another Classic Kit.) Sailors on the merchant windjammers of the era, faced with the Southern Ocean’s icy spray, smeared themselves and their clothes with grease or oil to stay dry and warm. Then a Scottish sailor named Edward Le Roy realized that the linen (flax) material from which the ships’ sails were sewn could be waterproofed by infusing it with linseed oil. Capes and cloaks Le Roy…

Never assume that just because you have the truck packed, the work caught up, and the bills paid that this will be another perfect adventure. I picked up my girlfriend, Sharon, from work in Tucson and we sped off into the cool desert night. We drove for a few hours, eastbound, listening to some old bootleg tapes on the stereo; this was pre-digital days. We finally made it to the little town of Duncan and I slowed down to look for the dirt road that would lead us to the mine. Although abandoned long ago, the mine was still full of treasures: the relics and oddities of long ago, waiting to be peered at through curved and polished glass, scraps missed or cast aside by the miners. Our goal for…