Overland Journal Fall 2015

In Good Company Our new FJ build is coming along great. I have decided that the latest Overland Journal will be permanently kept in the passenger rear seat pocket. This way, an uninitiated rear seat passenger can quickly see what overlanding and this version of the FJ are all about. I have been a voracious reader all my life, having literally read thousands of books and subscribed to hundreds of magazines. For practicality I have only kept the very best books in my library and have limited my magazine subscriptions to only the most interesting. My current personal subscriptions are: Overland Journal, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, and Men’s Journal. You are in great company. Keep up the good work. Jim Metzler, ICON Vehicle Dynamics 2013 FJ Cruiser Trail Team Edition Best Article Ever My compliments go…

Johno Ellison Raised in Yorkshire, England, Johno Ellison left home at age 18 to join the Royal Air Force where he trained as a helicopter pilot. The pursuit of higher education led him to Aston University where he studied sustainable product design. Johno’s longing for adventure has taken him through more than 70 countries, and his escapades include driving a $300 car to Kazakhstan, hitchhiking through the Balkans, and backpacking around South America. At the start of 2011, Johno and his “It’s on the Meter” team departed on a 15-month expedition to travel around the world in a 1992 London black cab. In August 2011 they set a new world record for the longest taxi journey. Jon S. Solberg Jon S. Solberg, MD, is a board-certified, U.S. Army-trained emergency medicine physician and wilderness…

I was truly humbled by the incredible outpouring of support and camaraderie. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they find out who their friends are; the ones they can count on in a time of need. They may not need to bail you out of a sticky financial situation, or pack up on a moment’s notice to fetch you from a mud bog in the middle of nowhere, but they step up to the plate when you least expect it. During my travels, which include months trekking through Central and South America, Australia and Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and so on, I have experienced nothing more than the occasional petty theft: baboons stealing sundries from my camp and that type of thing. (It would seem that I’ve led a charmed…

Two years ago I was in need of a new dual-sport helmet and purchased Arai’s XD4. Though I’m a fairly analytical shopper, the litmus test was a BMW F800GS Adventure press introduction in Moab, Utah, (Overland Journal, Winter 2013). After a 140-mile, off-pavement test day, followed by a 700-mile rip across Utah and Nevada, the XD4 remained comfortable. While comfort is a personal metric, ensuring you have the correct size and fit are critically important for safety. The Facial Contour Support cheek pads come in several sizes for easy fitting and provide support during use. Mass is a weighty subject, and the unit’s Complete Laminate Construction is light and right. Goggles, depending on those chosen, will fit without removing the shield. The sun visor is designed for highway-speed use and can…

Garmin touts the Foretrex 401 Global Positioning System (GPS) as a compact wrist-mounted device with a highly sensitive receiver, a barometric altimeter, and an electronic compass. It carries an IPX7 (3.3 feet for 30 minutes) rating for incidental exposure to water, and I’ve found it holds up to rough field use. The on/off and device settings are activated via rubberized buttons on the side of the unit, and menus are intuitive, which makes setup and changes simple. The user can customize certain screens to allow viewing of preferential information, such as simultaneously displaying latitude and longitude together with UTM. It will also hold 500 waypoints, 20 routes, and 10,000 points. Using the Jumpmaster software and military grid reference system (MGRS) you can wirelessly share routes, waypoints, and tracks with nearby Foretrex…

If you are a longtime subscriber you are quite aware that we hold reliable equipment in high regard. I don’t personally need, nor can I afford, every latest-and-greatest whiz-bang gizmo that comes down the line. However, there are certain aspects of my gear that I won’t skimp on. In 2006 I picked up an ARB recovery kit for a trip to Baja, Mexico. Though it originally contained two kinetic recovery straps, a snatch block, winch line extension, and several bow shackles, I’ve added a handful of shackles and one of ARB’s synthetic line blocks. The original winch line extension was loaned out a few years ago and, well, never came back. The rest of the kit, however, is intact and has literally been put into service hundreds of times—during recovery…