Show Notes for Podcast #68 

Summary: Scott Brady and Matt Scott interview Bryon Dorr

 

Guest Bio

Bryon Dorr

Bryon Dorr has always been athletically minded and at an early age Boy Scouts gave him a taste for adventure. Through family road trips across the U.S. he got hooked on overland travel. Seeing new things and having new and varied experiences is really what motivates him in life. Adventure sports like kayaking, mtn biking, and skiing have fueled his passion for getting out there and getting after it. Outdoor pursuits have also focused his professional career in the outdoor/paddle sports industry. Bryon has been a rep, distributor, marketing manager, guide, instructor, athlete manager, sponsored athlete, retail manager, retail buyer, and even a manufacturer owner in the paddlesports industry.

In 2011 Bryon mostly left the outdoor industry to pursue his passions for adventure travel and photography. He bought a 4×4 van and chased the water, flowing and frozen, around -mostly- North America for nearly 8-years full time on the road. In that time he has made a name for himself as a go to marketing expert, editorial writer, editor, and photographer with a focus on the outdoors, overland travel, and all things automotive. He has moved on from his van, having built a custom overland truck camper, the EEXP, and more recently a fully custom Lexus GX460. These days he is also seen regularly traveling on his KTM 950 Adventure and in his Porsche 996TT, as well as a wide range of press vehicles, while holding down a home base with his family in Portland, Oregon.Exploring Elements is Bryon’s personal project. His ‘day’ job is the EIC at AutoWise.com and Motors Editor at GearJunkie.com. He is also the Features Editor at Tread Magazine and a regular contributor at Diesel World Magazine. He regularly does business consulting, marketing, and commercial photography for clients in the automotive and outdoor industries.Bryon has created content for the likes of: Expedition Portal, AutoWise, GearJunkie, Tread Magazine, Diesel World, Canoe & Kayak, STEP 22 Gear, Maxtrax, Autoweek Magazine, OutdoorX4, Trucks.com, Matador Network, Playak, DirtNewz, American Whitewater Journal, SUP The Mag, Motus World, XPCamper.com, Bethesda Magazine, Alaska Magazine, Unsealed 4×4, Mr. 4×4, Roots Rated, CO Ski Country USA, TCT Magazine, Alloy+Grit, Off-Road.com, Rigged & Ready Magazine, Adventure Driven, Ninkasi Brewing, DeLorme, AT Overland Equipment, Buckstop Truckware, Goose Gear, Equipt Expedition Outfitters, ROAMBuilt, Gerber Gear, Cascade Designs, Outdoor Play, Overland Expo, NW Overland Rally, Santa Cruz Paddlefest, Lucky 8 Offroad, New Legend 4×4, Top Gear, Cadillac, Travel Channel, Dagger Kayaks, Twisted Throttle, Denali Electronics, Mosko Moto, Clothing Arts, ROXOR Offroad, Dealer News, UnRally, MotOZ Tires, Club Ride, and more…

Bryon’s travel resume is extensive: USA (50 states), Canada (10 provinces, 2 territories), Mexico (17 states), Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Honduras, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, England, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, New Zealand, Australia (4 states), Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia

Follow Bryon on his adventures at:

Exploring Elements
IG @explorelements
EIC @autowisepro
Motors Editor @thegearjunkie
Feature Editor @tread_magazinewww.exploringelements.com

Host Bios: 

Scott Brady

Scott is the publisher and co-founder of Expedition Portal and Overland Journal and is often credited with popularizing overlanding in North America. His travels by 4WD and adventure motorcycle span all seven continents and includes three circumnavigations of the globe. His polar expeditions include two vehicle crossings of Antarctica and the first long-axis crossing of Greenland. @scott.a.brady

Matthew Scott

Matthew is a leading expert in automotive adventure. He has extensively explored the world’s most remote places by 4WD and is considered an industry authority on overland travel. He is the only American to ever become an editor of a major Australian 4WD publication and has over 15 years of competitive auto racing experience. @mattexplore

 

This episode sponsored in party by:

CGI Outdoor 

iKamper 

 

Full Transcripts:

Matt Scott: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is the Overland journal podcast. I’m here with my co-host Scott Brady and bestie Brian Dorr. We’re going to interview him today and make him feel slightly uncomfortable. 

Scott Brady: And we’ve guaranteed that nearly by you having three Pabst Blue Ribbon and a Coors in front of you.

Matt Scott: I’m not driving, don’t drink and drive, but we have just all come off of working 12-hour days at Overland expo so we’re going to do what we feel like. 

Scott Brady: And I figure if it’s good for Ryan Reynolds and I think Jason Momoa has a privately labeled alcohol. 

Matt Scott: This is Scott Brady Tequila. It strangely looks like urine. It may or may not be, and he does have what was once a Brita pitcher? 

Scott Brady: Yes.

Matt Scott: Next to him filled with what may or may not be tequila, which has several different Overland international [00:01:00] brands on it. My favorite being the expertly prepared branding package here. See, when you pull this off, it twists… oh it twists. Look, it twists with Expedition Portal. If you don’t read Expedition Portal, you probably should.

Scott Brady: Mostly after drinking tequila. 

Matt Scott: Yeah. Please go on the Exhibition Portal forum after a bottle of Scott Brady Tequila. 

Scott Brady: Exactly.

Bryon Dorr: Good when it twists off. That’s the best kind of tequila.

Matt Scott: Yeah. So we’re here with Bryon. Bryon is an accomplished Overlander automotive journalist and you do the things that require your heart rate to be up and you exercise in various ways outdoors. Scott and I do not. 

Bryon Dorr: Human powered and dyno juice powered adventures.

Matt Scott: So, world-class kayaker, you mountain bike, you do the thing where you use gravity down the ski slopes.

Bryon Dorr: Oh yes. All of the things skiing, snowboarding, all of the things. 

Scott Brady: [00:02:00] Both skiing and snowboarding.

Bryon Dorr: Snowboard instructor back in the day and recently ski photographer. 

Matt Scott: I’ve had the pleasure of traveling all over the world with Bryon. I’ve had the pleasure of Bryon coming for Thanksgiving and leaving for new years and yeah… no I’m just stoked to have you here. 

Scott Brady: You were on our original list of guests, and it’s taken this long.

It’s taken almost two years. 

Matt Scott: We had that many people that we wanted ahead of Bryon.

Scott Brady: That’s not true. You were actually very, you were very…

Matt Scott: Busy moving from a nomadic life to marrying a wonderful woman, Kate, whom we all love. And having a beautiful baby, Rose, and having a roof over your head that does pop up.

Bryon Dorr: I hope not.

Scott Brady: Those historic homes, anything is possible. 

Matt Scott: Modern homes.

Bryon Dorr: 1928. It’s old. 

Matt Scott: So how do you describe Bryon Dorr? [00:03:00] 

Scott Brady: BRYON. Yeah. That’s an important distinction.

Matt Scott: DORR. So like, if you try and spell your name the way you think it’s spelled, you’re going to mess it up. 

Bryon Dorr: If you try to spell it the most wrong, the worst that you can think of. You’re probably about right. 

Matt Scott: Scott and I do not have that problem. All of our names. First names. There’s six first names on this side. 

Scott Brady: That’s true. Scott Allen Brady. They’re all first names. Yeah, I think that makes us very suspect, Matt.

Matt Scott: Incredibly 

Bryon Dorr: Is that the only thing that makes you suspect?

Scott Brady: No. That’s one of a long list. 

Matt Scott: Overland life kind of started for you with your sports mobile.

Bryon Dorr: It did. Yeah.

Matt Scott: You were in Portland. You were running… What was the name of the shop that you are running? You are an outdoor industry buyer. 

Bryon Dorr: Yes. At the time I ran a large paddle sports retailer, a part of a big outdoor store. It was called the next adventure. 

Matt Scott: It’s still around, I [00:04:00] think right?

Bryon Dorr: Still around, still getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, they’re killing it. So I moved about a 2000 square foot sports department in the big outdoor stores, so I think about the local REI style thing. Took that little 2000 square foot, two employee things to a 15,000 square foot paddle sports center with 16 employees and two vans on a rental program and 3000 plus students through school a year. And about the three-year program I took that thing from making okay money to making well over a million dollars a year. So that’s good. 

Matt Scott: That’s pretty awesome. 

Scott Brady: I think that’s one of the things for me that is really interesting about you, Bryon, is that you’ve gained a level of mastery in a bunch of totally disparate activities. So you’ve gained a significant level of mastery in water sports. You’ve gained a notable level of mastery as an automotive journalist. Then you’ve also started and run and grown businesses to a pretty significant degree of success. What would you say is the common thing amongst all of them about you that’s allowed you to do that?

Bryon Dorr: Probably really enjoying and [00:05:00] excelling when things are continuously moving and you have to react to it and have already planned ahead, had four or five plans enacted and then deal with what’s coming at you when it happens. It’s in whitewater when you’re in the middle of a rapid, you’re not turning around and going back, you’re going downstream one way or the other at that point and you gotta deal with what comes at you, whether you expected, and I think it’s the same with business. 

Scott Brady: So you find yourself to be effective as a tactician or planner, but then it seems like that you are certainly effective at the moment. Like when something goes suddenly sideways or upside down as businesses and whitewater… 

Matt Scott: I think Bryon always has a plan. I mean, Bryon’s helped me so much with my business and starting Adventure Imports and a variety of things, because you plan.

Bryon Dorr: I’m decent at planning. I’m really good at situational awareness and having the knowledge and skills from my history to deal with stuff that’s happening at the time. In a super appropriate manner, that kind of is a plan for the future. So it might look like I have a [00:06:00] plan, but it’s just, because I kind of made something happen on the fly back in the day that then created that situation.

Scott Brady: So a big toolbox for you based on all of those experiences. 

Bryon Dorr: I think so. I think, yeah, I think my experiences in business and running multiple businesses, running business for other people, myself, all the above, paddle sports, action sports, that’s all led to wanting to travel more and doing well and just figuring it out while on the road, I started out trying to be a professional photographer. That was 2011. I’m like no debt, but no money. I mean, I had a hundred bucks in the bank, but I owned my used sports van that I bought. Sold off my car, sold everything I had, I think I had like 1200 bucks, I think in my bank account and my special bill, but I had no bills. I mean, I had a cell phone bill, car insurance. No other bills. No Netflix, no Hulu, none of that stuff to add to the monthly bills and I just hit the road and I was like, I’ll figure it out. I can always go get a job if I have to and slow down. But the plan was to go see lots of stuff and kind of follow the seasons, ski, snowboard, kayak, do all the above and try to be a professional outdoor industry photographer, [00:07:00] especially action sports. I love skiing, snowboarding, and kayaking. Kind of my passions.

Scott Brady: What did you do before that moment in time? What we find when we interview people, there’s something either they hate their job or there’s been a significant personal shift. What was the thing that brought you to that point to saying I’m going to leave with my van and $1,200 and go see the world, or at least try.

Bryon Dorr: Yeah. The 12 months before that was kind of a trifecta. Lost long-term girlfriend, kind of we split, went our different ways on different coasts at the time and the second thing that happened was I was not getting a kind of respect and monetary value for the job I was doing. Even though I was making it huge, I was making the same money managing two employees at 32 hours a week as I was 80 hours a week, managing 16 employees and at some point you just sit back and go, this isn’t going to work out long-term, I’m wasting my time. So I have to have fun with that essentially and the other thing that happened, kind of the big thing that I always talk about is I had three pretty close friends pass away in [00:08:00] short order. So in six months, three friends, all younger than me, some substantially, some less. All three kinds of doing what they love. Whitewater kayaking, freak accident there. Then one South African friend had rabies. So he took in a stray dog. It was licking him and he’s a rancher, so his hands were all cut up and you contracted rabies through the cuts in his hands, like they didn’t know the dog had rabies at all until you contracted it. So yeah, vegetables are pretty quick. And that was rough, and he was 22, I think. So yeah, that kinda was a big impact and eye-opener. It was like not a dead-end job, but like I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t getting what I needed out of it. It saw people that were living life to the fullest that were gone. And I was like, it’s time to do something different with my life. Time is the most valuable resource. We all have. The one thing we can’t get back, we can always earn more money or do this, or do that. But time is… you never know. So it’s time to hit the road and do something different and that was… I didn’t know what I would do, but it was in a situation where I didn’t have any, I don’t want to say baggage, but the baggage of pets or property or a significant other or anything else and debt. So I didn’t have that. I [00:09:00] paid it all off with a bunch of work and was just ready to do something different, a fresh start. 

Matt Scott: And I guess prior to that, you know, you brought up kind of friends and South Africa and stuff. You paddled like the Zambezi. I remember you telling me this one story where you hit the side of your kayak, so the hippos don’t come out after you.

Bryon Dorr: A hundred percent, when you paddle the Flatwater in on the lowers Zambezi, which isn’t run that often the inner Gorge, the upper session just below Victoria falls is pretty commonly run and that’s the harder rapids, and that’s why people run into is really hard and really fun as from an experienced kayaker point of view, but further down it’s flatter between the rapids and longer, and that’s where all the hippos are and the freshwater Crocs. So yeah, you’re in those pools together in a group with the kayaks really close together, and every other stroke, you tap the boat with the paddle, and it makes enough noise altogether that it makes you seem really big. And then they don’t mess with you. You hope so. I know a friend that got eaten by a freshwater croc, so it’s a thing.

Scott Brady: They don’t have a higher discernment of prey. So like anything that looks like protein is [00:10:00] prey. 

Bryon Dorr: For sure. The Zambezi is amazing. Like if you ever get a chance to, if you’re not a kayaker, it doesn’t matter. Go raft it though. Even if you’re not a kayaker, like epic, epic, place to be. As a kayaker, the rafts don’t go here. But up there, the rapids are numbered. One through, I forgot what it was, 20 something and there’s negative rapids and the negative rapids are below Victoria falls like directly below where the falls fall off the rocks and you have to actually paddle upstream and kind of do a portage and then ferry across the current to get up there. So rafts don’t really go to. But I stood in that area. I saw some friends around the Minus rapids. I didn’t, it’s really, really hard like class five plus, plus, plus. It was amazing. I got so many amazing images as a photographer, but I got to stand under one of the smaller waterfalls falling off Victoria Falls directly under it and that was just like a super moving experience for me. Like that’s a place that so very few people have been. It’s one of the many things in my life that really connected me to whitewater as a thing to go explore places on the planet that other people just haven’t been to, or very, very few [00:11:00] people have been. Being on the river and traveling by water is a unique perspective on the world. And it’s just, it’s really cool, especially really remote creeks. Kind of early on, I studied abroad in Tasmania and Australia. And there’s this really remote creek that had been run once before and it poured rain for like five days and it went off, it started flowing and I had all my friends there, like they dragged me out of bed in the morning, super early. We went out there and did it. It was way above my head skill level wise at the time and probably shouldn’t have been there. It was pouring rain all day. But I ran in like an inappropriate gear of rapids above my head. Like in the middle of nowhere, you’re not going to get help. There’s no cell service. We didn’t have Garmen inReaches back then and just the teamwork and being in those places was just the most special thing, and that’s what really hooked me. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to travel the world to do this because it’s going to take me places that others don’t go and I liked that. 

Matt Scott: It’s always been interesting, like as a friend, you know, we’ve been friends for a while now and just, there’s always a new layer of Brian Dorr. You’re like a complicated, slightly [00:12:00] salty onion.

Bryon Dorr: Salty for sure. 

Matt Scott: Anybody that knows Brian will be laughing right now. Okay, so you’ve done the Zambezi. I know prior to that you were involved with importing kayaks and kayak equipment. That was a big part of your life prior to that. So let’s, fast forward to what we initially talked about was the sports mobile? You love vans for some reason…

Bryon Dorr: I do. 

Matt Scott: I mean, you’re like all of this fan life thing. 

Scott Brady: Oh, totally pre van life.

Matt Scott: Pre van life. You get this… it was four-wheel drive, right? Yeah. So it’s four-wheel drive. 

Bryon Dorr: It was a fast four-wheel drive on 33s, extended body, e350 with 73 diesel, it was a full sports mobile.

Scott Brady: Did it have a pop top or a solid top?

Bryon Dorr: Pop top.

Scott Brady: Nice.

Bryon Dorr: For me, pop tops are required because roofs are for adventure gear. So a full height one, you just get too high and won’t be able to fit down trails. I’m always on the top. 

Matt Scott: We kinda got into the [00:13:00] Overland world right about the same time. Found each other pretty quick, became friends, been friends since. Been to each other’s weddings. Actually both of you guys were the only non-family I had on my side of the wedding.

Bryon Dorr: Amazing wedding, if you guys haven’t talked about that yet.

Scott Brady: We did talk about it a little bit. I mean, it was the most beautiful wedding scene.

Matt Scott: 13 people.

Scott Brady: You needed four-wheel drive to get there.

Matt Scott: You needed four-wheel drive to get there. It was at 11,500 feet. 

Bryon Dorr: Two-month-old baby did really well at 11,000 feet.

Matt Scott: Rose was the star of the show. 

Bryon Dorr: I don’t know, Dack was loved by everybody.

Matt Scott: My dog and I had matching suits. 

Scott Brady: They did. That was classic. 

Matt Scott: That was pretty cool. We just, we just valued what we valued. A core group of friends and then we spent the money on our ridiculous honeymoon and traveling because after all this COVID stuff…

Bryon Dorr: Sportsman before times, back in 2011. Honestly, that came about because I didn’t know anything about [00:14:00] Overland World or the…. 

Matt Scott: Overlanding has been a tool and a general industry that has allowed you to do other activities. 

Bryon Dorr: I loved automotive stuff as a kid. I’m a sports car guy. Ferrari guy, the whole nine yards. I was never way into four by fours or… I camped in Boy Scouts and camped in tents and stuff, but yeah, I don’t know that I’m an Overlander. I want to live in a van down by the river, like straight up. That was me. That was like putting the kayaks on there and chasing the rain and going to find rivers all over the planet. Or skiing, I mean, the cycle of water, right? Whether it’s frozen or not, I enjoy using gravity and going down it.

Scott Brady: You’re kind of like the actual definition of overlanding. I mean, a lot of people call themselves that, but you’re actually doing vehicle-based adventure travel. That’s like literally what you did.

Bryon Dorr: So it totally depends on the definition, right? Because for my first, a lot of years, I lived about eight years. Full-time on the road between 2011 and 2018 so seven something years, I lived in a couple of different vehicles, [00:15:00] but started with a sports mobile for a few years. And I was chasing water and doing all that, but the automotive stuff was a tool to go do the adventure. That was just a way to live cheap so I could do the adventures of, I lived under the poverty line for five, six years, and sort of by choice, like I could have gone out and made more money. I had made more money before I started on the road. It was enough to keep doing what I wanted to do and hone my skills in photography, learn a lot about off-road travels or recovery and all that kind of thing, how to drive off road and how to live in a camper and all that kind of thing and then the next step was… the sports mobile was old and a little rusty, so build another vehicle and that was like the big next move. So ’01 Dodge Ram. 

Scott Brady: How would you, before we move to that next section, this is really interesting to me. When you talk about living below the poverty line, I think Matt and I get a lot of questions about how I afford to do this, or I can’t do this because I can’t afford it. That’s really interesting to me. Would you mind talking a little bit about how you did that, how you made decisions [00:16:00] financially where you could go and travel and live in a van down by the river below the poverty line. 

Bryon Dorr: I think the key to that and that’s always, the question is like, how do you do it? And they don’t mean how you do it. They mean, how do you afford it, and the reality of that is if it’s a priority, you afford it. It’s not that complicated. Everybody makes it a thing and it’s usually because they have hang-ups with societal norms and laws. So like, I want to own property, oh, I got this house. Like, I can’t leave. I can’t go do anything. I got to pay my mortgage. You can rent it out there. Right? Or you can sell it. You don’t need to own that. You know, you don’t need the white picket fence, or I got kids, I can’t travel. We all know plenty of people. 

Matt Scott: We were literally just having a margarita with Graham and Louisa Bell.

Scott Brady: Raise their children…

Matt Scott: Raise their children across the world.

Scott Brady: Totally amazing. Super well adjusted. Funny. 

Bryon Dorr: Again, all of those are just excuses because the priority isn’t to go travel and do that. They might aspire to it, but that’s not the priority in life. The priority is like, well we want a stable school life, and we want this and we want that. And that’s [00:17:00] fine. That’s the thing that I think a lot of people got to get over is like, find the path that works for you in life at that time. I mean, my life’s dream has changed dramatically recently, and I’m fine with it. It’s a new path. It’ll change again. 

Scott Brady: You have a road garage now, too.

Bryon Dorr: If I have a roof over my head, I’m going to have a toy box garage. That’s required. 

Matt Scott: I feel like in a year, Bryon went from living in a van down by the river to having…

Scott Brady: All the things…

Matt Scott: To having a Lexus and this awesome garage and a 911 turbo and I think it just kind of goes to show the capability of you as a person, you know, and one of the things I’ve always thought about you, Bryon, is that you talk about, what you were just saying with priorities and what you value and things and you’re a highly intelligent person that has been able to figure out how to do whatever they want whenever they want. 

Bryon Dorr: Sort of…

Scott Brady: Well, and that’s the definition of wealth and a lot of times people confuse being rich with being wealthy. Being rich means that you spend a lot of money. So that means you’re [00:18:00] some people make a million dollars a year and they spend 1.2 million. They’re very rich, but the person who is wealthy is doing what they want to do when they want to do it. Sometimes doing what you want to do requires more money than someone else, because what they want to do is different, but that’s really the only true definition of wealth is being able to do what you want when you want, and you did that. So you are very wealthy, much more so than most Americans.

Bryon Dorr: For sure, yeah and it wasn’t money. That was not the rich part of the wealthy for sure. But yeah, and then actual dollars and cents and how to make it work, is to piece the puzzle together to be you have your fingers in a million different things, or be really good at one thing that pays well and do that on the road. But that is hard. That’s not for everybody to do. I went the route of putting my fingers in everything because I wanted to be a photographer. That was my goal. In today’s world, everybody wants everything. So you got to be a good photographer, get paid for it and get in with editors and everything else. You have to also be a good writer. Maybe a personality. Maybe [00:19:00] have a social media presence, maybe have video and YouTube stuff going on. There’s a lot of facets to marketing yourself these days especially in the media world and the media landscape continually changes as we all know. So yeah, it’s just piecing it together. So I did commercial photography. I did editorial photography. I did editorial photography and writing and eventually got into editing other people’s stories, doing copy editing and doing that stuff for brands, as well as… 

Matt Scott: You did a bit of marketing consulting…

Bryon Dorr: Social media management, marketing consulting. So I am entrepreneurial… What was it? A Bachelor of Science in business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurial marketing. Like that’s the degree I had

Scott Brady: I always knew you had a BS. 

Bryon Dorr: I have lots of BS, a whole lot of that. So yeah, so I mean this whole table, I hired myself out of college and started my own company. I think just finding your own path and figuring it out is the puzzle. So events management work, run some people’s social media, take some photos over here for a company, write some stories and take some cool photos on your [00:20:00] adventures and sell those to some magazines. Print always pays a little more than online. So just kind of piece it all together. 

Matt Scott: The cool thing you’ve always done is you’ve always been really diversified in your work and I think that’s been the key to you having been able to do this for so long, right? Like obviously there’s been changes, you know, that you wanted in recent times, but I think in the lesson, you know, as we were talking about, oh how do you do it? So many people will put all of their eggs in one basket. They have a job with Google or some tech company or something, and they get to work remotely and that is it for them. That is their one income source and as soon as that job changes or they don’t like that job or something, you know, their priority still maybe was their career or something else and I think what you said was smart is like, figure out your actual priority and then kind of make it work from there and I think by diversifying you did that. 

Bryon Dorr: By diversifying, it gives you the freedom and flexibility to [00:21:00] make it work as your priorities change. I think that’s a really good Segway into just a little piece of the recent history of April 2020. Like the world was ending, right? Everything’s shut down. Maybe not down here in Arizona, but everywhere else in the world. 

Matt Scott: Well, certainly in Portland where you are.

Bryon Dorr: In Portland, Oregon, where I was.

Scott Brady: It felt like the end of days in Portland. 

Bryon Dorr: It did. Yeah. That was before a lot of the protests and riots and stuff. But yeah, in April 2020, I lost about 80% of my income within a week and a half. So every outdoor industry company and some companies in this space that I was running social media for and doing corporate photography or commercial photography for they laid off all their freelancers and like 30-40% of their staff. Everybody was getting laid off at the time. So freelance is the first to go because they’re not on salary and in house and then all events were canceled. So I helped run the Northwest Overland rally. Help with the BC rally. Teach sometimes at Overland expo and stuff like that. So running some music festivals for operations management, all that stuff disappeared instantly. So right around April everything for at least the next six months. So I’m looking at it like, all [00:22:00] right, but luckily the company that, again, it’s being diverse and knowing people… it’s all about connections, right? Like you get your foot in the door and prove that you can create and deliver whatever it is they’re looking for. So I was working for gearjunkie.com at the time. A big outdoor industry site. And I’ve always positioned myself as the guy between automotive and outdoor adventure and that’s what I do. I love being outside and doing active adventure, sports, and human powered stuff, but using vehicles to do really fun trips to get there is awesome. And you kinda need vehicles to carry kayaks around cause they’re big. You can’t, they’re not very good on a motorcycle. I’ve tried. I have done it. But so yeah, it worked out where, like a week later I got a full… My first job in my life, like a salary job with benefits, running a site called autowise.com and being the motor’s editor over at Gear Junkie. So it was a huge change for me, but I worked it out in my contract because I brought so much to the table with my industry experience and connections that I can still freelance forever. So I still have fingers and everything. I still help with events when they happen. Hopefully more so here coming up [00:23:00] soon, do lots of social media stuff a little bit. I’m getting out of that a little bit again. I’m trying to refocus on my photography cause that’s what my passion is. So in my free time, I was just out shooting a truck this morning for a print magazine. 

Matt Scott: Yeah, you’re shooting Mario’s new Attara from AT Overland.

Bryon Dorr: Very slick. Yeah. He just showed that off at Overland Expo and yeah, we took it out in the mountains and got some really cool shots this morning, some neat clouds with the weather and that’ll go in print because I’m the feature editor at Tread Magazine. So that’s kind of my print job. I still keep my finger in that and then it’ll go on Gear Junkie as well. We got an exclusive back in the day from Mario with some of the CAD drawings and stuff. So it kind of debuted online, which was super cool to show that off to the outdoor audience and that camper is really fun for four seasons. Like that should be pretty sweet as a ski lodge, for sure. 

Scott Brady: And it’s fairly priced too. 

Bryon Dorr: Not inexpensive, but fairly priced in this industry and really well-made. 

Matt Scott: Quality is never cheap. I mean, like my AT camper, I have [00:24:00] like the Summit and that thing has just been a bomber. I mean, I’ve had my airborne a lot… 

Bryon Dorr: Those pop top style truck campers are pretty amazing. There’s a huge variety of companies out there. An article I wrote for Gear Junkie, I think in 2018, I did a Roundup of all of those and it’s one of the top performing stories still to this day on gearjunkie.com. I know Expedition Portal has a very similar one where you guys got to test everyone. I’ve had my hands on every one that I wrote about in that article and those are the top two on a Google search for that product. 

Matt Scott: I am not the top Google search for that product. 

Bryon Dorr: You are not. 

Matt Scott: I’m disappointed. 

Bryon Dorr: We’ll have to try to sneak in…

Scott Brady: Again its priorities Matt, you have other priorities like Dack and Laura.

Matt Scott: Lovely Greyhound. Rescue greyhounds, lovely.

Bryon Dorr: Your baby Dack. 

Matt Scott: Baby boy Dack snood season has started in the Greyhound world. 

Bryon Dorr: What is this? 

Matt Scott: They’re like a sock that goes over their neck, keeps them warm and then you can put it over their little cute [00:25:00] ears.

Bryon Dorr: I saw you putting that on the dog this morning. 

Matt Scott: Snood season has begun.

Bryon Dorr: The things you learn.

Scott Brady: On the overland journal podcast. Talking about snoods right now. 

Matt Scott: Snood’s man. 

Bryon Dorr: I mean, you’ve got to keep your hand warm when you’re overlanding that’s the thing.

Matt Scott: Everybody’s going… you know, when we were over in that Overland expo. Oh, whose car is this? My dogs. What about that one? My dogs. They’re all outfitted for my dog. I mean, the LJ, it’s basically a moving dog bed. 

Bryon Dorr: And we talk on a regular basis about all of your new vehicles and which ones you’re getting next. And it’s always, well, no flat seats. We can’t have that one. Not for Dack.

Matt Scott: Like the new G wagon just makes me so angry that it does not have a flat loading floor. Cause Dack… 

Scott Brady: It does in the very back. Doesn’t it?

Matt Scott: Yeah, but he will not tolerate that. How would you feel if Aaron got a new car and you had to exclusively sit in a third row seat, think about it…? 

Scott Brady: This is true. 

Matt Scott: You would be hurt.

Bryon Dorr: Well the new Bentley will work for you. Just so you [00:26:00] know, the Bentley Continental has a nice low flat…. like you put a little dog bed in there.

Matt Scott: I can tell you from experience that a Greyhound does not fit in a Bentley Continental GT.

Bryon Dorr: The new one it might…

Matt Scott: The Bentayga? For sure. 

Bryon Dorr: Okay. All right. Bentayga is an interesting choice. That’d be fun for some off-road adventures. I’m in I’ll photograph that.

Matt Scott: They’re just really ugly.

Scott Brady: Like directly from the front is okay. But any other angle is not okay. 

Bryon Dorr: The rear haunches are a little rough. 

Matt Scott: Yeah. It’s kind of like the middle-aged woman of cars. 

Bryon Dorr: I like the front fenders though. 

Matt Scott: Nothing that there’s anything wrong with middle-aged women.

Bryon Dorr: Wait a minute…

Scott Brady: What did you mean by that, man? 

Matt Scott: I don’t really know actually, now that I think of it…

Bryon Dorr: Drink some more of your cheap Russian beer over there. 

Scott Brady: Do the Russians own Pabst Blue Ribbon?

Matt Scott: Established in Milwaukee 1844. What I read on Facebook is true. Even if it came from the Russians. You haven’t even opened your beer. 

Bryon Dorr: No, I haven’t. 

Scott Brady: Bryon is the [00:27:00] only one that’s actually smart at this table. 

Matt Scott: Here’s something to know about Bryon. He is the most pretentious beer person I’ve ever met in my life.

Scott Brady: He does live in Oregon. I mean, is this like a surprise?

Matt Scott: I mean like, does he want a kombucha delivered by a Subaru microbrew made by? I don’t know. I don’t know what you do. You like dark beers, The beers you like are as dark as my soul. 

Bryon Dorr: Your soul might be a little dark. Just a little. 

Scott Brady: Oh, cool. On that note.

Bryon Dorr: No, darker is the key. Porters Stouts, barrel aged, like multilevel of flavor. 

Matt Scott: So what’s your favorite beer? Cause you do like that beer app. 

Bryon Dorr: I do Untapped. That’s the beer app. 

Scott Brady: So you can look it up and it’ll give you the tasting notes and flavors and rankings. 

Bryon Dorr: It does that a little bit. I use it as a ranking thing, so I can look up if I had already had that beer or not and if it was any good. 

Scott Brady: What you thought of it. 

Bryon Dorr: What I [00:28:00] thought of it is. You rank it and you can leave notes and stuff. So it’s fun cause I travel a lot and when I do, I tend to eat at breweries a lot cause then I usually get a sampler and enjoy all the local beers, but yeah. 

Matt Scott: Speaking of you eating, you now eat vegetables.

Bryon Dorr: Some. I’m still a weird picky eater.

Matt Scott: Like anybody that actually knows Brian, that’s listening to this podcast will be laughing right now.

Scott Brady: I’ve never seen Brian be picky. No, I mean, we’ve had many dinners together. 

Matt Scott: Have you lived with Brian on different continents? No, but I’m just telling you like… 

Scott Brady: Maybe the menu helps cause then you can kind of figure out what’s in each thing, but I’ve never seen you…

Matt Scott: Bryon has married a vegan, and Bryon has essentially become vegan.

Bryon Dorr: No, not even close. I had a Filet mignon wrapped in bacon the other day.

Matt Scott: Because you weren’t around Kate. I know you. You are like me when I get loose from Laura, and I like to pretend to be cool and drink beers. But at home I like to drink seltzer water.

Bryon Dorr: I’ve seen that happen. Yeah, that was last night. 

Scott Brady: [00:29:00] It was within 24 hours. 

Bryon Dorr: That’s right. I came home later. 

Scott Brady: You are an old soul Matt. I run and I’ve noticed that from the very beginning. At 21, you were like…

Matt Scott: The only consistent thing in my life, since I’ve been 21.

Bryon Dorr: It has been owned by people in different continents, but you’ve continued drinking it either way.

Matt Scott: And I’m disgusting. I like it slightly warm.

Bryon Dorr: One of the best photos I have of Matt Scott is the Northwest Overland rally. He flew in for the event and he was given a press car, a Range Rover, maybe an autobiography. Beautiful car, beautiful car. On his way he had his flip flops on, he had his shorts on, he had probably a Hawaiian print shirt on and he rolled up with a 24 pack of…

Matt Scott: It was a 30 rack Bryon. At the time PBR still came in 30 racks. 

Bryon Dorr: I’m not up on my PPR program here. Rolls up and I walk up to him. The first thing I see is him sitting on the tailgate of a Range Rover sport with his leg dangling [00:30:00] off, cracking a PBR. As he showed up at the Northwest Overland rally. It was a quintessential mascot.

Matt Scott: Champagne budget BEER taste.

Bryon Dorr: He does love his rose too. 

Matt Scott: I’m a rose slut. 

Scott Brady: Most gingers are.

Matt Scott: I drank the four seasons Tanzania safari lodge out of rose. 

Bryon Dorr: That does not surprise me. 

Scott Brady: They’re like, we’re so sorry Mr. Scott…

Bryon Dorr: They didn’t fly in more rows for you? 

Matt Scott: They literally sent someone to Avertia. Yeah. If anybody knows Tanzania, they understand that one. 

Bryon Dorr: So champagne budget sometimes. Well, points are awesome.

Matt Scott: I’m a point ho. 

Bryon Dorr: But back to food, I am a super picky eater. Always have been. Meat, cheese, bread, kind of guy. If there’s any color on my plate, I probably didn’t eat it. It was all brown. You want the rainbow on your plate to eat healthy. And I didn’t really do that for a long time, but on the flip side, I don’t ever do fast food. I don’t drink sodas. I don’t drink energy drinks. I keep away from sugar generally. I do have a sweet tooth, but I [00:31:00] try to not get into that too much. I don’t eat candy or things like that. I love ice cream and cheesecake. Cheesecake’s my weakness, but I don’t do it that often. And I married a beautiful vegan and she… 

Matt Scott: A beautiful vegan.

Bryon Dorr: A beautiful Vegan and it’s great…

Matt Scott: I’m going to text Kate after this, Luke Bryon married a beautiful vegan.

Bryon Dorr: My wife, Kate is a vegan and yeah, she’s been great because she’s really opened my eyes. I’ve always wanted to eat more healthy and more vegetables, but I’m just a picky eater and don’t like most of that, but she amazingly, we at home, we don’t eat meat at all. Like not being vegan, vegetarian. Like we put cheese on stuff.

Matt Scott: I just remembered like we just had lunch with the Bells, Ashley and Richard Giordano, there’s a whole group of Overland people sitting right outside of that door and I think you were eating a plate of chips.

Bryon Dorr: After the Carne Asada topping.

Matt Scott: Did you take the pickled cabbage off? 

Bryon Dorr: Yes. 

Scott Brady: I’m with Bryon on this [00:32:00] one. I mean, because Erin is vegetarian, she will eat fish. So I don’t eat. I mean… I feel better eating less meat in my diet. It doesn’t mean that when I go out to a dinner that I don’t every once in a while, have steak, I’ve never really liked chicken. 

Matt Scott: It’s kind of a diseased meat. Like if you’re going to get sick from one meat.

Scott Brady: That’s my thought.

Matt Scott: It’s going to be chicken.

Scott Brady: It’s also a kind of wholesale slaughter. I mean, like one meal is one chicken. Like it’s just… Like you can feed a family for a year off of one cow. So to me it seems like there’s less and less just overall death happens. 

Matt Scott: There’s this place that ranches Spanish cows out by where we live.

Scott Brady: The Arivaca float?

Matt Scott: Yeah, and we should split a cow. 

Scott Brady: We should. The Baca Float.

Matt Scott: It’s so hard to find good meat. 

Scott Brady: Yeah. I’m into it. I’m totally down with that, but I get it and I think you’re right. I mean, I have felt healthier for the last, even in a previous relationship vegetarian, and I think eating that way for now [00:33:00] years, I feel better overall than when I was eating meat all the time. So I don’t know that I would ever stop eating bacon, but…

Matt Scott: See, I’m not that big of a bacon guy. I think bacon is quite basic.

Scott Brady: Just got fired from your own podcast, man. 

Matt Scott: I don’t know. It’s like, it’s okay. 

Scott Brady: I get, everybody’s got a different thing.

Bryon Dorr: Bacon is the one thing that most vegetarians and vegans will crack on. Kate will not. 

Scott Brady: Aaron has said that she’s like if I was ever going to have meat, it would be bacon. That would be the one.

Matt Scott: People who think bacon is great and are like they’re all meat, have not had two things. Korean fried chicken and pork belly.

Scott Brady: Pork belly is pretty special.

Bryon Dorr: Pork belly is pretty much bacon, let’s be honest.

Scott Brady: It all makes sense.

Matt Scott: But it’s like bacon plus. It’s like… I’m going to only drive a Ford Mustang and then they’ve never driven like a, I don’t know, like a Kia or something that’s better. 

Bryon Dorr: Crispy peppered [00:34:00] bacon is better than pork belly. I know it’s probably not the right opinion, but it’s my opinion. 

Matt Scott: You know who knows meat? The Koreans. 

Scott Brady: Oh yeah, for sure. No doubt. 

Matt Scott: My cousin’s wife is Korean, and we went to Seoul with them, and I had the meat sweats for a week solid. We’d go to these meat markets and then above the meat market, are these like restaurants with Korean barbecue things and they bring all the kimchi’s and the little sides and stuff. I have never seen a little Korean woman eat so much meat. I mean, Bryon, she could out bacon you. Solmi is a cool chick. 

Bryon Dorr: No doubt. I’m ready to go to Seoul now.

Matt Scott: To be honest… Seoul, as far as eating goes, I think if you’re not a super, super adventurous eater, I think that Koreans have a more similar palette to Americans than most other Asian countries. [00:35:00] But they’re perfectionists, right? Like they will take fried chicken, which was kind of… Fried chicken everywhere, but like American style for a chicken and then they’ll take it to the next level and it’s twice fried so it’s fried chicken that’s not terrible. Like if you have KFC now, you’re gonna be…

Bryon Dorr: That’s fast food, I don’t do that.

Matt Scott: I’m just saying like, they’re like the… Like the only fast-food chain that is anywhere and everywhere in the world. Kentucky fried chicken. 

Scott Brady: It’s insane. And I did not know that until I started traveling. You would think it’d be McDonald’s Nope. You go to Iceland. There’s no McDonald’s there. KFC…

Bryon Dorr: KFC and Burger King because they’re owned by the same company, and Pizza Hut. 

Matt Scott: When Chris Cortez and I went to China together, it was like we went from looking at frogs for sale in the market right next to a KFC.

Bryon Dorr: Here’s the top secret Asian best food, one of the best meals I’ve had in my life. Niseko Japan. There’s eight types of ramen in the world, and one of them comes from Niseko, Japan and you can’t get it anywhere else. We’ve tried [00:36:00] to make it at home and Kate does a good job, but it’s not quite right. Potato ramen. 

Matt Scott: Oh, if you ask Laura very nicely, I’m sure she would be able to make it. She has the press. She likes noodle things. 

Bryon Dorr: Does she have the foamer? Now the foamers are the key, no there’s a foamer thing…

Matt Scott: Weren’t we just talking about this last line? And you’re like, you should tear that wall down in your house and I’m like, I guarantee you, by the end of the year, it will be filled with some kind of specialty kitchen equipment.

Bryon Dorr: Matt has a large kitchen and lots and lots of storage, like a lot and there’s half a wall between it, the kitchen, and living and I’m like, yeah, it’d be better if that was like down, you know, so you could cook and watch TV. 

Matt Scott: I kind of agree. But you also don’t eat the food that I do every night.

Scott Brady: That’s true. That’s fair. Yeah. Priorities. So on the food thing, since you just talked about eating healthy, no fast food. I think that the one question I wanted to ask, there were several, but the one that was most important to me is how do you rank being physically fit for travel? Cause it’s [00:37:00] an interesting thing that I’ve encountered in my travels. I always try to maintain a base level of fitness and strength. I mean, big spare tires and all these things that we have to do to recover and everything else. Moving luggage around. 

Matt Scott: Which big spare tire. The ones that we both have?

Scott Brady: That’s why I can carry a spare tire. I maintain a level of fitness. So I try to maintain enough fitness to be an effective traveler. But how have you found that being really adventure ready, like at your level of fitness, how has that changed your travels and what would you recommend people consider around fitness for an Overland trip? 

Bryon Dorr: Yeah, wow. I mean, my fitness ebbs and flows for sure and it’s usually based on injuries or other injuries from adventure, sports, or old injuries from adventure, sports that pop back up, my backs destroyed so like right now I’m super unfit. Really am, I haven’t been working out much at all, but I’ve been traveling a ton. And I always feel worse when I don’t work out and I’m not ready for the adventure because I tend to go and do, when I go and do things, I don’t kind of [00:38:00] do them halfway. Like I haven’t been mountain biking in a while and I’m like, okay, I’m going to go solo the Wasatch crest trail, be fine. And a thousand vertical ascent, 3,800 down, a double black downhill trail or whatever on my Enduro bike, it’s fine and it works out fine and I do it and I have fun. But when you get to the bottom and you try to wake up the next day and you can’t get out of bed, because your back doesn’t work, it’s kinda rough. But last summer I ran my first ultra. So it was like 60 plus miles. And I was in the best shape of my life for that…

Scott Brady: Wasn’t that for your 40th birthday?

Bryon Dorr: Yep. For my 40th birthday, I always wanted to run an ultra before I turned 40 and COVID hit, and the world ended. So there were no events, so I just decided to do it myself anyway. So I went and did… right above Portland in forest park there’s the Wildwood trail and it’s 30.2 miles each way. And a huge ascent. I forget the total; it goes up and over this kind of huge hill up to Pittock mansion and I did that out and back. So 60.4 miles and it hurt, but I did it solo. I had a couple of friends hop in and kind of pace me a little bit and make sure I didn’t die too much; I fell over on her [00:39:00] tree root once on the way back cause I was just not operating at full capacity at like 50 something miles. 

Scott Brady: What qualifies as an ultra-marathon?

Bryon Dorr: Anything over a marathon is technically. So 26.2 is technically an ultra. So like a 50 K is like 30.1 miles or something.

Scott Brady: What’s the general standard? Like when did people really start to see that being as legit?

Bryon Dorr: My personal standard, which I always hold myself away from, is 50 miles or longer. 

Scott Brady: So essentially twice a marathon. 

Bryon Dorr: Yeah. So I wanted to go run 50 plus miles in under 12 hours. That was my goal in the race. Well, there’s no race. So I just went and did it myself and this just was an easy goal. It was like five miles from my house. My wife supported me along the way. She joined, and it crossed a couple of roads. And the rest of the time you’re in the woods and she’d stop and give me some more water or food or a change of clothes. halfway I got all the fresh clothes, which was amazing. Because it was in the summer in the middle of July. So super-hot. Yeah, it was, it was a blast. I mean, I always said I wouldn’t do it again when I finished it, but it’s just [00:40:00] like marathons… Yeah, I’ll do another one. Why not? So the next goal is under 24-hour, 100 miler. At some point I’m not in shape right now to do it, but that’s, it’ll be on the bucket list.

Scott Brady: Would that be a trial race, or do you want to do something that’s more flat? I mean, what’s your goal? 

Bryon Dorr: I very much liked running in the woods more than just pounding pavement and my joints and old man back very much appreciate trail. I like the type two suffering when it comes to the elevation change. So the trail runs for sure. But hopefully not at altitude because that hurts me. I live at sea level right now, but I’m coming up here even to Prescott and stuff, 5,000 to 7,000 foot between here and Flag and even at Matt’s wedding at like 11,000 feet and I did like an 18 mile bike ride in the morning. 

Matt Scott: All you needed was one of these. 

Bryon Dorr: One PBR. Yeah. So I got up super early the morning of Matt’s wedding and did a 18 plus mile bike ride with like 1400 vertical ascent and 28 down. It was… it was rough. It hurt at 11,000 feet. So again, being adventure ready, like you said is for me I try to [00:41:00] do… when I’m working out a lot. I try to do push ups everyday. Every time I go in and out of my room with a pull up bar on my office in, in the doorway and try to hammer out a couple of pull-ups, just kind of a good… I got a little campus board in the entranceway to my garage. So it’s the same kind of thing. Like every time I go in and out, I try to at least do a, pull up…

Scott Brady: That’s the little like climbing with a bunch of different holds on, is that what that’s called? 

Matt Scott: We could get those here. 

Scott Brady: We have a gym next door that none of us use.

Matt Scott: We also have an electric scooter so we can go to the gas station to get red bulls. 

Bryon Dorr: That’s like me wanting… I really want one wheel. They’re really, really fun. But if I got one, I would never walk. I hate walking. I’ll run, but I hate walking. 

Matt Scott: It’s boring. Moving your legs about is just very 19th century.

Bryon Dorr: Like biking and running, bicycling and running, you can see the world at a really good pace.

Matt Scott: Do you kind of think hiking is boring? I always think hiking is boring sometimes.

Bryon Dorr: Hiking’s like ridiculously boring, unless it’s somewhere really special where the only way to get there [00:42:00] and get some epic photo.

Scott Brady: How would you ever get a date on Tinder if you didn’t have to have hiking in your profile? 

Matt Scott: I’m pre–Tinder I’m done with that, did you ever have to do Tinder?

Bryon Dorr: Yeah. I never did. 

Scott Brady: You had to go hiking there? You have to. 

Bryon Dorr: I didn’t.

Scott Brady: Oh, you didn’t know how many dates you got? 

Bryon Dorr: First date was hiking. That’s the best part.

Matt Scott: But then you ended up meeting a lovely wife through friends. I believe that she liked your jacket at a mutual friend’s wedding or something.

Bryon Dorr: She thought I looked outdoors-y with my outfit. 

Scott Brady: She told us a story, and she’s like, who is that good-looking outdoorsy guy?

Bryon Dorr: A mutual friend’s wedding. Yep. But I didn’t meet her there. That’s the fun part. She stalked me afterwards. And then when we dated, I never saw her at the wedding. I kind of feel bad about that. Actually, she was hanging out with her mom, and I was hanging out with a group of friends that I’ve had for longer than any other friends that I know.

Matt Scott: Other associated women you met on Tinder. On the fitness thing, because this is something that [00:43:00] Scott and I will never be able to answer for our readers ever 

Bryon Dorr: Scotts fit. I don’t know. You’re talking about. He’d whoop me right now. 

Matt Scott: Sure. So… 

Scott Brady: As long as it doesn’t involve the running part.

Matt Scott: Yeah. Okay. So let’s just not put Matt in that position of choosing between friends. 

Bryon Dorr: Oh, Scott beat me on the Trek expedition by like a hundred feet. We went different ways. I don’t know who was faster. 

Matt Scott: Running or like high lift Jack winching.

Bryon Dorr: It was a navigation running thing and he beat me by like a hundred feet to the cars, but a different route. So I don’t know whose was longer. So I don’t know… you might, I think you chose the better route, so that made him faster, I think. Smarter runner than me. 

Scott Brady: I did start ahead of you too. So that’s probably that helped as well.

Matt Scott: If you’re living on the road, if you’re doing a van life, what are three easy things to stay… you know, cause not everybody can bring a bike with them cause they do take up a lot of space. Sometimes they can’t reach high acts or whatever, but you should bring a bike. That’s really fun. What are three easy things that people that are doing in life on the road, whether it’s [00:44:00] van or roof tent or whatever, how would you recommend that they stay fit? Cause I always think like when you’re fit, you’re in a better mental state, you enjoy things more, you interact with the community, you interact with the terrain, you interact with the environment. 

Bryon Dorr: More energy. 

Matt Scott: What are those three things? 

Bryon Dorr: Three things, no bikes, no kayaks. I mean, running shoes, easy. You have to have multiple running shoes. I have more shoes than my wife. Like I have trail running shoes, trail running shoes, road running shoes. You got to have at least two you got to swap out when you’re putting in big miles, and then you got mountain bike shoes, road bike shoes, kayak shoes, creaking shoes, and play boat shoes for the kayaks. Like there’s so many shoes. So let’s see. Yeah. Appropriate footwear for getting out there and adventuring that’s one. One that’s really good that I don’t do enough. At least for me it is just those elastic bands. Like the ones you get from PT, like they cut it off whole different weights. Those are really good for shoulder exercises and stuff. I’ve blown out shoulders and have joints for your elbows and wrists and shoulders that [00:45:00] work properly, have better posture when you’re sitting, and you just feel better. You can go do so much stuff when all those little ligaments are strong. Even if your big muscles aren’t strong, you’re just better. You can handle way more abuse when you crash and stuff like that. 

Scott Brady: And what, what do you use for flexibility? Because when I think of being adventure ready, there’s three things that come to mind. Stability is one of the most important, so we don’t get a lot of injuries that happen in the backcountry. So stability comes to mind. Flexibility is the other thing that comes to mind, which is going to reduce our chances of injury and then obviously we want to have a degree of strength. Cardiovascular fitness can happen in a bunch of different ways, but when I think about being adventure ready, the thing that I find is you want to have a little bit of fuel in the tank. You want to have some cardiovascular fitness, but if I’m, if I’m stretching well, and I have good stability and I have good strength. I’m able to kind of do all of the things, the high lift jacking and the tires and all of that. What do you use for flexibility? I mean, what’s your focus around that? 

Bryon Dorr: I’m horrible at that [00:46:00] truth. And that’s why I’m not really flexible. But I don’t work on it enough and it definitely hinders my performance. The best thing that I’ve found for that honestly is like Bikram yoga, like once a week, even…

Matt Scott: What is Bikram yoga? I know what yoga is, and I have been sold on this. Like, it’s fantastic. We do it at night before bed and I’m just very… like, I sleep better. What does Bikram mean? 

Bryon Dorr: It’s a type of yoga, but they do it hot sometimes. It’s slightly different, but normal Bikram yoga. I think it’s just like normal base yoga. I think I’m really bad. I don’t know. 

Scott Brady: I will put it in the show notes. 

Bryon Dorr: There’s the show notes. We’ll just say the definition of Bikram yoga. But I know that’s the type that I’ve done a bunch of, and it basically like… it strength, balance, flexibility, kind of combined and it’s a lot of like stretchy postures while like holding a pose, you’re locking off a few muscles and stretching others and I find that really useful, especially for [00:47:00] core, like me with the back and a tall torso. Like I got the same problem, Matts got. It just messes your back up. So the stronger your core is, the less back pain I have and the more… If your big core muscles are strong and even if you have a twig for arms and legs, you can manage to do a lot of things really well. Especially if you have good form. So even at kayaking, like professional kayakers, like they have thin arms, they’re not all bulked out. They’re pretty big shoulders and really good abs. Because it’s all core. If you have good form, if you have horrible form, you have biceps the size of Popeye, but yeah. 

Scott Brady: But those will get smoked pretty quickly. Yeah. That’s interesting about yoga. I agree. That’s definitely been something that I have had a lot of success with. I need to do it way more, you know, if you go on to YouTube or any of the other tubes, depending on what you’re doing. So I would do a, an, an after run yoga session that was specifically for running and like the recovery could improve by hours if not days, like I’m not [00:48:00] 20 anymore. So like doing that after exercise, stretching, like that was such a big deal. 

Bryon Dorr: It helps. 

Matt Scott: I’m just always scared of doing yoga classes. Because every time I’ve done them, I just swear like a sailor. 

Bryon Dorr: I just fell over dead quiet and he’s in the corner swearing. That’s great.

Scott Brady: You didn’t do your namaste, man. You gotta… 

Bryon Dorr: You gotta center your chi or something. 

Matt Scott: Yeah, I won’t do that. I don’t do that.

Scott Brady: I usually just fall over. Like you try… like some of those ones you’re really…

Bryon Dorr: I love the balance. The balanced ones are my favorite. I love slacklining and trying yoga pose wall slacklining. Super bouncy and you can think through all the little muscles in your body, like, as things are happening, like you can think of individual ab muscles and contract them and like get yourself the balance and I love that like body awareness. And it’s something that I wish I learned… I’m going to impart on my daughter for sure. Is like body awareness. Like, I love adventure, [00:49:00] sports and snowboarding and inline skating back in the day and all that. I was a fruit bitter, it happened. But when I got inverted, like wakeboarding, I tried tantrums like a laid-out backflip. I land on my head every time. It’s because once I’m in the air, things get wonky. And I just don’t have it figured out. One thing that I want to impart on my kid early is body awareness and like how to spot landings and that kind of stuff and even if they’re not into any of that, it’s fine, but it’s really good for even if you fall or anything else you just tuck and roll, and all that kind of stuff comes automatic when you really understand what’s going on around you. When you’re inverted, your brain still operates properly.

Scott Brady: Interesting. 

Matt Scott: So I’m going to do a subject change here. So prior to you getting…

Scott Brady: Done with the fitness. Done. 

Matt Scott: The only thing I can add is that during yoga, I mainly just think about how terrified I am of farting. Like that’s… like some people find it very relaxing. It’s incredibly stressful for me. 

Scott Brady: It’s a room full of people. How do they know?

Matt Scott: [00:50:00] Because I’ll be the one giggly.

Bryon Dorr: Give yourself away? Work on your poker face.

Matt Scott: You know, I cannot do poker. The only time I’m near a poker table is when we’re in Las Vegas and I’m drinking the free beer that they give you because I’m winning because you’re winning and then I drink it. Yeah. Cool. So I’m glad we’ve established that I have no poker face, but so before you and Kate got married, you guys flew to South America, you bought a Forerunner. Some stuff went a little bit sideways.

Scott Brady: Way south.

Bryon Dorr: Almost to the end of the road. 

Matt Scott: So where did you fly into? 

Bryon Dorr: I flew into Santiago right before new year’s. So we got to spend New Year’s Eve in downtown Santiago. 

Matt Scott: That’s where you bought the 4runner. I finally convinced this guy like Bryon; you should just buy Toyota’s they’re really reliable. 

Bryon Dorr: Super reliable. 

Scott Brady: Was it a North American registered? So did you buy it from… Or it was a South American…

Bryon Dorr: So I got [00:51:00] basically the Chilean version of a social security number down there. I went through the paperwork so I could buy whatever I wanted and have it Chilean plated legal. Chile’s one of the few countries where you can actually do that as a foreigner. Pretty painless. There’s huge lines and paperwork and nonsense, but there’s like two or three companies down there that will help you through that process. You pay them a little bit. It’s pretty minimal, totally worth it in that way. I don’t know if flying by program is worth it. My plan was, I looked at all the rental rates and we’re going to be there for about two months. And I was like a rental rate, like eight grand for like a Hilux or something like a basic one, not even outfitted with a camper or anything for two months and I’m like, this isn’t going to work. I don’t have that kind of money. So we were like, all right, well we’ll fly down. I worked out the program. I was like, I’ll buy a car for between eight and 15 grand. So it’s semi reliable. Make sure that you go through all the fluids, make sure it’s good and then take off for two months and sell it for similar, might lose two or three grand. Two or three grand I can eat that for two months of travel for living in the vehicle. When we got down there my wife and I were both really sick. We had some flu for a while. [00:52:00] So New Year’s Eve was rough. We’re like walking around downtown, like not drinking or anything and like stumbling around cause we’re delirious. But we saw the fireworks and stuff. It was an amazing scene to be a part of. Cool city. In Santiago, we worked with another one of these handler companies to try to find a car. They were not a great help, to be honest with you. We searched a ton. I even test drove a few. They do not take care of their vehicles in Chile. It’s just how it is. Like, I don’t understand because the vehicles are super expensive, like way more expensive than North America to buy new and then in relevance use and they just don’t take care of them. They don’t do oil changes. They don’t repair the Springs. I guess they just blow all their money on buying it and then they can’t maintain it or something, but they’re like, oh, rust-free and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I drive the thing and it’s just like the biggest rust bucket. The shocks are blown. I’m like, I don’t want to… I don’t have the money to update this thing to use it. So after a few of those experiences, we found through that agency, another traveling couple that was leaving and they had been traveling in it for like five months as a Forerunner. It was Chilean plated. It was like an [00:53:00] ’06 with the V6 in it. Like a V6 gas motor, and I was like, it’s a Forerunner. I wanted something interesting. I was looking at modded Ebas. I was like a Mitsubishi Montero. I was looking at things like, we can’t really get here easily… Cause I wanted to write stories and I wanted something fun. I want a driving experience. I’m always looking for the next interesting driving experience. So I was like, all right, this is the most boring thing ever but it’s just kind of reliable… 

Matt Scott: Then I talked him into a Forerunner. 

Bryon Dorr: And he talked me into a Forerunner, and I was like, all right, it’s the most reliable thing. Of course we can sleep inside. It’s like, perfect. Screw it. I’ll buy it. It’s good to go. It was like 8 and a half grand bought it. Two weeks later we had made it to almost to Ushuaia, like couple hundred miles away in Southern Argentina and the engine just seized, like, we pulled over the side of the road, like seized… nothing. So I was communicating with Matt and a couple other people through my Garmin inReach texting from the other side of the globe. Like what can I do? Is there anything I can do here? Like I was at a loss. I mean, the engine wouldn’t turn over. I had plenty of battery. I had all the things, but it was seized. Like the piston was seized in the block. So the coolant, the head gasket had failed and the coolant we think. Coolant had got in the engine [00:54:00] and seized. Waited on the side of the road for three hours. A cool traveling couple from Guatemala, had a F-150 with a truck camper in it and pulled over. We waved them down. We’re in the middle of nowhere on this highway and they told us up and over a mountain through the checkpoint into Chile to the closest town, because also in Argentina they don’t sell the gas motor, they only sell a diesel in that car. They wouldn’t even have the parts. If we were to find… there’s no towns down, there in Argentina anyway. But so we made it over there through a storm on that note, like the thing I always tell people to travel with, or to start to get off-road and Overland travel is a set of really good traction boards. So Max Tracks, give you a plug there, Matt. They work. I literally carry them around the world. So I set up a Maxtrax with two soft shackles and a tow strap. And those items are what I carried with me from the U S down there. I didn’t use the Maxtrax because the car was seized before we got to the good off-road stuff. But the strap and the soft shackles is what we use. So I was on a short strap, and it happened, it was a recovery strap, not a tow strap… so a little springy. So up and over a [00:55:00] mountain through an insane wind and rainstorm. Short strapped on a camper that I can’t see past was interesting. Let’s say at the least no power steering at that point, no power, brakes assist nothing, but I managed to not run into him. Any of the downhills we’d pull over I’d unhook and then just coast down the hill beyond my own power and so I didn’t run into him and yeah, we made it there in town we sold it for scrap. I used that scrap money. We hopped on the ferry, went through the fjords in Patagonia, which was beautiful. Do that. We did not make it to Ushuaia. We were 100 miles away. It wasn’t really worth it to go to the end of the road at that point, I will be back maybe on a Modo next time, I hope. And then we just rented a little tiny Volkswagen car… I forgot what they call it. They don’t even have it here. It’s a four-door econobox with like, I don’t know, six-inch-wide tires. It’s the same size, but four-door sedan and we off roaded the crap out of that thing. It was a rental…

Scott Brady: Every rental is four-wheel drive…

Matt Scott: The most capable four-wheel drive in the world.

Bryon Dorr: The rental.

Matt Scott: The rental, unless it’s rented from Nina Barlow. In which case, please be respectful. 

Bryon Dorr: Please, please be respectful. Yes. [00:56:00] But yeah, this car we, we, so we finished the rest of the trip. We didn’t make a douche wire, but we did pretty much everything else, but we ended up spending way more. Because we were staying in hotels. We did have a ground tent. So we stayed in that place at times. But the rest of the time we had sleeping in the back, like the air mattress in the back and our sleeping bags and with the seats down, it was great. But yeah, so the, it, in the end, it cost me about nine, nine and a half grand extra for the trip and it would have, but it’s about the same as renting. So it sucked, but it was like. Kind of washed, but we missed a few things. There’s a few places. We just couldn’t go with that little car.

Matt Scott: And then you were so taken with Toyota that you bought a Lexis, which is basically a Toyota.

Bryon Dorr: I did come back and try to buy a van and buying the unicorn van that I want doesn’t exist because they’re all rusted out.

Matt Scott: Because you always look on the east coast, this is the problem.

Bryon Dorr: That’s not true. 

Matt Scott: Like a van, rusty. Truck, rusty. Correlation, east coast cars. 

Bryon Dorr: No, the van wasn’t an east coast store. 

Matt Scott: It was a Portland car probably rusted from [00:57:00] kombucha.

Bryon Dorr: No, Minnesota car, which is the same difference. It’s even worse. I know. Yeah. So I looked everywhere in the country, including Canada and Mexico. And I cannot find… if anybody on this podcast wants to reach out, regular body E350 73 non rusted barn door, van.

Matt Scott: If you get to make your shout out, please, if anybody has Highline fenders for a TJ. Give me a ring, 

Bryon Dorr: Matt needs some of those.

Matt Scott: I need them, badly. There’s actually somebody that did reach out and then ghosted me. It was like…

Bryon Dorr: They’re going to listen to this and reach back out. You’ll be okay.

Matt Scott: Please, please. I’m not mad. Just… I want to talk. That’s all I want. 

Scott Brady: I need a Bimini for a Catalina 250. 

Matt Scott: You just want a sailboat. 

Scott Brady: I did.

Bryon Dorr: Nice. Over watering.

Matt Scott: Over-watering.

Scott Brady: Very, very far over land. 

Matt Scott: You and Bryon did that. Mental sailing, adventure. You guys are both sailing [00:58:00] individuals.

Bryon Dorr: I’ve sailed quite a bit. Yes. Windsurfing, yacht racing…

Matt Scott: I’m from cornfields. 

Bryon Dorr: You are. Originally from Baltimore. 

Matt Scott: Water terrifies me. Straight up. I love looking at it while drinking a margarita. 

Bryon Dorr: I’m going to get you in a white-water boat, it’s going to happen. 

Matt Scott: Yeah. It’s not going to happen. It’s like trying to get you to do something you don’t want. It was like trying to get Bryon to eat vegetables circa 2013. 

Bryon Dorr: Would’ve been rough…

Matt Scott: Yeah. If I would have thrown a thing of iceberg lettuce at your head, it would’ve gotten about the same responses as a whitewater raft.

Bryon Dorr: I got you in a whitewater… no, you didn’t. You chickened out at my wedding. I had whitewater kayaking rafting and he didn’t come, everybody else. I got my parents, Kate’s parents, in a raft. 

Scott Brady: 80-year-olds in the raft, but no Matt.

Bryon Dorr: Matt and Laura did not come. They were there. They hung out in the hotel.

Matt Scott: I drove across the country in the same way that you drove across the country to go to my wedding. But I [00:59:00] hate water. 

Scott Brady: Oh, okay. I didn’t know this about you Matt.

Matt Scott: I provided water for you at my… 

Scott Brady: Yeah, you even did a stand-up paddleboard out in the middle of the lake. 

Bryon Dorr: I did. With my suit on it was…

Matt Scott: So you have a Lexus. GX 460 now, and I think that, yeah, it’s on Bryon’s shirt. So I think one of the cool things that you did with yours is you designed your own bumper. You designed your own roof rack. 

Bryon Dorr: I helped design the brackets for the Sheel-Mann seats. I helped design a goose gear platform system …

Matt Scott: And you love Sheel-Mann seats, because you’ve got lower back problems. 

Bryon Dorr: I love my show and seats. 

Scott Brady: What an incredible product that is.

Bryon Dorr: Yeah. That product is pricey in all regards, but it’s so worth it. Like they’re just… I just got back from Matt’s wedding and on the way back, it’s a long drive from Tellurides Portland and I was going to be in the back seat with the baby, a bunch and working cause I got the day job now. The wife was going to drive. But instead I ended up driving most of it because I could not sit in the [01:00:00] backseat. My back was destroyed sitting in the back normal seats in the GX. So the Shell-Mann’s like, sort of like a little bit of heat on, and they’re just ergonomic. You tweak the little lumbar support a little bit and they’re so good for long distance. 

Matt Scott: So what else have you done to give us like the… give us the, I’m going to say 30 second elevator speech that’s under five minutes. 

Bryon Dorr: 40 seconds ago. All right. Lexus GS 460, 2013. I looked at it while I was trying to buy a van. The vans were all rusty. I found a non-rusty GX. 

Matt Scott: I talked you into it.

Bryon Dorr: A little bit. Yeah. At the time…

Matt Scott: I found it, I totally found it. I found it and sent it to you.

Bryon Dorr: We’ll go with that. We’ll go with that theory.

Matt Scott: Cause you were looking at Land Rovers. You’re going to get an LR3 and I’m like… I have the distinct advantage of being Bryon’s first helpline and I just was not putting up with an LR3. Like I was putting my foot down. So hard. 

Bryon Dorr: I’d still buy one.

Matt Scott: Don’t.

Scott Brady: The theory, man. [01:01:00] I get it. It’s going to be like that. It’s going to be like that South American Forerunner though. 

Bryon Dorr: One of my best friends, Nick Schoeps has one in Portland, and I get to drive it quite often.

Scott Brady: When they work, they’re amazing. They’re amazing. 

Matt Scott: If I’m not your first call for when stuff goes wrong with your car, please buy a Land Rover, LR3. 

Bryon Dorr: Okay. On it. I will. But I bought a GX and a, the GX 460, was already built by a guy in Georgia, quite honestly, 95% of the parts that were on it were not up to par for my standard of quality. So, and I knew that the… I had a lot of partners in the industry at that point after building my Ram truck camper, so I built a custom box and lived in that for quite a while. I saw an opportunity to work with a few partners and before I bought it, I reached out to them, and they were ready to build some parts for that platform. I worked it out to help design a number of parts. I designed the front bumper with trail ready. It is by far the most functional and tight bumper on that car. 

Matt Scott: It looks really good. [01:02:00]

Bryon Dorr: And it’s the lightest full featured one. It’s got a full winch set up. 

Scott Brady: What’s it made out of?

Bryon Dorr: Aluminum, stainless, and steel. So there’s three, but they’re all in the right way to make it the lightest and strongest as possible. You can’t use aluminum like a recovery point, cause you’re just gonna rip it out on the front of it. So it’s got swivel recovery points, so soft shackles worked great on it. It’s got a warm winch. It’s got a G5 link on the front of it. It’s just clean and works great. So I’m super happy with how that worked out. It took two prototypes to get it perfect. Got integrated PL lights. Even the top bar of the grill guard is an integrated light bar and that is like the only…

Matt Scott: That’s my favorite part about it, and doesn’t it have like a little storage box or something.

Bryon Dorr: No storage box. It just has full access to the winch. So it has a little hatch on the top. Yeah.

Scott Brady: That’s the problem with most of those bumpers. You can’t get to the winch.

Bryon Dorr: This is one you can, without opening the hatch, you can reach your whole arm in and touch everything and with the hatch off the top, you can see the entire reel and deal with everything. So, yeah. Uncommon but needed. [01:03:00] I’m all about functionality. Like if it doesn’t function then do function and then make it look right. Like that car always has a cleft chin look. And I tried to minimize that as much as possible. It’s just the body lines that are really hard to make an off-road bumper. That looks good on that, but it worked out really good. I’m happy with that. Did a full custom roof rack with a local company in Portland that makes van roof racks. The rack came out pretty good. I’m happy with it. It’s wide. Has lights on it. For me, again, it’s designed to carry like five kayaks, or four kayaks and a toolbox for my skis at the same time, skis, and paddles, and paddling gear at the same time, I know it’ll hold two kayaks, a mountain bike and all the gear on the roof, which is… 

Scott Brady: Literally do a triathlon out of your car.

Bryon Dorr: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, adventure triathlon. It might be the next adventure actually. So yeah, that worked out great. Then I worked with Goose Gear, and we did a custom drawer system. They already had a plate for it. Yeah. It’s a little higher and it goes over the rear seats, and I got a little attachment, which gives me a sleeping platform on the passenger side so I can sleep one person. It’s got a cage [01:04:00] on it with the drop slide. Matt has an adventure import or had a few, I don’t know if he has any left. 

Matt Scott: I got a few left. 

Bryon Dorr: So that worked out really well and then Equipt got me one of the national Luna fridges, which works amazingly the new legacy ones. So drop the fridge on top of the door system, and sleep next to it. What else is on that thing? It’s got full Eikon, stage seven with a few tweaks for better Springs and stuff for suspension. 

Suspension is crazy on that thing. It’s really nice. I could drive down Death Valley, like a crazy washboard at like 70 and I was talking to you on speakerphone one time. Like it’s all good and then we did a body mount shop and it’s got 34s and it’s got the Evo corse wheels that won Dakar.

Scott Brady: The wheels look great. 

Bryon Dorr: They’re so clean. I wasn’t originally going to go with the bronze, but it came out really good with the crazy vinyl graphics I did on the trucks. So it’s got custom sliders that came on the truck. That’s the one part that I really loved that I kept on there and it still has a rear bumper that I’m really not happy with. That’s the only part left that’s really not okay. 

Matt Scott: It’s like a China prida bumper. 

Bryon Dorr: It’s a knockoff of Kaymar Bumper. Let’s be straight. The best bumper for that truck is the [01:05:00] Kaymar. The Kaymar costs four times at retail what all the other competitors are. It is the best, but I don’t know. I don’t have that kind of money to put into a rear bumper. So I haven’t bought one. Yeah. If you want the best.

Matt Scott: Like the Kaymar’s great, but they’re kind of a pain to use with those latches and haven’t really innovated, like some of the ARB stuff, like some of the AEV stuff.

Bryon Dorr: It’s a better latch than a cheap knockoff one. I’ll tell you that, because it holds up. Mine are all wearing out from rattling on the road, so all the joints are rattling off.

Scott Brady: Have you looked at a Prado 150 rear door fit on your truck?

Bryon Dorr: It would, people have done that. 

Scott Brady: That would be interesting. 

Matt Scott: I had Matt Glass’s Prado door sitting in the Maxtrax warehouse for months… feel bad. It was like he ordered it and then all the containers started being full to capacity and I’m like, sorry dude. 

Bryon Dorr: Yeah, there’s a ton of cool Prado parts you can put on it and some Forerunner parts you can kind, kinda sorta make work. Trail Ready, just made a rear swing out, single swing out, for the fifth gen Forerunner. [01:06:00] It might fit. I’m not sure, but it looks really good. It’s kind of overbuilt. I’m super conscious of weight. Like I really care about my weight. Have you weighed your truck? So I have, I don’t remember the number, but it was within a 100-150 pounds of GBW with me in it fully loaded with water, fuel, food, kayak, mountain bike, gear, all of it. And it was just over, GBW like a hundred pounds over.

Scott Brady: You’ve removed the rear, the third-row seats.

Bryon Dorr: I have.

Scott Brady: That saves a lot of weight.

Bryon Dorr: It does. 

Scott Brady: And then you removed part of the rear seat? 

Bryon Dorr: No, all the rear seats are in place even with the bed platform at full full, because I want to be able to quickly convert it back and be able to haul people and my baby. Yeah, and then Sheel-Mann seats and a switch pro system, and Expedition Outfitters helped me dial in the electrics and the electrics are all like… it’s all shrink wrapped and labeled and run appropriately and a cell phone booster from Weboost 

Scott Brady: Weboosts are really good.

Matt Scott: Mine never works. 

Bryon Dorr: I’ve heard such mixed results on it.

Matt Scott: Because it’s not MIMO. Right? It’s [01:07:00] like trying to do whatever… like whatever a band it latches onto, it’s only bringing one in, where your phone, like the new iPhone will have… I think they call it four by four where it will bring four different bands in and, and, and combine them. Interesting. So it’s great for voice. 

Bryon Dorr: I find it amazing on the edges of cell signals. You have to have some signal, or it works not at all, but when you have some signal, it boosts it like double. Like, when I can’t get out a call, a text even all of a sudden, I can make phone calls, which is huge. I’ve used it effectively to work on the road. It has helped me, but they are expensive and it’s a big crapshoot as to whether it’s worth it. Quite honestly.

Matt Scott: I think it’s so situation dependent. I put one on my Gladiator just because where I live, I drive through this dead zone, and it didn’t do anything for that dead zone.

Bryon Dorr: If it’s dead, it’s dead. You got to have some signal. 

Matt Scott: I mean, there’s one or two bars, but it’s just like…

Scott Brady: And you put the phone right on [01:08:00] the booster. Like you actually…

Bryon Dorr: It’s an internal antenna. 

Matt Scott: I have the RV one which is supposed to have the bigger antenna.

Scott Brady: Yours is the directional one then, or it’s usually the new omni-directional one?

Bryon Dorr: Omni-directional one. 

Matt Scott: It should be omni-directional.

Scott Brady: When we talk to Weboost, the key to it is you’ve got to have your phone within an inch of the antenna, within an inch of the antenna to get the maximum. 

Bryon Dorr: Cause the RV one, the way it’s set up is as another antenna on the inside of the car and it’s supposed to broadcast within the vehicle. 

Scott Brady: Yeah. You gotta have a right on top of it. 

Bryon Dorr: I’m going to try this next time.

Scott Brady: Put it right on it and you’ll actually watch the bars go up on your phone. So as you pull it away, you can watch the bars go down, and that’s how you know it’s working.

Matt Scott: I’m testing this Mofi 5g router right now.

Scott Brady: Is that the one that Mike’s got? It’s a 5g router. 

Matt Scott: I think he’s got the CradlePoint one. He’s got the CradlePoint one. This is like the…

Bryon Dorr: These [01:09:00] guys aren’t internet nerds or anything.

Matt Scott: So this is like the equivalent for my tax bracket versus Mike’s. It’s kind of like a cheaper one.

Bryon Dorr: We all have different levels of wealth. 

Matt Scott: We should probably wrap up here, cause this is a bit long. So we’re going to do a subsequent podcast with Bryon. So Bryon and Scott were both just on Trek, which is a kind of an athletic slash four-wheel drive competition that land river has always historically done and…

Bryon Dorr: Bryon won that.

Matt Scott: Bryon won it, which is really cool. 

Bryon Dorr: We’ll put the qualifier on there, but it was amazing. 

Scott Brady: And who was on your team? 

Bryon Dorr: Who was on my team? We had Jeff from Whoniverse, and we had Tommy from TFL Off Road.

Matt Scott: Don’t discredit yourself because the other waves are used car salesmen. 

Scott Brady: That’s not true. 

Matt Scott: Isn’t that? It was always Land Rover dealers. 

Scott Brady: It could be technicians, or it could be their…

Bryon Dorr: It’s dealers and they always have at least one tech, one front of house and one Backhouse and then a third person. So there’s three people from the dealership. So there’s a technician, a [01:10:00] salesman, and somebody.

Matt Scott: I’m still kind of right. 

Bryon Dorr: They sell new cars too. I worked at a Land Rover dealer. We’ll throw that in, we’ll talk about that… 

Matt Scott: My first job was working for Land Rover.

Scott Brady: There were a couple of questions I do like to ask, and I’d love to get your insights because I know that you’re a well-read Bryon. Are there a couple of books that you have found in your readings that really changed the course of your life, where you thought about something in a different way than you had before?

Bryon Dorr: I’m not, I’m not a prolific reader at all. I definitely read a decent amount, but 

Matt Scott: Dr. Seuss to your daughter doesn’t count. 

Bryon Dorr: I haven’t done that yet, but that’s coming soon. She’s only three months old and working on him, but that’s a tough one. I can’t think of one off the top of my head…

Matt Scott: Harry Potter? 

Bryon Dorr: There were some interesting marketing books in university around that time. Marketing is one of the things that always has stuck with me. In high school I was winning like without, with zero studying or doing anything, I’d show up at national competitions and win marketing awards. It was really kind of weird. So that’s actually, I had no clue what to do. So that’s why I went to college for marketing. I was like, oh, I’m good at this and I don’t have to do any, I don’t have to study at all. This is perfect. I can have a good college [01:11:00] experience. 

Scott Brady: It’s okay. You don’t have to have an answer for that. We can just cut that right out of the podcast.

Bryon Dorr: I don’t know. I’m not educated. No, I, yeah, books. I mean, I read a lot of adventure books. 

Scott Brady: Is there an adventure book you like?

Bryon Dorr:Let My People Go Surfing. That’s a great one. Yeah, so that one’s a really powerful book, whether you’re in a business or not. I find that one’s really good. I forget the name of the cliff, the people that started Cliff Bar, kind of the case study on that. It’s a really good read, a fun one that I don’t know if you’re gonna learn anything from, but it’s The Driver. So the guy that Alex Roy drove cross country. They made a movie out of it. I haven’t watched the movie Apex. It’s on… I think you pay for it on YouTube or something like that? I mean, it was like a documentary slash like an entertainment film, but about like the Cannonball run. So setting them up, coast to coast.

Scott Brady: Is that the guy that did it in the black Mercedes?

Matt Scott: No it was an M5.

Bryon Dorr: M5… and he’s done it a lot. He currently has the three-wheeler record, he did it in a Morgan Three Wheeler. 

Matt Scott: That’s a little bit obscure.

Bryon Dorr: [01:12:00] But he did have the overall record in a BMW M5. That was fully prepared.

Matt Scott: Were you there when we got really drunk with him in Vegas with Matt Redonicus from Four x Four Australia?

Bryon Dorr: I was there for a little bit of that. Him and Richard Rollins.

Matt Scott: I think I was also like 22 in Vegas on Scott’s dime.

Bryon Dorr: Thank you, Warren, for the amazing booze at Cabo Wabo 

Matt Scott: I drank so much inappropriately on this guy’s tab when I was working for them. I’m sorry. 

Scott Brady: But what are we doing right now, Matt?

Bryon Dorr: And let’s be straight. Matt didn’t drink on Scott’s tab. He would just be on Scott’s time as an employee, but he’d be drinking free booze from all the manufacturers.

Matt Scott: Also drinking off of your poker tabs. 

Bryon Dorr: Well, that came later, but yeah, absolutely poker and blackjack.

Matt Scott: Yeah, and that bombshell, we’re going to end this. Thank you for listening to the Overland Journal podcast with Bryon Dorr, Scott Brady and myself, Matt Scott, stay tuned for the next round of all of this and safe travels.

Scott Brady: [01:13:00] Safe travels. Thanks for listening.