Show Notes for Podcast #75
Gear of the Year 2021
Summary:
Matt and Scott riff on the best gear of the year, the ultimate new SUV’s, trucks, and campers
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 part by
Top Podcasts of the year:
Principles of Overlanding: Vehicle Recovery Part 1
Principles of Overlanding Vehicle Recovery Part 2
Principles of Tires and Wheels
Interviewing Richard Giordano About the Joys of Overlanding, and a Simple Vehicle
Interviewing Ashley Giordano: Adventurer, Journalist, and Overlander
The Best Overland Gear of 2021
Favorite podcast from Matt and Scott:
Luisa Bell Global adventurer and overlander
If you want to see our YouTube of the podcast sessions you can find us here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ExpeditionPortal
Gadgets and items discussed for 2021 wrap up:
Gaia GPS https://www.gaiagps.com/
OnX GPS https://www.onxmaps.com/
Garmin In Reach https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/inreach/personal/
Oura Ring https://ouraring.com/
Rechargeable smart batteries (this is an example, we have not tested this specific product)
https://paleblueearth.com/products/pale-blue-lithium-rechargeable-aa-batteries
Remembering to be kind to the earth wherever you are:
Tread Lightly https://treadlightly.org/
Leave No Trace https://lnt.org/
Nature’s Head Composting toilet https://natureshead.net/
Full Transcripts:
Gear of the year 2021 podcast
Scott Brady: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. This is episode number 75. Now this is a special episode because we are wrapping up 2021, and this is our first podcast that we’re recording in 2022. So even though Betty White passed away, we somehow made it past that date. Which, sorry to see Betty White go, obviously.
Matt Scott: 2021 kind of sucked.
Scott Brady: It did kind of suck.
Matt Scott: This COVID, stuff’s getting old.
Scott Brady: It’s a challenge.
Matt Scott: Particularly October, I was feeling really good. I’m like, oh, I’ll be able to start traveling again in 2022, and then it happened again.
Scott Brady: Yeah. I mean, I was able to make it to Italy and then within weeks Omicron kind of hit and things were starting to shut down again. And I mean, we’ve both got trips planned that we want to do, and we’re hopeful that they happen in 2022, but it’s just a realization. I mean, we were just talking [00:01:00] about who would really the Overlander of the year be, and we were struggling to think of someone who’s really out traveling internationally, cause it’s hard to do. I mean, Dan Greg’s going around Australia. He found his way to make it work
Matt Scott: He couldn’t even get out of New South Wales for the longest time.
Scott Brady: That’s true. I mean, it’s such a challenge.
Matt Scott: It’s just an interesting time.
Scott Brady: But people are finding a way they’re traveling more locally, which I think is very cool. I mean, you and I we’ve done our own trips in the local area, which has been just super fun. So finding ways that… you’re going to go, in a couple of days, to California?
Matt Scott: I don’t know where I’m going, I might go to lower California known as Baja, or I may do Alta, California. We can either go left or right when we hit California. I don’t really…
Scott Brady: You’ll make a decision when you get there. That’s good though.
Matt Scott: Yeah. It’s interesting. Like, you know, Baja right now seems slammed. Like I’ve talked to a bunch of people that have been down there.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s some of the few options right now is that.
Matt Scott: We gotta stop telling people to go to Baja, I guess. Soley responsible.
Scott Brady: Yeah, [00:02:00] exactly. But it’s, it’s fun to think about the fact that we can hopefully start traveling again. And the sailboat thing really worked for me last year. But I still love motorcycles and I still love trucks and I hope to be able to get out, and now that I’ve got kind of my life to the point… that was another thing I’ve been working on is getting to where I can be more nomadic myself. So I’ve got a scout built out on top of the AT4 and I’m finishing up the last few pieces of that project to get ready to be on the road.
Matt Scott: Less stuff more travel is what I’m really hoping this year is about, for me at least, I mean.
Scott Brady: I think that’ll be the place that a lot of people will come to is that for the last couple of years, it was this idea that I’m going to grab a bunch of things that’ll satisfy the fact that I’m not traveling. And now that hopefully we’ll be able to start traveling again, the things will back off
Matt Scott: I have way too many cars.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Well, you needed a hobby.
Matt Scott: I needed a hobby… so I turned trucks and Ferrari’s.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly. You needed a way to spend the time.
Matt Scott: It was fun. You know, in [00:03:00] 2021, it’s I’m not saying I took a year off from overlanding. In a lot of ways I think I did, you know, we did some adventurous things. I got married. Not we. The collective we did not get married, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you know, me and Laura got married. We went on this amazing honeymoon at Switzerland and Dubai…
Scott Brady: Amazing.
Matt Scott: And the Serengeti and it was really cool. We got to see new places and we did the whole pebble beach car week thing, which was really…
Scott Brady: That was an adventure in and of itself.
Matt Scott: Man. I’ve never felt so poor in my life. I remember sitting in a Koenigsegg booth at the Quail, which is an event that happens during car week. And oh, what’s that? Oh, it’s a new Koenigsegg whatever, whatever how much? 5 million. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think I’ll take one, you know, like that kinda kind of crowd. When you think there’s money at Overland expo go to pebble beach.
Scott Brady: Yeah, true. But I think that’s also the recognition is that that $5 million car, at the end of the day, doesn’t make you happy. Not even close. The sooner that we figure that out. The better off we are, I think, as humans.
Matt Scott: I think I [00:04:00] saw a lot of… I mean, I think everybody kind of did the same thing. Right? I think that people definitely got out, but I don’t know. It’s just, it all feels a bit weird.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s still all trying to sell…
Matt Scott: Overlanding feels a bit weird. I want to talk about how overlanding feels weird according to Matt, like we’ve ended up as like this industry of stuff. I’m kind of over that. You know, like there’s so much… the conversation about travel and doing, it was always like this Ying and Yang battle between the travel and the travelers and the stuff and the people who just like to wire it. Yeah. It’s like, everybody’s on team stuff now. I would like less stuff. There’s so many widgets and so much like copycats in the industry. There’s so much infighting. There’s so much just like…
Scott Brady: Finger pointing or whatever.
Matt Scott: Like, you know, as we were going through the list and like, what innovations have we seen this year? And I’m like, I’ve seen a bunch of stuff [00:05:00] that’s laser cut. CNC bent, maybe CNC machined, because it’s able to be manufactured here and oh, this guy’s doing it, so I’m going to do it too. And then there’s like… I mean, how many Prinsu roof racks are in this industry now?
Scott Brady: People that have taken a great idea and then just copied it. Yeah. We just kind of let everybody do their thing.
Matt Scott: I want to talk about something I think that’s going to be really, really big in 2022 human waste at campsites. With so many people going out, you know, like for example, we have a toilet in the Earth Roamer and I’m seriously considering the Gladiator or whatever we end up taking with is taking a toilet with us. And I’ve mentioned this idea to a lot of people, and I always get made fun of, but I saw this happen in Australia when I was working over there running a magazine and, you know, four wheel drive has always been popular there, but like Cape York became really, really popular, for example, I went and did Cape York 2014. No… 2013… 13 or 14. And I did it two years later. The amount of just like human waste that [00:06:00] was at the camp sites, all of a sudden there’s like flies everywhere. There’s toilet paper everywhere. And we talk about tread lightly, but so many campsites are getting wrecked. I mean, there’s so many campsites that were like kind of hidden secrets in Northern Arizona that I just can’t go to anymore because you’re like tripping over human waste and I wonder. If ethically moving forward, we need to ask the question of like, do we need to be packing out? Do we need to probably need to start taking our own waste out?
Scott Brady: I agree. And it’s, again, this is going to be something that’s going to be personal for everyone. The one thing I don’t want to do is shame someone else for the decision that they make. But the decision that I made was to get a nature’s head toilet, which is a composting toilet. And I take it with me when I’m camping, and we have other solutions that we can use when we’re not camping that way. It’s just looking at the campsite that you’re visiting, and is there a lot of impact going on around there? Maybe if you don’t have a toilet with you, you make a compromise and you say [00:07:00] alright, I’m going to spend five minutes picking up trash and we just do something and take a little bit of personal responsibility of… cause what I’m afraid of is that future generations, I mean, you and I are going to be able to enjoy this stuff for the foreseeable future, but like how does someone’s kid get a chance to see the same things that you and I see if today we don’t take some responsibility for that.
Matt Scott: It’s just, I think it’s a topic that people need to maybe start thinking about in 2022.
Scott Brady: And maybe those that are listening, if you’ve got ideas or you found things that are working or there’s some good resources out there that you’re finding on again, there is tread lightly and there is leave no trace, but if there are some additional resources that we can talk about on this podcast, let us know and we’ll give information at the end of the podcast on how to reach out. But I agree, Matt. I mean, Moab shut down camping, they had to, because they had 3 million people camping. They estimated 3 million.
Matt Scott: They did that in Sedona, too. Same thing. And you know, like we have campsites in Sedona that we used to go [00:08:00] to that we just like… I don’t know if it’s, here’s a hot topic in defense of the Overlanders. The van life crowd is pretty bad with this because they’re sitting there for like a long time. I’ve definitely been to some campsites where I see people burning trash. I see people like just doing some interesting things. Cause what, what do you do with it? Like all of a sudden, like there’s squillions of people going out into these places that have no services. A lot of these people are going out for the first time. Like how many urban people during this saw on Instagram, Ooh van, I’m going to get into that. And they hadn’t, respectfully, they didn’t know. They weren’t told. And there’s a lot of like… anything that’s like easily accessible right now is pretty torn up. And we’ve seen that down in a lot of places.
Scott Brady: So maybe that’s part of what we do in 2022 is we realized that this thing is growing very quickly. And those of us who have been doing it a long time, maybe we can… again, I think it’s most [00:09:00] important to look inward instead of telling other people what they’re doing right or doing wrong.
Matt Scott: I just like yelling at people.
Scott Brady: Yeah, totally. And sometimes that’s necessary, if you’re on the trail and someone’s literally driving off trail, we do have a responsibility to say.
Matt Scott: I think I’m also going to start shaming companies who are driving off trail and being general dickheads in 2022. I see so many companies, major companies, car companies, that are setting this precedent of you’re not in a trophy truck. You’re in like a Ford ranger with like four inches of suspension travel on 200 horsepower. I know that marketing is a big thing, but same with camping and some of the trails we’re privileged to have access to this stuff. We have to start all doing a better job.
Scott Brady: Such a crappy part of the podcast that we just went through. I told you, but we’ve got some good news too.
Matt Scott: Half a million…
Scott Brady: half a million downloads of the podcast, which is really exciting. We’re so grateful for you all for listening. We would not [00:10:00] have a podcast without all of you that take the time to listen to Matt and I ramble. We have also been so fortunate to have the quality of guests that we’ve had on this podcast and we’re so grateful for all of the people that have taken the time to participate in the podcast and share their stories of their life and being so open about their experiences and their advice to all of us. I’ve learned so much myself as we’ve interviewed these folks. And of course, huge thanks to Paula Burr. Our producer of the podcast. She works tirelessly to put all of this stuff together, so that way we can continue to do what we’re doing. We added a fourth podcast each month, so we got four a month now, and this is podcast number 75. So they’re really rolling along. And one of the things that’s kind of fun to look at is the top five podcasts of the last year. So the Principles of Overlanding Vehicle Recovery, which part one and part two are one of our most popular podcasts overall. And that was when we do a Jim [00:11:00] West. And he is awesome, and he was such a great resource around that. And I think that that turned out really fun, so take a listen to vehicle recovery part one and two. And then after that was the interview with Richard Giordano, which I thought was really fun because he’s got such a great outlook on travel. He travels in this 1990s Toyota pickup. He’s just got the right attitude and they’re very well-traveled and they’ve got… I mean, they’re Canadian, so they’re super nice.
Matt Scott: Why are Canadians generally just nicer?
Scott Brady: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, maybe it’s the bad weather. I don’t know. Maybe they watch less television.
Matt Scott: I just seldom meet mean Canadians.
Scott Brady: I’ve just not, I can’t think of one. And then after that was the chat we did around Tires and Wheels. And then after that was the Best Overland gear of 2020, which we’re going to get into a little bit today on round 2021. And then number five was Ashley Giordano. So the Giordano’s like swept the interview side of things.
Matt Scott: Well, they’re just so sweet. Just want to hug them. [00:12:00] I already missed them. Aren’t they in Saudi Arabia right now?
Scott Brady: They are, yeah, they’re in Saudi Arabia and they were planning on going to Oman, but they’re there for the Decar and they’re traveling around. They’re making it work. They’re making sure they get out there themselves, and Ashley has become an integrated part of our team and she works on Overland Journal a lot, and Richard’s been really helpful with a bunch of new projects. So we’re just super lucky to have him around as part of the team. That kind of brings us to like what your and my favorite episodes for the year was for me, it was really fun to, to see the Louisa Bell podcast go live, which I had nothing to do with. Ashley interviewed Louisa. I had never heard it. I didn’t participate in the production. So I’m in my truck and I’m driving along, and a new episode pops up and I got to listen to it like a fly on the wall, like a regular listener. And I found myself laughing and they were both so awesome. And so that was my most fun moment listening to… which [00:13:00] I don’t listen to most of the episodes, cause I was there.
Matt Scott: I can’t listen to myself. I would be like, man, you sound like such a dbag. Why would you say that? But then I would lose that certain zest for life if I tried to control myself too much.
Scott Brady: Don’t control yourself too much, man. There is a yin and the yang here. We got to keep it going. Was there one that you had a lot of fun with?
Matt Scott: And I don’t know if it will come out just before or just after this podcast but interviewing Dave Harrington from AEV was really cool is awesome. The products he’s designed since I’ve literally been a little kid have been something that I’ve looked up to and the coolest podcast from here when I learned something. Rather than just espousing my views on the world, it’s nice to…
Scott Brady: He was dropping all kinds of great insights.
Matt Scott: So that was really cool.
Scott Brady: Yeah, Dave Harrington, the CEO of AEV. He’s coming up.
Matt Scott: He’s the dude. I’m going to, I need to like look through… cause there’s 75 now.
Scott Brady: I know it’s crazy.
Matt Scott: I’m gonna figure out how to go on podcasts. Rebelle Rally one was fun. That was fun. And you know, interviewing Brian [00:14:00] Door was interesting.
Scott Brady: Oh, he was great. And his did really well too. His was…
Matt Scott: You know what my favorite one is? Was the Grand Touring one. Cause I’m just like so interested in like these like cooky kind of ideas, like we’ve both been doing the four-wheel drive thing for so long. I like, I don’t know… I want to do something crazy, like I still want to get a Bentley continental GT and like drive it around the world. Like drive it through Russia. I mean, there’s so many of those things there…
Scott Brady: You can get it service. Club meetups… yeah. Air suspension.
Matt Scott: It would be really nice. So what do you do this week over on the world? What are you doing next week? Home.
Scott Brady: I wonder how quickly that’s been done. I don’t know the answer to that one. How quickly someone’s actually driven around the world. Not that I want to rush, but yeah. All right. So then the next spot we launched onto YouTube. So we have live podcasts now where you can see our smiling faces all of our gesticulations with our hands and everything else like [00:15:00] that, as we’re talking. So that’s been a, that’s been a fun update as well. But now let’s kind of get into the gear of 2021, the vehicles and the equipment… and I think it’s going to be a little bit different one for us, because again, we’re trying to be more mindful of the equipment in general, but there’s still been a lot of innovation that have happened mostly around the vehicle side of things. As Matt says, we’re in the swan song of the internal combustion engine. So we’re seeing these vehicles that are like nothing we’ve seen before, but they’re going to be the last of their type probably cause there’s been company after company that have come out and said, look… we’re going to be all electric by 2030, or we’re going to be all electric by 2025. Some of them Toyota just announced that they’re electrifying, which they were a big holdout, and that’s other interesting news. Toyota just eclipsed GM for 2021 as the most voluminous is car reseller or car manufacturer in the United States. So they sold more cars in the U.S. than GM by a small margin. So [00:16:00] pretty big deal that that has happened. But SUVs of the year, I mean… the Bronco comes out, we’re starting to see more and more details around the Grenadier.
Matt Scott: These things are always a little bit ambiguous, like what was the best in 2021? Cause some car magazines or outlets or whatever you want to call yourself. They’ll be like, it has to have been delivered. You had to be able to buy it in 2021. I think for SUV’s that you could buy in 2021, Bronco.
Scott Brady: Yeah, for sure. The 392 is an interesting…
Matt Scott: Like I would buy a 392 over a Bronco, but…
Scott Brady: Why? They’re both so great…
Matt Scott: Because the Bronco has the interior of like… honestly, I liked the interior of the Ford Maverick with a $19,000 starting point more than I liked the interior of the Bronco that was sent to us at a $63,000 sticker.
Scott Brady: Although we did experience that same kind of feathering of the plastic that we had with the Bronco in the Maverick. And I realized it was actually just [00:17:00] the button of my jacket from having my arm there. So it wasn’t even trying to be…
Matt Scott: There’s no excuse for it because…
Scott Brady: By now they should have durable interiors.
Matt Scott: Because the interior of the F-150 and the Super Duty is top-notch, it’s very durable. It’s very well-made and you know, the super duty isn’t that much more of an expensive vehicle than the Bronco. Yeah, but you just not getting like top shelf Bronco is nearly the same price as a top shelf Raptor and you’re not getting the same value.
Scott Brady: On the interior components. Yeah, for sure.
Matt Scott: You’re getting a smaller engine, smaller everything.
Scott Brady: But the thing about the Bronco that really impressed me was the technology that they brought to bear. The lockers worked better than anything on the market because they instantly turn on and off, even when you have drive-line wind up and bind. The sway bar disconnect is super cool. You could be.
Matt Scott: The chassis is fantastic. Like whatever the first refresh of the Bronco is going to be fantastic. You [00:18:00] know, it could not have been easy for Ford to really bring this vehicle to market during the pandemic. This industry, the auto industry, the overland industry, anything automotive aftermarket has been hit really, really hard by supply chains. And I think that’s why, when we get into the later things, we haven’t seen a huge amount of innovation. Cause half of the companies are too busy just copying what these small mom and pop businesses are doing, and then the other half are struggling to survive. So they just keep doing what they’re doing. I just commend Ford for bringing the Bronco back. I’m really excited to see what it… Here’s why, cause I’m a Jeep guy, because now there’s a lighter under Jeeps ass. And now all the guys we know at Jeep, or Stalantis, that’s the stupidest name. Now they have a reason to go to the accountant that actually runs them and say, I want to do this. And that’s how things like the 392 happen.
Scott Brady: You think of Wranglers today. You want a diesel Wrangler, you [00:19:00] got it. You want a manual transmission Wrangler, you got it. You want a V8 Hemi Wrangler. You got it. You want a Wrangler with a pickup truck on the back. You got a Gladiator.
Matt Scott: Well, and you know, there’s been all these reports with this… have you heard about the twin turbo six?
Scott Brady: No.
Matt Scott: Yeah, so they just went into production in Saito Mexico on the next generation engine that will kind of replace the 57. And it’s supposed to go in the Gladiator, it’s supposed to go in the 1500. So it’s going to a variety of things probably, but it’s a Straight 16 turbo. It’s basically the four-liter turbo that they have right now, which is itself an alpha Romeo sourced engine. And then they’ve added two cylinders, from what I understand. That’s going to be an interesting one.
Scott Brady: I love those small displacement turbos at 40 put out… they rip
Matt Scott: They’re super cool. I mean, you know, turbocharging is great. Cars are just great right now.
Scott Brady: They really have gotten good.
Matt Scott: That’s the only thing I can nitpick on the Bronco is like…
Scott Brady: The top in the interior.
Matt Scott: The top in [00:20:00] the interior.
Scott Brady: Just something didn’t come together.
Matt Scott: The one in Tuck…
Scott Brady: The snow got inside.
Matt Scott: Like it was a blizzard inside.
Scott Brady: Which I don’t know if you can really blame the Bronco for that. Did it have a soft top?
Matt Scott: I don’t know why you’d live in tuck by a soft top Wrangler?
Scott Brady: Or maybe it’s somebody that traveled up there, who knows.
Matt Scott: They live there.
Scott Brady: Oh, that’s amazing. Well, good for him. Talk about being optimistic. He’s like bring on the global warming. I’ve got my soft top Bronco in Tuck.
Matt Scott: They have some of the best engineers in the world they’re going to figure it out. They’ll figure it out.
Scott Brady: They’ll totally figure that out. And Ford has done some fun things, I mean we’re going to move on to trucks next, but the Maverick is like… It is summed up as the most charming little truck I’ve ever driven. I mean, it reminds me of… like you said it best, a Chevy S10. Like when they had those bare bones, super…
Matt Scott: Simple work trucks. That’s my truck for this year that I drove, I guess I technically drove it in 2022. But it was available in 2021.
Scott Brady: You looked at it in [00:21:00] 2021.
Matt Scott: I looked at it in 2021. I sat in it. Yeah, for sure. That little thing was so cool. I’m driving this little night… It was $24,000 sticker. It had Falcon wild peak all-terrain tires.
Scott Brady: FX Ford package, front skid plate. 250 horsepower.
Matt Scott: It was plenty, fast. It was plenty comfortable fairly low height on the bed. If you actually use a truck, and I’m not proclaiming to be somebody who actually uses a truck. But I like them. I like the idea.
Scott Brady: You drive a lot of them.
Matt Scott: I drive a lot of them, and you know, this means that when I go to the boutique garden store, I only have to lift the bag of mulch 30 inches, not like 78 inches into a super duty bed because they’ve gotten so tall. I think that it’s a bit of for Ford to launch that. Like you can sit back and be like, why?
Scott Brady: And they’re selling a ton of them.
Matt Scott: I went to Laura, and I was like, we should buy one because then I can… we have this really unfair thing in our relationship where she won’t drive a pickup truck, but she’s says I have to drive a pickup truck. [00:22:00] I’m not saying that I dislike pickup trucks, but like I’d probably rather drive a wagon. They just make a little bit more sense.
Scott Brady: Better storage.
Matt Scott: Better for the dog. Like you could just like buy one.
Scott Brady: It might be the perfect car for Laura, because it’s like a Subaru, and it’s a better all-wheel drive system than the Subaru’s I’ve tested. And it has a little pickup truck bed on the back.
Matt Scott: But you’d have to run that by my dog. He’s got a lot more room in Subaru.
Scott Brady: Okay, that’s true. We’ve done some great testing with it, and it’s clear that it is not intended to be a recreational four-wheel drive vehicle. So I just want to preface that, like I’m not making claims of extreme capability when compared to like a Tremor or a, or a TRD Pro Tacoma, it’s got limited ground clearance. It doesn’t have a lot of underbody protection, but for someone who would look at a Subaru or they want a pickup, but they also want it to drive really well and get great gas mileage. It got 30 miles a gallon for me when I drove it down to Phoenix. So it’s really, I think, going to be a great [00:23:00] solution for a bunch of people, and it is not bad off-road it is impressive.
Matt Scott: It has more payload then a Tacoma.
Scott Brady: It does a 1500-pound payload.
Matt Scott: It has more payload then a Raptor. It has more payload than a Gladiator Rubicon. It has more payload than a TRX.
Scott Brady: Nearly the same payload is a Power Wagon, within 76 pounds of the Power Wagon. It’ll tow 4,000 pounds. Make sure that those that are considering buying one. Make sure you get the max tow package, cause it gets you lower axle gearing. And that’s the one challenge off-road is there’s no low range, and in reverse, it’s like half of the reduction of the first gear. So if you get into something and you’ve got to reverse out of it, you may not have enough gearing. So get the max tow package, but it is a super charming little truck. I dug it.
Matt Scott: I just imagine putting like one of those tonneaus covers and then like a, like a, like a folding roof tent on it and like driving south, because it’s durable and it has everything you need to just be durable and store stuff and quite comfortable, and it starts at [00:24:00] $19,990.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s just under 20 grand. If you get a two-wheel drive hybrid, which gets 40 something miles to the gallon in the city. Yeah. I think they’re going to be super popular.
Matt Scott: The diesel option on full sized trucks is $10,000.
Scott Brady: Thats half the price of a brand new…
Matt Scott: I’m saying that. I mean, it goes up. Like the high output Cummins is 12 something, you know? So like here’s this… That’s half of the price of a decently well-equipped car that we drove.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s a really fun vehicle for those that are looking for getting to the hiking trail, something that kind of does it all and gets good gas mileage and is really affordable. Check out the Maverick. It really impressed me. The Tremor we went into super details around trucks for the truck of the year podcast that we did a few episodes ago. So we’ll refer everybody to that. The Tremor is really good.
Matt Scott: Is that thing for overlanding? Because that package was first made available in 2021. It’s pretty cool.
Scott Brady: Oh yeah. It’s super capable. And the fact that you can get a diesel, [00:25:00] so you kind of end up with almost a Power Wagon capability, the Power Wagon is more capable. There’s no question about it.
Matt Scott: A lot of suspension difference.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Mostly the softness of the springs, a lot more articulation.
Matt Scott: The front end, the coil sprung rear end.
Scott Brady: Disconnectable sway bar. Front locking differential. Not a front mechanical limited slip, but for overlanding purposes, carrying a heavy load, putting a camper on the back, and going into remote technical areas. I think that the Tremors definitely a win. I’ve been driving this 1500 GMC AT4, and I am absolutely in love with the drive train. If you’re interested in the half ton truck, make sure you at least drive the turbo diesel three-liter GMC or Chevy variant. The motor is magic. It gets better gas mileage than any car I’ve ever owned.
Matt Scott: What’re you getting? Getting upwards of 14!
Scott Brady: With the camper on the top, I can still get 19 miles a gallon.
Matt Scott: That’s really good.
Scott Brady: That’s really good. And if the camper’s off of it and I keep my foot out of it. it’ll get mid to high twenties [00:26:00] and people of course have higher per mile much more than that.
Matt Scott: I don’t get good gas mileage in my pickup truck.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s talk about your truck. Speaking of truck of the year, kind of your truck of the year.
Matt Scott: I guess I just said the Maverick. I mean like the Mavericks, like the realist. Okay. I’m going to allow… I’m making my own rules. So my like realistic, cool truck of 2020 Ford Maverick. Awesome truck of 20… I said 2020. 2021 escaped me. Whatever, 2021 coolest truck that came out in 2021, 2021 model year deliveries didn’t really start until like December 2020, January 2021 is the Ram TRX that truck… we beat the crap out of it on the Rebelle rally. Like Chris Walker was driving and I lent it to him for a media support vehicle for the event. He’s being like really… and he’s a professional off-road driver, super great dude. And then like, we get somewhere excited to be in the Earth Roamer, and then we’re in like Dumont dunes. And he’s like being very [00:27:00] respectful, and here comes Matt highlining, just like *cool truck noises*. It hasn’t had a single check engine light. It hasn’t had anything go wrong with it in a lot of off-road miles. It’s incredibly comfortable inside. It’s quiet inside. It’s well-made.
Scott Brady: Like the breadth of capability is something else. Isn’t it four seconds, 0 to 60?
Matt Scott: It’s something around that. But I think MotorTrend did it in like 3.9.
All I know is that it moves, I launch it regularly.
Scott Brady: In the parking lot… and that’s why I think I like the truck. The number of times I’ve seen you smiling from ear to ear in that truck or giddy in some variant because of driving it. I mean that in of itself is a great reason to buy a car.
Matt Scott: It’s really fun. It’s really well made.
Scott Brady: You said it’s the best grand touring vehicle you’ve ever owned.
Matt Scott: Like if, i’m going to drive across the country [00:28:00] tomorrow, that is one of the best cars that you could take. Honestly, like the Raptors also in that category, the Raptor gets a lot better gas mileage and has a better fuel range.
Scott Brady: But there’s something about 700 of the horses that is insane.
Matt Scott: Something with 700 horsepower and then it being swaddled in Alkin Tara and carbon fiber. You know, so yeah, that’s my truck of the year. I mean, just hats off to those guys for… just the only thing that I would change on the center console, they put this plate that has like your VIN on it and the horsepower and whatever. So what that means is in the summer, it brands you like, I probably have a TRX tattoo somewhere on my forearm. And then in the winter it freezes you. Just sadistic… hate it. That’s my complaint.
Scott Brady: Your one complaint.
Matt Scott: I got one complaint. Really good truck.
Scott Brady: Yeah. It’s cool. It looks great too.
Matt Scott: Motorcycles. You rode more new motorcycle this year than I did.
Scott Brady: I rode a lot of new motorcycles this year. [00:29:00] Everything from the Ducati to the Aprilia Tuareg. And I would say that it’s impossible to pin it down to one for me, because what has happened that is worth noting is the mid-range for the mid-sized adventure bikes are better than they’ve ever been before. So the complaint with the big adventure bikes has always been that they are so heavy and cumbersome, but you bought them because they had the horsepower, or they had the electronics that made it comfortable to cruise. Whereas now you can get a Husqvarna 701 long range, and it’s got 300 miles a range and it’s got a great off-road suspension. It’s relatively comfortable to ride. It’s the more off-road biased one, you can get the 790 or the 890 KTM, which they both rip off road and they’re much more streetable now they have traction control, and they have other things that, that make motorcycling safer and actually more effective. The one that I think is really [00:30:00] impressive too, is like the Norton 701. Looks great, it’s based on the KTM. Looks super cool, like kind of retro. That’s another one that’s really great. The Yamaha 700 Ténéré, like that’s another midway bike, but the one that I rode that I kind of personally enjoyed the most was the Aprilia Tuareg, and that was because it does have cruise control. It’s got a much more comfortable seat. It’s also like really fun to ride fast on the road, which a lot of travel ends up like on twisty roads in Columbia. And the fact that you can like drag a knee, if you dare. It’s really great, so I really liked the bike because it’s 12,000 bucks to get an Italian made adventure motorcycle. That is pretty fun.
Matt Scott: I feel like, and maybe this is just the perspective of getting slightly older and not being incredible young, but motorcycles just seem to have stayed the same price. They haven’t really fluctuated in price that much. And as cars continue to just get more and more [00:31:00] and more and more expensive, there’s just this interesting value of some of these very premium motorcycles.
Scott Brady: Totally. No, that’s such a great point. You could, for twenty-five thousand dollars, you can get the best of the best BMW, GS adventure, or maybe…
Matt Scott: I feel like they’ve been the same price for like 20 years. Maybe that’s a factor of there’s just not as many people riding. I don’t know.
Scott Brady: Yeah, I’m not sure.
And a special thanks to this week’s sponsor, Dometic. When you’re heading out, you don’t want anything to hold you back. Whether you’re planning a week-long adventure, or a quick overnight trip to your favorite outdoor spot, we’ve got ya. Dometic’s CFX3 powered cooler is designed with any size adventure in mind. The CFX3 allows you to bring more of your favorite food and drink along for the ride, no matter how far you plan to go. Available in multiple sizes, the CFX3 is built for the demands of outdoor use and comes with a handy app that gives you complete control at [00:32:00] your fingertips. It’s the state-of-the-art, designed for rugged use cooler that you can rely on and enjoy for years to come.
Matt Scott: I have to say that like as vehicle speeds have gone up, as distracted drivers have gone up… the appeal of motorcycling to me is less. Yeah. I love off-road motorcycle riding.
Scott Brady: What a great workout that is.
Matt Scott: Yeah. I need to do that. I’ve gotten fat. The end of 2020…
Scott Brady: You have not.
Matt Scott: The end of 2021 made my pants very tight. Pebble beach, followed by wedding, followed by honeymoon, followed by…
Scott Brady: And you’ve worked a lot this year too. Sitting down a lot.
Matt Scott: And not traveling. Boo, poor Matt. Let’s all show sympathy for Matt.
Scott Brady: Yeah. You’re working hard, man. Proud of you.
Matt Scott: This is all very sarcastic. I mean I work really hard. Like super hard, but [00:33:00] don’t feel sorry for me.
Scott Brady: So yeah, the mid-weight adventure bikes are money. They’re just gold.
Matt Scott: My pick of the year, as always, is the 2021 KTM 450 factory rally edition. You cannot buy it though. Sorry, but it’s the best.
Scott Brady: There you go. Well, you’ve heard it here.
Matt Scott: If you’re going to raise the Dakar.
Scott Brady: Which would cross Liechtenstein really quickly.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Which actually, I mean… my favorite two wheel powered vehicle of 2021 is my little electric scooter that I bought, who made… Segway? We’ve got this little gas station. It’s like a six-minute walk. I can get there in like 45 seconds on my little scooter.
Scott Brady: I can tell when, your watch or something tells you to stand up, because like here comes Matt he’s on this scooter *fast scooter sound*, red bull, back.
Matt Scott: Awesome. Little electric scooter. Trailer of the year.
Scott Brady: Yeah. This one… so this is where we had some…
Matt Scott: This is where it starts to bog down.
Scott Brady: It [00:34:00] does, and the reality is that until there are some things that are happening in the trailer market that are good, there’s more trailers that you can live inside, which is in my mind, one of the few reasons to pull a trailer is that you can bring along comfort and maybe a foul weather suitability that you can’t build into a truck.
Matt Scott: Not going to tow something if I can’t open a door and then like go inside of it.
Scott Brady: And that’s just my opinion.
Matt Scott: It works for some people though.
Scott Brady: So there’s sometimes you have to do that. So like, let’s say you’ve got a Forerunner and you have two or three kids then you’re probably gonna pull a trailer if you’ve got a two-door Wrangler and it’s you and a kid or a dog and a partner or whatever, I can see why some people would just pull a lightweight trailer behind their vehicle. If you can build the systems into the truck, build the systems into the truck. So that way, when you’re on that shelf road in Colorado and the trees down, and you’ve got a backup, I mean, how do you do that? Like, I’ve been in those situations and it takes you…
Matt Scott: You burn the [00:35:00] trailer.
Scott Brady: Off the edge…
Matt Scott: You wait until that guy comes along that really knows how to back a trailer.
Scott Brady: Just wait for like weeks
Matt Scott: There’s a roof… Our buildings collectively got hit by hail, like over the summer.
Scott Brady: Like, it looks like a frag bomb went off.
Matt Scott: Like I’m looking at my door today and there’s a guy that just like comes barreling in this Super Duty with this big stuff trailer that you put stuff in, like the ones that say like Big Tex, and this dude just like, boom, bam. Just like perfectly backs the trailer. I’m like, that guy knows how to back a trailer. I don’t know how to back a trailer like that. They terrify me. I can do it, but I’m like…
Scott Brady: It’s a commitment, and so from my perspective is if you’re going to tow something that just has a roof tent on it, just put the roof tent on top of your car. And so the smaller trailers are less appealing to me, but we’re starting to see smaller trailers that you can sleep inside with heaters and protection from the elements.
Matt Scott: Tear Drop trailers 2.0.
Scott Brady: Totally, and I think that that has a lot of merit. I think that a lot of [00:36:00] people are looking at living inside a trailer. So like an Airstream or a trailer that has a bathroom and a shower and all those in that. Those kinds of things make sense, cause you can’t build those fully inside a vehicle unless it’s a camper that built into a vehicle. So I think that trailers like that are changing, now what needs to happen next is that they need to improve the quality. We are just encountering test unit, after test unit, after test unit with multiple system failures. Multiple fit and finish failures. So I think that that’s my biggest concern is we’ve got trailers are coming along. They’re starting to meet the needs of the consumer and they’re starting to be more appropriate for purchase, but their quality…
Matt Scott: There’s a few trailers on the market that look really appealing, and honestly for the price of what they actually sell for I can’t disagree. I mean the RV industry, which is rapidly merging with the overland industry you can have $120,000 trailer, but it’ll actually sell for 12 cents and a Snickers bar or something. Like the [00:37:00] MSRP… like once in 2021 they sold for MSRP. And that’s about it, you know? So I don’t know, like there’s a lot of, for an off-road trailers, a lot of systems to be built in. But what we’re really starting to get here with, I’m going to say the offered caravan type trailer, you know, something that you can live inside. Something that’s like a typical RV trailer, cause all of these are coming out of China and kind of the provenance of these things is Australia really innovated in that segment. Late 90s’, early 2000s’, and the market became large enough. Australians have a lot of money and a lot of them, just that as a pastime for that country so they use it. Well then they started exporting manufacturing to China, and now there’s just been so much turnover and whatever that there are just companies in China that make these trailers. I’m sure that you can find… If you’re looking at an off-road trailer, I’m not going to name names. But then you go to alibaba.com and you type in off road caravan or off road trailer. You’re going to find something that’s very similar to [00:38:00] that. And there’s these markets in Australia that, you know, they kind of do like… you buy them, it’s built in China, and it shows up, and they sell them for X amount per week or X amount per month. They’re the low end because they have domestic manufacturers that are still doing the high end. The Brooder trailers and stuff like that, that are the ones innovating. Well, the new trailers that are on the market over here are the ones that have been in the market over there for a long time. I’m not saying that they don’t serve a purpose. I’m not saying that they don’t offer actually a pretty good value, cause most RV trailers over here are just of such poor quality that the quality of even these Chinese trailers offer is still pretty good.
Scott Brady: Yeah, for sure. And we’ve seen some of them that are very livable. It’s just… it’ll be nice to see when that quality requirement starts to come into play, because the reality is… and I heard this from one of the camper manufacturers. He said that the average camper or trailer buyer only uses it two weekends a year. So [00:39:00] if you only have to use it two weekends a year, you probably don’t notice those quality issues that much. Whereas a typical Overland traveler is going to use it a lot more or maybe even live out of it. So they’re going to degrade very rapidly. So I’m looking forward to when we start to see like Earth Cruiser and Earth Roamer level quality trailers available. And hopefully that, that, that comes with time, and right now what most people pick is an Airstream. We see a lot of people that they tow an Airstream, and they park it and then they drive their truck around wherever they want to go off road.
Matt Scott: And it’s inevitable that the collective Elkhart Lake manufacturers… No Elkhart Lake is in Wisconsin where the racetrack is. Elkhart, Indiana. Ones where road America is, one is where staple guns and glue, and all those things are made. They’ll eventually start to see an opportunity there. Airstreams Thor who owns like everyone else in the world. I don’t know. It’s interesting. I mean, it’s hard to say.
Scott Brady: So, yeah, I can’t pin down the trailer of the year.
Matt Scott: A trailer of the year, because while there are new things on the [00:40:00] market, they’re not actually, when you look into it, they’re not actually that new… I guess that’s what I would say. So on the camper front, we’ve seen some really cool stuff. There’s the Earth Cruiser Terranova that came out in 2021. That’s a pretty cool truck.
Scott Brady: Totally. And they’ve got manufacturing down. They’ve got quality down. It’s owned by people. It’s owned by the founders, still care about quality. They still do their own versions of adventures around the world. So we see good quality out of that. A couple years ago, the Earth Roamer, their new carbon version came out, which is…
Matt Scott: LTI is really cool. Mike McMod gets all the cool stuff. Yeah, the LTIs cool but that’s more of a, I guess, 2021… Probably 2020. I think launched in 2021, camper style. I do like the version two Go Fast camper. It looks really cool. I saw a couple, like my buddy Jackson has one on his AED Prospector and it just looks cool. Like there’s thought that’s gone into it. But it’s very much [00:41:00] a truck bed that you can camp in. Thats the way I look at the GFC stuff, you know, that’s the scout camper that you got. Those are really starting to hit the market in 2021.
Scott Brady: I couldn’t be happier with it. So, I mean, it was a camper that I paid for myself and there’s been… the only issue that I’ve had with the camper was the water tank. It’s not the tank that’s built in. It’s just like a lifesaver.
Matt Scott: We talked about this on this podcast, that thing was going to leak. They always leak.
Scott Brady: Yeah. So yeah, the lifesaver Jerry Can, does not work on its side.
Matt Scott: Don’t work upright either.
Scott Brady: Well, I haven’t had any trouble with them upright, but on its side, it definitely doesn’t.
Matt Scott: Super cool concepts. Then you get pressurized water that’s filtered and yeah.
Scott Brady: So if you can… I’ve finally got it where it doesn’t leak, but it was like a bunch of rescue tape and changing seals and a bunch of things to try keep it from leaking and now it doesn’t leak, but overall, super happy with the camper. And it’s the fact that it’s durable, it’s simple, and it’s affordable. That’s kind of a [00:42:00] rare combination to find.
Matt Scott: They’re in the low twenties.
Scott Brady: Yeah, it depends on what like an Olympic or Olympia can be in the twenties. The Kenai that I have is in the mid to high twenties. So they’re very, very good value. And it’s because they’re very simple. So me, I just wanted a four-season shell that I could sleep in comfortably and have a heater. And I love the little Dickinson, the little Dickinson sailboat heater that’s in there. I love it. So yeah, for me, I’m super happy customer of that.
Matt Scott: It’ll be interesting, I think in 2022, because that’s the year that we’re now in, we’re going to see more hard sided camper. I think we’re going to see… these are Matt’s predictions for 2022 in the camper segment. I think we’re going to see less vans. I think we’ve hit peak van. Like the moment I started seeing not another Sprinter bumper stickers. I’m like touché you know, there’s so many [00:43:00] vans out there right now, and we’re going to continue to see them.
Scott Brady: They’ll continue to be popular, but full-size trucks with campers are going to…
Matt Scott: Full size trucks with campers. That’s why the Earth Cruiser Terranova really interests me. You know, this is just me personally. I have never been able to talk myself into driving a Mitsubishi Fuzhou or Canter. It just doesn’t work for me.
Scott Brady: They’re pretty fatiguing. Like when I drove that one around Australia, you’re sitting on top of the front axle and it’s pretty fatiguing.
Matt Scott: They don’t have a lot of power, et cetera, et cetera, but for a pure travel truck, they make so much sense. Once you’re going outside the U.S. like, I mean… Earth Roamer for the U.S. Earth Cruiser for everywhere else, but these new diesel… well, you don’t have to get it in a diesel. You can get with the 7.3 Godzilla. You can get it on any of the platforms with that Terra Nova. I like that style.
Scott Brady: It makes a lot of sense.
Matt Scott: Makes a lot of sense. And there’s the AT Atara. That came out in collaboration with Turn Overland. I think Turn Overland developed [00:44:00] it.
Scott Brady: They did, I think they developed the structure, and then Mario and his team from AT Overland, they develop the interior systems. Yeah.
Matt Scott: Stuff like that’s really cool to see coming out. But we’re going to start seeing more integrated vehicles, I like to think.
Scott Brady: Because it makes a lot of sense.
Matt Scott: You know, eventually people are gonna tire of buying the camper and then buying the flat bed. I mean, there’s clearly a market for it because people are spending… by the time you buy a good flat bed, a good camper, and a good truck outfitted you’re at 200,000.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Somewhere between 150 and 200. And I think that’s why the vans have stayed with it because you can go buy a van for 50 grand and then you can build it out yourself at your leisure because you got… and that’s why the vans have done well. All right, so let’s get into the EVs. So EVs are coming, it’s going to be more and more a point of reality for us. We’re going to see people traveling in them more and more.
Matt Scott: Definitely. EV of the year for me is the Ram [00:45:00] TRX. So let’s continue on this podcast, which has turned a little bit into Matt’s soap box. I’ve got a buddy who in December of 2020 bought a Rivian, which by now they’re advertising that they’re delivering them. I think Rivians are cool. They’re delivering them to like early investors in the company. They’re delivering in very small numbers in reality. So he bought one and put his deposit down in December 2020. So that is over a year ago now, he won’t get it until the summer of 2023. So I would have to say as far as Rivian and stuff goes and EV adoption, 2021 would have to have been a big year. So I’m like… I was thinking about buying one and I’m like, well, but he ordered it over a year ago and he’s not going to get it for a year and a half. By the time I buy that car, it’s going to be outdated.
Scott Brady: That’s the one challenge that Rivian will have is that we’ve seen the car for a long time. And it is a very handsome truck, I like the [00:46:00] fact that it looks more traditional in its styling. I do like that a lot.
Matt Scott: You know, I like the Rivian team. We spent a bunch of time with them on the rebel rally. They had a vehicle competing in it. So we spent a lot of time with him. It’s really cool, but making cars is hard and learning how to make cars is hard. Meanwhile, I can by the time… if I placed an order for Rivian right now, I suspect I will be able to buy an EV on a showroom floor from the big three manufacturers.
Scott Brady: GM just announced Silverado EV. Ford has just doubled production of the Lightening. The Hummer EV
Matt Scott: is delivering in the same way that the Rivian is.
Scott Brady: It’s kind of coming out right now for the $112,000 model. So this is all hitting, so hopefully you want to see them succeed. They were certainly playing in white space. They came up with a really attractive unit with a bunch of great [00:47:00] technology, but they’ve got to start delivering cars or else it’ll just be there and they’re in the wake of…
Matt Scott: I mean it would take gusto to be in that space because there is a lot of things Americans do really, really well. We are the undisputed king of pickups. Thailand actually may argue. I think there’s more pickup trucks made in Thailand and owned as an overall percentage of vehicles in America. Interesting fact. High Lux, Colorado Azuzu D max… they’re all built there. Yeah, the diesel motor that goes in the Colorado. Made there, but you’re staring down the barrel of the F-150 going to EV and I read a thing today that like almost weekly Stalantis is… change that name. Like I don’t care what weird company has to buy you, but I will take anything but Stalantis, you know, their weekly updating their 1500 EV platform. They’re watching what’s coming out and they’re like, cool. We’re [00:48:00] going to make this change, this change, this change. And they know how to make cars and they have established supply chain relationships.
Scott Brady: But it’s coming. So EVs are here and they’re coming quickly and it’s exciting to see that technology, cause it’s also… let’s just say we dismiss EVs entirely. They inspired the automotive manufacturers to make more interesting internal combustion engine cars. So like that’s how we ended up with the TRX and all of these super-fast internal combustion cars. So they’re coming, and I think that the advantage of that the big three has is that you’re already going to be concerned about buying something that’s so tech heavy. So the fact that you can go to the local dealership and get it serviced, like where do you get the Rivian serviced? And it’s a very complex vehicle.
Matt Scott: You know, it’s a problem that Tesla solved. You know, Tesla was just shy of delivering a million vehicles. You know, congrats to them. American companies are leading innovation in EVs. Yet Americans really aren’t buying them in the same percentages, but again bigger [00:49:00] distances. Like I looked at buying that Taikan or no, sorry. I’m going to say this properly. Ze Porsche Taikan Cross Turismo, impressive car. Beautifully designed. It is the manufacturing and the build quality that you would expect from Porsche. It’s a great car that happens to be EV. And it’s like a 220-mile EPA range.
Scott Brady: So that’s Phoenix and back if you’re lucky.
Matt Scott: And then I started looking into the reality of like living in Prescott with an electric car. There is downtown there’s two chargers. One in a hotel, which I’m not going to go to. And there’s one in front of another hotel that’s near founding fathers, some parts of the country just aren’t ready for it yet. And that’s what we kind of decided, but I think that that’s going to rapidly change.
Scott Brady: It’s going to come very quickly.
Matt Scott: I wonder how the EV will affect overlanding, whether these older cars… and I say older, I mean stuff that’s in production right now will just become a little bit more desirable. I mean like 10 or 15 years ago; you didn’t want to touch anything from the two thousands that was mainly Land Rover. I’m being honest. You wanted the basic stuff with no [00:50:00] computers and whatever, but then they figured out electronics. Eventually they’ll figure out range.
Scott Brady: Yeah. That’s the thing. They’ll figure it all out. And there’s always going to be a place for internal combustion in some capacity. It’s like when the automotive… when the automobile came, the horses didn’t go away. They just became something that people did for fun or recreation or on their ranch. So you’re gonna continue to see internal combustion vehicles that are just going to be not as common as they are now.
Matt Scott: I think that there’ll be cool. I mean, we’ve kind of figured them out.
Scott Brady: And that’s exciting to see what’s going to happen.
Matt Scott: Hope I wasn’t like too hard on Rivian. I think they’re a super cool company.
Scott Brady: You’re pulling for them. You want them to be successful, but if they wait too long, the car is going to look dated and they’re going to get bypassed by other manufactures.
Matt Scott: I’m not saying that it’s boom. It’s super easy to do. What they’re doing is gotta be one of the hardest things in the world. And to do it at volume, you know, EV of the year for me, Rivian. They have two, they’ve got the truck and they’ve got the SUV. Both really cool. Gear of the year. Here’s another [00:51:00] thing is like, I feel like there’s just a lot of unnecessary widgets that came out this year.
Scott Brady: You like your electric scooter. What’s the stuff that even if we… like, let’s say that we just abandon the idea that there’s some totally new, exciting Overland piece of kit. Let’s just go with what, like what have you been kind of falling in love with? What have you been using? You like your apple headphones?
Matt Scott: I got those apple, like the big ones. They’re really heavy. Like to the point where if you’re running, they’ll kind of like fall off and then they’ll like come crashing to the ground. They need to make them lighter. I get that they’re supposed to be premium feeling or whatever, but they’re really heavy. Jeez… I think that that geary techie thing that I adopted most in 2021 was probably Gaia, really started planning routes and trips in that because with the apple CarPlay integration, it’s a pretty big thing. I still find it better for planning routes and stuff. I know there’s [00:52:00] OnX, but OnX has this weird… I don’t like their maps. Like if you’re a map geek, I think Gaia is better. OnX, you know, they highlight… they did this like fluorescent highlight of all these routes. Super busy.
Scott Brady: You can turn those layers off, which helped. But yeah, what I do like is the very clean display of the map on Gaia. And so this is one of the things that I love is all the different map layers you can get. So you can get like old school TAPO’s, like from 1900s’.
Matt Scott: Is that Gaia? Or we’re talking Gaia not OnX… Yeah, cause you can get all the old stuff. So many maps.
Scott Brady: I can get like the original TAPO map of Prescott, where it shows all the mines and where all of the…
Matt Scott: I downloaded that one after you showed me.
Scott Brady: It’s so fun to be on a trail and be like, oh there’s a mine right up over there. And sure enough, that’s there.
Matt Scott: So here’s a few of my favorite ones. They have a light pollution map. Which you can do it as a layer. You can layer maps, and I’ve been using that as a reference when I want to get [00:53:00] away. I’m like, are there lights around? And you can actually start to see where the remote places in the country are based on light pollution. Cause there’s lights, there’s people. They have cell coverage maps, which have been really useful if we’re kind of working from the road from the Earth Roamer. That’s really handy. They have a wildfire map that shows you what areas have burned recently. That’s a really cool… it’s also gotten really glitchy since outside magazine bought it. Like I have this many of the same layers. There’s like 15 satellite TOPO and it has been getting a little glitchy for me.
Scott Brady: That’s good to know. There was a period of time where the tracks weren’t recording. You know, reliably and that that’s been fixed. But yeah, that’s why you got to have multiple options. It’s why I still bring a Garmin Overlander with me is because I want to have two sources of my track. Just because we use it for editorials.
Matt Scott: Yeah. I the GPS things that go on your dash and it’s like using a worst version of your cell phone.
Scott Brady: Yeah.[00:54:00] It’s good just to have redundancy.
Matt Scott: I have inReach since it has all the redundancy. I liked it, cause I had a keyboard.
Scott Brady: There you go. inReach is a big thing.
Matt Scott: That’s a big deal. That would probably be a techie thing that I liked in 2021. I got like the big one that’s orange and I don’t know what it’s really called.
Scott Brady: It’s the inReach with the GPS built-in.
Matt Scott: Yeah, and it’s got the screen and you can text from it and I can get the weather. It’s really handy, like you’re in the middle of nowhere. And you can see the weather cause you can download weather reports.
Scott Brady: You could open the door or the Earth Roamer and step out and see what the weather is. I like the Gaia one, that’s good. For me I’m just going to go with just the things that I’ve just totally been geeking on. So I’ve been using this aura ring for a few years now and they had a gen two. Which I owned. And then they came out with the gen three. So it basically allows you to have like a smartwatch, but on your finger. And so it records your steps and record your heart rate and it records… So it helps [00:55:00] me recognize, like what things are happening that maybe contribute to some stress and some increased heart rate. But what I really focus on is the sleep is I find that the better-quality sleep I get, the more productive I am and the just happier I am. So it’s really useful for that, they’re not a sponsor or anything. I paid cash for it. I like…
Matt Scott: It sounds like a cool idea. Like I got an apple watch for Christmas and I kinda got into watches.
Scott Brady: Yeah, so do. I like old school watches, and this is another thing that was really fun for me, I was at Thanksgiving with my family, and I got this watch winder, this Wolf Watch Winder for the automatic watches that I’ve got. And my dad’s like, I think I’ve got this cool old watch. He’s like, I bought it when I was in the Vietnam war, and it was made by Seiko. And he’s like, I think I bought it in the late sixties or maybe 69′ or 70′. I’m like, dad, go get the watch. We gotta check it out. So he goes and he shuffles around looking for the watch for 20, 30 minutes, and he comes out and it’s [00:56:00] this Seiko chronograph. Now in 1969, 1970, there was this battle going on of who is going to come out with the first automatic chronograph and Zenith, I believe was one that did. And then there was a consortium of Swiss watchmakers that, that also produced a version. And then Seiko came out with one. So it’s literally one of the first automatic chronographs and this is my dad’s watch. And its super… It’s the watch that Bruce Lee wore. I mean, it was the first automatic chronograph in space was this. They called it the poge. It’s a slightly different face of the watch than the one that my dad had, but it’s the same movement and all that. Same vintage and everything. So it was for me… like to get this super cool watch from my dad. So I want to wear my dad’s watch, but I also want to keep track of my sleep and my heart rate and all that other stuff that helps me be a healthier human. So that’s why I like the aura ring. So yeah, Matt and I have both gotten into watches in the last couple of years. Yeah, so those that are listening, if we want to geek out on watches, like [00:57:00] send me a thing on the Instagrams. So the aura ring is super cool. My Mac book pro that apple finally fixed all the things that were terrible about their laptops forever. Like I actually have multiple USB-C ports, so it’s back to being a great source for travel and producing content. So I’ve been really happy with the new MacBook pro, but that as far as overlanding gear, there’s just nothing that really stood out to me as being different that I wanted to talk about today or encourage people to buy. All the stuff that I had the year before works just as well.
Matt Scott: I’ve just got nothing on the Overland front. I mean, I’ve got a lot of geeky, snow peak stuff that I got.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Well, Snow Peak stuff is awesome. Dometic did come out with this new water system, but it’s not available yet. So we haven’t had a chance to test it. It has a lot of merit. But we haven’t had a chance to test it yet, so that should be, that should be a good one.
Matt Scott: I don’t know… like I just geeked out so hard on the Earth Roamer [00:58:00] 2021. I put this like 5g internet system in with this crazy external antenna. That was kind of cool, but I’ve been working so. I haven’t been able to use it.
Scott Brady: I got the Starlink, which is amazing, but they don’t let it, they don’t let you move with it yet. So it’s incredibly cool.
Matt Scott: Did you see the cat’s with Starlink where like the dish surface is heated and the cats are like, F your internet.
Scott Brady: He was wondering why his internet wasn’t working and he looks outside and there’s like four cats sleeping on the dish. That is pretty funny. So no super exciting new pieces.
Matt Scott: Here’s an interesting thing for travelers that I’ve found, they now make AA, AAA, C, D whatever replaceable batteries, but they charge by like micro USB or USB-C.
Who makes that?
I found them on Amazon and there’s like several manufacturers.
Scott Brady: You plug it right into the battery itself.
Matt Scott: Plug it right into the battery. I’ve switched everything that we needed in the Earth Roamer over to that, cause I don’t want to be buying batteries and just throwing them away. Like [00:59:00] replaceable batteries non-rechargeable are not super great for the environment. I don’t have the scientific data on that, but I would have to imagine that throwing…
Scott Brady: It feels better to not throw it away.
Matt Scott: It feels better to not throw it away. So like, I’ve got this big Maglite mounted on my door in case I have to like beat a crack head or something outside of my earth roamer. And I put like the big lithium batteries in that.
Scott Brady: Because they were heavier or what, but lithium is lighter, so you have less mass to smash with.
Matt Scott: But I’m a ninja, I’m not. I also got into guns. I got into HKs really heavy in 2021. I turned into an MP5 slut, and I even built an MP5. It’s not even an SP5, for the Earth Roamer.
Scott Brady: It’s got its own little truck gun. I like that. No, the HK stuff is amazing. I love my SP89K that I was fortunate to buy off of John Lee at Expedition Exchange.
Matt Scott: Just like shooting a sewing machine.
Scott Brady: A [01:00:00] really nice sewing machine.
Matt Scott: But gee, what else?
Scott Brady: I mean, it’s all fun stuff. I think we’re just kind of pent up. I think we want to get out and travel. And so the gear is not that exciting for me, it’s part of my job. So I test things and I am certainly enthusiastic around it for that period of time. But when it comes to something I want to tell somebody to buy… it’s like I just want to buy a plane ticket to Johannesburg is what I really want.
Matt Scott: KnI just want to go, you know? Like, you know, we’re doing this big Alaska trip is my big focus is we’re gonna spend a couple of months. We’re going to do all the fairly remote places in Northern Canada. I’m calling it my Alaska trip. Cause that’s kind of the, I guess in theory, the furthest destination, but it’s really gonna be Yukon Northwest territory.
Scott Brady: That’ll be amazing. So beautiful up there.
Matt Scott: I have to say, it would really suck if the world got in the way that, cause it got in the way of it in 2019 because of work. My choice, like you know, I’m an entrepreneur. I got to put the bread on the table, so to speak. 2020 [01:01:00] obviously no go. 2021 for most of the year you couldn’t. And then we were, again just so busy and I’m just like 2022, like hell or high water. I have to do it. Maybe this goes into something positive, like I think so many people that probably listen to this podcast have had these adventures that they want to do that they can’t, but you have to keep the dream alive, and you have to keep persevering. You have to keep it on your mind. You have to keep it as a goal. if you can’t go, that’s something that’s out of your control, but what you can control… you can remember the person that you were before all of this crap happened and you can hold yourself accountable to say I want to do this no matter… so many people, like we were talking, have just geared out. Like, I think we just don’t know any gear for 2021, because we’re just like tired of buying stuff. Like I took the Amazon app off my phone, cause it’s too convenient. And it’s like, you get a little bit of money in your pocket. You’re like, oh yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, [01:02:00] hold on one second. Cool. Yeah, just bought it. And maybe it’s not good, I want to make a conscious effort to really reprioritize overland travel in, in 2021. And that that’s going to mean selling cars and that kind of stuff, cause you add stuff and then the stuff ends up owning you. It’s not a super great feeling when you kind of like…
Scott Brady: Well we’ve all got to go through that. I went through it. I had way too many cars for too long. And it’s good it’s healthy to let that stuff go. So that’s 2021. I mean, what an amazing yea. We are so grateful for all of you for listening and for supporting the podcast. And we would love to get your feedback. When you think about ways of helping with the Overland Journal podcast, obviously being a subscriber to the print magazine is what makes this possible just from an infrastructure standpoint. So we thank all of you that subscribe to Overland Journal as a magazine. And we thank all of you for giving us feedback. We’re [01:03:00] going to do an AMA at some point in the near future, we’ve collected a lot of the questions that you guys have been asking. So we’ll kind of rip through some of those questions that you guys have been sending our way. If you want to get ahold of Matt, it’s MattExplorer on Instagram.
Matt Scott: And you’re Scott.a.brady.
Scott Brady: That’s me on Instagram. You guys are welcome to reach out. I’m also Scott_Brady on Twitter. I have been playing with that a little bit more. It’s kind of an interesting change from the metaverse in a way… I found myself very much giving up on Facebook. Yeah so, I just haven’t really…
Matt Scott: I feel bad cause I have like so many like friends that I’ve met and that’s kind of how I almost stay in touch with a lot of these people.
Scott Brady: Their algorithms have somehow just made toxicity the priority. And Instagram’s great too, there’s a lot of beautiful imagery on it, but I think I’ve gotten a little bit more selective on who I follow. So I’m more inspired.
Matt Scott: I [01:04:00] learned that you can… generally people post crazy stories, but they might have like cool hosts or whatever… something in between the two, but you can mute people on stories.
Scott Brady: Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t know that.
Matt Scott: Like, I can’t stand the influencers that share a story every three seconds. Here I am camping on the beach. Here’s the quality of the sand. Here’s my dog and the beach. Here’s the quality of the sand. Here I am camping on the beach.
Scott Brady: Seven or eight of them in a row.
Matt Scott: You know, like the little stories are like that.
Scott Brady: So how do you mute them?
Matt Scott: You just like go to their profile. You go to mute.
Scott Brady: Oh, awesome. Okay. That’s very helpful. See, I just learned something.
Matt Scott: Yeah. It’s like… here, I’m going to mute you.
Scott Brady: Although I’d have to do stories in order for you to actually mute me.
Matt Scott: I hope everybody has a good 2022.
Scott Brady: Spend time with your families. Spend time traveling. Spend time thinking about traveling.
Matt Scott: less stuff, more travel. And that’s also one of those things that it’s do as I say, not as I [01:05:00] do. Cause I may just end up with stuff and travel.
Scott Brady: Well we’re learning. This is not a perfect process. We thank you all for listening and we’ll talk to you next time.
