In my early 20s I snagged an awesome gig as a bicycle tour guide in the wine regions of France. That led to managing other companies, including one of the largest adventure travel outfits in Alaska. As a result I always considered myself a leader—never a follower. Not to say I looked down on paying clients, but I discounted their…

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal, Gear Guide 2009. Modifying a vehicle is nearly always a compromise. Adding horsepower typically comes at the cost of efficiency. Lifting a vehicle often comes at the cost of high-speed stability, and each new modification usually adds more weight and complexity to a platform that the factory engineers spent thousands…

In the mid-1990s, while living in France, I had a local friend named Georges. Twice my age, he spent his days toiling in the vineyards near my home. Every now and then, I’d volunteer to help him trim vines, burn brush, or some days we’d just sit around and chat. The one thing I remember most about George, aside from…

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal, Fall 2008. I still remember the article about the 1991 Camel Trophy. The words and images are as visible in my mind today as the first time I saw them. I had casually picked up a 4WD publication from a newsstand. Thumbing through its pages, I stopped short at a…

How many times have you wished you could sell everything that wasn’t bolted down, or put it all in storage, and hit the open road? For most people those daydreams are just that—dreams. There are those with just that little bit of extra courage who take it to the next level and push beyond the doorway. Heather and Dave are…

On our arrival in Japan, on the southern island of Kyushu, we needed to plot a general route for the coming months. We skimmed our two guidebooks and marked the possible-of-interest places on our Reise Know-How roadmap. Local information is always a welcome addition and Japan, we quickly learned, has a super-organized system of tourist information centers. You will find…

I must have a thing for symmetry. As I wiggled and twisted down the road, the Ural beneath me seemed determined to thwart my best efforts to ride a straight line. I started to mentally catalog all the asymmetrical things in the world, most of them annoying to me. There’s the fiddler crab with his one large claw; the scalene…

Sure, you could drive to Inuvik in a Unimog, by why not a Bavarian sports coupe?

Although it had been around for ages, it was high time for REI to retire the Novara bicycle line. Discerning cyclists never really warmed to the label, quick to dismiss it as an entry-level house brand. To be fair, that is essentially what it was. For 2017, REI made the decision to give their bike department a comprehensive reboot, and central…

As much as I love to venture into to the woods and survive on trail mix and beef jerky, I also admit I’m an unabashed foodie. I have a tattered Michelin restaurant guidebook with plenty of dog-eared pages, and can snob around the food scene with the best of them. When I learned of Good To-Go and the well-known chef…

With a legacy dating back three quarters of a century, the Jeep is surely one of the world’s most iconic vehicle platforms. From the U.S. Government’s initial call for a four-wheel drive light personnel carrier in 1940, to pioneering the Rubicon Trail in the 1950s and setting the standard of 21st-century capability, the seven-slot grill has a place, not only…

“It’ll be amazing,” they said. “A trip of a lifetime,” they said. Every day, we want to believe that driving through Africa in our ’91 Defender named Maggie is an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience, but the truth is that it doesn’t always feel like rainbows and butterflies. At times it can be really, really hard, but it’s exactly because it’s hard…

The pre-moistened towel ready for the big job of cleaning a full grown human.

Before this wall gets built, I want to spend as much time in Mexico as I can. Surfing, camping, eating tacos, taking in the sights, and just otherwise unplugging from the Great American Life. But when I say Mexico, what I really mean is Baja—that slim peninsula stretching into the Pacific Ocean just south of San Diego. What Sri Lanka…

It wasn’t all that long ago my young family of four fit in a roof top tent. We played games and read bedtime stories, blissfully falling asleep with everyone safe and snug. And then our two toddlers grew. I still remember the first time I got kicked out of our roof top tent, but can’t recall if it was an…

All travelers understand the importance of clean drinking water, but too few know how to best select the proper water treatment system for their individual needs. It is an understandable conundrum as there are seemingly endless options for filters, purifiers, and chemical solutions. Over the span of the last two years, I set out to evaluate nearly two dozen of the…

I’ve always regarded blogs as harbouring the sort of self-indulgent small talk which bores us all; inane, desultory, mini-updates neither telling a story nor addressing a point. An incoherent musing of one’s day-to-day life written by those who seem to have overlooked the stories that readers might actually want to hear. So, it came as a surprise when I found…

I don’t want to sound like a pedant, but automotive news often pushes the boundaries of good journalism. I liken it to celebrity rumor rags and the unabashed pursuit of attention getting. As we knew they would, leaks have started to emerge pertaining to the highly anticipated 2018 Jeep Wrangler. Before I proceed, I would file the following details as…

I had never been to Mexico prior to this trip. Also, being Swedish meant that my Spanish was pretty much non-existent. That wasn’t going to stop me. I could not have been more excited about my solo road trip to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. I had been planning it for quite some time. What better vehicle to do this…

If you’re anything like me, getting my day rolling without a cup of piping hot coffee is nigh impossible. Because my backwood outings range from vehicle supported forays with copious amounts of gear, to trips with the absolute minimum, my coffee making methods vary wildly. Fortunately, there are a number of new products on the market which accommodate my ever…