TransAmerica Trail with Crankshaft Culture

I don't think I'd attempt to try this stunt.

Or we owe this horsepower to Uncle Sam.

Too many cars.

Look, I put my beer belly on it.

Yeah.

You can't immediately tell somebody how many cars you have.

You'll really give those up at a yuppie, something to think about.

Stay on the by.

Don't go off the by with your Bronco.

1980 Volvo horns, what's right?

Meep meep.

I'm one of the man's coolant.

And he's like, oh, I thought it'd be small.

It's for a small car.

And I'm like, yeah, but it's still an automatic transmission.

They're never going to be light.

It's definitely going to have to crash.

Starting off with Brad buying another car.

That's the West.

Internet.

Is this a Nigerian oil print?

I also wish we drove a tan Camry.

Anyways, that's a very horrible podcast content.

Very inside joke.

They love to be driven hard.

All right, hello.

Welcome to Auto Off Topic.

Hey, we've got some guests tonight, Brad.

We've got returning guests, too.

Andy and Mercedes-Lilienthal.

I want to thank them in advance for coming,

because we've not had a guest for a while

due to all of our audio and strange issues.

And we think we haven't talked enough now

to get back on the trail here.

So we brought them along,

because not only are they excellent returning guests,

but they're returning guests.

So if it does go haywire,

maybe they'll understand more than a new guest.

I don't think it will.

I think we get it knocked.

Hey, everyone, Andrew here checking in.

It did go poorly, actually.

If you listen to this in the first go-round,

the audio was totally messed up.

So I have re-edited it and attempted to fix the audio.

So let's take this again.

Here we go.

I looked back up.

We had them on last, it was August 23rd, 2024.

Well, it would have been a couple of days before that,

but that was when it was released.

So Proletive Adventures is that episode.

And that was about the,

that was the TSD you guys had across Europe.

I don't forget any of the details,

but it's because it's recorded.

So if you wanna go back and listen to that one, yeah.

I can't tell you the episode number,

but I can tell you when the date it was.

It was not number 300.

No, it was not.

But I figured we kick it off before we,

we're gonna get into talking about,

Mercedes and Andy drove across the trans-America trail.

Was this past summer?

Yes.

So we're gonna talk about that.

But before that, we're gonna do our usual,

we're gonna talk about project cars.

We're not gonna talk about Brad and Andrew's project cars.

We'll talk about Mercedes and Andy's project cars

because we just talked about our project cars

in the other episode.

And everybody knows all about our stuff anyways.

So yeah, go ahead guys.

I wanna hear about your project cars.

Yeah, so we have four cars at the moment.

They're all kind of project cars.

We've long had a 91 Mitsubishi Pajero turbo diesel

with a 2.5 liter 456.

We have had a 1994 Mitsubishi Delica space gear

with the 4M 40 2.8 liter turbocharged diesel.

We've had that since 2020.

Yep.

And then our daily driver slash weekend rallyer

is a 2022 Subaru Crosstrek.

So that is by far the newest vehicle that we own.

With the manual.

They're all manual.

They're all manuals, yep.

And that one, we swore we would keep stock

and other lies we tell ourselves.

And so it's got a rally innovations light bar,

got light force lights on it,

full primitive racing skid plates.

215, 75, 15, BF Goodrich KO3s, which we just put on.

We're doing a little bit of a revamp on it.

Ryka Seeker wheels in 15 inches.

And nameless axle-back exhaust, nameless cross,

ah, excuse me, strut tower bar, thank you.

And their new tie down, battery tie down.

And then I literally just today picked up a set

of King Springs from Primitive Racing

for the rear, their rear overload springs

because we're installing a rigged supply.

Rigged supply, ultra swing rear tire carrier,

which is something we discovered

on the Transamerica Trail and loved.

And then-

Well that also is gonna have the side hack

for the fuel canister as well as the full down table too.

Right, the ultra table.

And then we also just picked up a set of new Tully crossbars

and a new Tully-

The motion three.

Motion three box for the top.

We're big fans of that.

And when you have a small vehicle,

it can be hard to bring a lot of stuff with you.

One other thing we just got,

we got this thing from sleep rides.

It's a simple but effective insert that goes,

when the seats are folded down,

it's a wooden insert that goes down

and uses the headrests as supports.

And so then you can sleep inside the cross track.

So that's a brand new company.

And in fact, I believe we have the first production unit.

Yeah, the very first manufactured unit.

And the guy ends up being local.

We live in Oregon and he's just, what,

I don't know, 15 minutes away.

Yeah, yeah, make some specifically for the cross track.

Right, which is great

because you just have to slide the cross track

front seats forward and then tilt them forward

and it fits in.

And the cross track is a little bit too short

for a lot of people to be able to sleep in

versus yell back, which is longer.

So we're stoked to test this.

We haven't even slept on it yet.

We literally have it sitting next to the rooftop box

in our living room right now, right behind us.

This is not what they meant by Scandinavian design.

Let me tell you, our house is another garage right now.

I'm glad there's no camera on this podcast.

You guys would have a good laugh.

So in addition to that.

It's funny, I think that if I had to guess

that a company called Sleep Ride

that builds sleeping platforms for cross tracks

was based anywhere, my first guess

would have been up by you guys in Oregon.

Yes, right.

We are definitely in the land of Subaru's for sure.

So, and then before, right before we left

for the Trans America or for the Alkan 5000.

Two days before.

We bought a 98 Suzuki Jimny wide.

So it's a bit of a white whale for me.

I've always wanted that, but we've always wanted,

I always forget that.

Yeah, we've always wanted it.

We've always wanted that style of Jimny started in 98.

And I swore that in 2023,

when it became eligible for import, I'd get one.

Well, it took until 2025,

but it's the 1.3 liter engine.

So it's not technically a K vehicle.

It has a little wider fender flares.

It's already got a little baby lift on it.

Some 23575 VF Goodrich KO2s and a winch mount.

And so just gonna be doing a little bit of work

on it here short, shortly.

And yeah, so excited to have the Jimny.

We're staying busy.

Sounds like it.

I've been a huge fan of the Jimny.

The earlier ones, the newer ones,

the brand new one that we can't get as well.

Oh, so good.

It's a little frightening to think about

late 90s vehicles being importable,

but I guess by definition numbers they are.

Is that basically calling all of us old right now or?

Hey, listen, we're all in the same age bracket.

So I thought you would say the same thing

to myself.

Yeah, the idea that you can import a 2000,

an MY2000 vehicle and have it qualify under the 25 years

mildly terrifying.

Yeah, on my day job, obviously I'm an insurance appraiser.

And I had an assignment today to look at a 2003 Nissan 350Z.

And it just, it struck me that, yes,

this is a 20 year old car.

When I first started in this business in like 2000 or 99,

like that would have been in 1980

and it would have never even been repaired.

It would have been totaled immediately.

But we're in a world now where a 20 year old car

is still a daily drivable like normal vehicle.

This is all it's strange things.

In fact, a friend of mine who lives back in the Midwest,

almost out of a joke, I guess I would say,

he put antique plates on his Saturn SL2.

Now I have antique plates on my Eclipse

and I've been asked many a time, how old is that thing?

Oh my gosh.

And I've also been told, hey, is that a Saturn?

So I get his vibe.

Oh, wow.

Very cool.

It's cool to run down of your stuff.

I don't think you had the Jimmy last time we talked

and I just had everything else I think

has been around though.

We can put it this way, that it's so new,

I have yet to drive the thing.

It's been sitting on our driveway

because we bought it two days beforehand

and we actually had the 2026 Honda Passport Trail Sport

that was a fleet car for us to measure and whatnot.

It wasn't the actual rally car,

but we drove up, I doubled up behind Andy,

and then after we bought the Jimny from the Seattle area

and actually drove it back home,

but it's been sitting,

it's got a little bit of mechanical work we need to do on it

and so we ordered parts and so yeah,

it's been driven very little,

but I've yet to drive the thing.

It's been to two cars and two or three cars and coffees

and that's about it.

Life of an imported Jimny.

Yeah.

You guys will use it more, I'm sure,

but it seems like most of them are just cars and coffee rigs.

Oh no, we'll put it to the trust us.

We're gonna probably do a good amount of pinstripes

and stuff on it when we build it up

the way we wanna build it up.

I have faith in you guys,

I'm just saying in general,

that's the path they take.

I see a lot of those and Mitsubishi Pajero juniors

and minis, I've got other cars and coffees here,

but I rarely see them on trail.

In fact, the only time I saw a Pajero Mini on trail,

it was abandoned and shot full of shotgun shells

and the roof was jumped up and down on,

so I don't know what the story was about.

That seems like a very strange car

to abandon in the woods.

Yeah, it was out in the desert here in Arizona.

We came across it and we were like,

oh, that's not normal.

Why is this out here?

Somebody is missing this, I'm sure.

Yes, wow.

Sad, it was a sad sight, it was a sad sight.

I have a couple Subaru questions.

My wife has an 18 cross track six speed.

Have you done the struts yet?

Have you replaced those?

Front struts are rear.

We did all four, or I did all four at about 50,000 miles

with a set of Bilstein HDs.

That was a huge improvement just for,

all she does is drive around in the city

and that was a huge ride improvement

for all the pothole roads we have out here.

Yeah, I have not done them.

We only have about 31,000 miles on ours

and so I'm gonna put these King overload springs

on the back, just on this factory suspension

or factory struts until it's time to go the Bilstein route.

We had B6s on the Transorbacker Trail vehicle.

And we got those springs

from Primitive Racing here in town.

Yes, yep, nice.

Yeah, I've actually did a video on swapping them

so if you go on our YouTube page.

Ooh, cool.

We'll do.

Yeah, it wasn't too bad.

I got one of those fancy spring compressors

that's got the screw, it's the screw type

with the fingers so you can actually put it

in a bench vise or a jaw horse.

It's not the two sided thing.

Oh really, I'll have to look at that.

Yeah, you can get them pretty inexpensively now.

It's just a knock off of the Eastwood version one

that we got on Amazon.

It works really well.

Okay.

Yeah, definitely a lot easier I think

for swapping the springs in your driveway.

Which we will be doing.

Yeah, probably Sunday.

When it's not raining at least in the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah, and then yeah, so you only get 30,000 miles on it.

We got to about 60 and I started hearing a noise

in the rear end and I ignored it for another 10,000 miles

and it needed both rear wheel bearings at the same time.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so watch out for that.

Apparently that's the thing on these cross tracks

as the rear wheel bearings.

Yeah, I've heard Subaru's just,

I mean this is our fourth Subaru.

We did buy a 2005 Subaru Forester XT,

stage two tune, downpipe, all the things.

It was a very fun fast car with 200,000 miles on it.

We had it for about seven months and to be honest,

I was just worried.

I kept thinking I'll just put a new engine

and if it goes out, but the dual of head cam turbo engines

are Henn's teeth, unless you want to spend

lots and lots of money on a remanufactured one.

So I had a lot of fun with it for a bit

and then ended up selling that, so.

Yeah, see I had a WRX of that same generation

and I never had any issue with the wheel bearings.

I think it's the later ones.

These more modern ones, they changed the design

and I was doing like a little part searching

and I think on the, I think actually on the,

what's the super off-road one that you guys were driving?

The wilderness one, I think actually

on the wilderness version of the Crosstrek,

at least for this 2025,

because I think they changed the actually chassis, right?

It changed from the.

Yeah, 2024 went to a new chassis.

Yeah, so if you look at those parts,

it's actually the outback rear knuckle and bearing.

It's the same part number it crosses over.

I was like, oh, that must have gone

with a more heavier duty knuckle and bearing, maybe.

I don't know.

Well, the wilderness actually has a larger rear axle,

larger rear differential, factory Crosstrek,

or the standard Crosstrek.

So yeah, I mean, maybe it's just straight off the outback.

I don't know.

Yeah, so there's some interesting part stuff there,

but yeah, if you go back, I've got a couple episodes here

of me talking about doing rear wheel bearings

and trying to source the parts from Japan to save some money.

And yeah, it was a pain.

Sounds like a cautionary tale.

Yeah, I mean, where you are,

you probably have less rust to deal with.

Right, yeah, very true.

Stephanie Daly drives this car and they were,

they're supposed to be bolted in,

but they were rust welded.

Oh boy.

Yeah, we're very familiar with that.

We're both from the Midwest originally.

So we know about breaking bolt breakers

and stuff like that.

Yeah.

These were, it was more cost effective

to do the knuckles and the bearings,

just buy new ones and just put them together.

Sure.

But anyway, enough about that,

because I've gone in depth on that so much this podcast.

This summer was all about that.

I wanna hear, we wanna hear about your Transamerica Trail.

So that is something I'd never really heard too much about.

I guess I wanna give us a little background

on what that is.

Yeah, it was originally mapped out,

started in the mid 80 by a gentleman

by the name of Sam Carrero and he lives in Mississippi.

And he was an adventure motorcycle enthusiast

and started just mapping out routes.

And over time, he didn't set out to do this

as we understand, but it ended up becoming a network

of trails that crisscrossed the United States

and were linked together.

And hence the Transamerica Trail.

And it's definitely started originally

for adventure touring motorcycles.

But now you do have four wheeled vehicles doing it.

Well, and if there's four wheeled vehicles that do it,

primarily they are four by fours with low range

and whatnot, not necessarily all will drive vehicles

and not necessarily near stock all will drive vehicles.

Right.

And so it starts in, if you do the entire thing,

it's basically three sections.

There's the Atlantic Ocean Spur.

That starts in Nags Head, North Carolina, the Outer Banks

and then goes into Virginia.

And then you pick up the traditional Transamerica Trail route

which runs essentially from Virginia through Idaho.

Well, that's the east to west portion.

There are spurs that come off of it.

Right, if you wanted to go up to, say, Minnesota

or down, I believed Texas.

And then the Pacific Ocean Spur runs from Idaho

to Port Orford, Oregon.

So we did all three.

Nags Head, North Carolina to Port Orford, Oregon.

It took us 29 days and 15 states and 7,163 miles.

And of those 7,163 miles, 3,184 miles was off pavement.

So dirt, gravel and mud.

And it took us about 317 hours and five minutes

over 29 days of drive time.

And what was our average speed?

Average speed over the whole entire country

over those 29 days was 25 miles an hour

and an Appalachia was about 18 miles per hour.

And you could tell who the navigator was.

For sure.

That is a slog in the longest way to traverse the country

but it sounds super fun.

Yeah, I was reading those stats that you've sent me

and I was like, wow, this is like if it was 100 years ago

and you're across the country in a Model T.

Yeah.

That is about the same average speed you'd probably have

and probably the same amount of time, I bet.

You know, one of the things we looked at was

it was a big milestone across the Mississippi River.

And when we threw it in Google Maps,

just to see how long it would take the fastest way

to get from North Carolina to Helena, Arkansas.

Helena, West Helena.

Helena, West Helena, Arkansas.

And it was something like, I think it was like

two and a half days and it took us two weeks approximately.

So it's definitely a slow but scenic way.

Well, and we need to preface some of the slowness of it

was due to two weeks straight of severe thunderstorms

and severe weather and so much rain that, I mean,

the only reason that we had to stay in a couple of hotels

was because we could not outrun or bypass

or get away from some of these severe storms.

We made a pact too before we left.

We said, look, we're too old to be sleeping on the top

of a car in a severe thunderstorm just to tough it out.

No, we're too stupid if we're gonna do that.

Well, maybe that's it.

No matter the age.

Yeah, so we just decided like if it's gonna,

if we're gonna, if we're setting up camp in it

and we're in a tornado warning or something like that,

we're not gonna.

That's just stupid.

We're gonna go to a hotel.

And so we did that three times because of severe weather.

Right, and so the biggest thing,

especially out east is with the severe weather,

you are gonna be in the middle of nowhere

doing Trans America Trail most likely.

So we had to drive maybe 45 minutes or an hour,

one way out of the way to get to the nearest town

and you were primarily without cell phone service

through the majority of the time

being on Trans America Trail.

So we were lucky that we ended up having a Starlink Mini

that we used that was packed really neatly

in a Pelican case.

And we had to deploy that more times than not.

We thought, oh, we'll just use it for, you know,

checking emails and stuff.

Oh, no, it was to outrun either wildfires

or severe storms.

Self-preservation becomes important at some point

in your life when you realize, you know,

that you are mortal.

So I understand that completely.

Right.

I understand that completely.

I've slept outside in some pretty gnarly conditions

and I can't imagine doing it now.

It was different 20 years ago for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Here I go calling us old again, but, you know,

it is what it is.

Yeah, we had one night when we were in outside

of Jasper, Tennessee.

And yeah, we were in the rooftop tent, all set up

and I don't know, like four in the morning,

just big thunder and lightning and torrential rains.

And luckily the Tully tent we have, which was...

Is the Tully approach tent?

Yeah, it was very large for the car,

but it did its job.

But I remember thinking, gosh, you know,

hopefully it's not too bad.

We had no cell service.

Our Starlink was put away,

so we couldn't really see what the weather was about to do.

But yeah, it was, it makes you realize

you are mortal and you are small.

Well, and in addition to a lot of the severe storms

and, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about the wildfires

and the smoke here in a little bit,

but we had severe heat, absolute severe heat.

Of the 29 days, 28 days were 90 degrees or warmer

and six of those days were 100 degrees

or warmer up to 111.

And the first two weeks was like,

they had severe humidity warnings for the East Coast

and the whole Eastern section.

And that's what we drove.

But thank God that our 2025 Crosstrek wilderness

that we drove from Subaru had excellent air conditioning

and that puppy never let us down.

I mean, yeah, hot is hot, but hot and humid is awful.

So that sounds terrible.

Hot and humid in a tent for multiple days

with no showers, it sounds even worse.

It was absolutely, I think...

I think the worst was we were,

I don't even know where it was,

somewhere in Tennessee again.

And it was, it was like, it had, it was poured

and then, but it then got warm again.

And it was just absolutely miserable.

And thankfully we had, you know, our sleeping bags,

but we had brought some liners just in case it got cold,

but the liners were, you know, a wicking material.

And so they, that was like so much better

than having to lay on top of a nylon sleeping bag

in like, you know, dew points of near 80.

And for us, if nobody knows of what cooling cloths are,

look it up, you, we lived by them

and we packed a couple of them.

And I mean, we literally slept on top,

like Andy said, on top of our liner.

So we didn't stick to our sleeping bags

and we used our cooling cloths

and we tried to sleep as best as we could.

And if you don't know what those are

and you, you know, don't do, do well with heat or humidity,

they're super cheap.

They're like on Amazon or whatever,

you could buy a six pack for like 20 bucks.

Yeah. Shout out to our $12 target fan as well that we bought.

Yeah. He got it. He was so good.

He got a name Fernando anyway.

Yeah. You do things on the road when you're like,

well, okay, we need some sort of breeze

cause this is, yeah, enough said.

Yeah. No, I have a, I have a tent fan

and it's definitely a huge improvement,

especially because when you have the rain fly on

and closed up, there's not much air movement inside a tent.

So having a little fan in there

makes a, it makes a huge difference for sure.

Fernando was maybe what, I don't know, five inches in diameter

and we clipped them on top and it just had enough,

it was battery powered enough to last most of the night

and we had it on low and it just, it helped.

I know it definitely helped, but you know,

he's here waiting for his next expedition.

Yeah. I'm sure it's probably the same kind of thing I have.

I have a very similar size battery powered one

and it's got a little light on it

that it's a little hook to hang from top of the tent

and it is a God's end for sure.

So they're like, they're sub $15 to buy one online somewhere.

And if you can't much, I would also completely

and totally encourage buying your own small camp fan.

Huge, huge difference.

If I have a question about the driving,

so if your average speed was less than 30 miles per hour,

most times on the trail, these are like,

these aren't fire roads.

These are less than fire roads.

Well, what's the driving like?

Yeah, good combination, yeah.

I mean, we literally drove pretty much

everything you could imagine.

In going over the Appalachian Mountains,

you had lots of tight...

Twisting roads.

Tight twisting roads and trails in the mountains.

More pavement.

Most of them weren't difficult technically.

There were some we would get to that were washed out from,

especially when we got towards Asheville

and the areas that were affected by Hurricane Helene.

It was unbelievable.

Well, and when we just landed,

they had just started doing all these severe

thunderstorm warnings and the severe humidity

that stuck around for the last couple of weeks.

And we started going into, like Andy said,

near Asheville and even before that,

there were huge thunderstorms that were literally,

and I kid you not, wiping out the bridges

that were just built from that hurricane

and the storms we were involved in

and trying to outrun and trying to dodge

were literally disintegrating

everything that was just fixed.

So we ended up at this,

we came out of these forest service roads

after being in Asheville.

And so we're trying to make kind of

Southwestern progress.

And we got to this area and it was shut down,

the highway was shut down,

I-40 was shut down.

Well, it turns out that huge line of storms

that came through the day before had,

how are two days before,

had created a huge landslide that closed to I-40

and then they weren't allowing us to continue

on the forest service roads to go continue Westford

because it was only open for locals

and they were ticketing.

Well, and that's the most important thing

is we weren't going on I-40, right?

So the Trans-America Trail,

basically is all back roads, country roads,

dirt gravel, farm roads type of thing,

and then mountain passes in Colorado,

way up above 12,000 feet, for instance.

So we were trying to get those forest,

I'm sorry, those dirt roads

that were on the Eastern side near I-40,

but like Andy said, they were ticketing

and we talked to one of the,

what was it, I think it was the department,

you know, DOT worker or something.

Yeah, it was a, yeah, New Carolina DOT truck

and he was telling us, you know, you can't get on I-40,

you can't go straight,

so the only option was to go back towards Asheville,

which is where we had already come from and it was-

Or risk getting ticketed, which we didn't want to do,

especially with what we were driving and who we are

and we're like, we're not into that kind of stuff.

But once you got, once you got, say like,

once you got to Oklahoma, things got flat and stray.

And muddy.

And they had, yeah, Western,

I'm sorry, Eastern Oklahoma had been experiencing

a lot of flooding. Lots of floods, yeah.

So we got turned around a lot.

You'd be driving down just like a county road

and you'd literally round the bend

and there's a lake in the road

and there may or may not be a road close sign

and so you'd just have to figure way around all this stuff.

And we figured out very quickly

is you had to pack your patients.

We, you know, with Trans America Trail,

it's not like you're with a group of people

and you have a set place.

You need to sleep every night or whatnot.

I mean, we were self-sustained.

We had no support vehicle.

We had all of our gear with us.

I mean, heck, we flew from Oregon

all the way out to the East Coast to Subaru's headquarters,

flew with our camp gear.

Which is in New Jersey, by the way.

Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry, East Coast, New Jersey.

We flew with our camp gear, our tools,

all that type of stuff, met the vehicle

and then essentially started our 29 day journey.

And the thing that's important about that

is we very quickly learned to pack our patients

and to just say, okay, as a navigator,

I've got paper maps, right?

Andy had a GPS track that he stitched together

that you can also do.

It doesn't tell you where to turn.

It just gives you a line that you can follow.

But I had paper maps that were 11 by 17,

not great maps that, you know,

they had like Crayola color highlighters

as to where to go and whatnot,

but it was enough for me to piece together

along with turn-by-turn route instructions

that you put in like a little motorcycle road chart holder.

So I did that primarily and I wanted to have that

for the Godometer readings

and to get myself oriented that way.

That being said, is all three of those,

so road chart holder, paper maps and the GPS,

or GPX tracks that we stitched together

with our Garmin device,

basically formulated where we were

and how I had to deviate.

And over those 29 days, we deviated 39 times.

One other note too is we, on top of those three,

we also had, we were using Onyx,

the Onyx app when we were on actual off-road trails

because some of the trails we were on

are designated trails, like especially in Colorado

when we went over the San Juan Mountains.

So there were times though, even in Oklahoma,

where we were using Onyx, and it would say,

oh, this is actually technically a trail.

It's like a three out of 10, so it's not hard, but.

And they had crowdsourced data too with Onyx,

which was great because then we could see,

oh, hey, this is washed out.

I was here a week ago or whatnot,

or we could leave data too.

We could say, hey, there's a huge tree down,

this and this, whatever,

because it happened all the time.

If it wasn't a flood, it was trees, it was,

the first few days,

because of these big storms that had come through,

you know, I remember, I'll never forget,

the first trail we turned down,

and luckily it was real early on the trail,

but there was a huge like 100 foot tall tree

that was laid across the road.

And we were going to buy a chainsaw

at the last minute

because we were already so full of gear,

we opted not to,

but even when we had gotten to that tree,

we would not have been able to saw through that tree.

It was just too big.

So you really had to really just expect the unexpected.

That's part of the fun.

Yeah, so yeah, that's what I was wondering

was if it was like really technical rock crawling,

but it was really just on back roads.

They're just like unimproved roads.

Yeah, most of it is unimproved roads.

Now, when you get to Colorado,

you're going over Cinnamon Pass,

you're going up and going through California Gulch,

and supposed to go over Hurricane Corkscrew Pass.

That's more than just an unimproved road.

Same thing with the Ofer Pass.

Same thing when you get into Moab.

Some of those are, I mean,

we were on the Gemini Bridges Trail,

which is not a super difficult trail,

but being in a cross track,

even with 9.3 inches of ground clearance,

I think it is.

Yeah, stock is 9.3 and we had stock suspend.

Well, I mean, we had.

Yeah, we had Bilstein B6s,

and then we ran Kingsprings in the rear

and full primitive racing skid plates.

And you really had to be cognizant of where you're going.

You're not in a, you're not in a Arpeggio,

like Arpeggio or you're not in a Jeep or something

with a ton of ground clearance.

So you really had to watch where you went,

but if you went slowly and carefully.

Or had me spot you, which we did.

Which we did, you know, it was okay.

Yeah, we did run into a couple of people

who were just like, how did you get up here?

Well, I mean, you know, we were,

so we were able to crest some of the San Juan Mountains

in Colorado, some of the really high passes,

and we knew that that was gonna be

one of our biggest challenges.

So we knew, we know some of that area.

We've never done cinnamon pass before,

but we did overpass in four by four vehicles.

We've done California corkscrew

and those types of things, hurricane.

So we knew what to expect,

but those always change too, right?

And those are legitimate, like very slow going,

you know, bouldering, a lot of Lucio rock,

that type of stuff.

And you're talking about, for instance,

cinnamon pass that we haven't done before,

12,460 feet above sea level for its summit.

And, you know, let's see,

overpass is just under 12,000.

So we knew that that was going to be a challenge

because A, we didn't have a locker.

We didn't have low range.

We didn't have a turbo.

We didn't have a turbo, right?

We've got the cross track engine.

And it's a CVT, so it wasn't manual transmission either.

So, and we're at pretty much stock height

with the primitive racing skid plates.

So we knew with any type of vehicle

doing enough off-roading at those elevations,

you know, 11, 12, 13,000 feet,

that every vehicle gets anemic.

We didn't know how much it would be

and how much of a potential issue it could be.

But we always said, if we can't do it,

we'll backtrack, we'll go back down,

we'll turn around, and it's all about being safe.

Safety's first.

Yeah, I was going to ask if that was a CVT vehicle, but...

Yeah, yes.

But how was the, I know they have like,

is it like X mode or something for off-road?

Yeah.

How are their off-road modes in that?

So I was legitimately impressed with this, you know,

we've got three vehicles with four-wheel drive

and low range here in our driveway.

And so that's what we're usually used to doing

actual off-roading in.

The X mode in the cross track kept impressing me.

The first time it really did was when we were in this,

we were on this washed out trail in Appalachia.

And it was pretty technical.

It was our first time where we really had to worry about,

you know, like, okay, we gotta be cognizant

of how slow we go, where we put our wheel.

And so I put it in the X mode, snow and dirt mode.

And it just, you could feel it figuring it out, you know?

You could feel the wheels kind of go slow

and then like you get a little bit of spin

and then it sends power to the wheels that need it.

Well, you have to be patient and let it do its job.

Yeah, you didn't just like roll over everything.

You get to stuff that you had to be careful with

and you could feel the all-wheel drive system

using its all-wheel drive super power

to figure out where to send the power.

So, and then when we got into some of the muddy

and mucky areas of Oklahoma,

we put it into the deep snow and mud mode

and that allows more wheel spin.

And so we were pretty lucky

because we had been warned by lots of people

about the clay going across the middle part of the country,

especially in Oklahoma.

And so we really tried not to have to get into it,

but there were a couple of times

where we just, it was unavoidable.

We had to go through it,

but I always made sure we put on that mode

that we could power out of it

and clean the tires out if we needed to.

And it worked.

I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of CVT transmissions,

but the X mode and CVT on the Subaru's,

on that cross track wilderness, it really works well.

I just wish that they had it on the manual transmissions

because our 22 that we have at home here,

which is a stick shift, does not have X mode.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting

because sometimes, especially if you come from driving

more conventional four-wheel drive stuff,

you kind of have to relearn a little bit with those.

You do have to give it some throttle

because like you said, it will figure it out

because it's using probably the ABS

to break individual wheels

and sort of give a faux locker by using the brake system.

So it actually needs some wheel speed to work.

So if you're not giving enough, it's not gonna work.

We have a friend who works at Subaru

and we went out to dinner with him before we left

and he gave us that exact advice that you just said

was he said, hey, just a little advice,

when you get to an obstacle, keep your foot into it,

not like floor it, but just keep throttle

because it does exactly that.

It has to kind of figure it out.

And it did really, really well.

We were on slightly bigger tires, but not even,

it's barely, we went from a 225-60-17

to a 225-65-17, BF Goodrich K02,

and I'll take any millimeter of ground clearance we could get.

Yeah, no, that's interesting.

Yeah, I don't know, it feels pretty brave to go up that high

in a little car like that without any extra power adders,

but I did, I mean, it's all pavement, right?

You go up through the Rocky Mountain National Forest,

you can drive the, I forget the highway route,

but it's all paved and you drive up and over.

We did that on the way back in my all track.

Yeah.

Which has turbo, so it's a little easier, but it's all paved.

That was a cool road.

Oh, wow.

You had to put up, yeah, you had to put up the sails and...

Put the hazards on.

We had to, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Well, when we were on California galt,

we ran into a guy with a Ford Raptor

and we just got chatting briefly

and he was saying that he had followed

this guy over the pass in a,

he said, I think he said it was like an 84 Ford pickup truck

with a 351 and carburetors and he's like,

man, he's like, that guy, going up and over.

I mean, at least he had a decent size,

he had the cubic inches,

but taking a carbureted vehicle up and over 13,000 feet

you should get a medal for that somehow.

He brought his new balances and screwdriver

and tuned it up as he went.

Yeah, right.

I'm down to try it now.

Yeah.

I figure I'd go on to almost 7,000 feet.

What's another couple of a few thousand feet, you know,

it'll be fine.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

My truck has a solid 100 horsepower.

I will have 10 by the time I get up there,

it'll be all good.

No worries at all.

Well, that was like the first time that we went up

with our 1995 Suzuki side kick,

which was a brand new head 95 horsepower.

Yeah, it had 95 horsepower at the Flywheel brand new.

We went up and over Imajean pass at 13,114 feet

back in like 2015.

And we were in low range and the only really steep section

is getting up that section when you're going from

you ready to tell your ride to get to that summit.

And I, Mercedes had mentioned,

you think we'll be able to do it.

I'm like, as long as nobody comes down the hill,

we'll be just fine.

And of course, like four side by sides

started coming down the hill right at us.

And, you know, of course uphill is supposed to have

a ride away, but they didn't know that.

They, yeah.

So we ended up having to pretty much dump

their side by side people.

So you ended up having to pretty much dump the clutch

at like 4,500 RPM just to make.

Try to get movement.

Yeah, and I looked it up and I think we were making

something like 40 wheel horsepower at that elevation.

But, and so that, you know, that taught us a lot.

And then of course we had our Jeep Cherokee

that was also modified that we took up later

but at a different year.

But we learned a lot about how anemic vehicles can be

no matter what type of vehicle when you're that high.

Sure.

The first time I ever experienced that actually

I was with Andrew and we were out here in Arizona

and we were in a, we had a rented Altima

with a four-cylinder CVT.

And we pulled out of a gas station up near the Grand Canyon

and the Grand Canyon is probably about a mile up.

And I remember pulling out and there was an 18-wheeler

coming and I'm sure Andrew remembers it.

We hit the gas as we had been doing the entire time

we drove it from the rental desk

and the car did not go anywhere.

And I thought for sure we were all going to die

by tanker truck.

Just a little quick remake of the movie Duel.

So, yeah, so we learned pretty quickly back then.

And so I knew driving my 86 Mighty Max 4x4

loaded up with two people in camping gear

up and over 6,000 feet wasn't going to be a super easy track

but it was a good time, it was a good time.

Yeah, and our vehicle, the engine,

everything was completely stock.

So we had suspension modification, we had armor,

we had wheels and tires and lighting and that kind of stuff.

But we did not have any engine modifications

and really the two four turbo out of an outback wilderness

would have been the modification we needed.

And I mean, for the truth of it is,

we modified this vehicle with Subaru America

but we were very specific in what we had wanted

to use our modifications with.

So in addition to the primitive racing skid plates

and the BFG tires and the RICA wheels and whatnot,

we wanted to have adequate lighting, right?

Auxiliary lighting, especially up front

because you never know, we didn't know

how late we were going to be running through the night,

we didn't know how bad the conditions

were going to be, the dust, the fog,

which we hit all of it times 20.

So we ended up having a rally innovations,

front light bar mount and then we ran Baja designs.

What was the?

XLR pros.

Yeah, XLR pros, I was going to say.

We've used a squadron center on the Honda

that we did with the Alcan.

But we also ended up using some other parts and pieces

that were instrumental, right?

So we had EcoFlow, we had a Delta Pro 3

and then we also had an alternator charger for power.

So the Delta just, the Delta 3 is a Delta 3 plus,

I believe was the power station we brought with us.

Right, and so what we wanted to do

because we had an Airbnb fridge with us

and a couple of other Airbnb accessories

like a portable single air compressor

and an awning and whatnot.

But the fridge, I mean, we're on our own

for what ended up being a month long straight.

We didn't know how often we were going to have grocery stores

or gas station stops or things like that

or where we were going to end up being.

So a fridge for us was really important

and so we've had Airbnb fridges in the past

that they've always worked really well.

But how to power that overnight

so that you didn't end up waking up with a dead battery

was of a huge concern for us.

And so EcoFlow has this really nifty system.

So we ended up getting the higher powered 800 watt

alternator charger so you can reverse charge it.

So right, so during the day,

you can charge your power station

but at night you can reverse charge it.

So it tops off your car's battery

so you never end up having a low charge that way.

That's cool.

It's a really good app.

So you just make sure you reverse the charge at night.

Yeah, so I mean, so that worked really well.

So, for instance, when we had the car off

and we needed to charge,

like power up our Starling, which was many times,

we just plugged it right into the AC plug

of the 20 million plugs that are on that power station

and ran it that way.

So that was really important for us to have that

but then we also had some specific recovery gear too.

I mean, because we didn't know being self-sufficient,

we needed to make sure without a winch

how we could get out of being stuck.

Yeah, luckily we didn't need it

but we did carry max tracks, extreme boards.

They have a version called the light board,

which is a very, it's a different polymer

in the plastic makeup, but we went with the extremes

and then also a factor 55 hitch link 2.0,

which goes into the trailer hitch

just in case we needed to get pulled out.

I think we had a couple, did we have a strap or two

and we ended up having a couple of shackles too with us?

Yeah, we just carried the usual stuff.

You know, I worked in the vehicle recovery business

for about 15 years.

So I always go a little bit over prepared with that

but luckily we never had to get stuck

and we never had to recover anybody else.

It's always good to have that stuff not only for yourself

but also for the recovery of other people for sure.

Yes, exactly.

Well, and you bring up a good point

is because we didn't know who we would meet

that needed help or what would end up being

in that type of scenario.

And we did end up needing to help other people.

And I mean, for us,

we don't care if we're on a mountain pass cliff side

or if we're in the middle of a, you know,

Appalachia gravel road in the middle of this

next big pass that goes over.

I mean, we ended up helping a couple of different people,

didn't we?

Yeah, so we're in where we're,

I don't even know where we were.

Appalachia?

Somewhere in Appalachia.

Well, a tight mountain.

Yeah, it may have been Tennessee.

But anyway, so we're in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, literally just,

it's a mountain zigzaggy thing on the map.

And I come around the corner

and there's a white Nissan Versa

and a guy on the ground by it.

And I'm gravel.

Yeah, and you know, I mean,

when you're in the middle of woods and, you know,

just by yourself, you're always like,

well, what are we gonna run into?

Who are we gonna run into?

And so there's this guy and I looked at him

and he's on the ground with a wrench.

And I rolled down the window and I said,

are you okay?

And he just looks at me and goes,

please tell me you have a breaker bar.

And I said, I actually do have a breaker bar.

Well, it turns out he had just bought this Versa.

He's a lineman and he bought this Versa

and it had a spare tire but didn't have the kit to,

it had the jack but didn't have the tire iron.

And so he had gotten the wheel off.

And I said, how did you get the wheel off?

He said, I had an adjustable crescent wrench.

I said, how did you get four lug nuts off

like an 80 foot pounds with an adjustable crescent wrench?

But he did.

Probably anger.

Anger and some muscle.

Yeah, and so anyway,

he was very happy to have seen us with a breaker bar.

And we also landed him our air compressor

to inflate the flat spare tire.

So it's one of those things everybody's,

nobody remembers to keep their spare tire aired up.

So consider this a public service announcement.

Right, and I mean, and those are some of those instrumental

bits of kit that we were like, okay,

if we get stranded, we need air, right?

So we got the single portable air compressor from Airbnb.

You know, we had the recovery gear,

we had the power, oh God, we should talk about the eco flow

and we had the lady.

Yeah, one of the craziest things that had happened to us.

And this may be one of the craziest things

that ever happened to me in my entire life.

Period, or me, yeah.

We were about 30 miles outside of Wendover, Utah.

And in the absolute, again, absolute middle of nowhere,

which you'll see a theme here with transameric control.

You're oftentimes in the middle of nowhere.

Well, this one was north of the Bonneville Salt Flats

because we had just passed through here.

Yeah, and so driving down this road,

driving down this road, and I can see something

in the middle of the road.

And now we're on one of these roads

that is like vanishing point,

you know, just like goes on forever

until the up into the mountains.

And it wasn't just a road.

This was a huge rocky gravel trail, like big rocks.

Not just gravel, you can go fast.

It was pretty rocky.

And so I see something in the road and we get up to it

and there's a board that says help on it.

And there's another board that says help

facing the other way.

And then up the hill is a,

some sort of structure outbuilding or something like that.

And then there's a road, it's barely a road,

and that said help, phone, tire.

And I'm like, so I stop and I'm looking around.

There's nobody there.

There's no car.

There's nothing.

And I'm just like, what is this?

And Mercedes is like, I'm gonna get out.

Somebody just stay in the car.

Just like, I don't know.

Like something doesn't feel right here.

And so we're just looking around like,

there's nothing here.

Why are these signs up here?

And then all of a sudden a truck comes up behind us,

pickup truck.

We're like, are we gonna get ambushed?

I mean, we really, I mean, I don't know.

We're in the middle of nowhere.

And so this couple pulls up next to us,

they got their kids, it's a pretty new F-150.

And they rolled the window down and they're like,

are you guys okay?

And we were like, we're fine,

but we're trying to figure out

what's going on with this sign here.

When at that point, I think we were there

for maybe 15, 20 minutes already.

I was about ready to call emergency on the sat phone

or on satellite device.

And they said, well, we thought you needed help.

We have a farm about 15 miles down the road.

And we went into Wendover to get groceries

and these signs were not up.

So we're kind of like, I don't know.

I'm looking at the wife and she's looking at me.

And I think we're both like, are you guys,

is this kosher?

Is this gonna be good or bad?

Who's gonna look mug who or something?

Yeah, so they get out and so we get out

and start looking around.

And then all of a sudden this woman comes out

from behind this cluster of boulders

and she's just sobbing.

And bleeding from her knee and there's a dog.

And she's like, unconsolable, unconsolable.

And like first question, are you okay?

Are you okay?

Do you need water?

Do you need food?

We've got cold food, cold water.

Well, long story short.

So she kept wanting to talk to the tire shop and the mayor

and we're just like, oh, oh boy.

Yeah.

And so, yeah.

And anyway, long story short,

she said she'd been out there for two weeks.

She lived in that outbuilding, off-grid.

And-

Like off-grid as in no water, no electricity, no nothing.

She got water from a local spring nearby

and she woke up with the sun

and she went to bed by the sun.

She had a cell phone, she charged it in her car.

Well, the car had gotten a flat tire

and so she'd put the donut on.

Well, then she got a flat on another tire

and had no donut and couldn't get off her property.

And then the plug that-

And then the cell phone died.

Well, her, whatever, I don't know if it was a cigarette

lighter, USB port or something in her car

that charged her phone broke.

So she had no way to charge her phone and her phone died.

And so we used this eco-flow to connect our Starlink.

I connected my phone to wifi calling

and we were able to call the tire shop and Wendover

and they, it was all, her store all added up.

They had the tire that she said they had

and he said he'd come out and put the new tire on

so she could get off her own property.

And it was just like, what the hell?

It was just, it was one of the most bizarre moments.

We were there like an hour and a half, it was crazy.

And I think the biggest moral of that story was

is you just don't leave anybody behind.

I mean, you know, both of, the hair on both of our necks

were like way standing up being like,

are we gonna get robbed, killed, mugged?

I mean, you know, we've got a Subaru car

that's fully decked out that's got a wrap on it

that's got a huge Subaru logo on it.

We're like, but the biggest thing is,

is the kindness of strangers, right?

I mean, could she have died out there?

I don't know, you know, but help people.

That's the biggest thing.

My question though is how do you wind up

living in an outbuilding in the middle of nowhere

and not have the wherewithal

to have a contingency plan for this stuff?

Like, that seems like you would,

that would be step one would be having a backup

to your backup.

You know, she said she had generators but they weren't working

or she didn't use them.

The whole thing, I mean, it was just, it was incredible.

I mean, I'm glad she's okay.

She called us the next day to thank us and all that,

but it was, I mean, we left creeped out happy

that she was okay, but we left just like,

what, like, what just happened?

Did this really, are we on some sort of

Twilight Zone episode or?

We kind of wanted to leave Utah right after that.

Yeah, we had a couple of experiences in rural Utah

that were just like, okay, we're just ready to be.

I'm not, I'm not surprised.

I've heard a lot of stories about people

when they're traveling and having issues in two states

in particular and one of them is Utah for sure.

So that's,

Oh, really?

But do we know what the other one is?

Well, it's actually Tennessee.

So those are the two I've heard the most.

Oh, well, that would probably be the third one.

Okay. Well, now there must be a story

behind the third one.

So we'll get there.

Sure.

That's another podcast, yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah, I just, I've heard some weird stories

about Utah, not only in the rural parts,

but also in like the cities, just because it's Utah.

No, no hate to Utah,

just some weird stuff going down people.

Oh, we love Utah, we really love Utah.

There's a lot of beautiful parts.

Yeah.

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful place.

I mean, that's all the good off roadings in Utah.

Right?

This is true.

Yeah, and, you know, a lot of great people are in Utah too.

Oh, no, no question.

I'm not hating on Utah at all.

I don't know how Utah is.

Yeah, I mean, we just,

we were really glad that we had the most important thing,

right, for any of the people.

Plus, I mean, heck, we, sorry.

We gave our five gallons of fuel off our rig supply

as per tar carrier to a jeep that an old will is.

What year was it?

46 or something?

I think it was a 47 or 48 willies and yeah.

But he had a fuel cell and he was up on cinnamon pass

above 12,000 feet and we stopped

because we weren't 100% sure which direction we needed to go

when he came up to us.

He's like, I hate to ask, yeah.

I'm like, oh God.

I thought he was gonna tell us to get this Subaru

off the trail.

Yeah, yeah, we were expecting some sort of altercation,

but he's just like, do you have any spare fuel?

You can, you know, spare to give us.

And we knew at that time we knew what our track was

and we're like, you know, yeah, we've got extra five gallons

and so we gave them the five gallons that we had.

I mean, he paid.

You know, we weren't expecting payment

because you just help people,

especially if you're, you know, above 12,000 feet

and you're in the middle of nowhere again.

Notice the trend here, but no, I mean, he,

I don't know, gave us 20 bucks or whatever it was,

but you know, you just help people, so.

All good karma, right?

You wanna have it come back to you eventually.

Yeah, yeah.

Road karma as we come.

Yeah, like Andy was saying the whole trip.

He's like, you know, it's good road karma.

We're building up for the good road karma.

100%.

As we've had too many a times.

So, you know, we understand it.

We get it from being on the receiving end

or the giving end.

It's just the right thing to do.

Yeah, cause I definitely had some people help us out

at times, so I try to help other people out if I can.

Yeah, I find that in this world of especially automobiles,

there's a contingent of people who know people

and a contingent of good people who know people.

Like there's obviously people in the automotive space

that we don't like, but I feel like, you know,

all of the good people have somehow found each other

through the internet and podcasts and Instagram.

And I'm confident in driving anywhere

in the United States now and knowing that I'm probably

only an hour or two away from somebody who I'm connected

to somehow who can help out if needed.

So, it's turned out to be a pretty good thing that way.

So, and that road karma is huge.

You know, I've often stopped and helped people

when the situation's not sketchy.

So, you know, I can't drive by a person in an old car

on the side of the road without stopping and helping.

Like that could be me, so I'm gonna help you too.

Well, thank you for doing that

because so many people don't.

It may lessen time in a place, right?

If it's a high speed highway and somebody's off the side,

I might not be able to, but in any case, if you can,

you wanna build that.

I'm not a big faith or karma guy,

but, you know, sometimes it's something to it.

Yeah, totally agree.

Yep.

So, yeah, if you were out, you'd be driving for hours

and hours on this trail, you're out in the middle of nowhere,

would you just pull over and camp anywhere

or would you try to find campsites or a mix of it?

That's a great question.

I would say around maybe two o'clock, three o'clock.

Early afternoon.

Yeah, Mercedes would start looking at where we are,

where we're headed and what our camping opportunities were.

We didn't get onto any public land until Colorado,

so all of our camping from Nags Head all the way

through Colorado was generally at state campgrounds.

We stayed at a couple of private ones, private campgrounds,

but most of them were state parks, state campgrounds,

that kind of stuff.

Some were fantastic, some weren't so fantastic.

Some were disgusting.

Some were a bargain at, you know, 10 to $12 a night.

Some were rip off at 41.

At 40, whatever, yeah, we camped in.

It was a very nice campground in Virginia,

but it was over $40 a night.

And then once we got into Colorado,

we were able to stay on public land

and save some money, which was good.

But yeah, we had some epic camp places.

Big shout out to the Great Plains Bunkhouse

in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

You run across these, I don't know what you call them,

locations or landmarks, waypoints

on the Transamerica Trail.

You'll just see the Transamerica Trail logo,

the three white arrows.

And it generally means they're tack friendly.

Like you might be able to camp there

if you need tools or need water.

Yeah, if you will.

And so we were, for a very long day in Oklahoma,

we came across, just in the nick of time,

this place called the Great Plains Bunkhouse.

It was inexpensive and you can camp in there,

the front field that they have there,

but they also had a bunkhouse if you wanted to stay inside.

And two cute kittens.

Yeah, but I mean, it was,

we were the only people there.

And so we had this like kind of common area

and a kitchen and even an area with a piano

and all that stuff.

But it was kind of a highlight

because it felt like a remote outpost.

It felt like a little bit of civilization

in the middle of nowhere,

but it also highlighted this thing that we did not expect

which was the amount of isolation that we experienced.

We didn't see a single other person

doing the Transamerica Trail for 7,100 miles.

We ran into a couple of people,

like we'd be at a grocery store and they'd be like,

hey, are you doing the Transamerica Trail?

And we'd be like, yeah, I did it on a KTM or blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, oh, that's cool.

But we didn't run into hardly anybody else on the trail.

And there were days that we maybe saw one person

if we didn't need fuel.

You know, I mean, the most times that we saw fuels

if we needed to restock our groceries,

do laundry for laundry day.

Laundry day.

Or just needed fuel gas, sorry, I said that already,

or groceries.

So yeah, the isolation,

I mean, Andy and I are used to doing things on our own,

stuck in a steel box,

doing a crazy Arctic rally for 11 days

or doing this or that or whatnot.

I mean, we're used to that.

But doing 29 days and not talking to hardly anybody else

for that length of time

or finding camp in the middle of nowhere

with nobody else nearby,

that was really interesting

because there's a lot of introspection that happens.

There's a lot of emotions that can happen,

especially if you're out running storms or smoke

or wildfires or humidity or all that type of stuff.

And it's not always easy,

but we learned a lot or at least I learned a lot from that.

Yeah, was this your longest trip in a car?

Yeah, I think you're consecutively camping

out of a car for sure.

Oh, for sure, the most camping consecutively,

traveling out of a car.

We drove from Fort Myers, Florida to Portland

in our Mitsubishi Delica when we bought it.

I think this was still longer.

That was five days.

Yeah, that was five days, not 29.

Where's the 29?

And we were camping at Love's truck stops.

Yeah, I think I should qualify,

not distance, but actual time.

Oh, yes, yes, it was.

Time, yeah, consecutively.

I mean, when we did the Baltic Sea Circle Rally,

when we drove an early spec,

German market early spec 2024 ID buzz from Volkswagen,

it's the new hot EV,

we were able to get that on loan for us.

And that rally was kind of a gift to each other

because it was our 20th year wedding anniversary.

And when we did that,

we were over in Europe for about five weeks,

but the rally itself was 16 days and nine countries.

And so that was probably, and we camped out of it.

That was about 15 days of camping.

Yeah, so that was about 14, 15 days of camping.

But again, mind you, we're doing nine countries,

seven or eight of them, which we've never been to.

So that was a whole other different interesting feat

as itself, of course, you can listen more

to the previous podcast that we did with you guys

on that rally.

But that was several months before

the North American iteration even came out here at ID buzz.

Yeah, I've done nine days in a car

with about half of those camping, and that was a lot.

And I can only imagine this trip, so.

You know, it's funny because you start out doing it

and you're like, it's kind of novel.

And then you just, you realize it just becomes your,

I mean, again, we're not out here for years,

but it just, you fall into a routine

just like you would anywhere else.

And you get up, I would pull, I would close up the tent

Mercedes would get the interior of the car set up,

plug in that fan to recharge.

I'd close the tent up, she'd put the kitchen stuff away.

So you fall into a rhythm and it just becomes

kind of like your normal day-to-day

and you don't think that you're, hey, by the way,

we're camping in the middle of the Utah desert

and no big deal.

And I think we've learned over the years

that it works best when we realize

somebody has a special talent

or can put away the roof top tent easier

or somebody knows well, the kitchen supplies go

in said bag that, like our front runner,

we had a front runner typhoon bag that we had

that we flew out with with a bunch of different supplies,

but we ended up using that as our quick get-in,

get-out of our, we have some Helanox chairs,

we had some, all of our camping stuff

or mountain houses, right, our mountain house

freeze-dried meals, a lot of our kitchen stuff.

So that ended up being a big bag for that,

but I spent almost 20 years as a commercial interior designer.

I know space planning, I know packing,

I'm really good at it, but it took us years to learn.

I'm getting angry just thinking about

having to go through that bag.

I hate it.

Any type of organization or especially

putting Tupperware away, sorry, sorry, honey.

Oh, don't bring that up.

But it's like Tupperware or anything like that,

Andy's not the best, but he's really good at other things.

So like mechanical stuff or yell, right, right, right.

So, but it's taken us years to learn, okay,

so we need to rely on each other's strengths.

And if there's a weakness, hey, let's see how we can help.

And are we perfect at it?

Not at all.

I mean, do we have issues?

And do we have to figure things out on the fly during TAT?

Trying to have a trail? Yes.

But that's part of it.

That's part of the narrative.

So it's just every year or every trip

or every excursion that we do,

we try to learn from it and get better for the next one.

You're basically describing my relationship as well.

I can't pack, she can pack.

And we go with that strength, we know that fact.

Yeah, she packs, I get angry and jam things into places

they don't fit and then she fixes it.

Same, it's fine.

Exactly.

Yeah, because it always falls on our head

when we try to pull it out.

Well, there's been more than one camping trip

where I've come home and she'll be like,

is the tent packed?

And I'll be like, well, I mean, it's,

it's not erected anymore.

Yeah.

It's in the car.

It's right, it's in the corner because I couldn't,

bear to get the patients to get it back in its bag

in the wind and the dirt, but you know, it's there.

We'll fix it.

Well, and then when you do this in a,

when you do this in a cross track for this long

and you've got, I mean, really,

it basically, you find the most optimal place

for things after a few days.

No, you find the most optimal place that is.

Well, what I was saying was everything has to go

in a certain way when you have this much gear.

And then, you know, as, as journalists,

we had multiple camera bodies, cameras,

video, laptops, yeah.

And all this extra stuff.

And so, I mean, it really did have like the two bear

containers did have to go specifically stacked

behind the passenger seat or else the stove

doesn't fit in, right?

And if the stove doesn't fit in, right?

Then the table doesn't fit in.

So it's like, it's like a game of,

game of Tetris of which Mercedes is much better

at than I am.

Well, and you're much better at it at other things,

but I think the biggest learning thing for us

and we're still continually-

Notice she doesn't say what those things are.

I'm just saying.

What did I just say?

It was yelling and wrenching, which is, you know,

it's the same here, it's the same here.

Yelling and wrenching, it's the same here.

Yeah.

Well, maybe it's a, you know, man, woman thing,

I don't know, but I think the biggest thing for us,

and we're still learning this,

is to be humble enough to say,

okay, you're better at this, can you do this

and then I'll do this or whatnot.

And we've learned over the years,

it's like, we had one of the stupidest arguments

of, you know, who could zip up the old CBT-10,

the rooftop tent we had however long ago.

Years ago.

Because I stuffed it in a different way

and I was able to not jam the zipper.

I mean, the zipper always just jammed on it,

which was hard to put it away.

It was one of those old soft-sided ones,

but I think we learned a lot being like,

okay, if he's better at putting the tent away,

let him do it and then I'll go ahead

and pack something else or this or that.

But it's an evolution.

It's a process of figuring out how you can live on the fly

with portable gear and make it work,

especially for a month.

And that's a lot, believe it or not,

it's actually a lot.

It's definitely a lot, for sure.

It's definitely a lot and that's a small car.

I know how big this car is

and I packed it for road trips, it's not a big car.

We won at the challenge.

Yeah.

And we did it very successfully.

Did you say you had a swing out spare tire carrier?

Yeah, we worked with a company called Rig Supply

and it's a spare tire carrier that goes into the two inch

hitch and it carried our full-size spare,

our max tracks, our trasheroo and five gallons of fuel.

And then it had a dropdown table called the altar table

that allowed us to set up computers

or make dinner off the back of or anything like that.

Or a happy hour if we're lucky enough.

Yeah, we liked it enough that we're actually getting one

for our own cross track.

Yeah, so that's one of our secret things

that we're gonna be building up with our own vehicle.

So a practical question then,

if you've got a full-size spare on the outside,

did you take out the temp spare

and use that space to put stuff in?

No, we kept it, don't use the temp spare.

We kept it.

Shout out to be of good rich.

We didn't have a single flat tire the entire time

which was awesome.

But we, two is one and one is none, right?

And so we didn't need the extra space where the,

actually I think we did put a few things

under that where that spare tire are, but.

I think the biggest thing for us is we realized

if you pack a full-size spare plus a tire patch kit,

so for instance we have this speedy seal

ARB tire patch kit or do a full-size spare

plus the donut or whatever spare

that's supplied and then the tire patch kit

that will never have a spare and knock on wood,

we haven't yet, so hence why we did it.

Safety first again.

Yeah, if you have those things, you won't need them.

If you have none of those things,

you will absolutely need it immediately.

You got it.

This is true.

You got it.

For all the preparedness.

Yeah, I can't if you don't want to use it.

Yeah.

Excellent, so where'd the trip go from there?

Well, that's cool.

Well, we ended up into Idaho

where things did not get any cooler.

And then.

It got flatter and faster.

You get to drive through a bombing range,

which is exciting and there are lots of signs

saying to stay on the road, which we did.

And then, yeah, and then from there you cross into Oregon

and we sort of thought, oh, hey, we're in Oregon.

This is familiar country and it did not

let us finish easily.

Oh, God.

The last 200 miles were terrible.

The last day we thought, hey, we're gonna roll

out of the mountains to the Oregon coast

and finish just in time to get the crazy

Norwegian's fishing chips.

Which everybody said to go.

In Port Orford, Oregon.

And Oregon was not gonna let us finish easy.

We had, we ran into a sinkhole

that was like 10 feet in diameter

and about four feet deep,

which completely made us have to turn around

finding a hole another way around.

That set us back a few hours.

And I mean, it was just one thing after another last day.

We thought we wouldn't actually finish on the day 29.

There was, we both really wanted to.

I think we were both at that point

where we were ready to be to the ocean.

And lo and behold, we were able to do it on day 29.

We got our fishing chips and a much desired shower.

Right, and I think one of the reasons for that push,

at least for me, was it oddly enough

ended up being our wedding anniversary.

So that was our 21st wedding anniversary.

So we were like, oh, well, of course we have to celebrate

by doing this crazy month long thing

and then finishing on our anniversary.

I mean, we had no idea how long it was gonna take us,

whether it was gonna take us four weeks, seven weeks,

and we had no clue or what we'd get ourselves into.

But the fact that we actually finished

on our wedding anniversary and had a chance

to have a celebratory beer with fishing chips

and touch the Pacific Ocean.

We did buy a bottle of champagne.

Yeah, we did buy a bottle of champagne

and drink Argyle champagne, which is local in Dundee, Oregon.

And I persisted to drink it out of the last hotel room

in Port Alfred, Oregon.

What was it?

I can't remember the name of the motel,

but anyways, it was a local motel

and we got the last room in the whole entire town

and drank it out of the little plastic cups that were there.

And yeah, that's how it was.

And maybe drink a bit out of the bottle too, so.

Anything's classy, we've been on the road for 29 days

sleeping in the dirt, so.

Yeah, considering that we didn't have showers

for maybe a week beforehand, yeah, you know.

Excellent, that sounds like an excellent end

to a hell of an adventure that you probably

will probably never do 29 days camping in a row again.

You know what, I'd do it again tomorrow.

It was amazing.

Literally, we were just talking about it yesterday

being like, what can we do?

Can we do it?

I mean, not very many people do it backwards

because you do it East Coast, West Coast,

that's how it's supposed to be.

In a gym, me?

Yeah, right, well, we're like, can we do it again?

How can we do it?

Where can we do it?

What's more, like, not more crazy, but like, you know,

I think you guys know as well enough

that we test vehicles in an unconventional manner

to see if they're capable to do it or not.

And so, yeah, we, hey, anybody give us an opportunity,

we do it again in a heartbeat.

It's a real type two fun.

Type two fun.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, I can't, I don't know if I would be able to do it.

I think, yeah, 29 days car camping is rough for me.

I didn't smell Andy and Andy hopefully didn't smell me.

No, we stayed up on the personal hygiene.

Yeah, we did, especially the fact that we were sweating

like crazy for the first two plus weeks.

And I mean, again, you know, we had one day

under 90 degrees plus.

So, I don't know if you watched the,

I think it was a three or four part series

where Donut Media did this all off road track

in a Subaru SVX.

But they did most of the Transamerica Trail.

They just didn't say it.

Right, they didn't call it the Transamerica Trail,

but there were sections where we were like,

oh yeah, we know exactly where that was.

Or yeah, we remember that water crossing or whatever.

And but that SVX didn't have air conditioning.

And we were watching this being like,

I don't know how we would have done this

without air conditioning.

At least during the day, we had a cool place to sit

because it was just unbelievably hot

and we just never got out of it.

So, but it was a heck of an adventure.

And yeah, as long as the car has air conditioning,

I think I'd do it again.

Well, and I mean, huge thanks to Subaru of America

for trusting us with this opportunity

and, you know, to test their vehicle

in a very, very long and adventurous way, shall we say?

And then also our product partners too

and our friends and our family

because, you know, we wouldn't be able to do it without them.

And for us to be able to write about it

and talk to you guys about it

and be able to share all the photographs.

I mean, we took a lot of, you know, great photos and videos

and there'll be more coming out via Cranchev Culture,

which is our own entity in our social media,

but we will at some point have a long form video coming out.

We still need to do Baltic Sea Circle rallies as well.

We're a little bit behind on long form stuff,

but it's a collective effort.

And I think the biggest thing is if you go in prepared

as best as you can be and research beforehand

and lean on those friends, like you said,

the friends that are throughout the country,

some of them who reached out and said,

hey, if you have any trouble, I'm an hour off the trail

or I'm here or there or whatever, thanks to everybody

because that's so important.

No matter if you're an on-road or off-road

or drifter classic car person, it's the car culture

and that's what we love so much.

Absolutely.

We're all about the car culture here

and the good car culture and the good people

and the people who want to live on things.

So, 100% that's why you guys have it on more than once.

I know there's definitely like a trans New Hampshire trail

that people sort of map out and there's stuff

across the main.

It's by the New Hampshire BDR.

Yep.

Something like that.

So yeah, and we did a week across main,

kind of all off-road one time back in 2016.

Pretty podcast, that's how long it was.

So yeah, there's like, if you ever have an opportunity

to do a trip and you want to stay in like a,

you know, one or two states, there are ways to do it.

There's tons and tons and tons of shorter trails

that you can do that don't require you to do 29 days.

So yeah.

We love that.

I've done a little bit with Honda, the trail track tour.

Oh gosh, when was that?

Multiple years ago now, maybe, I don't know,

six, seven, eight years ago, something like that,

where we ended up at Overland Expo East

and that was with Honda.

That was when the trail sport series was just coming out

and I drove a passport and I think it was Virginia

and West Virginia that I did some off-roading

all the way down to where Overland Expo East set up shop

and then we camped there when we arrived.

We camped at that event.

But other than that, I've never done any off-roading

farther up North, have you?

No, I'd love to explore the Northwest more.

We had, I'm sorry, Northeast more.

We had to live in the Northwest.

Yeah, we had the chance to road trips

through some of that area.

Beautiful.

It ended up being a last second, last minute.

Oh, we have an extra day and we just,

we bombed it up from Hartford to Portland, Maine,

had Lobster Roll, came down through New Hampshire, Vermont,

and then had dinner with a good friend of ours

in Western Mass and then back to Hartford.

But that was within 12 hours.

But I know that there's some cool stuff up in Maine.

Some of these, I can't remember what it,

you guys would probably know what they are.

It's like these back roads that you have to get a permit

or something.

So in Vermont and New Hampshire,

I might get this backwards.

I think it's Vermont has class four roads, they call it,

and New Hampshire has class six roads.

And these are public roads that are just not maintained.

So there are good maps that have them.

And if they're drivable, you can drive across them.

Like it's no big deal.

It's illegal to drive them.

Maine has some stuff.

I don't think they have a name for them.

We drove, in 2016, we drove the Golden Road,

which is from Millinocket.

And I forget where we either started

or ended in Millinocket, I can't remember right now.

Okay, and that was, they built that road.

It was like six lanes wide dirt road.

It's built for semi trucks carrying logs.

So they used to float logs down the river

for the paper mills.

And then in the fifties, they built this road,

fifties or sixties, they built this road to run trucks.

So you can be out there, you gotta register to run on that

because they wanna know who's out there.

Cause you gotta watch out for some eyes and stuff.

But you can dive off of that and take side roads,

whatever you can find.

And there's the Maine Gazetteur.

It's a Delorm product, so it's a book.

But the Maine Gazetteur is like really good.

It's a big paper atlas and it has really good definition

on all the roads that you can drive.

Sure.

So yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff

up here in the Northeast.

And definitely you can do it in the winter,

which is a little sketchier,

but it's nice in the summer, June, July up here.

It's a good time to drive across stuff.

It sounds like those roads are much, much wider

than the roads that we had in a lot of Europe.

When we did the, I'm sorry, transfer extra,

the Baltic Sea Circle Rally,

which you were supposed to have stayed off of,

any motorway, autobahn, highway, that type of stuff,

and do back roads and no GPS, mind you.

Although we had to use GPS when we had to fill, fill,

charge our EV, our ID buzz.

But a lot of those roads, especially in Norway,

were literally like, you couldn't do two-way traffic

even if you wanted to.

And those were the highways that squared God.

It was, it brought another level of roadworthiness,

especially if you're in country roads.

I mean, heck, Andy and I, when we did that,

we didn't realize that we were passing into Poland

on a gravel road until we saw a sign and Andy said,

hey, I think we're going into Poland.

And I had to stop and then I pulled up my GPS just to see.

You know, I pulled up my cell phone and I was like,

oh my God, I think you're right.

Because, you know, that's just how they roll over there,

which is insane.

It's interesting when we were doing the main one,

you know, we'd go off the golden road a few times

to explore some of the other trails.

And there were a couple of times we were up by Canada

and you'd be going down a trail.

And then in order to prevent people just from driving

in and out of Canada on dirt roads,

they just dug trenches across the road, basically.

We came across that one, two or three times, Andy.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah.

That's insane.

Yeah, so most of the roads are very small,

like car and a half width or less.

Unimproved, you'll get pinstripes.

The golden road is special because it was built specifically

to, and they'll grade it.

In fact, when we were signing up,

signing in to go, the guy's like, oh, they just graded it.

So it'll be nice and smooth for you.

But I think it was still like super washboardy.

It's 96 miles long.

I just looked it up real quick.

But yeah, it was built from Millenocket

to the Canadian border.

And it was just for logging companies

to run paper trucks.

So I mean, huge.

And that's the other thing, you have to be careful.

Some of these roads you'll get on, you run a CB

because the trucks are supposed to call it mile markers.

Yeah.

Because they're doing some of these,

I mean, and some of these roads they use

for the main forest rally.

Yeah.

Because that's how fast you can go on these roads.

Yep.

So you've got an 18-wheeler doing 65 on a road.

You don't want to come across it head-on.

So you listen to the CB, you'll see a marker on the road.

It'll say like channel 19, channel 17, whatever.

And there's mile markers and the guy's supposed to call out

as he's going 10, nine, eight.

So you know, there's a truck coming.

Well, that's so much in Alaska.

Yeah, we ran into that up in Alaska

and Northwest Territories and whatnot.

We have one of our friends, Shane Bowman,

who was one of our buddy cars

with his navigator, John Williams.

And on the Alkan 5000, yeah, you'd be on these roads.

And Shane used to be a truck driver

and had the right channels programmed into his radio.

And so, yeah, he'd call Lowe's out.

And then you'd eventually know where the truck was

because he called out five and you were at six or whatever.

Well, then he made sure to let them all know where we were

because we were passenger vehicles, right?

I mean, you know, we've done the rally

a couple of times now with them.

So, you know, he'd call out, you know, Jeep Rubicon

and then, you know, whatever vehicle that we're driving,

whether it's a Subaru Outback Wilderness

or whether it's the Honda Passport Trail Sport.

And then he'd call it out just so that they knew

that we had two vehicles oncoming to them.

So it was very helpful.

Nice.

That's cool.

Well, hell of a story.

So the main purpose for this trip

was to promote the Subaru vehicle, correct?

There was no other people doing it, it was just you guys.

That's correct.

So this was unlike some of the other things

we've done like the Alcan 5000

or the Baltic Sea Circle Rally, there was nobody else.

This was just us and Subaru was willing to lend us

the vehicle to do that.

And then we had our product partners

and it was just the two of us.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we both went to the 2024

Cross Truck Wilderness launch when it very first came out

and separately and we wrote for different publications.

We were both very impressed at how capable that vehicle was.

And they put us on an off-road trail

that was really, really quite interesting in some parts.

It was like, you're gonna put us up there?

It's like this really crazy, craggy,

steep, silt-ridden, you know.

A lot of the media drives you go to for off-road vehicles,

they make it very easy.

Well, they make it very easy and it's all very prescribed

and it's all very vetted and all that.

And when we did the Cross Truck Wilderness launch,

which was done outside of Zion, I believe it was,

in Utah.

And I remember I was partnering with

another journalist, Perry Stern,

and we got to the base of this huge hill

that Mercedes was talking about.

And I mean, I could, you know.

It was so vetted, it was all silt.

Nearly 20 years of off-road experience under my belt

and I remember getting to the base of this hill

and I looked at Perry and go,

we're not really going up this, right?

And there was a woman at the top who worked for Subaru.

She's like, just keep your foot into it.

We're like, okay.

Oh my God.

And sure enough, it went up.

And at that time, I remember thinking,

wow, this thing is actually more capable

than I thought it would be.

It's not just a car that's got all-terrain tires on

and that's it.

Well, and that's where the seed, I guess,

was planted for me at least.

And I thought of that the whole time

and then, you know, fast forward to this.

And we're like, what vehicle can we do

that's an unconventional vehicle?

Well, we don't want to say underdog,

but unconventional vehicle to do the Trans-America Trail.

And our first thought immediately was this vehicle.

It's definitely not the normal choice,

but there does also seem to be a lot of Subaru off-road stuff.

So it's not completely out of the ordinary.

It's not like you did it in an Alantra.

So.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

It's still be stuck in Colorado.

Yeah, and you know, we also aren't the first people

to have ever done this in a Subaru.

Other people have done it before.

I don't know if anybody's run the entire thing.

You know, a lot of people,

like a lot, like the back country discovery routes,

people will run sections of it and sections of it,

or even like the Pan-American highway, you know,

not everybody runs it from Dead Horse to Urshuaia, you know,

they do it as they can.

And so I don't know if there have been other Subaru's

that have done the whole thing at Onefile Swoop

or if we were the first.

I doubt we were the first.

But yeah, Subaru is not,

it's not a vehicle that is often chosen

to do the Trans-American Trail,

but ours proved that it was capable of doing it.

Well, and I think for us with our knowledge

and off-roading experience,

both of us as a driver and a navigator

and I'm doing in a lot of these rallies,

whether it's, you know,

you've got a topographic map with a compass

or no GPS and a map of Lithuania,

you know, Poland and Norway, you know, figure it all out.

And I think that's why we said, okay,

let's see if we can do Subaru,

let's see if we can do a cross track wilderness

and see what can happen and can we do this?

And it's just, you know,

we're very grateful for their trust in us to do it.

And for us to, you know,

I think the biggest thing is to,

no matter what vehicle, what rally,

what competition, Trans-American Trail

or whatever event that we do,

it's all about respecting the vehicle

and mechanical sympathy and helping each other

and to get the job done.

There were a couple of times where we did not do

a water crossing or something else

because we're just like, look,

we're a quarter of the way into this trip.

We do not want to break down in Tennessee

and have to call it.

Yeah, we're not going to do something stupid, right?

I mean.

Yeah, mechanical sympathy.

If you want your product to last be,

or if you want the vehicle to last,

you need to be gentle to it.

And for sure.

I mean, we all drive old cars,

so we get that more than anything.

Yeah.

Right, us included.

Fast as possible, slow as necessary, right?

Yeah, that's actually an excellent phrase.

No, with most of my cars fast,

it's not possible either, but that's fine.

It's fine.

I think it was, what was that company, Andrew,

in, I think it was Georgia.

They used to have a podcast, they had a sticker.

It said, always slow, never fast.

Or I feel the sticker said now.

Never first.

Never last, always slow, never fast.

Yeah.

I always liked that phrase, but excellent.

Well, it sounds like an awesome, awesome trip.

So obviously people will be able to follow it

on your social medias.

You said the Crancheft culture was the website.

Yes. Crancheftculture.com.

We've got some content up there,

as well as a whole ton of Instagram reels,

YouTube shorts, things on Facebook,

Blue Sky, all the socials, almost.

And if somebody wanted to literally watch

from the very first day that we did it,

until the end of day 29, Instagram's the best source.

We probably have seven or eight different highlights reels,

or highlights bubbles that saved

all the different Instagram stories.

And then, I don't know, probably 10 or 15 different reels

that are posted that talk about

the different daily compilations for recaps.

Yeah, we've written articles on this

for OVR Magazine, Expedition Portal,

GeoJunkie, Truth About Cars.

And so, if you Google Transamerica Trail cross track,

you'll find it.

That's what we'll do.

So what is the social media stuff?

What was the night thought,

everything under Crancheft culture?

Everything's under Crancheft,

the website's Crancheftculture.com,

and the rest of our social is just Crancheft culture.

All right, cool.

So yeah, our regular listeners know where to find us.

We're on off topic.

We're on Instagram and Facebook,

and I'm racing on Instagram and Brad,

where are they?

They can find me all the same places as you,

plus my own personal one of TSI SS 350

and the Arizona Rising Sun Rally with an E,

R-A-L-L-Y-E on Instagram as well.

It's AZ Rising Sun Rally.

Yeah.

All right, well, thank you guys for coming on.

It was great to have you again.

Yeah, thank you for having us.

It was always so much fun.

And it was fantastic to kind of relive

some of these memories.

Yeah, super cool.

I'm glad you guys came on too,

and we had a successful first guest appearances

on the podcast again.

So thank you for willing guinea pigs.

Oh yes, always willing.

I'm happy to talk to you anytime.

All right, cool.

As always, keep cars analog.

Name for the roses.

TransAmerica Trail with Crankshaft Culture

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