00:00:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Overlin Journal podcast. I'm your host, Matt Scott. Today's episode is prepared not paranoid, practical readiness with last line of defense. I'm here with Mike Pfeiffer, a guy I've known a while. Thanks for being here.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
00:00:20
Speaker 3: I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank all of you for listening to the Overland Journal podcast. By listening to this podcast and subscribing to the Overland Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own and veteran owned business. If you enjoy the podcast, I think you'd really love the print magazine as well. And one hundred percent of that subscription price goes back into creating the content like you're listening to right now. And as a special thank you for your loyalty, we're giving twenty percent off any subscription and that even includes our special lifetime subscription which includes numerous lifetime only benefits. You can go to Overland Journal dot com and use the Code Overland podcast at checkout. Again, that's Code Overland Podcast at checkout, and that'll give you twenty percent off. I sincerely appreciate your support.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, This episode is about bridging the gap between everyday capability and long haul readiness without losing your grip on reality, which I think is something that you do just so well. You're not a prepper, but you have that mindset of being prepared, and I think that's a really fine line and really respect that about you.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
00:01:33
Speaker 1: Your last line of defense online. That's kind of your handle, your YouTube, your social It's a great follow by the way, So you've built subscribed gets as good, but you built a community I guess around gear that you actually test informed decisions, honest reviews. You have a kind of also a big passion for overlanding. I'm really excited for this one. This is going to be a really great podcast.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it'll be good. A little different than the norm in that I'm probably the least traveled guest on the podcast, but we're going to make it work.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: So who are you?
00:02:05
Speaker 2: Hey? Yeah, Hey, I like here. Yeah, So I'm like, I guess brief brief, full life background. Maybe I'm a dude currently living in Colorado. I was born to mom and dad. My dad was in the army, so I was an army brat for my entire life from birth to when I left the nest.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: I moved around a bunch.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: Moved around a bunch, and my parents traveled quite a bit.
00:02:29
Speaker 1: The least traveled personal.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, like by vehicle. Like, I've been to a lot of places because my parents liked to travel. So I've lived overseas for a little bit, traveled overseas a little bit, and lived in every coast in North and South and Texas. Born in Minnesota and.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: Everywhere cool, cool, Midwestern.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Graduated high school from Hawaii. That's fun. And then lived in California for I had to be so.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: I graduated from high school in the suburbs of Chicago.
00:02:55
Speaker 2: He went some. Yeah, I had a great high school. It was a great time. That's actually when I got my first jeep Wrangler. That was my first vehicle as a jeep wrangler, top down, two door criuising around to the beach.
00:03:07
Speaker 1: First time I was in a jeep wrangler spring break nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, Matt's family vacation. I was eight, Okay, I remember crawling in the back of a green jeep Wrangler. Sahar Sahara.
00:03:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Saharas were cool.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: I think they should do a throwback on those.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were rad. I don't even think they had rubicons back then.
00:03:25
Speaker 1: Now those are like three.
00:03:26
Speaker 2: And I didn't have the set. I just had the regular, but I wanted the Sahara at the time. But it was a good time. So we drove out on the beach and did a little bit of this, and that's what maybe sparked my interest in off roading in general. I was into off roading, wheeling, building out rigs long before I was into even camping in them. Parents loved to travel, We camped a bit as a kid, all that stuff. Then in my adulthood got into kind of firearms and just generally being prepared and that kind of stuff, and did some backpacking and fly fishing, like to hike up to alpine lakes and do that whole deal, and separately love to off road.
00:04:05
Speaker 1: But all of these things are related, right, But it's like, you're going to the alpine lake. You don't want to go to the one that everybody's going to that as a parking lot next to it.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want the fish to be dumb.
00:04:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like so then you start thinking of, oh, maybe I need some tires because it's a Shaeley Road or maybe I'm gonna get stuck, Okay, then I need to bumper with a winch. Like it's all I think. The cool thing about this podcast is it's all so interlinked.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I agree, and it's there. So vehicles turned in. They went from I would off road to off road. That was the activity, that was the event. We're gonna break some stuff and we're gonna conquer some obstacles. And then the next weekend I would go back back and do a separate set of hobbies. And then I was like, oh, why don't I combine them together? And the first time I actually kind of got into it at a disco, a land Rover Discovery, a ninety seven Discovery.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: I had a ninety seven Discovery and jeezh School because I coudn't afford a jeep and they were cheaper.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: They were, I mean, you got them from dirt cheap.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: I mean they they're actually pretty underrated. I think, Yeah, they got.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: The V eight's aluminum block, the underpowered but solid axle, cool interiors.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: It flex pretty well.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. They do well off roads. So I had some skinnies on that and the Safari Rack and I was like, I'm going to take Yeah it was white. I like you taped off from the painted the hood like a section of the hood black, like it was the whole. It was a vibe at the time. But that was the first vehicle where I was like, you know what, I could just throw a sleeping bag in the back of this in camp and so that was probably what got me into Okay, now I'm going to use my vehicle as a tool to pursue other hobbies. And that through years of evolution, eventually I got a Tacoma.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: I think we met in your Tacoma day.
00:05:46
Speaker 2: The Tacoma was where established a presence in the overland space. People weren't really putting rooftop tents over their beds and stuff like that, and I was just dicking. I've always been a tinker. Just I wonder how I can make this work for me, So mess with some stuff through a rooftop tent on the Tacoma. And that's what got me in.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: That was the multiicam wrapped one.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, recently it's quicksand and then eventually I multiicam wrapped it.
00:06:12
Speaker 1: Yeah that was actually quite cool back then.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a like I talked to people in the industry and that was a really defining truck or the weekend adventure space. I have a small truck, I have a bed. How can I put a tent on it? That truck and through the videos probably caused a major market shift that truck probably now than that style that is, but it wasn't. That wasn't the first one to do it. I'm not trying to claim something, but i've certainly.
00:06:43
Speaker 1: But it was early in the whole kind of creator days. It was early in the overlying space. It would have been twy seventeen.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a sixteen truck and probably about twenty seventeen was when I started doing that stuff. So yeah, whether that was a good or bad thing for the industry, I don't know, but it's.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: Great, man. I think anything that gets people out, that's more of the attitude I think I need to take. It's definitely times where I get a little, oh, overlanding is only international, and yeah, maybe I need to soften up on that. I think as long as you're getting out, I think as long as there's absensive adventure, yeah, I think that is really I think that's what defines Overlanding is like a little bit of dust, a little bit of a rough road, and there has to be a sense of adventure, right.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is where shift a difference between more of the we're digging into cultures and we're doing international travel and we're crossing borders. Your world and then my world, which is I got a nine to five job, I got a lot of crap going on. But I want to do a little weekend reset. I want to go just disconnect. I want to go somewhere with no service. I can't take three months to do a big trip, but I can. And this is what I talk about a lot. I can take an eighteen hour adventure after work on a Friday, dig out, cook a hot dog on a fire, come back at noon the next day. But that was enough to just that was nice. I stared at the stars. I disconnected. So I made this term up where it was like I never liked calling myself like an overlander, because I was like, I'm not, really, it's not what I do is not overlanding. So I actually made this whole series on YouTube called weekend or Lander, which was an homage and making fun of poking a joke at I think you're an overland I was, like, I do it on the weekend.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: It's just not taking yourself super seriously. It's definitely like people that love to wear this badge of I'm an overlander.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Whenever I say, like I overland, I always whether you're watching this or not, I always quotation, yeah, I'm into overlanding, but not would I love to do some international travel and just like ship my truck to Iceland and whatever that would be. Yes, but I haven't built my life around that ability. So instead I'll go out for a weekend. Maybe I'll go for a few days out to Moab or like, I'll do short trips. But I have a ton of fun with it, and I'm able to again combine hobbies and hang out with friends, and I just it's way different getting together with some friends around a campfire at twelve thousand feet than it is going to somebody's backyard barbecue. And I love that aspect of it, and it only takes eighteen hours to do. So I've embraced that reality where it's yeah, I didn't I didn't travel down to get out for five weekends and eat some hot talks or whatever. And I love that aspect of.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: We're good, yeah from Chicago, and I don't want to fight you.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: It'd be fun. But yeah, I guess that's the journey of my life as it pertains to more this probably the listeners of this podcast. The separate aspect of kind of my life and the channel, I guess is what you alluded to earlier, which is a general sense of preparedness. I don't ever want to be in a situation where as small as I need to cut a tag off a label, I got a knife for that. Two I got a flat tire, I gotta tire repair kit for that too. I don't know how much you can talk about.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: It, Okay, it's all I think, this preparedness thing. There's prepping and there's preparedness, and maybe I don't know is that Is there like an actual distinction between those two terms.
00:10:20
Speaker 2: No, there are different because there's the crazy doomsday prepper.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: There's a doomsday preper thing.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: I'm a bit of that, but not not really, Like I'm not walking around with my tin hat and my emp bag being like the world's ending tomorrow kind of deal. But if the world did end tomorrow, I'd be pretty set up for it. Which is not totally what I preach, but there are certain aspects of it. Hey, if your power goes out for a while, dude, totally have some things in mind where you can power your fridge or whatever.
00:10:49
Speaker 1: We're our house is effectively off grid.
00:10:51
Speaker 2: Test the power walls.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: And you love them so much, but you think about it, like, especially with what we just went through with COVID, like that got weird.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Did you not have a little extra toilet paper?
00:11:01
Speaker 1: Did I have one hundred and twenty eight rolls? Maybe because it's this panic thing, But there's these things that you can take into your daily life, like those Tesla power walls are like the perfect example. We're both Tesla fanboys. By the way, I have an oil well on my roof. I don't have to go to the gas station. I charge my car off grid, I power my house. I power everything from solar panels on my roof. Yeah, but we also do solar on overland trucks. Literally right now, the ac was just running in the Earth Roamer. We've twelve hundred wats of solar on this.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: You can get sol charging it.
00:11:33
Speaker 1: On your tacoma. We live in a world that is just like energy intensive now so.
00:11:37
Speaker 2: There's something cool to the whole thing, like over overland travels. What are self sufficient, self reliant? Whatever the definite you guys know the definition of it. But taking that aspect and just applying it to kind of every everything. So like I I EEDC I every day carry a multi tool for example. And if something's loose, if Mike, I use this example, like a handle on my cabinet is loose where I'm like, maybe I'm in a hurry, and I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'll go get a screwdriver and I'll fix that later. And then months go by and I still got the loose I'll get that later. When you have something on you, you're just like, oh, I got a screwdriver in my pocket.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: Done.
00:12:14
Speaker 2: Yeah maybe, but yeah, So that kind of aspect I apply it to my vehicle, like have everything in the vehicle. If I live in Colorado, if a road.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: Closes, like you're remote. You used to be used to be a.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: Little more remote. I'm twenty minutes from movie theaters in Walmarts and conco and everything.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: That is the dream and the flex though, is to have a property that's a little far away.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: But yeah, like I'm on fifteen acres, you can't like.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: It's even more land.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: I worked towards that, like it was a ten year goal to get there, and now I'm pretty set up. So if I was like doomsday prep red bick, I need to get four hours away from Denver or whatever, but I'm like, I got a pretty good setup.
00:12:56
Speaker 1: We're in Prescott, and my prepper notion is everybody from Phoenix is going to come to press it. You've got to go. I think just being prepared with your vehicle is so important. Your analogy of having the multi tool to fix something around the house that's just there and it gets done. Having a prepared vehicle can also benefit you in daily life. I bought a grenadier and did the little goose gier things. I have the dometic drawer, fridge and the lithium battery and vehicles self sufficient. The way I say it is that I'm ready to go camping at any time. But also like, in some ways, I guess that's a bug out.
00:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like.
00:13:38
Speaker 1: Two different people could look at it from two different perspectives and say.
00:13:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it's not. Again, I live my life in a couple different worlds. Maybe the preparedness world in the overland world or whatever, and they mesh and they collide a lot in a good way. But even the daily life. You got a fridge, and I have kids now, and maybe I got a fridge in my car all the time we're going to go to the park. But once some pops after yeah, boom. But then I'll take it on my trip to my lab for a few days and keep some bacon cold or whatever. I try to take things that someone that didn't have those hobbies but was into preparedness would idealize or want to do. And I say, why don't you make that a hobby? Then you want to build a bug out truck and it's just going to park in your drive and want you get into overlanding while you take that out? Why you actually see what airing down your tires does and have ability to patch it if you need to.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: The training aspect is I think so important. You can have all of the gear but none of the knowledge. Yeah, if you don't know how to put a plug in a tire, probably not going to figure it out. It's not that hard. Once somebody says, hey, yea, you turn it through here and you do this and you do that.
00:14:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you've done it a time or two, it's way easier than if you're doing it the first time.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: That's just assuming that triple A is coming.
00:14:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where you're out, Yeah a lot of time. Like I've done the little tuttu rules and tires and it's easier than changing a spare even Yeah, just like I'll pop it in.
00:15:01
Speaker 1: A gets high off and then you're out for dinner and then every nice item of clothing that you've worn is covered and breakdown.
00:15:09
Speaker 2: You're climbing under your chain stuck, things aren't working the way there's it always goes wrong, especially if you haven't done that kind of stuff. So even changing a tire, it's maybe you should do where your jacket is in your car up. This crowd probably does, but not everyone does. So all that stuff is good and a lot of it, like you're saying, is the skill is In my world we call it like getting reps in basically, so practicing it until you don't have to think about it, or if you're under stressed, then you don't have to think through the process. It's more second nature. You can have all the knowledge in the world and sometimes people emphasize the skills and the knowledge too much. You can't plug a tire with all the knowledge in the world. If you don't have a tire prepare kit. It's like you need the gear. The knowledge is super important. But sometimes people overemphasize gear and they don't know how to use it. And sometimes they're like, my two wheel drive camera could go everywhere and inexperienced guy in a Tacoma could go. Yeah, part of that's true, but why don't you just try to get to both.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: There's been some places I've been to around the world and I'm like, man, I feel like a real explorer. I'm in like Northwest Namibia on the end goal and border, and I'm in a seventy series land Cruiser with a one HC diesel engine and manual transmission. There's no computers in the truck. I'm like, yeah, I'm prepared, and then like a Toyta Corolla rolls up like h But that guy drives that road every day, as you're saying, he has his reps in. He doesn't have to blast over the or I'm just driving over the proverbial pothole in the corrugation. He knows the road he's figured it out.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: Cara momentum through this section.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a healthy combination of both. Knowledge is always great, but to a degree, like you have to have the goods.
00:16:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of them at least. Yeah, absolutely, what I do, who I am, what I'm into, it's just a combination of all those things. And I just try to have a good time. And my motto, I guess is gear in good times. Because I'm a gearhead. I like testing out stuff, like trying things out of like solving problems.
00:17:12
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the coolest gadget you've recently encountered.
00:17:17
Speaker 2: Completely unrelated to anything. It's this little it's from Exceed Design, not a plug, not sponsor not getting paid. It's this little.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Oh because it has a replaceable.
00:17:28
Speaker 2: Blade, replaceable blade you can spin it around.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: That's actually smart.
00:17:32
Speaker 2: I can just destroy this thing. Whereas if I have a really nice knife with whatever.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: So if you're not watching this on YouTube, essentially this is a really cool premium folding knife, but it has like a box cutter and utility. It's super nice.
00:17:49
Speaker 2: Nice. It's like one hundred dollars. You could get a Milwaukee Fastback or whatever that.
00:17:54
Speaker 1: Essentially does kind of I would carry that because I always joke like I have these ludicrously expensive pocket knives and I just use them to open Amazon packages. Yeah, and that's actually better at what I do.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: So it's what are you using your knife for most of the times? Like opening boxes? Honestly, But I'm like, I have some property. I'm creating a homestead, so I'm just like getting lumber packs delivered, hacking through building a chicken coop and this thing I'm just like.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: In your mid thirties early forties where you have this desire to have chickens.
00:18:27
Speaker 2: I don't know you have chickens now, do Yeah, we have a ton of them.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Button quail Okay, have you seen button quail?
00:18:34
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:18:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to have a button quail ranch because I could have if they have a little button quail enclosures and you just have them in like your laundry room, your quail legs.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was talking to someone just recently. If I was like sailing across the Pacific, I'd throw a couple of chickens in there. Man. Some button or quail would be even better.
00:18:56
Speaker 1: Honestly, this woman on Instagram that has like this button quail account and she creates these little dillic enclosures for them. When they have a high end button quail, it's like bespoke button quail. I see, I didn't what kind of chickens do you have.
00:19:15
Speaker 2: A bunch of different breeds? Really, my wife is building up. We have fifty chickens right now.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: I have to worry about price of eggs, eggs.
00:19:26
Speaker 2: If you live in the Morsnarian, we want to buy a farm pressh eggs. Hit me up. Now. We're actually selling eggs to just some neighbors and stuff now, and so my wife is more into we want every color of egg, the deep olive greens and the dark browns and the blues. So our breeds are specialty for egg aesthetic.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: Okay, on the homestead concept, so you have eggs hunting for protein.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: I do have animals on the property. I could hunt, but it's more again, it's more self reliance, like solar and battery on the roof. I want to store up some feed for my chickens. And when there's a chicken egg shortage, does just megan jokes and then yeah, so we do some gardening as well. I want to build an orchard, plant grow an orchard. So I planted a bunch of fruit trees on the property and a bunch of like berry bushes and stuff like that. So it's checking the prepper box, but it's also hobby the whole self sufficiency.
00:20:20
Speaker 1: I'm realizing we have so much in comment on this homestead front. Like we have some peach trees, we have an apple tree. We're in Arizona. We have some water issues right now, so we're not super watering. We're looking at our next property and we just there's also like a health component to like, and there's.
00:20:34
Speaker 2: Also something like a lot of that too.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: I don't want to sit or something spiritual out growing your own food, but there's something special and satisfying about it.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: You're running a n acy, not plugged into anything, not running the generator, just off of the sun on the roof, like similar to that.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thankful that I bought my solar thing when I did, because it has gotten like considerably more expensive. It's like as soon as the like subs cities went in, all they did was just like add the subsidy on top of the price. Even long term I think about it, I'm just like man like it allows me this stuff is going to allow me to travel more. Like I don't have a four hundred dollars electric bill like most people do in the summer in Arizona. I don't spend a couple hundred dollars a month on gasoline because we just Yeah, we have the Grenadier and we have this earth stomper five thousand that gets ten miles to the gallon.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: But ten's pretty good.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: And point eight miles to the gallon for something that has a friggin' wine rack is astonishing, because I bet your Tacoma didn't get much better.
00:21:34
Speaker 2: No, that's why I'm saying that is impressive. You got ten mile per gallon. In the podcast Studios.
00:21:39
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is the episode where Matt becomes a prepper. Ninety gallons of diesel meant twenty gallons of water.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, nearly one thousand miles of range.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: I was just like cruising if I had to, I'm sure I could get a thousand. I think I think it's ninety gallons of stated capacity, but I think.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: I can usable you get a little more.
00:21:59
Speaker 1: I think I actually get a little more. Fill in the top auxiliary tanks they have to have a certain amount of error. Whatever I've put fifty five gallons in that tank before there. You go, yes, or I scre on that gas pump. But yeah, but honestly, we live in an area that's very susceptible to wildfires. You do as well. It's not always these like cataclysmic events that you're preparing for. But I know that, Okay, Like if I had to go, I literally just pull the earthrum er out, hope and pray that the rest of the stuff doesn't go up and smoke.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: But yeah, less affected by it.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't need to live in a hotel. I have this thing.
00:22:39
Speaker 2: So your prepper dude, Yeah, we're.
00:22:41
Speaker 1: Realizing that Matt's actually a bit of a prepper. He's gone off grid. He has the ultimate prepper truck.
00:22:48
Speaker 2: You're even more dial.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: Ks. I don't actually shoot them, you would.
00:22:53
Speaker 2: Be a HK guy. I could see a little class year I got.
00:22:57
Speaker 1: Into the sp thing. I just got like my first suppressor because I have like fifteen years of motorsport, has my hearing all hecked up.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: Pressors are great.
00:23:06
Speaker 1: Oh it's so good. It's like a sewing machine if this roller lock thing, it's really good. Okay, So Matt is officially a prepper. All of the people that listen to me pontificate about international overlanding.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: No, it's good, it's good. Everyone should be a prepper. Some everyone should be a little prepared.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: I think so.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Not paranoid prepared.
00:23:26
Speaker 1: Even if you're in a city though, too, right, But that would That's the thing that terrified me. Like, imagine being in New York and something was crazy was going on. Imagine a horrible day, but at a nine to eleven trying to get out of there.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I like on my channel. Everyone's in different has different constraints in different life stages or scenarios and budgetary limitations and job obligations or whatever. But man, if you could get out of a city, do it, I think it's like such a better I don't know. Some people love the city. They just want their little studio and they want to walk to ten different restaurants or whatever, And I kind of get the appeal to that. But man, there is nothing I like more than just like walking outside and having quiet, like seeing trees and landscape, and like being.
00:24:12
Speaker 1: Able to water your plants in your underwear as a luxury that most people don't understand.
00:24:16
Speaker 2: My son almost exclusively, he's running around naked.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: What a wonderful like childhood upbringing, I think being I'm not gonna say being in the middle of nowhere, but this homesteading concept usually comes with being a little more remote.
00:24:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: Think that the quality of life is better.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: I think so. And again it's tough. I get that not everyone can do it, but it's yeah, and the whole thing, like my son going out and grabbing some eggs out of the coop or grabbing an apple off the tree and eating it seems amazing to me.
00:24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have it. Obviously takes saving and it takes, like you said, this was a ten year work towards it. Yeah. None of these goals, whether they're a via all of your dreams, the home of your dreams, or whatever, none of this happens overnight. That's the one thing talking to so many people being here, like the guy that has a nice truck, It's all a journey, you know. I think one of the really cool things about where we live in our country is if you work your ass off, you can probably do it.
00:25:18
Speaker 2: America's great for that comes under fire for some things, which I get, But if you are somewhat clever and have somewhat of a work ethic. You can create any life that you want.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Like, we've been watching house Hunters International, Okay it's on Hulu, and what's these people that are moving abroad and they find real estate or whatever. So we've been like, oh, man, it'd be cool. We used to live in Australia. I lived in Panama for a little bit. You've been all over and I had this realization that what am I actually trying to get. I'm trying to get lifestyle. But you have the freedom to do that lifestyle here. If you just want to work, You're like, oh, I love in France they work five hours a week in smokes cigarettes at breakfast. You can actually do that here. People just don't.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: Could do it. But it is that your suppressor in that area.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, that rural life. I just man, like with Amazon Prime and like, you can have anything you want delivered to you. Some people get it, some people don't.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get it's not for everyone, but man, it should be. I love it.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: So what's in your garage right now?
00:26:26
Speaker 2: I have too many vehicles? Actually right now I feel you. Yeah, I've just I've been I'm actually trying to downsize a bit. I had a GTR for a bit. I actually just sold that.
00:26:36
Speaker 1: Could you like it?
00:26:37
Speaker 2: I love the GTR, Yeah, it was my dream car, Like I've always wanted R thirty five.
00:26:42
Speaker 1: Well, it was like the Skyline had always been the unobtainable car and if you were of that, like Grand Turismo generation or Fast and Furious whatever, and then they finally brought the R thirty five here.
00:26:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember it was like R thirty four is rad. R thirty two to thirty three is sweet, But I really always one a R thirty five and I was delivering pizza. Best one of them, it definitely is. It doesn't have the character whatever. The older one's a better car in everyone.
00:27:08
Speaker 1: I know that everybody loses their mind over the R thirty four GTR. Yeah, but I've been seeing I saw one in person. Finally. They have a great front head on profile, but the side profile is a little awkward.
00:27:21
Speaker 2: There's just a regular car.
00:27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker 2: The interiors suck like the exterior. Yeah, if you romanticize it and you're into it, they're awesome, but if a normal we actually I saw one with my wife out on the road and I was like, what R thirty four? Which what are you looking at? There's nothing cool, There's nothing cool in this direction. The GTR was great, is my dream car. When they came out, I knew about him and everything, but I delivered pizza to a guy that had one in his driveway. First one I saw in real life and I was walking up and I was just I was like, holy, this is a GTR. I've never seen one in person. And he saw me through the window like looking at it, and he came out. I was like, oh, yeah, just got you want. He's like, let me sit and he wants to show it off obvious.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah that's nice.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: And at that moment, I was just like, one day, Yeah, I finally achieved that goal. It was great. Had two kids, I've got different and I wasn't driving it much and it's just sitting.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: And I've been through the phase of sports cars. I'm still recovering. But the cool thing about the GTR that you've had is you don't see that many of them, Like I've become a Porsche guy. I do not own a dental practice, but they're so common these days. Yeah. Great, they're expensive and when you see a GTR, you're like, oh, man, that's special.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you usually get someone who's a bit of an enthusiast, like you're driving and it's like a douchebag. Is you're just rich or.
00:28:45
Speaker 1: What is it something he thought he should buy? But he buy a GTR for the reason.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's exotic and not like everyone. You go to any car show and the kids GTR. God's I get a picture any gas station I pulled up to, people were stoked. And I've been at places where it's like what's parked next to like a Lambo and a Ferrari and people come and take pictures of the GTR because it's something something. Anyway, I don't own that that was special. I have this f five to fifty bus that I'm basically going to turn into a poor man's earth room or oh sweet cry, super single it and I gutted it. It's a twenty eleven.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: Oh this is a two thousand and eleve.
00:29:21
Speaker 2: Oh is it okay?
00:29:22
Speaker 1: So first, yeah, I have all of the motor and driveline information.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: I was shopping for these things and two rare things that the shuttle buses don't usually have. So it has the power stroke which most of them are gasers, and has factory four will drive, which almost none of them have. So I bought that and it's just been sitting. But I'm going to be working on that this summer. I recently This is coming out in a couple of weeks, so people will know by then. But I've I just bought a F four fifty that twenty nineteen that I'm going to super single and just.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: Those are really dual when you run them in like a square setup.
00:29:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
00:29:58
Speaker 1: And then you can do the over flair fenders in the front.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:30:02
Speaker 1: They have so much presence.
00:30:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then it's the tires or swaps. Is it a pickup?
00:30:07
Speaker 1: Pick up?
00:30:07
Speaker 2: Cool? Yeah, So it's not derated or anything.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: Problem with the five fifties yeah, which.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: I did a lot of research cab chassis versus truck chassis. Some like pretty educated in that world. Now I have a twenty twenty four Tacoma.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: Tacoma's are actually good. I talked mad about the third gen because they were just Toyota was always like under attack by everybody, and for once they didn't have the best product. But the new one, it looks good. The build quality seems really good.
00:30:33
Speaker 2: I have no complaint. Light Year is better driving experience than the third gen that a third gen thirty fives geared did everything to it that I could. My twenty twenty four is the hybrid on thirty sevens and not geared. Drive is incredible, he said, Yeah, it's a little that's all.
00:30:52
Speaker 1: It's a good sized truck. Now you'll figure it out when you start really driving this four to fifty more. The cool thing with the four fifties it has that wide track, apple sharp like. Honestly, the Roamer is pretty maneuverable. Yeah, you need two parking spaces. Why it's big. There's parking spaces you just can't fit into. Yeah, Tacoma is such a perfect size.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: It's good. So I yeah, the Tacoma have a twenty four Tundra as well. Speaking turning radius, my crew Max short bed Tundra has a wider turning radius than my eight foot bed duly f four fifty. Yeah, my four to fifty turns tighter than the Tundra. So much bigger truck.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: I think they're the axles underneath it. Yeah, are a delivery truck.
00:31:35
Speaker 2: Axle breaks super suspension. Yeah, payload out to Wazoo toes three times as much as the Tundra turns sharper gets better fuel mile.
00:31:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. Does the nineteen have the ten speed or the six six speeds? Still?
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's pros and cons.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are saying the early ten speeds weren't really sorted.
00:31:56
Speaker 2: The six speeds are supposed to be pretty bomb proof. The ten speeds are small, their shift better in the power ban lit.
00:32:02
Speaker 1: I can be in like one hundred and twenty degrees in the earth room. The six speed that's in the fort so yeah, one hundred and ninety two degrees all day long. It doesn't matter, it doesn't overheat, it's smooth.
00:32:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. The six seven paired with the six speed does it pretty sordid? I have a sixty series land Cruiser.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember the eighty. It's the brown one.
00:32:20
Speaker 2: That one's pretty cool. They've been sitting in.
00:32:22
Speaker 1: Your for me with cars probably Yeah.
00:32:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. I got Alex five seventy. That's pretty nice. I got a golf r ooh, the golfer is cool. It replaced it.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: Though, which amount of why do you do the performance? Got a long See, I did the performance and I think that I would do the long range next.
00:32:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to do the acceleration boost with the long range, so it'll.
00:32:45
Speaker 1: Be like, oh, the suspension, the performance beats you up, and that twenty a little more comfortable. The twenty one, I think they're twenty one. The big it's the performance gets the big wheel so much more complixing. I mean it's twenty.
00:33:00
Speaker 2: I think you can get both twenty ones.
00:33:01
Speaker 1: Or yeah, we have the big wheels. Its way rougher.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine's pretty comfortable, like more sidewall, little absorbed books, a little better, your suspensions a little more too. If you're tracking your car, yours would crush it. But daily driving the long range.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: It's my Greyhound transport code. Do you use the dog mode?
00:33:20
Speaker 2: It for the kids. It for the kids more like they fall asleep in the car when we get home. The nice thing is like no emissions. We come home, we park in the driveway, kids are asleep. Set the temp, crack the door, listen for them. Yeah, just let them sleep for a while. We're not pumping exhaust into the garage.
00:33:37
Speaker 1: And there's no like hot engine. There's no exhaust heat soaked the underneath of the car.
00:33:43
Speaker 2: They can't crawl under touch something whatever.
00:33:45
Speaker 1: Living in Arizona, I don't know how I did it without an EV and Arizona seems to like everybody here hates evs. I'm like, dude, it's the Model wise, the most American made car money can buy. It's one of the few international Inner prizes outside of technology where we're seriously competitive. Root for the home team, man.
00:34:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I feel too. Us jobs and the it's hard to beat. Also, the tech, like the full self driving is so I don't really use it much, but I just tried it to try.
00:34:15
Speaker 1: It so good because they were doing that like subscription.
00:34:18
Speaker 2: Yeah I got a free when I bought it for a bit, but I didn't pay the eight thousand for it all the time. The app is so good, like century Mode so good, being able to like just remotely view the camera the UI. It's like an iPad.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: Just it's always every like couple of weeks ago out and your car has new features, like they.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: Changed their updates. Your car gets better. Yeah they're not. They don't lock it down to make you buy the new model. Let's just push it out to everyone. I got the Model Y, and then I have a second gen Sequoia.
00:34:47
Speaker 1: Okay, Kakoia is underrated. I just don't know much about them.
00:34:51
Speaker 2: Yes, so I had a first gen Sequoia. I liked it, and then X five seventy similar the second gen. If so we had another kid. So we have three kids total, two dogs. Like decent sized family, and I want an excursion, but it was too big for my wife.
00:35:06
Speaker 1: I have no idea why four. It doesn't bring that back. I grew up in an excursion. That's why I like that eleven to sixteen super Duty because it still has the old body. That thing would sell like hotcakes, hot and forums. Gas prices went out, people started to become more environmentally conscious. Yeah, it's a short bed, single cab frame, like, it's not actually that big.
00:35:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a two fifty, but it's smaller than the Tundra. It's moller than a crew cab Tundra.
00:35:32
Speaker 1: The dudes that are running around in f two fifty three fifty Platinum Lariat, King Ranch whatever, Super Duties, if you gave them an option for the excursion.
00:35:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it toes well, solid action the front and rear that both the Triton and the seven to three that came in and go forever. Yeah, they're just a but my wife did it. I was like, babe, it's literally smaller parks, better turns, sharper than the Tundra. It's not that, but she didn't want it. So the second gen Sequoya is Toyota's best people move outside of the minivan. Toyota's best people move by far. It's like cavernous interior. You can travel around like in it easy, it drives nice, it's not as wheelable, independent front rear suspension on it. It's a good people outside of a minivan.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: Hell's gate every day.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Oh you're not just driving it around and sometimes going on some fire roads with it or whatever. But it's so much better than.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: That's probably a super where you're going.
00:36:34
Speaker 2: But that one's pretty nice and it's got the five to seven. So I have a couple of vehicles with the five step Toyota's five to seven, which I like. I' the one that's in the GFC booth, my regular cab short bed two thousand and seven Tundra.
00:36:46
Speaker 1: Okay, sweet, yeah, I want to downside which one's your favorite?
00:36:52
Speaker 2: I think the four to fifty will be my favorite.
00:36:54
Speaker 1: I think that the thing with the four fifties. It feels special.
00:36:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the reason I got it, like I go to rent a mini excavator or something in the tundra and they'd be like, can't do it. Yeah, like that you need it at least a three quarter ton to get And I was like, you know what, I don't want to be turned down for anything ever again. I want to be the guy saying, cute truck to the other guys.
00:37:17
Speaker 1: I can still park next to you. Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker 2: So there was some of that, but I think I'll like that truck a lot. And it's again trying to parallel park it in the city or anything like.
00:37:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: I am currently pickupless really for the first time and some time I couldn't imagine, but I'm thinking about getting a K car like a K truck.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: They just became legal to drive on the road in Colorado. Like I know they have been in Arizona. There's thirty states you can get them, but just this last week they became legal in Colorado. I want to do this thing that's for fun on the four fifty with the eight foot bed. I want to put a diamondback cover on it, put it on forties and then just for a show for fun, get a k truck, park it on top the tent on it. It's a cool display of what you could.
00:38:05
Speaker 1: Because they're probably like seven or eight feet long.
00:38:07
Speaker 2: They're not yeah, they're like ten or eleven feet long, but your wheelbase would just fit on the eight foot bed. I'm pretty sure. I know they fit in an eight foot bed, and they're they're like thousand pounds and I just take it.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: I had one of those I back things on my Prospector and it was like, very usable. Do I want a bed cover like a camper shell like a GFC or something like that, And I'm like, eah, but I'm never really going to camp in it, So then do I do a topper? I don't really want to spend like that much money in a topper, but this was cool because I had the bike crack on top with a little crossbars. I put one one up racks on top of the crossbars so I can put my bikes and stuff on top, and I still had all my storage.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're surprisingly usable. Yeah, you can like because you can do a costco run or whatever and it's if it's raining or whatnot, it's protected. Or throw some guns in the back and nobody really sees them. You could take it off if you to go get some dirt, You could put racks on it, throw stuff off. They have a kind of a toolbox feature where you can open the front cab and have a toolbox up there. So they're pretty functional for kind of like a daily driver that's going to see mixed use. But yeah, I think probably four point fifty, Like I drive the testa the most, but I think the fourth about.
00:39:18
Speaker 1: The Calderman setup, that's pretty good.
00:39:21
Speaker 2: I need to figure out what it's like.
00:39:23
Speaker 1: You're going like full you got you're like committing if you didn't like these wheels and tires, Yeah, I actually have like sixty eight mile an hour speed, right.
00:39:33
Speaker 2: I bought a set of on marketplace actually tease, Okay, yeah, it was such a good deal because they came with the super single wheels. I think they're the ebl designed wheels with the continentals unused. For five grand, it's like half half off of what.
00:39:49
Speaker 1: You would Yeah, that sounds like a lot of money, but the tires can be.
00:39:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you like you get the setup, it's like a thousand dollars wheel, thousand dollars tire pay for mounting and balancing, pay for shipping it. You're looking at over ten thousand dollars to buy those and these were essentially new local down the street from me. So and I'm going to do I'm going to use them either on the bus or the F four fifty.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: What are the what are I'm going to I'm gonna do some rapid fire things people. Three things that every Overlanders should keep in their.
00:40:25
Speaker 2: Car medkit, probably just for daily.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: Use, not using exft you it can be for somebody else.
00:40:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're driving in a car. People getting car accidents all the time.
00:40:35
Speaker 1: What's your favorite medkit right now?
00:40:37
Speaker 2: I have Dark Angel Medical I fact, so it's more of a trauma centric as tourniquits and some you know, knowledged and used that a little bit. You can watch the YouTube videos. I've taken some training courses and whatnot. So I think medical kit's good. I think a jumpstarter.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I use like the ones carry with me. I'm sure there's other.
00:40:57
Speaker 2: A bunch of them out there. He's like a fantic on. I have a Coo one as well, but I use them more often than not for other people's vehic.
00:41:05
Speaker 1: When Scott and I were driving up to over the next bow. We had to jump a lady that battery had died.
00:41:10
Speaker 2: And then the third thing. I don't know, there's probably just all generalized recovery gear. I guess, like even if you have a car, have a have the knowledge to know where your little screw thing is and maybe have a soft shackle so.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: There'll be like a little cap on your bumper and you have to thread this islet in.
00:41:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it'll be by your jack or under your seat. It's really the only recovery point on a car. I only mention it because a truck usually has recovery points.
00:41:40
Speaker 1: You never attach a recovery strap to a toe hitch ball, like the ball not meant to take a load. That way kills people in Australia because if they use a lot of kinetic recovery, there.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Big ball launching right back at you. So soft shackles are easy and good.
00:41:56
Speaker 1: I lately have been trying to pare down, particularly the Grenadier, to like the minimum amount for the maximum impact, and I have gone down to just a winch extension strap and three soft shackles because I carry that with me everywhere, and I'm like, okay, if I'm doing something that requires like a kinetic strap, rope, rigging, snatch block whatever. I know that I'm getting into that. Where with this, I can pull somebody out of a ditch slowly like I can tow a car. And then I always say three soft shackles, so if one breaks, you.
00:42:34
Speaker 2: Just have some or you sometime had to rig some weird stuff around someone's axle or something to get them shut out. So yeah, i'd say that handles most of the kind of like relatively minor recoveries.
00:42:46
Speaker 1: So I just can't thank you enough for coming on. Where can people follow you learn more about what you're doing.
00:42:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you could just google Last Line of Defense and it's probably all me, but yeah, Last Line of Defense on YouTube. For Last Line of Defense on Instagram one word, or have a website l lood dot us some stuff on there, a small Holster company.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Overlin Journal podcast with Mike Pfeiffer from Last Line of Defense. Thanks for listening.
00:43:17
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, all right, take care,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Overlin Journal podcast. I'm your host, Matt Scott. Today's episode is prepared not paranoid, practical readiness with last line of defense. I'm here with Mike Pfeiffer, a guy I've known a while. Thanks for being here.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
00:00:20
Speaker 3: I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank all of you for listening to the Overland Journal podcast. By listening to this podcast and subscribing to the Overland Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own and veteran owned business. If you enjoy the podcast, I think you'd really love the print magazine as well. And one hundred percent of that subscription price goes back into creating the content like you're listening to right now. And as a special thank you for your loyalty, we're giving twenty percent off any subscription and that even includes our special lifetime subscription which includes numerous lifetime only benefits. You can go to Overland Journal dot com and use the Code Overland podcast at checkout. Again, that's Code Overland Podcast at checkout, and that'll give you twenty percent off. I sincerely appreciate your support.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, This episode is about bridging the gap between everyday capability and long haul readiness without losing your grip on reality, which I think is something that you do just so well. You're not a prepper, but you have that mindset of being prepared, and I think that's a really fine line and really respect that about you.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
00:01:33
Speaker 1: Your last line of defense online. That's kind of your handle, your YouTube, your social It's a great follow by the way, So you've built subscribed gets as good, but you built a community I guess around gear that you actually test informed decisions, honest reviews. You have a kind of also a big passion for overlanding. I'm really excited for this one. This is going to be a really great podcast.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it'll be good. A little different than the norm in that I'm probably the least traveled guest on the podcast, but we're going to make it work.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: So who are you?
00:02:05
Speaker 2: Hey? Yeah, Hey, I like here. Yeah, So I'm like, I guess brief brief, full life background. Maybe I'm a dude currently living in Colorado. I was born to mom and dad. My dad was in the army, so I was an army brat for my entire life from birth to when I left the nest.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: I moved around a bunch.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: Moved around a bunch, and my parents traveled quite a bit.
00:02:29
Speaker 1: The least traveled personal.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, like by vehicle. Like, I've been to a lot of places because my parents liked to travel. So I've lived overseas for a little bit, traveled overseas a little bit, and lived in every coast in North and South and Texas. Born in Minnesota and.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: Everywhere cool, cool, Midwestern.
00:02:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Graduated high school from Hawaii. That's fun. And then lived in California for I had to be so.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: I graduated from high school in the suburbs of Chicago.
00:02:55
Speaker 2: He went some. Yeah, I had a great high school. It was a great time. That's actually when I got my first jeep Wrangler. That was my first vehicle as a jeep wrangler, top down, two door criuising around to the beach.
00:03:07
Speaker 1: First time I was in a jeep wrangler spring break nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, Matt's family vacation. I was eight, Okay, I remember crawling in the back of a green jeep Wrangler. Sahar Sahara.
00:03:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Saharas were cool.
00:03:20
Speaker 1: I think they should do a throwback on those.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were rad. I don't even think they had rubicons back then.
00:03:25
Speaker 1: Now those are like three.
00:03:26
Speaker 2: And I didn't have the set. I just had the regular, but I wanted the Sahara at the time. But it was a good time. So we drove out on the beach and did a little bit of this, and that's what maybe sparked my interest in off roading in general. I was into off roading, wheeling, building out rigs long before I was into even camping in them. Parents loved to travel, We camped a bit as a kid, all that stuff. Then in my adulthood got into kind of firearms and just generally being prepared and that kind of stuff, and did some backpacking and fly fishing, like to hike up to alpine lakes and do that whole deal, and separately love to off road.
00:04:05
Speaker 1: But all of these things are related, right, But it's like, you're going to the alpine lake. You don't want to go to the one that everybody's going to that as a parking lot next to it.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want the fish to be dumb.
00:04:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like so then you start thinking of, oh, maybe I need some tires because it's a Shaeley Road or maybe I'm gonna get stuck, Okay, then I need to bumper with a winch. Like it's all I think. The cool thing about this podcast is it's all so interlinked.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I agree, and it's there. So vehicles turned in. They went from I would off road to off road. That was the activity, that was the event. We're gonna break some stuff and we're gonna conquer some obstacles. And then the next weekend I would go back back and do a separate set of hobbies. And then I was like, oh, why don't I combine them together? And the first time I actually kind of got into it at a disco, a land Rover Discovery, a ninety seven Discovery.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: I had a ninety seven Discovery and jeezh School because I coudn't afford a jeep and they were cheaper.
00:05:02
Speaker 2: They were, I mean, you got them from dirt cheap.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: I mean they they're actually pretty underrated. I think, Yeah, they got.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: The V eight's aluminum block, the underpowered but solid axle, cool interiors.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: It flex pretty well.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. They do well off roads. So I had some skinnies on that and the Safari Rack and I was like, I'm going to take Yeah it was white. I like you taped off from the painted the hood like a section of the hood black, like it was the whole. It was a vibe at the time. But that was the first vehicle where I was like, you know what, I could just throw a sleeping bag in the back of this in camp and so that was probably what got me into Okay, now I'm going to use my vehicle as a tool to pursue other hobbies. And that through years of evolution, eventually I got a Tacoma.
00:05:44
Speaker 1: I think we met in your Tacoma day.
00:05:46
Speaker 2: The Tacoma was where established a presence in the overland space. People weren't really putting rooftop tents over their beds and stuff like that, and I was just dicking. I've always been a tinker. Just I wonder how I can make this work for me, So mess with some stuff through a rooftop tent on the Tacoma. And that's what got me in.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: That was the multiicam wrapped one.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, recently it's quicksand and then eventually I multiicam wrapped it.
00:06:12
Speaker 1: Yeah that was actually quite cool back then.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a like I talked to people in the industry and that was a really defining truck or the weekend adventure space. I have a small truck, I have a bed. How can I put a tent on it? That truck and through the videos probably caused a major market shift that truck probably now than that style that is, but it wasn't. That wasn't the first one to do it. I'm not trying to claim something, but i've certainly.
00:06:43
Speaker 1: But it was early in the whole kind of creator days. It was early in the overlying space. It would have been twy seventeen.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a sixteen truck and probably about twenty seventeen was when I started doing that stuff. So yeah, whether that was a good or bad thing for the industry, I don't know, but it's.
00:07:01
Speaker 1: Great, man. I think anything that gets people out, that's more of the attitude I think I need to take. It's definitely times where I get a little, oh, overlanding is only international, and yeah, maybe I need to soften up on that. I think as long as you're getting out, I think as long as there's absensive adventure, yeah, I think that is really I think that's what defines Overlanding is like a little bit of dust, a little bit of a rough road, and there has to be a sense of adventure, right.
00:07:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is where shift a difference between more of the we're digging into cultures and we're doing international travel and we're crossing borders. Your world and then my world, which is I got a nine to five job, I got a lot of crap going on. But I want to do a little weekend reset. I want to go just disconnect. I want to go somewhere with no service. I can't take three months to do a big trip, but I can. And this is what I talk about a lot. I can take an eighteen hour adventure after work on a Friday, dig out, cook a hot dog on a fire, come back at noon the next day. But that was enough to just that was nice. I stared at the stars. I disconnected. So I made this term up where it was like I never liked calling myself like an overlander, because I was like, I'm not, really, it's not what I do is not overlanding. So I actually made this whole series on YouTube called weekend or Lander, which was an homage and making fun of poking a joke at I think you're an overland I was, like, I do it on the weekend.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: It's just not taking yourself super seriously. It's definitely like people that love to wear this badge of I'm an overlander.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Whenever I say, like I overland, I always whether you're watching this or not, I always quotation, yeah, I'm into overlanding, but not would I love to do some international travel and just like ship my truck to Iceland and whatever that would be. Yes, but I haven't built my life around that ability. So instead I'll go out for a weekend. Maybe I'll go for a few days out to Moab or like, I'll do short trips. But I have a ton of fun with it, and I'm able to again combine hobbies and hang out with friends, and I just it's way different getting together with some friends around a campfire at twelve thousand feet than it is going to somebody's backyard barbecue. And I love that aspect of it, and it only takes eighteen hours to do. So I've embraced that reality where it's yeah, I didn't I didn't travel down to get out for five weekends and eat some hot talks or whatever. And I love that aspect of.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: We're good, yeah from Chicago, and I don't want to fight you.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: It'd be fun. But yeah, I guess that's the journey of my life as it pertains to more this probably the listeners of this podcast. The separate aspect of kind of my life and the channel, I guess is what you alluded to earlier, which is a general sense of preparedness. I don't ever want to be in a situation where as small as I need to cut a tag off a label, I got a knife for that. Two I got a flat tire, I gotta tire repair kit for that too. I don't know how much you can talk about.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: It, Okay, it's all I think, this preparedness thing. There's prepping and there's preparedness, and maybe I don't know is that Is there like an actual distinction between those two terms.
00:10:20
Speaker 2: No, there are different because there's the crazy doomsday prepper.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: There's a doomsday preper thing.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: I'm a bit of that, but not not really, Like I'm not walking around with my tin hat and my emp bag being like the world's ending tomorrow kind of deal. But if the world did end tomorrow, I'd be pretty set up for it. Which is not totally what I preach, but there are certain aspects of it. Hey, if your power goes out for a while, dude, totally have some things in mind where you can power your fridge or whatever.
00:10:49
Speaker 1: We're our house is effectively off grid.
00:10:51
Speaker 2: Test the power walls.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: And you love them so much, but you think about it, like, especially with what we just went through with COVID, like that got weird.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Did you not have a little extra toilet paper?
00:11:01
Speaker 1: Did I have one hundred and twenty eight rolls? Maybe because it's this panic thing, But there's these things that you can take into your daily life, like those Tesla power walls are like the perfect example. We're both Tesla fanboys. By the way, I have an oil well on my roof. I don't have to go to the gas station. I charge my car off grid, I power my house. I power everything from solar panels on my roof. Yeah, but we also do solar on overland trucks. Literally right now, the ac was just running in the Earth Roamer. We've twelve hundred wats of solar on this.
00:11:31
Speaker 2: You can get sol charging it.
00:11:33
Speaker 1: On your tacoma. We live in a world that is just like energy intensive now so.
00:11:37
Speaker 2: There's something cool to the whole thing, like over overland travels. What are self sufficient, self reliant? Whatever the definite you guys know the definition of it. But taking that aspect and just applying it to kind of every everything. So like I I EEDC I every day carry a multi tool for example. And if something's loose, if Mike, I use this example, like a handle on my cabinet is loose where I'm like, maybe I'm in a hurry, and I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'll go get a screwdriver and I'll fix that later. And then months go by and I still got the loose I'll get that later. When you have something on you, you're just like, oh, I got a screwdriver in my pocket.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: Done.
00:12:14
Speaker 2: Yeah maybe, but yeah, So that kind of aspect I apply it to my vehicle, like have everything in the vehicle. If I live in Colorado, if a road.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: Closes, like you're remote. You used to be used to be a.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: Little more remote. I'm twenty minutes from movie theaters in Walmarts and conco and everything.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: That is the dream and the flex though, is to have a property that's a little far away.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: But yeah, like I'm on fifteen acres, you can't like.
00:12:42
Speaker 1: It's even more land.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: I worked towards that, like it was a ten year goal to get there, and now I'm pretty set up. So if I was like doomsday prep red bick, I need to get four hours away from Denver or whatever, but I'm like, I got a pretty good setup.
00:12:56
Speaker 1: We're in Prescott, and my prepper notion is everybody from Phoenix is going to come to press it. You've got to go. I think just being prepared with your vehicle is so important. Your analogy of having the multi tool to fix something around the house that's just there and it gets done. Having a prepared vehicle can also benefit you in daily life. I bought a grenadier and did the little goose gier things. I have the dometic drawer, fridge and the lithium battery and vehicles self sufficient. The way I say it is that I'm ready to go camping at any time. But also like, in some ways, I guess that's a bug out.
00:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like.
00:13:38
Speaker 1: Two different people could look at it from two different perspectives and say.
00:13:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it's not. Again, I live my life in a couple different worlds. Maybe the preparedness world in the overland world or whatever, and they mesh and they collide a lot in a good way. But even the daily life. You got a fridge, and I have kids now, and maybe I got a fridge in my car all the time we're going to go to the park. But once some pops after yeah, boom. But then I'll take it on my trip to my lab for a few days and keep some bacon cold or whatever. I try to take things that someone that didn't have those hobbies but was into preparedness would idealize or want to do. And I say, why don't you make that a hobby? Then you want to build a bug out truck and it's just going to park in your drive and want you get into overlanding while you take that out? Why you actually see what airing down your tires does and have ability to patch it if you need to.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: The training aspect is I think so important. You can have all of the gear but none of the knowledge. Yeah, if you don't know how to put a plug in a tire, probably not going to figure it out. It's not that hard. Once somebody says, hey, yea, you turn it through here and you do this and you do that.
00:14:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you've done it a time or two, it's way easier than if you're doing it the first time.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: That's just assuming that triple A is coming.
00:14:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where you're out, Yeah a lot of time. Like I've done the little tuttu rules and tires and it's easier than changing a spare even Yeah, just like I'll pop it in.
00:15:01
Speaker 1: A gets high off and then you're out for dinner and then every nice item of clothing that you've worn is covered and breakdown.
00:15:09
Speaker 2: You're climbing under your chain stuck, things aren't working the way there's it always goes wrong, especially if you haven't done that kind of stuff. So even changing a tire, it's maybe you should do where your jacket is in your car up. This crowd probably does, but not everyone does. So all that stuff is good and a lot of it, like you're saying, is the skill is In my world we call it like getting reps in basically, so practicing it until you don't have to think about it, or if you're under stressed, then you don't have to think through the process. It's more second nature. You can have all the knowledge in the world and sometimes people emphasize the skills and the knowledge too much. You can't plug a tire with all the knowledge in the world. If you don't have a tire prepare kit. It's like you need the gear. The knowledge is super important. But sometimes people overemphasize gear and they don't know how to use it. And sometimes they're like, my two wheel drive camera could go everywhere and inexperienced guy in a Tacoma could go. Yeah, part of that's true, but why don't you just try to get to both.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: There's been some places I've been to around the world and I'm like, man, I feel like a real explorer. I'm in like Northwest Namibia on the end goal and border, and I'm in a seventy series land Cruiser with a one HC diesel engine and manual transmission. There's no computers in the truck. I'm like, yeah, I'm prepared, and then like a Toyta Corolla rolls up like h But that guy drives that road every day, as you're saying, he has his reps in. He doesn't have to blast over the or I'm just driving over the proverbial pothole in the corrugation. He knows the road he's figured it out.
00:16:45
Speaker 2: Cara momentum through this section.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a healthy combination of both. Knowledge is always great, but to a degree, like you have to have the goods.
00:16:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of them at least. Yeah, absolutely, what I do, who I am, what I'm into, it's just a combination of all those things. And I just try to have a good time. And my motto, I guess is gear in good times. Because I'm a gearhead. I like testing out stuff, like trying things out of like solving problems.
00:17:12
Speaker 1: It's like, what's the coolest gadget you've recently encountered.
00:17:17
Speaker 2: Completely unrelated to anything. It's this little it's from Exceed Design, not a plug, not sponsor not getting paid. It's this little.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Oh because it has a replaceable.
00:17:28
Speaker 2: Blade, replaceable blade you can spin it around.
00:17:31
Speaker 1: That's actually smart.
00:17:32
Speaker 2: I can just destroy this thing. Whereas if I have a really nice knife with whatever.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: So if you're not watching this on YouTube, essentially this is a really cool premium folding knife, but it has like a box cutter and utility. It's super nice.
00:17:49
Speaker 2: Nice. It's like one hundred dollars. You could get a Milwaukee Fastback or whatever that.
00:17:54
Speaker 1: Essentially does kind of I would carry that because I always joke like I have these ludicrously expensive pocket knives and I just use them to open Amazon packages. Yeah, and that's actually better at what I do.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: So it's what are you using your knife for most of the times? Like opening boxes? Honestly, But I'm like, I have some property. I'm creating a homestead, so I'm just like getting lumber packs delivered, hacking through building a chicken coop and this thing I'm just like.
00:18:21
Speaker 1: In your mid thirties early forties where you have this desire to have chickens.
00:18:27
Speaker 2: I don't know you have chickens now, do Yeah, we have a ton of them.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Button quail Okay, have you seen button quail?
00:18:34
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:18:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to have a button quail ranch because I could have if they have a little button quail enclosures and you just have them in like your laundry room, your quail legs.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was talking to someone just recently. If I was like sailing across the Pacific, I'd throw a couple of chickens in there. Man. Some button or quail would be even better.
00:18:56
Speaker 1: Honestly, this woman on Instagram that has like this button quail account and she creates these little dillic enclosures for them. When they have a high end button quail, it's like bespoke button quail. I see, I didn't what kind of chickens do you have.
00:19:15
Speaker 2: A bunch of different breeds? Really, my wife is building up. We have fifty chickens right now.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: I have to worry about price of eggs, eggs.
00:19:26
Speaker 2: If you live in the Morsnarian, we want to buy a farm pressh eggs. Hit me up. Now. We're actually selling eggs to just some neighbors and stuff now, and so my wife is more into we want every color of egg, the deep olive greens and the dark browns and the blues. So our breeds are specialty for egg aesthetic.
00:19:45
Speaker 1: Okay, on the homestead concept, so you have eggs hunting for protein.
00:19:50
Speaker 2: I do have animals on the property. I could hunt, but it's more again, it's more self reliance, like solar and battery on the roof. I want to store up some feed for my chickens. And when there's a chicken egg shortage, does just megan jokes and then yeah, so we do some gardening as well. I want to build an orchard, plant grow an orchard. So I planted a bunch of fruit trees on the property and a bunch of like berry bushes and stuff like that. So it's checking the prepper box, but it's also hobby the whole self sufficiency.
00:20:20
Speaker 1: I'm realizing we have so much in comment on this homestead front. Like we have some peach trees, we have an apple tree. We're in Arizona. We have some water issues right now, so we're not super watering. We're looking at our next property and we just there's also like a health component to like, and there's.
00:20:34
Speaker 2: Also something like a lot of that too.
00:20:36
Speaker 1: I don't want to sit or something spiritual out growing your own food, but there's something special and satisfying about it.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: You're running a n acy, not plugged into anything, not running the generator, just off of the sun on the roof, like similar to that.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thankful that I bought my solar thing when I did, because it has gotten like considerably more expensive. It's like as soon as the like subs cities went in, all they did was just like add the subsidy on top of the price. Even long term I think about it, I'm just like man like it allows me this stuff is going to allow me to travel more. Like I don't have a four hundred dollars electric bill like most people do in the summer in Arizona. I don't spend a couple hundred dollars a month on gasoline because we just Yeah, we have the Grenadier and we have this earth stomper five thousand that gets ten miles to the gallon.
00:21:25
Speaker 2: But ten's pretty good.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: And point eight miles to the gallon for something that has a friggin' wine rack is astonishing, because I bet your Tacoma didn't get much better.
00:21:34
Speaker 2: No, that's why I'm saying that is impressive. You got ten mile per gallon. In the podcast Studios.
00:21:39
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is the episode where Matt becomes a prepper. Ninety gallons of diesel meant twenty gallons of water.
00:21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, nearly one thousand miles of range.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: I was just like cruising if I had to, I'm sure I could get a thousand. I think I think it's ninety gallons of stated capacity, but I think.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: I can usable you get a little more.
00:21:59
Speaker 1: I think I actually get a little more. Fill in the top auxiliary tanks they have to have a certain amount of error. Whatever I've put fifty five gallons in that tank before there. You go, yes, or I scre on that gas pump. But yeah, but honestly, we live in an area that's very susceptible to wildfires. You do as well. It's not always these like cataclysmic events that you're preparing for. But I know that, Okay, Like if I had to go, I literally just pull the earthrum er out, hope and pray that the rest of the stuff doesn't go up and smoke.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: But yeah, less affected by it.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't need to live in a hotel. I have this thing.
00:22:39
Speaker 2: So your prepper dude, Yeah, we're.
00:22:41
Speaker 1: Realizing that Matt's actually a bit of a prepper. He's gone off grid. He has the ultimate prepper truck.
00:22:48
Speaker 2: You're even more dial.
00:22:51
Speaker 1: Ks. I don't actually shoot them, you would.
00:22:53
Speaker 2: Be a HK guy. I could see a little class year I got.
00:22:57
Speaker 1: Into the sp thing. I just got like my first suppressor because I have like fifteen years of motorsport, has my hearing all hecked up.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: Pressors are great.
00:23:06
Speaker 1: Oh it's so good. It's like a sewing machine if this roller lock thing, it's really good. Okay, So Matt is officially a prepper. All of the people that listen to me pontificate about international overlanding.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: No, it's good, it's good. Everyone should be a prepper. Some everyone should be a little prepared.
00:23:22
Speaker 1: I think so.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Not paranoid prepared.
00:23:26
Speaker 1: Even if you're in a city though, too, right, But that would That's the thing that terrified me. Like, imagine being in New York and something was crazy was going on. Imagine a horrible day, but at a nine to eleven trying to get out of there.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I like on my channel. Everyone's in different has different constraints in different life stages or scenarios and budgetary limitations and job obligations or whatever. But man, if you could get out of a city, do it, I think it's like such a better I don't know. Some people love the city. They just want their little studio and they want to walk to ten different restaurants or whatever, And I kind of get the appeal to that. But man, there is nothing I like more than just like walking outside and having quiet, like seeing trees and landscape, and like being.
00:24:12
Speaker 1: Able to water your plants in your underwear as a luxury that most people don't understand.
00:24:16
Speaker 2: My son almost exclusively, he's running around naked.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: What a wonderful like childhood upbringing, I think being I'm not gonna say being in the middle of nowhere, but this homesteading concept usually comes with being a little more remote.
00:24:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I.
00:24:33
Speaker 1: Think that the quality of life is better.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: I think so. And again it's tough. I get that not everyone can do it, but it's yeah, and the whole thing, like my son going out and grabbing some eggs out of the coop or grabbing an apple off the tree and eating it seems amazing to me.
00:24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have it. Obviously takes saving and it takes, like you said, this was a ten year work towards it. Yeah. None of these goals, whether they're a via all of your dreams, the home of your dreams, or whatever, none of this happens overnight. That's the one thing talking to so many people being here, like the guy that has a nice truck, It's all a journey, you know. I think one of the really cool things about where we live in our country is if you work your ass off, you can probably do it.
00:25:18
Speaker 2: America's great for that comes under fire for some things, which I get, But if you are somewhat clever and have somewhat of a work ethic. You can create any life that you want.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Like, we've been watching house Hunters International, Okay it's on Hulu, and what's these people that are moving abroad and they find real estate or whatever. So we've been like, oh, man, it'd be cool. We used to live in Australia. I lived in Panama for a little bit. You've been all over and I had this realization that what am I actually trying to get. I'm trying to get lifestyle. But you have the freedom to do that lifestyle here. If you just want to work, You're like, oh, I love in France they work five hours a week in smokes cigarettes at breakfast. You can actually do that here. People just don't.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: Could do it. But it is that your suppressor in that area.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, that rural life. I just man, like with Amazon Prime and like, you can have anything you want delivered to you. Some people get it, some people don't.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get it's not for everyone, but man, it should be. I love it.
00:26:23
Speaker 1: So what's in your garage right now?
00:26:26
Speaker 2: I have too many vehicles? Actually right now I feel you. Yeah, I've just I've been I'm actually trying to downsize a bit. I had a GTR for a bit. I actually just sold that.
00:26:36
Speaker 1: Could you like it?
00:26:37
Speaker 2: I love the GTR, Yeah, it was my dream car, Like I've always wanted R thirty five.
00:26:42
Speaker 1: Well, it was like the Skyline had always been the unobtainable car and if you were of that, like Grand Turismo generation or Fast and Furious whatever, and then they finally brought the R thirty five here.
00:26:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember it was like R thirty four is rad. R thirty two to thirty three is sweet, But I really always one a R thirty five and I was delivering pizza. Best one of them, it definitely is. It doesn't have the character whatever. The older one's a better car in everyone.
00:27:08
Speaker 1: I know that everybody loses their mind over the R thirty four GTR. Yeah, but I've been seeing I saw one in person. Finally. They have a great front head on profile, but the side profile is a little awkward.
00:27:21
Speaker 2: There's just a regular car.
00:27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker 2: The interiors suck like the exterior. Yeah, if you romanticize it and you're into it, they're awesome, but if a normal we actually I saw one with my wife out on the road and I was like, what R thirty four? Which what are you looking at? There's nothing cool, There's nothing cool in this direction. The GTR was great, is my dream car. When they came out, I knew about him and everything, but I delivered pizza to a guy that had one in his driveway. First one I saw in real life and I was walking up and I was just I was like, holy, this is a GTR. I've never seen one in person. And he saw me through the window like looking at it, and he came out. I was like, oh, yeah, just got you want. He's like, let me sit and he wants to show it off obvious.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah that's nice.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: And at that moment, I was just like, one day, Yeah, I finally achieved that goal. It was great. Had two kids, I've got different and I wasn't driving it much and it's just sitting.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: And I've been through the phase of sports cars. I'm still recovering. But the cool thing about the GTR that you've had is you don't see that many of them, Like I've become a Porsche guy. I do not own a dental practice, but they're so common these days. Yeah. Great, they're expensive and when you see a GTR, you're like, oh, man, that's special.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you usually get someone who's a bit of an enthusiast, like you're driving and it's like a douchebag. Is you're just rich or.
00:28:45
Speaker 1: What is it something he thought he should buy? But he buy a GTR for the reason.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's exotic and not like everyone. You go to any car show and the kids GTR. God's I get a picture any gas station I pulled up to, people were stoked. And I've been at places where it's like what's parked next to like a Lambo and a Ferrari and people come and take pictures of the GTR because it's something something. Anyway, I don't own that that was special. I have this f five to fifty bus that I'm basically going to turn into a poor man's earth room or oh sweet cry, super single it and I gutted it. It's a twenty eleven.
00:29:19
Speaker 1: Oh this is a two thousand and eleve.
00:29:21
Speaker 2: Oh is it okay?
00:29:22
Speaker 1: So first, yeah, I have all of the motor and driveline information.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: I was shopping for these things and two rare things that the shuttle buses don't usually have. So it has the power stroke which most of them are gasers, and has factory four will drive, which almost none of them have. So I bought that and it's just been sitting. But I'm going to be working on that this summer. I recently This is coming out in a couple of weeks, so people will know by then. But I've I just bought a F four fifty that twenty nineteen that I'm going to super single and just.
00:29:53
Speaker 1: Those are really dual when you run them in like a square setup.
00:29:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
00:29:58
Speaker 1: And then you can do the over flair fenders in the front.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:30:02
Speaker 1: They have so much presence.
00:30:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then it's the tires or swaps. Is it a pickup?
00:30:07
Speaker 1: Pick up?
00:30:07
Speaker 2: Cool? Yeah, So it's not derated or anything.
00:30:10
Speaker 1: Problem with the five fifties yeah, which.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: I did a lot of research cab chassis versus truck chassis. Some like pretty educated in that world. Now I have a twenty twenty four Tacoma.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: Tacoma's are actually good. I talked mad about the third gen because they were just Toyota was always like under attack by everybody, and for once they didn't have the best product. But the new one, it looks good. The build quality seems really good.
00:30:33
Speaker 2: I have no complaint. Light Year is better driving experience than the third gen that a third gen thirty fives geared did everything to it that I could. My twenty twenty four is the hybrid on thirty sevens and not geared. Drive is incredible, he said, Yeah, it's a little that's all.
00:30:52
Speaker 1: It's a good sized truck. Now you'll figure it out when you start really driving this four to fifty more. The cool thing with the four fifties it has that wide track, apple sharp like. Honestly, the Roamer is pretty maneuverable. Yeah, you need two parking spaces. Why it's big. There's parking spaces you just can't fit into. Yeah, Tacoma is such a perfect size.
00:31:11
Speaker 2: It's good. So I yeah, the Tacoma have a twenty four Tundra as well. Speaking turning radius, my crew Max short bed Tundra has a wider turning radius than my eight foot bed duly f four fifty. Yeah, my four to fifty turns tighter than the Tundra. So much bigger truck.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: I think they're the axles underneath it. Yeah, are a delivery truck.
00:31:35
Speaker 2: Axle breaks super suspension. Yeah, payload out to Wazoo toes three times as much as the Tundra turns sharper gets better fuel mile.
00:31:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. Does the nineteen have the ten speed or the six six speeds? Still?
00:31:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's pros and cons.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are saying the early ten speeds weren't really sorted.
00:31:56
Speaker 2: The six speeds are supposed to be pretty bomb proof. The ten speeds are small, their shift better in the power ban lit.
00:32:02
Speaker 1: I can be in like one hundred and twenty degrees in the earth room. The six speed that's in the fort so yeah, one hundred and ninety two degrees all day long. It doesn't matter, it doesn't overheat, it's smooth.
00:32:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. The six seven paired with the six speed does it pretty sordid? I have a sixty series land Cruiser.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember the eighty. It's the brown one.
00:32:20
Speaker 2: That one's pretty cool. They've been sitting in.
00:32:22
Speaker 1: Your for me with cars probably Yeah.
00:32:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. I got Alex five seventy. That's pretty nice. I got a golf r ooh, the golfer is cool. It replaced it.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: Though, which amount of why do you do the performance? Got a long See, I did the performance and I think that I would do the long range next.
00:32:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to do the acceleration boost with the long range, so it'll.
00:32:45
Speaker 1: Be like, oh, the suspension, the performance beats you up, and that twenty a little more comfortable. The twenty one, I think they're twenty one. The big it's the performance gets the big wheel so much more complixing. I mean it's twenty.
00:33:00
Speaker 2: I think you can get both twenty ones.
00:33:01
Speaker 1: Or yeah, we have the big wheels. Its way rougher.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine's pretty comfortable, like more sidewall, little absorbed books, a little better, your suspensions a little more too. If you're tracking your car, yours would crush it. But daily driving the long range.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: It's my Greyhound transport code. Do you use the dog mode?
00:33:20
Speaker 2: It for the kids. It for the kids more like they fall asleep in the car when we get home. The nice thing is like no emissions. We come home, we park in the driveway, kids are asleep. Set the temp, crack the door, listen for them. Yeah, just let them sleep for a while. We're not pumping exhaust into the garage.
00:33:37
Speaker 1: And there's no like hot engine. There's no exhaust heat soaked the underneath of the car.
00:33:43
Speaker 2: They can't crawl under touch something whatever.
00:33:45
Speaker 1: Living in Arizona, I don't know how I did it without an EV and Arizona seems to like everybody here hates evs. I'm like, dude, it's the Model wise, the most American made car money can buy. It's one of the few international Inner prizes outside of technology where we're seriously competitive. Root for the home team, man.
00:34:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I feel too. Us jobs and the it's hard to beat. Also, the tech, like the full self driving is so I don't really use it much, but I just tried it to try.
00:34:15
Speaker 1: It so good because they were doing that like subscription.
00:34:18
Speaker 2: Yeah I got a free when I bought it for a bit, but I didn't pay the eight thousand for it all the time. The app is so good, like century Mode so good, being able to like just remotely view the camera the UI. It's like an iPad.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: Just it's always every like couple of weeks ago out and your car has new features, like they.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: Changed their updates. Your car gets better. Yeah they're not. They don't lock it down to make you buy the new model. Let's just push it out to everyone. I got the Model Y, and then I have a second gen Sequoia.
00:34:47
Speaker 1: Okay, Kakoia is underrated. I just don't know much about them.
00:34:51
Speaker 2: Yes, so I had a first gen Sequoia. I liked it, and then X five seventy similar the second gen. If so we had another kid. So we have three kids total, two dogs. Like decent sized family, and I want an excursion, but it was too big for my wife.
00:35:06
Speaker 1: I have no idea why four. It doesn't bring that back. I grew up in an excursion. That's why I like that eleven to sixteen super Duty because it still has the old body. That thing would sell like hotcakes, hot and forums. Gas prices went out, people started to become more environmentally conscious. Yeah, it's a short bed, single cab frame, like, it's not actually that big.
00:35:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a two fifty, but it's smaller than the Tundra. It's moller than a crew cab Tundra.
00:35:32
Speaker 1: The dudes that are running around in f two fifty three fifty Platinum Lariat, King Ranch whatever, Super Duties, if you gave them an option for the excursion.
00:35:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it toes well, solid action the front and rear that both the Triton and the seven to three that came in and go forever. Yeah, they're just a but my wife did it. I was like, babe, it's literally smaller parks, better turns, sharper than the Tundra. It's not that, but she didn't want it. So the second gen Sequoya is Toyota's best people move outside of the minivan. Toyota's best people move by far. It's like cavernous interior. You can travel around like in it easy, it drives nice, it's not as wheelable, independent front rear suspension on it. It's a good people outside of a minivan.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: Hell's gate every day.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Oh you're not just driving it around and sometimes going on some fire roads with it or whatever. But it's so much better than.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: That's probably a super where you're going.
00:36:34
Speaker 2: But that one's pretty nice and it's got the five to seven. So I have a couple of vehicles with the five step Toyota's five to seven, which I like. I' the one that's in the GFC booth, my regular cab short bed two thousand and seven Tundra.
00:36:46
Speaker 1: Okay, sweet, yeah, I want to downside which one's your favorite?
00:36:52
Speaker 2: I think the four to fifty will be my favorite.
00:36:54
Speaker 1: I think that the thing with the four fifties. It feels special.
00:36:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the reason I got it, like I go to rent a mini excavator or something in the tundra and they'd be like, can't do it. Yeah, like that you need it at least a three quarter ton to get And I was like, you know what, I don't want to be turned down for anything ever again. I want to be the guy saying, cute truck to the other guys.
00:37:17
Speaker 1: I can still park next to you. Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker 2: So there was some of that, but I think I'll like that truck a lot. And it's again trying to parallel park it in the city or anything like.
00:37:27
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: I am currently pickupless really for the first time and some time I couldn't imagine, but I'm thinking about getting a K car like a K truck.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: They just became legal to drive on the road in Colorado. Like I know they have been in Arizona. There's thirty states you can get them, but just this last week they became legal in Colorado. I want to do this thing that's for fun on the four fifty with the eight foot bed. I want to put a diamondback cover on it, put it on forties and then just for a show for fun, get a k truck, park it on top the tent on it. It's a cool display of what you could.
00:38:05
Speaker 1: Because they're probably like seven or eight feet long.
00:38:07
Speaker 2: They're not yeah, they're like ten or eleven feet long, but your wheelbase would just fit on the eight foot bed. I'm pretty sure. I know they fit in an eight foot bed, and they're they're like thousand pounds and I just take it.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: I had one of those I back things on my Prospector and it was like, very usable. Do I want a bed cover like a camper shell like a GFC or something like that, And I'm like, eah, but I'm never really going to camp in it, So then do I do a topper? I don't really want to spend like that much money in a topper, but this was cool because I had the bike crack on top with a little crossbars. I put one one up racks on top of the crossbars so I can put my bikes and stuff on top, and I still had all my storage.
00:38:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're surprisingly usable. Yeah, you can like because you can do a costco run or whatever and it's if it's raining or whatnot, it's protected. Or throw some guns in the back and nobody really sees them. You could take it off if you to go get some dirt, You could put racks on it, throw stuff off. They have a kind of a toolbox feature where you can open the front cab and have a toolbox up there. So they're pretty functional for kind of like a daily driver that's going to see mixed use. But yeah, I think probably four point fifty, Like I drive the testa the most, but I think the fourth about.
00:39:18
Speaker 1: The Calderman setup, that's pretty good.
00:39:21
Speaker 2: I need to figure out what it's like.
00:39:23
Speaker 1: You're going like full you got you're like committing if you didn't like these wheels and tires, Yeah, I actually have like sixty eight mile an hour speed, right.
00:39:33
Speaker 2: I bought a set of on marketplace actually tease, Okay, yeah, it was such a good deal because they came with the super single wheels. I think they're the ebl designed wheels with the continentals unused. For five grand, it's like half half off of what.
00:39:49
Speaker 1: You would Yeah, that sounds like a lot of money, but the tires can be.
00:39:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you like you get the setup, it's like a thousand dollars wheel, thousand dollars tire pay for mounting and balancing, pay for shipping it. You're looking at over ten thousand dollars to buy those and these were essentially new local down the street from me. So and I'm going to do I'm going to use them either on the bus or the F four fifty.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: What are the what are I'm going to I'm gonna do some rapid fire things people. Three things that every Overlanders should keep in their.
00:40:25
Speaker 2: Car medkit, probably just for daily.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: Use, not using exft you it can be for somebody else.
00:40:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're driving in a car. People getting car accidents all the time.
00:40:35
Speaker 1: What's your favorite medkit right now?
00:40:37
Speaker 2: I have Dark Angel Medical I fact, so it's more of a trauma centric as tourniquits and some you know, knowledged and used that a little bit. You can watch the YouTube videos. I've taken some training courses and whatnot. So I think medical kit's good. I think a jumpstarter.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I use like the ones carry with me. I'm sure there's other.
00:40:57
Speaker 2: A bunch of them out there. He's like a fantic on. I have a Coo one as well, but I use them more often than not for other people's vehic.
00:41:05
Speaker 1: When Scott and I were driving up to over the next bow. We had to jump a lady that battery had died.
00:41:10
Speaker 2: And then the third thing. I don't know, there's probably just all generalized recovery gear. I guess, like even if you have a car, have a have the knowledge to know where your little screw thing is and maybe have a soft shackle so.
00:41:28
Speaker 1: There'll be like a little cap on your bumper and you have to thread this islet in.
00:41:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it'll be by your jack or under your seat. It's really the only recovery point on a car. I only mention it because a truck usually has recovery points.
00:41:40
Speaker 1: You never attach a recovery strap to a toe hitch ball, like the ball not meant to take a load. That way kills people in Australia because if they use a lot of kinetic recovery, there.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Big ball launching right back at you. So soft shackles are easy and good.
00:41:56
Speaker 1: I lately have been trying to pare down, particularly the Grenadier, to like the minimum amount for the maximum impact, and I have gone down to just a winch extension strap and three soft shackles because I carry that with me everywhere, and I'm like, okay, if I'm doing something that requires like a kinetic strap, rope, rigging, snatch block whatever. I know that I'm getting into that. Where with this, I can pull somebody out of a ditch slowly like I can tow a car. And then I always say three soft shackles, so if one breaks, you.
00:42:34
Speaker 2: Just have some or you sometime had to rig some weird stuff around someone's axle or something to get them shut out. So yeah, i'd say that handles most of the kind of like relatively minor recoveries.
00:42:46
Speaker 1: So I just can't thank you enough for coming on. Where can people follow you learn more about what you're doing.
00:42:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you could just google Last Line of Defense and it's probably all me, but yeah, Last Line of Defense on YouTube. For Last Line of Defense on Instagram one word, or have a website l lood dot us some stuff on there, a small Holster company.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Overlin Journal podcast with Mike Pfeiffer from Last Line of Defense. Thanks for listening.
00:43:17
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, all right, take care,
