Slow Baja - Kurt Williams Talks Land Cruisers And Travel

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Today’s Slow Baja conversation is with Kurt Williams. He owns Cruiser Outfitters, a legendary company specializing in parts and services for Toyota Land Cruisers. I am eternally grateful to Kurt and his staff at Cruiser Outfitters, who were instrumental in sorting (and sponsoring) my suspension upgrades last year.  Williams, a lifelong Utah resident, bought his first Land Cruiser Fj40 at age 15. He’s an intrepid traveler (40 countries and counting) and an integral team member of E-7 (Expeditions 7). In that fantastic experience, Williams drove five of the seven continents and befriended fellow team member Clay Croft, whom he’s joined in several X-Overland Expeditions.  As a member of Canguro Racing, he’s raced a "stock" Land Cruiser 200 Series in the grueling Baja 1000. While he embraces the Slow Baja travel philosophy, Williams attributes his success in finishing 8 out of 9 Baja 1000s to going just slow enough to survive. He’s a Tread lightly Master Trainer, HAM radio operator, Land Cruiser Heritage Museum Board Member, and a member of several local Utah 4×4 clubs.  In this episode, we discuss his extensive travels, his love for paper maps, and his shop locally, eat locally philosophy that feeds his passion for connecting with locals --usually over a meal! Cruiser Outfitters is Slow Baja Approved. Visit their website here: https://cruiserteq.com/ Enjoy this Slow Baja Podcast conversation with Kurt Williams, powered by Baja Bound Insurance. Get your Baja insurance here: https://www.bajabound.com/quote/?r=fl9vypdv2t More information on Slow Baja Adventures: https://www.slowbaja.com/adventures

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. You know, I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Well, I want to say hearty thanks to all those folks

who are coming on the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition. They got the okay from their doctor, and they're going to have a great time exploring Baja Norte with me. Hey, folks, selfie stand up here from Slow Baja HQ. Breaking news. Over the Labor Day weekend, we had an entry transfer from the 2023, Slow Baja vintage to the 2024 event. So if you've been hankering on going with us, now is your time.

Do not delay. Hit me up. Use the contact button at SlowBaha.com. If you've got something 1993 and older or something that looks like in 1993, I'd love to have you join the fun and come to Baja with us October 15th through the 20th. San Felipe to San Felipe, one night in a hotel on either side, four nights under the stars with chef prepared meals, Cervasaria Trans-Peninsula when we get into camp and probably a little tequila four delays it by the campfire. So if this sounds like a little bit of the way you'd like to experience Little Baja, don't delay. Hit me up right now. in on the 2024 Slow Baja vintage, this time in Baja sur. You got to check out the Adventures tab

at Slowbaha.com. And if you have a newer rig and a lot of folks did inquire with newer rigs, and you want a winner getaway, the Slow Baja rally is February 23 to March 3rd. It's a slow roll from San Diego down to Loretto and back. About 10 days long, we're going to have a couple nights laying over in Loretto. I've got some ready-made adventures for you there. If you want to get off on a one-day mule packing trip or if the weather's good, you want to get out on the water, we're going to have a one-day water adventure. There's also going to be a one-day volunteer project for folks who might want to do that. And if you've got some stuff that you need to address on your rig, well, we're going to have some hand-selected, slow-baha-approved mechanics, whether you need a welder or a tire shop or a mechanic transmission, whatever it is. We're going to have those resources for you.

So it's going to be easy for you to get whatever you need addressed, addressed. You know, it's not the longest or the largest or the most miles. It's the slowest and the best miles and hopefully the most smiles. All right. For more information, check it out. It's a slowbaha rally at slowbaha.com slash adventures. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You can always reach me through the contact link at slowbaha.com.

Once again, that's February 23rd through March 3, 2024, the Slow Baja rally. Well, hello, thanks for tuning in. And my keeping dose of gratitude today goes out to my wife, Amy Leonard. There's absolutely no way I could be doing Slow Baja without her support. And I just need to say it, baby, thank you. You know, I'm going to miss our anniversary. It's 28 years this weekend, 30th. I'm going to miss our anniversary because I'll be in San Diego at the Baja Bound Lifestyle and Travel Expo.

That's right, September 30th. I'll be at Crown Point. I'll have Slow Baja on display if you want to take a look, and I'll have some brand new Slow Baja swag for sale. So stop by. Say hello, support the show. And you know, the next day, October 1st, I'll be out at the Southern California Offroad Show and Swap at the Lakeside Rodeo grounds. And I'm really looking forward to talking about Slow Baja and talking about some Slow Baja adventures. And, well, speaking of my Slow Baja adventures, I need to thank some sponsors for the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition. Of course, my friends,

Baja Bound, they've stepped up. They are the title sponsors. Thank you, Baja Bound, for your continued support going way back to my fun adventures in 2006. Thank you, Baja Baja Baja. Yep, Fortaleza Tequila. I'll be sharing a little of that around the campfire at night, and that's going to make the Baja sky even more beautiful and the experience even more wonderful.

You know, they sell every stinking drop they make. The best tequila in the world. All you need to do is talk to a tequila aficionado, a bartender, a retailer and mentioned Fortaleza, and they all get this wistful look. Oh, Fortaleza. I love that stuff. Well, you know why you can't find it where you are? Because they're sending it to Baja with me. So you should be with me in Baja, sharing a little Fortaleza around the campfire. So thank you, Fortaleza Tequila. Benchmark maps. They've stepped up again. They've got a beautiful Baja Road and Recreation Atlas, the 72-page book. Everybody in my group is going to get one of those in their swag bags. They

won't get lost. Surveisaria Trans-Pencillar. When we get back off the dusty trail, we get back into camp, you're going to have plenty of time, plenty of time to set up your tent and, uh, open yourself in a frosty cold, Cervesa Trans-Peninsula. We're going to have a few different flavors there. So, uh, thank you, Colin. Thank you, Cervasarea Transpennelar. Glutred. Thanks, guys. Glutread has stepped up. They're sending tire patch kits. Everybody going to Baja should have a glue tread, uh, tire patch kit in their vehicle. Uh, I can't say it strongly enough. It's one of those things. They don't take up very much space. So thanks glue tread for providing patch kits for everybody. And Sheelman, thank you for stepping up for your

sponsorship. Greatly appreciated. Absolute, bar none. Greatest modification I've ever made to Slow Baja was putting in Sheelman's seats. Thank you to Toby Nicole for helping support this amazing Slow Baja Vintage Expedition. And Sheelman, you're going to be hearing a lot more about them. If you're thinking about seats, folks, I can't say it strongly enough. They have changed my life and they've changed my relationship with my back. Well, again, couldn't do the Slow Bar Vaja Vintage Expedition without those sponsors and their help. So thank you for that. And, you know, you can always help out the show if you've got a couple tacos in your pocket still

jingling around there. And I do want to acknowledge the folks who've dropped a taco in the tank lately. So let me run through these folks and say thank you, sincere thanks to Mountain Top Cabin Carrier stickers are on the way. They are going out today. Jose Vargas. Thank you for your support. Denise Wiles, thank you.

Chris Newman. Thank you. Anthony Golden in Ohio. I can't wait to get you to Baja with me next October in your Jeep. Thank you for your support, Anthony. Caleb Heinrich, thank you for your support. David, Carlo, up there in Alaska, thank you, David, for your ongoing support. Hope to get you to Baja someday in your FJ40.

Elk Management, thank you, Patty McCormick, an old friend from San Francisco. Patty, we've known each other a long time. I'm glad you listened to the show, and thanks for your support. Emily, Long, thank you. Thank you for your support. I truly appreciate slit a tray of tacos in. Emily, thank you. Jose Ruvicabla.

You sent me some folks to know, some folks to interview for the show. It sounds like Ohos Negros. I know your friends, Jose. They'll probably get on the show. But thank you for your support. I really appreciate it. Thomas Melville. Thank you, Amigo.

And Eric Lippincott. I've mentioned his name before. He is the Slow Baja ambassador for the state of Colorado. And I want to say, hey, thanks. Eric, you slid in an entire party platter, entire party platter with the side of guacamole to the Slow Baja cause. And I appreciate that. And I'm looking forward to hang with you and hang with

Travis Gardner, you're coming on the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition. I can't wait to see you in Baja. All right, well, on to today's show. Kurt Williams, this is his birthday today, by the way, as I'm recording this, happy birthday, Kurt. Kurt Williams is one of the great people to know in the Land Cruiser world. He runs Cruiser Outfitters, which is a fabulous shop in Murray, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake. He helped me sort some suspension problems and help with some sponsorship on my ARB,

old man, emu suspension that I've had on the truck for just over a year now, and I really love. And I had a chance to meet Kurt at the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum Cruiser Fest. And he's really just, again, a terrific guy. He's traveled all over the world, five of the seven continents on the expedition seven's trip about 20 years ago with Greg Miller. I told you about that on the last intro to the last show. Kurt's been everywhere, man, and we're going to talk about it today. We're going to talk about why travel matters.

So without further ado, Kurt Williams today on Slow Baja. Hey, Kurt. Good morning. Morning to you. What a delight to have Kurt Williams on Slow Baja here at your house and your garage. What's this land cruiser behind me here? This is Jenny. This is my 1989 BJ74.

So this is one I get out and use a lot on the trail. So kind of keep it right here ready. It's always just unplug the trickle charger this morning. So it's always ready just to fire up and go. Right-hand drive. Right-hand drive. Japanese market? It is a JDM market with the turbo diesel.

It's got the 13BT. It's just a delight to rip down the highway. And it's kind of, we're going to dive into a lot of cruisers or talk about some things today. But that's about as close as you can get to a replacement for an FJ40, in my opinion, for the U.S. market. Now that they're 25 years old and legal, it's a perfect, little more modern than a 40 series, but still has the same vibe and fill. Awesome. Well, we just lost all of our listeners on some arcane and cruise. talk.

Right. Stay with us. I promise it'll get better. Well, again, delightful to be here. A beautiful day in Sandy, Utah. It's nine-something in the morning. The blue skies, birds are chirping. And Sam is on multiple cameras making the show look great.

So we're going to dive right into it. You're the owner of cruiser outfitters. You've been exceptionally kind to me in helping me with some sponsor stuff for the Nora 1000, keeping my land cruiser going. and I'm grateful for that. But before we dive into your business, your Land Cruiser history, all that, I really want to know about Kurt Williams and your travels.

You've been everywhere, man. Isn't that the Johnny Cash song? I've been everywhere, man. I still have a few places to check off my list, but been fortunate and very humble to have some of the opportunities I have over the years with some amazing people, and that's kind of one of the best parts of travel, too,

is when you get to go to amazing places, but with amazing people sharing that with both locals living there and maybe friends and family you get to come from home with. Yeah, so I met a couple of your pals. I met Greg Miller for the first time and Claycroft for the first time. You did Expedition 7 with Greg, and I think Clay was part of that. He was, yeah. And you did that seven continents, folks, Expedition 7, you don't need to dive into it right now,

listen to the rest of this show before you get onto YouTube. But check that out. But you drove five of the seven continents, right? I did. I was fortunate to be part of five of the seven continents. The whole journey was taking a vehicle to all seven continents and was fortunate to get to do five of those. Amazing. And your entry into that, if my research is correct, did they tab you with, hey, Kirk, can you run this thing up to Newfoundland for us? Yeah, that was the first continent that I was North America. We ran from right here in Salt Lake City left, went down to Overland Expo West and took it all the way out to Cape Spear in Newfoundland in a 70 series land cruiser. and just they needed an additional driver.

And I had a great relationship with both Scott Brady, who was the founder of Overland Journal and Expedition International, Overland National, and Greg Miller, who we know is a big... Expedition Portal. Expedition Portal and Expedition Journal or Overland Journal and Overland International are all his words. Got that, Scott. Scott is a busy guy.

Got that Scott. And yeah, they had formulated this plan to take the same vehicle, a land cruiser to all seven continents, which is an amazing feat. and I was very humbled to get invited to be a part of the North America segment. I really thought that's where it would end. I would go do that segment. I'd fly home, the truck ship, and then just kind of kept getting invites along the way

and kept saying yes, absolutely, and ended up doing the bulk of the Expedition 7 journey. And what was your role? A handful of different roles, depending on where and when, helped with some of the little bit of the planning, though Scott and a gentleman named Kyle Patton handle a bulk of the planning depending on which continent. What I really was involved with is driving, vehicle maintenance. And then my big role came into play for the Australia segment. I went over ahead of time and we bought and built a new land cruiser to support the Australia journey that we had planned. We were going to be doing the Canning Stock Route, which is about

1,800 kilometers. So it's called like 11, 1,200 mile self-supported journey through the Canning Stock Route area, which is thousands of sand dunes and super, super, super. super remote travel. So we built a little 79 series four door truck with a big canopy on the back, like an enclosed canopy box to hold fuel. So that was a held a lot of, not only fuel, but a lot of other kind of mission critical support being food and clothing and bags and camping gear. So you weren't shooting kangaroos to eat on the way? No, no, no. We let them live. We let them all live. They're beautiful animals, so it's fun to see him bounced around. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that was the big role. And then that truck continued on. And I was fortunate to get to do all of

Australia with that one, and then we did Africa, spent time in the southern half of Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, and then that truck shipped to South America, and we drove down to Yushaya, all the way back. Wow. They're here in Salt Lake now. Yeah, I saw it, saw I'm at the museum. So Expedition 7, can you break that down from when it started and when it finished about three years? Yeah, it was over about a three-year period, and it finished off, if I'm not mistaken, I want to say, because we were talking about this. We had more members of Expedition 7 that had taken part in some form of the journey

at Cruiser Fest this last week and then we ever have in previous. That's like the first time we've had that many members. Scott Brady wasn't able to join us because he's currently traveling in an Ineos down through Africa. And a handful others had other commitments. But we had a really good group. I think there was 14 of us there

that were able to get together and take a photo next to the vehicles. But that all kicked off in about, I'm going to say about 2011 is when the idea popped up. Greg Miller, long-time land cruiser enthusiast, but also an adventure enthusiast himself, was during the week of the outdoor retailer show, about, again, about 10, 11, 12 years ago now. And Scott Brady was in town, and I actually helped kind of pair the two of them up. They just wanted to meet and kind of mutual acquaintances. I had met Scott before, knew Greg really well.

And they were just casually chatting over breakfast and said, how cool would it be to take the same land cruiser to all seven continents? And I'm paraphrasing a fair bit because that's quite a long story. You should definitely ask either of them if you ever get the chance. And Scott had already done a little bit of planning about taking a motorcycle to all seven continents, but a vehicle's quite different, but thought, yeah, we could, let's talk about this. This sounds needed. It'd be fun.

We've both driven land cruisers on lots of continents, but not the same one. How cool it would it be to take the same one to all seven continents? That's really where the idea spool up. And then like over the next six, nine months, it would come to life and everything would get put together. And that's kind of where I got tagged in is on that initial North America journey leaving Salt Lake here heading out to Cape Spear. Well, in addition to that amazing voyage, if my research is correct, three-ish years, 50 or so people cycled through various parts. Five vehicles? Is that about right? Yeah, I've got to do my math here.

six vehicles all in one two three four five yep six vehicles five land cruisers one high luxe the arctic truck in AT 44 yeah little over 50 people were able to be part of the journey in different forms that's not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of amazing people we met around the world or helped us in many facets of the trip all over I went as I mentioned went to

Australia and I spent a couple of weeks ahead of time building a land cruiser from scratch with an ARB store over there and just got to make some amazing friends some of which I still definitely in contact with to this day. We met over a few weeks, but they saw the vision of what we were doing and realized, hey, these guys are from out of town. They're going to need some help, and they dove right in, and we've got it done. We're going to circle back to the folks you've met around the world

and meeting people around the world in your travel soon. We'll get back to that. But tell me about one of the guys from that trip who I met on this trip. We're going to shout out Sinway, the photographer. So he's a friend from Baja. saw him at the Cruiser Fest VIP dinner. He was on that trip. But Clay Croft, who's got quite a reputation of his own Ex-Overland,

you've done a number of trips with him as well. I have, yeah. I've been really fortunate to travel with Ex-Overland for the last four or five years and still doing some looking at some fun projects with them for the future. So Clay came on Expedition 7 initially to the Russia, Asia portion, when we crossed kind of like their summer road, Road of Bones out through all the way out to Magadam. Clay was the cinematographer for that portion. And I had met Clay before, but real briefly,

met him at Seema, and we were, you know, kind of friends. And I was certainly excited about all the cool things that he was spooling up to do with X Overland. He had big, big visions, but like things were really starting off small then. And he filled in as the cinematographer on Russia. So he and I got to spend a whole lot of time together and really get to know him. And that's where we really bonded and formed a great relationship. They, right, when we finished with that segment of Expedition 7, he went on to go do their very first season, which was going up to Alaska. That's like X Overland Series 1. Meanwhile, Expedition 7 is still ongoing.

We went to Africa. We spent an amazing trip in Africa covering the Skeleton Coast and doing some really neat stuff. Well, we then shipped to South America where we did, shipped into Buenos Aires, where we then drove down to Ushuaya and did the trip all the way back here to Salt Lake with the vehicles. Well, Clay subsequently was just getting ready to go the opposite direction through Central America down to Panama. And so he had called me. We'd stayed in touch and I'd been watching their first season and see all the cool things are up to. And he'd called and just said, hey, what did you guys do at this border crossing? Or what was this like? What should we plan for here?

And I had just finished with that. And I had been involved in kind of more of the logistics on that side of those countries than probably any other in the previous. So I was really comfortable with those. And I was really diving in and trying to improve my Spanish as best I could. And so it got to some point after a whole bunch of calls and a whole bunch of questions, he just said, hey, can you come on this trip? You know, would you be available? I was like, you know what? I think I can do this. I have a poor habit probably of not saying no enough to things, but it's led to some pretty awesome experiences.

And maybe it's set me back, you know, in my career, maybe set me back financially over the years by going out and doing a lot of these things. However, I've got some great memories. So I said yes. Yeah, I think by any measure. you are leading an extraordinarily rich life blessed by any measure, by any measure around the world. You're leading an extraordinary life. Do you ever reflect on, you're a Utah native? Do you ever reflect on like how's a boy from Utah found his way all over the world?

I mean, I'm assuming you didn't spend your entire childhood in front of an Atari. You were an outdoorsy kid from what I've learned in my research. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents? Were they great travelers as well? Yeah, we definitely, I grew up here in Utah. It's kind of all I've known, been fortunate to travel all around, but really love this state both for the people, but also the outdoor recreation we have available.

And that started in my childhood. We did a lot of camping and boating and fishing when we were young. Definitely probably spent too much time in front of the TV and video games. But I never really got that into video games. I had two older brothers that did more. I was kind of more of the tinker or out getting in my dad's toolbox causing havoc on my bicycle or something and got into motorcycles and go carts as a really young child. You know, even kind of buying a motorcycle before my parents said I could have one, had to hide it

for a little while before I could bring it home as a young teenager, not even quite a teenager. But yeah, always loved that kind of stuff. And then I think it's probably fair to say Boy Scouts and getting involved in scouting really kicked it off. My dad was a scoutmaster and he over the years involved with some of the other. that helping out. My brothers were into scouting and we, I grew up a little further out in Sandy here, had a really big, a lot of youth in our neighborhood. It was kind of a young neighborhood. So pretty active in that way. You got to have a lot of great at camping experiences, winter

camping, summer camping, hiking, but just the other cool activities that come along with scouts. So you just, I really learned to love the outdoors. I think by the time I was, oh, I don't know, 13 or 14, somehow, and I don't know where this spot. but I got really into ghost towns and treasures. This is kind of weird. This is a total tangent. My mom bought me as a teenager, bought me like some Utah ghost town books

and some Utah treasure books that I still have to this day, but are actually still really relevant text to this day if you're into actually bumping around the West Desert and looking all over the mountains looking for these ghost towns. And by the time I was like 15, I was pretty bent on being a prospector when I was in my summers. I thought, you know what?

I'm going to all summer I'm going to like beat around the hills and go gold panning. This is like such a, you think, I think back on it now how laughable it is, but it was aspirational to me to be a prospector and just camp all summer. And I camped a lot during high school. We would go, there's a little area down south here called Corner Canyon. It's all developed with homes now, but we would camp up there all summer during the school year after football games. I had an old FJ 40. We'd bounce around the hills in. But I just loved being outdoors to the point where to me, my bedroom at my parents' house was more just like a little base camp of where you keep your things. I spent more time in my living out of my vehicle or friends' houses or up in the mountains than I did anywhere else. So yeah, I got to give it credit to my mom for those ghost-tale books because that really led me into wanting to be out of the grid and just camp and travel as much as possible. And that really led to my love of land cruisers and it's how it all spiraled out of control.

So there's no truth to the rumor that your mom had six aloe boxes and you had to have all your stuff in that at all times. No, not true. But they, my parents grew up with four by four. You know, always had my dad, always had like a Ford truck. And we, you know, camped and traveled and had a pickup camper or tent camped and stuff. But never into, like, true going out to do four-wheel drive adventures. That was subsidiary to getting to like a campsite or getting down to the beach to launch a boat. You know, or buzzing up a canyon to go shoot, you know, go plinket targets or something. But he wasn't like a four-by-four enthusiast, so to speak.

But always he had an old Bronco, had some Ford trucks, had some Toyota trucks, and then got into four runners and Tacomas themselves. but that was kind of always a tangent to what they like to do in the outdoors and their kind of activities. Well, just driving around here, I was saying to Sam, just drive around this neighborhood is like, hey, this guy's got an RV in his yard, this guy's got a boat, this guy's got a boat, and an RV, and, you know, a four by four. And, you know, it's just, it's recreation central here. It is.

Here in Utah, we're very fortunate. Like, within one hour, you're kind of on the dirt roads of the West Desert, and no joke, you can drive to California on the Pony Express Trail, nearly exclusively dirt, starting about an hour from here. You head out to the West Desert in the summertime. Slow Baja future trip coming. There you go. And it's an amazing trip.

I have done that. We did the Pony Express Trail from just outside of Salt Lake here all the way to South Lake Tahoe, almost exclusively on dirt. It's a pretty amazing trip through remote Nevada. But, yeah, summertime our mountains here, our Wasatch Mountains, just to our back. And Uenta Mountains and roll on. We have so much summertime mountain off road in four-by-four trail recreation that all lead to great hiking and hunting, fishing, whatever your form of recreation is, backpacking.

We've just got great mountains in the summertime available. Of course, a lot of great winter sports were known for, too. Yeah, of course. Is it true that you were mountain biking as a teenager, and you saw a group of FG 40s out there, and you said, I have to have one of those. Is that really true? Is that just a legend?

No, that's 100% true. We were on a Boy Scout trip. This would have been 1994. I got to think of my dates here. I had it been 94 because I would have been 14. We were on a mountain biking trip in Moab, and we were doing the Poison Spider Mesa Trail. It's either 94 or 95.

I got to just kind of think how old I am dating back. But we're on the Poison Spider Mesa Trail with our Boy Scout Troop, Troop 1459. We were down there. We did the Slick Rock Bike Trail one day and kind of just all the, we do maybe every other year, do a mountain biking trip at scene between scouts or family. And we were on the Poison Spider Mesa Trail and saw a group of four by fours. Time I didn't really know what they, super know what they were, but working around the trail.

And as I kind of learned a little bit more about those, right then on the spot, because we had our bikes just kind of tipped over, and we were taking a water break and got to watch them all go up through a fun little waterfall, Z-turn area that kind of a neat part of the trail about halfway through, and then realized, man, those are Toyota's.

Those aren't like jeeps that I kind of know. And then it rang a bell that right around the corner from my parents' house, just three, four houses away. A guy had one of those. He was a hang glider, and he had a big hang glider rack all set up. And it was this kind of rusty, crusty, old cruiser, but I had always, like, really appreciated seeing that, too.

I always thought it was super cool. You hear one of the dogs is going off out there in the background. That's all right. That's real life. That's right. You're sitting right here with us, folks. Yeah. That's our little, that's Lexus.

We have Tech and Lexus, our two German shepherds here at the house. Wonderful dogs, but they get noisy from time to time. Tech and Lexus, yeah. But, yeah, so he had one of those, had the hang glider, kind of knew what they were, then got home. I'm, I'm a 14, just, I probably just turned 15 and I started looking for a vehicle. And I was actually looking in the, this is back in the newspaper days, you'd hop in the,

get the Salt Lake Tribune or the Desert News. I was a paper boy, so I had easy access to those. That was my revenue source as a teenager. I had a paper out, but I would always go through the newspaper, even before I took it out on my paper out, I would go through the classifieds and look at things. And I was looking at Willie's Overland, Wagon, I was looking, the Willys Wagons, I was looking, the Willys Wagon's, I was looking at Willie's pickup trucks. And certainly Land Cruisers were on my radar, but,

But even then they always demanded a little more of a premium. You know, like if a Jeep was $1,500 at the time, an equivalent era land cruiser was like $2,500. So I was like, man, what's up with these things? They're a little more money. And I'm this like naive 15-year-old kid that has no clue about mechanicals. My dad always did work on his own vehicles. So knew, you know, always helped him and knew a way around things. But didn't know about like the four by four aspects.

And I remember seeing a Jeep ad and it said it had lockers. And I remember calling the guy on the phone. I'm like this 15-year-old mind, you see he was really patient. I'm going like, so it's got lockers, like worn lockers out on the hubs. My dad's trucks had had hub locks. That was a fun thing to do as kids is we'd get out and go lock the hubs. And he's like, no, no, it's got lockers in the differentials. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, like the worn ones.

You like click the, you rotate the handle. And he's like, yeah, whatever. You know, like, I think back on that all the time now that, hey, we all start somewhere. There's no bad questions, you know, bring everybody, help level everybody up. because I was that young 15-year-old kid that had no clue what a locker was, and here I am talking to this guy with this built Jeep and didn't end up buying that one.

Somehow through the family grapevine, an aunt of mine, my aunt and uncle, Bart and Diane, they heard I was looking for a land cruiser. And I had a cousin in California that turns out had one. It turns out the cruiser sphere around me was already kind of a little bit present that I didn't even know. My cousin wasn't going to sell his. My aunt heard that I was looking for one,

and she said, you know what? my brother, so he's not, it's my aunt's brother. She's married in the family, so I'd never met him before. He was in the Navy and had just renewed his service term and signed on for like another five years and had a land cruiser behind his parents' house just out in West Jordan here. And she said, let me get a hold of them because I know my parents want it gone. They don't want that thing sitting under the tarp in the backyard anymore. It's been there for three or five years already.

But they had to write them a letter. This is in the time, you know, like this is a little pre-unerate. This would have been 1995. They had to write them a letter, took a few weeks of back and forth, and I'm the anxious kid calling every, probably every other night saying, have you heard back yet? And finally, they did, and they were willing to sell this land cruiser, and I bought it for $1,500. It was a 1968 FG40, and my dad, like, totally indulged and went out there and helped me pick it up. And that's kind of where it all borne as far as me getting a vehicle to drive. So, Kurt, I don't actually really remember how I came to be begging for your knowledge and for your help.

But cruiser outfitters is a has a legendary spot in the land cruiser community. And, you know, like so many things, when you get into one of these specialty vehicles, it could be an old Porsche or could be an old VW or a heck, you know, a Rolls-Royce for that matter. But you need those people who are the keys to your community. And I'm so fortunate where I live that I had George Esther and I had Gary Cardam and, you know, Marlin. probably the last carburetor he touched was mine. That rebuild that I got a chance to meet him and make, not kidding, my new best friend in the world,

with the, you know, 40 hours I spent with him, you know, rebuilding my car and giving me information. You're that guy. You're that guy for hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people. Your cruiser outfitters is this legendary spot, this beacon of knowledge and service right here in Sandy, Utah. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I've been very fortunate to be part of the land cruiser community. And some of those names you mentioned are absolutely mentors of mine and people I look up to. And folks that we do work with all the time, Marlin was an inspiration to all of us, very sad on his passing this last year because he was such an ambassador to the Toyota community. And while he was really big in Toyota mini trucks and really well known for the Marlon Crawler and his others, he was also a land cruiser guy. And he did a lot of land cruiser car work and was really known in those in the early years. It was a great loss to the community, but his legend will live on.

I trust that Big Mike and the family will definitely do it right with the Marlin brand. They're still doing great things. My story started. We kind of mentioned Erdogan in the podcast talking about how I got into Land Cruisers as a 15-year-old. Well, then I had to have a place to buy parts. And like many, Spector off-road was so well known. It had this awesome paper catalog. And I remember, like, here's this 15-year-old that orders the Spectre catalog and goes through.

again with the highlighter and the post-it notes, all the things I'm going to need for this land cruiser. I worked, sold a motorcycle to buy parts, and did my paper out, had started working at a small engine repair shop. And I did find a shop here in Salt Lake called Cruiser Outfitters, and it was up in Salt Lake, which seemed so far away at the time.

That was a 30-minute drive for a teenager, a 16-year-old, and his Rattie FJ-40, it's a little bit of a commute, but really got to know the owners and the folks, the Cruiser Outfitters, which was right down by the ballpark. Salt Lake there. It was right, less than a block away. And I ended up working there was a customer for the first few years and ended up working there. And my, just as I graduated from high school and

college, and he hired me to part out a whole bunch of vehicles. So he had a whole parking lot full of kind of rusty, crusty, wrecked FJ60s and some rolled 40s and just beat up trucks that were going to be best served as parts. And I spent an entire summer parting out all those vehicles. And we would, you would take one, get all the good parts off it, put it on a trailer, and then fill full of all the other scraps, stuff that couldn't be resold or didn't have any market value, and then all the good parts we'd put on the shelves. Well, fast forward to 2001 and the owner, Daryl Norta, still a dear friend of mine and still a total land cruiser enthusiast, Daryl decided he wanted to go be an underwater commercial

diver off in the Gulf. That was like a new big thing. I think it was always a thing, but new big thing for him, a lot of money, and he didn't have, you know, like a connection holding him into Salt Lake. So he basically was going to sell the company. and Spector off road, ironically, ended up buying all our used parts from us. So we shipped, I helped load

and kind of helped work that deal. I was 21 years old at the time. Helped kind of load all that, work all that, and we shipped a bunch of some diesel loads of parts down to Spector. And then I kind of helped sell off some of the stuff that didn't sell. And then in the end,

I ended up with Cruiser Outfitters, which is about everything I could fit in the bed of my dad's 1996 Tacoma at the time. And a name and a phone number. And a name and a phone number and a bunch of accounts. We were an ARB dealer dating back to when they came to the United States in the 90s. We were West Coast differential, a lot of these different brands.

I still have great relationships to this day that we do a lot of work with. And meanwhile, I'm a college student. So this was what I thought was the ultimate college job. I'm selling Land Cruiser parts on the Internet. No website at the time. We built a website in 2003. I'm 22 years old, 21, 22 years old. And up at the University of Utah going through the engineering program,

and I would then at night, I'm on the computer on forums like Pirate and I hate mud, selling Land Cruiser parts, yep, and selling knuckle rebuild kits and tie riding kits and a lot of used parts back then, too. Used to have a lot more. You see here we are at my house. I have way more used parts at my house than I do the shop even with Cruiser Outfurters fast forward now. We employ 12 people, ship all around the world, have a full cruiser tech as our e-commerce. But we mainly focus on new parts and we specialize like in drive train. everything from the engine down to the axles, brakes, steering, suspension, etc. I still have a lot of you stuff that's in my personal collection because I still have a handful

of personal land cruisers. I'm both driving but also going to be getting running or planning to build in the future. Never get rid of that. Never get rid of that. Yep, exactly. You can tell him a hoarder. A little bit of a hoarder. Well, pretty well organized hoarder. Hey, well, let's take a quick break right here. We'll work in a message from my friend's Baja bound insurance, the Baja Baja Bound Expo is for the next place you're going to see me. And Jeff Hill, Baja Bound, if you're heading that way, if you're heading south of the border, mainland Mexico, Baja Bound is the only way to go. So we'll be back in a minute with Kurt Williams after we hear from Baja Bound bound.

Here it's Little Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. And when we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at BajaBound.com. That's Baja Bound.com, serving Mexico traveler since now. 1994. Big thanks to my new sponsor Nomad Wheels. They stepped up and sponsored the Slow Baja Safari class at the Nora Mexican 1000, and I

don't know if you've seen the pictures, but Slow Baja is running a set of 501 convoys in utility gray, and they look pretty damn sharp. They were a little shiny. I will admit that they were a little shiny when I got them installed at Basil's Garage just before the Norah Mexican 1,000, but after, I don't know, 3,800 miles of Baja dirt, they look perfect. Nomadwheels.com. That's right. Check them out reflecting a minimalist approach to off-road travel. Nomadwheels.com. Hey, we're back. We're here with Kurt Williams. We're out in his back garage, the back shop.

And it's a beautiful morning in Sandy, and I'm delighted to be here. It's so nice of you to allow me to be your plus one at the dinner the other night. I don't usually reach out to folks that I don't know personally. I mean, we have a little relationship. We've had a few messages back and forth. You've helped me immensely with you. with my land cruiser and the suspension stuff that I had to upgrade last year. But I haven't, I don't think I've formally thanked you for bringing me along. That was quite a dinner and quite an accomplished group

of folks just hanging around, you know, being quiet, being Toyota nerds. Yeah, what a neat event. That was our first year ever doing like a little Friday night get together before the Saturday Cruiser Fest. And the whole idea was, hey, why don't, we're gonna have some neat friends of the museum in town,

why don't we get together and just be able to hang out and kind of have a fun little quiet evening in the museum because the next day we knew was going to be big and fun. So it was just nice to have a little more chill night. And I'm really glad you did reach out because it was great to get to know you a little more and spend some time together and hang out amongst some cool folks. Yeah. And of all the folks that I sit down next to at the table, the guy that I'm sitting next to his son is going through the college baseball recruiting process. So my son's a pro baseball player. So I've lived every minute of this guy's life from six-year-old, you know, Little League to travel ball to, you know, can my kid play in college, you know, what level, all that stuff. So it's just funny not to want to talk max tracks or rhino racks, but just to talk kids in baseball.

Yeah. And it was great being here at this time because my son was in town playing ball. But back to what we're here to talk to you about, what have you learned? I mean, you've traveled all over the world. what have you learned from the way the rest of the world looks at life? I'm going to throw out a few things that I learned from my grandfather, who, you know, once we were sitting there, he was a great traveler, came from nothing, did well, had clothing stores, did well,

and wanted to see the world while he was able. And luckily, when I was out of college, I got to be his valet for a little period of life, a little window where my grandmother didn't want to travel anymore. and I got to see a little bit of the world carrying my grandfather's bags and making sure he didn't do anything silly. And one morning we were having a fabulous breakfast on the Grand Canal in Venice, and I'm looking at this thimble full of coffee and two thimbles full of orange juice and a croissant. And I'm working up what the lira to dollar conversion is.

And as I said to my grandfather, I think this breakfast is like $35, grams. He said, yeah, if you want to save money, stay home. That's awesome. You know? And he then, you know, what I learned from him was the reason you travel is because it's not like home. Stay home if you want to stay home. What have you learned? You've been all over border controls, off-road remote locations.

You must have dealt with the ingenuity of the local mechanic who has nothing compared to what's in your shop, yet can still see the problem, sort the problem, and come up with a solution with, again, sort of next to nothing. I mean, at least that's what I see in Baja. Take it away. And that happens everywhere around the world, that local ingenuity. We take for granted how fortunate we are to have tools or just know-how or shops or resources, the internet places that we can go find that kind of information. That doesn't exist still to this day around the world.

They've still got to do very bush mechanics and kind of just keep things going. But that would be just one segment of the many lessons learned. I could break it down into business lessons learned. I go out of my way when I've traveled to go visit four-by-four shops or land cruiser shops if I can, but even just general four-by-four shops because it just always need to see what's relevant in their area, what's different about the business, and I kind of love that art of business. Certainly it's fun to see mechanics and how they fix things and how they work on them and what repairs they commonly see.

That's really neat. But I think, I'm happy to chat on all of those could go on and on and on about the neat, funny repairs I've seen or the cool, ingenious things I've learned by watching how they assemble something or how they fix things. But really, the kind of the neat especially just the way human beings live around the world and the lessons you can learn to matter what kind of lifestyle or what kind of economic situation they're in. People in the United States, I think a lot of travelers get pretty hung up thinking of traveling some of those areas because it is so different. And I hear a lot of people say,

Hey, I remember what this happened when I did the first trip with Expedition Overland, we went to Panama. And I remember hearing a lot of, that was their first international trip. And we heard a lot from viewers of the show, fans of the show, friends of the show at Expos. And when we did travels and myself personally, hey, that's really cool. You guys went and did that. But I'd never do that trip because I'm not comfortable going to those countries, X, Y, Z reasons. I could give you a whole list. It's too far away.

And you get said, you live in Southern California. It's not too far away to really get yourself out of the cultural you're used to and get yourself immersed amongst a totally different culture than your own. Really, it's easier than coming to Utah. It's less money than coming to Utah. That's even true for going to Alaska. Everybody puts Alaska and going up to like Pruto Bay or getting up to Fairbanks on their bucket list. And that's amazing. It's an amazing place.

But it's less of a drive to get into Central American countries. It's shorter miles to go from Salt Lake to like Panama, roughly. than it is from Salt Lake to Pruto Bay. When you think about that, like, whoa, that's crazy. And if I go to Panama, I go through five plus countries along the way and deal with five plus similar but distinct, amazing Latin American cultures, starting in Mexico, working your way down. So that's the part I love the most about it.

I always surmise it with people are worried about fuel. Well, guess what? People drive around the world. There are gas stations around the world. They also drive. They figure it out. You will figure it out. Yeah.

It's not to say you don't need a plan and prep. do a little bit of research on where you're going to be, but you can drive up and down Baja without having to have too much extra fuel because guess what, locals also put fuel in their tanks every day. People are worried about food. Well, guess what? People eat every day, everywhere around the world. And that's the best way, bar none, to learn and to make relationships is over mills, whether you're buying the mill or somebody you meet while you're sitting down having a So I'll dive off real quick when we travel Baja both with kangaroo and we're racing and we usually try and go down ahead of time just to spend some relaxed days hanging and camping and beach camping

or when I've traveled down there for other personal trips or with XO, I am a total advocate of don't bring any food with you for multiple reasons. Bring a fridge full of coax. That's what we bring. Or buy the coax when you're there. Bring some cold drinks to have when you're out on the beach. Go into town and get food. get tacos, go meet people.

Absolutely. It's ridiculous, in my opinion. Everyone's got their own opinion to bring all your food, get to a beautiful beach location, and then stay there and just cook your own food and stay immersed only amongst yourselves. And if you love to cook, maybe there's an argument there. I'm not going to die on that's not the hill I'm going to down. But for me, the joy is going to the beach, enjoying it, and then heading into town and getting tacos and returning to the beach or travel to a different spot.

Or the taco stand on the beach. Or the taco stand on the beach. Or the fisherman who brings the fish that you buy and his wife cooks it for you right there. Absolutely. I'm in a thousand percent agreement right there. So not only that, they're with border crossings, and this certainly holds true if you were to move further, moving from Mexico into, you know, technical Central America getting into Guatemala and further south, a lot of times that those borders have to throw all your food away, particularly things like meats and cheeses. So you find yourself right back at the grocery store. And that's cool.

Buying local and shopping and local tandoes and grocery stores and Mercadoes, that's a great, that's also a great culture experience. But like thinking you're, going to go to Costco and preload your trip ahead of time so you don't have to, you know, be, I hate to use the word burden, but some maybe feel like that's going to be a burden figuring out how I'm going to eat. It's the wrong way to look at it, you know, like go eat as the locals do. Try something new. In my 71 FJ40, I literally don't have a cooler. So I'm stopped, I stop for gas a lot. You're going to be able to find something when you stop for gas. And I eat where the locals eat. And if there are three, three locals gathered at a tiny little stand, that's a good sign.

seven, that's a better sign, and that tells me where I'm going to go. And lately, probably over the last year or two, I keep a little eagle eye out when I'm in any little market or Tienda. If there's a plastic cooler sitting around, I always open it because you're going to find tamales or you're going to find machaca burritos. You know, sometimes it's tortillas and I don't need to buy tortillas, but when I see machaca burritos, it's I buy six or nine or 12 because I'm going to eat two and then they're like power bars for the next two days.

Wrap them up in tinfoil and have them for the next few days, reheat them or sometimes you eat them cold. They're still good. Exactly. Yeah. We're the same way. So try to minimize any like prepared foods. I mean, there's exceptions.

We'll grab some local meat, grab some carneasada at the market and then cook it on the beach over a campfire. But enjoy, enjoy embrace and harness those. local engagements that often happen over food because I can think through Expedition 7 and XO on 40 countries around the world some of the most meaningful conversations we've had with locals and some of the best travel tips invites go check out these have all happened over mills have happened because you're parked out front and somebody will come over to your table and say excuse me what are you guys doing and you get talking and they're going oh well then you've got to

go check this out you've got to go do this stuff you're never going to read about in the old Frommers guide stuff you're not going to find in somebody else's trip report you know maybe maybe you'll find it on an old map or something but you know what it means but local knowledge trumps all it beats everything you can find is like getting some local knowledge and that always seems to happen and resonate and facilitate over food when you're sitting down over meals I agree 100 percent and I know you've done an awful lot of travel with an awful lot of external considerations, filming, schedules, airplane flights, what have you. The thing that I find most interesting on travel, and again, I'm talking Baja most of the time,

is being open to this interaction that you just brought up about, you know, the local at a meal or what are you guys doing? And then maybe the next thing that comes, oh, you need to go check this out. Or, hey, come to my place. I'm doing, you know, I'm having a barbecue. And a lot of people just aren't open to that or wired to that. And maybe now that our vehicles are so dialed, they're so self-contained, they don't have to be open to that. I've got my rooftop tent.

I've got my refrigerator. I've got my, you know, portable fold-out grill out of stainless steel. I don't need to do anything and I'm afraid to do anything. It is an interesting irony. And this certainly applies to Baja. As we know, there's so many amazing great little taco stands and you can find food everywhere. But this happens in the U.S. too, that we build these vehicles and that the kind of recent, and I shouldn't say recent trend, it's a pretty long-going trend because it is such a fun way to travel overlanding is about being so self-contained. But maybe we're too self-contained in some reasons because I think the same holds true going to Moab or going to other.

made that's name a good example. There's a lot of other small towns here in the west in Utah, Nevada, California all over that you probably ought to go sit down to the local diner there too because that same transfer of information will happen over a cup of coffee or happen with your waiter or waitress along the way. Interesting, we with Expedition 7, less so with XO because of the filming schedule and happy to kind of chat on that. But with Expedition 7, filming was secondary to the trip we were doing. And Greg was very specific that this needs to be authentic, authentic way we would travel. If we can capture film and photo along the way, that's awesome. However, that's not what we're not here to tell the story. That's exhibition

Overland does. That's a little different. So they have to kind of prepare differently. But because of that, we bought prepared, or we bought very few mills on Expedition 7 that we, like to make ourselves is what I'm getting. We ate out as much as we could because, one, it was more efficient. Sometimes it costs them a member, but the big one is like, that's where you get the best cultural exchange throughout. traveling countries, especially when you're traveling through a handful of countries in the duration of a few weeks or a few months, it's hard to really settle down, slow down, and stop and dive in, but mills, I keep saying, are a great way to do that. But that's true of the U.S.

as well. It's no better way to get to know a local town than find the local diner, you know, skip the, skip the chilies or skip the chain stores and go into like a little local diner. You're going to get to know the real vibe of that area. Yeah. And my analogy on that as well is if you can get away from... from fast food or chain, which is also very prevalent. It's very hard to find the mom and pop diner or what have you. But, you know, I often think about it's rare that you're going to see somebody in an American fast food restaurant kind of singing and dancing behind the counter, enjoying that they're making tacos or what have you the way I see in Baja. There's a joy in, you know, it's a small stand.

They've got some business. They're happy. They're hand-making some tortillas. It's slap, slap, slap, goes on the press, goes on the grill. You've got a minute there, and there's some happiness that I don't see when I'm at XYZ fast food, you know, what have you here.

I want to stay on this Baja thread that we're getting into. And you've had some travels in Baja related to your Baja 1,000 experience with kangaroo racing. Can you tell me about kangaroo and who you're racing for, what the class is and what it's all about. Yeah, you bet. So kangaroo formed out of just kind of a love of, really a love of adventure travel and a love for kind of bumping around the desert. We started, it's all local Salt Lake guys.

Originally was all gentlemen from Salt Lake that we all had a common denominator of land cruisers, that we were all members of a local club called the Wasatch Cruisers. And the other denominators, we all kind of like to drive fast out in the desert. We didn't have race cars. This is our own personal land cruisers, be it an FJ 40, a 60 bump around. And we all had a desire, really loved the idea of running the 1,000. But we didn't know a whole lot about it, to be fair. So a handful of us had been down there on personal trips to Baja before,

kind of just camping trips or maybe on a cruise stop. I think if you were to pull our whole group, everyone had been there before. And then so we started going as kind of a group, a little nucleus of the team. We'd go down there before we ever started racing. And we finally got to a point where we decided, okay, we're ready to do this, we're ready to race. And we actually started in a Class 5, a Volkswagen-based car. So we raced our first year in Baja in Class 5, and that was a ton of fun because everybody appreciates seeing a Volkswagen.

We weren't like an 11 car, like a bonestock Volkswagen bug. Those are the true soldiers, the true heroes of Baja. We were in a Class 5, which is still Volkswagen-based, but has a lot more suspension, so quite a capable vehicle. We bought that built. We learned everything about it, prepping it, rebuilding it, fixing things, modifying things and we went down and raced our first race was a peninsula run and finished the race that year in that little Volkswagen I think that drove the point home we were all hooked and a couple

years later before we were even racing we were going down and spectating and I would encourage anybody I've heard from a lot have said I want to go to Baja I like the idea of the Baja 1000 but I don't like the idea of touring Baja during the Baja 1,000 and I actually think quite the I opposite. I think it's one of the best times to travel to Baja if you want to go have that true Baja beach experience and remote and be able to see some race because they're two totally different things in two totally different places. In fact, I would argue that some of the beach locations and like really remote camping areas that are just beautiful are going to be less traveled that week. They will be less traveled that week because everybody's near the race. So

if you're on the opposite side of the peninsula, I promise you you'll have a more remote but then still get the ability to watch a thousand horsepower truck blast pile you in the night's a pretty special thing too which is pretty pretty crazy pretty crazy so we yeah we started doing that and one of the years that we were down there just doing one of our camping slash watch the race we'd spend a few days on the front end camping at cool spots go watch the race for the duration try and catch it a couple times and spend a few days camping afterwards just checking out sights and sounds and doing the bumping around bahad dirt roads thing we ran into uh we met joe bacal we were able to meet him in It's not as to we had a relationship with them, but we got to meet them in San Felipe where they were having some car troubles.

And we ended up helping them in the pits. And I think just in passing afterwards, we had always joked with Joe, hey, when you're ready to sell this vehicle. And he was at the time racing a Lexus, LX-570, which is the 200 series chassis. We always joked, hey, when you're ready to sell this, let us know, we'd be interested. Meanwhile, we get into a five car. We were racing the five car in local Utah races, did some, we've done the Mint 400 and done the Vegas Dorino. So we'd been doing some other desert racing, including building up to 1,000. And I got a Facebook message from him one day, hey, you guys still interested.

And I kind of passed it along to the team and everyone was in. And Darren Webster, a member of our team kind of really facilitated and followed up. And different members had different roles. And we ended up buying that vehicle from him. And that's what we've been racing since. So for about 10 years now, eight years now we've been racing that vehicle, which is a 200 series. With some pretty good success. It's pretty just in success.

Yeah, we're, we're, I have to do the math. I think we've raced Baja nine times and we've finished eight out of nine, which is pretty dang remarkable because usually it's about a 50% attrition rate. And I will attest to that because we're in a slow class, you know. And there's a lot to be said, a finish to us as a win. Yeah, fast class can go slow enough to finish too. They can go slow enough to finish. They just can't do it.

But if you're out there to win the whole race, you put a lot more on the line. All the mad respect in the world for those guys out there. It's fun to watch them racing at those. speeds. I mean, we're still a pretty quick car. Don't get me wrong. It's still a race, but we take it to us a finish is a win, and that's how we look at it. And we have six drivers on our team that are all like kind of equal stakeholders in the team. And if I'm driver one through five, my only job is to get a running, driving vehicle to the next driver. It's not to finish the race, not to win to race. So I'm just there to maintain a good pace, get to the next

checkpoint or pit stop where we're going to be doing a driver change and hand off a working, running, driving vehicle to my counterpart, to my teammate that then does the same. So the only guy that's really racing is the last driver bringing it over the finish line. And that's kind of how we, that's the mentality we go into a race is let's get to the finish line. In order to win, you must first finish. Exactly. Well, let's, let's mentally shift into we are in that last pit stop and you and I are getting into the last leg of this journey that we've been on. And we're going to bring this home to the finish line. And I really wanted to, get into some things that I've heard you talk about,

it's sort of in line with my philosophies of less is more. You've been on these incredible journeys where you're surrounded with every bit of technology. I think the only thing that would have more technology than some of the interiors of these vehicles that you're in are airplanes. I mean, you have an awful lot of technology now. You can, you know, with Starlink, you can see in real time where the hell you are all over the world. Why do you still have a map, a paper map in your lap? Why, you said it, I say the same thing. You got to have a map in your lap.

Why? I'm a huge paper map fan and all of our team are. We still do the bulk of our planning on paper. We have a three ring binder for those that remember what those are. You know, they clip open and closed and you whole bunch things to put them in there. We build all of our chase plan. All of our race plan is kind of on paper with paper maps because they don't go dead. They don't crack screens.

They don't break. And it's a lot easier, particularly with a Baja Atlas. I should have brought mine out. I've got this ratted, tattered, beat up old Baja Atlas that is so full of sharpie marks and highlighters and post-it notes from both race trips but also personal trips over the years. and that's still the best absolute way to get your big picture planning. Now, digital resources are fantastic. HEMAs and onyxes and Gaias, they're great for honing in and maybe putting checkpoints,

but I'm a huge advocate of not pre-planning a trip so much that all you're worried about is staring at your GPS, wondering where your next turn is. You're too afraid to look out the windows that you may take a wrong turn and throw off maybe the cadence or the agenda of your whole off-road trip. There's a time and a place for that, maybe. I don't know. I'm not a fan of that. I like using those digital resources, and I am a big user of them. I use them to record my tracks. Not to plan my trip. I just record and kind of let it be its own thing. Meanwhile, I'm using a paper mapped apt to determine what looks cool and where I want to go.

And we definitely do that with the race team. So our planning and Dave Connors, who does the bulk of our race planning and carries all of that load as a longtime Baja enthusiast and traveler himself still starts with a Baja Atlas, gets that out. you lay out and start making post-it notes on where the different pits will be, and that's how we do our planning. And for you folks at home who don't know what a Baja Atlas is, it's now called a benchmark Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. Save yourself about $350 of buying the Baja Atlas online on eBay, download the digital version and get yourself a benchmark Baja Road and Recreation Atlas, 72 pages. It's amazing. But funny, on my last scouting trip for the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition, I pulled into a, I'd never seen

the taco stand at Rancho Grande. So you've got the market there, you've got the little gas station across the street that never has Wi-Fi, you always have to pay in cash. And while I was paying, I looked at it, I'm like, wow, there's a taco stand. I never been, so I'd pull in there. And not five minutes after I pull in, Chris Collard

sees my truck, and he pulls in. Oh, awesome. And then five minutes after that, Tim and Kelsey see R two trucks, and they pull in. And Chris, Chris, had unbeknownced to me been following me on a pretty remote track for the entire day and wondering who the hell is ahead

of him. Whose tracks are these? Reading my tracks. He told me I ran over a rattlesnake which I never saw. Not my fault. Sorry, sorry baby rattlesnake. But he, you know, was an old school tracker and very funny. You know, he comes out with his Baja

almanac. And I'm like, you know, Chris, I've got one behind the seat in my truck too. But it was just so great to see a super old school dude just drop that on the table with the slap. And we got into it, poured a couple of fortaleases, solved all the problems of the world, and talked about a lot of places. And it's still a beautiful thing to have six people gathered around a map instead of a, you know, my phone screen or a tablet. Yeah, whatever.

And I think you touched on it the eyes up, what I've found in the times, you know, when I've had to be. on a screen. I am super worried am I on the right course. And I am looking at that device all the time. And my travels in Baja are always a portal to some other place. And I really

am at odds with that. And how do you say sort of eyes up in reading the terrain as much as glancing at the screen, double checking the map, talking to the navigator next to you? I mean, how do you sort all that stuff? Well, racing is certainly

different. Totally different. Totally different. Totally fair. We don't need to talk about it. Yeah, we're bare. But for just travel, I think have a good idea of put some goals in mind. I mean, I'm not saying just take your first trip to Baja and wander aimlessly, like truly aimlessly. I mean, wander, absolutely. See where a dirt road goes.

Go check out and see where the end of the horizon is, but maybe have a little bit of a plan. Part of his having that Baja, on that note, we all got, we didn't get out in time. We should have sold those when the price was super crazy before the new benchmark came out and you brought me a benchmark when you visited the shop i wasn't able to meet you hear that

hear that benchmark yeah and it was awesome that's the one i'm now using yeah and it's they have done a great job and i've i'm a long time benchmark atlas fan for their utah all their west yes i have 17 books now i collect i have all the all the western relevant states i've used those and i'd say that was dating way back i got a benchmark atlas back many many years ago and that's how i was uh utah planning and all these ghost towns marking these even before i could you know had the resources to go out and check them out. I was using that benchmark. So I'm a big fan of the benchmark atlases.

But yeah, back to that. I think start with one of those on your kitchen table at home before you plan your first trip down there. As you're planning, read trip reports, watch YouTube videos, see kind of those cool things. Get a posting note out. Make some highlighters. Make some marks. Make some scratches on your almanac.

Use that as your way to decide, hey, what direction should we point the ship today? rather than having such a set itinerary and a set route that you're worried to take a left because it throws off all your planning. And even with Exhibition Overline, that has a lot more planning because we do have staff members or members of the show cast flying in and out. We've got filming objectives.

We have to film permits, and that actually kind of sets up your timing. Even then, we only really plan two or three days in advance. We have to leave flexibility, because some of the neatest opportunities that have ever popped up are the ones that you didn't plan for three months ago. So you've got to be a little, you've got to be nimble. You got to have a little bit of, have a lot of flexibility built in your trip.

And I would say of all the places that holds true, Baja absolutely is on the rank of that. Because again, you'll find food, you'll find fuel, you'll find plenty of places to camp and overnight. Don't get too hunkered in and having a dedicated itinerary that takes away from being able to have a kind of a fun, unique experience that just develops itself. Can we wrap up with some of Kurt's tips? I mean, we've kind of covered a lot of it, but if we wanted to summarize with some of Kurt's trips about interactions with people, you've already given us a great one of eat local, eat with the locals.

I think a lot of people are always worried about people who are right next door. You know, one of my jokes when I meet somebody from someplace, I know nothing about Bulgaria, just to, like, break the ice. I say, so who do you hate? You know, but it's like the Canadians hate us, you know, you know how it all goes downhill. We're always wary of our neighbor. What have you learned, Kurt, and all these travels around the world, if we're going to summarize, I do want you to touch on patience and ingenuity. I do want to, again, you know, less is more was another one that I wanted to bring up here. I'm grasping in the bottom of my notes here,

but how can you summarize some of the things you've learned in your extensive, extensive travel? I could touch on a few. One is I always urge travelers to remember you're a guest in their country. So don't come in like they owe you anything. But you'll find that all around the world, there will be people that give you the shirt off their back or would give you the shirt off their back to help you. And I would say reciprocate that when you run across travelers here in North America.

and here in the United States particularly, I hear a lot of stories of people that said, oh, man, yeah, these guys, these people came in and they didn't know where they're supposed to be camping, a bunch of Yahoo's, like, well, why don't you help them? You know, like, why don't you go help them? They're travelers, and I've had some of the most amazing people help us and set us straight when we're in their areas.

Like, hey, that's not a safe spot or that's not ideal. The water's going to come up or anything. And they were so nice about it. I always think, do people treat them the same if they were coming to the United States? So be genuine, be kind, but, you know, like reciprocate. on that. The next part of that one is be mindful on where you do camp. You hear a lot about the safety concerns that a lot of people feel and hear. Yeah, if you do nothing but watch the news, you shouldn't

leave your house. Because guess what? There's places in Salt Lake. I wouldn't camp overnight. Just to have a personal security, you know, or just to be on the safe side. A lot of people camp here overnight. I see it. There is a lot of camping happening overnight. Yeah, yeah. Actually, there's a lot of places in downtown. That's a San Francisco urban camping joke. Yeah, sorry. No good. We, yeah, no worries. We do have a lot of overnight camping happening all over. The point of all that is, is, yeah, there's some, there's some rough towns on both sides of the border here in the United States. There's also some rough towns north of the border a long ways all over the U.S. Use your best judgment. Don't plan your trip to go camping, you know, right over the border, get down a little further

into Baja and you'll find that like all those socioeconomic and those border issues that are, again, on both sides of the border, that that is, that's a very real situation. But it's, they're friendly people. People are good everywhere. You know, that's like, it's like, that's not, governments are kind of the ones we need to be weary about. People are good. Governments are bad, that old saying, it's true. And I think once you get just a few miles down into Baja, you can kind of calm down, life slows down,

everything goes back to just great people that realize tourism is an economy down there. They are welcoming. They're extremely welcoming, especially if you're in their restaurants, in their tenders, in their stores, in their buying stuff, buying fuel. So, yeah, don't be afraid to travel. If you are afraid to, well, change that.

Well, I think we're going to leave it right there, Kurt. That's it. Don't be afraid to travel. And if you're afraid, change it. Where's the best place for folks to find out what you're up to most of the time? Between Instagram and Facebook, I'm pretty active on both. Cruiser Kurt on Instagram and just Kurt Williams on Facebook. That's where you can kind of follow the different adventures.

And I usually share all our kangaroo racing stuff. I try and share the X Overland stuff and stuff with the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum involved in so always trying to kind of keep uh keep those the fun activities i'm on share those where possible and that's uh it'll be in the show notes folks but that's kurt with a k well kurt with a k patience and ingenuity eyes up less is more thanks man again i appreciate you making some time for slow baha uh here on a beautiful morning i'm off back to chicago today and you've got some work i'm sure that's more important than talking to me but it's been a real delight really has so thanks well this is great and i really appreciate the opportunity i've been a big fan

the podcast and a fan of your travel, so look forward to hanging out some more in the future. Let's hope. I want to get it down, bump around to Dirt Road and Baja on my 40 and your 40 soon. You know, it's pretty fun when you get the couple of old trucks together, you're going slow, and then you get there and somebody's a great Mexican chef is cooking over an open flame and putting a beautiful piece of food on a plate for you. It's nothing wrong with that. You're saying all the things I like. All right, man. Cheers. We did it. Hey, well, I hope you enjoyed that show. I love getting out meeting people where they are, sitting down in Kurt's garage, Sam Hurley, on the cameras. Really, you know, you can watch these

things on YouTube now. I hope you enjoyed that. I did. You know, I think that message is so important about getting to meet people, especially through food, break bread, where they are. Really, it is a profound way of traveling and it's right up a slow Baja's alley. Love to get into the local taco stand and meet some folks when I'm out on the road. And, well, while I'm talking about tacos, If you've got one in your pocket, if you've got a couple in your pocket, drop one in the tank, keep this little show on the road. I really do appreciate it. It really does help.

I can't tell you enough how helpful your tacos are. So if you've got them, drop them. If you don't have any tacos, I understand most of the time I don't have a single taco in my pocket. So you can still help the show, drop a five-star review on Apple or on Spotify, write a few lines about why you like the show. That helps people find the show. and that's important too, and I really appreciate it. And I love to just say, hey, hang up right now, turn this thing off. Do that. Do that. Drop that five-star. Say something nice. That's your assignment for the day.

All right. Well, I'm going to get on the road to Baja. I'll be gone for about three weeks. Can't wait doing the Slow Baja Vintage Expedition and be thinking about off-road motorsports Hall of Famer. Mary McGee, while I'm looking at all those bikes that Adam Sheard's bring into the slow Baja vintage into the Speed Deluxe vintage expedition. I'll be looking at all those bikes. I'll be thinking about off-road motorsports Hall of Famer Mary McGee and her pal Steve McQueen, who said it. He said, you know, Baja's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. You know, I'm a minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I don't leave home without is a good old paper map. My favorite is the beautiful and I, I have a beautiful and I

mean beautiful Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by Benchmark Maps. It's an oversized 72-page book. It's jammed with details. It brings the peninsula's rugged terrain into clear focus. Get yours at Benchmarkmaps.com. In fact, get two. One for your trip planning at home and one for your Baja rig. And while you're at Benchmarkmaps.com, you've got to check out all their other atlases. I think they're up to 17 now, including British Columbia. They've got folding maps. They've got digital maps. They've got giant wall maps. My favorite, and I've got it up on my wall right here at Slow Baja HQ, is the 30-inch by 46-inch Baja wall map. It's so great to just look at one thing, you see the entire peninsula there. I love it. Benchmarkmaps.com, Slow Baja approved.

Huge news out of Ensenada, huge news, folks. Cervasaria Trans-Peninsula has Slow Baja on tap all summer long. That's right. I saw it for myself. Heck, I tasted it for myself. You got to get there. You got to check it out for yourself at Serviceria Trans-Penanceal Arts. Right there next to the Hotel Corral and Marinas in the Playitas neighborhood. Get yourself a frosty cold, slow Baja on tap, but don't delay.

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