CONTRIBUTORS WINTER 2017
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GARY AND MONIKA WESCOTT
DEREK CROWE
GREG HATTEN
Gary and Monika Wescott have spent the last 45 years globetrotting around the world, from the arid desert of Turkmenistan, following the Silk Road, to the jungles of the Amazon, and across Siberia in the dead of winter. The couple’s travel adventures have been published in 10 countries and eight languages. Their indepth knowledge of the problems and joys of overland travel in remote areas is incomparable. Gary and Monika’s meticulously prepared travel/research trucks, from their original Land Rover to the current Ford F-550, The Turtle V, have been an inspiration for many. Their experience and photography encompass what Overland Journal is all about. From the beginning, The Turtle Expedition’s motto has been, “Don’t take the trip. Let the trip take you.”
Derek Crowe is a Yukon-based photographer who has chronicled adventure across the circumpolar north since 2000. His images have been featured in publications such as Outside, Canadian Geographic, the Globe and Mail, Boston Herald, and London Times. In 2007, Derek won the prestigious Northern Lights Award in Travel Photography for his coverage of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, a 1,600-kilometer endurance event. In 2010, he was awarded a Guinness World Record for the world’s longest Arctic unsupported snowkiting expedition. He traveled for 67 days, using the wind to ski from Greenland’s southern Atlantic coast to the Arctic coast, then back across to the Thule region. A lifelong cyclist, Derek founded Singletrack to Success, a mentoring organization for aboriginal youth in the Yukon.
Greg is an outdoor adventurer, writer, and special-interest speaker on topics that apply wilderness experiences to management and leadership challenges in everyday life. After holding senior executive positions with Hallmark Cards and Bi-Mart, he founded a successful consulting practice where he guides companies and clients through the dynamic world of consumer products. His passions for building and rowing wooden boats and fly-fishing in the Pacific Northwest motivated him to launch WoodenBoat Adventures, offering high-end fishing trips on the McKenzie River. In 2014, 50 years after Martin Litton’s historic dory run of the Colorado River, Greg helped recreate Litton’s boats to run the mightiest of rivers. When he isn’t on the water, he can be found exploring the Western backroads in his FJ40 Land Cruiser.
HEATHER LEA
ÅSA BJÖRKLUND
In the spring of 2014, Heather Lea thought her boyfriend’s suggestion to ride around the world together on motorcycles was a fantastic idea. Little did she know she was agreeing to nefarious activities such as blowing up her underwear and letting a dead toe touch her lips. Or the blood, sweat, and tears of breaking a bone, riding in sand, and mechanically trashing her G650GS so badly, she’d need to use most of her trip money to replace it with another bike more up to the task. Heather’s goal in life has always been to travel through 50 countries by age 50. She is currently in Mongolia, her 51st country, and is nowhere near 50 years old, though closer than she’d like to admit.
Swedish born, Åsa has roamed the globe working as a waitress, a factory employee, and a dozen other odd jobs “that made life more interesting.” As a human rights lawyer, she worked with development aid in Central America. When she escaped the office, she explored the remote areas of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras in a Land Rover. With a desire to write full time, she switched careers to journalism. Her work includes articles for international magazines covering topics such as overland travel, wildlife, current affairs, and social issues. Åsa has a love for animals and a particularly soft spot for horses. Whenever she can, she explores the Arizona backcountry with the help of Desert Daisy, a 1987 Land Cruiser FJ60.
OVERLAND JOURNAL WINTER 2017
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ble. I hear a low-rumble and look up to see half a dozen bikes of various shapes, sizes, and makes pull up. A tall, slim guy with a leather vest and a long, silver braid down his back swings a leg off his Harley and hitches up his jeans before walking into the bar. His friends follow. One is even on a race bike. I’m curious where they’ve come from seeing as a large portion of what we rode from the east along the Top of the World Highway was gravel. They must have come from the west, from the city of Fairbanks. Maybe the road is paved from here. I hoped not. Dave and I are happier riding unpaved roads. We have to work pretty hard to find off-pavement riding and the roads we do find can be incredibly difficult. Telkwa Pass is a 55-mile-long trail (and I do mean trail) that Dave and I rode on The bartender our northern quest as a “shortcut” between mutters something Smithers and Terrace in British Columbia. about not being It’s a beautiful beast one should never dispaid enough for cover on a fully loaded adventure bike. It this and cautiously took us over 2 hours to cover a 6-mile section approaches the along Telkwa Pass. Dave is forever scout- smoldering cannon. ing out “roads” on Google Earth and in map He kicks it over books that should have their own category and ducks. on a map legend, labeled steep as blazes sheep track. And in true sheep form, I usually follow. My questionable judgment doesn’t stop at riding a big bike in small places—it looks like my underthings are now ready to explode all over Chicken. The bartender takes the cannon out to the gravel parking lot and lights the wick hanging out the back like a rat’s tail. The bikers who pulled in earlier stand around to watch. The wick sparks and sizzles but falls out before igniting the gunpowder, landing limp on the ground. No boom. The bartender mutters something about not being paid enough for this and cautiously approaches the smoldering cannon. He kicks it over and ducks. When nothing happens he retrieves the cannon and brings it back to the bar’s front porch to begin the tamping process again. This guy deserves a big tip. The second and third try to blow up my underwear results in much the same way as the first. As you can imagine there are all kinds of intelligent comments about why my undies wouldn’t ignite. By the fourth try, everyone is unenthusiastic, especially the bartender. The gunpowder doesn’t have enough oomph to light the cannon. We give up, and I’m wondering what to do with my underwear now that it has been manhandled and pounded into a cannon. A guy from the crowd thinks of sticking the wick into a wine bottle cork so it won’t back out. This great idea works. The wick holds, the cannon shoots off, and a pair of green lady ginch blows into three pieces which come fluttering down for a landing dangerously close to an RV. Its occupants are staring out the window in alarm. No one had thought to warn them of a cannon going off behind their rig. Now that my underwear has finally exploded, the party fizzles out like the first unsuccessful wicks. Dave and I walk back to our tent that we’d set up behind the bar so as not to have to venture too far from Chicken’s night action. As we leave, we hear one of the bikers say, “Well I didn’t ride this far to spend the night sober.” I hoped I wouldn’t regret stapling a card with our trip’s website to my panty remnants, now proudly displayed on the bar’s ceiling.
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OVERLAND JOURNAL WINTER 2017
Illustration by Michele Dollorso
TAIL LAMP HEATHER LEA
THE NORTH YOU DON'T KNOW OFF THE BEATEN PATH IN CHICKEN, ALASKA.
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find him straddling a bar stool in Chicken, Alaska. Dave, my boyfriend, is engaged in a conversation with the bartender about blowing up women’s underwear, which the bar is known for. When I walk in, Dave says, “There she is,” and I feel my panties creep up a little in fear. The bar is perfect, if you’re into sketchy. The interior is the kind of dark that’s always dark, no matter the weather or time of day. The walls and low-hanging ceiling are completely covered in baseball caps, lewd posters, and the unsubtle, colorful addition of exploded women’s undies. Is this the most interesting part of the interior design, or is it the row of a dozen cop badges nailed to the shelving unit showcasing a hundred different bottles of liquid courage? Who’s to say? I ask for a beer and sit on a stool next to Dave. “So,” he says pointing to a pair of tattered underwear above him, “Are you going to do it?” For Dave and I, riding to the top of the Northern Hemisphere during a 2-year, round-the-world motorcycle journey meant visiting some spots off the beaten path and hopefully meeting some unsavoury characters along the way. So far, so good. I leave the bar to go dig out some clean undies from the Giant Loop panniers strapped to my G650GS. I only have four pairs. It used to be three but we made a quick stop at my parent’s house in Revelstoke, British Columbia, on our way up north from South America. I pull out a pair that have not fared well through so many hand-washes and are ripped in a few places. Perfect candidates for cannon powder. Before returning to the bar, I snap off a couple photos of Chicken’s chicken mascot, then go back in to find Dave in a contest with another patron to see who can lift the 30-pound cannon with one hand. The prize is a free drink. OVERLAND JOURNAL WINTER 2017
In my jeans pocket I find a multivitamin and swallow it with a swig of beer. I then continue to watch Dave not succeed and wonder how quickly we can get to the nearest hospital from this nowhere place (population 7 in winter, 23 in summer) if he drops 30 pounds on his foot. The bartender puts an end to the contest because he needs the cannon for my underwear event. I take my beer and follow him outside. He stuffs my pair of green underthings into one end of the cannon with a stick—fair enough, we are homeless travelers after all. Listening to the ting, ting, ting of the gunpowder being tamped down into the cannon, I think of how only yesterday Dave and I spent the evening in a Dawson City saloon slamming back shots of 80-proof liquor with a severed toe in the glass. The rule was the toe had to touch your lips. In the 1920s, a rum runner named Louie Liken had his toe amputated because of frostbite. It was preserved in a jar of alcohol until 1973 when Captain Dick Stevenson, a Yukon local, found the jar and brought it to Dawson’s Sourdough Saloon. For fun, he plunked it into the drinks of the brave and unfortunate. It has been documented, either through true fact or creative license, that there have been seven toes since the original because people accidentally swallowed them. Somehow there was always another toe at the ready. One toe was donated after an inoperable corn was discovered. Another after a lawn-mowing-in-sandals accident. And yet another from diabetes. In 2013, a man who had just collected his rent deposit clambered up to the bar for a toe shot, purposely swallowed the toe, slammed $500 down on the bar—the fine for swallowing the toe—and left. This was apparently the first time the toe was swallowed deliberately. The fine has since increased to $2,500. On the picnic table in Chicken, my beer bottle begins to tremContinued on page 138