Expedition Overland - Tacoma

So out of curiosity, have yall found any interesting mods for any of the cup holders in the tacomas?

 

Ummmmm

 

Nope, not that I can recall.

 

Met Clay and the gang at NW Overland Rally and have been following their show for some time. A bit of a groupie and my wife and I love the show and especially since the wives took part in the African race for the past two years. The really have some quality stuff in their store and we have a black (me) and white (wife) hydro flask and both patches on the headliner.

Like someone said - very quality programming and family friendly with good solid values being modeled and some very cool group dynamic and problem solving going on!!

A definite good watch to enjoy and learn!

 

Deleted Scene: The Most Capable Vehicle Is A Rental Car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeVaR3U1Pjg

 

LOL Drive it like you rented it!

 

Very clean

 

I watched Season 2 in a marathon session yesterday and went back and watched Season 1 today. Good stuff, have some of the other vids on their youtube page que'd up for another time.

 

I love this show!

 

Does anyone know the name or any other info on the intro song used for the show? There's some albums by the guy that does their music, but I didn't find this particular song when I looked a while back. Maybe I missed something, or maybe they used a section out of the middle that's not played on the samples.

I think I've heard the song used elsewhere, so I suspect it's in some royalty free music library. [Edit: Listening to more of woodrowgerber's music, the intro song sounds too much like his(?) work to be something generic. I'm guessing it's by him(?) but not on iTunes).

I'm taking my 7 year old son on our first big off-road trip and I thought it would be fun to play the theme song to set the mood as we are heading out.

 

Which season? "Insane" by Suicide Denial, I know they play at the end of one of their seasons that was pretty catchy.

 

I think they have used it for every season, but I'm sure it's the one for the Alaska/Yukon trip. This is the song played during the intro. "Insane" sounds similar in sections, but it's not the right one. It just occurred to me that I could try using Siri to find the song based on an audio capture.

Thanks for giving it a shot.

 

Let me know what you find.

 

Success, but Holy Hellfire(tm) that was a PITA.

[My time is worth more than this, but I really don't like to fail.]

Siri had no clue, so I re-checked iTunes and sampled every song by Woodrowgerber. None of them were right, but it seemed likely he was the dude who did it. I did some net searches and found several places where it was mentioned by XO or Woodrowgerber that ALL of the music on a particular episode was by him. That seemed to rule out some random royalty free library song. Also, I found mention that the episodes are actually scored by Woodrowgerber, so Clay isn't just dropping songs on the timeline. I found his site but it just listed the same albums that are on iTunes. SOOOO.... frack. I was just about to post on the XO Facebook page and ask the name of the song, but I wanted to double-check the proper spelling so I typed it into Google. I clicked on one of the links and it brought up his bandcamp page and defaulted to the "XO" album. But THERE WAS AN EXTRA SONG! I'm guessing it's too short for iTunes because it's only 38 seconds long.

It's called "Coco Intro" on the "XO" album by Woodrogerber. You can buy it here for a dollar:

https://woodrowgerber.bandcamp.com/album/xo

Now I'm prepared with the proper music to kick off our trip.

 

Good job, thanks for the track down. May you and your son have a great trip.

 

Wow

 

I finally started watching it a couple weeks ago and ended up watching all the episodes in a matter of a couple days. My only complaint is they don't spend enough time showcasing the actual driving. I was hoping they'd devote more of the episodes to the actual off road expedition aspect.

 

I've been re-watching the seasons during slow nights at work.

I still maintain that the North American series (S1), in which they take 6 individual "short" trips to various US destinations, is the best for actual off roading, learning, and innocent fun. The guys are kind of dorky but relate-able and like-able. The trucks are simple (the Cruiser doesn't even have lockers), and are "theirs", the gear is "theirs". No free shit, no attempts to sell stuff, no suggesting that you need a $45,000 built rig to have fun. I would watch that shit all day.

The Alaska Yukon series (S2) is okay, and has some off roading in it, but you can already sense the sort of commercialism that is coming.

The Central America series (S3) I initially didn't like. I don't think it is in the same category as S1 in the sense that the playful innocence of amateurs doing weekend exploration is gone. You ever see the movie "Fifty First Dates"? The scene in the diner where Adam Sandler initially scores big with Drew Barrymore but then he tries to recreate that day on subsequent days and just ends up trying to hard and forcing it? That's S3 (and sort of S2 to a lesser extent) compared to S1. The guys have tons of sponsors, they are practically wearing an XO uniform and all look alike, it feels like there is a push to show off all the gadgets and shoehorn famous people down our throats (look, it's Ivan Stewart, oh and meet our 2 free 4Runners which we promptly built up with other people's money). There is too much touristy shit, too much pavement, and too much "false suspense" at the end of each episode. I will say S3 ended well and I think if you watched S3 as one long episode, all at once, instead of 10 or 12 individual episodes, one per week; it would have been a little better.

I think the show clearly has been a success, I mean Clay Croft is advertising fucking CB radios for Right Channel and is in ads for some XO themed trailer company in Expedition Portal. People seem to like it. I personally think the show would be better and more relate-able to the US audience if the trips were shorter and done within the US - stuff that people watching could do on their own. I think very few people are going to do Central America and those that do probably would do it better and more personally than the XO crew did it and they certainly wouldn't be rocking in 2 free built and brand new 4Rs.

One of the neat things about S1 was that it was trips "anyone" could do. This was a total coincidence but I had watched S1 several years ago and kind of forgotten about Moab. My wife and I did Moab last year and then I happened to rewatch the S1 Moab epsiode a few weeks ago. The XO guys did the same route we had done, and in fact we both even got turned around at the same place near Chicken Corner where Lockhart Basin drops into the wash and is hard to follow. I had to laugh as they were doing the same shit we had done - or maybe vice versa. But THAT'S the stuff that makes it interesting and relate-able to me, not tromping around in some ruins 5000 miles away, killing spiders and shit, burning someone else's gas.

Having said all that, all seasons of the show are better than a lot of shit on TV, and it is family friendly, and well put together. I would still chose to watch it over most anything else and I would watch S4 when it comes out.

 

It was probably the funnest to do, film and edit too... but it was completely self-funded i.e. no cost recovery for the hundreds of hours of film/edit time not to mention the equipment. I think we can all sleep at night knowing we "waste" hundreds of hours each year on our hobbies... but you can't survive on "thanks" and "great show". Clay/production team bankrolled the first two seasons i.e. knowing it would be a long-term investment to get sponsors involved. It's 100% safe to say a personal trip to Moab or Mex is going to be more intimate, more authentic and more entertaining to those involved, but it doesn't capture well, it certainly doesn't monetize and it has no shelf life. There are a million blogs about travelers circumnavigating the globe, international travel is far more common and approachable than you give it credit for and with cheap fuel prices, it's becoming more and more prevalent. It may have been this very thread where we discussed the fact it is cheaper to drive from SoCal to Panama than it is from SoCal to Prudhoe, people build their own borders that are often so easily traversed.

Phew, didn't know how much more in depth review I was going to have to read. You've been very vocal (like more than any other commenter in the 30 different places I monitor re XO ) about your dislikes for the show, I get it and I'm again shocked you continue to find time to watch but thanks for doing so.

 

They've got a new Gen 3 Tacoma they are tricking out right now. Tires and Icon lift so far with a custom bed topper. So obviously a new journey is in the future.