Adventuress Wanted, Lurker Found

[nicholastanguma]

Hello ExPo, I'm a longtime lurker and a longtime I've been a-lurking. But I think now it's time to stop peeping in the bedroom window and finally knock on the front door.

I wasn't sure where exactly where to post this, so by default I'm plunking it down here in Completed Expeditions, since the adventure took place quite a while ago. Moderators, if there's a more appropriate place, please migrate it there.

I'm also a longtime inmate over at ADVrider.com, especially in the Old's Cool subforum, where we have an unhealthy addiction to traveling rugged places via ridiculously inappropriate and creaky old motorcycles. Here on ExPo I've noticed an appreciable amount of similar sickness regarding four-wheeled conveyances (Dodge Power Wagon, Yota FJ40, Jeep CJ, VW Beetle, Suzuki Samurai, etc), and I thought what better way to flash the crowd...um, I mean introduce myself...than by offering what has immediately become my new favorite piece of awesomeness.

An old one-armed (yes, ONE ARM) American man hires a fifteen-year-younger Japanese camerawoman to spend a year driving a forty year old VW buggy from Stockholm, Sweden down to Capetown, South Africa. They have no support crew. They have almost no money or visas or carnets. They sneak through numerous illegal border crossings, constantly break down in the middle of nowhere, and of course eventually fall madly in love. This documentary won Best Directorial Debut at the 2010 New York International Film Festival, and it's absolutely bloody freakin' free to download. C'mon, I'm giving you something awesome and free so you'll be my friends.

www.redbuggy.com

Here's the trailer to whet your appetites.

[video=youtube;oJr4BOtpgW0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oJr4BOtpgW0[/video]

 

[Bergum]

It's an excellent film that will move you somehow, if you let it..
I loved it.

B4x4.no

 

[concretejungle]

great video! So the question remains, did you two end up getting hitched?

 

[nicholastanguma]

great video! So the question remains, did you two end up getting hitched?

Sorry to disappoint you, mate, but I'm not the filmmaker, nor am I affiliated in any way except as a fan of the film.

However, to answer your question...

...no, the two of them didn't end up tying the knot.

In fact, the end of the movie is Yoshiko getting onto an airplane in Jo-burg to fly back to Japan. Upon finishing the trip she wanted to marry Tom and have kids and start doing the whole domestic thing, but Tom wasn't interested in that at all. He'd already been married once, already had two daughters, and the whole reason he was overlanding in the first place was because he was tired of the domestic life and his corporate job. He was already planning to sail around the world after Africa, and so he and Yoshiko simply couldn't reconcile any future together. Admittedly, the ending of the film is very, very sad.

 

[Bergum]

No, not really. Now bouth of them kan make them self a happy life, and none of them have to give up a dream.
Actually a sad but happy ending...

B4x4.no

 

[Joash]

I think she gave up too easily. If she had accompanied him on that sailing trip she would've eventually broken him down.

 

[nicholastanguma]

I think she gave up too easily. If she had accompanied him on that sailing trip she would've eventually broken him down.

I read some very old blog postings of Tom's concerning this very thing. For a couple of years after the trip he and Yoshiko tried finding a way to form a permanent relationship, but they just couldn't do it successfully because their original bond had been forged under such an astonishingly difficult paradigm. Back in the "easy" world of grocery shopping and folding laundry they were too different to find common ground again--you know, the age difference, the cultural differences, etc.

At one point they even tried a short trip in Africa again, but the magic couldn't be recaptured because, as Tom put it, Yoshiko had grown to be independent, and wanted too much to prove it to him. Even worse, neither of them could form meaningful relationships with anyone else, either, because they had come to crave the kind of trust and closeness that only adventure partners and combat veterans share. Tom wrote that after their overlanding adventure they were both stuck collecting sex partners, but never relationship partners.

I know this is actually a pretty common problem faced by people who return from a long adventure, that inability to find common ground with people back in the first world. Even old friends can seem to have become petty and myopic when you've spent so much time experiencing things vastly outside of the average parameters, things that "modern" people barely even know exist except as something seen in photos or on television.

Nonetheless, in my opinion, IT IS A PRICE WELL WORTH PAYING. :victory: