Jet City Jimbo

A few years ago, when I first started getting interested in adventure travel, I found a website with some great travel writing kept up by a guy dubbed Jet City Jimbo. Nee Jim Klima, he and his wife wrote about their various travels, cleverly entitled "It will be so awful, it will be wonderful." They took trips in a huge truck with Dragoman, one of the oldest overlanding companies out there. (I went with Encounter Overland to Morocco in a similar truck...an incredible experience) Their stories were some of the most incredible accounts of adventure travel I've read. For instance, it took them over 30 days to cross Zaire (back when it was Zaire), and they spent much of that time mired in mud on the main highway across the country. In another account, they almost died in Nepal during a flash flood...reading this gripping story will give you shivers.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, I tried to get back to the site, and found it down. Through some sleuthing around on Google, I found another blogger who wrote about Jim, and mentioned that he was sick with cancer. Well, tonight, I got a subconscious prompt to check again, and found the site back up and operational, but with a caveat that Jim died in May. It was quite sad to find out...almost like I'd lost a travel partner. I learned a lot about independent travel from their site. Jim's wife is keeping the site up as a fitting memorial to his life.

Check it out. You won't be disappointed.

Rest in Peace, Jim...