And although we met our share of Trouble along the way, what impacted our team most were the stories of Trouble that other folks recounted to us each day. Each person that we met on the road had a unique run-in with Trouble that put his or her determination, courage and ingenuity to the test. We met firefighters, rodeo clowns, ship captains, hunters, fishermen, survivalists, and relief workers – everyone had a story about Trouble that changed their lives and they were eager to share the wisdom gleaned from the experience. Our research crew found that much of that wisdom was found simply in the hands, faces, and voices of these brave new friends.

Back in Portland, we sifted through data, footage and field notes, compiling our results in a video document of our first American Expedition. We’ve barely settled in and yet already we can feel the Black Boar’s nervous energy as she is ready to take on a new adventure. We’re still, however, undecided about the goal of our next mission. In order to help determine where we should head next, we’re asking for your assistance. If you have seen Trouble or have a story of your dealings with Trouble, please share your information with us here. This will help us pinpoint where our crew may head in the upcoming year.

Additionally, after the Trouble that Hurricane Sandy caused, we’d like to continue offering our support to our friends at Lava Girl Surf in Rockaway Beach, New York, and at Jetty Life in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. Our sincere thanks to everyone we met on our trip. Many of you generously offered us shelter, camaraderie, and provisions. For this we are grateful. We couldn’t have completed our mission without you.

Trouble is standard protocol for us, but the aftermath of a natural disaster isn’t one you can easily look forward to. Sandy was an unwelcome guest on the East Coast, but she still showed up with a bad attitude and trashed the place. The destruction from strong winds and heavy rains had been met with the stronger will of the people. Sights of homes and businesses being demolished were echoed by sounds of a community rebuilding itself. We soon found out that Trouble wasn’t only blatantly apparent, but looming in places we couldn’t see. The team met up with Cory Higgins at Little Egg Harbor, NJ for a look at some of the specifics.

Cory and his company Jetty have been innovative in raising relief awareness and donations for the Jersey Shore. Shortly after their evacuation Jetty was already designing a custom fundraising t-shirt, which they began screen printing as soon as the storm cleared. The funds have all gone directly to the first responders and displaced community. The storm’s destruction caused the demand for skilled labor to be spread too thin, and their idea has helped to procure the expertise needed in the field. If Trouble had been surfing up and down the coast, then we knew there was plenty more to find. We took a bite of the big apple and began to chew.

The team connected with Brandon D’Leo from Lava Girl Surf, an organization at the forefront of organizing the relief and rebuilding of Rockaway Beach, NY. He explained that the Trouble they were facing was ever-changing. Each level of the community has varying needs, and the ongoing struggle is addressing them in personalized ways that have a lasting impact. Structural damage and debris removal needs at one building could be right next door to a home infested with spreading black mold. A volunteer might have two working hands, but no tools to put in them. We gladly assisted with some tools of our own, and made sure that no one working was empty handed. People always say that we pack more knives than we’ll need, but we know a little extra can go a long ways. This place needed all the help it could get.

It seemed that no matter how much elbow grease and resources are put in, there is another problem that could use attention. Trouble was shapeshifting before our eyes. Half the battle is just picking the right form. We made haste back into the city where we established Field HQ for one last hurrah. The team had made contact with The Pop Up Flea where we were able to mingle with locals and start debriefing some our contacts back home about the mission.

Hearing the accounts and witnessing the humble volunteers made us reflect on our own expedition and all the generous support given to us. We traveled over 5,000 miles on a search for Trouble, and people happily supported the cause. Our friends and sponsors not only share our spirit for adventure, but shared the provisions necessary to sustain us for a month on the road. We would like to give a sincere heartfelt thank you to: Danner, Poler Stuff, Tanner Goods, Stumptown Coffee, Filson, Churchkey Can Company, Olympic Provisions, Stanley PMI, Hand Eye Supply, Eddie Bauer First Ascent, Sambazon, Klean Kanteen, See See Motor Coffee Company, Brave Soldier, Northwest Quad Van, Tire Factory, Portland Modern and Moulé. Without you this expedition could have easily turned into a suicide mission.

The American Expedition is officially in the books. So what comes next? Where will we go and what will we do? We don’t know yet, and that’s part of the fun. The search for Trouble never really ends. A few of the team have already volunteered to go on scouting missions, and requests for the Black Boar continue to trickle in from around the globe. Ice fishing at the North Pole sounds very interesting, but we also hear that Vegas is nice this time of year.

Whatever happens, we’re sure to keep posting about it here. Check back soon as we’ll be releasing video from the expedition for a closer look at the places we went and the Trouble we found along the way.

Hello, Trouble. We’ll meet again soon enough.

We spotted some hunter orange color through the thick brush, and met a couple of men who were in the area after wild turkeys. Their names were Chip and Jason, and they took a break from their hunt to talk Trouble with us. The two have been hunting all of their lives and had stories from that area to as far away as Alaska.

During a winter hunt a member of Chip’s group took down a buck alone at nightfall and lost the trail under the falling blankets of snow. He ended up hiking in a circle, and when he rediscovered his own tracks they had the undesirable addition of fresh bear paw prints on top. His role quickly switched from hunter to hunted, and he was forced to drop his deer as bait to distract the bear from pursuing him any further. Trouble, however, was not finished there. After six hours the main hunting party still couldn’t locate him and they needed to call in the Search and Rescue team to help with the manhunt. The rescuers knew of a remote cabin and calculated that he could end up there if he kept traveling in the wrong direction. Their instinct was spot on and they found their lost friend trying to build a fire to get his body temperature back up from the onset of hypothermia.

Jason coincidentally had family ties to the knife industry. His uncle Rick Fields was a renowned wildlife artist known for his scrimshaw work on ivory handled blades. The team fought back sentimental tears as it always hits a soft spot in our hearts to meet others that have hand tools ingrained in their family heritage.

Our warm feelings of camaraderie turned to curiosity of superhuman powers when we arrived at the site of the historic Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown. We read the old reports about the disaster and became puzzled when we saw a man fishing the waters from a small vessel. We were fascinated if he was searching for Trouble of the mutinous variety, so we waited for him to dock at shore to find out what he knew.

We hit the history jackpot as the fisherman was a retired state trooper who spent his career in the area. His name was Joe, and he had been one of the first responders to the accident when it occurred. He said they established a secure command post to investigate the incident, but the real Trouble was that even the nuclear physicists didn’t know what the problem was. The uncertainty led to panic as inconsistent reports rolled out and know one knew who or what to believe. The problem all stemmed from a closed valve, but the Trouble it caused was one of the few kinds that a person can’t overhaul with their bare hands. Cleanup of the area concluded in 1993, but the true effects of the radiation are debated to this day. We inquired, but Joe insisted that the reports of two headed cows and glowing neon fish belonged in the tabloids

We continued to push further east towards Philadelphia knowing that the finale of our expedition was drawing near. The team wanted to pay tribute to the Founding Fathers while we were in the area, but the museum was not supportive of our request to ring the Liberty Bell with a Gerber machete. We settled for cheesesteaks instead.

His official handle is Mayor Collette, but he insisted that we simply call him Sherbin. Flooding isn’t the only problem in Louisiana, and he brought us on his boat to fish while giving us the schematics of the marsh and swamp habitats. He made short work of hauling in catfish and showed us the outer lying parts that we would need an airboat to reach.

We found ourselves an airboat captain and he laughed at the sight of our scuba diving equipment. He promised to show us Trouble up close, but said we would be sorry if we ever stepped into the swamp.

Cottonmouth snakes primed with venom. Snapping turtles eager to relieve you of fingers. Alligators ready to take you home and feed the family. The wildlife in the swamp blended in so well that we often couldn’t tell what we were looking at. The bayou had its own version of Trouble lurking beneath the surface, and we needed to learn the rules if we were to make it out.

We met local hunting legend Jude Mequet who has tasted every flavor of Trouble that the bayou wildlife has to offer. It wasn’t gator season so he couldn’t take us out, but after the stories he shared I can’t imagine many of the men would have volunteered. Jude himself hunts alone and told us of the time he tagged a gator so big that he couldn’t load it into his boat. He had no choice but to sink his skiff, float the massive gator into it, and then bailed out the water for over 4 hours while hungry eyes watched him from nearby.

Certainly not your average hunt, but when you’re looking for Trouble nothing ever is.

Broken bones, concussions, torn ligaments, busted teeth, paralysis, and the possibility of death. These are standard occupational hazards involved in a rodeo. When things go well this sport is an amazing spectacle of grit and glamor. When things don’t go so well it’s still a spectacle, but one that makes you wince and wonder if these people have a death wish. It became clear that cowboys embrace Trouble as their job. They practice and prepare for it daily. They eagerly sign up for it and wait their turn. We liked what we saw, but we needed to find out more. We needed to talk to the clowns.

Rodeo clowns are known to put a smile on your face, but their real job is saving lives and keeping injuries to a minimum. True bullfighters are showmen up front, but ones who willingly throw themselves in front of 2,000 lbs of Trouble the moment a cowboy hits the ground. Getting hurt is inevitable in this line of work, but how much and how often are the things they strive to control. The subtleties of making split second decisions need to come second nature. You can’t reason with an angry bull, but you can always take it by the horns. That isn’t asking for Trouble as much as imploring it to come at you head on and full or rage. A bullfighter doesn’t have to be completely crazy, but they do need a method to their madness if they’re going to make a career out of it.

When we asked them about injuries they gave us a laundry list and showed us the scars to go with it. Some we could relate to, but others made us grimace from the thought alone. Getting your ear ripped off as a side effect of a bull stamping on your head isn’t an easy picture to forget. It was strange to hear them talk about so many near death situations, and it made us reluctant to ask them about the people who weren’t so lucky. They said the real test is the mental challenge after getting hurt. Quitting is easy. Putting the pieces of yourself back together is one thing. Convincing yourself that you’re ready for more Trouble is another story in itself.

When we got deeper into Texas our positive attitudes turned to doubts after our excursions on the open range only led us to unmanned oil rigs, tumble weeds, and road kill. Some of the men started to become distraught as nothing we came across showed the faintest hint of Trouble. We started to question our own instincts, and one of the men accused Gene of sabotage. Was this the end of the line? Had Trouble bested us long before our final destination of New York? We came to the conclusion that Trouble was merely testing our mettle. Our path was turning into a thousand mile stare, and we needed to pull over and reassess our plan of attack.

We were nearing the metropolitan area of Dallas so we pulled off to look at our maps and consume a few canned beverages. A group of unusual men saw us charting our new route atop of the Black Boar and asked us if we were lost. They were musicians from the band Child Bite and they were on their own tour across the country.

We shared a few of our refreshments with them, and they shared with us tales of Trouble from their home in Detroit that we’re not comfortable repeating for obscenity reasons. The more we talked we learned how much we had in common. They moonlighted as post apocalyptic zombie hunters and were big fans of the Gerber blades that go along with that line of work. They gave us some pointers, insisting that Hollywood oversimplifies what it takes to bring down the undead for good. Child Bite also gave us some direction on our search for Trouble. That if we really wanted to find Trouble in Texas, then we needed to start going where the action was. Their fresh set of eyes was exactly what we required to see things in a different light.

There is never a single answer, but it was very possible that we were just searching in the wrong places. It was time to cowboy up, and head into the city. Hello, Trouble. We’ll be with you soon.

Our medical training suggested food poisoning, but this was unlikely as the team had been fasting for several days. We headed towards the adobe structures near the foothills to see if they held any answers. A man sat inside wrapping a small circle of sticks with leather and sinew. None of the men said anything to him, but he understood why we had come. He spoke a thousand words with his eyes alone. It filled us with a realization that our quest for Trouble needed to go deeper. If we discovered the unknown would we ever return? Were we stuck in a dream? Was this the afterlife?

We came upon a father and son walking along a road into the horizon. They asked us if we were hunters, and we told them about our search for Trouble. They told us tales of triumph and failure while tracking big game in the area. The father spoke in a low tone as he gave us these parting words of wisdom. “Finding them, killing them, skinning them. That’s the easy part. It’s carrying them out that’s the hard part. You don’t realize how far you’ve gone until you start to walk back. That’s the real work.”

We ascended down a hand-made ladder into a cave below the earth’s surface. The cool air filled our lungs and the stalactite structures had a calming disposition. Had we finally reached the end, or was this a new beginning?

We awoke the next morning in the same spot where we had pitched camp the night before. None of the men said a word. We knew it was time for us to leave the desert.

We sauntered into Cerrillos, NM at high noon and it seemed as if we had taken a step back in time. Ghost towns were a regular sight on our expedition, but this one still had a pulse. Antique shops that were antiques in their own right and hole in the wall cantinas lined the main street. Staring down the middle of that dusty road it was hard not to envision the spirits of gauchos and gunslingers facing off in wild west shootouts. The team spotted a watering hole with an open door and we went inside to find something that could calm our nerves. The bartender wasn’t much for words, but he understood what Trouble meant and told us a few routes out of town that might provide us such a thing.

Following a short discourse amongst the team we agreed to put our maps and navigational equipment aside and began to explore on instinct alone. We hit several dead ends with little sign of Trouble and spent a lot of time retracing our steps back to the main road. One of the men joked that Trouble might simply be hiding from us. We pondered the possibility for a moment, but considering the Black Boar doesn’t exactly provide for a subtle approach we were left with little other choice.

We traveled down another gravel road and started to lose hope that it would lead anywhere worth the effort. Suddenly we began to make shapes out in the distance of what appeared to be a parking lot. Locals had informed us that long exposure to the sun would cause travelers to often imagine things that they wanted to see. This however was no mirage, but we proceeded forward with caution. When we drew closer we found that there were in fact many vehicles parked, but mostly ones that hadn’t been mobile for decades.

A man pulled his head out from under the hood of a truck he had been working on. We slowly waved our peace flag out the window to signify that we were friendly. He laughed at our timid gesture and waved us forward past the cattle guard. The team piled out of the Black Boar and we asked him what he was doing out there alone at the end of a road. Before he could answer a young woman sprang from the house and turned the question back onto us.

We briefed them on our mission, and they seemed genuinely supportive to our cause. Don himself was an explorer in his younger days, and looked favorably upon our strategy of finding Trouble. By happenstance his daughter Marissa was visiting him and she currently resides in Portland, OR. This is the home of most of our team, where Gerber began producing tools and knives in 1939, and the very place where the American Expedition all began. A surprise memoir of our roots while out in the middle of nowhere. We told them about some of the things we had experienced thus far on the trip. When we asked them to tell us a story about their experiences with Trouble they were happy to oblige with a few tales of their own.

Don gestured towards an old rusting baby blue school bus that sat as a focal point on the property. He told us how he had ventured across the greater United States in the early 1970′s with the vehicle. Originating on the East Coast, it seemed as if Don had a story from nearly everywhere. We told him about the lands where we each grew up, and the places we had just explored on this expedition. He replied with excerpts of his own travels from those same areas, and it reminded us just how small the world can truly be sometimes. A memorable encounter with Trouble from those days happened on the route to the very place he stood before us. Don had blown a piston inside the engine of the blue bus while making his way across the Midwest. A forward thinking man, he was prepared for this form of Trouble, and had been carrying a spare big block engine with him. He made makeshift repairs to the bus on the side of the road as best he could before slowly limping the large vessel to Boulder, CO where he had a friend with the necessary tools to change out the engine. After four days of mixing and matching parts, he was able to fire up the bus and make it to New Mexico. When Don arrived he asked some locals where a good place around there was for him to park the bus for a little while. They recommended to him the road we had just driven down just moments before ourselves. Forty years later, he remains at the spot to this day.

Marissa explained how she had been born on the property and lived there with her father until she graduated high school. She then made her own way towards the Northwest territory of Oregon where she currently resides. Marissa manages environmental restoration projects along the Willamette River and is making a career out of dealing with the Trouble involved. In this line of work Trouble often comes from the irresponsible negligence of human beings and the impact that we often have on the adjacent flora, fauna, and water supplies. She told us how her job isn’t just grappling Trouble with her own two hands, but teaching the future generations how to use their own to make a positive impact on the world. Trouble to her isn’t just a physical hardship, but one that begins when our children are growing. We admired how she spoke of using natural solutions to solve the environmental Trouble caused by mankind. We thanked them both for their insight and hospitality towards strangers and offered them their choice of tool from our Gerber Gear to use on their future endeavors. The mechanic in Don lead him to select a multi-tool, and we’re still not exactly sure what lead Marissa to choose the machete.

Regardless, we left the two feeling that we were parting with more than we had arrived with. The next stop on our itinerary reads Texas, and we will report back as soon as we’ve established a Field HQ.

Crossing the bridge over the Rio Grande was like entering another world. The beauty of the area instilled a sense of serenity, but deep down we were filled with an eagerness to find out what lay beneath the surface. Our directions instructed us to turn by a big sign that read LOVE. Steering the Black Boar in that direction felt like a bit of a contradiction. We weren’t looking for love in the desert, although most of the team were antsy in more ways than one.

We began to spot small settlements and dwellings scattered across the landscape. Our party spotted a figure near one of structures so we navigated in that direction. The intention was to find out what Trouble was like for the people living on The Mesa and off the grid. This is when we met a man by the name of Eric, who gave us a taste of what the lifestyle entailed.

Eric has been living here on The Mesa and off the grid for the past 15 years. To say that he lives a modest lifestyle would be an understatement. When asked about Trouble, he had a different take on it than the others we had met on the expedition up to this point. Living off the grid was a simple life by definition, but one that provided a different set of challenges than most folks are accustomed to. Work is never really finished because there is always something that can be done. There is always something to build, fix, and improve. Always something else that needs preparation for the days ahead. He explained how working with your hands wasn’t just a regular activity, but a requirement. This was evident from the moment we pulled up and saw him using a double-handled saw to strip the bark from aspen tree branches. This was a man who could appreciate a good tool. Not only because they help to ensure your livelihood, but to solve regular run-ins with Trouble. When we asked him about a memorable time he had with Trouble, he certainly had a tale to tell.

According to Eric, a serious Trouble had affected everyone on The Mesa when their supply of propane had been cut off in the middle of a harsh cold. That winter Dallas was hosting the Superbowl at their new stadium, and the influx of people to the city caused an abrupt increase in demand of propane as a heat source. This caused their local supply of the fuel to be averted to the Dallas area, leaving no one on The Mesa with gas for several weeks when the temperatures were dropping below zero degrees. Old man winter had little compassion for their circumstance, and evidently a sick sense of humor. Everyone became entirely dependent on firewood for heating and cooking, a commodity that Eric himself was a principal supplier of. He needed to yield more wood than ever before to keep his neighbors and himself safe from the freezing temperatures. Bartering goods and trading labor is a fact of life when living off the grid, but the sudden urgency to locate and split more wood than ever before made Trouble a life threatening situation for everyone right in their own backyard.

Eric told us of these hardships on The Mesa in a straightforward and stoic manner. He explained that he believes his higher purpose in life is to look out for the well-being of others. A mindset that he credits to the spirituality living off the grid provides, and the fact that his mama had raised him right. You need the desire to be independent to appreciate living without the little things, but you also can’t be afraid to ask neighbors and strangers alike for help. When you think of Trouble this way it seems a little less threatening even though it’s constantly on the back of your mind. This attitude fit in perfectly with what we are accomplishing on our American Expedition. We are deliberately searching for Trouble, but we can always put one foot in front of the other because we know how to solve it.

Eric lead us around the property and we asked him to give us a wood splitting demonstration. This is when he showed us an axe he had busted just days prior, and his new axe which didn’t look like it stood much of a chance either. We grabbed the Gerber splitting axe we had locked to the Black Boar and fought back our giddy smiles as we put it in his hand for a test drive. In one fell swoop the log erupted and he was showing a smile of his own. We gifted him his tool of choice, and were pleased to tell him about the lifetime guarantee it carried with it. For a man who goes through a lot of tools, this would literally be the last axe he would ever need in his collection.

We hesitated at first to part with our axe this early in the trip, but a bigger part of us felt like it was fate considering his tale of Trouble and line of work. We climbed back inside the belly of the Black Boar and continued the expedition heading in the direction he had recommended.

If our families ask about us tell them not to worry. 

The locals we have encountered thus far have been friendly, helpful, and encouraging. We have learned that offering personal rations helps to build trust, and have gained access to privileged information as a result. Coffee is a standard currency of trade, but we have also parted with many Gerber tools for our new acquaintances accounts of Trouble, as well as to procure skilled services.

We hit Colorado and the thinning air provided a challenge of its own once we started to make our way through the mile high topography around Denver. We made a pitstop in Boulder to give our friends at Backpacker magazine a sample of our 2013 gear before swooping down to the Fort Carson military base to pay tribute on Veterans Day. This is where we met some soldiers who know more about Trouble than most people on this earth. We spoke with a young man who told us about the Trouble he faced while on deployment in Afghanistan. He explained how he had kept a Gerber LST hidden in his combat boots at all times while in the field. A reliable backup plan if he were to ever fall into the wrong hands. We also met with Command Sergeant Major Brian M. Stall who has been facing Trouble longer than most of us have been alive. After surviving numerous tours in Afghanistan, Sergeant Stall had a memorable run-in with Trouble while deployed in Iraq during a convoy on the road to Mosul. He had driven in a soft top Humvee that left his troops and him exposed for the entire length of their journey. When Trouble decided to show its ugly face, they were the ones who were able to come out on top.

We left Fort Carson feeling humbled, but still hungry to push forward into the mountains. This is where we stumbled upon a stone crushing plant, and met a foreman by the name of Roy. He told us tales of how he uses his blade daily to help repair massive machinery throughout the quarry. Trouble to him is being put behind schedule. A burden that he refuses to accept, and enjoys cutting out of his day. It was gratifying to see a Gerber knife in his toolbox, and we all shook his callused hand before steering the Black Boar back onto the highway.

Support from back home has been exceptional. We are beginning to receive more intel about Trouble abroad, as well as invitations to face it with the people who live amongst it on a daily basis. One of our followers offered to take us snowshoeing in the sparse high-country of Colorado. Another patron suggested that we take a sidetrack to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee to help in the search of Big Foot. Other requests have been steadily pouring in from across the country and around the globe.

We can’t be certain at this time if we will make it to Nottingham, England, Alberta, Canada, Sabah, Malaysia, or specific far reaching corners of the United States on this expedition. Nevertheless, we are encouraged and gratified by the reality that the world is requesting the team’s presence during our search for Trouble. If we can make it through this maiden voyage unscathed it will go a long way to securing the probability of future endeavors in the Black Boar.

We do not know what tomorrow will bring, but we are confident that we can handle whatever comes our way. Our agenda is Trouble, and it refuses to fit a schedule. Hello, Trouble. Here we come.