Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1130: Alastair Humphreys Mega Adventurer Revisited

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Ep. 1130: Alastair Humphreys Mega Adventurer Revisited · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:20
[SPEAKER_02]: episode 1,130, Alistair Humphrey's revisited.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: This episode is from 2019, Mason, did the interview and he was still in Denver, Colorado at the time.
0:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Alistair has been on the adventure sports podcast a couple of times and this is the first time that he appeared with us and
0:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Alistair, if you don't know an amazing adventurer, he's written several books about his adventures.
0:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's just a few, the boy who biked the world, the great outdoors, the doorstep mile, moods of future joys, thunder and sunshine, there are other rivers, grand adventures, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, lots of books.
1:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Alistair is a British adventurer, author, blogger and a motivational speaker, known for promoting accessible outdoor experiences and environmental recreation.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: He did a round-the-world bicycle trip from 2001 through 2005, 46,000 miles.
1:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He walked across India in 2015, 2,400 kilometers.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And he also has wrote across the Atlantic Ocean, he's run at least six marathons in the Sahara desert.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: He crossed Iceland on foot, but his more recent claim to fame has been encouraging people to have local adventures, micro adventures, close to home, and I applaud that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So you're going to enjoy this episode.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But before we dive into the show today, I wanted to thank all the Patreon members who do help to support the Adventure Sports podcast through Patreon.
2:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Every little bit helps and it goes a long, long way, so thank you very, very much.
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: If you would like to be a guest on the Adventure Sports podcast, or if you know someone that you think would be an excellent guest, please contact us at Info
2:18
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2:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Now what is the number one best way that you can help the
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Sharon episode that you love with a friend, let other people benefit from the podcast too.
2:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much in advance, and here's Mason.
2:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you calling me from today?
2:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm supposed to ask you that question.
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm coming from Denver, Colorado.
3:03
[SPEAKER_03]: That's home.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
3:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I briefly was there.
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: year or so ago doing a talk.
3:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I did one talk in a bolder and then one talk in a very boring hotel in Denver flying visit.
3:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, really.
3:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
3:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, was it just a speaking engagement?
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so just luckily I managed to tie together two companies to into one plane trip, which was good.
3:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, it's just the grief visit.
3:34
[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome, man.
3:35
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
3:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And so where are you coming from today?
3:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in a little shed in my garden where I work is just outside London, how far.
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, about half an hour in the train, so not really in the wilderness unfortunately, but it's quite a convenient place to be.
3:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a nice post at Notin front to be now saying, climb a tree because on the first of every month I go and climb the same tree.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm doing it once a month throughout the year and May today, this is the first time there's going to be green leaves on it So I'm really looking forward to that when we finish our talk.
4:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, man.
4:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's fantastic.
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, god.
4:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So is that part of your micro adventure campaign?
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's sort of it's just I've realized that I like doing things that kind of measure out a year
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: whether that's the seasons or once a month.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Something like climbing a tree every month, you see how the, obviously, the tree changes through the, but also it's just a chance for me to think about how my last month went and think what I'm gonna do the next month and just be a bit more observant of time passing.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Plus I get to climb a tree, like a kid.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that doesn't take too much time either.
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, exactly.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's literally, it's about five minutes to my house.
5:01
[SPEAKER_01]: sit there for 5-10 minutes and come home and it's already it's becoming a genuine highlight in my year now.
5:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I climb to the same point each time and take a photo in the same plate so you can see how the tree is changing.
5:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a nice progression through the year.
5:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a mountain right behind my house and you know I know we're gonna talk about it but I love I love the micro adventures you know we interview a lot of people from the UK on this show almost every single one of them mentions the word micro adventures.
5:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh really?
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to start trademarking this.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm telling you.
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cash.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Another revenue stream right there man.
5:43
[SPEAKER_03]: You'd copyright infringement.
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not sure that's quite the spirit of the game.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right, right.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Soaring people's ass.
5:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I had what I love about it is that these activities like that, you know, you just kind of in the busyness and the how serious life is.
6:02
[SPEAKER_03]: You just kind of neglect little things like that.
6:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I can't possibly.
6:06
[SPEAKER_03]: take time away from all these meetings to go climb a freaking tree.
6:10
[SPEAKER_03]: There's, you know what I mean?
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: That seems so.
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you imagine opening up some business man's journal to see that?
6:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Pin down?
6:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
6:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
6:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually it's, it's the people, the people who think that they're too busy to do that, who actually need to do it the most, isn't it?
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the people for whom it could be a real genuine
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Transformative experience.
6:34
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a small hill behind our house.
6:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It climbs maybe 1,000 feet, maybe 800 feet in a couple miles.
6:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And my friends, a financial advisor downtown.
6:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And
6:45
[SPEAKER_03]: hijab sounds terrible to me.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it sounds like just meeting with rich people all day and you know kissing their butts all day and and we go find this and we see deer and elk and we see the white covered white cap mountains all behind Denver and it's right outside I mean it's right it's in town, but.
7:05
[SPEAKER_03]: He had been so long since he'd done something like that.
7:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It was it felt like we were, you know, trekking in the Himalayas.
7:11
[SPEAKER_03]: It was awesome.
7:13
[SPEAKER_03]: That was just last week.
7:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So.
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's incredible.
7:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's nice to try and build up the habit of those things as a way for.
7:21
[SPEAKER_03]: a chance to hang out regularly as well isn't it absolutely so man I don't even know where to start I want to say thank you first of all your your first bike trip inspired me to do my first which was cool three three months now three months long it was a last get a florida
7:38
[SPEAKER_03]: just over a summer, over a university, a year in university, and my best friend and I, and man, it kicked off this entirely different trajectory in life.
7:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I never expected leading, you know, to this podcast and a number of other things, so thanks for your influence and that.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I am, when I cycled up America, I found it so hard to decide which route to take, because, you know, you got the West Coast, you got the East Coast, you got the middle, you get
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like being in three different, completely different worlds.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So I like you're a, did you go diagonally across?
8:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, straight diagonally.
8:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just right across from one corner to the other.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you go through, through an Oklahoma?
8:21
[SPEAKER_03]: We went through Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and then a little bit into Wyoming and just kind of zigzag our way down seeing interesting points.
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But it started with you and this other two guys, you might know their names, they were
8:37
[SPEAKER_03]: in school and they decided to go from the magnetic north pole to the magnetic south pole without engines.
8:45
[SPEAKER_03]: They sailed, they roller-bladed, they bite, it was random, as can be, and they were in national geographic, and man is all these brits inspired us.
8:53
[SPEAKER_03]: To be honest.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, James Hooper and Rob Gauntlet.
8:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that's who it is.
8:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to write that down because I did another name.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the sad part is that James died a couple of years after doing that.
9:06
[SPEAKER_01]: simple climbing accident.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: No kidding.
9:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just on a holiday, not even a sort of expedition climb, just climbing with a few buddies.
9:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he was really, really young.
9:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think that now that you mentioned that, that does ring a bell about something.
9:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I looked them up afterwards.
9:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And, oh man, yeah, and we just had a tragedy in the mountains a few weeks ago in Canada,
9:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it happened, that's terrible.
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's another reason to stick to microadventures.
9:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you come home to see the kids.
9:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And now you speak on which you have kids, don't you?
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I do, I've had them entirely removed from my internet adventure life for many years.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that intentional then?
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It has been, yeah, just trying to make your career out of the internet is such a weird, weird thing to do.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: and, you know, and building a brand around yourself and to some extent, I'm going to sort of show off about yourself and I have to be very careful not to start believing my own BS.
10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so I've been for various reasons.
10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I really wanted to separate my real life from my adventure online life.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So I kept them very separate for that.
10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But actually, just the recent book that I've written is the first time I start to talk about,
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: being a dad and the challenges of trying to combine being a good dad with being an adventurous free spirit and the sometimes the seeming incompatibility of the two things.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So it has been it has been something that I
10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: kept away from the internet.
10:52
[SPEAKER_03]: But I've started to think, well, actually, this could be a useful conversation to talk to people about the swirl of, you know, balancing who I think I am based on these trips I've done versus who I'm going to have to be now.
11:06
[SPEAKER_03]: That's been a really interesting thought process.
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'd love to hear from someone who's been down that road before.
11:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And we do talk to a lot of guests that are going through that life transition now.
11:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But I mean, is there anything you want to speak to that?
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, I, I, I thought I could have it all.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So my theory was that I could be this cool exciting adventure guy who was continually off in the wilderness and also be this brilliant modern dad who was at home all the time.
11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't quite figured out the the contradictions between those two things.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: hugely underestimated the impact it would have on me.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think because my adventure life has in many ways become my life, it feels very much my identity and who I am.
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: When I stopped doing a lot of that stuff because I was becoming a dad, then I really felt a huge loss of identity and really spent a long time
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, if I'm not that anymore, then what am I, who am I?
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've, and the micro adventures was one of my main ways of trying to figure out how it could still try and live adventiously, but also domestically.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I certainly, I think, well, you're in for a big shot.
12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm appearing for the worst.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, no, no, I hope for the best.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's been without a doubt to the greatest adventure of my life.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But it certainly gets in the way of a big adventure plans.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Or actually, all you take them with you, depending on your choice of life.
12:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But in my case, it's certainly got in the way of big adventures.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you just have to start looking differently at adventure.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
12:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because you, I've read a lot of your stuff in your blog.
13:03
[SPEAKER_03]: some things you've written, you enjoy having those two different lives, like life in London and life on the road and adventure.
13:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct?
13:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly.
13:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You have an intentionally integrated the two.
13:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really enjoy the different sides of life.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, my wife, she, she who enjoys one of the sides of life, she thinks the
13:26
[SPEAKER_01]: adventure sleeping in the tent is a stupid thing to do.
13:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So she doesn't go camping or anything.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: No, she's got more sense.
13:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, man.
13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I, and I'm so glad you said that.
13:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting that, you know, the pinnacle of the adventure world in a lot of ways you are a big figure in that has chosen out something like that.
13:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's, well, gosh, there's a heck of a lot more to life than going on an adventure, that's for sure.
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So, uh,
13:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I enjoy the variety of aspects in my life, whether that's being in big cities.
14:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I love big, crazy, noisy cities, and then I love being in the mountains away from big cities.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the variety of life is what I enjoy.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's also been reflected in the different adventures I've done over the years.
14:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I never chose to become say a specialist mountaineer.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's climbing ever harder mountains.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: jackable trays, doing some biking, doing some running, doing some hiking, different kinds of trips.
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the variety of life is what I like the most.
14:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think it's different for somebody who's only had micro adventures to have that same
14:43
[SPEAKER_03]: sense of true adventure that you've had.
14:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm going to go into more detail in the intro of this about your background.
14:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I know you have a billion accolades to talk about, but, you know, you have those huge, huge year, year long, multi year long experiences.
15:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And now you have microadventures too.
15:06
[SPEAKER_03]: to sit on, to experience, how do you think it'd be different for somebody who's never had that big experience to start it all off?
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, I think microadventures have been a brilliant part of life for lots of people and there's, you know, a lot of the joy I've had from the big journeys you can get from cycling for a weekend or hiking for a weekend or camping out for a couple of nights.
15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: real life and I've been really trying to champion that.
15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: However, there's no doubt that that can't compare really to this sense of normative, say, being on the road for four years non-stop or being in a little rowing boat, a thousand miles from land in a storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a sense of epicness and scale to that that you can't get in small things,
16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: endlessly grateful for having had those opportunities and seized the opportunities to do those big trips.
16:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's something pretty epic about doing something pretty epic.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the other hand, it's not something that is often achievable and therefore I think you just need to do what we can with what we have and do it now as one of your wise at President's once said.
16:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I absolutely, yeah, good president at that, yeah.
16:36
[SPEAKER_03]: having been able to do the, you know, a lot of people probably told you that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience at the time that you believed that and that now do you say, yeah, that that probably is true, life gets complicated quickly.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think when I was, when I was cycling around the world, those four years in my late 20s, I think I anticipated then that I would, to some degree or another
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: some sort of wild man, whether on the road or living in strange and crazy countries, I certainly anticipated that was what my life would be.
17:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely didn't expect that I would have a shed and a mortgage and two kids.
17:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, if you'd asked me my life when I was 10, I'd probably spent the said that
17:26
[SPEAKER_01]: and to space spending the whole of my life eating ice cream and watching cartoons on TV.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we're after in life changes over time as well, doesn't it?
17:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
17:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And speaking of that, you've mentioned before that your career has been non-strategic and just kind of how it's unfolded.
17:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Has that changed at all?
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Now that you have more
17:56
[SPEAKER_01]: trying to plan so that you can head in a direction you want to be going in life because you can't get everything you want right now and a lot of things you have to work towards for many years.
18:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So in my case that's making a living out of the adventure stuff.
18:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a case, there's a case for planning ahead, but there's also the argument you don't know what you're going to want to do in life in 10 years, so you should get on with
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: what feels important and exciting and meaningful right now and just try and do your best to not close off too many avenues through those decisions.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So in my case that meant years ago I thought I love adventure stuff and I really don't want to sit in an office so I'll just go and do a load of talks to schools and elementary schools and high schools and earn enough money just to stay alive while I write a book because that's what I want to do right now with my
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: that as progressed, I'm doing school talks and writing magazine articles to now, just making my whole living out of doing adventure stuff.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But with the slight pressure now that I need to pay for a mortgage and mid-laid, my first ever prescription reading glasses.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, you'll need to change the needs of the reasons why you're doing your work.
19:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose change over time.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But,
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I still wake up with the same joy and excitement of thinking, wow, great, it's a day in the office today, I absolutely love what I do.
19:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, so I mean, I don't know if this is a front or just how you come across, are you a happy person, truly?
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very happy when I'm doing stuff that makes me very happy.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm quite grumpy when I'm doing stuff that makes me grumpy.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And that sounds like it's a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a kind of like a rest of us.
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
19:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a stupid answer, but actually it's really true for my life.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, everyone, pretty much, well, anyone who's listening to this, unless they actually know me will only have heard me talking with enthusiasm about adventure and travel and stuff like that, people who know me in my real life will sometimes be surprised by how much I
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: how enthusiastic I sound here, because back home I'm grumbling away about boring real-life stuff.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So interest rates and insurance plans, yeah.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, I'm not sure I'm quite that boring, but yeah, that's sort of thing.
20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, things that have to be dealt with.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, one of the best things I did, but I did it years too late was spending money on a accountant, rather than trying to do all that complicated stuff myself.
20:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So now I just pay her what she asked me to pay her and I pay the government what she tells me to pay the government and I trust her and it's freed up my brain and so many happiness percentage points.
20:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Thankfully my wife is not such a, not so a phobic of all these responsible things so she's able to handle a lot of that and man, the value of having a partner that can fill those gaps is unbelievable.
21:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you're building this, you've built this career, it's kind of like all on your shoulders.
21:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you ever feel like, if you ever wanted to throw in the towel and say, this is just too hard or has it been a steady, consistent climb for you?
21:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's hard to tell for us, you know what I mean?
21:21
[SPEAKER_03]: You're the one that's going through it all.
21:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, you know, quite a few years, like anyone's starting out, I had a lot of worries
21:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Crankyama, is it possible to earn enough money from talking about myself?
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, can I make this work?
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I make it work?
21:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's become a great relief now that I've got to a nicely happy, sustainable point where I'm pretty sure that as long as I keep doing this, I can pay the bills and that's great.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a huge relief.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Every so often though, I think, wow, I've been doing the same thing for about 20 years now.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's time to go and become a carpenter
22:01
[SPEAKER_01]: or something like that.
22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So every so often I consider that I should go and do a big change.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the trouble is I can never think of any thing that is so much fun and requires so little actual hard work as what I'm doing now and therefore I just keep doing what I'm doing.
22:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And the third aspect of me thinking that is a serious one and it's like the old story of the golden goose.
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the golden goose of my life and my business.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: in order for me to have a living, I need to keep doing interesting stuff and writing and talking about it.
22:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means that when I'm 60, I'm out of to go and sleep in a tent on some mounted side when I'd much rather be sitting on the sofa watching TV.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm conscious that it's, I'm kind of playing a young man's game with no exit strategy.
22:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a beautiful bartender that begins to age, you know.
22:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes a younger, prettier person is going to step in one day and kick you out of your job.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, well, you know, I've started to do quite a few bits of work for different brands now, making films for them or stuff like that.
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just have my first rejection this year on the grounds of, I don't appeal to Millennials.
23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: What was that about?
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It was some brand wanted to showcase their product and they decided that if I was doing it, that wouldn't appeal to Millennials.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was my first wake-up call that I'm getting old.
23:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, man.
23:34
[SPEAKER_03]: That is funny.
23:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You say that we had some young guys on the show a couple of weeks ago, and we heard from all these high school and college kids saying, wow, it was so refreshing to have a young person on the show.
23:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm thinking,
23:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, I'm not old.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, what are you talking about?
23:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm still that.
23:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm still young, but like, yeah, to them, we're talking to a bunch of mid-30s, maybe early 40s your olds, and to me, that's not old.
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, to them, it seems like a lifetime away.
24:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm sorry.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: How did that rejection feel?
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: the the sort of people who are interested in the stuff I talk about, I think a large number of them have grown up with me and they've started reading my stuff when I was cycling around the world and then I've got all there as they've got all there and and it did make me think I wonder whether 18 to 25 roles have much interest in what I say and if not,
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: does that matter?
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Or should I try and change?
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, and pretty much the answer I came up with is what I always come up with.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not sure if that's because it's a good answer.
24:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm because it, or it's because I'm lazy.
24:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But the answer was, I think I just need to keep doing what I do.
24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Do it, because do it for the reasons that feel important to me, not for other people's reasons.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep doing it as well as I possibly can.
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And then hopefully everything will work out all right.
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And generally, when I've stuck to that policy,
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... things have gone well the times when i've tried to chase fame or fortune or when it generally doesn't go so well and i end up hating myself yeah i would totally agree don't try too hard to be someone you're not for somebody you're not because man
25:25
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, maybe you won't appeal to millennials or whoever's next, but you know what, if you're going to be working on the middle age crowd right now, I promise you, there is an endless market for angsty parents who want more adventure in their life.
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's, I mean, every other one I talk to.
25:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And micro adventures, the whole world of micro adventures has opened that up to
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So clearly, and I've actually, I've actually recently started a new email newsletter called Living Adventurously, which is me trying to figure out my own life, I guess, but just articulating it through newsletters about trying to just live adventurously within the constraints of normal real life and the emails I've been getting in response to that, they definitely show me that there is a large market of
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: um, frustrated adventurers out there.
26:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
26:22
[SPEAKER_03]: We uh, we've had some guests talk about, you know, going transitioning from adventure to more professional life and why that's not a bad thing and why that's, you know, their their desires change in time.
26:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is just something I guarantee the 25 year old version of you could never understand at 25.
26:48
[SPEAKER_01]: spent a month busking through Spain and consider that one of the greatest adventures of my life.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The 25-year-old version of me would have completely sneered at such a pathetic, wimpish, non-hard core pretence of an expedition.
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, very, very conscious of that.
27:06
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's funny.
27:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So, so with Nanopelington Millennials,
27:14
[SPEAKER_03]: However, you're you're pretty active on social media.
27:16
[SPEAKER_03]: How is social media changed what you do?
27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's a little vague.
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not it's not it's not vague at all.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The the internet has totally has completely facilitated me turning my hobby into my job and I I started my blog
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it wasn't called a blog, and I started it in the year 2001.
27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've seen a lot of transition periods for how people use the internet.
27:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And social media coming in, say, the last 10 years, has, for me, had a lot of advances in disadvantages.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The chief disadvantage in my mind is the complete race to the bottom, in terms of shorter
28:02
[SPEAKER_01]: less challenging articles, easier things to write, just a dumbing down of stories I found.
28:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I find that frustrating.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, the good side of it, of course, is this endless appetite for content and the potential to find your exact little niche of people.
28:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not going to appeal to a million people, but I
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: perhaps appeal to thousands of people who are looking for exactly the same sort of stuff that I'm looking for.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that sense, it's an absolute jam of a thing for making this choice of lifestyle viable.
28:42
[SPEAKER_01]: My one of the main difficulties is to try to remember
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: why I'm doing adventures as it when I'm up on a hilltop I should be out there because I want to do it not just because it'll look great on Instagram and the second aspect of it which we touched on earlier is I need to remember that social media is not real life and I should not necessarily believe everything I see or even put on social media and just keep myself grounded in reality a
29:16
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's one of the reasons why I've chosen so vehemently to separate my real life from my internet life.
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's huge amounts of things that I do in my life that it just never occurs to me to get out my phone and tweet about.
29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm really glad of that separation thing.
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So the only struggle comes really when I'm out doing something vaguely adventurous.
29:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when I'm starting to think in the back of my mind I'm thinking, hang on.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't just a bike ride, this is work, and then my brain starts worrying about, I should try and tell some sort of story about this, which is a bit annoying, but it's a heck of a lot better than most day jobs.
29:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very aware of that.
29:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, I didn't know that was an intentional thing for you because I'll be honest until I started researching for this interview.
30:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not know you were married and have kids.
30:12
[SPEAKER_01]: completely apart, really, just for some sort of sanity thing.
30:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually, how did they feel about it?
30:17
[SPEAKER_01]: They're for fun.
30:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, you know, my wife doesn't write about me on her office linkedin page.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think, I don't feel too sad about that.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The change me really was a couple of things.
30:32
[SPEAKER_01]: One was, I was noticing increasing numbers of people yearning to do adventures, yearning for microadventures, stuff.
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: the constraints of real life of, you know, family, family commitments, essentially.
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized that I was in a position to try and perhaps help these people by talking about that.
30:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet I never had chosen to do so.
30:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second part was as I was writing my book about Spain, which was, on the one hand, it's a simple adventure story of busking through Spain with no money.
31:09
[SPEAKER_01]: but to leave it as only that was missing out a huge part of why I did the trip and why it was important to me, which was as a way of me trying to to try and resolve a lot of these conflicts and dilemmas and being pulled in lots of directions that I was facing in my own life and that trip was a way of me trying to consolidate to all and sort my head out and accept that middle-age
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: forced me really to think, right?
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I just need to now tell the world about this sort of stuff.
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a, and what I have to do now is make sure that they keep the separation in my head from work and real life still.
31:52
[SPEAKER_03]: What is busking?
31:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not familiar with that term.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, slowly, busking.
31:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Busking is when you stand up in the street and play musical instrument, and someone gives you money.
32:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, so like panhandling or like a street performers.
32:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
32:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't know what you do.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well that's interesting.
32:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to translate this for my, for my, I need to turn.
32:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely know people that do that.
32:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I just never heard that turn before.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
32:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just, so my favorite travel book from that, a guy 80 years ago walked through Spain playing his violin.
32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always loved that book and wanted to do it, but I can't play the violin.
32:33
[SPEAKER_01]: terrifies me.
32:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like one of my deepest fears up there with karaoke.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so I decided that as a way of trying to again change the way I look at what adventure means to me rather than just going off to do some tough guy adventure thing, what I should really do was something that really scared me and really was filled with risk and the chance of failure which was to go and
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: and to make it spicy, to do it without a wallet or credit card and only surviving from the money I earned from my very, very bad violin playing.
33:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can't play.
33:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm really pay you to start playing.
33:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I am that kind of, I'm as bad as that is what you've expect.
33:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really, I did seven months of lessons before I set off, which for the violin is really not very much practice at all.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could play five,
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: songs of about 20 seconds each.
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were very, very, very, very bad indeed.
33:36
[SPEAKER_01]: People would walk down the street and Spain looking at me with this strange look on their face of what, earth are you doing?
33:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You're clearly not from Spain.
33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are you doing in our country playing this terrible attempt at music?
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a very, very embarrassing nerve-racking
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: terrifying.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find it really interesting how standing up and playing a musical instrument in a little village in Spain, to many people, sound as scary as getting on a bike and cycling across a continent, if not more so.
34:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And it really gets into the heart of the stuff that so often stops us doing the adventures we want to do, which isn't the practical constraints of
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: not having a good backpack, it's more the fears and worries and what will people think about me or people like me shouldn't be doing this.
34:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a grown man, I should be doing a spreadsheet or something.
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: These are these inner fears and vulnerabilities that stop us doing so many stuff.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So much stuff.
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That I think was at the heart of this hike through Spain.
34:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I wasn't aware that, I mean, I read that you did that, but I didn't take the time to look up the word because I wanted to ask you.
34:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Man, that is, that is an adventure.
34:50
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a true adventure, because for you, and I understand this and a lot of our listeners understand it, at some point writing a hundred miles on the bike through a desolate highway does not, it's not an adventure anymore, because you're so used to it, and it hasn't, it's not challenging you anymore.
35:09
[SPEAKER_03]: in a lot of ways, where is that?
35:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Holy cow, you know, it's short enough to not be gone from family too long, but long enough that you really are into it.
35:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're doing something every day that's so uncomfortable, but you have to do it to continue.
35:26
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't have another way of continuing because you don't have that money.
35:29
[SPEAKER_03]: That's hilarious.
35:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, an interesting
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: and I slept out every night because obviously I could never afford a hotel, but so conventionally walking 500 miles and sleeping out every night, conventionally that would be what people consider an adventure.
35:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I noticed, that none of that crossed my mind until the first day when I was in Spain and I opened the map for the first time thought, right?
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to walk through it and not even cross my mind.
36:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's exactly, as you say, because that's easy for me.
36:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done that many times in my life.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And my brain was totally filled instead with the thought of having to stand up in a quiet, beautiful little village square and play to try and earn a euro to buy loaf of bread.
36:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I think the things that we do as adventurous people, I think it's interesting for us to ask ourselves,
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: a different sort of rut and in a different source of comfort zone where you ever are standing out there with the violin screeching in your ear and you look around as a 40 year old man and say what the hell am I doing out here yeah and that was one of one of the main reasons I did it and you know I was a 39 year old man so I was only my apologies my apologies but that's an important it's an important point because I was
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was worried about the best years of my life being behind me in all that sort of classic midlife crisis stuff.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, a lot of the whole trip was me asking, what the heck am I doing?
37:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And then specifically, yeah, standing in the square, looking like an absolute idiot was so embarrassing.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was kind of the reason I wanted to do it, just to try and shake off the shackles a bit and that be a bit more liberated with life.
37:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so did it do then.
37:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it was absolutely wonderful.
37:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so, when the first day, I thought this is a disaster.
37:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually, this kind of gentleman handed me a euro.
37:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I earned some money on my very first day.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was the most thrilling way I've ever earned money.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It was incredible.
37:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And from then on, the whole month was just completely filled with joy and excitement and thinking, wow, this is exactly what I'm looking for in my life.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's adventurous, but in a different way to what I've done before, it's really challenging me, but in a fresh way.
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's because I was earning so little money, I'm also living incredibly simply, the simplest food,
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all I have to do every day is walk 20, 25 miles and find a hill to sleep on at night.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And this ends at the end of the day of thing you, wow, I've done everything that the day asks me.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm now sleeping out under the stars.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just a,
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: joyful brilliant wonderful adventure.
38:31
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, that is adventure.
38:33
[SPEAKER_03]: That is, it's, it's completely out of your comfort zone for most of it.
38:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It seemed like it's, you're, you're, you're not an expert in any of that, but you know, anyone can just start walking.
38:48
[SPEAKER_03]: anyone can start doing something so simple, but adding all those elements of not bringing your own money, yeah, and that's exactly what adventure is.
38:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So is it safe to say you're not going to ever be the type of person that needs to climb Mount Everest to complete their adventure resume?
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I spent five years trying to do a very, very,
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: big and difficult expedition to the South Pole.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the end, I had to pull out of that because I'd two little kids came along and it didn't seem the right thing to do, set it.
39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So that, I'd be lying if I said that doesn't sit in my mind as a significant regret, fitting and not having done this big elite challenge that I set my heart on for so many years.
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the other hand, you know, time moves on as we've talked about.
39:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And these days, I'm very happy,
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: climbing trees around England.
39:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to get my adventure kicks without flying as much as possible these days.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And just swimming in beautiful rivers, climbing trees, reading good books.
39:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe I'm finally growing up.
39:56
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a element of simplicity in all that.
39:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I'm dating all the way back to when I spent four years on the road, just wearing literally wearing the same shirt every single day to it,
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: when there is simplicity and purpose in my life that things generally seem to be heading in a good direction.
40:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's when things get, when I head away from that path that I get less content, I think.
40:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think I've seen in pictures that might be in your shed, there was a quote that on the wall that said, the best things in life are simple, but not easy.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, well, I'm a very big fan of the difference
40:41
[SPEAKER_01]: summed up at a good adventures one that's simple but not easy as well.
40:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I strongly believe that.
40:47
[SPEAKER_03]: What part of building a career in continuing a career?
40:51
[SPEAKER_03]: What part do you like the least with what the work that you do?
40:55
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really good question.
40:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The parts I like the least are the admin, so taxes and accounts, answering lots of emails.
41:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry for that.
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I dislike that side.
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Having to sell stuff, so I spent the whole day yesterday trying to work out a social media blitz for trying to sell my book.
41:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And man, I didn't really enjoy doing that.
41:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think I enjoy pretty much everything else, but
41:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I sometimes get a bit weary and worried that my greatest stories are in the past and I still have to tell people about
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: that time when I cycle around the world, 20 years ago.
41:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's coming up on 20 years since you started.
41:45
[SPEAKER_03]: That trip, I mean, it's a few years from now.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, yeah, it's 18 years now.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this summer will be 18 years.
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Gosh, so that means I've been talking about a cycling around the world for lots more times than I actually do.
42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel a bit like the rock star who goes on stage and has to keep the crowd happy with his greatest hit,
42:08
[SPEAKER_03]: his autistic new album right you know that's fascinating because he there's something there's definitely a stigma of like living in the past and all that but it's it's such a main it's so amazing out there and the things you've seen are so incredible it's hard not to spend a lifetime talking about it because that's almost how long it takes to process the whole thing yes that's
42:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Once I started to label myself as an adventurer for quite a lot of years, I only felt as good as my next adventure.
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I'd done in the past and really seemed to matter to me the important thing to me and pretty much every into I ever did was what's next, what's next, what's next.
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt this pressure on myself and from perhaps perceived but from from society at large that
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I was only still interesting if I had something epic in the pipeline and I didn't like that aspect of trying to be an adventurer for quite a number of years.
43:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Spain trip was quite a cathartic experience for that in me being able to say, hey, actually I'm not going to cycle around the world again for another four years and if if that bothers you then I'm sorry, but that's the times are a changing.
43:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, times are a change in man, so for you, with the times changing, what is in your pipeline?
43:37
[SPEAKER_03]: What are you excited about right now?
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really enjoying writing, writing's always been what I've loved, and for so many years, I've written 11 books now, but I still don't feel like a writer.
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: at all.
43:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I always think, that's what I enjoy doing, but you know, I get paid from doing talks at conferences, not from being a writer.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had a bit of a mental breakthrough around the end of last year when I asked myself, why don't I just consider myself a writer, make that declared to myself, I am a writer, and then see what I have to do in order to try and make that
44:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And the book, I've started to write a book now about living eventually, but I've decided that, as I write each chapter, I'm going to stick it online as an email newsletter.
44:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm kind of giving away my book for free live, whilst I'm writing it, and people can follow that along.
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a good pressure for me to get on and write it.
44:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm enjoying doing it as a sort of more open source project.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just trying to find different ways
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, interesting, hopefully useful.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, and that combined with some exploration, micro adventures, small adventures close to home seems to be keeping me happy these days.
45:04
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great, man.
45:05
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great to hear that the changes in life they're necessary and they're not a bad thing and those things that are so amazing to people.
45:16
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I just think a lot of people are going through that to be honest.
45:18
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people that were very adventurous early on and maybe realize, I feel like you know, you start out, this is how I put it.
45:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like you're in a rowboat.
45:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really easy to control, but it's only capable of so much.
45:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And as life goes on, you build up families.
45:33
[SPEAKER_03]: All this, you know, this brand almost, this, this following, these experiences.
45:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's almost by the end
45:42
[SPEAKER_03]: any turn takes so much longer and so much more calculation but it's also capable of so much more but it's not as agile as you were before or I could just say break up with my girlfriend and bike around the world for four years, you know, with $10,000 but they're they're both beautiful things.
46:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Man, that's very interesting.
46:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So with being a dad
46:08
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you hope for your kids to do with their life?
46:10
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you hope that they see from you and in that they do?
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one of the reasons that I decided to go do the Spain trip was I hadn't done any sort of decent adventure for a few years.
46:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was trying to, you know, I would like them to be curious and wild and bold with their lives, whatever direction they go down.
46:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But I realized I had kind of stopped living that way in myself.
46:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So going to do that, Spain Tree, it was a bit of a demonstration to them, as well as to myself that I could still try and live adventurously.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's all I want from them, really, to choose their path consciously, not just follow the herd, choose the direction they want to go, and then do so with great enthusiasm and to be as weird and curious and wild as they dare to be.
47:03
[SPEAKER_03]: you ever see yourself going with them or them going with you doing something together?
47:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that'll be great.
47:12
[SPEAKER_01]: My son's current ambition is to pick up a professional soccer player.
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So I spend most of my life at the moment driving him for practice.
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We've struck a deal.
47:20
[SPEAKER_01]: If he gets into the Premier League, then he's going to give me a million bucks to pay for taxes.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of hoping he just becomes a football player and then I can retire on his wages.
47:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, when there'd be nice and isn't that the dream of every young boy in Gerrarda to be something huge like that?
47:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Which I think is where it starts.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, in reality, given that the poor kid has got my sporting genes, I'm pretty sure he's not going to be a professional athletes.
47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And all I hope then is that when that crushing disappointment settles in,
47:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't settle down for a boring life of mediocrity, but instead sets off on some other crazy ambitious dream and sees what directs and that takes him in.
48:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I will say on the really hard days that boring life of mediocrity does sound pretty appealing sometimes.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's a huge amounts to it that to be, there's a lot of good things to it.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The main thing I would urge is that it is done,
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: by choice, you know, you're choosing, right?
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do this for whatever stability, happiness, blah, blah, blah, but making it an actual conscious choice, I think, is a really important part of what I, what I, yeah, I think you've got to choose the direction as much as you're able to do so.
48:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You look at someone's life and see me, and I would love that stability, I would love, I would love just to look forward to cooking out with the family this week and rather than trying
48:50
[SPEAKER_03]: you know to so many interviews or so many speaking engagement to write this much of the book and just let someone else essentially pay my bills for me.
49:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, a lot of the people don't choose that and they feel stuck in that which is you know it's all I guess relative.
49:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly and I've certainly learned over the last number of years to not to not make a mistake of judging someone's life by what you see from the outside of it so
49:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm sure there's times in everyone's life where they're wishing I could do this I wish I do that, but I think you're on a pretty good path and you've got the biggest adventure rule coming up becoming a dad.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you've got some adventures ahead of you.
49:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, and I will say something about it seems so common like it's not an adventure everybody does this.
49:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you, did you feel that way?
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just say I spectacularly underestimated it.
49:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I feel that I feel that I'm going to be in for it then.
49:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, man.
49:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Get some sleep.
49:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, gosh.
49:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, god.
49:57
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
49:58
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we already struggle with that.
50:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the only bit of sensible, I have no sensible advice to offer any one of this subject except one thing I began a week before my son was born was a website called mail diary and you get an email from them every day or every week whatever you want and you just reply with a couple of lines and it forms a diary and I've been and when you first do it it's not that interesting but I've been doing it most days for about a decade now and that's built up into a huge
50:27
[SPEAKER_01]: treasure trove.
50:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So like anything, you start with something small, do it regularly, and it turns in something big and meaningful in the long run.
50:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's signed up for that, but it was you.
50:36
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a great idea.
50:37
[SPEAKER_03]: That's wonderful.
50:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So speaking of which, how can listeners learn more about you and your most recent projects your book just go ahead and plug that?
50:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so what I would love people to do one is to buy my new book or listen to the audio book, it's called My Mid Summer Morning, and it's on all the usual places you can get books, and then sign up for my new newsletter, it's just called Living Adventurously, you can find that on my website, and then I'm on all the social media things as Al Humphrey's.
51:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Perfect, well, in any parting words of wisdom, I really appreciate you being on, by the way.
51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think you need to go climb that hill behind your house and get some sleep in the next couple of weeks.
51:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my advice for life.
51:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a great place to start.
51:25
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, you got to treat a climb and I don't want to take up more of your afternoon.
51:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Alistair Man, I really appreciate it.
51:31
[SPEAKER_03]: You've definitely been a huge inspiration in my story and my best friend's story who just texted me and changed a lot about our lives and in, in, in, in, in, in.
51:43
[SPEAKER_03]: coming from that, our family's lives.
51:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you.
51:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very nice to hear.
51:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very kind.
51:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll send you a photo from up my tree.
51:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay sounds good, man.
51:51
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, we'll have fun.
51:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Cheers, Mason.
51:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
51:54
[SPEAKER_03]: See you.
51:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Bye.
51:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Bye.