Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1220: Bikepacking and Backpacking with Ryan Brown

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Ep. 1220: Bikepacking and Backpacking with Ryan Brown · Adventure Sports Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey friends, thanks for joining us today.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have Ryan Brown, who goes by Ryan Kodak, Brown.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Super cool.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was actually on the show nine years ago.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna be really fun to catch up.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is nine years of adventure.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have a lot of catching up to do.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: His episode originally was on a cycling trip from Canada to Panama.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was episode 282, but he's done so many things since then, so we're going to talk about that and how adventure can revolutionize, might be a word, your life.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that Ryan had that experience.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also is a filmmaker about adventure.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's going to be able to share some insights I hope for us about how people can do that and what his work is.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: He more recently did a bike packing trip from Patagonia to Alaska.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, a long bike trip, but this time, North instead of South, Ryan welcome to the program.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thanks for having me on Curtis.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good to chat again after so long.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we were sitting here chatting and I kept saying, I should have record.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is too good.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I should have record in any way.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: We wasted all that.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now we can, we can catch up.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to go back to the beginning, Ryan, you said that you started adventuring in 2012, I believe, and that that was a critical juncture in your life.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So will you give us the backstory and a little bit about that?
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So people have context.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so in 2012, I was kind of struggling with mental health issues with a lot of anxiety and depression that had lingered since I guess since like my early teens and as I was going through college and university and, you know, trying to do life, I would have these like debilitating panic attacks where I would be sitting in a classroom and all of a sudden, I couldn't breathe, I would get this tightness in my chest, I would literally feel like I was
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I would have to, like, kind of flee the room.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of thought I was dying, run home.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, my life was kind of like stalled and shut down.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I found, I found adventure.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I found bike packing.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I saw these people riding bikes.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bike trail where I'm from from Pittsburgh.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It runs from Pittsburgh to DC.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw these people just like randomly out there on the trail, and I kind of said that looks like fun.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I loved riding a bike, and then I had this gap where a truck broke down at work.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I just, on a whim, I bought a trailer and threw a bunch of camping gear in the back of the trailer, and off I went to like ride this trail over the period of a week.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like the freedom, the sense of adventure, like, my god, there's you get so much strength from being out there, like in these situations, and then I went back home and I told my boss that I quit, I changed up the bicycle, I've never stopped since, yeah, it's just been one kind of bigger trip after the next, wow, okay, so what happened with the, the panic attacks?
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah what happened i don't know um so my parents divorced when i was like sixteen and then i got put on a medication on an SSRI and i had kind of like a reaction to it yeah and then i kind of freaked out i don't know i started smashing a bunch of stuff in the house i think maybe it's just like
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It like freed me enough because usually I like, I don't know, I'm like a pretty calm stable individual and even then with all the drama in the house, but at that point I just kind of lost it and my mom was always a little bit, I don't know, maybe unstable and so as I'm like freaking out and in this like complete like they called it like a manic episode, so as I'm like having this episode my mom is then chasing me around the house thinking that I'm like possessed, so it's really just escalating the situation.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not funny, but it's funny in the reason we get left Ryan is because you started doing these long bike rides and it turned things around.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I really don't know.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Still explain that.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the part that I'm fascinated about is, is how did these bike rides make a difference?
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my, you know, I think for somebody like me that was so locked up so like afraid of the world so shy to just put myself out there in these situations where I'm like forced to interact with people where I'm like forced to rely on the kindness of strangers and people randomly and bite me into their homes, they
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: would support me in so many different ways on these trips and uh yeah it really like and still a lot of confidence it really goodness how did it change me like it's so many ways it's really hard to even put into words how it changes you yeah
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it really creates a lot of situations that you like can't run from and maybe in the past I might have like you know I would flee from school when I would have these panic attacks right and out here you know if you're having like a really difficult situation like you can't escape it there's no choice but to like charge on you know you're gonna 100 kilometer wins in your face like
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I had GRD for the last three weeks straight now, so my energy levels were really down and I'm still forced to get on the bike and ride regardless of what's happening with my body.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you found I guess what you really made of, you had to dig deep and that builds confidence, right?
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah, so much confident.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that was a long time ago.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was, yeah, I'm 39 now.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this was, my first trip there was 2012.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was, I think, 26 at the time.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's just really build on itself.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Neat.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know I have so many places that I'd like to go in our conversation they want to make sure that we we touch on all of it if we can but the idea that doing the big thing and doing the hard thing turned your life around I just want to highlight that so cool yeah really turn my life around changed everything
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also it makes kind of life, you know, after you've been like out in wilderness in these like really difficult situations and I've had a lot of difficult situations when you go back and suddenly ordinary life doesn't seem so bad if you have like an angry boss or like whatever's happening, you know compared to like how much you can suffer on an adventure it puts life into perspective.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think one of the biggest it gives, it provides the sense of very real and tangible.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think in our modern life, our stress is, it's almost hard to put a name on.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's so much underlying stress and tension that can build.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it can be really difficult to like name like what the thing is.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then on adventure, you really can like say like, okay, this is the win now.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it almost like trains you then to like actually identify a problem, realize and recognize what this is, and then see what's happening with like your mental state.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I recently did an episode with a gentleman that was talking about the self discovery that comes from doing it a long run.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It could be a long bike ride, but what it ever, you know, it's just you and your thoughts, right?
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was talking about no other time in life, can you really dig that deep and do that inner work until you have something that gives you a big block of time, and your body is preoccupied with the movement, and you're able to just go, oh yeah.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you have that experience?
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh all the time.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it gives you so much time to like think about your life and where you've been, where you're going, like the other really thinking process thing.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can also be a challenge because today it's easy to tune that out to just throw on, you know, music to throw on podcasts, you can really tune out that voice so easily today with so many distractions.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, that's like some of the best is when I'm out here and there is no internet connection, sometimes they're completely disconnected and for a week's at a time with no chance to actually try to escape from your thoughts.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm thinking back to when I used to take teenagers into the woods.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we would do a week long trip or something like that.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I, I, I,
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: did this multiple times with different groups.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of these young people thrived.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're like, oh, I found my element.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where I belong.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Others, when they were taken away from their distraction, they would start to unwind.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I say unwind, I don't mean become calm.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just the opposite.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they would freak because they relied so heavily in all their distractions that they never processed.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when they were forced to start to process, it was too much.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why nature does that necessarily, but it can be so healing, you know, it really can.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Incredibly, I find it now every time that I come into a town, so you know, like now we're bike-packing, so I'll be completely disconnected for like long periods, for days at a time, maybe longer, and then I come back into society and suddenly there's notifications, there's emails, there's people to talk to, there's work to be done there, so much.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then for a few days again after I'm back on the road and I call this like rewilding it's almost like I can feel it in my body this like tension of the like my mind wants to go back into those distractions and it takes literally like a few days to like come back out of that and just calm down again for the mind to settle that monkey mind said yes settle and calm down again and it's a more natural
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's a question that I've asked several times when I usually am talking to backpackers.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I say, how many days, how long does it take you to fall into the rhythm of nature is what I call it, right?
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some of them look at me like, I don't know that I do that, but most people say, oh, I think two days.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe three days, you know, and then I find that groove, you're bike packing and having the same experience.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: How long you just said it takes two or three days sometimes?
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it just depends how present I was to begin with, you know, because I can kind of maintain that presence if I don't like go too deep into that rabbit hole of, you know, whatever scrolling if I don't get too deep into screens, then it's a lot easier, you know, I can come back out of it and maybe it's like a day or some, but if I'm like really deep into, I mean, even edit sessions and when you get super focused on one thing at a time, it can take a couple days sometimes to come out of it and come back down.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what do you think about the black screen that we live on these days?
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what a question.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, how can you have something that's like healthy and, like, good for society when the entire thing is to collect and sell your data and manipulate you into buying things?
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I guess I feel rather strongly about it, yes.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just how addictive the addictive nature, how addictive it is as well is, I mean these things were engineered to be as addictive as possible when keep us as good as possible.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I find it so fortunate that I can get out here then and you know ride a bike now for the away from all of this because it is you know even out here.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to stay away from it
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's the real world.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's the fake real world.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the world we live in that we have these devices now, and it it's sad because in not always, but quite often they're taking advantage of human weakness, right?
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're not they're not trying to make us emphasize our strong suits or are grow into better or more capable people.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're they're taking advantage of weakness to pull us in.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're praying on our, on our nature.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's a juxtaposition for you.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're a filmmaker.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have a YouTube channel.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in a sense, you're participating with part of this, right?
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, you're like, yeah, but that's not always healthy.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do you manage the cognitive dissonance of that?
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so YouTube has a platform.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do find slightly different while they have short form content and I find short form to be I don't personally care for it, but I find long form content to be like a little bit better.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like clearly they still use an add model, but I mean
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, there's ways to avoid ads, there's ad blocking browsers, or you can pay whatever YouTube costs to completely avoid advertisements.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't put many advertisements, I've done like a few sponsors and videos, but mostly I'm just uploading content that's me outside, and that's what I've always loved about YouTube.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Versus like the Instagrams or the other platforms where it's like this like short dopamine hits of scroll scroll scroll I just posted a three-hour video the other day that is just three hours of like me and my wife Scycling across the entire continent of South America and if you don't have ads then it's you're just fully immersed in the South American continent
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know I I'll confess that dim scrolling on the YouTube shorts and I don't do TikTok you know I don't I I really spend very little time on Instagram.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just have found those formats Maybe I'm too compulsive.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get stuck in them, please.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just kind of like now it's not gonna be my thing.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to I want to have real life
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I got caught Doom scrolling on YouTube.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was probably five minutes into it.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I confess, I have had times that I get sucked in for 45 minutes, you know, and don't even know it.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's dumb.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it makes you feel Iki, you know, it's just like that.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't feel right.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you feel hypnotized.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to come out the other side of it, wake yourself up.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just so hard to come back.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in the middle of this Doom scrolling,
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: a little video short popped up and all it was was like a white board that someone had written on that said your life would be so much better if you would just do the thing you're trying to avoid right.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I read that and I said, oh, thank you and I turned off the phone and I was like, I'm back.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's beautiful and that it like broke that pattern of it.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It really worked.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have to rely on software to block these things.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I use one of my computer that like fully blocks.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Basically everything other than the tools I need for work.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then on the phone I have like really strict time limits for things so that I can't go on go over on these things and it helps so much.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to I want to make the point too that I agree with you 100%.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're looking at a quality video,
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, you're you're not getting that hypnotized by the doomsgrilling effect.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're learning things of value You're experiencing something and sometimes it's vicariously, but it's real You know when you have a video about doing a very real thing like you're talking about right?
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your YouTube channel?
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's Ryan Kodak Brown like Kodak like the cat.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There you go
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if people want real content, that's where they can find it.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about your biking.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this first adventure, back in 2012, let's just go there, give us a little information about how that worked and what came up.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the very first adventure was Pittsburgh to Comberland Maryland and then I turned around and rode back to Pittsburgh.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the great Allegheny passage and it's part of the part of a bike route car free trail that runs from Pittsburgh to Washington DC.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I only had a week so I rode half of it and at the time as I mentioned at the start, I
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a week off of work, so I just went out, I bought a trailer, I hooked a trailer up to a carbon fiber like roadbike, shoved it full of like way too much gear, I put a collar in there that had ice and meat, I don't know what I was thinking, I'm gonna like have a campfire and make burgers or something and the bike would barely ride, it was so heavy, I could barely steer it with the nice counterbalance of the trailer on the back.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was, you know, it was a fun trip.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the first trip like that is always something like super special and the pain of the saddle, you know, after riding every day.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was that when you, I guess, did the bigger trip down to Panama after that?
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, so then that one, so then I went back home and I was working as an arborist at the time.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I taught myself how to like climb trees, cut them down, do all the roping, and the rigging.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I was doing that for work.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And after that trip, then I told my boss that I quit and then I cycled from Pittsburgh to Bar Harbor main.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then so it was just like a step bigger, you know, 2,000 miles compared to 300 miles.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then that one then I just wanted to go bigger and do more.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then I went from Canada to El Salvador, which is what we talked about the last time on the podcast here.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what was that like your first big trip international trip?
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that one.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: how my it can be so difficult to like put all these things into words um i mean it was like shocking in a lot of ways it was i had a lot of like super terrifying moments like i remember crossing into Mexico and everybody before this trip told me that i'm going to die that for sure they're gonna kill me i'm gonna be murdered held for ransom my dad swore up and down he was terrified do i had a quit talking to him for about a month because he was
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: so worried about the trip and then I remember in California as I got closer to that Mexico border just having the most terrible nightmares just for days on end is like that Mexico border is approaching.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean it ended up mostly okay I had a few sketchy moments I was robbed some guy came up to like me and a friend with a knife and tried to rob us but
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: we ended up chasing him actually we like threw rocks at him and chased them off a mountain and then local people yeah and the local people kind of like yeah i guess be allowed to they helped out and we got all my friends stuff back thankfully yeah and then i had another sketchy moment at the Mexico Guatemala border which we talked about last time where i was
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of taking a gunpoint by like a family of like narco traffickers and i was there for lack of better words they're like pet gringo for four days while they just took me around and yep yeah so i mean it was the trip was crazy
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that moment then too, I didn't want to ride alone after that.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had been like through Mexico for five months solo, just by myself, and that was its own experience where I would sometimes go weeks on end without even hearing English, especially in the north of Mexico, where nobody really travels.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but then after that incident with Anarko as I started through hiking, so after that trip I went back home, and I saved money again.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I hike the Appalachian Trail, and that's what kind of set me on the path of hiking.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's still just the beginning, because you just kept going and kept going and kept...
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: that this was nine years ago and we visited last and you've just kept going ever since then.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's been one trip after the next I would adventure until the money would run out.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would find work for usually just like a few months for like a season or so doing whatever work I could find and then I would take another trip.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would either go on another through hike or another
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Another big bike trip and then in 2019, I moved into a van.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I outfitted a minivan.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was looking for more stability in my life after just free floating sleeping on couches.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I lived in an equipment trailer for a while like on one of the job sites.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He just let me sleep there.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then the van kind of gave me a home base that I could park and leave while I went on these adventures.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was the van a big improvement or was it just kind of like became more things to take care of I'm curious No, it was a huge improvement.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because then I had a place that was my own you know like what I would come back after one of these trips I had a place to go to like my stuff was in it I didn't have to like pack things into like I didn't have much stuff at that time I'd gotten rid of everything but I still had a lot of you know like camping gear or like extra gear like that
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then it just gave me a place to leave things I had a home base, and I would drive around, and I would do like lift or door dash, and I would like kind of work out of the van for a little bit too, so I could make money and live out of it and travel all at the same time.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was, you know, it was kind of fun.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did that for, I think, four or five years.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you had
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, yeah, and still like adventuring because I parked it then and I hiked the up or the I went back to the PCT in 2021 to hike at southbound and just south a week into the trail like south of the Canada border.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I met my future wife then, and we ended up hiking all the way to the California border and California ended up closing because it was one of the worst seasons of forest fires.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They literally closed every national forest and stuff in this state so we had to get off the
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: off the trail, but then uh, yeah, then we ended up like traveling together and I ended up moving to Belgium.
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We got married in Vegas, like she actually she came and moved into the van for a while and then we drove back, sold the van and then moved to Belgium where she's from, so Belgian.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's try to wrap this up.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't mean finish.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean contain it somehow and put a bow on it, right?
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So through hiking, bike packing, van life, met your wife, moved to Belgium.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So some people would say Ryan, you were just a homeless dude, but there's a difference.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But between being a homeless person and living an adventure-focused lifestyle.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So can you contrast
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think maybe the biggest difference is that maybe homelessness isn't always by choice.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some people do choose it.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I was never destined to.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was always a choice for me to just live.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was at that point, I think I was living on less than $10,000 a year.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's what enabled me to travel this way because if you don't have bills, if you don't aren't paying.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: for an apartment my only real expensive that whole period of my life was like a cell phone at least until I got my until I got the van and then expenses like went up a little bit but you can save so much money then and then if you're willing to sleep in a 10 every night and cook your own foods and eat a lot of ramen and oatmeal you can really travel a long way on very little money.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I love that story and I asked you that question on purpose because we've talked to so many people who've chosen an adventurous lifestyle and it's not because they can necessarily afford it.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're not trust fun babies with a big bank account somewhere.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, I've learned how to live on less and experience so much more.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I applaud that.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that that, you know, it's not for everybody, but for the people that do it.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Man, what a life experience.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever look at it and say, well, I wonder if I should have taken that desk job and said in the cube for nine years.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You ever ever wonder about that?
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, no, I don't.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's sort of like, this lifestyle involves a lot of sacrifice.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a huge trade and, you know, like, I don't really have so much community.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been so like, refloading and moving around so much.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, there's like a lot of,
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah sacrificing security all these things and also i guess where like you know where my life was like that was the original path for my life was supposed to be go to college you know get married have kids get a nice job and like live that life and
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it didn't play out that way for me, you know, I had some roadblocks in the way and my life took this huge detour and then I loved it so I really leaned into it and I was fortunate enough to not have like responsibility or like anything at the time that would like stop me from doing this.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it's fantastic that you did, you know?
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sitting here looking at a guy with, it's just a natural huge smile, you know?
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, life has been good.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Life has been good, and so many people can't say that, you know?
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a reason they doom scroll.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I feel numb inside, I've got nothing going on.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just, I needed distraction.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to think about my life, and you know, so we just get caught up in that doom scrolling,
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You actually chose reality and made something beautiful out of it and it's still difficult life still comes with its challenges no matter what path we choose in life
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you met your wife on the through hike, your future wife, obviously, on the through hike, you moved to Belgium.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there more to that story that we need to hear?
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds awesome.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so then I moved to Belgium and then I had to learn Dutch because Belgium speaks, like, in the north half of Belgium, they speak, they speak Dutch.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the south half of Belgium, they speak French.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's one tiny pocket of Belgium that even speaks German.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Belgium is a bit of a,
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little strange in that sense, so I started studying Dutch.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I took a bunch of Dutch classes.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I still am not like anywhere near fluent, but I can get enough to get by.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I found work on a golf course at that point.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I worked on a golf course for a year, like mowing the grass and helping maintain everything.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that helps save money done for this trip.
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess it was just like more planning for a new way.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Belgium will keep going.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and Belgium was a lot easier than, like, my wife coming to the United States, the U.S. makes it a lot more challenging.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in Belgium, I could work from day one, and it was, yeah, they just make it a lot easier.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you just mentioned this trip, we should probably talk about that.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where are you right now?
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So currently I am in the very south of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca in a tiny town called Yunyun Hedalgo Nice.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is and is your wife for you.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my wife is here as well.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and you're biking a big one.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: What what's the goal for this trip?
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the goal is to cycle from the very southern tip of South America from Ushwia to the very North of North America to Prudobalasca.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So from like being the Antarctic to the Arctic.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've talked to people that did it the other direction and I don't know which direction is best, right?
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what an amazing life experience.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're in Mexico, you've already covered all of South America.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, sort of South America is done.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's checked off and Central America as well.
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you have Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. to go.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what have your experiences been this trip?
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us about what it was like.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: for this first year.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess you're about halfway.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Little over halfway.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, by time.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, it's the start of the trip.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people, they ride this south and they ride south for a good reason because the predominant headwinds come out of the north.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: which means that we faced some crazy winds for the entire kind of Patagonia section.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it meant like really grinding into 60 mile an hour winds at times and we would hit these cross winds that sometimes at one point they blew my wife off her bike, it literally like knocked her over.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we were just trying to get to the chili border at that time in Tierra del Fuego and some guy in a truck like Witnessed her getting knocked over were on some gravel road basically in the middle of nowhere and he like stopped and ended up helping us He gave us a ride for like 18 kilometers to get to the actual border there Otherwise, I don't think we were gonna make it and we didn't have much food left because we'd been grinding into these head vents for like days at that point So that was a major
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did he get better after that as far as the wind's and stuff?
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the wind's kind of got a lot better when we got further north into the mountains.
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like once we hit the carateria austral and so they're in Chile, though wind's kind of died down and then the challenges more became the climbing.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like we went from this flat open plains into the mountains.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a lot of climbing, a lot of like gravel, difficult roads.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we would have some rain at that point too, but the landscape at that point was,
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: so stunningly beautiful like we're talking like pure Patagonia going through like the parks of Torres del Pena and I'll shut down the mountains there and the glacier Pareto Moreno like what a sight that was.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So all of it sounds very, very difficult.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that doing the hard thing sometimes is so worth it.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when you look back on it, you're like, oh, I wish that wind hadn't been there or do you look back on it and say, that was somehow a part of the experience that was also good.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your perspective?
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah i think that the challenges often make for the best stories and they really kind of make us here we are so like kind of fighting and i don't know what is life without challenge i think i think we kind of talked a little bit about like modern society and maybe that's like one of the struggles is like i don't know it's like kind of
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know yet like we don't have like a struggle sometimes like it's not like we have this like big real thing that we're working to a lot of our goals They're like years off in the future.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not so like a media.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like oh my this wind is terrible And I'm running out of food and if I don't make it another 20 kilometers Then I'm gonna be very very very thirsty and hungry.
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Ryan is sometimes happens You lost Wi-Fi for a little bit, but I just asked the question
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you give people a reason to try something like that?
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure you gave an awkward answer that we couldn't hear.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so in adventures like these, they can be so difficult, but they make us feel so alive.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, it does really change an answer after we're coming back in.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You probably had a really good one.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first round, no, I love what you just said.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very difficult, but make us feel so alive.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, um, it's like the struggle when you're like really into something like this, I keep coming back to that it's so real it's so tangible it can really suck in the moment like sometimes this is bordering into like type three fun words maybe not even fun to talk about afterwards.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But usually after these struggles like when they're done it's just this like whole sense of I don't know it's more than a accomplishment it just like really feels amazing it feels so good.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, even if it doesn't feel so good in the moment when you're actually doing it
• 30:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, I guess I'm sitting here filling jealous, you know, to be able to have that kind of adventure, you already related on your first big trip south, how the Mexican border was a real challenge.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I remember correctly, in the interview from nine years ago, you said something about, you cross the border and you just tried not to stop.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You wanted to get as far from the border as you could, which meant an extraordinarily long day, how hard that was.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you become this toy of the narcoterrorist, you know,
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people would say, okay, that's it.
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm done, but you've continued for nine years to do more big adventures.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have you had more bad experiences like that?
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or has it been more like, no, no, it settled down.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it like really settled down after that.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did take a break from an national travel, and that's kind of why I started through hiking, just to live and
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: traveling the woods with a bunch of like, you know, like, 33 hikers.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I did eventually like go back to Mexico a few years later to ride the Baja divide and yeah, I've not had any real bad experiences since I'm always hesitant to jinx myself.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But everything else has been, you know, the normal like storms and weather and yeah, kind of the normal adventure related problems.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, nothing major like that.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's your perspective on the human race in general when it comes to this sort of stuff and also the safety of this type of adventure travel?
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so that was the most beautiful part of like adventure travel for me was just experiencing how good people are.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think when we're home on our couches and we're watching the news we get this like real fear and dread of our neighbors that everyone is out to get us or you know like all these people are bad but in reality I think that like the vast majority like 99.9 whatever percentage of people are actually really good
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the greatest strength of humanity and that's what's like a loud humanity to thrive and like kind of prosper and take over the world is we have whether that's good or bad but it is like the strength of humanity is just how helpful how kind we are and how much out of their way people would go to like help us when we're out here and like now we're just we're literally camping in a lot of people's yards we'll go up to a random person when the sun is setting and
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: go on to their property and just ask them like, hey, we're doing this big trip and it's not always that safe or there's not much land.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can we camp here?
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you okay with that?
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes people invite us and give us a room to sleep in or they'll let us sleep on their porch or, you know, they just let us pitch a tent like in their trees on their field somewhere like people are extraordinary.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: People need to hear that message, Ryan.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they need to hear it more because we don't get We don't get that picture from the news like you mentioned and it's interesting because you've done a lot of big adventures now And your your first big international adventure had what some people would think is oh, man That's just exactly what I knew was going to happen, but then you say no no that was that was an isolated thing
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's not like that yeah and even that guy like and most ways was nice to me you know he's still like and didn't invite me to his home and he introduced me to like all five of his wives so I mean yeah that's crazy so even even the scary people were kind
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and like really bad things are it's so rare for anything like really bad to happen, you know, and how many people end up in a car accident or how many like tragedies happen in your own home, you know, yeah.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, my father, when we were in Ecuador, no, we were in Peru, I got a message that he was diagnosed with leukemia.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he was literally three months away from retirement.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, worked as whole life, he's about to retired.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then he's diagnosed with leukemia now, you know?
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I think, yeah.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, life is no guarantees.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: No guarantees.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so what are your thoughts you've been you were one of the people who said I'm gonna live it while I can this way while I can and had these experiences while I can I'm not gonna wait because you don't you never know right, but you think that's what everyone should do
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most definitely not.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't think this is for most people.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe Maybe small trips.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love the way that Alice their Humphrey's talks about like the concept of a micro adventure of Yeah, you know get out and start small and then you know if you can if you have the time if you Can do it then you know then maybe go for it, but you know start small like or just get out on a weekend go out for an overnight
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was in a position at the time that I had literally no responsibilities and, you know, my life wasn't going so well with the anxiety and with, like, mental health issues.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this opened up as an option and I really leaned into it because I could because I had those being as I had those options.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, but it's worked out really nicely for you, and now you have a YouTube channel.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you just told us how beautiful it was in Chile, and I'm sure Patagonia was too, but we can see some of this.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I assume when you're YouTube channel.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've been posting kind of monthly episodes, basically, I break down of each country.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I just released a three hour episode of like the entire entire South America cut down into three hours.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's Ryan Kodak Brown.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep Ryan Kodak Brown and you've also done a feature link documentary.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about that.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, we hiked my wife and I like right after we met right before we got married.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: We hike the great divide trail in Canada.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like around a thousand kilometers long and goes from the the U.S. Canada border to just north of Jasper and to Kauqua provincial park.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we filmed the entire thing and then yeah kind of made some interviews and stuff and made a feature-length documentary of the trip as a fundraiser for their great-to-vide trail organization.
• 37:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we were able to help them and it pioneered their their film fest now.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the GDTA like hosts an annual film festival is another fundraiser.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's really fun.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we were able to get it into a number of film festivals around the world.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's now on YouTube for everybody to enjoy.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the name of it again, out there, the Great Divide Trail.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Out there, the Great Divide Trail.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a great divide route.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to be careful what we call it in the U.S.
• 37:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does it connect with this?
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of, yes.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is like an extension of the continental divide trail, like the C-T for the hikers.
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is basically because the great divide mountain bike route crosses and goes into Banff, but it stays down on the roads versus the hiking trail here is up in the mountains, it's in the passes.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for much of the trail, there isn't a trail.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're constantly improving it every year and they've made like great strides in the, I guess, four years since we heighted and made that film.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot more of it's connected, but it's like a very remote and
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I talked to one of the people that was leading the organization that supports the continental divide trail several years ago and his statement at the time was, I'm not sure if anybody has hiked the same route on the CDT.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: because there's so many alternate ways to go and so much route finding, getting from point to point to point.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He says, I'd be surprised if any two people actually hiked the same route.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know, I might be much more connected now, but you're saying this section is very much like that.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a lot of this is like that.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, with GPX tracks and stuff nowadays, it changes a lot because we tend to just like follow the track that is out there, especially with, you know, what it got hook, I guess it's far out now.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's like changing it a lot and this trail is, yeah, we mostly, I guess, followed a GPX trail.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sure a lot of us have liked it like rather similarly.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you have the electronics to do it now.
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: How much backcountry backpacking through hiking skill do you need before you attempt this one?
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, the great divide trail is a big one.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would say you should have some experience under your belt first.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of the sections are 100 miles long or is it 100, I know I believe it's 100 miles.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's generally like six days, seven days between resupply points.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's not always a lot of like good bail options.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last section.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: In my might have changed now, but when we did it, we had to hike 300, I get confused now in kilometer miles, but we hike two weeks straight, so we had to carry food for 14 days because one of the trails that came into it was closed and because that section is just like so remote, and there's only a few bail options and one of them would have been involved like a crazy swim
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so a lot of the trail is like rather difficult and then some of it is very easy because you're going through like Bamf and Jasper and he's like very populated areas right where there is a lot of other people on the trail So you need to know your stuff before you start this one.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any recommendations on maybe a first trail before you try this one?
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, look as like a through hike a first through hike.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people are like I've always wanted to try that, but I don't know how to start
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh goodness, yeah, um, I would say just whatever local trail you have, you know, just start out hiking locally, start out where there's like other people.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you can join a club.
• 40:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like clubs.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is one of the beautiful things about our connected world these days is that we can.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can join and do these things with other people, but goodness.
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like one trail to, yeah.
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know actually to answer it.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't say one trail.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I like what you already said.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Choose a local trail.
• 41:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: that makes a lot of sense, you know, it just do what's, do what's more approachable first, right, and let it grow from there.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And people would be surprised, I think, Ryan, if they actually looked to see what trails are available in their area, because trails are everywhere.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, start small, start close to home, and then expand and grow from there.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we should do a whole other episode on the how-to for all of this kind of stuff, but for instance, bike packing.
• 41:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll learn filling up a bike trailer with an ice chest, and other gear might not be the way to do it.
• 41:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: What recommendations do you have?
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll start with biking, but if you're actually going to do a long bike ride, what do you really need and how
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so gear-wise, the easiest is to start with panures, but a lot of people could even start with stuff that they have in their home.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you already have a rack on the bike, you can strap a dry bag to the back of it and you could strap a dry bag onto the handlebars and you could get like a pretty good feel of just, yeah, go out simple, like strap a tent on there and strap like a sleeping pad and the sleeping bag and you can almost just like go out for an overnight.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: or at least ride into a park and assemble it and test your gear like that.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can get that like feeling for it, you can start small.
• 42:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then for like a more complete set of like panures or by far the easiest.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like a few panures thrown on the bike and then stuff it full of some camping gear, some food and yeah, then you can ride away and see where you end up.
• 42:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: How heavy is too heavy?
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your goal whenever you're loading up your bike?
• 42:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah that's a question on this trip i'm way too heavy i'm very overpacked because i'm carrying a lot of electronics for making this film that we're doing even footage wise i have like ten terabytes of footage so i've got i think like eight hard drives or something so i'm carrying a lot of weight i don't know how much i would say it's over a hundred pounds total with like food and water and the bike and all the gear
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it makes a lot of these climbs, especially in Central America, where they're incredibly steep.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them, impossible, you have to just walk some of the climbs and push a heavy bike up these things.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But generally, the lighter you can get, the better by far.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: On some of my trips, like when I rode the Arizona trail, my role was that I needed to pick the bike over my head.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: In case I had like barbed wire fences, sometimes I would have to like climb over fences and stuff, so I wanted to make sure the bike was like very light and maneuverable.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then for the Arizona Trail, you have to disassemble the bike and carry it across on your back.
• 43:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I took the bike apart, strapped it to a backpack, and then spent three days and hiked it like down into the Grand Canyon and the other side.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think my bike weighed 70 pounds or so at that point.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the lighter, the better for sure.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Any tips on how to get it light?
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take less stuff.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the biggest one.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know like clothes are an easy thing.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'd be surprised how little clothing you can get away with going and
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: wash things and sink or something if you're going on like a longer trip but yeah the easiest by far is just literally just like take less things like try to figure out what the essentials are the bare minimum and go with that and then spending money also helps you can always spy a lighter tent but it really starts with just carrying less stuff.
• 44:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the hard part for me is food, you know, I can get a light tent, I can get a light sleeping bag, I can get a light pack, but food is food and eating dehydrated or freeze dried food is a constant diet, I don't know, short term, that's fine, long term, what do you do?
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it depends on the adventure, so when we're like bike packing and when we're more on like roads and it's less remote,
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then we can carry a lot of real food.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll carry actual produce and pastas, our quinoa, we eat a lot of couscous.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we can fry foods.
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're like, cook up a bunch of vegetables and make a nice spaghetti out here on the trail.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we'll eat like real foods.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when we're on the remote routes, like when we cycle to cross Bolivia, we had to carry food for nine days.
• 45:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then it was all the dried food, all the romans, you know, a lot of dots and trail mix and kernel.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's, you know, mix bag, depending on where you are and what you're doing.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're in, uh, call it developing countries, is there pretty easy access for freeze dried foods and things like that or is it hard to come by?
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, freeze dried foods like if you're thinking like the mountain house meals and stuff like that, they're,
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: you won't find them here in Patagonia and some of the more populated regions you'll find like those kind of backpacking meals, but mostly it's going to be like rice and pasta rommings you can usually find rommings and a lot of the world most of the world maybe yeah it's a lot of like those kind of foods like I guess what would you call that the the college diet macaroni and cheese rites
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's fantastic.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you're saying you go into the market and start looking for something that you can carry something that's light.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what's one food that you indulge with?
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like no, when I find this, I don't care how much it weighs.
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna take it.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, interesting question.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It changes so much.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It used to be like peanut butter and maybe Nutella.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I used to love those things, but after eating them for so many years, I almost have a love hate relationship with it.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I can't stomach it so much.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lately it's actually, this is a weird one.
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's been these bags of beans they sell like, literally a pouch of dehydrated, or not dehydrated.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you, no, what do you call those?
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like refried beans.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what they're called.
• 47:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like refried beans and then frying those with some cheese on our little cap.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's like really delicious.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: A little hot sauce in there.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I try to eat a lot more like real foods when I can.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's a hard question.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, calorie dense and nutrition dense foods.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think are important.
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you have any recommendations for that.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: goodness like ramen as far as if you have to get like really light ramen because it has a lot of fat in it is like one of the lightest you know calorie to weight ratio it's one of the best the most dense calorie foods peanut butter is really good um
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of the bars, they can be more expensive, like, you know, all the different like power bars and these like sports nutrition bars are obviously good, but they are more money.
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, goodness, what else?
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And nuts in general, nuts are amazing, like dried fruits.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard question to answer.
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the reasons I ask it because I'm always wondering, you know, maybe maybe this person's figured it out.
• 48:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think everyone struggles with it.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, it's just hard.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and what makes it more challenging now is because every region we enter are foods have changed.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when we were in Patagonia, we were reading a lot of like we could like buy empenatas and stuff on the streets or packing those kind of foods out.
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now if we're going to pack something, it's like tamales or you know now there's a lot of like access to like beans and tortillas and our diets like really changed as we've crossed all these different countries.
• 48:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you the kind of person who can eat just about anything and be fine or do find that you're your endurance and your strength and that kind of things shifts with your diet?
• 48:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, well, it definitely does.
• 48:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I eat a lot of the standard thru-hiker diet was the hostess diet, that's a lot of candies and junk food.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And my energy really flags.
• 48:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find those sugary dense foods, especially as I get older.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: My body doesn't handle it so well.
• 49:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I end up with the sugar crashes and stuff.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So definitely as many real hole foods as I can, the nuts and the granola, those things actual just real food.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're fortunate now that we're in like cheaper countries where we can eat a few tacos for a dollar and that's like amazing fuel But my my wife is the type that she Can't handle just like she's like much more picky so for her to like eat ramen in every night like yeah She's on the other end of the spectrum where she needs like diversity in her diet whereas I'm I could eat chicken
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: and rice every single day as we did through like Bolivia and Peru.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she got like really tired of it really fast.
• 49:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I would be more like your wife.
• 49:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'd any more variety in my diet and I have to be pretty careful about what I eat regretfully.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's a big deal, man.
• 49:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Food matters.
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It really does.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are all we eat, right?
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about filmmaking a little bit.
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before we hit record, we started talking about the different experience when you have the GoPro on versus the GoPro off.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if people have experienced this, but I think it's meaningful.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, will you take us there a little bit?
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does filming do to the experience?
• 50:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've always loved carrying a camera under the back country.
• 50:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've carried a camera on every trip that I've done and only gotten more and more into it as I go.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I find that it adds this whole beautiful like creative element to the journey.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It really adds to it.
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I find that it immerses me more in moments because I find myself looking for these like tiny little details that I might otherwise like gloss over.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: like just one leaf flapping in the wind or like this little ice crystal forming on something or yeah so I find myself like really getting lost and like almost like seeing these moments then and then because I am capturing them I find that they tend to stick with me more because I'm so much more like immersed and focused on these like specific details.
• 51:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, so I've seen some people that they're not really doing what you're talking about.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They see a view and they pick up the camera and they click and then they walk off.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they don't take the time to absorb it.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you're saying is, you're looking for the art.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're looking for the thing that's really good to make your film.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: pop or whatever, right?
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a different approach and that's interesting because I've talked to so many people have said, yeah, yeah, I mean, if I, I fall, I do as just take pictures.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, I find that I don't get into the experience.
• 51:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what you're saying is the opposite, you're like, no, I'm trying to find the best thing and that helps motivate me to experience it.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, indeed, and I'm trying to share that feeling that I'm experiencing in the moment.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, I'm in so awe of so many of these landscapes.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had an experience on the Grand Canyon.
• 51:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting on the rim there, just staring and wander at this experience that, like literally, my mind can't even comprehend how deep this goes.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't even see the actual river that's so far down there.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just watching this line of people
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think any of them actually looked at it with their eyes.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They only looked at it like with the camera just to record it.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's kind of the difference then as they didn't take the time to like pause and experience it.
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas I'm actually still sitting in those moments, you know.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess because I do have the advantage of time where I can really immerse myself in these things since we're in them for a longer period.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a time.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 52:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whether that's a good point too, when you're traveling by bicycle or even by foot, it really slows things down.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah it slows them down tremendously yeah you stare at the same mountain sometimes for days and just watching it like slowly get closer as you're like peddling towards this thing that's yeah some of these volcanoes we can almost see them probably like 300 miles away or more wow and then it's like this period of a long time is you're traveling and just watching that thing and then watching it recit into the background over the next week
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's fascinating.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've often said you jump on an airplane, you fly from point A to point B, and you, for me, I get discombobulated.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like I don't understand what connected those dots.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm suddenly in a new world, it's like it was teleported.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a place for that, but I prefer to connect the dots.
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when you do it like you just said, you really connect the dots.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's fascinating because this like traveling the way I'm traveling now, it flips that whole experience on its head because, you know, most people are traveling, you know, in a plane and a car or whatever, you're going to the destination.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like you have a destination in mind and usually it's the most beautiful place in whatever region is there.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for us, like, traveling on the bike or on foot, the destination almost means nothing.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, not to, like, it's not to cliche either of, like, it's the journey that matters.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But literally, by the time we reach the destinations, we're usually so tired that we just want to, like, lie down and sleep and eat and, like, focus.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and that's whenever anybody else, the backpackers are out, like, exploring the city or doing the day trips out to the most beautiful places.
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we end up missing a lot of the most beautiful places because yeah we don't have the time or the effort or the money it's like go out of our way even those 30 miles or whatever it might be to see them.
• 54:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh wow.
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's completely different.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many zero days do you need?
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find like one a week is kind of the optimal since we're making films out here.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've been taking a lot more, so sometimes we'll take breaks of like five days or longer.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And too many zeros is also bad because then we end up like losing our, you know, we'll call them like trail legs or something.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then it's like you have to like rebuild that fitness constantly.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't stop as well, then you like burn out very quickly.
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: and also we're a year and four months into this adventure now and we both my wife and I find ourselves being like very tired like even a year like after one year into the route in South America like yeah really tired of living on the bike of living out of backpack since stuff it can be very exhausting so we took like a month and a half off then we flew back home to like
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: visit with my father and then we flew to Belgium to spend a few weeks with Elsa's family as well.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the outbreaks are so crucial.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's nice that you can do it that way.
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a good point.
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can.
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no rule that says you can't, right?
• 55:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what you're saying is, no, that's worth it.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good thing to do.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you just said since we're filming this, we've been doing it for what you said a year and four months.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is the project that you're working on right now?
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's it going to be called and where can people experience it?
• 55:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we still have a working title.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be Patalaska and that's like Patagonia to Alaska.
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't quite know the subtitle yet.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we're working on another like feature-length documentary project.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're releasing videos as we go on to YouTube and I kind of treat those as like a rough cut of the actual trip.
• 56:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we like kind of quickly tell a story to like share it and get it out there.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it also then helps us because we're condensing like for each country we have so many hours, like so many hours of footage.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then we can condense those into 30 minute projects.
• 56:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I combined all of South America which was I think seven hours total or something of already cut down episodes.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cut that down further into three hours.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then for the final film then you know I can take a lot of that and it's already like at least cut down a lot.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then I can go out and get interviews and I have a lot of the best parts of the trip already cut.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like cutting it down, cutting it down as we go here to like yeah make a film at the end.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's wild.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So is the YouTube channel, is it helping you financially along the way or you're getting enough from YouTube to be significant?
• 57:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: it definitely helps us.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't make a lot from like the ads or anything on YouTube and we've only taken like a handful of sponsors on the trip but it definitely helps and we have a Patreon community that also supports us but it mostly covers the hotel expenses.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is every video that we make is generally like about a week it's like 40 to 60 hours of editing time in a room somewhere which can get really expensive but we don't make enough
• 57:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna end up losing like a lot of money.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I say that like yeah, we're losing money as we're having this beautiful experience But for us it was never really about the money.
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's about the experience and doing it.
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just love making the videos Yeah Very very cool and once again the YouTube channel is Ryan Kodak Brown and Man, you've been out there doing it for a long time a long time How how can people connect with you if they would like to?
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: through the YouTube through comments or through Instagram.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't spend a lot of time there anymore, but I do tend to like my direct messages and stuff, so that's a good way to connect.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Best of luck.
• 58:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope that your ongoing project to Alaska is just continues to be rewarding and remarkable.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I'm here cheering for you.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you've got at least one fan for sure.
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Kurt, thank you so much.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was fun and being back on the podcast after like nine years, 1,000 episodes later.
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was really fun.
• 58:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me on.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, isn't that crazy a thousand episodes later?
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you have more water under the bridge than I do, I think.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have spent those years well.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So fantastic.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ryan, Ryan did a really a job of explaining how this kind of thing can rebuild your life.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm jealous, it just sounds fantastic.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But whatever you choose to do, make sure you do get out there and have some fun.