Latest / Go Wildly Podcast / Ep. 15 | From Cancer to Comeback: Lessons on Resilience & Outdoor Healing

Transcript

Ep. 15 | From Cancer to Comeback: Lessons on Resilience & Outdoor Healing · Go Wildly Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome to episode 15 of the Go Wildly podcast, Poo Poo poo.
• 0:07
  This week we're bringing you another Emily on the River
• 0:10
  recording solo style. But don't worry, next week we'll
• 0:13
  be back with another summer debriefing episode together.
• 0:17
  Today, meet Emilio Hotpants Samas, a former college
• 0:21
  ballplayer turned adventure junkie.
• 0:23
  From whitewater to rock walls to surf breaks, the single tracks,
• 0:27
  he's found purpose in the wild and now shares it with others.
• 0:30
  We talk all about losing everything and rebuilding his
• 0:33
  journey with cancer as a child, to rediscovering community
• 0:37
  through the outdoors, the importance of self-care, and why
• 0:40
  screwing up is sometimes the best teacher.
• 0:43
  Quick note, you're going to hear some wind and some mic issues in
• 0:47
  this one. If background noise isn't your
• 0:49
  thing, check out our YouTube version, or better yet, pop in
• 0:53
  your earbuds, head outside and go wildly.
• 0:56
  Here we go. Hey, hi.
• 0:59
  Welcome to today's episode of Go.
• 1:01
  Wildly I'm your one of your Co hosts Emily and I am here today
• 1:08
  at the. What is this place?
• 1:11
  Called. This is the Ennis access point
• 1:14
  on the Rogue River and I am being joined today by my friend
• 1:19
  Hot Pants, also known as I'm. Calling.
• 1:40
  We're going to do a very short little float today from Ennis to
• 1:45
  Galise. We're going to stop along the
• 1:46
  way, probably on Carpenter's Island, to sit down and chat and
• 1:51
  learn all about my new friend. There he is.
• 1:56
  Pumping up, We're going to do a double ducky today.
• 2:02
  Hey, hot pants. Oh, hello everyone.
• 2:05
  How you doing? Good.
• 2:06
  How are you today? I'm great.
• 2:07
  Just a beautiful day here on the Rogue River.
• 2:09
  Going to go do a little bit of floating.
• 2:10
  Awesome. I'm still looking forward.
• 2:12
  To it, yeah. Me too.
• 2:12
  We've. Been talking about it all week
• 2:14
  and. Now we're.
• 2:14
  Going to do it. We've been floating all week,
• 2:16
  but yeah, now we're going to float together.
• 2:18
  Yeah, yeah. We're going to get some great
• 2:20
  time, great conversation. I've been stoked all week for
• 2:23
  this. Yeah.
• 2:25
  One of the only. People that well, I guess I've
• 2:27
  we have lots of wonderful guests and lots of wonderful friends,
• 2:30
  but we only met a week ago and less than a week ago less.
• 2:33
  And when I mentioned that I have this podcast and that I think he
• 2:37
  would make a great guest, it was an immediate yes, no questions,
• 2:40
  ready to roll. So today's the day that we get
• 2:43
  to do it. Thanks for pumping up the boat.
• 2:46
  No problem. You're doing great, can I help?
• 2:50
  Shall we continue? Yes, please.
• 2:51
  All right. Here we go.
• 2:55
  Double ducky. And that is how you pump up a
• 2:59
  ducky. With a Makita blower.
• 3:03
  Is that a Makita? Did I brand it right?
• 3:04
  Yeah. Makita Makita starts you off and
• 3:09
  then top it off with a K pop. I probably had an opportunity to
• 3:17
  make some kind of weird sexual joke there that I missed.
• 3:20
  I was just about to say like there's different techniques to
• 3:22
  this. There's one hand, there's two
• 3:24
  hands, there's straddling motions.
• 3:26
  You can go side by side. It just it kind of just depends
• 3:29
  you. Can go real fast you can.
• 3:30
  Go real slow you can do like real shallow you can.
• 3:33
  Go to like something mellow or you can.
• 3:37
  Nobody likes that. I don't know, maybe some people
• 3:41
  do. Whatever's enjoyable.
• 3:42
  Yeah. Whatever's needed for the
• 3:44
  situation. Yeah, yeah, whatever gets the
• 3:47
  job done. And sometimes you need tools to
• 3:51
  get the job done. Oh, what kind of tools?
• 3:55
  Pumps and blowers. Pumps and blowers, Pumps and
• 3:58
  blowers. Sometimes you get weird sound
• 4:01
  effects too. It kind of sounds like it's
• 4:04
  farting air into it. I mean, it essentially is it is
• 4:07
  expelling air from the from the tube into another tube.
• 4:13
  A twist. It's a twister.
• 4:14
  There we go. Thank.
• 4:15
  You. It's a twister.
• 4:18
  There's the twisting motion, too.
• 4:20
  There's. There's a lot it's options.
• 4:23
  Yeah. Yes, indeed, if Heather were
• 4:31
  here, she'd be having a heyday. I've been real PG this week, I
• 4:38
  do have to say. I've been biting my tongue a
• 4:40
  lot. Yeah, yeah, the like, I don't
• 4:44
  know, I could probably count on one hand the number of that's
• 4:47
  what she says I was able to pull off this week and that's a
• 4:51
  supreme reduction in my usual. That's what she's setting.
• 4:56
  Like, usually it's you can't count on two hands, but I can
• 5:00
  count on one hand, like, legit, maybe five.
• 5:04
  Yeah. So shout out to this week's
• 5:08
  group for keeping a nasty this. Group was speaking my mind for
• 5:11
  me. I felt like like I was thinking
• 5:12
  it and I'm like. Hey.
• 5:15
  You're working and then they come out.
• 5:17
  I'm like, yes. Yeah.
• 5:18
  We got there. And it's so.
• 5:20
  Weird that like they're adults. Yeah, and it feels inappropriate
• 5:25
  to to be there in that raunchy space with them.
• 5:30
  They're not children. Yeah, we're the same age, ish.
• 5:34
  Yeah, so, but it's just the like professional envelope.
• 5:39
  I think that that's what she said.
• 5:40
  Jokes are the funniest because it's like, that goes back to
• 5:42
  like middle school, you know? But here we are, adults and
• 5:45
  still laughing at it, and it's still just as funny.
• 5:47
  Maybe even funnier. It's like fart jokes and poop
• 5:49
  jokes. Yeah, it never.
• 5:51
  It never gets old. Yeah, exactly, exactly like the
• 5:54
  poop with Pyrex. Oh, I never.
• 5:56
  Got to. I had many opportunities.
• 5:59
  They were good bonding moments, yeah.
• 6:00
  Yeah. Could you hear each other's
• 6:03
  motions? Yeah, yeah.
• 6:05
  We're like, don't have to be quiet.
• 6:06
  We're going to get there, yeah. I'll talk you through it.
• 6:11
  Yeah, yeah. Sweet are we?
• 6:15
  We're looking good. We're looking ready to go.
• 6:18
  We got a nice orange double ducky purchased from Gliese
• 6:22
  Resort when they were selling all their gear and we've got
• 6:29
  some camera equipment. Got some custom back straps as
• 6:33
  well. I I think that you'll be in the
• 6:35
  back and I'll be in the front. Whichever.
• 6:38
  In the boat. Yeah, I could also sit backwards
• 6:41
  and we're facing each other. Well, we'll do that on land for
• 6:45
  sure. But while we float, probably
• 6:48
  safe safety positioning, OK. OK, sounds good.
• 6:54
  And Oh well, while we're here. So you drove up from Southern
• 6:58
  California? Yes, from San Clemente San.
• 7:01
  Clemente, California. And you drove up in this lovely
• 7:03
  rig with your pop up tent on the top.
• 7:06
  Yep, Yep. Tell me anything you want to
• 7:09
  tell me about it. Yeah, so.
• 7:11
  I got a little torp. I'm not going to ask you to set
• 7:13
  it up. It's quick unless you want to.
• 7:15
  Oh, it's quick. Yeah, you haven't seen it set up
• 7:17
  yet. You've only seen it.
• 7:19
  Taken down. You want to set it up?
• 7:20
  Oh. OK, let's do this.
• 7:21
  Let's do this real quick. Let's get the paddles first.
• 7:24
  Make sure nothing's on top, so let's take paddles down.
• 7:27
  I can fit all of them in my arm or you can just put them down.
• 7:31
  Great. Cool.
• 7:32
  So helpful. Step one, undo the zippers.
• 7:37
  That is usually step one. Wait, let's back up.
• 7:40
  Step one, undo the Velcro. Oh, other side.
• 7:42
  Unscrap. There we go.
• 7:46
  Couple Velcro straps. Sometimes they come off and it's
• 7:50
  OK. You just watch them.
• 7:51
  Keep everybody from tailgating. You throw them over there.
• 7:55
  Now zipper's the other side. Oh shit, you don't have a
• 8:02
  parking pass? We have to pay a $5 day parking
• 8:06
  OK. They'll leave $5 on the.
• 8:08
  Windshield, there's envelopes over there.
• 8:11
  OK, Yeah, we can do that. OK, I forgot about that.
• 8:14
  That's OK. All right.
• 8:16
  I would have grabbed 1 from 1 of the vans.
• 8:19
  It's all good unless you want to go back.
• 8:21
  No, no, we already. We were we were forgetting
• 8:24
  something. How many times did we already go
• 8:26
  back? Seven.
• 8:27
  Yeah, probably, probably at least 7 From me thinking that my
• 8:32
  PFD was in the barn, to thinking it was in my truck at the other
• 8:35
  end of the property, to realizing that it was actually
• 8:37
  in the bus parked next to the barn.
• 8:39
  With all the extra gear, yeah. Yeah, and the good thing we did
• 8:43
  that because we need the paddle still Big Eddy out hard.
• 8:47
  Hard to get off off. Property on on last day of the
• 8:51
  program. It is.
• 8:52
  You're thinking so many things, saying goodbye to people.
• 8:55
  Tired. Tired.
• 8:57
  That's the big one. Yeah, and all, all week all,
• 9:01
  everything has been like laid out and easy and on a routine
• 9:04
  and on a plan. And now suddenly it's just like,
• 9:07
  yeah, free floating. It's kind of weird because we've
• 9:10
  been planning for like a group of almost, what, 1520 people,
• 9:13
  and now, now it's just two of us and we're forgetting everything.
• 9:15
  Oh. We need a paddle.
• 9:17
  But all week long we were like, good, we had extra gear, we had
• 9:21
  changes happening on the water. It was.
• 9:23
  We're well prepared. Yeah, it was very tight greased
• 9:26
  machine all week, but today? It's our off day.
• 9:30
  That's why. Loosey goosey, it's our off day.
• 9:32
  OK, All right, so we got the cover off.
• 9:36
  All the Velcro's undone, all the zippers undone.
• 9:38
  At this point, you just open it like a book.
• 9:41
  Really. Wow.
• 9:46
  And then as it's coming down, I'll jump on this side, catch
• 9:49
  the ladder and voila. Wow.
• 9:55
  This was my home for the week. So comfy.
• 9:57
  Can we go inside? Yeah.
• 10:00
  Absolutely. What made you pick this brand?
• 10:04
  So shit, tough stuff. Overland.
• 10:07
  I actually didn't pick this brand when I bought the truck
• 10:09
  used. The guy I bought it from
• 10:11
  included all of this, so him having this already was kind of
• 10:15
  something that made me want to buy the truck even more.
• 10:18
  I didn't have to worry about it. Good selling point.
• 10:20
  Yeah, yeah, it was for sure. Did you have your sights set on
• 10:23
  getting something like this, Like you were going to get a
• 10:25
  truck and you were going to get something like this anyways, or
• 10:27
  it was just a bonus? I had always wanted a camper.
• 10:29
  I had a Forerunner before, and I was even looking at like roof
• 10:31
  racks and campers to go on that. And then this opportunity came
• 10:34
  up and just made sense to go with this.
• 10:37
  Brilliant. Already done.
• 10:37
  Didn't have to worry about it. Yeah.
• 10:40
  So you had one more poll right here to set up and then I can
• 10:43
  let you jump in there up into the tree house.
• 10:47
  Yay. And pretty spacious.
• 10:50
  Yeah, sleeping bag, pillow fan. Yep.
• 10:54
  Lots of headspace. Couple battery packs, red light
• 10:58
  for night. You got the mattress that's foam
• 11:00
  on the bottom. Yeah, it's very comfortable.
• 11:02
  It feels, feel. Is it memory foam?
• 11:04
  It feels very. It is memory foam.
• 11:07
  So cute and cozy. Yep, my one key of advice, park
• 11:12
  on level ground. Did you learn that from a hard
• 11:16
  experience? I learned that from a good
• 11:18
  friend of mine, yeah. Well, yeah, it must be really,
• 11:21
  really insightful. They were looking out for me
• 11:23
  from the beginning and they're like, Are you sure you're going
• 11:25
  to be able to sleep at that that pitch?
• 11:27
  I'm like, yeah, it should be fine.
• 11:28
  I was starting at the cab of my truck in the morning.
• 11:31
  I'd wake up, I'd be all the way at the tailgate.
• 11:35
  Rolling in the sky. Rolling, rolling, rolling.
• 11:39
  But you slept well. Yeah, I did.
• 11:41
  I did very comfy. Heavy sleeper.
• 11:43
  Maybe a little bit. Yeah.
• 11:46
  Yeah. Could sleep through almost
• 11:47
  anything. I think I'd learned that in
• 11:49
  college because in college my dorm was right next to a train
• 11:52
  track, and it was a small town. So they did like they would just
• 11:55
  hit the horns no matter what. And it was the freight trains.
• 11:57
  So it's the one that goes by for like 20 minutes.
• 12:00
  If you get stuck at it in your car, you're in park.
• 12:02
  You might go to like, the jack-in-the-box or whatever is
• 12:04
  right there. Yeah.
• 12:05
  Take a nap, Yeah. So my first couple weeks in
• 12:08
  college, like I was waking up all the time, and then
• 12:10
  afterwards I just started sleeping through it.
• 12:12
  So I think that might have been a good part of it.
• 12:15
  They say to like when sleep training a baby, just make noise
• 12:19
  all the time. Don't create a quiet, pristine
• 12:22
  environment for the baby because that's not realistic in life.
• 12:25
  Just keep it. Keep it noisy, let them learn
• 12:27
  how to fall asleep anywhere, and they'll be better off for it.
• 12:31
  Yeah, and do your normal things, you know, dishes in the kitchen,
• 12:34
  all of that like sudden sounds that way they get used to it.
• 12:36
  That makes sense. Yeah, animals too.
• 12:38
  Dogs too. Like let them sleep in the noisy
• 12:41
  space. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:43
  Like when they're puppies growing up and stuff.
• 12:44
  Yeah. Yeah, I think I was raised in a
• 12:48
  very quiet sleeping environment because I, I'm not a, not a
• 12:53
  heavy sleeper. Oh, really a very light sleeper.
• 12:55
  I need very, very quiet, very calm.
• 13:00
  Like just a little bit of white noise, but not too loud.
• 13:03
  If it's too loud, it'll be disturbing.
• 13:04
  If it's too quiet, then I'm like seeking for it.
• 13:06
  So it has to be just the right volume.
• 13:07
  So do you have like a sound machine with a specific sound
• 13:10
  that? I have a like an air purifier in
• 13:12
  my room. Yeah, and that's enough noise.
• 13:15
  It's OK. Yeah, it's not perfect.
• 13:17
  I'm still working it out. Yeah, I'd rather be near moving
• 13:20
  water. Oh, of course.
• 13:22
  Yeah, of course. Totally.
• 13:24
  OK. And then putting.
• 13:25
  It back. Just just as easy.
• 13:27
  Steps in reverse, Yeah, usually if I'm like set up inside, I
• 13:30
  have to move everything to that side of it.
• 13:32
  That way it'll fold over easily. But since we just left it, just
• 13:35
  pushing it back over. Pop.
• 13:41
  Just like that. Well.
• 13:43
  And then it all easily tucks away.
• 13:45
  Yeah, then I'll lift the top up, tuck everything in, put the
• 13:48
  straps back on. That's it.
• 13:49
  So cool. Yeah, it's fun times.
• 13:54
  Do you know anything about brands like if you had to
• 13:57
  choose? Yeah.
• 13:59
  So if I if I were in the market for my own, I think I'd go with
• 14:03
  the hardcover. I feel like right now it's an
• 14:07
  extra step tucking everything in.
• 14:08
  And I think with the hardcovers, it all just kind of collapses
• 14:10
  down. Better to stay in it and you
• 14:13
  don't have the Velcro and all the extra zippers.
• 14:15
  They're just quick clamps, yeah. So.
• 14:19
  But. It's a later problem.
• 14:20
  Yeah, it's a later problem. Right now I'm not your problem.
• 14:23
  No, I mean honestly. Maybe maybe future hot pants
• 14:25
  problem but. Maybe.
• 14:27
  Maybe. Not present hot pants problem.
• 14:30
  No, I'm just stoked to have this because I've had this for less
• 14:32
  than a year now. OK so I've gone out to Joshua
• 14:35
  Tree a bunch with it did a road trip out to Texas did a lot of
• 14:40
  that's usually like a 2 day road trip or maybe day and a half.
• 14:43
  I turned it into like 2 plus days nice because any dirt Rd.
• 14:45
  I saw on the side I was like go explore go to the top of the
• 14:49
  hill then looking down on everything.
• 14:50
  It was pretty cool. That's awesome, yeah.
• 14:53
  That's a dream. Something about solo Rd. trips?
• 14:57
  They're fun. Yeah, to be to be fully
• 15:00
  contained too. Yeah.
• 15:04
  And safe like when when all the gals were in there this morning
• 15:09
  talking about like, what are the benefits between sleeping on the
• 15:13
  ground versus sleeping in this kind of pop up canopy and
• 15:17
  acknowledging that, well, one, you're off the dirt, you're away
• 15:20
  from critters, bugs, etcetera. But also as like a solo female
• 15:25
  camper and really just anybody, like there's just an increased
• 15:30
  level of safety to be up off the ground and kind of have that
• 15:35
  height advantage over somebody who may approach.
• 15:38
  Yeah. Or you hear more so what's going
• 15:40
  on around you and you don't feel like they're circling you in a
• 15:44
  way like you have your one access point.
• 15:46
  Really. Yeah.
• 15:51
  Do you solo camp with any kind of protective devices?
• 16:01
  Just your brains. Brains, brains and knowledge.
• 16:04
  I think, I, I kind of try to think ahead of situations, even
• 16:09
  though like sometimes they may be like crazy situations and may
• 16:11
  never happen. But I think just a quick thought
• 16:14
  on what would happen or what would I, how would I react if
• 16:17
  XYZ happened? And then just knowing, OK, I
• 16:19
  would do this and then all right, we'll just put that on
• 16:21
  the back burner for later if ever needed.
• 16:24
  So I feel like my brains always kind of thinking that way, but
• 16:28
  never in like, Oh no, something's going to happen
• 16:30
  right now. You know, like a fear kind of
• 16:32
  way. Just more of a prepared.
• 16:34
  Yeah. So I think that's kind of
• 16:36
  dependent too on like where you're going.
• 16:39
  Like where's your road trip taking you?
• 16:41
  Are you going out to the desert? OK, maybe instead of 1 big jug
• 16:43
  of water, I'll have two big jugs of water.
• 16:46
  Maybe different things like that, like driving through
• 16:48
  Texas, I would have. 5 big jugs of water.
• 16:51
  Yeah, 5 or even gas too, because there's stretches where there's
• 16:55
  no gas stations for like 4 or 500 miles.
• 16:57
  So if you have like one small pit stop, then yeah, you're
• 17:01
  stuck. Yeah.
• 17:02
  And then who knows how long until someone comes and gets
• 17:03
  you? Days, yeah.
• 17:07
  And you have room for all of that in here because you have a
• 17:11
  full available truck bed. Yes.
• 17:16
  Could you pack things into the tent or it really needs to
• 17:21
  compress to that size? I think it really needs to
• 17:23
  compress to that size. Things I get away with, like a
• 17:25
  pillow, sleeping bag, a blanket, some clothes about it.
• 17:29
  Other things that'll compress as well.
• 17:30
  Yeah, yeah. But you could add a thing to the
• 17:37
  cab canopy to carry more shit in if you needed.
• 17:42
  Totally. And I've seen the ones where
• 17:43
  this comes up even with the cab. Yeah, and you get the really big
• 17:47
  tent that goes across the whole thing.
• 17:49
  Those are cool too. For sure.
• 17:51
  Yeah. Multi, multi, multi person,
• 17:54
  yeah. Even though how many people were
• 17:56
  in this earlier? Five.
• 17:57
  I mean, we were sitting, we were all laying down, but.
• 18:01
  People fall asleep sitting. Yeah, true.
• 18:04
  And probably there was enough. I mean, they were all camping
• 18:09
  out with each other every night, but they probably would have
• 18:12
  been like, yeah, we could all we could all lay in here.
• 18:14
  Yeah, like push yourself up against the corner because I
• 18:16
  mean, you're pushed into a corner.
• 18:18
  It's pretty good. Yeah.
• 18:18
  Like I've leaned up into them too.
• 18:20
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:21
  It was totally fine. I could nap for sure.
• 18:25
  Yeah. Maybe not like a full 8 hour
• 18:27
  night, but hour nap. Oh, with that many people in it?
• 18:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:32
  I'm just like, oh, we've been talking and now I've fallen
• 18:35
  asleep. Yeah, OK for a minute.
• 18:39
  Oh, let me help you and. Help me out.
• 18:41
  Oh wow, thank you. Finally.
• 18:42
  Finally a chance. You've told me about it all
• 18:44
  week. How helpful I would be?
• 18:46
  All this help, I'll help you do this.
• 18:48
  I'll hope you do that. I mean, I'm.
• 18:51
  Sure you were there. Were ways that I was helpful
• 18:54
  this week. You were, you came in you, you
• 18:57
  spotted me on my water. You're like, hey, you're look,
• 18:58
  get some more water. Yeah.
• 18:59
  You're looking out for me. Yeah.
• 19:01
  Yeah, I just, I couldn't do everything for you.
• 19:09
  Then that's a bad look on me. It's like he's not working.
• 19:11
  Yeah. Why is she carrying two duckies
• 19:15
  at once? You did, but you did do that.
• 19:18
  I did do that. I think.
• 19:21
  That's what's cool. That was just like a flex.
• 19:23
  That. Nobody saw except tunes and I
• 19:26
  don't know that he even registered it.
• 19:28
  He didn't give it the appreciation it needed.
• 19:32
  I think that's what's cool about our job, too, is we get to,
• 19:34
  like, do a little workout, things like that, you know,
• 19:37
  like, I saw one of the other guys from this past week doing
• 19:39
  the same thing, you know, just working out on their own or just
• 19:44
  being active, you know? Yeah.
• 19:47
  Kind of have to to sustain the level of energetic output.
• 19:53
  Like even though we're we're working all day it we need a
• 19:59
  little bit of physical time for ourselves.
• 20:03
  Otherwise it can feel like it's all work or it's like work.
• 20:06
  Too lazy for me at least. It's, I think it's kind of cool
• 20:11
  because recently I was telling you earlier how I'm in between
• 20:14
  places right now. So some stuffs in storage had
• 20:16
  this big like squat rack in my garage and where I work, I work
• 20:20
  out of a model home garage. And so I didn't have anywhere to
• 20:23
  put this, it didn't fit in storage.
• 20:24
  So I just brought it to work and I put it in the garage there and
• 20:27
  then it was kind of cool seeing other Co workers ask like, hey,
• 20:30
  can we use that? And so they leave the weights
• 20:32
  like wrapped and ready to go and like anytime we're walking in
• 20:35
  and out, which is constantly all day, like they do a set of
• 20:37
  something. That's awesome.
• 20:39
  So like me and my Co worker are like, OK, today's upper body.
• 20:41
  So we'll do different upper body things anytime we pass it.
• 20:44
  I love that. And the first couple days
• 20:46
  they're like dude, I'm so sore and I couldn't figure out what
• 20:48
  it was. It's because now they're like
• 20:50
  working out and doing stuff they didn't have time to before.
• 20:53
  They go home to their families and their kids, and they just
• 20:55
  don't have that self-care. But they want it, they want to,
• 20:58
  and there it is, available and unavoidable.
• 21:01
  Yeah. And now they're asking when are
• 21:03
  you moving again? Like when are you going to take
• 21:05
  this back? I'm like, I'll leave it here.
• 21:06
  Like we can leave it here until this job's done and we got it.
• 21:08
  We have to move so. And then move it to the next
• 21:11
  job. Yeah, move it to the next job.
• 21:13
  Cool. Yep.
• 21:13
  So that's kind of cool seeing that in other people too.
• 21:16
  Yeah, that's a really good or whatever they call like Lifehack
• 21:20
  or habit hacking or whatever that fucking buzzword is these
• 21:25
  days of like, yeah, put the thing that you want to do right
• 21:29
  in your daily path. If you want to drink more water,
• 21:33
  put a a water bottle or a water fill station along the way that
• 21:37
  you're moving already all the time or whatever.
• 21:43
  Whatever habit you're trying to pick up, it has to be like in
• 21:45
  your face and obvious and convenient.
• 21:48
  So put it in your path and pick it up more.
• 21:51
  Yeah, absolutely. Like those water bottles you
• 21:54
  see. And some people write their own
• 21:55
  notes on the side, but some are like, hey, 10 AM you're.
• 21:58
  You're supposed to be here. Yeah.
• 21:59
  At 12:00, you're supposed to be here.
• 22:01
  Yeah. Yeah, keep it going.
• 22:02
  Very. Cool.
• 22:03
  Yeah, that constant reminder. All right, that was that was my
• 22:06
  home tour for the week. Thanks.
• 22:07
  Welcome to my crib. Yeah, thanks for the crib tour.
• 22:10
  Yeah, let's put these paddles. Together and oh, let me, I'll
• 22:14
  grab an envelope from the from the fee box.
• 22:20
  Well, you put the paddles together.
• 22:21
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 22:23
  I see your trick there. I love when I love when I
• 22:29
  express my own pet peeve. One of my pet peeves is somebody
• 22:35
  saying we should do something or let's do something, but really
• 22:39
  just expecting the other person to do it.
• 22:41
  And there I did just do that, but.
• 22:46
  Really, it was. There are two things that need
• 22:49
  to happen, and let's do those two things.
• 22:53
  Together. Together but divide divide the
• 22:56
  tasks. Divide and conquer, Yeah,
• 22:58
  because I don't want to walk that far.
• 22:59
  Exactly and clearly I will. I'm walking and running all over
• 23:05
  the place. OK need a pen just in County
• 23:10
  Parks Department day use fee envelope, $5 day use fee for
• 23:14
  this location. That's real cute.
• 23:20
  Did it come with that? Also came with the truck.
• 23:22
  Cute. That was a big part of, I left
• 23:28
  kind of some of the stickers that he had on here just as part
• 23:31
  of the story he had with it, like the firefighter sticker,
• 23:34
  that sticker him and all of his buddies that would go off
• 23:38
  roading together all had that same sticker.
• 23:40
  So that was something cool. Is it one of those things that
• 23:44
  like, if somebody saw it, they'd be like, hey.
• 23:48
  I think so. That's mine.
• 23:50
  Yeah, that's cool. If his buddy saw that, they
• 23:52
  would think it's him in that parking lot or at that shopping
• 23:54
  center, wherever it is. That's so cool.
• 23:56
  Yeah. Is it from the same town?
• 24:00
  Like does he see his own truck driving around sometimes?
• 24:03
  Oh yeah, I see him all the time. Cool, because it was one of my
• 24:06
  clients at work. I work in a neighborhood
• 24:07
  community, so anytime I'm driving by, he'll see it.
• 24:10
  And he's like, oh, you added this to it, or you added that to
• 24:12
  it, or oh, it's clean this time or.
• 24:15
  That's cute. That's kind of cool.
• 24:18
  OK, I'm going to put this back in the box.
• 24:20
  It's like high 80s sunny, cute little clouds in the sky.
• 24:26
  Jesus Christ, they use fee. In the box we paid for a bus.
• 24:34
  Are we ready to hit the old wet trail?
• 24:37
  I think we're ready. Let's do our gear check, say we
• 24:40
  have everything, and then remember what we forgot once
• 24:43
  we're out there. Perfect to the river.
• 24:45
  Let's do it. Cool.
• 24:47
  OK, we're gonna float through this little rapid and.
• 24:55
  Tell us where we're at. What put in is this?
• 24:57
  We're at Ennis. I did tell.
• 24:59
  I told them, but I'll tell. You I'm a non local so you have
• 25:03
  to give me some some beta. We're at the Ennis access point
• 25:07
  on the Rogue River in Josephine County.
• 25:11
  Little boat ramp. I don't know what the camera is
• 25:14
  going to pick up there, but nice little boat ramp and it goes
• 25:18
  right into like a Class 1 little rapid.
• 25:22
  It's pretty rocky at the top right now.
• 25:23
  Water's kind of low. Not an awesome place to put in a
• 25:26
  raft because there's there's no drop.
• 25:30
  You just end up putting your ramp or your trailer pretty much
• 25:34
  in the water flat and still have to push it all off.
• 25:37
  But it's a really otherwise really easy access point, and
• 25:41
  it's at a nice central location between.
• 25:44
  The like really. Flat stretch of the recreational
• 25:47
  stretch of the rogue and then getting into more more Rapids,
• 25:51
  more Class 2 and then and then the one class 3 before the wild
• 25:54
  and scenic. Yeah, sweet.
• 25:56
  Yeah, and we're just going on a very short stretch.
• 25:58
  It's maybe 3 miles between here and the next access point of
• 26:03
  Galice and so we'll stop midway ish and find a shaded beach.
• 26:09
  Cool. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
• 26:11
  Cool, let's go enjoy our day. Awesome.
• 26:13
  I think that I will put the recording equipment away for the
• 26:17
  rapid because we're in a ducky and I don't want any of this to
• 26:21
  get splashed. So we'll be right back.
• 26:24
  OK, We did that. That was a nice little.
• 26:27
  Flow it was. Caught a little wave train in it
• 26:29
  too. You showed something interesting
• 26:37
  as we were getting started, I said that would be a good thing
• 26:42
  to say on camera. Yes.
• 26:43
  I'm. Going to say it again.
• 26:45
  I'm trying to remember. I'm just so blown away by going
• 26:48
  through the wave train just now. Well.
• 26:50
  That was part of that was the essence of it.
• 26:52
  Yeah, I think that kind of when you're going through the Rapids,
• 26:55
  you got to stay plugged in or you don't even have to.
• 26:57
  You just feel plugged into the moment.
• 26:59
  But before, when we, you know, just shut the camera off.
• 27:02
  I was telling Emily here how it's nice to have a day off like
• 27:06
  this at the end of a program week or before, you know,
• 27:09
  guiding on the river and you get your own time to really
• 27:12
  disconnect and enjoy it and not have to, you know, watch a group
• 27:16
  or worry about other things going on for the day.
• 27:19
  Be on a time schedule. You know, we have a lot of
• 27:21
  things that are choreographed throughout the day and we try to
• 27:24
  hit the hard time points. So it's nice to just get out and
• 27:27
  completely disconnect. And be and forget things and and
• 27:32
  it not be a big deal. Yeah.
• 27:36
  It's no, I mean, it's just that our own pressure, yeah.
• 27:39
  It's our own expectations of our experience and ourselves.
• 27:44
  No one else is relying or depending on us to get out here
• 27:47
  at a certain time or have certain items with us.
• 27:51
  Yeah. It's just what we need when we
• 27:54
  need to do it. See, so unplugged, forgot about
• 28:00
  these rocks we got to avoid, I mean.
• 28:03
  The current would probably carry us away from them, depending on
• 28:08
  the wind. The wind is going to push us
• 28:09
  right into them. But all right, hot pants.
• 28:18
  All right. Let's dive in to well, OK, we've
• 28:24
  talked a little bit about hey, great blue Heron.
• 28:27
  Oh. Nice.
• 28:31
  Wow. Hey Ron,
• 28:47
  I love a great blue Heron. I I grew.
• 28:52
  I live in my childhood home, the house I grew up in, and I've
• 28:57
  been slowly crafting it into my adult home and finding things
• 29:04
  from childhood life that I either want to get rid of, move,
• 29:10
  move on to some other home, somebody else's home, or revive
• 29:15
  into my home. And a few weeks ago, I dugout
• 29:19
  this great blue Heron statue that had been sitting gathering
• 29:25
  Moss for probably like at least 15 years.
• 29:31
  And I moved it to essentially my entryway and it's very, it's
• 29:37
  very gritty from where I scraped all the Moss off of it.
• 29:41
  Excuse me? And I'm my housemate and I Asia
• 29:47
  episode 7 I. Think she's episode 7?
• 29:50
  Are slowly working on like every time we pass by it one of those
• 29:55
  like habit hacks of a grounding calming point when we walk by
• 30:01
  it, we, we kind of pet the Heron.
• 30:06
  We we call him Ron because it's a Heron.
• 30:08
  So hey, Ron and I think over time his head will become very
• 30:14
  smooth and coated in our hand oils and the stone will be be
• 30:21
  worn down from its ragged jagged edges just like US and river
• 30:28
  rocks. And it's really been a really
• 30:31
  nice like touch point when entering and when exiting the
• 30:37
  home. And it's also feels very like
• 30:40
  Judaism coded. I've not I'm Jewish, but I'm not
• 30:44
  super Jewish, but keeping the tradition of mezuzah on the door
• 30:50
  as a a prayer and a blessing for entering and exiting the home
• 30:54
  and people much more Jewish than I touch it, kiss it upon
• 30:59
  entering and exiting. And that's like a, a, a blessing
• 31:03
  and a grounding action that didn't feel that's never felt
• 31:08
  super authentic to me. I like the I like the essence of
• 31:12
  it, but the practice of it has never felt very authentic.
• 31:16
  But this Heron statue is kind of touching that energy in in a way
• 31:24
  that feels a lot more authentic to me.
• 31:28
  That's beautiful. That is in your house like that
• 31:30
  too, so it reminds you every single day.
• 31:33
  So whatever you're about to do that day, that's your grounding
• 31:35
  moment that you make for yourself.
• 31:37
  Yeah, Yeah. It's like outside the front door
• 31:40
  in the entryway. Yeah, Yeah.
• 31:43
  Thanks. How nice to see one just now
• 31:45
  too. Yeah, do you?
• 31:46
  See them very often. All the time.
• 31:48
  You do? All the time.
• 31:48
  Yeah, usually. My alarm clock in the morning is
• 31:52
  usually either the Heron squawking or the geese
• 31:55
  squawking. Yeah.
• 31:57
  And yeah, flying. Flying over my house all the
• 32:01
  time. I love most of my mornings start
• 32:04
  with me sitting in my hot tub looking out of the river and
• 32:10
  usually a Heron will fly over in that morning time.
• 32:14
  And every time I'm floating on the river for sure Heron Heron
• 32:19
  flies by and only one time ever have I seen a Heron fishing.
• 32:28
  It was like walking. I'd never seen a Heron walk,
• 32:32
  only ever see them fly and land, and I got to watch a Heron
• 32:38
  walking in the water and fishing and it was so fucking.
• 32:43
  Cool. That's cool, Yeah.
• 32:45
  Yeah, catching them in their own element like that, it's pretty
• 32:47
  sweet. Yeah.
• 32:49
  It was awesome. OK, so we've been talking a
• 32:52
  little bit about program and what we've been doing this week,
• 32:55
  but let's give the viewers an actual explanation of what what
• 33:02
  you've been up to this week while we paddled down to
• 33:05
  Carpenter Island, OK? So this whole week as as a whole
• 33:10
  with programs. Yeah, I was like, what?
• 33:12
  What? What you what have you been up
• 33:14
  to this week? Yeah, so I found out about this
• 33:18
  past week, maybe 2 weeks ago. And as soon as I found out about
• 33:23
  the opportunity, it was like a fuck yes, let's get out there
• 33:25
  kind of a deal. And so Sundance Kayaking School
• 33:29
  on the Rogue River has a close relationship with First
• 33:32
  Descents, the nonprofit based out of Denver, 1st of Sense,
• 33:36
  does a lot of work in the oncology healthcare space
• 33:38
  community. And so we had a group of 12
• 33:42
  people, all strangers, nobody knows each other.
• 33:46
  All they know is they're going whitewater kayaking at the
• 33:48
  Rogue. They had no idea what they're
• 33:50
  truly signing up for, the conversations that would be had
• 33:53
  with the community that they had been looking to find so deeply.
• 33:57
  So that was, it's pretty special to witness from day one arrival
• 34:02
  to departure day, which was this morning for them.
• 34:05
  They're just so close and so intertwined with each other.
• 34:09
  But Emily and I had the opportunity to guide them down
• 34:13
  the river along with our other Sundance instructors.
• 34:16
  So took them through a few different stretches, of course,
• 34:20
  showed them all the safety things on day one, make sure
• 34:23
  that they were safe and competent on the water.
• 34:26
  And this group got out there and they were crushing it.
• 34:28
  They were getting after it. So spent about 4-5 hours a day
• 34:34
  on the water. And then we're back at the River
• 34:37
  House, last property along the Rogue River and get to sit there
• 34:40
  next to a rapid and enjoy the white water sound.
• 34:44
  More conversations, community building.
• 34:46
  And it was just an amazing week all around.
• 34:49
  It really was. And part of the reason it was
• 34:51
  just like such a quick fuck yes to coming out here was I knew
• 34:56
  that everybody was going to be awesome because people come out
• 34:58
  here. It's not to make money or get
• 35:01
  rich or any of that. It's it's filling your cup back
• 35:04
  up to the top of the people that, you know, still exist in
• 35:07
  the world and the kindness that can be shown.
• 35:09
  And that's what's really special out here.
• 35:11
  And what better place than to do it put outdoors because this,
• 35:15
  this has been our our view all week long.
• 35:19
  Very special place. Yeah.
• 35:22
  Was this your first time as a kayak instructor?
• 35:26
  It was first time kayak instructor, so all the programs
• 35:30
  I've done leading up to this past week was as a lead staff on
• 35:34
  the 1st descent side. But I had the chance to join the
• 35:38
  guide side, which I feel like I always kind of was on that side,
• 35:41
  helping them with gear, with instruction, or there have been
• 35:44
  times where I was given my my own group of small people to run
• 35:47
  down with. Small people specifically or
• 35:51
  just a small group of people? Small.
• 35:53
  Group of people. OK.
• 35:56
  So I feel like I've been exposed to it.
• 35:58
  Yeah, very, very been exposed to it a little bit before.
• 36:01
  And yeah, it was an exciting week of doing it.
• 36:06
  How much kayaking experience did you have prior?
• 36:09
  Did you learn how to kayak through working at First
• 36:12
  Descent? Everything's through first
• 36:13
  descent so it worked for them for about 5-6 years.
• 36:17
  I was doing anywhere from 8:00 to 12:00 programs a year and
• 36:20
  majority of what they offer is whitewater kayaking, so most of
• 36:23
  the programs I was on was on the river somewhere in the US.
• 36:27
  Wow. Yeah.
• 36:29
  Did you have a favorite? River, Oh, the road's just a
• 36:31
  special one. It really is.
• 36:33
  It makes it the location, the last property, feeling like
• 36:37
  you're in the wilderness, the community that's out here as
• 36:41
  well, because some of our participants mentioned other
• 36:45
  boaters going by and they're just so friendly and waving and
• 36:48
  saying hi and asking how your day is and enjoy the next rapid
• 36:51
  or celebrating with us too, you know, because we had a big
• 36:54
  groove. There's a lot of hooting and
• 36:55
  hollering. And so it's cool seeing other
• 36:58
  people that don't even really know what we're doing or why
• 37:01
  everybody's there or their back story, just supporting them just
• 37:03
  as much. So I think that's cool that they
• 37:05
  take that home with them too, knowing that it's not just
• 37:07
  within the group of people that signed up, but just in the
• 37:11
  outdoor community in general. You have that that like tight
• 37:17
  knit community. Yeah, that camaraderie is really
• 37:20
  special. And especially for new people
• 37:23
  being introduced to the river, people being introduced to
• 37:27
  kayaking, boating, to feel like it's it is welcoming and they're
• 37:33
  not alone in it and that they're wanted there.
• 37:37
  Yeah. It's not like, oh, they're
• 37:39
  they're students. They're learning.
• 37:40
  They've never been here before. It would get get off my wave.
• 37:43
  It's like, oh sweet, let me see what you can do, and let me see
• 37:47
  how I can help and let me see how I can cheer you on.
• 37:49
  Yeah, and I feel like. You want to keep coming back and
• 37:52
  doing this. Yeah, totally.
• 37:54
  And like the town I live in is a small beach town on Southern
• 37:57
  California coast, and a lot of people asked when I first moved
• 38:00
  there, are the locals kicking you off waves and kicking you
• 38:03
  off certain beaches. And I was like, no, not at all.
• 38:07
  I think everybody is out there to have their own special
• 38:10
  moments with whatever outdoor activity is, whether it's just
• 38:15
  sitting on the rocks on the beach watching people surf or
• 38:17
  it's actually out there surfing. There's never been that.
• 38:20
  This is our local home ground. Get out of here kind of a thing.
• 38:24
  But then there's also that kind of just talk around town where
• 38:27
  how this is the last small beach town that hasn't been really
• 38:31
  like overtaken with a lot of your chain restaurants or chain
• 38:34
  shops or things like that. Like it's still very mom and pop
• 38:37
  kind of style, which I think is what's makes makes that place
• 38:41
  special as well. Do you feel like there's a
• 38:43
  threat to that? Are.
• 38:45
  There developers proposing development or.
• 38:50
  They make it very hard for them both.
• 38:53
  Yeah. So this is the last town before
• 38:55
  it, you know, it turns into military base and land.
• 38:58
  And then further South is San Diego.
• 39:01
  So I don't think that there's a a big push for it just because
• 39:07
  any further South of that there's like it's no more area
• 39:11
  to really expand or grow for them.
• 39:14
  Yeah, it would just turn into a hugely metro, Yeah, Metro
• 39:19
  California, yeah. Totally.
• 39:22
  That's nice. Why are you in?
• 39:25
  What? Wait.
• 39:26
  Yeah. What landed you in San Clemente?
• 39:28
  That's what kind of drove me. There was that small town kind
• 39:31
  of feeling. I always wanted to live by the
• 39:32
  ocean as well. The place I was, I'm in the
• 39:35
  middle of moving right now. The place I was at before was
• 39:38
  about like a 2 minute walk to the beach, which was like a
• 39:41
  dream for me. Yeah.
• 39:42
  And every day I was at the beach or in the water or getting off
• 39:46
  work and going down there, nighttime walks to the ocean,
• 39:51
  just anything. And anytime I had opportunity to
• 39:54
  go down there, I was making my way to the water.
• 39:59
  Just kind of cool because like today when we're packing the
• 40:01
  boat, we're like thinking of all this extra gear to bring.
• 40:03
  And you told me something like, Hey, less is more, right?
• 40:06
  And so I kind of. That's me at home kind of I'll
• 40:10
  just leave the house with nothing just cause knowing I'm
• 40:12
  going to get in the water and then I'm just going to walk home
• 40:14
  and shower outside with the hose and then just get in the house.
• 40:18
  So remembering less is, more is is.
• 40:21
  Kind of cute, yeah. But in in the situation, I'm
• 40:25
  gonna fuck this up right now. Yeah, love.
• 40:31
  Like, OK, yeah, if you're going to drive across Texas, you'd
• 40:33
  want more Yeah, more things most likely.
• 40:36
  But in a in a casual setting like this?
• 40:40
  For your afternoon trip out or your day trip?
• 40:44
  Easy peasy. Yeah.
• 40:46
  That sounds like a pretty dreamy, idyllic situation and
• 40:49
  place to be living. Why is that no more?
• 40:55
  Went through a break up with a partner recently and so found a
• 40:59
  new place to make home in San Clemente which is good.
• 41:03
  And you know, having my own space, fresh start and I'm
• 41:06
  honestly stoked. For it.
• 41:07
  So still the same town. I'm not going.
• 41:10
  Far I'm. Like 2 blocks over from where I
• 41:12
  was at before. So still kind of same distance
• 41:14
  to the water and things like that.
• 41:16
  The new place I actually joke around with, I have a solution
• 41:18
  to you. If I get on my balcony, if I
• 41:21
  jump on the roof, and then if I stack enough boxes I might be
• 41:25
  able to see like that much of the ocean, which is pretty
• 41:28
  freaking cool. Selling big time selling .0.
• 41:33
  There's a white crane flying by over there.
• 41:40
  Another little wild bird sighting.
• 41:43
  Beautiful. Oh yeah.
• 41:49
  See if he does a little fishing. No.
• 41:51
  Oh. He dropped a feather.
• 42:00
  Nice. Well, yeah, you mentioned Texas.
• 42:02
  That's where I that's where I moved from.
• 42:04
  OK. Like 2-3 years ago.
• 42:07
  Originally born in California so extended family like
• 42:11
  grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, almost every everyone
• 42:15
  lives out there. My parents and siblings still
• 42:18
  live in Texas, but my dad was in the military, so we moved around
• 42:23
  a lot as a kid. And every summer, like the day
• 42:26
  after school was out, they put me on a flight to California to
• 42:29
  go spend with family because they still wanted me to have
• 42:31
  that family connection. Living in Guam or some of these
• 42:35
  really remote places that were far away.
• 42:37
  They don't want me to feel secluded from family growing up.
• 42:40
  So I thought that was always neat that they sent me to
• 42:43
  California to go spend time with grandma, grandpa or aunt and
• 42:46
  uncle and cousins. And then I'd come home like a
• 42:51
  week or two weeks before school started.
• 42:53
  So it was literally the whole summer out there.
• 42:55
  And I think that was a big driving force of I want to make
• 42:58
  it back home to California, You know, like when I'm out on my
• 43:01
  own and have my own job and pick my own place to live, like this
• 43:04
  is where I want to be. So it's really cool to finally
• 43:06
  have a chance to do that. Yeah.
• 43:09
  Doing that, did it ever make you feel less connected to the place
• 43:12
  that your family that your parents were stationed at?
• 43:15
  Or was it like get me the fuck out of here or happy to leave?
• 43:19
  Kind of get me the fuck out of here.
• 43:20
  I'm happy to leave. Sorry Mom and Dad love you guys,
• 43:25
  but I'll go home and visit. I don't think I'm living there
• 43:27
  though, Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:30
  Even though you were like changing schools every couple of
• 43:33
  years. Yeah, even more of an incentive
• 43:36
  to be connected to family versus people in a place that you were
• 43:40
  just going to leave. Yeah, yeah, just constantly
• 43:42
  moving. I was that kid going up to the
• 43:44
  groups on the playground asking can I play with you guys?
• 43:47
  You know, they already had their little groups of like, playing
• 43:49
  tag or playing this or playing that.
• 43:51
  And yeah, I had to learn how to make friends, you know, not not
• 43:56
  sit back. So I think that's also kind of
• 43:59
  what's made me into the adult I am now.
• 44:01
  And being able to approach people and talk and be open is
• 44:06
  how I had to grow up. And you think you're better off
• 44:10
  for that? I think so, yeah.
• 44:13
  I think it opens up more exploration too, right?
• 44:16
  I've done quite a bit of traveling and never felt like
• 44:22
  the odd one out or anything like that.
• 44:24
  I've tried to, you know, find common ground with people with
• 44:27
  the culture that they're in or just the way they are as a human
• 44:32
  and make that the the talking point.
• 44:35
  That's great. That's a really, really good
• 44:38
  practice to have and probably really underrated to be able to
• 44:43
  talk to anybody anywhere and make a connection and see beyond
• 44:48
  like party lines essentially that came.
• 44:51
  I really liked that point that someone brought up in the
• 44:54
  campfire last night around Like, not once did religion or
• 44:59
  politics come up this week with this group, and it was such a
• 45:05
  vivid reminder of that. We're all humans and we can
• 45:09
  connect on a human level and a shared human experience.
• 45:13
  That there's so much more to who we are and what life is and how
• 45:19
  to relate to people than religion and politics.
• 45:22
  Yeah, yeah. Totally.
• 45:23
  And it's OK. It's OK for you to have those
• 45:26
  things and it's OK to not get into it.
• 45:30
  Yeah, there's so there is so much more to life than religion
• 45:35
  and politics. I had a side conversation with
• 45:38
  one of the volunteers this week kind of around that as well, how
• 45:42
  you come out here and those topics don't get brought up or,
• 45:45
  you know, out there in the world, there's these lines where
• 45:47
  it's like, hey, you're either on this side or this side and it's
• 45:50
  like trying to divide us all. And at the end of the day, we're
• 45:53
  all just humans in this world. We're all spinning on the same
• 45:56
  earth. We're all going through
• 45:57
  challenges and what not. Why not just be on the same
• 46:00
  team? Yeah.
• 46:01
  Just support each other in the human experience, not in the
• 46:06
  theological experience. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:09
  That just doesn't make sense. Yeah, I need to change a
• 46:11
  battery. Be right back.
• 46:15
  OK, I we're back with a fresh battery and we're, I don't
• 46:22
  remember what we were saying before I turned off the battery,
• 46:24
  but I do want to hear how you came to 1st descent.
• 46:30
  Yes. So I came from the participant
• 46:33
  side. So I have my own oncology
• 46:36
  experience and I had Hodgkin lymphoma.
• 46:39
  So found out when I was in college my sophomore year and
• 46:45
  went through treatment, which was over a course of six months.
• 46:48
  I did 12 rounds of chemo, so every two weeks I was going in
• 46:52
  and I'd be the first one in the treatment center at like 7-8 AM
• 46:56
  and then the last one to leave at four or five.
• 46:58
  So it was all. All day.
• 47:00
  All day. I don't know what Hodgkin's
• 47:02
  lymphoma is like. I mean, I've heard of it, but I
• 47:04
  don't know what it is, what it affects.
• 47:07
  I'm guessing the lymphs. Yeah.
• 47:08
  So your lymph nodes is what that affects.
• 47:12
  You have your lymph nodes throughout your body and like
• 47:14
  your wrist, your elbows, your armpits throughout your neck,
• 47:17
  they're in different points. And their function is to, if you
• 47:19
  get a cut in your finger, your lymph nodes are supposed to stop
• 47:22
  infection or disease from going to the rest of your body.
• 47:25
  OK, so those were compromised to myself and I had stage 3, which
• 47:32
  means it was all the way in my neck and my armpits, in my chest
• 47:35
  and in my core is where it was. So if it was a little bit
• 47:40
  further down and started getting into legs than it would have
• 47:42
  been 4, which it was pretty borderline.
• 47:45
  So that's why they did, you know, the full day treatments
• 47:48
  and successfully went through all of that with, you know, some
• 47:53
  challenges of course. But at the end of it, I was
• 47:56
  trying to find what normal felt like again and being a college
• 48:00
  athlete and feeling like I was in the best shape of my life.
• 48:03
  And then this happening in that same time period, it was very
• 48:07
  eye opening coming out of it because I was much weaker in
• 48:11
  just a six month span than I was 6-7 months prior.
• 48:16
  So started working out on my own, trying to find like my own
• 48:20
  path and self again. And then my mom was always
• 48:22
  sending me different like articles about oncology.
• 48:25
  And one of them that she sent me was an article, I think it was
• 48:30
  like ACNN article. And Brad Ludden, the founder of
• 48:34
  First Descent was talking about this amazing community and going
• 48:38
  out whitewater kayaking or rock climbing, surfing, and at the
• 48:41
  time even ice climbing. And when I saw ice climbing in
• 48:44
  the article, I was like, that's a sport.
• 48:46
  Like I had no idea that that even existed.
• 48:49
  So that the ice climbing is what caught my attention.
• 48:52
  And then looked on the website, I saw that they were actually
• 48:58
  trips that were paid for completely.
• 49:00
  You only had to buy your flight there.
• 49:02
  And they even offered flight scholarships too.
• 49:04
  So they really made like 0 barrier to entry.
• 49:07
  And so I signed up for it. And then my doctor said no.
• 49:10
  So it was kind of tough because this was about November and the
• 49:15
  trip was going to be in February.
• 49:16
  So it's kind of coming up pretty quick.
• 49:18
  Of what year? Of 16-7, this was 2017.
• 49:23
  OK. And then the doctor said no.
• 49:27
  And I said OK, I'll, I'll wait until next year.
• 49:29
  And his reasoning was my lungs were affected in my treatment
• 49:32
  and he didn't want me going to altitude in Colorado.
• 49:35
  So he was. That makes sense it.
• 49:38
  Was good it was good reason which you know little back story
• 49:41
  I did have major lung problems after the first two treatments
• 49:45
  and so they actually had to take one of the chemos out of the
• 49:47
  mixture because they knew that was the one that was hard on the
• 49:51
  lungs. So the whole year goes by, I'm
• 49:55
  still kind of trying to find myself work out.
• 49:58
  I'm trying to find different baseball teams to play for in
• 50:00
  school still. And then next year comes around,
• 50:03
  they're doing the ice climbing again.
• 50:04
  So I'm like, all right, let's try this again.
• 50:06
  Went and took the paper to my doctor and he signed off on it
• 50:08
  right away. He's like, Yep, you, you've been
• 50:10
  good. You've been athletic and taking
• 50:14
  care of yourself and working out and you're going to be fine,
• 50:17
  right? So signed up.
• 50:19
  And you're like, well, I was doing all of that before I got
• 50:21
  diagnosed. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:22
  That's why I was OK. Thanks.
• 50:26
  And yeah, signed up for it. And this was maybe 3-4 months
• 50:31
  before the trip was actually happening and I had no idea what
• 50:34
  I was getting myself into. I thought it was just going to
• 50:37
  be a free trip outside to go ice climbing and learn a new sport,
• 50:42
  and I didn't realize how much I needed it.
• 50:45
  To talk about your oncology experience, to relate with other
• 50:49
  people that just feel like you're on your own out there,
• 50:54
  even though like family or friends or whoever might be
• 50:57
  there with you. Whenever they would say things
• 50:59
  or try to help me with things, it was always like a thank you.
• 51:03
  But you don't really get it. And going on one of the first to
• 51:06
  sense trips, it was everybody got it.
• 51:09
  You know, like maybe they didn't have the same kind as you or
• 51:13
  very different stories, but everybody recognized that the
• 51:17
  struggles that you had and kind of just acknowledged you for it.
• 51:21
  And I was very special. Like there are people from the
• 51:24
  first trip that I did in 2018 that I still talk to today.
• 51:28
  And they live in different countries and I've gone to visit
• 51:30
  them and they've come out to visit me and we've planned like
• 51:33
  snowboarding trips together and still getting outside.
• 51:36
  And it's kind of cool whenever we do get in like the deep parts
• 51:41
  of life again, where there's struggles, whether it it be
• 51:44
  medically or with relationships or whatever it is.
• 51:46
  And like we're still 1 phone call away from each other.
• 51:49
  You know, like a buddy of mine, it was my roommate on my first
• 51:52
  trip. His name is Howdy.
• 51:55
  In the real world, he's called Howard and.
• 51:58
  Wait, wait, this is the real world.
• 52:00
  This is the real. World.
• 52:02
  That's the build government. That's the built world.
• 52:04
  Government name. There we go.
• 52:06
  This is the real world. This is the real.
• 52:08
  This is it. I mean, look at that family of
• 52:11
  Morganzers on that log right there.
• 52:14
  This is it. This is the real world.
• 52:18
  Absolutely right, and sometimes you just got to kick back and
• 52:30
  enjoy it. A lot of times.
• 52:32
  A lot of times. Life isn't meant to be
• 52:37
  experienced in a stress filled way.
• 52:41
  Oh, absolutely. We didn't make it this far with
• 52:48
  rushing. Yeah.
• 52:53
  Human progression has been pretty slow.
• 52:56
  So we've had phone calls at 2:00 AM because he's on the other
• 52:58
  side of the world, which I think is pretty cool by, you know,
• 53:01
  both directions. So it's just a really special
• 53:05
  group of people that you meet out on on these programs.
• 53:08
  At first descents and day 2, when I was on my program Ice
• 53:12
  Climbing, I was like, I want to do that.
• 53:14
  Like I want to be the lead staff and I want to be able to show
• 53:17
  this to people and take them out.
• 53:18
  And that's what I was determined to do.
• 53:23
  So the week wasn't even over and I was already on their website
• 53:26
  signing up to be a volunteer at the airport.
• 53:28
  I was already emailing people in the office saying, hey, I want
• 53:30
  to volunteer. How do I fundraise?
• 53:32
  How do I give back, right? And did some volunteering with
• 53:37
  them, did some fundraising. I ran a Spartan Race and was
• 53:40
  getting people to donate like a dollar per obstacle.
• 53:43
  So if you don't know what a Spartan Race is, you run X
• 53:45
  amount of miles, but you have different obstacles to go
• 53:47
  through, like over these hoops or underneath barbed wire or
• 53:50
  like swinging monkey bars. Different fun things.
• 53:53
  And yeah, I raised 5 grand for first descents doing that.
• 53:59
  Gave it all the first descents. And I think that may have put me
• 54:01
  on their radar a little bit because then the next year they
• 54:04
  were hiring for lead staff and after I was stalking their
• 54:08
  website every other day, I saw the posting and made an
• 54:11
  application and applied, got hired on, and then worked my way
• 54:18
  up to being a lead staff manager towards the end of my time with
• 54:21
  them. And it was just absolutely
• 54:24
  amazing. It was so beautiful seeing all
• 54:27
  of the community come together, all the different events that
• 54:31
  they do. You go to an event and they're
• 54:33
  just strangers, but you feel like you've known them forever
• 54:36
  when you're talking to them, which is pretty awesome.
• 54:39
  Yeah, yeah. Do I need to paddle?
• 54:41
  Through this. Did you want to find a beach
• 54:42
  shore? Yeah, it has purple paint on it.
• 54:46
  Does it really? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny.
• 54:51
  It was calling you. It was we were meant to be at
• 54:54
  this beach. Yeah, we were.
• 54:55
  I'm. Going to kick my shoes off.
• 55:00
  Oh, we turn this around. So, OK, we can kind of see.
• 55:09
  Ourselves. Perfect.
• 55:13
  Cool. Stay hydrated, part of being in
• 55:21
  the outdoors. Hydrate or hydrate?
• 55:24
  Yep, bring enough water. Yeah.
• 55:26
  And like, hydrate in advance, hydrate at the start of your
• 55:30
  day. Yeah, at the even before the
• 55:32
  adventure even begins, start. Oh, yeah, hydrating not just
• 55:38
  with water, but with electrolytes, with fruit, with
• 55:42
  hydrating meals. Yeah.
• 55:44
  So that you don't get to a point in your excursion and experience
• 55:49
  dehydration. Or even days before too.
• 55:51
  Like if the people we had this past week, I would start telling
• 55:54
  them three or four days before. Like start drinking water now.
• 55:57
  Mm hmm. That way you're not trying to
• 55:59
  catch up. It's harder to catch up than to.
• 56:03
  To just stay be. Prepared.
• 56:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when you know what's
• 56:07
  coming. Yeah.
• 56:09
  It's way better to plan ahead for that.
• 56:12
  Yeah. You're going to lose.
• 56:14
  It's the the phrase that kept coming up this week.
• 56:17
  I think Gnomeo was saying it and then I had.
• 56:19
  I kept reminding Postal of it was go slow to go fast.
• 56:22
  Yeah. Like slow down, be intentional,
• 56:26
  take your time getting set up and getting prepared so that you
• 56:30
  have everything you need to send it.
• 56:32
  Yeah, it's better for longevity. I'm going to put a little fluff
• 56:38
  on our mics to with the wind to help with the wind and hopefully
• 56:42
  this isn't too noisy of a water spot.
• 56:45
  Should we do a check? There's really no way for us to
• 56:48
  know that I know of. We just kind of figure it out in
• 56:55
  editing. Thanks, Heather.
• 56:58
  Shout out to Heather. There's the bomb.
• 57:01
  I'm so I'm so grateful to have her and to have her in this
• 57:09
  partnership and her skills and, and to get to see her like
• 57:14
  learning and shifting to Sorry Wind shifting to like
• 57:23
  accommodate each other's working styles and our ability to
• 57:27
  communicate about our working styles and what our expectations
• 57:30
  are in each other's work and in ourselves.
• 57:33
  And just having total grace and acceptance and love for each
• 57:41
  other of like this is, this is work, but doesn't need to feel
• 57:45
  like work. This needs to be joyful and
• 57:49
  enjoyable and not a like. It should be a labor of love,
• 57:55
  but not be laborious. The point is to enjoy yourself
• 57:58
  with it and not put yourself in a spot where then you are
• 58:00
  stressed out and you're time crunching yourself.
• 58:03
  And yeah, there's no need for that.
• 58:05
  Yeah, because like, oh, sorry, the, the episode's late because
• 58:10
  I've been on the river all week. That's not my problem.
• 58:16
  That's nature. Nature calling it's.
• 58:18
  Yeah, like it's late by some prescribed timeline that
• 58:22
  somebody else is expecting, but yeah, it's there when it's
• 58:25
  there. Yeah, I've shifted, I like to
• 58:28
  throw parties. I like to host parties.
• 58:30
  And I've shifted more into a mindset of like the party is
• 58:34
  happening for these hours. Yeah, come and go as you please.
• 58:38
  You're not. You're never late because you're
• 58:40
  just. You're there when you're there.
• 58:41
  Yeah. And maybe you might miss
• 58:44
  somebody else who was here earlier, but that doesn't make
• 58:48
  you late. Yeah, like part the party's
• 58:50
  happening between these hours. Just come, come and go as you
• 58:54
  please. That's funny because I take that
• 58:56
  from like a cultural perspective, being Hispanic and
• 58:58
  like we're just never on time. So hey, we say party starts at
• 59:01
  4. Like all the Theos and Theos are
• 59:04
  showing up at 6:00 and it's like party starting when we get there
• 59:07
  kind of a deal. So that's that's cool.
• 59:09
  Yeah, that's cool that you're doing that with your parties as
• 59:11
  well. It just makes.
• 59:13
  So much more sense, like the stress that people feel thinking
• 59:17
  that they have to be there at a certain time and they have to
• 59:19
  stay till a certain time. It's just it.
• 59:22
  Doesn't make the party fun if that's the expectation.
• 59:25
  I'm sure there are certain kinds of parties that there needs to
• 59:29
  be a firm starting time and a firm ending time, but.
• 59:33
  Like what kind? I don't know, like maybe a baby
• 59:35
  shower? OK.
• 59:37
  Like a wedding reception, yeah, or something like that.
• 59:39
  Where, like there is a schedule and things are happening at a
• 59:42
  certain time, dinner is being served at a certain time, a
• 59:45
  certain activity is happening at a specific time.
• 59:48
  Yeah. But if it's just like an open
• 59:50
  hang, yeah, it's a family BBQ. Or I, this will be my second
• 59:57
  year throwing my summer party. Yeah.
• 1:00:00
  Where I rent a giant inflatable water slide and put it in my
• 1:00:04
  yard. And then there's the river
• 1:00:06
  access. And one of my best friends, who
• 1:00:09
  also makes the music for this podcast, is a DJ, and he does a
• 1:00:14
  sunset DJ dance party on my deck.
• 1:00:17
  It's so fucking epic. That's cool.
• 1:00:19
  I started it last year because I really wanted an inflatable
• 1:00:22
  water slide. Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  And my birthday's in the spring, so not like summer party time.
• 1:00:28
  And I just decided, you know what?
• 1:00:31
  Fuck it, I can. I'm.
• 1:00:32
  Going to make my own party birthday.
• 1:00:34
  I don't need. I don't need a.
• 1:00:35
  Reason to throw a party. I can just throw a party because
• 1:00:38
  I want to throw a party and people can come if they want to
• 1:00:41
  come. And if not, I'm going to have a
• 1:00:43
  great time because I'm going to slide on my water slide, OK?
• 1:00:46
  I'm going to get my money's worth out of it.
• 1:00:49
  And it was a huge hit. A bunch of people showed up,
• 1:00:53
  everybody had a great time. Tons of adult friends had never
• 1:00:56
  been on a inflatable water slide before and like weren't prepared
• 1:01:00
  to and then ended up going down it in all of their clothes again
• 1:01:05
  and again and again. Because once they did one, it
• 1:01:07
  was so awesome. They had to keep going.
• 1:01:09
  And it was. There was also a full moon over
• 1:01:13
  the dance party. And it was so fucking cool.
• 1:01:17
  So I have now it's becoming an annual thing.
• 1:01:20
  That's sweet. That's sweet.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah. That took me back to like, my,
• 1:01:24
  my younger brother's birthday party that he would have in the
• 1:01:26
  summers. And they would get a big, like,
• 1:01:28
  inflatable with the small little pool at the bottom and then a
• 1:01:31
  slide going down into it. And we would get it for like two
• 1:01:34
  or three days just because we'd go out there on our own and do
• 1:01:36
  it. Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  Regardless if his friends were over or not.
• 1:01:39
  Or it actually, like, party time. 8:00 AM It was blown up
• 1:01:43
  and like 8:00 PM then the floodlights were on in the
• 1:01:45
  backyard and it was still going. Yeah, you know it was.
• 1:01:48
  You can't. Like, it's so fun.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, it's such an underrated fun.
• 1:01:53
  I never had it as a kid, but I've always loved water slides.
• 1:01:56
  I don't like jumping off of things, but I do like to slide
• 1:01:59
  and. It's just.
• 1:02:02
  Yeah. It's your own water park.
• 1:02:03
  Yeah. In nature, too, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  In my own. Yard, yeah, for.
• 1:02:06
  Like everything I need is right there.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah, all my friends are there and it's great.
• 1:02:13
  Yeah, highlight. Highlight of my summer snow.
• 1:02:16
  Yeah, that's sweet. Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Can't wait for the invitation. Yeah, I want to go water.
• 1:02:20
  Sliding the date off off the record, yeah.
• 1:02:22
  Because. I mean, I'm.
• 1:02:24
  Sure, I love everybody. Who's going to watch and listen
• 1:02:26
  to this? And maybe this will come out
• 1:02:28
  after the party. And my general rule for the
• 1:02:32
  invitation is if I like you, you're invited.
• 1:02:35
  Oh OK, so that's how I'll find out if you like me.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, yeah, I said I'd tell you the date off, off the record.
• 1:02:41
  Perfect. OK, so my town adopted something
• 1:02:44
  similar. They used to do an annual like
• 1:02:47
  desk chair race, cool going down like the main downtown strip,
• 1:02:50
  which is all at like a decline going down to the ocean.
• 1:02:53
  And then I guess one year too many people got hurt.
• 1:02:56
  That makes sense. So they change it from an office
• 1:03:00
  chair race to a slip and slide into the ocean.
• 1:03:03
  So they found one area of beach where they can get like the long
• 1:03:07
  plastic tarps from Home Depot or Lowe's.
• 1:03:10
  And this is all just organized within the community, you know,
• 1:03:13
  people, just people, just people doing it.
• 1:03:16
  And they wanted to keep some kind of annual tradition going
• 1:03:20
  through the summer. So they started doing that.
• 1:03:22
  But it's like one of those things, you don't know what's
• 1:03:24
  going on unless like, you know, somebody in the community, you
• 1:03:26
  know of it going on. You have that buddy that's
• 1:03:28
  organizing it or like maybe even the Facebook Facebook group
• 1:03:31
  mentions it. Otherwise you just you'll see a
• 1:03:34
  bunch of people out there sliding.
• 1:03:36
  Down and you'll be like what's? Going on am I can I join can?
• 1:03:39
  I go, I'm like, of course you can join, but it's not
• 1:03:43
  advertised, which is pretty freaking cool.
• 1:03:46
  I want to go to Yeah there. That sounds awesome.
• 1:03:50
  I'll. Give you that date off.
• 1:03:51
  Camera OK, perfect. Hopefully it's not the same day
• 1:03:56
  as my party because I can't be in two places at once, but.
• 1:04:00
  We'll make something work. OK, cool.
• 1:04:01
  That sounds awesome. Yeah, I my backyard is sloped,
• 1:04:06
  so people think that I'm going to set up the water slide back
• 1:04:08
  there, but it's, like, not a good spot for it.
• 1:04:11
  Yeah, but this winter we had a big snowstorm, and I'd never
• 1:04:15
  been sledding in my life. And I sledded down down my
• 1:04:20
  backyard into the river. That's sweet.
• 1:04:23
  Was it like an actual little sled or like a trash can lid
• 1:04:26
  like traditional? Actual sled I put on my dry suit
• 1:04:28
  and I put on a helmet and I put on my PF Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  So I was like, OK, I'm going to end up in the river.
• 1:04:33
  So I need to be like, river ready.
• 1:04:35
  Yeah. And it's freezing.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. And vacation rental guests that
• 1:04:41
  I'd had a couple years ago left behind a sled.
• 1:04:44
  And I was like, what am I going to ever do with the sled?
• 1:04:46
  It's like sitting in the bushes. But I'm a kind of a pack rat.
• 1:04:51
  So I don't like to get rid of things if I think there's going
• 1:04:53
  to be a use for it sometime in the next like 15 years.
• 1:04:56
  And so I've had this. Sled And how many years in were
• 1:05:02
  you like getting close? To the 2.
• 1:05:04
  OK, two years, so it still? Had a lot of life to sit.
• 1:05:06
  Yeah, yeah. But it is plastic and it's just
• 1:05:08
  sitting outside, so it'll break down over time and I might have
• 1:05:12
  cracked it on this sledding adventure.
• 1:05:15
  Just sending it too hard. Yeah, there were some rocks
• 1:05:18
  under the snow that I didn't know were there.
• 1:05:20
  And then I like ran into the tree root at one point because I
• 1:05:26
  did it probably a dozen times trying to trying to.
• 1:05:28
  Get the right line. So I was going to enter the
• 1:05:30
  river. Did you break it a first try and
• 1:05:32
  then you're like bummed that was it or no?
• 1:05:34
  No, my first few tries, I was really, really timid and, like,
• 1:05:38
  stopping myself before I got too far because it's like, yeah, one
• 1:05:42
  slope and then a flat spot and then another slope.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah. And so I was, like, trying to
• 1:05:48
  figure out how I needed to angle and to get the line that I
• 1:05:52
  wanted. And if I wasn't making the line
• 1:05:53
  I wanted, then I'd stop myself. OK.
• 1:05:55
  And so it's probably on, like, the eighth attempt that I think
• 1:06:00
  I cracked it a little bit. That's sweet.
• 1:06:02
  And then my housemate, Episode 7, Asia, she had just moved in
• 1:06:07
  like a month, two months before and we were still just getting
• 1:06:12
  to know each other. And so she did it also, and it
• 1:06:15
  was fucking fun. That's cool, yeah.
• 1:06:19
  Almost friends, so there's dogs over there.
• 1:06:21
  Doesn't snow that much up here then?
• 1:06:23
  No. So that was like this is
• 1:06:24
  happening. I got to do it kind of moment.
• 1:06:26
  Yeah, we were like snowed in. Yeah, I mean with like 4 inches,
• 1:06:31
  which is a lot. Which is a lot if you don't get
• 1:06:33
  it, yeah. And my my driveway has a slight
• 1:06:37
  slope also. And so with like front wheel
• 1:06:41
  drive, her car wasn't getting out.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah. And if she couldn't go to.
• 1:06:45
  Work. I was like.
• 1:06:46
  I'm not going to go. I'm not going to work, Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  We're just going to hang out and play all day in the snow.
• 1:06:51
  OK. Just kind of we built.
• 1:06:53
  It snowman, we made snow angels. We like played.
• 1:06:56
  Frisbee with the dogs. We went sledding.
• 1:06:58
  We made a whole like, it is a snow day.
• 1:07:01
  We're going to fucking snow day. Yeah.
• 1:07:03
  It was awesome. That's pretty sweet.
• 1:07:06
  That's pretty sweet. Yeah.
• 1:07:08
  Had a similar experience in Texas, too.
• 1:07:10
  Please. When it was actually such a
• 1:07:12
  crazy storm. We lost power and everything.
• 1:07:15
  So for a whole week we had no power.
• 1:07:17
  It was like a. Week, Yeah.
• 1:07:19
  A whole week and it's rare to get tech, rare to get snow in
• 1:07:23
  South Texas. We were in San Antonio.
• 1:07:25
  OK. And so how old were you?
• 1:07:27
  This was pretty recent. I was 2122.
• 1:07:32
  That's pretty recent. How old are you?
• 1:07:34
  29, I guess it feels more recent than what it was.
• 1:07:37
  I guess that was a while ago. But yeah, nobody went to work
• 1:07:41
  because they don't ice the roads there.
• 1:07:43
  So first day of snow was on Monday and it was maybe like an
• 1:07:47
  inch, two inches. The whole town shut down, right?
• 1:07:50
  And we're running. Never seen that.
• 1:07:52
  Before, no, never. And so we're all running outside
• 1:07:55
  playing in an inch of snow. By the time it got to like 11 or
• 1:07:58
  12, it was gone, right? It just melted off next night,
• 1:08:03
  like 4 inches comes in. So like 2 snow days
• 1:08:06
  back-to-back, like that was just insane.
• 1:08:09
  And that's when like we actually had enough to take.
• 1:08:11
  Like we're taking trucks off of our skateboards and riding our
• 1:08:14
  skateboards down the driveway because like our driveway was
• 1:08:16
  steep going away from the house, so we could ride it down into
• 1:08:20
  the street and like we just would get one line out of it
• 1:08:22
  before it was kind of ran out. And so we did that.
• 1:08:24
  Then we went into the backyard to snow.
• 1:08:26
  Huge snowball fight and I'm chasing like my 7 year old
• 1:08:30
  brother around and just having a good time in the snow.
• 1:08:34
  But then we're going inside like every 30 minutes because he's
• 1:08:37
  getting his normal clothes like just all wet.
• 1:08:38
  They don't have, like, they didn't have proper snow, a tire.
• 1:08:42
  Yeah. And so we'd go inside, Power was
• 1:08:44
  out. So we can't run a dryer.
• 1:08:46
  We can't wash anything. So we had the gas fireplace
• 1:08:48
  going and we just lined everything up right there.
• 1:08:51
  And like, our whole family just hung out by that gas fireplace
• 1:08:54
  for that entire week. That's so.
• 1:08:55
  Nice. So it was kind of like may be
• 1:08:58
  scary to some people not having those resources that you kind of
• 1:09:01
  just maybe expect to have, but. Some people depend on them, like
• 1:09:05
  medically and. Yeah, totally to.
• 1:09:08
  Stay warm at all totally don't have a gas fireplace and.
• 1:09:12
  Yeah, no, actually, a lot of people died during that storm.
• 1:09:16
  Damn. Which was pretty sad to hear.
• 1:09:19
  So we were fortunate with that. But yeah, some of the best
• 1:09:22
  moments of just running around and playing in the snow.
• 1:09:25
  And yeah, glad I got to share that with my brothers because
• 1:09:28
  they don't get a chance to like go on these trips that I go on,
• 1:09:31
  like snowboarding or these different mountains and things
• 1:09:34
  like that. So it's cool to kind of
• 1:09:36
  experience that with them. And you have a huge age gap if
• 1:09:40
  you were 21 and they were seven. So you weren't growing up
• 1:09:44
  sharing experiences together. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:48
  You have to come back as an adult and put that time in to
• 1:09:51
  build a relationship. Yeah.
• 1:09:53
  So there's a 19 year gap between me being the oldest and the
• 1:09:56
  youngest, but I think I was mentioning to you off camera
• 1:09:58
  like he'll take my mom's phone and like text me or call me or
• 1:10:01
  FaceTime me. So it is cool seeing that we
• 1:10:03
  have that like really close relationship.
• 1:10:06
  Yeah. I love that.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:10:08
  I want to hear how like how the outdoors came into your life.
• 1:10:13
  Did you grow up in an outdoorsy family?
• 1:10:16
  Did you find it later in life? Where was your initial
• 1:10:21
  connection and association with an outdoor world?
• 1:10:25
  Yeah, my very, like one of my core memories of the outdoors
• 1:10:30
  was on a military base. And my daddy's very like,
• 1:10:36
  explore the area kind of guy, right?
• 1:10:37
  Like I'm going to find the trails that's not on the map and
• 1:10:40
  nowhere goes and that's always kind of in him.
• 1:10:43
  And so he showed me that. What branch of the military?
• 1:10:45
  He was Air Force. Yeah.
• 1:10:47
  And so we're living on a base at a time.
• 1:10:50
  There is a river that went behind the neighborhood and he
• 1:10:53
  had found a path to get down to the river and found a few good
• 1:10:57
  like different fishing spots. So one of the nights we had
• 1:11:00
  dinner and he's like hey, let's, let's go fishing.
• 1:11:01
  So we grabbed our poles, we grabbed our little BMX bikes and
• 1:11:05
  we rode down to the trail and then we walked the trail down to
• 1:11:08
  the water. We had our little tackle box and
• 1:11:11
  we just spent the whole evening out there fishing until it was
• 1:11:14
  dark. Was that your first time
• 1:11:16
  fishing? One of the first times that I
• 1:11:18
  remember, yeah. And walking back is the moment
• 1:11:22
  that I remember because you're in kind of this forested area,
• 1:11:27
  good tree coverage on a, well, you know, groomed trail.
• 1:11:32
  But then all of these, I'm blanking on the name of it.
• 1:11:36
  They flash at night. Oh.
• 1:11:38
  Like lightning bugs. Lightning bugs or?
• 1:11:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  Fireflies. Fireflies.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah, just fireflies like crazy. Just came out everywhere, just
• 1:11:47
  lighting up like the whole trail after it was pitch black dark.
• 1:11:50
  And I just thought that was so cool as a kid.
• 1:11:53
  And that's one of like, the core memories I have of being in the
• 1:11:57
  outdoors with my dad. But I think he even grew up in
• 1:12:00
  that setting to just hearing stories from him on him riding
• 1:12:03
  his bike on trails or going on hikes or him living in Oregon at
• 1:12:07
  a period of his childhood as well.
• 1:12:09
  And he loves Oregon. Like when he found out I was
• 1:12:11
  going here, like, oh, you're going to smell fresh air in the
• 1:12:14
  trees. And it's just going to feel so
• 1:12:16
  clean. And he just, he loves this
• 1:12:19
  place. And I don't know if he's ever
• 1:12:20
  been back since last time he was here as a kid.
• 1:12:24
  So why was he here as a kid? Was were his parents also
• 1:12:27
  military? His dad was, I think they were
• 1:12:30
  going in a divorce at the time. And so he moved up here with his
• 1:12:33
  dad while his mom stayed in Southern California.
• 1:12:36
  And then couple years of that not being the right house
• 1:12:39
  setting for him, went back and lived with his mom for the
• 1:12:43
  remainder of his childhood. Well, yeah, thanks.
• 1:12:48
  Yeah, it was crazy. Sometimes, when you know, you
• 1:12:51
  know, you know. Yeah, where to go?
• 1:12:53
  Sounds like from what he's told me, like it wasn't very good
• 1:12:57
  child setting living with his dad.
• 1:13:00
  OK, even though it was in Oregon?
• 1:13:02
  Yeah, yeah. Just him as a person at that
• 1:13:05
  time, he wasn't capable of taking care of a kid.
• 1:13:08
  Bummer. Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Good that he had that option to go somewhere else though, yeah.
• 1:13:13
  Yeah, and I give my dad a lot of credit for hearing how his
• 1:13:16
  childhood went versus looking back and seeing how mine went.
• 1:13:18
  Like, he could have easily gone down that same path, but he
• 1:13:22
  didn't. That's why I like my dad's kind
• 1:13:24
  of a big part of my life and a hero to me.
• 1:13:27
  And I've seen him go through challenges and overcome them,
• 1:13:29
  and he's seen me go through challenges, and he's in my
• 1:13:31
  corner helping me out. So we're very, very close.
• 1:13:35
  I love that very. I love AI, love a dad bond.
• 1:13:41
  Yeah. Because my dad is a is a huge
• 1:13:46
  was a huge inspiration into my entire life.
• 1:13:50
  But definitely this, this podcast concept capturing these
• 1:13:55
  stories of people's lives and how the outdoors integrate and
• 1:13:59
  how just like 1 moment early on and transform into a whole life
• 1:14:07
  of being outside. Yeah, I know you mentioned a
• 1:14:12
  little this past week and you say was an inspiration, but I
• 1:14:15
  think he still is 1 to you. Yeah, because he's kind of
• 1:14:18
  raised you into the person you are today.
• 1:14:21
  So you still carry him? Carry him with you?
• 1:14:23
  Yeah, everywhere all the time. I just, I feel like I have to
• 1:14:26
  make that was versus is distinction so that somebody
• 1:14:30
  doesn't like ask where he is. Oh yeah, I hear.
• 1:14:35
  You you're like, oh, when are you going to see him next?
• 1:14:38
  So like right now, all the time, everywhere, because he's
• 1:14:42
  omnipresent in his spirit, but his physical form is no longer.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah. So there have been sometimes
• 1:14:50
  where I've said, Oh yeah, my dad, this and that and making it
• 1:14:54
  sound like it's very active and present.
• 1:14:56
  And then I have to explain like, well, no, if he's dead, but but
• 1:15:00
  and he's yeah, I am who I am so much because of him.
• 1:15:05
  And I have access to so many of the people and the places and
• 1:15:08
  the insight and the experiences and the capabilities because of
• 1:15:13
  how he raised me and what he instilled in me.
• 1:15:15
  And like the first river trip that I did without him, first
• 1:15:22
  multi day trip, I had a emotional reaction of course to
• 1:15:30
  that it was my first river trip without him and like fuck, how
• 1:15:34
  am I going to do this without him?
• 1:15:36
  Where is he? And then I looked around and all
• 1:15:40
  the people that I was with were there because of him and all of
• 1:15:44
  the equipment that I was using I had because of him.
• 1:15:48
  And I could drive myself with an inflated raft on a trailer to
• 1:15:55
  the put in and put the boat in the water because of the things
• 1:16:00
  that he provided. Hard skills, soft skills, like
• 1:16:04
  teaching me how to backup a trailer and teaching me how to
• 1:16:06
  rig a boat and how to read water and run the river and set up a
• 1:16:11
  camp and coordinate a river trip with people.
• 1:16:15
  Like, though his physical form wasn't there, everything was
• 1:16:19
  made possible because of him. Yeah.
• 1:16:21
  And so it was it was a moment of kind of freak out and then
• 1:16:26
  assure reassurance that, like, he's here.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah. He's still.
• 1:16:30
  He's still orchestrating all of this in his magical little way.
• 1:16:35
  Yeah. And showing up in people in
• 1:16:39
  really special ways. Almost like signs to you, right?
• 1:16:44
  Like you recognize it, but maybe someone next to you doesn't.
• 1:16:47
  Yeah. See it?
• 1:16:48
  Yeah. And it's it's like getting a
• 1:16:51
  little less profound. Than it used to.
• 1:16:55
  Because I think I'm just acknowledging that it just is
• 1:16:58
  integrated into my life and all of these like, of course, all of
• 1:17:02
  these divine connections and like universal alignments are
• 1:17:08
  happening because that's, that's the space that I'm living in.
• 1:17:12
  It doesn't have to like hit me so hard anymore that to like
• 1:17:16
  wake me up to it because I'm just in that flow state of it
• 1:17:21
  all working as it's supposed to. And he's he set it all up in
• 1:17:28
  some way. Yeah, that's special.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah, real special. That's real cool.
• 1:17:35
  So your dad, big inspiration, big guide in the way of
• 1:17:39
  introducing you to the outdoors. Did he continue to foster that
• 1:17:43
  in you? Like how how did your that first
• 1:17:46
  experience going fishing, seeing the fireflies and then you were
• 1:17:52
  hooked? Like where did that take you
• 1:17:55
  next? I think as a kid you're like,
• 1:17:57
  oh, this is cool, but you don't realize that that was the
• 1:17:59
  moment, right? And I think I saw that later on
• 1:18:02
  growing up. Some things you forget as a in
• 1:18:05
  your childhood, other things really just stick with you.
• 1:18:07
  And that's one that really stuck with me.
• 1:18:09
  Another one was when we lived in Guam, I was younger, this was
• 1:18:14
  maybe the year before the Firefly, you know, experience
• 1:18:17
  happened and they signed me up for swimming lessons.
• 1:18:21
  I was maybe like 5 years old and I learned to swim in the ocean.
• 1:18:24
  And then it was, we're on a military base, so an Old Navy
• 1:18:28
  kind of like docking station, but they didn't use it for the
• 1:18:30
  boats anymore. So it's kind of like 3/4 of a
• 1:18:33
  rectangle and then just complete open waters after that.
• 1:18:37
  But in that area, learned to swim, but then also was like a
• 1:18:40
  Cliff jumping area, which as a 5 year old, maybe felt like 20
• 1:18:45
  feet. When I talk about the story now,
• 1:18:46
  my dad's like, Nah, that was like 5 feet.
• 1:18:50
  So you feel like it's a lot bigger.
• 1:18:52
  Yeah. So I'll keep it 20 feet from my
• 1:18:54
  childhood story. Jumping into there and then
• 1:18:57
  snorkeling around that whole area, saw octopus, saw all kinds
• 1:19:01
  of like, different fish and just sea life right there and just so
• 1:19:04
  close to shore, too, which was really cool.
• 1:19:07
  I remember my parents would be on the beach.
• 1:19:10
  We'd be in like some calmer waters, maybe like a reef or a
• 1:19:12
  good snorkeling area, and I'd have my face down in the water,
• 1:19:16
  mask on, snorkel out, and I'd just be swimming around all day.
• 1:19:19
  And then I'd hear them calling me from the beach like it's time
• 1:19:22
  to go home. And my hand would come out and
• 1:19:24
  I'd go like this. And I just like.
• 1:19:27
  We're not going home. And it was every time they took
• 1:19:31
  me to the water that was my response.
• 1:19:32
  Like, no, it's not time to go home.
• 1:19:34
  We're staying out here. But I'd see like sharks going
• 1:19:37
  through the reefs. I'd see all kinds of different
• 1:19:39
  little fish going through there. It was awesome.
• 1:19:41
  And you were swimming in the reef by yourself?
• 1:19:43
  Or did you have a friend or? At times, companion times, I'd
• 1:19:48
  be out there by myself, yeah. That's so cool.
• 1:19:50
  Yeah. They trusted you.
• 1:19:52
  You trusted yourself. Yeah.
• 1:19:54
  Trusted the water. Yep, it was good calm water on
• 1:19:57
  on that side of the island. I think that's why they let me
• 1:19:58
  go do that. Yeah, so I think those are the
• 1:20:03
  2, like, earliest childhood memories that I have of like
• 1:20:06
  special moments outdoors. And then from there it kind of
• 1:20:10
  just felt like we were always doing something outside.
• 1:20:12
  We were always going on bike rides or as getting older,
• 1:20:16
  getting dirt bikes and going out into like the deserts and things
• 1:20:19
  like that. Just expanding how far we'd go
• 1:20:21
  and travel on things. Yeah.
• 1:20:24
  Just so many different activities outside.
• 1:20:27
  It wasn't like this was his sport and this was all like we
• 1:20:30
  went and do. We kind of explored everything.
• 1:20:32
  And then he gave me the freedom to kind of pick the own the own
• 1:20:36
  sports that I wanted to do outside.
• 1:20:37
  Like he was a big football guy growing up and that's the sports
• 1:20:40
  that he played. And there was never like a
• 1:20:42
  moment where he was pressuring me to play football, which I
• 1:20:45
  thought was pretty cool. He let me kind of find my own
• 1:20:49
  way and guided me through it and was there to support.
• 1:20:54
  And what sport did you land on? I landed on playing baseball,
• 1:20:57
  didn't play it until freshman year in high school.
• 1:21:00
  So it was a lot later than guys that are like 9 years old
• 1:21:02
  playing and like this is what they want to do.
• 1:21:07
  But then freshman year in high school, I kind of found like
• 1:21:09
  this is this is my sport. Like it's challenging.
• 1:21:12
  It's not like it was, I don't know.
• 1:21:14
  There's just so many different aspects to the game.
• 1:21:16
  They could be like episode 2 on the podcast.
• 1:21:20
  We did talk about coming back for the second round tomorrow.
• 1:21:23
  So yeah, let me play baseball. And I felt very behind the
• 1:21:28
  curve. Actually barely made the
• 1:21:30
  freshman team. They told me like, if there's
• 1:21:32
  one other kid trying out, he would have been better than you
• 1:21:34
  and he he would have made it instead of you.
• 1:21:36
  And I was like, you don't even know who this kid is.
• 1:21:39
  They're. Like, yeah, but we know it'd be
• 1:21:40
  better than you. Yeah, That kind of means you
• 1:21:42
  sucked, Tom. Yeah, it was bad, but I kind of
• 1:21:47
  use that to like fuel my fire. All right.
• 1:21:49
  And so I was like, oh, I'm going to show them like they're not
• 1:21:51
  going to have an option to cut me next year.
• 1:21:53
  So that first year I worked so hard and then coming back
• 1:21:56
  sophomore year I made I was like in this in between line.
• 1:22:00
  There was then it was OK, you're not good enough for varsity, but
• 1:22:03
  like you're good enough to be that last guy on the list.
• 1:22:05
  But we want you to get your Rep still so you're going to play
• 1:22:07
  down here. So like I played with JV, but
• 1:22:10
  then when varsity would go to tournaments, I'd go with them to
• 1:22:12
  tournaments and play in tournaments.
• 1:22:14
  So it's kind of like the weird in between right there and then
• 1:22:18
  junior, senior year, full on, full on varsity and kind of
• 1:22:23
  started feeling like I had made it at that point.
• 1:22:25
  But then another reality check getting into senior year, our
• 1:22:29
  coaches started breaking down all the stats like OK, of your
• 1:22:31
  high school team, only one of you has a 10% chance to play in
• 1:22:36
  college. And then of that kid going and
• 1:22:38
  play in college, you have a 1% chance of one kid on that team
• 1:22:43
  making it pro. So it was very like starting to
• 1:22:46
  really slim down. And I was one of two of 12
• 1:22:51
  seniors that had a scholarship. So I was like this.
• 1:22:55
  Yeah, it was. I think that just speaks on
• 1:22:58
  finding something you want to be good at, staying determined to
• 1:23:02
  it and just don't let anybody stop you.
• 1:23:04
  Just nobody. I think that's a big take away
• 1:23:08
  from it. And they didn't realize the life
• 1:23:10
  lessons that they were teaching me in high school and through
• 1:23:13
  baseball until I had cancer. And that's when, like some of
• 1:23:18
  the things that they had said to me came back just naturally.
• 1:23:22
  And I was like, whoa, this isn't just with playing sports.
• 1:23:25
  This is with just life in general.
• 1:23:28
  Like the one that they told me. And I'll still say this to the
• 1:23:31
  kids I coach or, you know, share this bit sometimes is you can
• 1:23:34
  only control two things. It's your attitude and your
• 1:23:37
  effort. Everything, everything else in
• 1:23:41
  the world is out of control, out of your control.
• 1:23:44
  And they related it to baseball, right?
• 1:23:45
  They're like the umpires, the stands, the weather, the other
• 1:23:48
  team, right? Like all sports specific.
• 1:23:51
  Then you apply it to life and you're like, it's everything.
• 1:23:54
  Yeah, yeah. You have no idea what can happen
• 1:23:59
  at any given time, but you know, the attitude you can have.
• 1:24:03
  You can know how much effort you're going to put into
• 1:24:04
  something, so that's something that I I carry with me to
• 1:24:08
  everything I do. I love that.
• 1:24:11
  Yeah. That's that is a nugget that I'm
• 1:24:15
  going to take out of this for sure.
• 1:24:17
  That's such a such a reality and so many people exist in the need
• 1:24:25
  to control everything or be prepared for anything.
• 1:24:29
  And you can be prepared for anything and still something go
• 1:24:34
  against that. Oh, there's a mink.
• 1:24:38
  Oh wow. If we stay perfectly still,
• 1:24:40
  maybe it will come over here. Maybe.
• 1:24:43
  Right now he's by our paddles. OK, he's going behind the camera
• 1:24:48
  as long as he doesn't hit the stop record button.
• 1:24:51
  You're a great narrator. Oh my God, it.
• 1:24:53
  Is so. Fucking.
• 1:24:54
  Cute 2 feet behind the camera. He's exploring the camera right
• 1:24:57
  now, popping his head up but still staying like behind the
• 1:25:00
  brush. Low key now he's even a little
• 1:25:04
  higher up. He's just like.
• 1:25:06
  Leaping from the ground to the tree root.
• 1:25:09
  Like we kid you not, maybe 6-7 feet from us right now.
• 1:25:12
  Yeah, maybe 12, now 12. He's climbing up the hill
• 1:25:17
  embankment. Yeah, I'm assuming it's a he.
• 1:25:22
  Why do we do that? Why do we genderize animals and
• 1:25:26
  like cars and vehicles without any?
• 1:25:32
  I don't know. I think I say he because I'm a
• 1:25:34
  he. Maybe that's why.
• 1:25:35
  But I say he too, and I'm a she. But then they refer to cars as
• 1:25:38
  she's. Yeah, why?
• 1:25:39
  What's up? Somebody.
• 1:25:41
  Somebody. Do they really?
• 1:25:42
  Yeah. I don't know that about boats.
• 1:25:43
  Boats and cars. She's Yeah, because.
• 1:25:46
  Although this past week because. I didn't ride them.
• 1:25:48
  There's some. That's a good point, but.
• 1:25:53
  So do women. But.
• 1:25:55
  I guess it started when they first came around.
• 1:25:57
  It was probably mostly men manning the boat or the car.
• 1:26:01
  Also that manning. We do live in a supremely
• 1:26:04
  patriarchal society and everything is man based and.
• 1:26:09
  Man didn't want to ride a key. Boat.
• 1:26:11
  Yeah, Not unless he was a pirate.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah. Well, the mink.
• 1:26:19
  It was a behind the scenes visit from them.
• 1:26:21
  That was really, really cool. Yeah.
• 1:26:23
  I'm I don't think I've ever been that close to a mink.
• 1:26:27
  I've never been on shore. That's the first one I see.
• 1:26:33
  I heard people calling it out this past week, but I never saw
• 1:26:35
  it on shore, so that was cool. So cute.
• 1:26:37
  Yeah, that was cool. They're like little ferrets.
• 1:26:40
  Almost like long little tails. Tails about 3/4 the length of
• 1:26:45
  the body, little legs. Yeah.
• 1:26:49
  Kind of long little nose. Do they kind of look like
• 1:26:51
  otters? Otters are much bigger.
• 1:26:53
  Oh, OK, yeah, OK, so then maybe we saw one in the water.
• 1:26:57
  Yeah. We saw one in the water, someone
• 1:26:59
  was calling it an Otter and I only saw it really quick.
• 1:27:02
  Definitely, definitely a mink. Otters are like dog sized like
• 1:27:07
  this. Yeah, tiny legs, but definitely
• 1:27:10
  more definitely more the size of a dog.
• 1:27:14
  And a mink is more the size of a ferret or a big, big rat with a
• 1:27:19
  furry tale. Yeah.
• 1:27:20
  Oh, my God, It's so cute. Oh, it's walking along a little
• 1:27:23
  narrow little route, doing a little balance beam action.
• 1:27:26
  Tightrope. Oh, scrambling down the Bay.
• 1:27:28
  Wow. He did a really good it.
• 1:27:32
  They did a really good job of avoiding us there.
• 1:27:35
  Yeah. Took the long.
• 1:27:37
  Way around. Let him just go right by, yeah.
• 1:27:40
  He was invited, they were invited.
• 1:27:42
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:27:43
  What how it identifies or what genitalia has so?
• 1:27:48
  That's cool. Yeah, that was so cool that.
• 1:27:49
  Was really neat, yeah. Part of being outside, yeah.
• 1:27:53
  You see cool things, you see. Animals in the wild, we're in
• 1:27:56
  the wild. Yeah.
• 1:27:59
  So yeah, took that away into life as well, not just something
• 1:28:04
  that was in the moment and still carry that into every day.
• 1:28:08
  Yeah, I love that. My dad used to always say, like,
• 1:28:12
  it's OK that you fucked up. Yeah.
• 1:28:14
  How are you going to recover? Yeah.
• 1:28:15
  So all. And that really drove home the
• 1:28:18
  attitude and the effort, Yeah, Of how are you going to feel
• 1:28:21
  about this fuck up? Are you going to let it carry
• 1:28:23
  down and, like, drown you? Yeah.
• 1:28:27
  Or are you going to rise up out of it and put effort into
• 1:28:31
  solving it or preventing that fuck up from happening again?
• 1:28:35
  Yeah. And turning this into a lesson.
• 1:28:37
  Yeah. Like another similar one is it's
• 1:28:39
  OK to fuck up. Fuck up different next time.
• 1:28:42
  Yeah, yeah. Right.
• 1:28:43
  Like you're gonna keep doing it. That's how you're gonna learn
• 1:28:45
  things. Just do it different.
• 1:28:47
  Yeah, or if you keep, cuz if you keep fucking up in the same way,
• 1:28:50
  you're obviously not learning anything.
• 1:28:52
  That's the like insanity clause, like keep doing the same thing
• 1:28:57
  and expecting different results. So do something a little bit
• 1:29:01
  different, get a different result.
• 1:29:03
  Yeah. And maybe you'll stop fucking
• 1:29:05
  up. Or yeah, you'll just fuck up
• 1:29:07
  differently and learn a new lesson.
• 1:29:09
  Yeah, I love that. So I've also never really spent
• 1:29:16
  time acknowledging that all of those sports soccer, baseball,
• 1:29:22
  football, rugby, polo. Yeah.
• 1:29:26
  They are outside, Yeah. And that can still mean
• 1:29:30
  somebody's having a relationship with the outdoors, even though
• 1:29:34
  they're not the mountain biking or rafting or fishing or
• 1:29:37
  climbing. Yeah.
• 1:29:38
  Still an active outdoor situation.
• 1:29:42
  I mean, anytime I think of people playing baseball, I
• 1:29:45
  really just think of them like standing in a field watching the
• 1:29:48
  clouds. Yeah.
• 1:29:50
  Well, I was picking grass. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:29:51
  So I was picking grass like, oh, there's a bee.
• 1:29:54
  Yeah. And then you hear.
• 1:29:56
  Whoops. Stop dilly dallying.
• 1:29:59
  I mean lackadaisical in nature. Like if that's the appeal.
• 1:30:04
  Yeah, and it's not just the 9 year olds that do that.
• 1:30:06
  I was in college playing. I'm like, I just please throw a
• 1:30:09
  strike. Like, come on, it's hot out
• 1:30:11
  here. Like there's those elements in
• 1:30:14
  it for sure. But no.
• 1:30:16
  So part of being outside in college when I played baseball,
• 1:30:19
  our field, so you have your traditional diamond, your
• 1:30:22
  outfield going around it. And we had the Rio Grande River
• 1:30:25
  in Texas was just behind the outfield fence.
• 1:30:29
  And so instead of running or doing our conditioning that way,
• 1:30:32
  we would go jump in the river and swim upstream and then get
• 1:30:36
  out, run down and then swim upstream again.
• 1:30:38
  Like that loop was our post practice workout.
• 1:30:41
  Awesome. So incorporating the outdoors
• 1:30:44
  and like other guys on my team enjoyed that as well and that
• 1:30:47
  was something that we kind of adopted on our own.
• 1:30:50
  That's pretty cool. I love.
• 1:30:51
  That Yeah. So a lot of people hate running,
• 1:30:54
  but they love swimming. Yeah.
• 1:30:56
  And maybe vice versa. I've never heard vice versa.
• 1:30:59
  I've only heard I hate running but I could swim and yeah, I
• 1:31:06
  just. Think that's really, really
• 1:31:07
  great? Concept, yeah.
• 1:31:09
  And like the water's a lot easier on your joints and so
• 1:31:11
  like, given playing baseball, you get a lot of shoulder
• 1:31:14
  problems, It was a lot easier on our shoulders, yet you're still
• 1:31:16
  working out. So that's why I think.
• 1:31:18
  It's hot. It's a way to cool off.
• 1:31:20
  Yeah, being in South Texas, yeah, it's hot.
• 1:31:23
  Great cardio and breath control. Lung capacity developments like
• 1:31:30
  actually holding your breath and tightening your breath instead
• 1:31:34
  of just puffin and puffin. Yeah, and actually kind of
• 1:31:38
  worked out as doing that on a regular basis because one of the
• 1:31:41
  times we were down there, some kids were floating down on not
• 1:31:45
  even like a proper, well, there's no Rapids on that river.
• 1:31:48
  So they were just kind of like in a tube and just floating.
• 1:31:51
  And one of the kids fell out, none of the proper gear.
• 1:31:56
  And my buddy actually was out there swimming and saved the kid
• 1:32:00
  and there was just kids out there like no adults.
• 1:32:03
  Wow. And.
• 1:32:04
  Also not in proper gear, but strong swimming skills.
• 1:32:08
  Yeah, and strength. Yeah, he was able to go save
• 1:32:12
  that kid. Wow, thank goodness for him.
• 1:32:16
  Yeah, just how things kind of align sometimes.
• 1:32:21
  Yeah, that's so cool. But.
• 1:32:23
  Always been very active, yeah, always been very active.
• 1:32:26
  And I think before cancer I had like baseball.
• 1:32:29
  That's kind of like my identity. That's what I poured everything
• 1:32:32
  into. Clearly, if I go from being the
• 1:32:34
  shittiest on the team to kind of make my way up, right, I fully
• 1:32:37
  committed to it. I mean, like 6:00 AM mornings
• 1:32:40
  being the first one at the school and it's dark still and
• 1:32:43
  I'd turn my truck lights on to light up the batting cage so I
• 1:32:45
  could see and hit. And then same thing at night
• 1:32:47
  time, but post cancer didn't have that anymore, didn't have
• 1:32:53
  that sport to go be my outlet. So then that's when I found
• 1:32:56
  first descents and the extreme sports that we talked about like
• 1:33:00
  mountain biking and kayaking and ice climbing and snowboarding
• 1:33:03
  and surfing. And like that's what I love to
• 1:33:05
  go do now. And it's not like I love one
• 1:33:07
  more than the other just because they're all so fun and they have
• 1:33:10
  their own different like characteristics to it.
• 1:33:13
  I think that's why I like have a snowboard and a mountain bike
• 1:33:16
  and a boats and all of this like all of the gear because.
• 1:33:20
  Once you start every sport, that is the downside to all of these
• 1:33:23
  outdoor sports is there is gear involved, lots of equipment
• 1:33:27
  involved and that's an investment.
• 1:33:29
  Yeah, it is. So it had to happen over time.
• 1:33:32
  Of course, you like Facebook Marketplace, a lot of things
• 1:33:34
  just because you're so excited to like get into it.
• 1:33:37
  And then when the right time comes, you're like, OK, I can
• 1:33:39
  maybe upgrade to this or maybe this is something that I'm
• 1:33:42
  looking for after writing this for a little while.
• 1:33:44
  And. Or you.
• 1:33:45
  Realize, though, there's different kinds of bikes for
• 1:33:48
  different kinds of trails or roads or places and different
• 1:33:52
  kinds of boats for different kinds of different kinds of
• 1:33:55
  kayaks for different kinds of water.
• 1:33:57
  Yeah, yeah. Totally, totally.
• 1:34:01
  That's awesome. Yeah, that's so cool.
• 1:34:03
  I love all the sports outside. Yeah.
• 1:34:05
  Even if it's just our feet on a trail hiking.
• 1:34:07
  Yeah, you know, because really that's that's the foundation of
• 1:34:12
  all of it is just being outside. Yeah.
• 1:34:17
  Like you don't have to be doing a sport or running around or.
• 1:34:24
  Oh no. Doing something super
• 1:34:26
  extravagant and active, just being outside is still a great
• 1:34:32
  way to be. Yeah, no, it doesn't have to be
• 1:34:34
  like, it doesn't have to be an adrenaline rush or like anything
• 1:34:37
  crazy. Like, you can just go sit on the
• 1:34:39
  porch outside and enjoy the sunset or enjoy the rain, enjoy
• 1:34:43
  the wind. Listen to the birds, watch the
• 1:34:47
  flowers grow and the grass turn brown and then green and then
• 1:34:51
  brown again. Yeah.
• 1:34:52
  Yeah, which is better than looking at a screen.
• 1:34:54
  Yeah, yeah, it really is. Like even when I talk to my
• 1:34:57
  friends, like I'll text sometimes but most of the time
• 1:35:01
  I'm like just pick up the phone and call.
• 1:35:03
  Like I'd rather just talk to you instead of texting back and
• 1:35:06
  forth forever. Yeah.
• 1:35:08
  I'd rather be in person. Oh, yeah.
• 1:35:10
  About like, yeah, I have a hard time actually talking on a phone
• 1:35:15
  call because I need AI, need a face.
• 1:35:17
  Like, I need a FaceTime. Yeah, I only really talk to like
• 1:35:21
  two people on the phone on any rate of regularity, and I have
• 1:35:26
  to FaceTime them. Yeah, If we move to a regular
• 1:35:28
  call, it's because there is not a good, good enough service or
• 1:35:31
  something. And I'll start to like tune out
• 1:35:34
  after maybe 5 minutes because I need, I need to look at them to
• 1:35:37
  talk to them. So that's why I do like texting
• 1:35:42
  because there's there's some kind of visual interaction, but
• 1:35:46
  but FaceTime. All the way.
• 1:35:48
  Yeah, totally. So what does life outside look
• 1:35:51
  like now? Being outside.
• 1:35:54
  Yeah, like how, how much time? What does your?
• 1:35:59
  How does like play time and work time?
• 1:36:03
  Yeah. Interact or contradict?
• 1:36:06
  Yeah, so I do have one work job that takes me outside, so
• 1:36:10
  coaching baseball right out on a baseball field out with kids
• 1:36:13
  that are laughing and having a good time.
• 1:36:15
  But then you get to like dial them in.
• 1:36:16
  Sometimes I coach 9 year old, so it's fun, like hearing their
• 1:36:19
  sense of humor in things. And yeah, it's a fun age for
• 1:36:25
  sure. So that's a good chunk of
• 1:36:27
  outside. But then like, you also need
• 1:36:29
  your personal time outside too, which I think you saw me at the
• 1:36:32
  end of yesterday. Like, we sent the rest of the
• 1:36:35
  group down and then I just took a moment on my own and I was
• 1:36:37
  just floating down by myself. And when I turned and looked
• 1:36:39
  upstream, I was like, I'm the only one out here, even though I
• 1:36:42
  knew we had a huge group with us.
• 1:36:44
  So that was kind of cool to have that too.
• 1:36:46
  That perspective shift. Yeah, yeah, just by doing a
• 1:36:49
  little 180. But no, every day I'm doing out
• 1:36:53
  something outside, whether it's working out, lifting weights
• 1:36:55
  outside or it's going down to the beach, it's getting in the
• 1:36:58
  ocean, it's going in just a run, running the stairs by my house.
• 1:37:05
  I try to do something outside every day.
• 1:37:08
  What do you feel like that does for you?
• 1:37:10
  Like what? Why is that a motivation?
• 1:37:13
  I feel like it slows me down. I you, you were talking about
• 1:37:17
  how we get so fast in life and day-to-day and work and all of
• 1:37:21
  that and making like a designated hour or two hours to
• 1:37:24
  go do that and just not take a phone with you or a watch or
• 1:37:27
  anything. And just just to be out there.
• 1:37:31
  It's almost like a grounding moment too.
• 1:37:33
  Reflect on your day or whatever's going on in life and
• 1:37:36
  have some thoughts to yourself, which I think is important part
• 1:37:39
  of self-care. Yeah.
• 1:37:43
  I obviously completely agree with.
• 1:37:46
  That yes, I. Prefers that.
• 1:37:51
  Yeah, well, I feel like the week that we've had recently
• 1:37:53
  together, you know, we're providing a lot for people too.
• 1:37:56
  And it's hard to show up for others if you don't take care of
• 1:37:59
  yourself in the way you need as well.
• 1:38:01
  You know, like you're sharing with me your morning routine.
• 1:38:04
  And like, that sounds like a self-care, you know, that you
• 1:38:07
  purposefully do for yourself. So it's important to find what
• 1:38:11
  works for you and adopt that into your everyday life.
• 1:38:16
  And for me, it's just being outside, being barefoot in sand
• 1:38:19
  or barefoot leaving my house all the way because I know I'm not
• 1:38:22
  going to need sandals on the beach or in the water.
• 1:38:25
  Yeah, what's special? It is, yeah.
• 1:38:30
  And especially having those practices integrated into your
• 1:38:33
  life before, then you go into a setting where like maybe some of
• 1:38:37
  those routines are going to be less available or pressed.
• 1:38:43
  On a little bit. And having something to like
• 1:38:48
  reset and ground and be able to sustain being present in that
• 1:38:52
  experience, even if things aren't quite like how you would
• 1:38:54
  have them at home. But still be able to tap into
• 1:38:58
  that like vital essence of self that is so easy to take care of
• 1:39:04
  at home or hopefully is easier to take care of at home because
• 1:39:06
  of the like systems and practices one has built.
• 1:39:10
  But now not being at home, how to keep, how to keep calm and
• 1:39:15
  keep keep presence with people who deserve to get that like
• 1:39:19
  best version of you, but are in a different kind of setting that
• 1:39:26
  isn't natural, isn't just like set up to support that.
• 1:39:30
  So having to like know who you are and what you're what you
• 1:39:34
  need to take care of yourself in those spaces.
• 1:39:38
  And I feel like it's bonded me and some of my friends as well,
• 1:39:40
  too. Like when I would go run the
• 1:39:42
  stairs, my neighbor next door, he's like, where are you going?
• 1:39:46
  What are you doing? Like you don't run.
• 1:39:47
  I know you don't run. Like, no, I'm not running, but
• 1:39:50
  I'm like running up and down the stairs a little bit different in
• 1:39:53
  my mind. I guess I can justify doing it.
• 1:39:56
  And so then he asked to join me. I was like, come out, let's go
• 1:39:59
  do it. And then he brought his own
• 1:40:01
  challenges to me. He brought a weighted vest.
• 1:40:03
  And I'm like, oh, man, yeah. So he was like, and we're not
• 1:40:07
  doing this many. We're going to do 5 more than
• 1:40:09
  what you usually do. I'm like, OK, OK, let's do it.
• 1:40:13
  I'm up for the challenge. So then we started doing that.
• 1:40:16
  Hell yeah, yeah. And then he started doing it on
• 1:40:18
  his own too, just because he saw some benefit benefit in it.
• 1:40:22
  So it's pretty neat. I love that the community
• 1:40:25
  building and and challenging by choice.
• 1:40:28
  Yeah, he actually texted me last night.
• 1:40:29
  He's like, we're supposed to go running tomorrow, but I'm still
• 1:40:32
  going to go. Even though you're in Oregon.
• 1:40:34
  Oh, that's so sweet. He's keeping up with it, so
• 1:40:38
  shout out to to Souza back home running the stairs today.
• 1:40:41
  Good job, Souza. Nice job.
• 1:40:44
  I think that's such a good sign of a good habit development that
• 1:40:50
  like somebody inspired it and then you enjoy it enough that
• 1:40:54
  you can do it without that person and it's not, it doesn't
• 1:40:58
  require that person to make it happen.
• 1:41:01
  That's like, that's something I think is, is something to do
• 1:41:05
  with freedom. Yeah.
• 1:41:06
  It's like I don't, I don't rely on this person to give me the
• 1:41:11
  thing that I want to get. They may have inspired it and
• 1:41:13
  brought it into my life, but I can go get that whether they're
• 1:41:17
  here or not. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty sweet.
• 1:41:21
  Do you have a piece of gear that you have with you anytime you go
• 1:41:28
  on any kind of adventure or do you have like specific items
• 1:41:32
  that are special that are non standard for different kinds of
• 1:41:36
  activities that you do? I think like we said by the
• 1:41:41
  trucks went to put in depends on kind of like where you're going
• 1:41:44
  right to fine tune some things. Something that I always thinks
• 1:41:47
  in my bag is like, even though if we're off grid, something to
• 1:41:52
  charge like mobile devices or some kind of like SOS emergency
• 1:41:56
  device, right? I think a lighter, a knife, like
• 1:42:00
  some of those basic essentials, just in case something happened,
• 1:42:05
  you know? Because I have been put in those
• 1:42:06
  situations too where it's like, oh shit, you know?
• 1:42:10
  Do you have a no shit story? I do.
• 1:42:12
  Have a no shit story? Yeah.
• 1:42:14
  And I feel like I need a snack for an oshit.
• 1:42:16
  Let's grab a snack. Yeah, need a snack.
• 1:42:20
  So a little background before jumping into this story with
• 1:42:23
  first descents and starting to guide outdoors.
• 1:42:27
  I got Wolfers certified. If you need a snack, here's a
• 1:42:29
  snack. So if you don't know what woofer
• 1:42:32
  is it, it's short for wilderness first responder, right?
• 1:42:35
  And so I did that training and after learning everything in
• 1:42:39
  that 10 day course, I was like, wow, this is just so beneficial.
• 1:42:42
  Anyone outside should take some kind of safety first aid course.
• 1:42:47
  And then I saw first hand why it was important.
• 1:42:51
  Maybe two years later, so out in California, mountain biking with
• 1:42:56
  my uncle after work. And he grew up there.
• 1:43:00
  Like, he knows all of the trails.
• 1:43:01
  He would go on night rides with just like a headlamp on his
• 1:43:04
  helmet and just RIP through these.
• 1:43:06
  He knows all of the turns. He insurance and outs,
• 1:43:08
  everything. And I'd always go in front of
• 1:43:12
  him because he had the go pros and cameras.
• 1:43:14
  So selfishly, I wanted to be on maybe on camera a little bit
• 1:43:20
  crazy. We're in front of the camera
• 1:43:21
  again. It was for coaching moments and
• 1:43:23
  feedback and technique, how to ride, right.
• 1:43:26
  Yeah, so we're riding together. We're on this trail in San
• 1:43:31
  Clemente. It's called sloppy seconds.
• 1:43:34
  And the way the trail goes, it's open up top.
• 1:43:37
  You have a big wooden bank turn and then it starts to narrow
• 1:43:41
  down into like the shoot of a Canyon, right?
• 1:43:43
  So now it's getting really narrow with the the walls on the
• 1:43:46
  side, and it spits you all the way back out at the bottom at
• 1:43:51
  another Canyon. And then it backs up to the
• 1:43:53
  military base. So there's nothing else going
• 1:43:56
  back in that direction. The only way really out of there
• 1:43:59
  is back up that hill that we just came down.
• 1:44:02
  And so I drop in through the shoots first and then I stop and
• 1:44:06
  wait at the next spot for him. And he has all the cameras on
• 1:44:10
  him. He's a photographer.
• 1:44:11
  He's like been known to just like pull up on the side, seeing
• 1:44:14
  an animal or something cool and then shooting it for a little
• 1:44:16
  bit and then getting back on the trail, right.
• 1:44:18
  So I'm used to waiting for him a little bit and get down there.
• 1:44:22
  I'm waiting for him. 5 minutes goes by and then I see somebody
• 1:44:28
  else come down instead and the guy is yelling at me.
• 1:44:32
  He's like, do you know Nate? Do you know Nate?
• 1:44:35
  Like my uncle's name? I'm like, yes I do.
• 1:44:38
  And he's like, he needs you. And so I'd leave my bike, ditch
• 1:44:42
  my gear, and I'm just running up the trail to see what's going
• 1:44:45
  on. And I see him there just sitting
• 1:44:47
  in the daze, like sitting upright like this, just looking
• 1:44:50
  down, just like totally out of it.
• 1:44:53
  No idea what happened at this point.
• 1:44:54
  His bike was just way off to the side and he's dead center of the
• 1:44:58
  trail, like right around a blind turn too.
• 1:45:02
  So not a good spot. So immediately sent another guy
• 1:45:05
  up to stop traffic from coming down.
• 1:45:08
  He doesn't. He's not like, oriented at all.
• 1:45:12
  Doesn't know what day it is, doesn't know I see the crack
• 1:45:15
  going straight down the middle of his helmet, like he shattered
• 1:45:18
  his helmet in half. Oh.
• 1:45:19
  My God. And at this point, I'm like, I
• 1:45:21
  need to get him off of this steep terrain into something
• 1:45:24
  kind of more stable, right? So we're able to move them like
• 1:45:28
  maybe 1520 feet up the trail, get them off to the side.
• 1:45:31
  Now we're in a spot where people see us when they're coming down.
• 1:45:33
  So we're in a safe area now. That's one of the things they
• 1:45:38
  teach you in like safety training outdoors, right?
• 1:45:40
  Like get into a safe spot first. You don't want to go try to help
• 1:45:44
  somebody and then you get hurt and now there's two patients.
• 1:45:47
  Or somebody else gets hurt. Yeah.
• 1:45:49
  Not knowing that you're there exactly in a situation.
• 1:45:53
  Exactly. And then I saw this moment
• 1:45:55
  happened with another guy that was out there on the trails.
• 1:45:59
  And this is what when I thought I'm like, it's important for
• 1:46:02
  everybody to have some kind of training because my uncle
• 1:46:04
  clearly took a head hit. You know, we know that he's not
• 1:46:07
  really awake and oriented. So the other guy on the trail
• 1:46:12
  goes, can you move your head like this and just goes like
• 1:46:15
  crazy. I'm like, don't.
• 1:46:16
  And I grabbed his head right away.
• 1:46:18
  I'm like, let's lay you down and got him laid down, had his head
• 1:46:22
  stabled, and then immediately got that guy off the scene.
• 1:46:25
  Yeah. I'm like, hey, can you run up to
• 1:46:26
  the parking lot and wait for paramedics to show up?
• 1:46:29
  Like, so he has a job. Yeah, right.
• 1:46:31
  But I don't have him there anymore.
• 1:46:33
  That's also part of. Because I need to give like my
• 1:46:35
  full attention to a patient now. Yeah, essentially.
• 1:46:38
  And that's also part of like Wilderness First.
• 1:46:41
  Well, really just first responder training, any kind of
• 1:46:43
  medical training is like give people jobs and like get people
• 1:46:49
  out of the way that aren't needed for the job at hand.
• 1:46:53
  Yeah, yeah. So got him off, right.
• 1:46:55
  But he's up there ready to flag somebody down, right?
• 1:46:58
  And I started treating him as a patient.
• 1:47:01
  You know, you run through the AB CS, you run through the whole
• 1:47:04
  checklist. There was no way we were moving
• 1:47:08
  him to get him out of there. And this was a steep trail.
• 1:47:11
  And so immediately, you know, I was on the phone 911 and told
• 1:47:15
  them trail we're at situation that was happening.
• 1:47:19
  The aids like you have a hole punch list of things that you
• 1:47:22
  can give them over the phone so that they show up prepared and
• 1:47:26
  within 10 minutes, you know, firefighters are coming down and
• 1:47:30
  they have a stretcher and I'm like, guys, it's not going to
• 1:47:34
  work. And then we called in a
• 1:47:35
  helicopter and a helicopter was overhead within like another
• 1:47:39
  maybe 5-10 minutes. Wow.
• 1:47:42
  Fast. It was very quick and then.
• 1:47:46
  That's fortunate. Same time that a helicopter was
• 1:47:49
  getting there, firefighters were coming from the bottom of the
• 1:47:52
  trail and it was Camp Pendleton, the military base.
• 1:47:55
  So they got the call as well. So county firefighters come from
• 1:47:59
  up top, you know, military base came from the bottom.
• 1:48:03
  Then helicopter got overhead and they dropped down to more
• 1:48:06
  paramedics that were like, the hell you back guys.
• 1:48:08
  Wow. And once those guys showed up,
• 1:48:10
  it's like you, you guys are the dudes that are doing this.
• 1:48:13
  So everyone else kind of just cleared the scene, got everybody
• 1:48:16
  back, got all the gear back. They got him.
• 1:48:21
  OK, helicopter overhead stretcher coming up from the
• 1:48:25
  Pendleton base from below. Yep.
• 1:48:29
  There we go. Cliff hanger.
• 1:48:30
  Yeah, I'm ready. Locked in.
• 1:48:33
  Helicopter's overhead and it's just throwing up so much debris
• 1:48:38
  and dust and dirt you can't even look.
• 1:48:39
  That's its own hazard. Yeah, So cleared everybody off.
• 1:48:45
  They had him in the Gurney. They're taking him up now.
• 1:48:48
  It wasn't like a land and pick him up area.
• 1:48:51
  That's why we had to call them to begin with.
• 1:48:53
  So they dropped a basket down, loaded him into it.
• 1:48:57
  One guy stayed on the ground. He was going up on one rope, and
• 1:49:01
  then they had another rope to the ground to keep him from
• 1:49:04
  swinging and swaying and all over the place and spinning.
• 1:49:08
  Right. And I asked my uncle afterwards
• 1:49:12
  if he remembers that experience. He's like, yeah, I remember the
• 1:49:14
  helicopter. Like that's when I felt the most
• 1:49:16
  scared. Oh wow.
• 1:49:18
  Or it was just like the most? Suspended and the.
• 1:49:20
  Most intense, like almost claustrophobic because you're
• 1:49:23
  strapped and you can't move. Yeah.
• 1:49:25
  They haven't really figured out what kind of head injury he had
• 1:49:27
  yet. So he's like immobile right now.
• 1:49:30
  And just watching him get like abducted into this helicopter,
• 1:49:34
  beamed up. Yeah.
• 1:49:37
  So like there's nobody riding with him.
• 1:49:40
  He's in a basket by himself. Oh my God.
• 1:49:42
  The other guy was up there. They sent him up and then one
• 1:49:45
  guy at the bottom because there was two of them.
• 1:49:47
  So once he got up to the helicopter, that guy pulled him
• 1:49:49
  in and they stayed hovering there.
• 1:49:52
  They got him off the basket. Then they dropped the other rope
• 1:49:54
  down and the other guy just carabineered in and picked him
• 1:49:57
  up from there. Wow.
• 1:49:58
  Yeah. But then it's like not over now.
• 1:50:01
  I got all this. I got his bike, I got all of his
• 1:50:03
  extra gear. I know they told me where he's
• 1:50:04
  going, so I know what hospital to go to and everything right
• 1:50:09
  did. They get his Oh yeah, the bike
• 1:50:11
  out. The firefighters were there, and
• 1:50:13
  they're like, what do you need us to carry for you?
• 1:50:15
  Right. And they helped carry everything
• 1:50:16
  out. Yeah.
• 1:50:18
  We ended up going back up the hill instead of riding all the
• 1:50:20
  way back around. It was just, it was tough
• 1:50:23
  terrain to get up, but it was the fastest way to do it.
• 1:50:25
  Yeah, get back up to the parking lot, called his wife, called his
• 1:50:29
  parents, started notifying like his family like, hey, something
• 1:50:33
  happened, come to the hospital and he's made it.
• 1:50:37
  Everything was good. He's had traumatic brain injury,
• 1:50:41
  obviously, and, and took him some, you know, the therapy and
• 1:50:44
  treatment to kind of get around all those obstacles.
• 1:50:49
  But it, it was definitely something that impacted him.
• 1:50:52
  He was a guy that would mountain bike every single day and he's
• 1:50:55
  not able to do it at that capacity anymore.
• 1:50:57
  So now he leans more into photography.
• 1:51:01
  So he goes out on like he's a very outdoorsy guy as well.
• 1:51:05
  So now his version of getting outside is being on like the
• 1:51:08
  whale watching boats on the coast and he shoots whales and
• 1:51:12
  dolphins and birds and sunsets, sunrises all day long every day.
• 1:51:16
  Like I get texts from him every day to small like like subscribe
• 1:51:20
  list that he has nice. And he sends the like 12 or 15
• 1:51:23
  photos of the day and then gives like captions to what inspired
• 1:51:27
  him in each photo, which is pretty, pretty cool to see.
• 1:51:31
  And he sees some amazing, excuse me, amazing stuff out there.
• 1:51:35
  Yeah, I love that he's been able to adopt his life to his new
• 1:51:40
  reality and accept that there are new limits to his capacity
• 1:51:46
  and still say, like, well, within this container, I can do
• 1:51:51
  anything, even if it's a different container than I had
• 1:51:54
  before. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 1:51:56
  Very inspiring because he found something that worked for him
• 1:51:58
  outside. And did he usually mountain bike
• 1:52:03
  by himself? Like was this rare situation
• 1:52:06
  that he was with somebody who had wilderness first responder
• 1:52:09
  training and knew how to handle this?
• 1:52:10
  Situation. Yeah, no, that's a good point
• 1:52:12
  because he did bring that up at the end like he's family and my
• 1:52:16
  uncle and close and all. And he was just like so
• 1:52:19
  thankful, like wrote me letters too as well, like thanking me
• 1:52:21
  for the training that I had. And then he even wrote a letter
• 1:52:25
  and emailed to 1st Descents and he was like, thank you for
• 1:52:28
  having, you know, hot pants on these trips and for everything.
• 1:52:32
  You hot pants. I'll have to go back and read
• 1:52:34
  it. I wonder.
• 1:52:35
  I wonder if he did. And yeah, just wrote a letter to
• 1:52:39
  them. He wrote a letter to the fire
• 1:52:41
  department. He was just so grateful for the
• 1:52:43
  training that everybody had and how organized and collective and
• 1:52:47
  people that never worked together knew their roles in
• 1:52:51
  this situation to help them. Yeah.
• 1:52:54
  That's very, very fortunate. Yeah, pretty special, yeah.
• 1:52:59
  So cool. Thank you for having like
• 1:53:01
  multiple like happy positive things and also scary.
• 1:53:06
  Oh shit, but also very important vital life lesson, like having
• 1:53:12
  the attitude and the right effort and yeah, handling that
• 1:53:15
  fuck up to turn it into a lesson.
• 1:53:17
  Yeah, absolutely. Some fellow floaters.
• 1:53:22
  Yeah, there's like 8 people on that raft.
• 1:53:27
  Yeah. Good for them.
• 1:53:29
  Just having a Good Friday. Just having a great day.
• 1:53:32
  It's one like fatherly person and one son and then 6 gals in
• 1:53:43
  bikinis. A father, son moment.
• 1:53:50
  Good for them. That's fantastic.
• 1:53:54
  I love watching the arrangements of people on rafts.
• 1:53:58
  Yeah. And like how many people people
• 1:54:00
  will fit into one raft. Oh yeah, Like 14 people on a on
• 1:54:05
  a raft just floating. Yeah, on like a 14 foot raft.
• 1:54:09
  So cool. That's awesome, yeah.
• 1:54:14
  Cool. Thank you.
• 1:54:15
  Of course, great stories. Yeah, a little bit of different
• 1:54:18
  perspectives, all roles. Yeah, all things that can be
• 1:54:22
  done outside. And lots of great lessons, lots
• 1:54:25
  of great little tidbits being pulled out of that that are
• 1:54:29
  first applied in one very specific scenario or setting,
• 1:54:33
  but really can apply to anything.
• 1:54:37
  Anything. That's so cool.
• 1:54:40
  Yep. OK, I have a few wrap up
• 1:54:41
  questions. I have one question from from a
• 1:54:44
  participant from this week. Oh, do I get to find out who
• 1:54:49
  it's from or is that? After, well, you know, I'm.
• 1:54:50
  Probably going to know who it's from.
• 1:54:54
  She her nickname this week was and her new alter ego.
• 1:55:02
  The most authentic part of herself is nicknamed Butter.
• 1:55:07
  Yep, go figure. And she wants to know, what does
• 1:55:13
  it feel like when your pants are so hot?
• 1:55:17
  I'm moving fast. I'm stopping, dropping and
• 1:55:20
  rolling really quick. That's probably when I go play
• 1:55:23
  water sports, right? I'll get in rivers, go surfing,
• 1:55:29
  maybe just take them off. That's probably the best
• 1:55:32
  solution that that gets the fire off the pants.
• 1:55:34
  Just take them off. There you go.
• 1:55:35
  Do the pants stay on fire somewhere else?
• 1:55:37
  Yeah, OK. Yeah, they stay on fire all the
• 1:55:39
  time. You ever seen the superheroes
• 1:55:40
  where they turn fire on and off? That's like the pants.
• 1:55:43
  OK. Yeah, the pants turned on and
• 1:55:44
  off. Sometimes they're just on.
• 1:55:47
  People probably want to know where the where and why the
• 1:55:50
  nickname Hot Pants came to be. Yeah, so there's several
• 1:55:54
  stories. I thought you were just going to
• 1:55:56
  end it. Yeah.
• 1:55:57
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah, they did. They're hot.
• 1:56:01
  Yeah. I've told so many different
• 1:56:05
  stories on how I got hot pants, but the true one was the ice
• 1:56:12
  climbing trip. That was the first one, OK.
• 1:56:14
  And I didn't have any snow gear coming from Texas going to
• 1:56:19
  Colorado on this trip. Were you required to or were
• 1:56:21
  they set up to provide? We were required to have our own
• 1:56:25
  clothing, but they provided the rest of gear necessary for the
• 1:56:29
  activity, right? So I didn't want to get lost.
• 1:56:32
  So I bought the brightest blue pants I found and they're like a
• 1:56:37
  neon bright blue. And 1st day getting geared up, I
• 1:56:41
  had these bright blue pants on and everyone else is wearing
• 1:56:44
  like their black ski pants or black ski coat or whatever,
• 1:56:47
  right? I was the only one with colorful
• 1:56:49
  pants and so they called me hot pants.
• 1:56:52
  That's great. Yep.
• 1:56:54
  That makes a lot of sense. After getting that nickname I
• 1:56:57
  had to go buy new attire I didn't have like swim trunks
• 1:57:00
  that were hot pants or regular shorts for climbing that were
• 1:57:03
  hot pants. So I've added quite a few good
• 1:57:07
  things in there. You saw the bright pink shorts
• 1:57:10
  this week on the river. I left the shorts at home that
• 1:57:13
  actually have like flames going up one whole side an ass.
• 1:57:16
  But then they're like really bright orange or another bright
• 1:57:19
  green pair with flames going up the whole side.
• 1:57:22
  Yeah, it was bummed to bummed to forget those.
• 1:57:26
  Well, next time, yeah, you still.
• 1:57:27
  Next time everyone still saw and accepted you as hot pants, no
• 1:57:33
  questions. Yeah, there's a lot of
• 1:57:35
  variations of the name, too. There's Captain Hot Pants.
• 1:57:38
  Captain Meat Pants. Oh, because I don't know if you
• 1:57:42
  heard this, but meatloaf was my name.
• 1:57:44
  No. To begin with.
• 1:57:46
  Yeah. So getting picked up at the
• 1:57:48
  airport, we have to, we try to give everybody a nickname before
• 1:57:50
  getting back to the house. And the guy that I was in the
• 1:57:54
  car with thought I said meatloaf when I said meatloaf, and
• 1:57:59
  meatloaf kind of stuck that first day.
• 1:58:01
  OK, so then they started kind of mixing the two names together.
• 1:58:04
  By the end of the week, it was hot pants.
• 1:58:06
  Yeah. It was.
• 1:58:07
  That was the best. One that feels a little better
• 1:58:08
  than. Yeah, than meatloaf.
• 1:58:09
  Meat. Pants, yeah, than meat pants,
• 1:58:11
  yeah. I mean, they're all adults, but
• 1:58:19
  yeah, meat pants is. Yeah.
• 1:58:21
  That's a that's a challenge. Yeah.
• 1:58:23
  Yeah, it was. It was.
• 1:58:25
  That's great. Great naming, SO do you have any
• 1:58:29
  advice or tips for somebody looking to live a life like
• 1:58:35
  yours? I think learn to let go and have
• 1:58:43
  kind of a short memory with certain things, right?
• 1:58:47
  Certain things we come across and they may really like rub us
• 1:58:51
  the wrong way or really kind of give us that like irk or like
• 1:58:54
  put us into a bad mood. But I always try to remind
• 1:58:58
  myself, in the grand scheme of things, is that one irking
• 1:59:02
  moment or grinding teeth moment really that important?
• 1:59:06
  Or was it just kind of like an annoying moment and not saying
• 1:59:10
  it completely ignore it, just saying not to let that one maybe
• 1:59:15
  bad moment energy carry on into other good moments throughout
• 1:59:18
  the day, the week, the month, Just learning to kind of maybe
• 1:59:23
  go with the flow a little bit and knowing how to let go of
• 1:59:26
  things. Of that, yeah.
• 1:59:29
  I worked a job for a while that I had a great mentor in and we
• 1:59:35
  were doing door to door outreach and interacting with people on
• 1:59:39
  their doorsteps in whatever states they were in.
• 1:59:42
  And often it would result in like a door being slammed in our
• 1:59:46
  face, yeah. Or something just really heinous
• 1:59:50
  being yelled at us. Yeah.
• 1:59:52
  And he his lesson in that was to have the attitude of a golden
• 1:59:58
  retriever and the memory of a goldfish.
• 2:00:00
  Oh, that's good. I like that one.
• 2:00:03
  Just like. Forget about it and show up.
• 2:00:06
  Yeah. Whatever it was, yeah.
• 2:00:10
  And I love that, yeah. You're right.
• 2:00:12
  I've never seen a mad golden retriever.
• 2:00:14
  Yeah, I was so. Happy but.
• 2:00:17
  I've never also had a golden. Retriever, yeah.
• 2:00:19
  So I've only seen them at the parks.
• 2:00:22
  They're pretty much always happy.
• 2:00:24
  There's this whole, like, golden retriever boyfriend trope now of
• 2:00:27
  just like this happy, so lucky boy.
• 2:00:30
  That's just like, yeah, I'm ready to play.
• 2:00:32
  I'm ready to go do that. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:34
  You want a snack? Yeah, I want a snack.
• 2:00:37
  I guess kind of like from that movie up, right?
• 2:00:39
  There's that golden retriever in it that's very much so like,
• 2:00:42
  what's next? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:43
  Eager for anything? Yeah, awesome.
• 2:00:46
  And if people do want to learn more about you, yeah, Or get to
• 2:00:51
  know you in another way, where could you be found if you wanted
• 2:00:56
  to be found, you're. Probably going to find me on a
• 2:00:58
  beach in San Clemente. You're going to find me down
• 2:01:01
  there. Very small town.
• 2:01:03
  So if you hit the right beach, the right day, the right time,
• 2:01:06
  I'm probably there. Nice.
• 2:01:08
  I, I, I hope somebody watches this and then goes and finds you
• 2:01:13
  on the beach and. Says that would be awesome.
• 2:01:14
  And they'd. Be like if you.
• 2:01:16
  Yell hot pants you. Don't know me, but I just like
• 2:01:19
  listened to you for two hours and I live here and I wanted to
• 2:01:24
  come and meet you. If you yell hot pants on at the
• 2:01:27
  beach, oh, I will come running up to you.
• 2:01:30
  I will, absolutely. Like a golden retriever.
• 2:01:32
  Like a golden retriever? Yep.
• 2:01:35
  Awesome. And so when your time on this
• 2:01:41
  plane of existence in this physical form comes to an end,
• 2:01:44
  yeah, how would you like to be remembered?
• 2:01:48
  Want to be remembered as just taking every opportunity
• 2:01:53
  possible and not living a life where I wish I did.
• 2:01:59
  You know, to really experience life and all the special
• 2:02:02
  beauties that are on this planet and to take it all in.
• 2:02:07
  You know, to know how to step back and to really live in the
• 2:02:10
  moment. Awesome, yeah.
• 2:02:15
  I feel like I had one more question come up but now I'm
• 2:02:18
  forgetting what it was. The yellow jacket on my foot.
• 2:02:29
  Was it based from like a conversation earlier and it.
• 2:02:32
  I think so. Oh.
• 2:02:34
  OK. Maybe you can guess what it's
• 2:02:37
  going to be. OK, What's your superpower?
• 2:02:42
  Oh. Superpower.
• 2:02:48
  I think superpower is going to be the finding the chocolate in
• 2:02:52
  the house and making sure it's not there anymore.
• 2:02:58
  Chocolate Hound. Chocolate hound?
• 2:02:59
  Yep, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, caramel chocolate.
• 2:03:03
  I think the only one I don't like is Reese's.
• 2:03:05
  Reese's, yeah. Shame.
• 2:03:08
  I think that's the only one. So if I because.
• 2:03:10
  You don't like peanut butter? I like peanut butter but peanut
• 2:03:12
  butter chocolate to me just doesn't mix just.
• 2:03:15
  In the form of a Reese's or in any in any form.
• 2:03:18
  I think just the Reese's OK, because I've tried like the
• 2:03:20
  Trader Joe's one and like, I love that one.
• 2:03:23
  So I don't know what's up with the Reese's OK, But if you like
• 2:03:26
  Reese's, I can just ship them to you.
• 2:03:27
  Great. Yeah, yeah, I love chocolate
• 2:03:29
  peanut butter. Yeah, I had someone at work.
• 2:03:31
  It was a homeowner, a customer. They gave me like the big Costco
• 2:03:36
  pack of Reese's. I was like, I love chocolate,
• 2:03:39
  just not this chocolate. Oh, damn.
• 2:03:41
  But like, I still took it and put it in our fridge at work and
• 2:03:44
  like everybody there loved it and just crushed it.
• 2:03:46
  Yeah, gone in a day, yeah. Easy.
• 2:03:49
  Easily, yeah. Easily.
• 2:03:51
  Cool. So don't leave chocolate around
• 2:03:53
  me if you want it because. Did you eat one of my brownies?
• 2:03:57
  This morning didn't ask. No, Postal did.
• 2:03:59
  You did too. Didn't too.
• 2:04:01
  I was eyeing it but Postal beat me to it.
• 2:04:03
  It was. Labeled with my name.
• 2:04:06
  Special for me. Not special brownies, but
• 2:04:08
  special for me, yeah. Yeah, Nope, that was not me.
• 2:04:12
  But I did see it. I was eyeing it.
• 2:04:15
  I maybe would have asked you or just grabbed it in front of you
• 2:04:18
  and just if you would have stopped me.
• 2:04:20
  If they're still in the house when we get back, we should beat
• 2:04:22
  them. Perfect.
• 2:04:23
  Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Awesome.
• 2:04:26
  And I guess just yeah. Anything else you want to add
• 2:04:29
  that you want to say that you want to have her I?
• 2:04:33
  Just I want to thank you for letting me be on this podcast.
• 2:04:35
  This is so special to do this and love supporting you.
• 2:04:39
  And I hope this really takes off for you because I know this is a
• 2:04:41
  special place in your heart and you're doing it obviously
• 2:04:44
  because you love it. So thank you.
• 2:04:47
  Keep chasing it and keep going after it.
• 2:04:49
  And I feel very honored you asked me after knowing me for
• 2:04:52
  maybe a day or two. So I felt very honored that you
• 2:04:56
  wanted to have me out here. So thank you.
• 2:04:57
  Absolutely. Thank you for saying yes and for
• 2:05:01
  being here this week and showing up kind of last minute.
• 2:05:06
  And I mean, you got great feedback all week long from
• 2:05:12
  everybody that you worked with of how what a great instructor
• 2:05:15
  you were and how supportive and helpful and how well you
• 2:05:19
  fine-tuned everything that you taught to each individual that
• 2:05:23
  you were teaching at any given moment.
• 2:05:25
  And not just like a blanket, blanket teaching curriculum, but
• 2:05:30
  really seeing each person and their learning style and their
• 2:05:35
  obstacles and their fears and making them feel so safe and
• 2:05:40
  supported and and taken care of in an otherwise very unsettling,
• 2:05:48
  scary, nervous place. Just really like building that
• 2:05:53
  trust with them right out of the gate that it wasn't earned.
• 2:05:56
  It was just given inherently. Thank you.
• 2:06:00
  Yeah, thank you for that. Appreciate.
• 2:06:02
  It really cool to witness and and to get to learn more about
• 2:06:05
  you. Yeah.
• 2:06:07
  Awesome. Yeah.
• 2:06:07
  Thank you. Well.
• 2:06:08
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 2:06:09
  Very cool. We.
• 2:06:11
  Did we did and I guess now we'll.
• 2:06:15
  We have some more river to float.
• 2:06:16
  Yeah, well, we're going to go through.
• 2:06:20
  A bit of a rapid so I'm going to turn off the camera and I think
• 2:06:27
  that'll just be the end of the episode.
• 2:06:29
  OK. I don't think I'll record
• 2:06:31
  anything on the way out because it's basically a rapid, rapid
• 2:06:33
  and then a rapid till the. End and then our take out at the
• 2:06:36
  end, yeah. And then we have to hitchhike
• 2:06:37
  back to the vehicle. Maybe I'll film a little bit of
• 2:06:39
  that. Yeah, that'll be great.
• 2:06:40
  Yeah, sweet shout out to go wildly.
• 2:06:44
  Thanks for being here. All right, Wildly wonders,
• 2:06:54
  that's a wrap. Thank you, thank you, thank you
• 2:06:56
  for hanging out with us on the Go Wildly podcast.
• 2:06:58
  Seriously, your ears, your energy, your vibe.
• 2:07:01
  They mean the world. And hey, the pod is usually
• 2:07:04
  going to drop on Mondays, but let's be real, sometimes it's
• 2:07:07
  Tuesday. And sometimes laugh be life in
• 2:07:09
  and the river calls louder than our calendar, baby.
• 2:07:12
  We out there adventuring either way will show up in your feed
• 2:07:16
  with stories that make you want to lace up your boots or paddle
• 2:07:19
  out. So please go ahead and do all
• 2:07:20
  the things like share, comment, subscribe, smash the buttons,
• 2:07:24
  click all the bells, throw us a bone on YouTube and come play
• 2:07:28
  with us on socials. That's how our little adventure
• 2:07:31
  family grows. Now quit staring at your phone
• 2:07:34
  or whatever you're doing and go jump in a river, a touch a tree,
• 2:07:37
  climb a tree, howl at the moon, or whatever gets you out there.
• 2:07:40
  Until next time, stay feral. Stay curious and for the love of
• 2:07:45
  dirt, go wildly. We're going to meet you out
• 2:07:47
  there.