Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Randy Perkins on Overcoming Tragedy and Finding Your Path to Adventure

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Randy Perkins on Overcoming Tragedy and Finding Your Path to Adventure · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I am
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: your host, Scott Brady, and for today's guest, we have
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Randy Perkins. Randy has been a member of the community
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: for decades and he has ridden motorcycles and driven land
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: cruisers on many continents of the planet. Randy's a very
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: interesting guest because he has a very storied past. He
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: started off his life as a marine and then made
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a career out of being a logger in New Zealand
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and in the Pacific Northwest, and he is a passionate Overlander.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: He has a lot of experience as a motorcyclist and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: more recently he's been traveling extensively by land cruiser in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Australia and in Africa. So we gleaned some really important
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: insights about buying a vehicle in country, keeping a vehicle,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: storing it in country, and maintaining documentation and registration. So
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: these are very interesting that we're able to dig into
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: with Randy about how he's able to keep these vehicles
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: on various continents of the planet. So please enjoy my
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: conversation with Randy Perkins. This content is brought to you
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: by Overland Journal, our premium quality print publication. The magazine
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: was founded in two thousand and six with the goal
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of providing independent equipment and vehicle reviews, along with the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: most stunning adventures and photography. We care deeply about the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: countries and cultures we visit and share our experiences freely
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: with our readers. We also have zero averatorial policy and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: do not accept any advertiser compensation for our reviews. By
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: subscribing to Overland Journal, you're helping to support our employee
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: owned and veteran owned publication. Your support also provides resources
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and funding for content like you are watching or listening
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to right now. You can subscribe directly on our website
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: at Overland Journal dot com. RANDI thank you so much
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: for being on the podcast today.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: You're welcome to Scott.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: It's a joy to have you here.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: It's humbling and I feel blessed to be here.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: We just got done with a nice little adventure together.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: So we drove. We drove out to Alamo Lake. We
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: had a great little trail ride. We had a we
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: had Matt Scott was there, Paula the producer, Ryan our videographer,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: we had, we had Caleb along as well. We had
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a great little little trip and for me, it was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the first time that I've just done a trail ride
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in forever. So thanks for being the impetus for us
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: getting out and doing that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Scott. I appreciate it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Well. Your story is so it's not only fascinating,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: but it's got so many wonderful arcs and turns and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: people that have come into your life, and you've you've
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: become a student of these people that you admire in
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: many ways. You are someone that I admire, and others
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: like Caleb and many people that I know in my
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: life admire you for the difference that you've made in
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: people's lives. And I thought it would be it would
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: be good for us to start kind of from the beginning.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Where did you grow up?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Gladstone, Oregon, until I was seven,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: living next to the library, Okay, And when I was seven,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: my dad bought twenty eight acres south of Oregon City,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: about ten about three miles and it backed up to
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty acres of timber and for whole
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: growth forest. So I went from a city kid to
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: you were huck Finn at twenty eight acres of Philbert's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: to take care of and then the rest of the
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: time I was in the woods, camping or doing something.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: From nine years old on so exploring.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And I remember in our conversation recently you talked about
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: huck Finn being an early inspiration for you about wonder
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and adventure and exploration.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: My second grade teacher read Huckleberry Fenn to us, and
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: then my third grade teacher gave me the softer side
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of my life when she read a book called Where
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: the Red Fern Grows to us, And that book changed
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: how I look at humanity. Yeah, people, what do you
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: feel you took away from that? How did you change
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the way that you saw people? After that book, I
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: realized that not everybody in our life comes from the
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: same circumstances we do, and everybody has their own challenges.
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  Speaker 2: And I understood a lot about the dirt poor poverty
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: that my dad that was born on the Indian reservation
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: in the Northwest Territories. It was Cherokee, it was three
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: quarter Cherokee, and then my grandfather who lost his farm
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: in twenty nine in Iowa, and the dirt Later on
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: in life, I understood that about the dirt poverty that
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: those people lived.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: In and had nothing. Yeah. Well, and that seems like
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  Speaker 1: that that has served you because it's allowed you to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: always remain rooted in the fact that things life can
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: change so quickly. It does too. Yeah yeah. And then
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: as a young man you joined the military. So talk
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit about your military career.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Well, when I was seventeen, I dropped out of school
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: and they later figured out I was dyslexic. I couldn't
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: attend school from about the age thirteen on. And so
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: my best friend, his dad was a colonel in the
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Oregon National Guard, and I went down to talk to
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: him and he said, you're not going in the National Guard.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: He said, you'll end up in jail. There's no discipline.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: You need discipline. So he referred me to the Marine recruiter.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And the funny thing was the way to wind. The
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: funny thing was is that the night before my best
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: friend who I grew up with and went in the
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps with, and Jim starred the Antler Chandelier Company
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: in Montana. He was at dinner that night with my
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: family and Jim said, mister Perkins, I am going in
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps. And dad said that that is the
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: greatest thing that any man could do. And I heard that,
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  Speaker 2: and the next day I had the Sergeant Roberts out
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: with me to get my parents to sign a waiver
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: at seventeen so I could go in Wow, just after
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: my seventeenth birthday.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: So similar to my grandfather, in fact, I think he
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: was a little bit younger than that. In fact, I
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: think his mom fibbed a bit on which that happened
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a lot for World Wars, Yeah, you know it did.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: And talk to me a little bit about what you
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: did in the Marines.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I went to of course, our biggest boot camp
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: and advanced infantry. But I went back to Memphis to
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: go to aviation school to be a flight mechanic. And
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: while I was there, I got snagged up to play
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: football for season four of them. And the funny thing
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: about the Memphis story is is that I got off
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: the plane August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven, the morning Elvis died,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and I'm in the Memphis airport. Oh wow, And the story,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: you know, they're all screaming, the king is dead, the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: King is dead. And I thought to myself, Jesus came
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: back and they killed him. I was on the airplane,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: but the military there. Yeah, I spent almost a year
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: going to school, went to Airborne Radio Operators School, also
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: on the C one thirties. But when I got ready
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  Speaker 2: to get out, i'd finished number one in my school
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  Speaker 2: and they offered me HMX one duty, which was Marine
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Corps Presidential Helicopter Squadron, and it's on my discharge papers,
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  Speaker 2: and I said, no, I want to go out and
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: be a Disneyland Marine and live in Tustin. I didn't
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  Speaker 2: want to go live on these coasts closer to family,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: but I ended up spending two and a half years
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: out there, and then quite a few times on the
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Tarawah down off of the coast of Central America when during.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: The Yeah, there was a lot happened in that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the arms for Yeah.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Well, I thank you for your service.
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  Speaker 1: I think that we both share the recognition that our
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: lives would have taken a very different path had it
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: not been serving in the military. I know for me,
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  Speaker 1: I felt like a like a ship with a lot
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  Speaker 1: of potential but no rudder, and the military gave me
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  Speaker 1: a lot of that direction.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, that I would never have gotten more I
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  Speaker 2: have in my life without the discipline I learned because
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  Speaker 2: I was an undisciplined punk.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was the exact same thing. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's still a punk and probably not as disciplined as
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  Speaker 1: I want to be, but yeah, but it would have
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  Speaker 1: been much worse. Yeah, I get that. So you get
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  Speaker 1: out of the Marines and you start getting involved with timber.
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  Speaker 1: But the thing that's so cool about your career story
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  Speaker 1: is that you didn't just do logging in the Pacific
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  Speaker 1: Northwest like everybody else did. You decided to go to
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  Speaker 1: New Zealand. So was that the first time that you
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  Speaker 1: really traveled internationally, not as a soldier. Yeah? Yeah. And
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: how old were you when you.
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  Speaker 2: I was twenty eight years old when I sold my businesses,
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  Speaker 2: I sold my tree farm, and I was recruited by
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  Speaker 2: the New Zealand government. There was an article in American Timberman,
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  Speaker 2: which at the time was the biggest newspaper about logging
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  Speaker 2: and if you're from the Northwest, you're a god in
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  Speaker 2: the timber industry because we logged bigger timber, steeper ground,
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  Speaker 2: more production anybody in the world. And I was recruited
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  Speaker 2: by the New Zealand government because of that article. But
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  Speaker 2: to back up a little bit. The biggest defining moment
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  Speaker 2: in my life was the day I got out of
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps. My dad picked me up at the
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  Speaker 2: airport and Mom wasn't there, and I couldn't figure out
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  Speaker 2: what was going on. And he stopped out on the
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  Speaker 2: Columbia River and he told me it was terminal with
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: lung cancer and didn't have long to live. And it's
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: like when you tell me and it's you know. So
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: it kind of threw me in a dark hole. Yeah,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: but there was no work at that point. We were
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: coming out of four years of Carter. I went into
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps about two weeks before Carter started, and
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  Speaker 2: I got out about two weeks before Reagan. So we
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: were down to no supplies, nothing to run the birds on.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: We cannibalized eighty percent of the birds were cannibalized so
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: we could keep flying. So I started a firewood company.
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  Speaker 2: My dad when I got home, he said, well, I've
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: got two truckloads of logs out there. If you'll cut
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: them up, you can have half. And I figured out
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: at that point I was making about fifteen bucks an.
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  Speaker 1: Hour, so it's good money. In nineteen eighty.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was getting a dollar sixty five a regular job,
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  Speaker 2: and so I started doing that, and I kept getting
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: bigger and bigger, and then I was buying logs from
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: an old man, Raymond Smith, out in Corbett, Oregon, and
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: one day he said to me, he said, how'd you
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: like to own your own property? And I said, well,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I really don't have much money, and he goes, well,
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  Speaker 2: I've got a forty acre track out there.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I'll sell you.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: And it was covered in alder at the time was
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: kind of worthless other than firewood, and so he took
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a chance on me, and I ended up buying a
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: small bulldozer, putting a winch on it, build am own blade,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: build him own canopy for it, and I ended up
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: logging my prop. And then the neighbors wanted me to log,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: and I took that fence down. Then I took the
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: next fans down, and for the next year and a half,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I just logged for my neighbors. And then another man
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  Speaker 2: grabbed me and saw the potential I had and took
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  Speaker 2: me into the National Force and taught me how to log.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Big timber man by the name of John Seri usually
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: man or amazing. Yeah, And you know, losing a parent
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: and that was many years ago for you with your
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: dad and just a year ago for me with my mom.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it really does recalibrate things in our mind.
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  Speaker 2: What did you feel changed about you after you lost
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: your dad? After I lost my dad, I went downhill
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: into drug addiction, drug addiction and alcoholism. I mean I
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: went downhill, downhill fast. It lasted about three years past
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  Speaker 2: that point. I'd had some stuff happening in my life
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: when I was twelve, some abuse issues, and I started
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: pretty much drinking every day at that point. And the
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: only sober time I ever had in my life was
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: the ninety eight days Marine Corps boot camp until I
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: was twenty five years old, when I had a friend
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: pulled me aside and helped me. But you know, it's
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: we get people step into our life, and we can't
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: forget that that people step up to help us. Yeah,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: and we have to remember that we have to do that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: We don't have to we get to do that for
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: other people in our lives. We get to step forward
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: and help other people. At twenty five, my twenty fifth birthday,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I tried to quit drinking and I kept waking up
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: every morning drunk, and I went into I was working
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: for the power company at nightis a mechanic, heavy equipment mechanic,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and one of the guys that I worked with had
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: been gone for thirty days. Everybody said he was up
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: at Boorgman at the coal plant was the common story
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four. And Bill was there and I
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: didn't even recognize him. And it was labor day weekend,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: and I'd been on a four day cocaine run and
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I had slept for four days, and I was in
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the We had a room we called the drawing room,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: which was one hundred and ten degrees with no humidity.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: We could draw our clothes. And I was sitting there,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: just shaking and sweating, and Bill came in and he said,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: are you ready to get some help? And I said,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I've been trying, but I can't stop. And he took
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: me up and got me into an outpatient program. And
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: many times in my life I thought, where can I
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: be a Bill in someone else's life to help them.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been blessed to have those opportunities. I don't
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: take any credit for anybody else, but I've been blessed
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: to have those opportunities to help other people and you've
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: been sober now for how long? Thirty eight and a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: half years now.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Well, and it takes an incredible amount of courage to
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: first of all, admit when we have something that we
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: want to change in our life, and then second of
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: all to stick with it. So thirty eight years is incredible. Well,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: thank you, Randy. I'm just so proud of you for that.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you, And we'll talk a little bit later about
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: some other things that we've been both been working on
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to help each other with in our lives. And you
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: make a decision to actually care for yourself, to show
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: yourself some of the love that you really that you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to receive, protect yourself, and save yourself in many ways.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And how did that change your life? What happened at
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that point that started to give you these opportunities?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I think when I was twenty five and I
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: got sober, the biggest thing I learned in my life
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: is always aligne all the time to everybody. Yeah, because
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: addiction is just one set of lies after another. The
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: gentleman I sat down next to my first meeting, Terry,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: he was my sponsor for twenty five years. She sat
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: down that night. I sat down next to him that
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: night and not knowing who he was. And he'd been
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: sober about fifteen years. He had a PhD in literature
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: from the University of Oregon and he ran a garbage company.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: He stayed in college as long as he could before
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: he had to go around the stat's garbage company. And
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: you know, he used to tell me, you know that
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: you just everybody's going to get one chance. You're going
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: to get a chance. There's going to be people walk
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: into your lives and you've got that chance to maybe
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: change your life. The sad thing about alcoholism and drug
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: addiction and is even of all the people that say
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: they want to do it, maybe only about ten percent
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: ever make it. Yeah, and that's the sad thing. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: then when you get to one year, there's a I
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: don't know, it's a trend. And it's been this way
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: since I got sober. But when people get to one
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: year sobriety, they forget about what they got doing to
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: get there and they quit doing it. So about thirteen
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: to fourteen months, people relapse all the time.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure, Luckily I was.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: I got sober with some really old hardcore people and
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I needed that because I had didn't have that discipline
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: sure to thrive and survive.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: We're all glad that you did survive, and we have
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of mutual friends that are grateful that you're here.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And I have no doubt that that decision made a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: big part of it.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well there was there were seven of us that
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: ran together. I got sober at twenty five, my friend
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Steve got sober at thirty, and nobody else made it
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: forty years old car rex and sorrhosis. And then I
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: lost Steve a couple of years ago when he was
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: twenty five years sober to They think it was the
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: cancer that's caused by round up because he ran a
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: cemetery and so it was some weird cancer they'd never
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: seen before. But the amount of people that you know,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: passed through our lives that even if they don't get
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: sober the first time, if you can make an impact
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: on him.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Everybody used to always ask me when I before I
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: moved to Vandorgon, where my ranch is out, I lived
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: in Corvallis, Oregon, which was a college town, and everybody
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: always said, well, why do you have dinner at the
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: same pub every night? Well, one the head chef co
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I took him to Columbia with me because he wanted
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: to go ride motorcycles in Columbia. So I took him down.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Then we rode motorcycles for thirty five days. And so
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: he make me whatever I wanted. But what when I
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: sit back and look at it, I always tell people,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you know, if I had seven people come up to
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: me and say, how are you so happy in life
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: and how do you do it without drinking? Yeah, and
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: five of those people are still sober. So you know,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: occasionally people are put in our lives, and most of
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: the time everything we've ever wanted and needed.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: In our lives.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: What I find out is a lot of times we
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: don't take it because it doesn't look like what it's
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: supposed to look like. We have a preset notion of
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: who this person should be, yeah, including ourselves and ourselves,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: and we're not that person and they're not that person,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: so we don't take what's given to us at that point.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, being willing to accept help and being willing to
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: accept change. You know, I'm feeling compelled right now because
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: there's likely going to be some people listening that need help.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Would you be willing to have them reach out to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you absolutely all right? Now, how would they reach you
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: on Instagram? I'm PVT mule Nicknam. I got in the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Marine Corps.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I phone numbers five O three seven eight OHO three
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: eight two eight And if I don't answer, just leave
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: me a message and I'll get right back with you.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: I still speak on a state level for alcoholics anonymous, so.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know you do that.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And for years I spoke on a national level
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: for cocaine anonymous. I was one of the founders in
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the Northwest of that to get that started so kids
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: could talk about drug addiction with the firmness of alcoholics anonymous,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: where NA tends to be kind of spread out that
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I don't mean this wrong, but to them, relapses acceptable
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: and to me it's acceptable. But every time it happens,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: it's that much harder for people to get there and
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: stay there. And you never have to leave a ze
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: thing and no, and it doesn't matter where you're at.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I have friends all over the United States that are
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: good people that have twenty twenty five years of sobriety
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: that can help you.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I know you do, and I might be able to
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: put them in touch with that, So I know that
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it's something that people struggle with and there is help,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and there's people that care about you making those steps
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: towards sobriety.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm just proud of you. Well, thank you, Scott.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I appreciated. It's nothing that I'm proud of or ashamed of.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: It's just my life story. It's who I am. And
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: if I was proud or ashamed, I would be silent.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: And if I'm silent, people die because of our silence.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: They just don't. I've led an unbelievably blessed life, and
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I've tackled some major issues in life, really tough ones,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: and went down those rabbit holes a few times, really badly,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: and then you know, had somebody step in and say, hey, Randy.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: You know you did it with me at the beginning
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: of the year, but step in and say, hey, I'm
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: tired of seeing you struggle with something. Here's what I
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: think might help you. I think to myself all the time,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: where can I be a Bill Quimby or where can
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I be a Terry Aggy and someone's else's life, not
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: only in recovery, but in business. Because I've got eight
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: or ten guys that used to work for me. I
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: downsized in two thousand and nine, two thousand and seven,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I downsized, and all the guys that have been with
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: me for quite a while, I took a risk on
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: them and I sold them logging equipment on contracts so
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: they couldn't get financing into bank to buy it, so
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: I sold it to them. And then, by the grace
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: of God, those guys are still guys that come back.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Now that I've decided I'm going to work five six
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: months out of the year, they still come back and
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: help me. They bring their machinery back and I contract
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: them in and we get to work together.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: I mean last week we were on a job and
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: we had four of us there, and we had one
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five hundred and forty five years of experience,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and we had eighty five years who were together. I
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: was sitting there watching. You know, my log trucker is Junior.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: His dad is Senior, and his dad started hollologs for
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: me in nineteen eighty one, and Junior's been holling for
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: me since ninety.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Six, you know.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: But we're who we surround ourselves with.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is something that I recognize, and I've heard
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: it said, is that we're basically a reflection of the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: five people that we're closest with. So if we're surrounding
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: ourselves with amazing people and you think about the people
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: in your life like Bill Drigu and Bill Whittaker and
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: these gentlemen that are absolutely exceptional individuals, and it helps
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: to make us exceptional individuals in the ways that we
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: can be.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: So we don't know those moments in life are going
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to happen. They're never staged. We never get that feeling.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: My whole relationship with overlanding changed in twenty twelve when
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I went to my first overland expo. I'm standing in
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: line as a lonely person and Buildergo and his wife
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Susan and another fa friends of theirs from Oklahoma there
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: and lady said, I got a room for five. Bill said,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: we're five. When we sat down and Bill said, do you
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: ride motorcycles? Said yeah, I just got back from my
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: twelve hundred and I've been down the ball three or
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: four times in the last year. And he goes, tell
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: me how you ride the Baja. I had no idea
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: who the guy was.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the greatest adventure motorcycle instructors in the country. Yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: and I had that's his humility. Yeah.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: And then you know, the next day he introduced me
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: to you, and then he introduced me to Bill Whittaker,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: and he didn't tell me what Bill Whittaker did. And
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Bill's drilling me about Excel Timber and Oregon about what
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: I see as her flaws. And I finally asked, who
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: the hell are you and he said, I'm a chairman
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: a Simplot.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And It's like, yeah, exactly, but it's.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: It's those relationships with my first riding coach, Amy Stroud.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: A week after I bought my first eight hundred, a
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: friend of mine that rides, I mean, I bought my
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: first twelve hundred. A friend of mine that I rode
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: dirt bikes with said you're either going to get some
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: training or you're going to get hurt really bad. And
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: then if you get on the bike, you're going to
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: get some training. I said, who the hell do I
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: get training from for this? And he said, well, Amy
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Stroud and Insiah Oregon. And I was logging the piece
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: next door to his property.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you get logged for part of the day and
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: then go ride your bike. I went rode every night yeah,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and that's great. You know, two weeks into a Raimy goes,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: what are you doing next week? And I said nothing.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: He said, can you take two weeks off? I said yeah,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and he said, well, bring your bike over. I said why.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: He said, We're going to this place called Copper Canyon.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I was hoping you'd talk about this story because this
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: is incredible. Yeah. So you you'd never other than Baha,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you'd never really done a big international trip, and now
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you're going to take two weeks.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I hadn't even done Baja at that point. This was
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. This was I bought my bike
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: in May and he took me in June.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. So you're so you're where did they ship
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the bikes Tokreel or No.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: No, he shipped it to Uhl Pass. So I put
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: it in his trailer and he took it down with
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Skip man Man Curso Curso from Motor Discovery.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Nice and still great friends with Skip. And I had
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to help his son when his son was
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: having some problems. Yeah, call me in the middle of
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the night and it was really touching. But we got
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: to we got there and then uh my first crossing
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: was at Warriz.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Get the party started starting, right. But isn't
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: that that is such an interesting area When you drive,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: like once you're out of Warez in your and you're
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: heading south, you come into these Mennonite regions of Mexico
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that nobody knows about, and there's there's kids wearing John
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Deere ball caps. Yeah, and you know these and these
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: huge farming operations. It's incredible the agriculture in that.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Two things struck me when I first time I crossed
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: that border was one when we got about fifteen miles
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: south out to the east, there's a mountain, yeah, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: there's an outline of a horse for heroin that the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: drug dealers have put there. And this seems like five
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: hundred feet high and a phil feet long. But then the
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: funny thing is is in the last ten years in
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Mexico they've changed from John Deer to Wander so you
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: can get a wand Deer hat down That's funny. But yeah,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: going down there and then you know, experiencing creole and
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: then you know.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And people, I don't think a lot of people realize
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that a town like that exists. It's kind of like
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the I mean, I don't know the Durango of Mexico.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: It's it's a high mountain. I think it's seven thousand
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: feet or so, and you know, so it's up in
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the pine trees. It's you know, there's log cabins everywhere,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and it's just it's the gateway to Copper Canyon. Yeah,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: isn't that where the train starts. Yeah, well it starts.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: It would be north and west about thirty miles from Creole,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: got it, because you come in on the road and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: you have to go a little bit east to get
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: to Creole. Well, it's out north and west at the
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: head of the canyon there. Yeah, but the Raimie knew
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: a guy that was a French chef that had this
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: little hotel, and so we're about halfway there. I can't
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: remember the name of the city, but he pulled in there
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: and this guy cooked us the most amazing meal I've
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: ever had.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: In my life.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: He asked a steak or chicken, and I'm thinking, okay,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: this is going to be the you know, the rubber chicken,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: rubber chicken tur And he comes out and he's a
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: French chef and this stuff has got sauce. I mean,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: it's just it's incredibly in a swimming pool there. It's like,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: do we have to leave, Raimy, you got to go
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: back there?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you get to creole And I mean, riding
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: an adventure, a big adventure motorcycle in Copper Canyon is
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: no joke.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: No, And it wasn't paved and it was paved and.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: It was yeah, it is paved down to about the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: p or at least part of the way. But at
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the time, and it was funny because you and I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: were just talking about this before we started the conversation
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and I was in the same area in two thousand
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and eight. We got to figure out what time I
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: was there, because it was probably close to the same time.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I'll look at my pictures because I saw pictures at
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: her time.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: He saw a whole bunch of sportsmobiles. It was me.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: It was me. But yeah, I mean, that is an
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: incredible adventure. And you guys got into this one section
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of trail. I mean, how many guys ended up injured?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Well that time you got to there.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: After we came out of Ball to Pedas. When we
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: dropped into Ball to Pedas, Ramy asked me to kind
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: of stay back because there was a lady Danielle and
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Art from San Diego, and Danielle was riding. She wasn't
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: really experienced, and she wrecked her bike on the first
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: corner where the right at the top of the hill
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: where you're standing down where the traditionary stands up there
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: and bless the ship. And Ramy said, okay, Randy, he
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: wanted me. He wanted me to stay help him load
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: the bikes because he's in a wheelchair. And so I
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: went to load the bike and the key was not
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: there to unlock the ramp. So he says, Randy, you
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: got to go to the bottom. And so my first
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: trip to the bottom of Copper Cannon was alone, and
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: he sat, I'll give you one piece of advice. Stay
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: out of the inside of the corners because the trucks
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: tear them up so bad. And I got to the
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: bottom and I talked to Scott, the assistant ride leader,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: and he said, well, I'm taking these people into balt piteus.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: He said, you're gonna have to ride that key back
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: up there. And it was not eighty on the rim,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: and it was probably one hundred and ten in the bottom.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: And I got back up and Ramy. I loaded the
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: bike and Ramy said, I'll follow you down and I
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: said no, no, just go. I said, you know, I'm
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: going to wait here about ten minutes and drink some water.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I think I drank three quarts of water because I
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: was just dying. And Raymi left and I was laying
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: against the cliff on the left side, and then there's
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: that area, there's that little shrine up there, and all
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: of a sudden I see movement and shadows and there's
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: a shaman up there blessing me, and he's blessing me
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: and then he goes like this was he Tarahumarini? Yeah,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: oh incredible, Yeah, and then he holds his hand out
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: and I got my wall and I laid a five
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: and put a rock on top of it.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And he goes well the way.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: But the ride to the bottom was it was quite
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: emotional because I'd lost my business partner two years before
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: and that was one of the places we had agreed
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: it's pretty's ashes at so I did on the bridge
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: that morning and that evening before we got into Baltipedas.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Coming out of Baltipedus. We got back up to Creole
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: two days later and there was a group that was
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: a kind of rebuild because a lot of the people
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: wanted to write pavement back I said, didn't come here
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: to write pavement. So there were six of us that
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: left and we went straight east out of Creole, past
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: the garbage dump, and then over the top of the.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: There was a Were you going to Sarah Cowi or
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: were you going to Divisidera or what we were going.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: To I don't know the name, but eventually we were
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: going to go over the You know, you go out
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: there and you go from seven thousand about nine thousand.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It's forceded right and.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: You're going straight east and then it goes east and
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: then it drops and goes north up to Chihuahua. It
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: was on that section we My famous last words were
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: there's a road there, it says two wheel ride, we
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: can go.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Well we went down and that road was so steep
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: that even a guy in a four to fifty that
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: was a really good rider couldn't make it back up.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: So we were stuck with going forward. And that day
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: you should have been about a six hour day, it
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: turned into thirty four hour day.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you were on the route to Sarah Cowie. Yeah,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: some big big river crossings. Yes, yeah, the bridges washed
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: out the bottom. That was the first thing we realized
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: we're in trouble. But you know, what are you going
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: to do out there? You know, we had you got
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to keep moving. We had two guys get hurt. My
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: friend Kim wrenched his ankle real bad and my friend
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: John tore his knee up real bad. They couldn't ride,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: so the bikes were in the back of the truck.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And then you ended up with someone with a broken
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: shoulder too.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and then I ended up with a dislocated
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: ankle later in the ride.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and explain to me, how was it that you
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: were shifting again after you dislocated that foot, because you
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: said you couldn't feel the foot anymore.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Well, they yeah, I couldn't feel anying from the knee down.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: And they decided since I was the only one at
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the time they had an hid light and we were
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: going to have to ride through the night that I
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: had ride because we're out of riders. We had no
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: place to put bikes. Sure I could physically still ride, well,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I took like seven or eight vicodin to get it
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: to quit throbbing. But they put tie wraps around my
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: leg and they put a loop in the tire rap
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: so I could pick my heel up. And then they
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: tied a shift string from the shifter up to my
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: tank bag so I could shift and down shift. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I remember we got to the top of that big
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: canyon out there. There was that little town out there
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: heading towards Shuahua, about halfway up, and we got to
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: the top of the ridge and the guy that was
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: in front of me, he stopped. It was still daylight,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: and I got the top of the ridge and I said,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: what are you stopping for? And he goes, well, look
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: at this. This is kind of cool. There's like a
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: dirt road that goes up this way and then down
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: here and there's a ramp, and we'll get the hell
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: out of here. This is the Landing Graft Landing Strip.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And you can still it was windy and you could
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: still see the track marks in the roof. So they
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: just built it. I said, if anybody asked you if
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: you saw anything, you didn't see anything, nothing, because it
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: was still really unregulated there.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I remember coming around the corner one time and here's
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: two locals and they have these huge backpacks on their back,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you know, stuffed with weed, and they're both carrying rifles
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and all. I didn't know what to do, so I
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: literally just smiled and waved like a tourist. I didn't
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: know what to do. I just kept driving and I
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: smiled and waved, and he actually gave me just a
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: little curl of a smile as I went by, and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: it was like that was all it. I mean, he
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: gave me a gift, because I would have been terrified,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: are they gonna call ahead or what you know? But
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: he kind of acknowledged me that, like, I mean, you
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: no harm man, I'm on my way. So because they
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: didn't see anything.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Later that evening, we were we were following this old
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: dirt road and it had to go to Chihuahua. And
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: then we came across a river drainage and I was
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: looking at a map and I could see on the
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: topical relief map it went down to Chiuaha and we
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: were on a plateau. And right before we started down
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: that plateau, set of police lights came on off order
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: our right and I stopped and Ramy said, you're in
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: the lead.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Beware.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: He said, if anything feels wrong, don't stop. And so
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: we got to the bottom of the road, we crossed
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: the bridge and this guy that's a cops trying turns
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: to go upstream. Yeah, And I knew Chihuahua was downstream.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: And Ramy said, if we'd went there, then we'd never
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: been found and they would have all our bikes. But
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just funny. Least there was a probability
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: of that. The funny thing was is that I got
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: to the hospital at Chiuaha. I mean I got to
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: the hotel at Chihuaha and they wanted to take me
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: to the hospital. I said, no, I've got a flight
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: out in two days to an orthopedic surgeon that'll help me.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: And so they took my boot off and it had
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: been one hundred and five every day and I hadn't
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: taken a shower for three days. And Kim came in
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: and helped me take my boot off, and that about
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: made me die because.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I got in a shower and then
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I laid down and Kim propped my foot up for me.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: And they came in the next morning they said, are
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: you riding? I said I have to. We don't have
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: anybody else. And it was great because somewhere I have
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: a picture and I'll send it to you someday. I
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: was on crutches, Kim was in a wheelchair, and our
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: other friend was on crutches too. In the hotel. Come
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: adventure and get disabled. They came in and they couldn't
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: get my boot on. My foot was too swollen, so
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: they couldn't find any way to loob my foot up.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: So they went to the kitchen and they got west
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: and oil and they covered my sot completely and to
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: put in my foot and one guy jumped across my chest.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Another guy was holding my legs, and two guys crammed
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: my boot on and that hurts so damn bad. And
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: they just said we'll be back in twenty minutes.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: To get you.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Shut the life off and rode all the way home.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: What an adventure to come out of the gate. You
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: had the bike for a cup months and you went
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: right it. You went right into right into Copper Canyon.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that I wanted to talk
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: about in this podcast, because I think it's it'll be
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: really relevant to a lot of people's desires for travel,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: is you have found a great way of flying in
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and either renting vehicles or motorcycles or buying them in country.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: You purchased a vehicle in Australia, I'd love to talk
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: about how you did that. Well, what was the process,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: how difficult was it, what did the vehicle cost? And
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: then how did you end up at the other end
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: of it did you were you able to at least
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: break even or something close.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: My first rig I bought was in Colombia, but we
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: can go back to that later about FJA forty three
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: down there. But in Australia, I went to rent a
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: rig and when I got there and there were no
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: rigs available, and they tried to give me this most
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: to something for the four World drive car and it
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: had ball tires on it, and my friend Paul said no,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: and so I took it back. They kept my deposit
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: of five thousand dollars. So I was talking to Paul
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: and he said, you know, Randy, he said, let's just
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: find you a good land cruiser and I said okay,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And then I called you and I said what do
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I look for? And he said, for you, I'd look
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: for a seventy six series, bea Diesel seventy six. And
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: we found when they had about fifty thousand miles on it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: I think I paid thirty fifty thousand Australia for about
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: thirty and it was only a couple years old. It
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: never meant it's really fair and it had lockers in
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: it already, So then, like any want to be, I
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: took it to the arb shop and started pointing and picking.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Sure, And it took him about a week to do
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: all the stuff to put the lockers and everything in
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: at force. And at that point I was married. Then
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Paul gave us his wagon ear and we took off
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: and went out the South coast and out towards Adelaide
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: and went to the Great Ocean Road and gorgeous and
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: saw the Twelve Apostles, and then we went up into
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the Grampians and the Flinders. The Flinchers are incredible. The
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Flinders I ended up revisiting three times. Yea, you know,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: I read every trip i'd go over. Did you ever
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: go to the Parinchilla Hotel? Yeah, yeah, it's so great.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Well I went there with my dad, So I just
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: had this incredible memory of that and my dad eating that.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: You could buy this plate of food that had, you know,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: crocodile and kangaroo on it and camel and all this
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: other stuff. So you know, the fren memory.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: The funny story about Australia is is ten years before
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: that happened, I pulled into the Loan Pine Cafe. And
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: that happened in eighteen and eighteen. That happened because ten
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: years before that I had met a name by the
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: man by the name of Paul Raymond and his wife
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Lee Mitchell, and they were at the Loan Pine Cafe.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And I had been writing in Death Valley in one
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: hundred and five hundred ten degree heat all day sure,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and I hadn't felt like heating, so I hadn't eate
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: anything all day. And I pulled into the Loan Pine
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Cafe on the corner there at five minutes to nine,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and the girl says, I'm not serving you. It's too
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: close to closing time. The only other people in there
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: were Paul and Lee, and they were in the back,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: and they were here from Australia. They had went back
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: to Roaring Thunder because Paul was a Vietnam Vet, and
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: they'd rented a Mustang convertible and driven all the way
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: out across the United States. Oh cool, and Paul in
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: the back says f that, Sheila, you come sit with us.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: We haven't ordered. And so we struck up a great friendship.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: And you know, the friendship carried forward notes of stuff
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: and finally pulsitveed, are you ready to come? You know
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: I can't keep I'm not going to live that much longer.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I really want to help you. And it was one
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: of those things of keeping in contact with people and
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: being honest about what you're able to do. Sure, Paul
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: helped me build my rig and I ended up spending
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: seven weeks. The first trip brought it back to Melbourne.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: The second trip, I took my doctor who travels with
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: me on my long distance trips overseas all the time.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: We traveled back up into the Grampians and I remember
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: we were in the art Cola Wilderness. The funny thing
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: is I forgot the first trip. You and I were
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: both in the Arcola Wilderness and we were going to
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: meet and we ended up being about five miles apart.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: That's it. It was crazy.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: You were a day early and I was a day early,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: and my satellite phone wasn't working, and we tried, we tried,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: We made up for it. Last night that's right. But
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: you know, I looked at Mark because I had tried
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: to climb Air's Rock and the oldest item on my
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: bucket list at that time was forty eight years old.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I had a second grade teacher read us a story
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: about the man that climbed Air's Rock to watch sunrise.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And I couldn't climb it. We got blown out every
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: day up there. We couldn't climb. And then so Mark
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: and I were sitting on the Oar Cola Wilderness, sitting
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: there right at that there's a lodge there. It's not
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: much of a lodge, but there's a lodge yep. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Mark looked at me and he said, can we go
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: climb Air's Rock? And I said, well, Mark, it's going
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: to cause us to have about four or five sixteen
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: hour days. And he goes, I'm good with that. He said,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm good with that. And I said, okay,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: let's do it. And so we got there and we
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: were there for three days. And the very last day
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: we were there, we got to the gate at eight o'clock,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: so they let us climb. We got about halfway up
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: and they started yelling us.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: To come down.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: I looked at Mark, so I'm not coming down, I'm going.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: And the problem was is that four years before that
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I crushed both feet really bad and I could hardly walk.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: I was hobbling and I crawled on my hands on
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: my knees most of the way to the top. And
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: I remember getting up there and that was the oldest
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: bucket list item I were had, and at that time
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: it had been on my list for fifty years. Wow,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: and I realized it was time starting to buckles.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And you have and you've the things that you've experienced
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is incredible. Well, let's talk a little bit about that accident.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So you were on your motorcycle, yeah, and you had
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: a pretty horrific accident.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I was October sixteenth to twenty sixteen and sign
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: and Lisa from to Ride the World and then Terry
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Borden from Adventure Trio had always told me, and Ramy
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: had always built in on my head that dreams are
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: just dreams until you set a date. And at that point,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I was riding down to the La Motorcycle Show that
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed going to, and I was going to
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: declare that I'm leaving Christmas Day to ride to the
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: bottom of South America and I was in the hills
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: above Redwood City, California, and I went in. We were
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: in the pastures up there, and these gorgeous pastures, huge
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: pastures overlooking the ocean. And I went around a really
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: hard right hand corner. I could see it was right
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: hand corner. Was the only place at that trees were
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: the corners. And I went around this corner and we
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: were going I was probably going thirty five and it
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: was probably thirty five to forty mile on our corners.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: No big.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I was taking it easy because it was so beautiful,
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: and my bike started to slide, started to come out
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: from underneath me, so normally my instant response was to
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: turn it into it and power up. Well, when I
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: powered up and got back straight, the bike just kept skating. Yeah,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: And it skated me right into about a ten foot
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: high rock wall dirt wall. I don't know really what
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: happened from then. The rider behind me told me that
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: when I impacted the wall, it threw me into the road.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: The bike went up in the air, and the bike
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: came down on both my feet, smashed them bad. It
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: broke the fibulous but it didn't, and my boots probably
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: were all that saved me. I've always been a great
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: believer in good gear. So we got my bike upright.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: I couldn't feel anything from the knees down, and I
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: still remember must have been kind of been a daze
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: because my friend helped me get back on my bike.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: We got it over to the side of the road
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: where it's little berms I can get up on it,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: and he goes, what do you want to do? And
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I said, there's this charboil chicken place about five miles
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: away and I've been tasting that thing all day. I
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: want to go eat eat a Charboro chicken sandwich hair.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: And I remember I pulled in and they helped me
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: off the bike and helped me into the restaurant. And
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: there's probably one hundred people on the patio overlooking the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: ocean watching it's just kind of staring at us. When
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: I was sitting there eating lunch, I couldn't feel my
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: feet anymore. They had to help me up get in
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: the bathroom, and I came out and the people were
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: just a gas because I was getting back on my bike.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: And I remember before I put my helmet, I turned
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: around and said, don't worry, I'm not going to do
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: any wheelies. But that's one of those points I wish
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I had somebody a little bit stronger in my life
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: because I don't remember the last hour getting back to
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Redwood City.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I do not. I don't, So you probably rung your
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: bell a bit too. Yeah, I did.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: And I had a bruise I had at the time.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Climate just came out with the adventure Rally armor, the
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: three D armor, the stuff from Germany, and I had
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: a bruise from here to here through that arm cross
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: your chest. Yeah, it would have broke my sternum and
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: broke every rib you know. I'd had a rib to
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: it A long or hurt for sure from that. But
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: I've never I've never met a person yet that wishes
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: they had less gear on when they got hurt or
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: cheaper gear on when they got hurt.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: That started a process of how many years have you
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: been recovering from?
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: That happened in twenty sixteen. It took me two years
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: to be able to feel my feet again when I walked,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: so I had to look at the ground when I walked,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: and I still ran my logging company. Eventually. The only
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: thing that was really bad was is I would get
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: about forty percent, swelling on a long day twenty five percent.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Normally my feet would swell up, you know, every night.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: And I did know that, and which you know, brings
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: me to I think an important part of the conversation
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: because the last time that I well, the time before
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: last when I saw you, when you came to Prescott, Yeah, Chris, Yeah,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: we were having I think breakfast together, maybe maybe lunch.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I think it was breakfast. You know, I know that
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: you had been working so hard to recover and I
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: could just I could see the pain that you were
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: in and not only the physical pain, but the frustration.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Because you're an adventurer, you're a traveler. You your goal
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: is to check off that those bucket list items as
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: you go around the world. And let's talk a little
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: bit about what we talked about that morning.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: You suggested something that nobody else ever suggested to me,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: and that was fasting.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was worried about you. I mean, I you know,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and we've talked about that, but I feared for you
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: as my friend. Is that that this path that you
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: were on, not only was it not a healthy one,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a long one.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Well that and two and a half years ago and
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I went through my divorce with Denise. That was I
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: went into a dark hole that I didn't know if
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: I was ever going to come out of. When I
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: when I got hurt, one of the doctors suggested to
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: stowstorm replacement therapy and they put me on four hundred milligrams,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: which is a huge dose, but they said we needed
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: to help you heal your feet. So it put about
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: seventy five pounds on me, and probably a third of
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: that was fat or half that was fat, and the
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: rest it was muscle. I've always been big, but I
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: mean I got big and I could never get it
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: to come off.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I mean I'd lose twenty pounds and then they'd come back.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I'd lose twenty pounds, it'd come back, and it was
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: so frustrating because I can't hike, you know, I can't
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: go out, and it's hard to go on physical. Yeah,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: it's hard to be physical when you can't walk, you know.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: I just I still remember our conversation from that morning
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: and having tears in my eyes, telling you, you know
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: that I really didn't see a resolution to this. I
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: didn't see because I'd had all kinds of surgeons try
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: to help me, and you know and tell me, you
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: know we can operate, but there's a seventy percent chance
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: it'll be worse. It could say worse. I'm not gonna
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: be able to walk. And then you suggested that I
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: start fasting, and I didn't really I trust you and
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: I love you, and I know that you were going
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: to give me the best put you could and you did. Yeah,
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell people, look right in the
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: camera and tell you if you haven't tried fasting for
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: joint pain and for inflammation, you got to do it
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: five days fast. It was simple. After the second day,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: I do was some hungry at all.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you handled it really well. And again, I mean,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: just as it's important to note in the podcast, but
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a doctor and I don't play
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: one on the internet. But I had had personally really
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: good success with that. You know, I just noticed my
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: mental clarity and the ability I guess for me. And
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I've told you this, but once you fast, and I've
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: done a ten day fast, once you fast for five, seven,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: ten days, you just realize that you don't actually need
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: as much food as you think you do. It's a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: it's just all a mental game of feeling hungry and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: that you got to satiate yourself. So when I got
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: through a ten day fast and it was just again,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: people need to talk to their doctor. These are things
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that you shouldn't take lightly. But by the time I
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: got done with a ten day fast, I thought that,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: you know, all of this stuff that I tell myself
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: about food, it's just garbage. It's just totally foolishness, because
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: you know, as long as you got some fat on
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: your frame, which I do, and I had even more
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: back then, you're fine. It's just not And of course
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: your doctor's got to tell you you're going to be fine,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: but I was. My doctor said I was going to
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: be fine, and I was, And then it changed my
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: relationship with food. Yeah, and now I'm sixty pounds less
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: than I was, and yeah, thirty forty pounds less than
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I was even a year and a half.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Again, well, I remember when you went through a drastic change,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: and I remember the Scott Brady I meant was heavier,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: a lot heavier, and then all of a sudden, you're
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: you're not swelth, but you're really looking good. Well, thank you,
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: You're welcome that change. It already pre programmed in my mind,
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: so when you talk to me about it, I'm already
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: thinking that. You know, I watched this guy drop forty
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: pounds and keep it off for the last four or
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: five years.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: One of my friends said, you know, the richest manuficult
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: have everything in the world.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: What would you have?
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: And I never guessed his health. And because I've always
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: traken for granted, I've always been a bull. I've always
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: been able to power my way through anything in life,
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: no matter what it was mentally, physically matter. And I
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: watched you and then I was blessed enough to have
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: you come to me and say, I think I might
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: have some help for you. And you did the same
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: thing Bill Quimby did for me with alcoholism. You started
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: me fasting and.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: We touch base every single day. Yeah, so those that
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: are listening, Randy, He'll send me the calories that consumed
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: during the day. You'll give me a waight update a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: couple times a week. And it's super helpful for me too.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: It's helped me stay keeps us accountable. Yeah, it's helped
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: me stay accountable. So just having that friend that you
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: can trust that you can share the things you're struggling
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: with and that you want to be better at. Yeah.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: And it was just such a blessing because the next
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: time that I saw you, you were upright and you
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: were walking with authority that I hadn't seen you walk
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: with in a long time.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: There was a couple of things I noticed. This one
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: is how much time I spent thinking about food.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, And to.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: How much time when I was driving I'd say, oh,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: there's my favorite burrito place. I could go have a
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: steak there I could go.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: And to realize when you told me when I was
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: about three days into this that any hunger you have
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: now is mental because your calorie counts down. You're in katosis,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: you know. And then I remember on the sixth day
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I called you, I said, okay, Scott, what can I eat?
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: And I respect you tell me salary and said you
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: can have whatever the hell you want, just keep it
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: in the Loser app So you know your calories and
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: you know your carbydrates today. And it was simple. It's
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: been simple.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the challenges. It's often just too restrictive. So
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: there is one thing that we have to restrict if
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: we want to lose weight and that's calories, and there
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: is a better way to do it. You can be
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: really paying a lot of attention to your macros, but
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: if you just start off with getting the number down,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: it's amazing how quickly it drops off.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: I've plateaued a couple of times, so I'm down about
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: thirty five and probably be home down forty pounds by
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: the time I get home. And it's the first time
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: since I got hurt where I felt like I had
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: somewhat control of my body and in my life before
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: I felt out of control. And that's not a good
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: place to feel. Now you have a physical you know,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: everything I've ever done, my whole life is extremely physical,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: which is you know, when I got out of the
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps, I was five foot eight, one hundred and
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: sixty pounds. Yeah, and you know, no, I wasn't big,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: wasn't strong, wasn't muscular, and it's just that many years
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: of hard, hard work that built that. But I felt
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: like I'd lost control of it, you know, I was,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: you know, no different than when I got sober. I
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: was having hard issues from cocaine and I was having
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: my guts were coming apart because the alcohol, the deal
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: of carrying the extra weight and feeling like you're out
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: of control is not good on your psyche.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not at all, that makes sense, you know.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: It's it's the selfishness inside of me now when I
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: put on pants or two cents or I'm wearing a
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: double Excel shirt now instead of a triple yep, you know,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: and and that I have. I know that no matter
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: what happens, if I just stay the course, things are
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: going to happen. Just keep making the effort and staying
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the course. Good things happen when you do that.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and have somebody that you could be a partner
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: in it and stay accountable. And we've done that for
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: each other and it's made it It's made a huge
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: difference for me. Yeah too, And it's such it's so
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: great for me to see you healthier and stronger each
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: time we get together. Let's pivot back a little bit
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: towards your travels because I think it's it's it's an
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: interesting one. You've done a bunch of trips down to
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Colombia with our mutual friend Micho and his wife Soda.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Wonderful human beings, the best yep. And they run elephant modicitions. Yeah,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: elephant moto. They run it in Colombia and in Costa
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Rica both, that's right, And yeah, Chris White runs the
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Costa Rica and Costa Rica, which I travel with Chris
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: by motorcyclis in South America too. That's one of the
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: ways that you have explored these really remote areas and
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: not have to ship your bike. You just fly in.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: You get a guy like Micho who's an amazing, amazing
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: ride leader, and then you run a motorcycle and you're
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: off to the races. Yeah.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: I watched Micho, who is a Trophy Team level writer
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: like Draguez, like Bill is, and we were coming out
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: of we can't remember the name of the huge canyon,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Chickamonga Canyon I think it is, and I was chasing
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: guys down the hill and I'm I'm pretty good, but
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not anywhere near their level. And then Bill said, oh,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: we'll make it easier for you, and so him and
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Mitcho pop wheelies and they're riding wheelies for about ten
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: miles all the way up that hill, and I'm still
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: struggling to keep up with them.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're amazing writers for sure. Yeah. The bridge is
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: that I was I was worried about crossing Mitcho was
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: crossing it on a rear wheel. Yeah, amazing.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing is that there, you know, you're
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: there in your twelve hundred, you got all your gear on.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: You're going across these old railroad bridges that are they're sketchy,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: they're sketchy, they're period. You know, they're railroad tracks. So
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: the railroad tracks are about five or six inches apart
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: on the edges, and then some of them are filled
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: with dirt, and some of them are filled and then
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: some of them have nothing. On one of my trips
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: I've ridden in Columbia like seven times now. On one
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: of my trips six or six times, and one of
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: my trips down there, we had a girl that that
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Bill was I was leading and then Bill was said,
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: I need you to ride to her right side because
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: she can't see very well, and I'll ride to her
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: left side because it was getting.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were in jungle like that when she
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: went into the water. Yeah. Yeah. Bill told that whole
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: story on the God it was I wouldn't know you
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: were there.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I was right behind her. I was riding on the
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: right side of front, and she was told, you know,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: don't go stop at the bridge like Bill, or I
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: check it out. And I stopped. She shot across a
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: bridge like a rocket, and I was right there with Bill,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: and he went in. Luckily, my friend Mark Hansen was
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: my doctor. He's I used to always give him a
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: nice bonus every year for his doctor work to go
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: with me so you could afford to go on trips
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: with me. And he got her out. But the funny
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: thing was is that it was nothing funny about it.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: There's two things I learned out of that is her
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: bike went off and wedged in a girder, and she
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: went down through a hole like this big round and
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: that was all she could do to fit through that.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: The blessing was is she landed in the only river
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: that was a mud river that we'd crossed all day.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Everything else we'd crossed would been, you know, one hundred
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: and fifty foot high bridges with no guardrails and sketchy.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: And she got ejected down through there, and by the
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: grace of God, there was a little kid on a
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: honda about ten years old coming at her. He saw it.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: He ran over into the passion and ran und meet
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the bridge and found her. Because Bill, it was pitch black.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Bill had ran over the end of the bridge to
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: the side she went off on, went to step off
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: and went off about a fifteen foot cliff and he
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: was grabbing limbs and brush and little kids screaming. I
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: found her. I found her, but she was face down
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: in the water with her advisor shut, completely full of water.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: And they brought her back up and I mean she
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: had contusions on her arms that were like this. I mean,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: it was horrible. I thought, sure she had broken everything
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: and she hadn't.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: What a miracle.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: But Mark got her there and got her head up
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: so because he was thinking she was going to going
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: to start having either a stroke or going into shock.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: I remember this, the somberness that night in the hotel
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: that we stayed.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: At when you know someone was that close.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody's even talking to each other. Everybody's walking around
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: the hotel normally we were jolly and laughing and giving
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: each other a hard time about the day.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: You know, I've had three amazing adventures of Bill down
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: there and Micho and saw her just two of the
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: best best human being. Jilman, I'm sitting here looking at
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: your picture with him, with the point.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, those are the photos right behind us.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And then you you recently did a big trip to Africa,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about where you traveled there
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and what was the highlights for you.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Twenty twenty one, Gary and Debbie who had stayed at
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: my ranch in ben with me. They're from Kenya. Gary
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: called me and he said, hey, I know you can't
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: go back to Australia because I had three three eight
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: week trips over there. And so in twenty twenty one
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Gary called me. He said, Hey, we're going to take
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: our overland truck and they're simply overland. If you love
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: beautiful pictures. Debbie takes some of the most beautiful pictures
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: you'll ever see and does some beautiful writing and they
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: travel all the time simply overland. There on Instagram. He said, Hey,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: when you come over, we'll rent your lankruser. We'll find
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: your lankeras your rent and I went and rented one
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: from I can't remember the name of the company, New
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Bushlow or one of those, yea, it was Bushlore and
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I rented a brand new, brand new pickup and with
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: a rooftop ten right on brand new, so fun five
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: hundred miles on it.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: That's great break it in.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Remember when I opened the hood up and it was
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: a six cylinder giesel and there was a fuel line
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: on this side and a shut off line on a
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: wire on this side.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: I could have stood, they're as simple as they get.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: They don't even have a turbo. No, they're as simple
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: as they They're just.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: As cirple as they get. And so we left Johannesburg
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: and we went straight to Botswana because our we had
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: to go fast because they were still having COVID testing
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: and we had to get across Botswan and into Botswana the.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Next two days. Oh gotcha.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: So we got into Botswana and then we kind of
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: slowed down a little bit and then we went into
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: the Chobe River.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Incredible, so beautiful there.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: I remember Gary's got pictures of me that he sent me,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: and I have some pictures to the first two elephants
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: I ever saw were along the highway and they'd taken
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: a lid off the box of a pipeline and they
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: were drinking out of them, you know, and I was
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: just you know, and they're so huge. And here I
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: am a week later and we're in the upper end
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: of the Choby and the Marini and I'm driving through
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: a herd of five hundred of them. Yeah, and Debbie
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: has some phenomenal pictures of me driving in the Lancers
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: and all the elephants around.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Us, you know, unbelievable.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: We went out to Koboo Island on the big lake
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: out there. Yeah, and that was my first encounter with
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: hyenas they took my iced tea bottle, rug it off
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: and ate it. So a couple nights later we were
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: at the Third Bridge and Choby, which is the real Mound,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: which is just a real deal, breath taking, and we
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: were will camping there and I was sitting by the
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: fire of the first night and Gary and Debbie were
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: on the other side of the fire in their big
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Overland truck and I was sitting leaning up against my
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: truck in a chair with my head lamp on, reading
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I see movement to the
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: left and I look over and it's a big cat
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: and he walks right between me and the fire and
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: he got just on the edge of camp and I said, Gary.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Gary came out and said, what I said, A big
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: cat just walked through. You got your torch and I said, yeah,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: I needs checking the footprints. He goes, oh, looks kind
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: of like a leopard and he walks out in the brush,
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: in the brush with a flashlight. Oh yeah, there is
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: about twenty feet away from me.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Geez. I hadn't heard that story. Boy.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: So that night they thought it would be funny. They
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: took and put all the garbage up on the top
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: of my roof rack next to my tent on the
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: anchorser'clock in the morning, I feel a truck shake and
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: then something comes over and lays against my tent, on me,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: and it's eating the garbagees, chomping on the plastic bottles.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: It was a brown hyaena. Oh geez, and those things
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: are just they're huge. They're huge, and he's leaning on
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: me and I'm afraid to move. Of course, God, I'll
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: pee my pants if I have to. I'm not going
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: to move. And so you know, about twenty minutes later,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: he gets off on the ground and he's down there
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: chewing a bottle and Gary comes out to take a
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: pee and he looks at me and he goes, what's up,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: And I said, and he goes. He comes out of
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: there and his underwearing shoes on, screaming at this hyena
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to get the hell out of here. So the next
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: night we.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Put the yeah South Africans or another there, they're their
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: own breed. Yeah.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: And the next night we put the garbage on top
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: of their truck. But that damn same hyena came in
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: and he stole our plastic washtub. And we've got video
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: pictures of him on the game trail cameras that night.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: But on third bridge out of Mound, north of Mound
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: there we ran into the hippos. Yeah, a lot of
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: hippos on the river there. They are huge and they're
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: you know, you don't f with the hippos.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: That's the number.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: When Gary pulled me aside and he looked me in
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: the eyes and he said, you do not mess with
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: the hippos. Don't tease them, don't even go near them.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they kill more tourists than any of the other
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: animals there in Africa.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: But they you know, if anybody other than a bisquito,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: we went to them.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: The thing I wanted to tell you was, is that
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: one of the goals on this trip. When Gary asked me,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: he said, I want to go to the skeleton coast
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: in Namibia and the Nabib Desert. And he said why
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: and I said, because the first overland journal article I
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: ever read when I found an overland journal magazine somewhere,
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: was about your trip coming down the Skeleton Coast. Oh.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was Bruce Dorn that wrote that. You
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: just saw Bruce again.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw Bruce. I didn't know that that Bruce
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: had written that he wrote that story, but I remember
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: your pictures in the shipwrecks and I thought, God, I've
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: got to go to that place.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: He's incredible.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: So we went there. We kind of bypassed the dunes
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: in the south and we went there, stayed two or
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: three days, and then Gary took me into the Nabib
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Desert and we didn't see another human being for four days.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: We didn't see tire tracks. We saw one animal close
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: to the coast, and the rest of the time it
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: was just nothingness. And when they say it's the oldest
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: assert in the world, I kind of leaving because all
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: the rocks are there's nothing sharp, everything's rounded off. But
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: you know, to move forward. We went up to the
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Kaprev Strip up on the northern end of Namibia. Gary said,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: do you want to go? How would you like to
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: go whitewater rapt in an Angola? And I looked at him,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: when sure, I'm game, Gary was. I came back that
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: night and I said, how do we do? And you said, well,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: you have your hands in your feet. So it was
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: a pretty good trip. But then we went out the
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Kabrev Strip and we stayed you know, all along the
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: k Preview Strip and then into Zimbabwe and then yeah, yeah,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: I ended up my trip at Victoria Falls and then
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: I flew out of Victoria Falls to come home.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Incredible. Yeah, I was so. I was so glad you
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: were able to have that experience. You know. One of
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the things that I love to ask in the podcast,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: and it's totally a selfish personal question, but let's talk
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: about some of your favorite books. Okay, you've read.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: In my youth. Huck Finn was read to me by
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: my second grade teacher. And I had just moved out
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: to a d our farm and I had seven eight
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: hundred acres of timber that was unexplored. It was old growth,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: big creeks that went all the way down the w
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Lammte River to miles away, and I spent every day
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: out there. I started my first business, crawdad fishing, and
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I sold crawdads to a guy that drove up and
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: down the road. The other book that really touched me
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: on a level I wasn't well, I didn't expect anything
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: at nine years old to read was the school teacher
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: read us Huck Finn. And being a child growing up
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: in Oregon, not in a big city, you don't have
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: any race differences in races, everybody's the same. And to
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: read Huck Finn and to learn about humanity, a little
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: bit about humanity. It stayed with me the rest of
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: my life. And then in later life, then she read
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: us that book, Where the Red Fern Grows, And that
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: book taught me to be a gentle soul, to people
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: into animals. That taught me what love is. You know,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: that book really is a story about love more than
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: anything else. Wilson Rawltz and Where the Red Fern Grows.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: It was written in the thirties, I think, and it's
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: still a mustery today for young people. When I bought
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: my first twelve hundred BMW, I was the day I
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: bought it, they said you might want to come back.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: Madeline and Scott Russell from Western Oregon BMW and I
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: said why. They said, there's a guy that's going to
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: talk here tonight. I said about what, and it would
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: just come and it was Ted Simon's Yeah, And of
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: course I bought Jupiter Travel that night. That fired my.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Messina incredible book, Yeah, incredible.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: And then my bike came in three weeks later because
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: we're going to have to order it from Europe because
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I wanted some special stuff on it. And my bike
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: came in and they called me and one my pastor
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: sent me a picture of him sitting on my brand
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: new bike. Man that did put me on TJ Man
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: that put me on his bike? Yay? Yeah?
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Did he bring your bike back after three days?
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: He just sent me pictures. But that night there was
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: a couple there that talked named Simon and Lisa thomas
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Is from the Round to Ride the World and listening
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: to them talk about their adventure. At that time it
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: had been about eight years they'd been writing, but for
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: the to listen to them talk about their adventures they'd
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: been on. And then at the end of it, I
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: asked Simon, I said, so, how much does it cost?
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: He said, well, you can budget for about thirty dollars
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: a day if you want to stay in hotels, about
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: fifty dollars a day. And instantly I'm doing the math
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: saying I got enough in retirement right now, I can
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: just leave. And then, you know, a week two weeks
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: later after that, I went to Copper Canyon. So it
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: kind of those books. You gave me a book about
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: five years ago, was mad, bad and dangerous to know.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he ran all fines book. Incredible, Yeah, incredible book.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: It is an incredible book. Talk about a life well lived.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: That guy. Believable.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then One Man Caravan Another, which I think
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: is one of the top two or three motorcycle books
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: ever written. If you haven't read that book, read it.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: And it was so early in motorcycle travel, it's just
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: incredible that they got any place at all.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: He goes all the way across modern day. I ran
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: in Africa, I mean metare day. I ran in Egypt
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: with nothing but British expeditionary forces.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Maps just at their dots, that's right.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: And he tells the story in the book about getting
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: into villages and they say, well, does the road go
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: into the next valley? Yeah, but don't go there because
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: people don't come back. Well, you know anybody just went there. No,
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: but don't go there because you won't come back. And
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: it was pretty crazy. But the book that you gave
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: me at Christmas time to listen to on the way
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: home and introduced me to audiobooks. I never knew what
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: an audiobook really was, never listened to them at all.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: I tend to be kind of old school about stuff,
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: and the Comfort Crisis, Yeah, it changed how I looked
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: up my relationship with my body and how I looked
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: at my diet and how I looked at my body.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't a book of know it alls preaching
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: to you. The Comfort Crisis is fifteen hours long and
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: it took me twenty four hours to listen to it
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: because I kept replaying it. Did they just say that, yeah,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: you know, I've never heard anybody say this kind of
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: stuff before. And it all makes sense, you know, about
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: why we go into katosis when we were a hunter
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: gatherers and we would run out of food and we
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: would die, But then your body would go into katosis
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: because you were gording everything you could get because you
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: didn't know when you're gonna eat again. And their studies
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: that they did with the you know, I never heard
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: of it before. Anthropologist nutritionists going back and studying ancient
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: tribes and ancient people, you know, and ancient cultures to.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: See how long they would walk and run in a day. Yeah,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you know, they'd walk twenty twenty five miles a day. Yeah,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: it's like incredible.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: It's like when Sterling Norlin did the book, the movie
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: on the people of Copper Canyon.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: The Yes, it runs a really good one. That's a
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: good one. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great book, Comfort Crisis.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I've recommended it to many of my friends because it's
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: a pretty powerful reed.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: It was life changing for me, And between that and fasting,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: everything started to make sense that I don't have to
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: play the cards I'm dealt. I can redeal. Yeah, sure
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: they have and I have and thank you. When I
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: was in the leadership school about fifteen years ago, I
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: had it's been eighteen years now, but it was something
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: pretty traumatic. Have I lost my wife to a drug overdose.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: She'd been sober when we got married, about four years.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: I had about ten years and she got overdose, fright
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: her brain.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Her parents are very wealthy. They kept her alive. She
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: just died. Her a couple of years ago, but she
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: was vegetable and I had to get some help. Ten
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: years later, I still wouldn't le anybody get even close
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: to me and I you know, you and I have
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: talked about it a lot about getting help. You know,
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: don't be afraid to get help. You only got one chance,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: You only got one life. And every day you spend
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: either struggling or not living life to the fullest is
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: one more day you're never going to get back.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we don't know how many of them we have,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: no so it every day might be the last.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: I've always told people I wish I knew when I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: was going to die, because I know if I could
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: quit working now and just go spend the rest of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: my life, I maybe could have did that ten years ago.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: But you know, to live each day to the fullest
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: and now through your help and also through you know,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: getting the help I needed. It took three years of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: tough work to be able to do that, To be
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: able to well love myself basically is what came down to.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to start with that. Because I could.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Always see everything that was wrong with me. I could
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: never see anything right with me, and that's just stuff.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: That's born in our head from our childhood, that we're
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: told we're nobody, and that's what we believe.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's been a hell of a journey. And I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: had a ranch down here that I was starting to build,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: and I showed it to you about three years ago,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: four years ago, and then I went through a divorce
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: and decided it was better if I sold it. I
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: have a beautiful cattle ranch out of Bend, Oregon, and
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: I know you've been to it, and it's heaven. Yeah,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: a beautiful place, and I wish you know, I come
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: down here and I just think to myself, this is
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: where you belong.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Haha. You know There's ben is an incredible place, Prescott's
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: an incredible place, and and home is really where we
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: make it as travelers. And you've been able to do that,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: You've been able to see the world. It's just been
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: an incredible thing for me to watch you progress as
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: a traveler. And it's just I think that this conversation
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: is so important, and I'm so grateful Randy that you've
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: been so open with our audience and you have been
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: with me for many years. Is that we all struggle.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I lost my mom last year and I needed to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: go to therapy because it was so it was such
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: a heart breaking, heart ripping out of your chest kind
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: of experience.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: I remember having those daily conversations with you for a
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: better part of two or three months.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Right, It's you know, there's just we don't we can't
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: prepare ourselves for those things, but we do need help
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to get through them. There's no such thing as that
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you're strong enough. None of us are strong enough. We
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: all have heartache, and we all have things that we
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: need help with. And I'm just so proud of you
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: for the things in your life that you've done to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: take care of yourself and to learn to love yourself
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: and to get the help that you needed. And that's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: really why I wanted to have you on today, is
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: to remind all of our audience that we do need
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: that and that adventure can be such a motivator for
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: life too, and it can fill us with so much
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: joy and love and connection and friendships that we would
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: have never imagined having.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: And confidence in ourselves.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: That's right, and we can continue to have those experiences
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: and to gain confidence in ourselves. Randy, Let's let's talk
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: again about how people because we're getting close to time here.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about how people get a hold of you
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: or follow you on Instagram can see more of your adventures.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: I'm PVT Mule Private Mule on Instagram game from the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: Marine Corps.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: And I think you're also on I think Facebook and
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: some other wa I got kicked off Facebook security risk.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: That's probably a good that I'm not on there very often.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram only.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's how people can follow you.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and my phone number. I'm not afraid to give
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: it out. I give it up to a lot of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: people that are in recovery and need help. And it's
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: five O three seven eight zero three eight two eight.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: And you know, most people that call me say do
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: I have a problem, And there's one simple thing I
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: always tell them. Just don't drink for thirty days. Just
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: don't smoke dope for thirty days, don't use drugs for
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: thirty days. If you can't do it, you maybe ought
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: to get some help. But I'm never here to tell
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: anybody that you're this or you're that. That's not my
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: place in life. They've got to come to it on
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: their own. Well, they've had people tell them for a
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: long time, maybe to come to it on their own.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: We tend to beat ourselves up so bad that we
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: start to look at ourselves like other people think we are,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: and then that sets our destiny and that's who we become. Yeah,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: what your actions is because they become your habits. Whatt
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: your habits, because they become your destiny. And you know,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: we don't. It's not one bad turn or one bad
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: episode that gets us where we're going in life. But
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: like with abuse, and you know, the thing is is
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: I've learned about abuse is from doing four Steps and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: alcoholics Anonymous with men. About ninety five percent of men
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: that have alcoholism problems it comes from either physical abuse
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: or sexual abuse. And you can pin it down to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: the day it started. For me, it started at twelve
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: years old. Sure, you don't have to live the story
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: you're living now. You have a chance to start over.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: And that's the beauty of this life. You can pick
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: your own ending. You can't pick your starting, you can't
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: pick your friends. You had to stay with your family.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: But in the second half of our lives, we have
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: a chance to make whatever story we want when we're done. Yeah,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: you know, and the beauty of it is you don't
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: have to know the answers. Beauty of it is just
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: do the right thing every day and keep doing the
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: right thing. You don't have to if you get set
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: back for a day. It's like you've told me, you know,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: I get upset because I wasn't losing you know, half
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: a pound or three cours pound every day. We all
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: reach my toes. Just keep doing the same thing and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: good things will happen.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: And they have and they really have. Yeah. Well, and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: having you on this podcast has been a good thing, Randy,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: And I appreciate your brother.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Very humbled to be asked, because when I look through
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: your list of people, those are all people that are
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: heroes in my life that I look up to. Yeah,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: they're my heroes too. Yeah, And you're lucky this man
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: in the world.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: I am because I get to sit down with them all. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: And Randy, thank you, thank you again.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: And I'm very grateful for the opportunity to.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad we got to get out and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: go camping together. That was That was awesome. We'll have
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: to plan the next one.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: It was awesome chasing me Matt's range over one lane
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: road with frush scrape.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very good. Randy, Well, thank you so much, my friend,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: and thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: you next time.