Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Chris Brinlee on Climbing the Peaks and Navigating the Valleys of Life

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Chris Brinlee on Climbing the Peaks and Navigating the Valleys of Life · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: host Scott Brady, and I'm joined today by Chris Brindley. Now,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Chris and I met just by happenstance when we were
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: both helping a rock climber get to this very remote
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: location in Arizona. He happened to be along providing technical
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: support for the climbing, and I happen to be along
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: as a driver to help support this climber to this
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: very unique spire outside of Sedona. But Chris and I
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: hit it off right off the bat. We had a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: lot in common. We talked about sailing and overlanding and travel.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Chris is one of the most interesting friends that I know.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: He's an extremely accomplished traveler. He's learned a lot about
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: himself during his travel, so we dig deep into that.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We also talk about his time sailing down to Antarctica
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: with Mike Horn. We talk about his scaling solo summits
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of six thousand meter peace Now how he almost died
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: in an avalanche climbing. Chris has been through a lot.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: He's also been through some real tragedies in his life
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: with loss. So for those that are listening that may
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: have some sensitivity around the subject of suicide, and we
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: do talk about that a little bit and that loss
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that Chris has had in his life. If anyone is
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: struggling with thoughts of suicide, please know that there is
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: help out there and we are available to help in
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the ways that we can to so you're never alone.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Scott dot
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a dot Brady on Instagram. I don't have a lot
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: of skills in that area, but I just want you
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to know that there's always someone that you can talk to.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So please enjoy this conversation with Chris Brinley and a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: special thanks to Dometic for their support of this week's podcast.
• 1:49
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  Speaker 1: our most recent Overland Journal Editor's Choice Award. Find out
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: more information at demetic dot com. Chris, thank you so
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: much for being on the podcast with me today. I
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: have been wanting to have this podcast happen since the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: day that we hung out. It was like a totally
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: serendipitous moment. We were both out there helping an influencer
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: get to this rock spire in Arizona. I was the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: driver of the GMC and you were the rock climbing guide,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and before we knew it, we were in it and
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we were finishing each other's sentences. But a lot of
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: shared interests, and I just find your story to be fascinating.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I've learned a lot from you. I think that your
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: travel has changed you in incredible ways, and I think
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: life has changed you in a lot of ways. Based
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: upon your story, and I think people need to hear it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I think people need to know that it's possible to
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: achieve these dreams and to maybe even live a very
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: unconventional life as you have. So let's talk a little
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: bit about recently. You did an article that was titled
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Dissolution of Identity, which I thought it's a really powerful read.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You had taken some time away from social media, and
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: then you codified your thoughts in that article. So talk
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a little bit about what got you to that point
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: that you did such a one to eighty absolut of life. Yeah.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So, I guess to provide a little bit of context.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: When I was twenty six, I quit my advertising art
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: director job in Los Angeles, took off on this grand
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: trip around the world, which I thought was going to
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: be maybe a short sabbatical from work, a little bit
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: of an effort to find myself sure, And then before
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I knew it, I had been going for a decade
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: with little slowing down throughout that entire process.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: And big expeditions, big mountains, yeah, a couple near.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Deaths absolutely, yeah. And the kind of impetus for that
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: on one side, was pursuing this more adventurous life I
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: had never seen a mountain with snow on it until
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I was twenty five years old, and then I I
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: took a mountaineering course on Mount Whitney, and then six
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: months after that, I quit my job and was climbing
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: in the Himalaya on these six thousand meter peaks.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And so that's the only mountain that we have in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: common is with Yeah, that's as high as I got.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I've actually been higher in a car, I believe, but yeah,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: when he was my that was my high the high
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: point of my mountaineering career. That's a great place, that
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: was beautiful, and that was actually what I realized I
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: was going to be the end of my mountain. Neanderthals
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: aren't meant to climb mountain it gets.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But having that experience, I became very drawn to
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: those pursuits in the mountains, and when I was in
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the thick of it, what I was experiencing at the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: time was this profound reshaping of who I was and
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: what I valued. And what those experiences ultimately showed me
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: was how much grit that I had and how much
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: was resilience I was capable of possessing. And ultimately those
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: experiences allowed me to carry about in daily life and
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: be able to just roll with the punches a little
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: bit easier because I had experienced a lot of trauma
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: based around my relationship with my dad when I was
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: growing up, and I think because of that trauma, I
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: had repressed a lot of my emotions and wasn't exactly
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: sure how to navigate feeling as an adult. So more
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: often than not, I just chose to not feel and
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: would instead just do, And in that process of just doing,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: it led me to these wild endeavors as you alluded to.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes more than I am probably proud of, I found
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: myself on the edge of mortality and having to confront
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: that in very serious real ways and evaluate my decision
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: making from those points and going forward. But what I
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: was ultimately experiencing, and I didn't realize this until much
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: later and even just more recently, was that I had
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: repressed all of my emotions. But climbing a mountain or
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: achieving something big outside gave me a sense of achievement
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: that was triggered by a dopamine hit that was essentially
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: a chemical reaction occurring in my brain.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And nature is healing in many ways, absolutely, and also
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: it can heal us fully, but it does heal us
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: in me.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so there were that dichotomy of experiencing this
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: healing aspect but then simultaneously having these experiences that allowed
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: me to feel something beyond the emotion repression that I
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: was unknowingly producing in my life interesting, and that steered
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: so much of my motivation, and I dedicated my time
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and money and energy into those pursuits, and ultimately what
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: they taught me about myself was you are tough, You're resilient,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: you're durable, you can handle a lot. But they weren't
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: actually allowing me to dress the inner causes of why
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  Speaker 2: I was going out there in the.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: First place, Why you were pushing.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Why I was pushing so hard?
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  Speaker 1: And was there a moment that you came to that
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: realization that you realize it, like, I'm really running hard
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: away from something.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely And so when I quit my in August twenty fourteen,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: actually on the twenty first, so just a couple of
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: days ago as my continued anniversary Wow.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Life, Yeah, Jap exactly.
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  Speaker 2: But I ran to literally the edges of the Earth, Antarctica,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Eastern Greenland, these great heights in the Himalaya, all in
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: an effort to try and discover myself, but ultimately what
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I needed to find lived within me all that time,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: it had just been repressed. And on Halloween twenty seventeen,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: my dad died by suicide and I was climbing a
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: mountain at the time. I felt this gut wrenching, like
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a wraith reached through my abdomen and twisted up my guts.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I felt this visceral feeling on this mountain and I
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: just wrote it off, not really having any context or
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: understanding of what was happening. It wasn't altitude sickness. I
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: was well acclimatized. It wasn't anything related to fatigue or
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: food poisoning. It was this very visceral experience. And I
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: found out two days later by satellite text that my
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: dad had died, and the timing corresponded exactly with that
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: feeling based on the time zones around the world. Lit right, yeah, exactly.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Just tore the fabric of my being an instance. And
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: because of the inherent link between my dad and me,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I took his name or I was given his name
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: at birth. If not for the twenty five years separating us,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: we could have been identical twins. We had so many similarities,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: and I looked at all of his traumas and his
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: struggles in the ways that he had not addressed that
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: and how they made his life so much more difficult,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: and I almost took the opposite approach in so many
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: ways to carve out my own identity separate from him.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: But what I didn't realize was that, in an effort
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: to produce some degree of normalcy in my life because
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: of the trauma from that relationship with him, I had
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: suppressed so much of what I felt from a child
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: all the way through adulthood. And when he died, all
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, I was forced to confront that identity
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: and that link between us and begin to confront that
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: trauma and begin to create some degree of separation. And
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: for the first two years after his passing, I was
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: so scared to even confront the grief for fear of
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: where that might lead me because of that interlinking between us.
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  Speaker 2: And only when I humbled myself before that and found
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: that rock bottom and accepted that if I were going
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  Speaker 2: to have true depth in my life, which I find
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: is defined by the connections that we share with people,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: if I were able to build those in the ways
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that I knew were important and that I wanted to
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: experience that richness. I had to address what was happening
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: inside so that I could show up and be vulnerable
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: and communicate and create these deep connections that can only
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: happen when you're willing to dive into these uncomfortable emotional
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: depths of topic and conversation. But to do that, I
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: had to look inside first. And once I began that
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: process of healing, only then was I truly able to
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: begin to discover what I had been searching for all
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of those years around the world. But just like in
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: the Alchemist, that treasure lived within me the whole time.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of people have mentioned that book
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, And I know in my own life,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I've spent so many years striving, and I think it
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was I wonderful, loving parents, and it was never certainly
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: high expectations, but never never that I felt was unreasonable.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: But I think I took that torch myself, and I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: set myself up for unreasonable expectations. And then you end
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: up working seven days a week. Do you find that
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: because knowing you as a friend from the very first
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: moment that we started spending time together. I did feel
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that genuine connection, that you were making an effort to
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: know me, that you were making an effort to learn
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: about my life and to share your life with me.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I could see that you had really been You had
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: learned a lot about what it meant to have a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: friend or to have a connection in your life. And
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I see that you do that with so many different people,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: So that in and of itself is very powerful. But
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: did you find at the same time that you were
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: able to connect with those parts of yourself? Have you
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: been able to find that way to be that friend
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: for yourself too?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Absolutely? And so much of that was rooted in me
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: facing up and owning who I was and understanding where
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: that trauma came from. And my dad was a very loving,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: caring person, and he like my siblings and I were
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: like his whole world, and he dedicated his life to
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: just raising us the best that he could. But he
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: had never taken this responsibility for dealing with his own traumas,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: and so that crept into every aspect of his life
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: and characterized all of his relationships. And from the time
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I was a kid, from five to thirteen, I just
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: thought he was gonna see. He was never round because
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: of work, and I think that was a way for
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: him to avoid dealing with his relationship with our mom
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: at home. And then from that point, from thirteen to
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: eighteen or nineteen, once my parents got divorced, he was
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: dealing with alcoholism and kept getting dys and wrecking his
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: vehicles and just being really destructive through his behaviors. And
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: then after that I was waiting for him to die
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: by suicide. From that point, from eighteen until I was
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: twenty nine when it finally happened, my whole life I
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: was waiting, holding breath for him to leave, just holding
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: my breath, and once he finally did, I was able
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to release that breath and start to better understand him
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: and appreciate the struggles that he went through, but then
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: also see how that characterized my own life, and in
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: doing so be more graceful with myself and better understand
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: why I had felt this need to run to the
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: ends of the earth, and in doing so and embracing
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: that process, embracing that grief, embracing everything that was imparted
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: onto me, and simultaneously all the ways that I had
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: carved out my own identity despite what I experienced with
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: him sure was ultimately this characterization of who I wanted
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: to be. And as I've continued this journey, I've been
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: very intentional about growing into that person that I am
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: proud of for me because of me.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: But your friends are proud of you too, man, And
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: it was interesting when I read that article. I could
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: see that it was this moment when you were trying
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to peel away those layers of yourself. But I can
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: see in the things that you've talked about recently is
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: that you're still proud of what you've accomplished. But I
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: could see in that moment you were really like, I
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: want to strip away this thing that I worked so
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: hard to and it never made me happy. But there's
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: so much for you to also be proud of. And
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you've learned a lot, And I wonder if it's possible
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to even get to the point that you were at
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: without all of those trials and struggles. Sometimes you got
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to spend time in the wilderness. Absolutely, and we can
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: also be we can look back and we can be
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: proud of the time that we spent in the wilderness.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I think about my own travels, but I just finished
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a huge fifteen year project for myself personally, and at
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the end of it, I allowed myself to be proud
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of the accomplishment, but what I was more grateful for
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was the ways that it had changed me, the ways
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: that it had made me want to spend more time
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: with my family, want to spend more time with my
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: love ones, spend more time with my friends. Because to
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: your point, you start to realize what's more important. It's
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: not like a fancy truck in the middle of nowhere.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: It's the connections that we have along the way.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: So exactly.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a really powerful journey that you've been on.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So I like to think.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Of it as a rite of passage. Yeah, And in
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: our modern, technologically advanced societies, we have very few opportunities
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: to undergo true rights of passage. And what I realized
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: several years down the line, probably around the time that
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: the pandemic started and I was able to step back
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: from what I had been doing and be a little
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: more still, was that entire journey had essentially been a
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: right of passage to truly discover not just who I was,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: but how I fit into the world.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And men, traditionally in cultures all had a right of
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: passage and those no longer exist, and in many places
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: what would have been the right of passage would be
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: entirely illegal to even attempt today. But if you think
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: about the Massai warriors going and killing a lion, or
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the Aboriginal young men that would be sent
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: off into the Australian outback for months at a time
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: without any supplies to survive for themselves, no doubt that
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they came back from that journey more ready to support
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and provide for the community. And I think that unfortunately
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in the modern day, those things aren't as available, or
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: there's parents are terrified that there's something's going to happen
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to their kit. It's understandable, but like it results in
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: maybe too much safety and not enough struggle, which I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: think we have to have some struggle in our life,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: which leads me to the question you went through this
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: process of deciding that you were going to start hunting
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: for your own food and talk a little bit about
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: was that another one of those opportunities to come into
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: touch with nature and with the struggle of that.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think when the pandemic started, I had been
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: focusing all my training on these mountaineering objectives, which at
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: a certain point in my journey as an alchemist, I
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: realized that the return on investment of that time and
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: energy and money was diminishing. There wasn't so much that
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: those experiences were teaching me, which was ultimately why I
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: was going out there in the first place, was to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: learn something about myself.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And for context, you were soloing six thousand meter peaks.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: That's about as real as it gets. Yeah. Those are
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: incredible endeavors, thank you. Yeah, And.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Those were really meaningful, as you said, They showed me
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: so much about who I am, and they were such
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: an integral part of that process, and I am so
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: proud of what I've done and I wouldn't trade any
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: of that for anything. But when the pandemic happened, I
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: realized that I had all these skills that were essentially
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: I had been orienting them to these pursuits of personal growth,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: but at a certain point they just became hedonistic, which
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: is fun and fulfilling, but I was seeking something deeper,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and I realized that they were transferable to backcountry hunting.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: And I grew up in rural western Arkansas but always
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: felt like a social outcast there and in a way
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: to carve out distinction from myself. I had purposefully abstained
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: from that because I was like, Okay, if people aren't
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: going to accept me for who I am, then why
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: should I try and conform to the lifestyle that you have.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: And I think that was a young and naive take,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: but that was.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: We all do that. Yeah, exactly, if you don't accept me,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to accept you. It's totally understanding. I've
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: done that. I don't speak for everybody, but I think
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: most of us have done that. Yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: And as time went on and I found myself in
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: this environment of uncertainty that was predicated on a bunch
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: of wild things happening around the world, I ultimately was like, Okay,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: how can I take what I know about mountain travel
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: and how can I take this fitness that I spend
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of time developing and apply it to something
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: that can generate sustenance and have like true alignment with
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: what it means to be human from the perspective of
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: literally sustaining life.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: And humans have been doing that for a very long
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: time and it's another right of passage exactly.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And in many ways I felt that my elk hunt
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: in the tundra of the San Juan Mountain Range in
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Colorado was the capstone of my right of passage, not
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: just from the perspective of going out and harvesting an
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: animal and being able to feed myself in my community
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: for months off of that harvest, sure, but also from
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: what it allowed me to experience from a perspective of
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: emotional growth, because that was the first time that I
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: had taken a life, and simultaneously I had still been
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: reeling with losing my own dad, and then just before
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: losing my dad, I had a very close confrontation with
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: death in the mountains, and so it was the avalanche
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: in the Canadian Rockies, and so there was this triad
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: of loss that was focused as an epicenter around this hunt,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: and it allowed me to truly feel all of these
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: emotions that were embodied by this experience. And when I
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: was coming down from the mountain after that hunt, with
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the quarters in the cooler, I felt this metamorphosis occur
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: in my soul and the core of my being that
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: I've only experienced on a couple of occasions, And to me,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: that epitomized this journey of personal growth that I experienced,
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: and in so many ways. It brought together all of
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: these verticals that I had been pursuing in the ways
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: that I've been progressing as my development as a human,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: and it brought them into this prism of reflection and
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: that was truly transcend transcendent moment.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would never recommend that someone hunt. It should
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: be very much a personal choice, but it is. And
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: you can spend a lifetime without eating meat too, and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: entire cultures do that, so it's not a I'm not
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: suggesting that this is an answer for a lot of people,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: but for some people it probably is because it's not
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: only something that human beings have done for a very
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: long time. But in my own experience as a hunter,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in talking with other hunters, it does connect us more
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: with what it means to be human. It connects us
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: much more with our responsibilities to the planet, our appreciation
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: for where our food comes from. There are a lot
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of people who don't like hunting but are happy to
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: go to Costco and buy a package full of meat,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and there's no difference they either way. You're just not
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: pulling the trigger. And I think it's the it's the
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: struggle to be at altitude to stock the game to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: be quiet, to not be on your phone, to probably
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: be out of sell coverage entirely, to spend days in
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: usually bad weather because it's typically fall. And then you
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: have to pull the trigger and take a life. And
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: then you have to take that, You have to take
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: a moment, and then you have to go to this animal.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: You have to of course you should, We should all
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: show great gratitude for the fact that it is providing
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: sustenance to us. But then we have to take this
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: animal apart, and we have to bring it back to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: our family or to our community. And if you think
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: about it, that is something that human beings have been
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: doing from well before recorded history. Just it's a cycle
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that we that humans have gone through, and I think
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: it's part of human growth, it's part of the human experience.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So absolutely, yeah, now that would be an interesting one.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit, get more. Talk a little
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: bit about some of the overlanding stuff that you've done.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: So recently you went to Vietnam and you're like, Scott,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get some motorcycles. I'm gonna go rail around
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this country for a while. Talk about how did that go?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Oh man, it was there was a lot of smiles
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: in the photo.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: One of the greatest experiences of my life, not just
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: travel related in the period, and in many ways it
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: was also a bookend. When I quit my job in
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, I found myself in Himalaya climbing mountaineering, and
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: then from there I found myself in Southeast Asia. As
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: it was a pretty easy transition, and riding motorcycles had
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: been a huge part of my life growing up. It
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: was something that my uncle introduced me to and that
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: my dad continued to foster. And so it was this
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: experience that I had had with these two important men
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: in my life from a kid. And then when I
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: was living in La I didn't have a car. I
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: only rode a Triumph Street triple around. Yeah, and so
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: that was very much my life. Sure, And when I
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: left Los Angeles, I gave up on that huge park.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Like the modern Steve McClane.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was something that I really missed. And so
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: when I realized that I could buy a motorcycle for
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: a few hundred bucks in Vietnam, I did it in
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: a heartbeat, and I rode from ho Chimen City down
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: to Canta on the Mekong Delta in the south and
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: then all the way up to Hanoi over the course
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: of a month, and that was probably the full epitomization
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: of that very first round the world trip was wrapped
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: up in that. I think that's where I had the
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: most emotional struggle. It's where I started having my eyes
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: open to the rest of the world in a really
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: big way.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: You went pretty quiet on social media around that time.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I think you were really working through it.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and this very first trip it was, and
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: in many ways it was like a bookend to my
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: start of this journey of personal growth. When I got
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: to Hanoi, I had essentially run out of money out
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: a visa time, I lost my camera, my computer, my
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: hard drives. Oh no, it's whole ordeal. And I bought
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: a ticket and flew back to La after that, but
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: I had missed out on the northern section of the country,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: which is where I had been most excited about going,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: and I had been dreaming and scheming of going back
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: up there to complete that journey to ride to the
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Chinese border ever since then. But after that first Vietnam trip,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I found myself diving headlong and alpinism and dedicating most
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: of my resources into that pursuit because of the kind
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: of personal growth that I thought I was getting out
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: of it. And so when I had come around and
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: started to step away from alpinism a little bit, all
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, it opened up more of my time
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: and my energy to explore other things. And the idea
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: of going back to Vietnam to finish what I had
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: started all those years ago was wrapped up in that
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: trip I took in December.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And so what were some of your lessons learned? Takeaways
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: you Because you're an alpinist, you do pack light by nature.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: How did you prepare for that trip? Because a lot
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of people are interested in, like how do I go
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: to Thailand or Vietnam ran a motorcycle and go right
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: around the country. What were some of the what was
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: some of the gear that you thought really helped with that,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: What was the kind of motorcycle that you picked? What
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: were some of the things that you learned from that journey?
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that simple is better. And in Vietnam,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of the roads are quite small, a lot
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: of them have not yet developed, and so you're going
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to encounter a lot of sections of aspirational highway that
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: is maybe just the construction zone. And so it's very
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: kind of core adventure riding. Maybe there'll be a little
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: bit of single track, depending on how ambitious you are,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit of highway riding, but very windy roads
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: where speed is not really possible. And so I opted
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to rent Honda XR one for that trip. Perfect small
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: light bike, yeah, exactly, and it was the perfect choice
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: for that mission.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And then did you go with a backpack or did
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you have a duffel that you strapped.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: You went with travel backpack from Matador, which kind of
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: had a little bit of a convertible feature. Yeah, able
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: to tuck the straps away. So I traveled over there
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: with just that bag and then a duffle for my
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: moto gear, and I took proper riding boots and pants
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: and helmet and gloves, some of that stuff you can
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: get over there. But I prefer to ride with my
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: own kit and just I'm I really like to emphasize
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the safety aspect when I'm on a motorcycle, and I
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: find that bringing my own kit is a sure way too.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And that's a tough that's a tough environment too, because
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it's there's so much rain, it's so humid and it
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: can be so hot that you really have to have
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: very technical writing gear in order to stay cool. Was
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: there was what kind of a writing gear did you
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: find worked best for you in that environment?
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: So I opted for a little bit of a hybrid style.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I took adventure pants with built in inserts that had
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: decent ventilation, and then for my top I opted for
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: just an under armor type moto like Endured with durable
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: enduabed jersey, and then just a Craghoppers Hardshell rain jacket
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: for the implement kind of inclement weather.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: That's perfect. Yeah, I think a lot of times in
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the heat, you're way better off having modular armor, so
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: that way you can wear lighter clothing on top of
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the armor. Obviously, it's the abrasion resistance that a lot
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of times we're looking for. Sometimes it gets so hot
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: that you're going to die if you don't get some
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: airflow totally, So you got to strike a balance sometimes.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And then with those roads, especially in northern Vietnam, very
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: rarely were we even able to go more than one
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: hundred kilometers an hour because the roads were so windy
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: and so Brasien resistance was a little bit less of
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: a consideration that we're spending too much time on aspect.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And then did you try to camp or did you
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: stay in I know it's so cheap over there, you
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: probably just stayed in the home, stayed in guest house. Yeah,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I was wonderful, and I've heard that the people there
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: are just incredible.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So warm and inviting, you feel like family. We stayed
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: in these guesthouses along the circuit that we did was
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: called the has Young Loop, and so we did that,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: but with some slightly more adventurous variations throughout. But because
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: it is a little bit of a known route, there
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: are designated spots along the way where it's pretty easy
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: to find a guesthouse, and a lot of those logistically
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: ten years ago maybe would have been tougher to find,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: or you'd have to roll into the village and kind
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: of ask around. But most of these people have their
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: places listed on booking dot com now, so it's pretty
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: easy to get a book. But it didn't make the
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: experience any less homey oriented. We'd have family dinners with
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: them every night and all just eat together around table,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: sitting on these.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Little sounds amazing.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: It was truly blissful.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: You enjoyed it. That's awesome, man, And I think you're
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: working on a piece for Overland Journal if it hasn't
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: already gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So well, that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: journey will be in the magazine for those that are listening,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: so you can see Chris's trip through there. Let's pivot
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit towards how we maintain our physical fitness
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: while we're traveling. That's something that you're like my dose
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: of inspiration because usually you're smiling at the camera talking
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: about your day while you're running, which I can do
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: one of the three of those, and maybe I could
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: smile and look at the camera. You could get too
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: maybe I could get too down. It would be yeah,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: it would be impossible for me to do all three.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: But it looks like that you have found a way
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: to make physical fitness a part of every day of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: your life. And I know that many people on this podcast,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: we've had many questions and inquiries around maintaining health and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: strength while we're traveling. So talk a little bit about
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: your fitness routine. What are some of your go tos?
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: How did you get into that consistency, What are some
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: recommendations that you would have for people who want to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: stay more fit for travel.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think it's important to note that I have
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: a background as a high school and then collegiate athlete,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: and when I graduated, I pretty much stopped all of
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: that training that I've been doing for most of my youth.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Just I was still somewhat active, and I did different activities.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I rode my bicycle to work, got into some
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: extracurricular sports in the city. But I pretty much stopped
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: training with regularity in my early twenties. And when I
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: transitioned from my desk job into this more adventurous career
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: pursuing mountaineering and storytelling around that I did not pick
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: up any of those same training habits that I maintained
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: when I was younger. I was just doing stuff off
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: the couch. And I got to this point to where
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: my objectives were getting bigger and more committing. And I
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: got to this point where as you alluded to earlier,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I was on this expedition and had triggered an avalanche
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: and nearly lost my life. And after that experience, I realized, Oh,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the things I'm doing out here are really serious. If
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be like pushing this envelope for myself,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I need to treat it like I'm an athlete. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: so that was a wake up call, and the following year,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: I hired a coach that smart train me specifically for alpinism,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: so that I could make sure that at least I
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: could take that variable out of the equation. If I
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: knew that I was prepared physically for these endeavors, then
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: hopefully everything else could go a little bit smoother.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: What are some of the foundational movements within that routine?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: So those movements I've continued on from that point that
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I was twenty eighteen when I first hired the coach,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and I have maintained that same type of training ever
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: since then. And it's very much aerobic oriented, but still
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: incorporating strength training in.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: That to c and with heavy gear.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got to be able to haul heavy gear.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: And the same thing applies for backcountry hunting. It's very
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: physiologically similar. You're going far distances at a pretty slow
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: pace and you're having a haul gear. And so what
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: that looks like from a practical standpoint is I will
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: run about four days a week, and I'll do strength
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: training two days a week and then I'll have a
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: rest day almost every week, and the mix of that,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: it's mostly aerobic endurance.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: To your zone two, zone three.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Zone one in two and so it's a long slow.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: I've really learned a lot about that. The fact that
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: you can run in zone two is impressive, that's it,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: but that's you have to be really fit in order
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: to be running and staying in zone two. Yeah, it's hard.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And another thing is it's not walking in zone two, hiking,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and that's fair.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: The more consistently you stay in that zone two and
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: the more time you give it, the higher aerobic capacity
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: you're going to have and your pace is going to
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: be able to increase. I think a lot of issues
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: that people have when they start out running or trying
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: to get into training is that they have this idea
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: that they got to run fast, and so that puts
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: them into zone three or four, and that is not
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: building your aerobic capacity and so Oldultimately, it's not helping
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: you work towards these longer endurance oriented.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: As I understand it, and I'm not a doctor and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I don't play one on the internet, but the more
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that we stay in zone two, the better our mitochondria performs.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: To be able to manage atp and to be able
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: to manage energy, and to be able to be efficient
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: with the calories that we have that we're consuming. So
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: it seems like Zone two just really does give us
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: that long distance performance. Yeah.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And that's the baseline for anything you're going to
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: want to do in the mountains, because if you're going
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: on a hike, if you're going on a hunt, all
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: of that is predicated on being able to just walk
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: for a long time, and.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: That's very human thing to do. Again, if you think
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: about some of the still the hunter gatherer tribes that
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: are present around the world, they can walk with short
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: periods of running, but they can walk for fifteen twenty
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: twenty five miles in a day. And human beings got
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: really good at actually running down their p not with speed,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: but they literally exhausted. Because we can sweat and we
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: can be very efficient over long distances. The way that
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: we can run pretty interesting. That's cool. I've been hearing
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: more and more about Zone two and I'm trying to
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: change my own mindset because I've always focused on strength
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: training because with overlanding, you do have to be strong.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: We have heavy things that we're moving, We're pulling winch cable,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: We're shoveling heavy materials to get unstuck, We're hauling heavy
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: bags on and off of a rack, lifting heavy tires,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: all of those things. So I think strength training is important,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and we strength training also helps us build a bigger motor,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: just helps us to be stronger and more stable. But
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: I'm learning that I really need to get serious about
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: this zone two stuff.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: So I think it's good to have a balance of both.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, that's great feedback. Awesome. One of the things
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to ask about because I just it
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: was just such a fascinating story that I got just
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: a brief bit from you from on was so you
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: somehow ended up on an expedition sailboat with Mike Horn
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: going to Antarctica. Like, how I suspected there were very
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: few seats on that trip? How did you get approached?
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Mike Horn is one of the greatest living explorers, extremely accomplished.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: How did you get on that trip?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really serendipitous. When I got back from
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: my Round the World trip after quitting my job, I
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: got sent to the Go pro Athlete not the go
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: pro Athlete camp. It was the GoPro Mountain Games to
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: go cover the launch of one of their new cameras
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: for a blog that I was writing for. Okay, And
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: while I was there, I ended up meeting Nick Woodman,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: their CEO or founder and kind of the whole marketing team,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: and we all hit it off. And then a few
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: months later they invited me to go to their athlete
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: camp in Alberta to just tag along write a story
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: about it, but also get to experience all of the
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: activities and hang out with crew. And that trip was
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: being co produced by Travel Alberta and they connected me
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: to the tourism board up there, and so Jimmy Chin
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: was doing this photo shoot for Travel Alberta and he's.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Incredible and he's done some writing for us. We've been very,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: very lucky to have his work in the magazine.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. So I got connected to Travel Alberta through
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: GoPro and then onboarded with this trip with Jimmy Chin,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and so we're doing some helicopter hiking and camping up
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: in the mountains there on the British Columbia Alberta border.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: And from that trip, I just got tied in with
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: that whole Travel Alberta crew. And then also Jimmy Chin
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: and Mike Horn have the same management company, this company
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: called Inkwell. And so through that experience where I was
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: embedded as a photographer, I got tied in. And then
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: six months later I get a call from Travel Alberta
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: and they're like, Hey, we've got this guy coming up
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: to do some overland journey and preparation for some trip.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: We'd love to have you come photograph it. And that
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: guy ended up being my corn, and so I got
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: to go to.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Do stuff with the g Wagon for a while. Yeah,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that's what it was. So he's a genuinely accomplished overlander
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: as well, like he seems to dig the long vehicle trips.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the big trip that he had done
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: around that time was driving from Europe over to Pakistan overland,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: which seemed like a pretty wild journey. And so I
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: got to ride around in those same G wagons around Alberta.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: And that trip was a little bit of a soft
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: launch for his Poll to Poll expedition, And while I
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: was there, he invited me to come join him for
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: a segment of that expedition to cover it for a
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: magazine that I was contributing for Red Bulletin, and we
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: talked about different segments that were an option for me
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: to join. He had put Namibia on the radar and
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I was like, that sounds really cool, But when else
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: am I going to get to go to Antarctica on
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: a sailboat?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: And had you done any sailing before?
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I had never sailed. I had never been on a
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: boat other than a day.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Did you get sick? Yeah? Yeah, Like Brian mcvickers, who's
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: on our team, he's currently as we're recording this, he's
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: about two thirds of the way across the Northwest Passage,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: and this guy is like impervious to sea sickness. Like
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: I would watch he'd be sleeping. He was the only
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: guy that was willing to sleep in the v birth
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: and he would be catching air off of these when
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: we're crossing the Pacific, and I'm like, I've got all
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of the dramamine and the wristbands. Yeah, that's it's I
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: love it, but it's tough. It was rough.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: I learned a lot about myself on that mission.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So what was the size of the sailboat?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: It was I think.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Don't quote me on this, it was around thirty meters
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: or thirty five meters long, a big one.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: About a ninety foot boat, so a proper expedition class.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was kind of custom design aluminum hole.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: It was at the time maybe still one of two
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: ice breaking sailboats in the world.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: And yeah, we were the first ones cruising down. We
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: took off from Cape Town and basically you.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Did from Cape Town, South America. Interesting.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: So it was about two and a half weeks to
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: get down to the ice shelf, and then we spent
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: a week on the ice getting Mike prep to take
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: off for his kite skiing journey solo across the continent
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: at its widest point.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: So you guys were around like the I think it's
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: called the Novo Russian base. If you were straight down
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: from Cape Town you probably were, I'm not certain, like
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: the Queen Maudlin Mountains and all that. Probably, Yeah, it was.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: There was nothing around.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, amazing.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And for seven and a half weeks we didn't
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: see another soul, We didn't see any land except for
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: that ice shelf that we were docked on, right, and
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: then once we dropped Mike off, we sailed and continued
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: on to Perth Australia, which was where I debarked.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Now and a half weeks and then did the sailbook
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: continue on to pick him up on the other side. Yeah, oh,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: how sweet that was Ida, I think that's incredible.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Sixty days later, I think he finished his ski trip
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: in fifty seven and a half days, he got picked
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: up on the other side and then continued this north
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: south circumnavigation.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that guy's a rock star. Yeah, but what an
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: incredible experience. I know that for me, sailing across the
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Pacific was one of the most formative and totally unexpected
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: experiences of my life, and in so many positive ways.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Just I was able to read a lot, There was
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: a lot more downtime than I was expecting, lots of
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: time just sitting on watch, listening to an audiobook or reading.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: And there was just short periods of time when we
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: would have connection during the day, so lots of time
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: without my phone. So it was like a huge, like
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: intellectual reset for me in so many positive ways. So
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: what were some of the things that you learned, maybe
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: even from Mike, What were some of your key takeaways
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: from not only being able to spend time with one
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: of the world's greatest living explorers, but also to be sailing,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to be going to Antarctica. What were some of your
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: lessons learned from that one.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I never want to do it again. I like that.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: I like that the honesty is good. Yeah, it was
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: a really tough circumstance. I was not a sailor, and
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: we were in some of the most notoriously dangerous.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: And difficult big time navigating, big time, big time roaring forties,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: all of it.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I a lot of my existence was confined to be
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: inside the cabin from a safety precautionary falling off. They
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: didn't want me falling off because if I fell off,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: by the.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Time they could turn around, done most likely.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: And so for about three weeks I didn't really go
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: outside because we were sailing through these really rough waters.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: And at one point we had this week long storm
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: that we got caught in with sixty knot winds and
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: thirty foot swell and we were just getting tossed around
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like a rag.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Doll in.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: And so I was in the forward most cabin on
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: the top bunk, and there's a little netting with a
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: strain to keep me in place while I was sleeping.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: But these waves of swell was so huge that the
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: bow was coming up three or four meters at a
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: time and just slamming down, And so I literally had
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: to stick my arm underneath the mattress and sleep on
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: my stomach on my arm to try and anchor myself
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: into the bunk to keep from rolling off and breaking
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: my neck while we were doing this. And it was
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: like that every night for a week.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: And then at one point I got used to the
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: boat just listing almost all the way over sure, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: I was sitting in the main cabin area just reading
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: my books as you alluded to. And at one point
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: we had been tipping over a lot, healing, and at
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: one point we had healed over, and this second wave
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: came in and hit the bottom of the boat and
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: pushed us over even further, and the window behind me
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: exploded like that scene from Mission Impossible one where he
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: throws the gum on the fish inke and it floods.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: The whole refat into the street.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So I was sitting there when this window blew out
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: and seawater started flooding in around me, just completely immersing
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: the whole bottom of the boat.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: And that was absolutely terrifying.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Like the based to be filling with water.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly so close getting sucked out to see through this window.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: And then that was close to nighttime and had to
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: do a urgency repair and they had everything on board,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: they and everything to be able to do that. But
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: I'd never been exposed to that. I was in this
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: little cocoon, what I thought with safety inside this cabin,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden I was awoken to
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: how real of an experience it was.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: And they sound sorry, they sound like a really competent
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: crew and they were well prepared.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: And absolutely incredibly competent.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what an experience, man.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was wild.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: And then when your time with Mike, was there any
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: takeaways or little pieces of wisdom that you grab from him?
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: Mike's kind of like a walking motivational poster, and it was.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Like he is that guy.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you can't be around him and not
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: be inspired and just getting He was obviously very busy
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: and preparing physically and mentally and logistically for this expedition,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: but there were definitely a couple nice moments where we
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: got to spend some one on one time together and
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: have some of these conversations, and that was really meaningful.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: I was the last person to walk with him on
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: the ice as he took off for a solo journey. Yeah,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: and getting to just have that off into the sunset.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: What was that conversation, what was the what was some
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: of the last things that you guys talked about before
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: he took off.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Just the follow your path type things that you might expect.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: I think at that point in my journey, it was
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: always uncertain where I would be sleeping the next week. Financially,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: there's so much uncertainty into living a life that is
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: off the beaten path, as that is, and.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Just off the beaten path, yeah, exactly.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: And to get to have that alignment with him and
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: see the ways that he made it work through great
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: personal sacrifice but also sheer determination was just very inspiring
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: for me to trust the journey that I had set
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: myself on and even though it is unique to me
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: in many ways, to just trust in that process. And
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I think it seems.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Like he it seems like he has done a good
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: job of maintaining a high degree of integrity and authenticity
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: in his pursuits. Where he is working with companies, there
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: are corporate sponsors, but he's really aligned with the best
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: of the best, and I think it helps keep you
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: above reproach when you're doing it that way. It seems
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: like he's done a good job of that.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the things he sets out to do are
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: very much his motivations. They're not influenced by these sponsors.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: They come along for the right exactly.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: And in a world you see it in polar travel,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: you see it in Himalayan expeditions right now, where it's
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: become so commercialized and it's just about ticking off these
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: really ambiguous hair splitting records, oftentimes with huge amounts of
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: logistical support in order to make that stuff happen. Is
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: out there. He's got a team that supports where necessary, sure,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: but where he thrives is just going off and charging
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: headlong into the unknown by himself, right, And he does
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: that in a very genuine, authentic way that is so
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: true to the core of his being.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's an inspiration we contrast, and it's the
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: inspiration that we need in the world of like you said,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: influencers splitting hairs like I went up the left flank
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of the shortest mountain in the Himalaya. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I think the guys like that or people like that
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: are the kind of inspiration that we need to wrap
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the conversation up, because we could spend days talking about
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: not only your adventures but the things that you've learned.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: But I think one of the things that it seems
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: like you've had an incredible journey on is also, in
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: addition to physical health, your mental health. What are some
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: things that you can share with the audience when they're
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: in the middle of something really challenging on their travels,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: when they're in the middle of when it feels like
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: life is hitting you from about sixteen different directions. What
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: are some things that you've learned. What are some mantras
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: that you've learned, or some touch points that you have,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: an anchor point that you have that helps you with
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that mental strength when you're traveling as well or expeditions.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: all of you for listening to the Ovalan Dural podcast.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: By listening to this podcast and subscribing to The Ovalan
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own and veteran owned business.
• 54:35
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• 54:39
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• 54:42
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• 54:46
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• 54:49
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• 54:53
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• 54:56
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• 55:00
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• 55:07
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• 55:09
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• 55:15
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• 55:18
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• 55:21
  Speaker 2: I think that resilience is born from being confronted with
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: those challenges and then staying true to your course and
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: your motive. And one thing that I've found that's incredibly
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: important is that it's okay to pivot. So often when
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: we're going out and we have a vision or an
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: idea for what we want to do, and we want
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: it to go a certain way, but oftentimes the reality
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: of these circumstances are dictated by forces that are so
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: completely out of our control, whether it is like immigrations
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: and custom stuff. If you're going country to country, yes,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's plenty of or whether it's weather and
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: conditions in the mountains, these forces are always going to
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: be there to confront us. And earlier in my career,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: I would get so frustrated and discouraged when I'd done
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: all the planning, had done all the training, everything should
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: have been going just right, then it wasn't, and I
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: would just get so frustrated that I couldn't keep charging
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: down this path, and I would beat my head against
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: the wall. And what I learned was that it's far
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: easier and much more healthy to just accept those circumstances
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: for what they are and then make a pivot so
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: that you can.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Continue to flow.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: And when you think about it from the perspective of nature,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: like a river, it's going to take its course. If
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: it runs into a canyon wall, it's not just going
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: to keep hitting that canyon. It's going to find a
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: way to flow around. And I think that's a great
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: metaphor that we can apply to our own lives brutally
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: and be like water. And simultaneously, we're going to be
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: confronted by these challenges and they're going to discourage us.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: And going with that flow does not mean quitting it.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Doesn't mean giving up. There's a reason that we put
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: ourselves out there in these situations, in these environments, and
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: when we're there and when everything is going wrong or
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: shit is hitting the fan, it can be really easy
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: to question our motive why we're there. But I think
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: it's really important to look back at the initial motive
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: and our impetus for going out in the first place,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: and using that as an anchor point, and trusting our
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: own intuition and our own decision making process from a
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: point when we were able to be grounded, and look
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: back on those anchor points as we need to make
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: these course corrections and allow them to just continue to
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: guide our path forward.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense, Chris, I think, if
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing what you're saying, I have found many times
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: in my life that my anchor point has been whatever
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the destination was or whatever the goal was. And it
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: sounds like that what you're suggesting is come back to
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the reason why you left. What did you hope to
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: experience and how did you hope to grow? And I
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: would suspect that it's probably not never more true than
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: for a mountaineer or for an alpinist, because if I
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: understand it, like one of the most important disciplines you
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: can have as an alpinist is to be willing two
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: hundred meters two hundred feet from the summit to turn
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: around and go back. And I have gotten summit fever
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: most of the trips in my life where and I
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: didn't have the same risks that a mountaineer does, but
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I would find myself pushing really hard. Even in Greenland
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: when we were crossing the Greenland ice sheet, we were
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: in really bad conditions and the risks were getting really high,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and I continue I wanted to continue to push, and
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: I had to actually find a way to get some
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: structure around the decision process so that I didn't get
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: us all killed. And it was a big lesson for me.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not only our own life, but the people that
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: are with us are really counting on our ability to
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: make good decisions. So that's a really important framing And
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that, because that is part of
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: the mental journey, is to realize, like, why are you
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: doing this in the first place. Yeah, that's really good advice, Chris.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: What are some of the other things that you would
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: what are some of the biggest takeaways you've had from
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: all of these experiences that you can share with the audience.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Where are you at in your journey? Now, that's a
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: great question.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: What I'm finding as I've been reflecting on this past
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: decade are a stronger understanding of my own values, and
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: I think that's largely rooted in community and the people
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: that kind of characterize and provide the richness of life
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: in those connects. And there are other places that I've
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: traveled to where I've found that those are very ingrained
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: into the culture. For example, in Vietnam, we were having
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: kind of some of these evenings in different cities along
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: the way, and I remember showing up in this one
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: town on a Saturday night and the entire main street
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: had shut down to vehicle traffic, and just the entire
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: town was there moving around and playing, hanging out. There
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: were games or kids running around by the hundreds in
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: little groups two or three, nobody on their smartphone. But
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: the crazy thing was that these kids didn't even have supervision.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: They were just able to be out there in their community,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: playing around, having a good time. There were talent festivals
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: with these groups of grandma's doing dance competitions and just exactly. Yeah,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: like in the square and they were just going through
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: these circuits and it was so enriching to get to
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: be a part of just for an evening, and same
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: thing in Japan rolling into an island on a weekday
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: night and there's some big festival going on where the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: whole community comes together. And I think it's difficult to
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: find that in North America. But I also believe in
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: the inherent value of that, in the cultivation and the
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: creation of that, And so if you have an opportunity
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: to build or strengthen those communities and to find ways
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: to enrich in that, it's so important and it's so meaningful,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: and so just taking those opportunities or taking those initiatives
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: to deepen that is so imperative, Especially when we look
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: at how isolationists our societies have become. We have to
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: take initiative to move beyond that so that we can
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: understand our common ground and realize that we have so
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: much more in common with each other than most people
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: give credit for.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you spend more time on your virtual relationships
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: than you do with your physical relationships, it's probably time
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: to reassess. And I think a lot of people today
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: they can spend hours a day with people that they've
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: never met, and as humans, we're not meant to do that.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: We are meant to spend time physically sitting across from
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: each other, like you and our ir right now, spending
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: time together, helping each other through challenges, encouraging each other,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: learning from each other, being in physical space, eating, celebrating,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: doing hard things together. We're supposed to do that for sure. Now.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: One of the things I've been watching on your social
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: is you've developed and this has been another good inspiration
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: encouragement for me, is you have found a way. You
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: are writing two thousand words a day. Now. You don't
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: need to share what it is that you're writing, but
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: is it fiction or nonfiction?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Is the book that I just completed the draft for
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: based on that structure is a fiction?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Okay? Cool, So watch this space. I can't wait to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: see what that's going to be. But that's awesome that
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: you were Were you pretty much able to pull that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: off where you wrote two thousand words a day?
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that quota actually increased as I became more efficient.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: I had this idea for a novel and I had
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: written an outline back in the autumn and I knew
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: if I was ever going to have any hope of
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: completing it, I had to carve out some time for myself,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: and I had to create a structured discipline and able
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: to be able to reach that goal. And so all
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: the writing I've ever done has been short form for
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: magazines or blogs, social media, things like that. And I
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: knew that I was capable of writing two thousand words
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: a day. I knew that it would be somewhat ambitious
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: but also very doable, and I basically did the math.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: It's okay, this particular genre of novel needs to have
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: eighty to ninety thousand words, and so I broke that down.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: How does that break down into two thousand words a day?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: And then I basically took on my journal and I listed.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: Every single It was awesome.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: And then I told myself, You've got to do this
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: one thing every day. And that was the same kind
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: of structure that I utilize in my training for alpinism
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: to get out of some of these physical ruts. Knowing
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: that I had a big goal, so you don't bite
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: it off all at once. You take a little bite
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: every single day, and over the course of six months,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: you're going to be super fit and ready to tackle
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: the skull. And so it was the same thing for
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: this process of writing a novel, and so I just
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: I told myself, you got to cross it off the list.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: You can't go to sleep until you crossed it off.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I'd be crossing that off at ten thirty pm
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: because I'd got distracted. But as I got a little
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: bit more dialed in my process and a little more focused,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: I'd be crossing it off by noon and have the
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: whole rest of the day to go do the things
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do. And it was an incredible journey
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: and process to be able to commit to that discipline
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: and then stick to it, and so anyway going through
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: a big project, but you know, it.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Was an encouragement. It was an encouragement for me because
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: I've got a book deal going and I was in
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: the right in the middle of it with you. I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: was nowhere near as successful as you were. So there
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: were days that I would had to write six thousand
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: words because I didn't, and that's you're asking a lot
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: of yourself to try to pull that off. I would
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: have been much better off with sticking with around two
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: thousand words to day, but or even if I had
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: just picked a thousand words a day, would have because
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: it was pretty weighty nonfiction, a lot of research and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: stuff that went into it. But that was certainly a
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: big encouragement for me. So I look forward to hearing
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: what the book's going to be, get it out there
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: to the world so people can read that. How do
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: people find out more about what you do? How do
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: they follow you on the social media's and how do
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: they keep up with what you're up to?
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably the easiest, most consistent day to day type
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: thing is going to be my Instagram or my Threads account,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: which are both my name, Chris Brinley Junior. I've also
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: got a sub stack where I periodically will publish a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: little bit more short form type stuff that's more introspective
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: on my own takes on the world and things like that.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: That's a great place to dive in. Yeah, and the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: two that I'm more consistent.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: About, Chris, I'm so grateful for our friendship. I'm so
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: grateful that with you and I always scattered to the winds,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: that we both happen to be in Denver today. I'm
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: here for the Overland Expo, and you're here seeing some
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: family and you're leaving this afternoon to fly to Turkey.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I think really fortunate that we were able to sit
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: down and have this conversation and spend the time together.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: And I'm just really proud of you. I'm proud of
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: everything that you're accomplishing, and I look forward to seeing
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: what you do over the next couple of years, and
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: then maybe we'll get a chance to get back together
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: and talk about the next journeys.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe share one together.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: That's very next. Awesome Chris Well, thank you for being
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, and we thank you all for listening,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you next time.