Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1106: Karlos Bernart - Bike Packing Revisited

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Ep. 1106: Karlos Bernart - Bike Packing Revisited · Adventure Sports Podcast

• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I became fascinated with just kind of connecting those dots with the soap purpose of creating routes for me to prepare to ride the great ride mount on my route, where we actually met them first.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hi friends, thank you for listening to the Adventure Sports podcast today.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is Friday, which means it's a flashback Friday.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to do a revisited episode with Carlos, Bernard, and Mason, and they're talking about bike packing.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're talking about the great divide route slash race.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they're talking about creating bike packing routes all across Florida and just a love for nature and a love for conservation.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I think it's going to be a fantastic episode.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you again for listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And also I want to thank you especially for sharing the Adventure Sports podcast with your friends and loved ones.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: the the show is growing and that's fantastic news that's what we need to keep the show going so thank you in advance and also thank you for what you've already done now here's Mason
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host Mason going into today's episode.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're talking to Carlos Rodriguez Bernard.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot going on here.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to take a couple minutes.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is going to be a little bit longer intro than normal.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: What's going on here is I'm born and raised in Florida.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Florida in the United States for anyone listening outside the US.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I got was getting into mountain biking in college and a lot of my friends and I wanted to do these long bike trips.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of my entire introduction into adventure sports was was bike packing and bike touring.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't a whole lot of that going on here in Florida.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: There was one person, however, who was kind of the go-to person that was building all the routes, creating all the systems, like basically the entire culture of bike packing in the area, revolved around this singular person, like the son of the bike packing solar system, and that was Carlos.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And his name was just permeated through all the conversations we had, Carlos says, Carlos, that, well, I finally got to meet Carlos about ten years ago.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: on the tour divide, the bike race from Banff, Alberta, Canada, all the way to Mexico on the continental divide route.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: What I love about Carlos's story is it wasn't that bike tour that really just tickled his fancy.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was route building and building route, so to train for this crazy adventure, he started building all these routes in Florida, a place that he had grown up in.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what Carlos began to realize is that the middle of Florida basically everywhere away from the coast was so wild and so beautiful and filled with all these natural treasures that he never knew.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of Floridians don't know exist.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people just think it's beaches and Disney World, and that's it.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there is so much more to it.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: So as Carlos began to build these routes, he began to take more people and discover more things.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: and realize it was this amazing, interconnectedness of it all.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And simultaneously, for years, biologists and scientists had also recognized this connectivity of Florida and realized that so many of the unique animals here in Florida that used this peninsula shape of the state to literally migrate up and down in travel, as well as birds that fly up and down.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: and all the water quality issues in Florida and all the animals that also come along with that water all started with this interconnected network of green land when you get away from the coast in Florida you know it's really built up their condos and beaches and you know and towns all right there along the coast but if you get inland it's all rural you know farmland ranch land
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: citrus, green spaces, literally like national parks and state parks, wilderness areas, and those animals in the wild life use all of that land that I just mentioned to travel to migrate.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so developing this thing called the Florida Wildlife corridor is the effort to protect all of that land.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a huge massive swing for the fences type effort that protects eighteen million acres going from the Everglades, which is the southern tip of Florida,
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: all the way up to the Georgia and Alabama line.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is an eight hundred mile stretch of interconnected land that basically creates a super highway for nature to exist and to thrive and to not get isolated in these little pockets of wilderness here and there surrounded by houses and development.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the good news is about half of that land.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ten or so million acres is already protected.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: The bad news is about eight million of it still needs protection.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: What Carlos began to see is that he could ride his bike throughout all this land, see it all, and see how it connected.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he started bringing tons and tons of people on these trips, planning these amazing trips through the corridor, and he realized as he fell more and more in love with this place, he got a lot of other people too as well, including myself in a lot of ways.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: His work is a big part of why I'm even doing what I'm doing today.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what's cool is the organization that has been put in charge to make this thing called the Florida Wildlife corridor known to the world is called live wildly.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Carlos is a live wildly wild Floridian because what we realize is just when you when you just show people something they don't know exists they begin to love it they begin to want to advocate for it.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know about you, but every time I go out in the woods now or go camping, I don't just enjoy it like I used to.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's this sense of I need to do something to help ensure this kind of experience exists forever.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so maybe in my early twenties, it was more like, yeah, just go have fun.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do the coolest thing possible.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: One, it's really enjoyable.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's fulfilling too.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it looks cool, but really now it's it's go out there, experience these places, but but do everything you can when you're not out there to help protect them.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the biggest catalyst to helping other people join you in that fight is getting them out there just to see it.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Carlos is doing that work.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing that work and even if you don't live here this system and this idea still applies to you because if Florida can build a thriving wildlife corridor,
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: any state, any country in the world can.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's my connection to Carlos, that's my connection to the Florida Wildlife corridor and live wildly.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why I'm so passionate about adventure sports and how it intersects with conservation and protecting these places that we go out and have adventures.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: So thank you for indulging me on this very long intro.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And let's go ahead and get in the conversation.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, man.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So something I always got to ask, where's home for you?
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then also where you grew up?
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell us a little bit about that.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Currently, I reside in Delan, Florida, which is a very special place to me.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love this little town.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you've never had the opportunity of visiting Delan, Florida, I highly recommend it.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I call it the unofficial bike packing capital of Florida.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess unofficial because it's not official because Florida bike packing is everywhere, right?
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in a town called Deltona.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I moved to Delton, I came straight from Puerto Rico to Delton.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was seven years old.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: To me, Deltona and Central Florida area is home.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's where I've spent my youth cut my teeth and nearly everything I've ever done in my life was right here in Florida.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely love this state.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I would challenge anyone to be a bigger Florida fan than me, honestly.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The challenge is out there.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Challenge accepted, dude.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: you think you're a bigger floor to fans send it come let me see what you got yeah I love this place oh man I I I love to hear this and for folks that listen most so most are listeners are out west Colorado California Texas a lot of New York too, but you know here in the States in Canada Florida is so underrated I know we could just
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: salivate talking about for the whole time I'm from a similar town like the land it's instead of north of Orlando it's similar just south like direct almost the same distance you know smaller and yeah grew born and raised there
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: old Florida in a lot of ways and probably didn't understand just how cool it was, but you know what, what did you grow up doing?
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know you were big into skateboarding.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Did you at all understand just kind of like in between all the towns and all the pavement and all the skate parks or whatever you're into?
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: All this awesome stuff was happening.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I was kind of just living my life.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I've always been fascinated by moving under your own power.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I find it fascinating to cover distances by my own energy.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess from when I was just a small kid, I just fell in love with
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Living off my board, like I would spend my entire summer just living off my board, but literally eating and sleeping, but spending my entire day, you know, my waking hours out.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then my mom, God bless her heart.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is the sweetest woman in the world was just so comfortable with giving me the freedom to explore my surroundings on foot and on wheels.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of just carried over into my adulthood and just kind of grew and grew.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was always, I guess, fascinated by maps.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I noticed pretty quick on some things that maybe the average person doesn't notice and this will be helpful for them when they do look at maps.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what they do when you're looking at a map is they identify the green spaces.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you look at a map, the areas that are considered public land and coincidentally part of the wildlife corridor are green.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not only that, but if you even look even deeper into the map, they actually name separate areas, just not in the green spaces, but in the neighborhoods, like specifically the neighborhood I live in, to land is called Pine Hills, which is weird.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you look, you'll see these names on the map of every little neighborhood as a name, which is really odd.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I recommend everybody do that, and you'll start kind of like bugging out, looking at how bright, why did they name it this?
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I understand why they name this neighborhood Pine Hills.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just interesting little things I noticed.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I became fascinated with just kind of connecting those dots with the so purpose of creating routes for me to prepare to ride the Great Divide Mountain bike route where we actually met the first time.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: You traded in the skateboard for a bike, when you became an adult, I read that it was lower impact.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of us, a lot of the people that listen to the show have been on the show, they start out maybe a traditional sport, or some of those like, they start off BMX.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a good friend, Ben Myers, that you know, he lives around me and he's a BMX rider and he traded that in for a gravel bike when he got older and now he rides a ton of your routes.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: We talk about you all the time.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So you traded in the skateboard for the bike and you read about this thing called the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Was it the tour divided at that point?
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Was it a race?
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if so, like, what was that your first year?
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: The one that we met, that was twenty thirteen that I did it.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I was my second time up there.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, second time.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, so tell me about finding out about this route because I mean, it's unreal.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was um,
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: might have been outside magazine.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was an article that they had done on John Stamstab when he decided to time trial the route.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I read and what I think what fascinated me about the route was that it seemed completely crazy.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna ride twenty seven hundred miles self-supported.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seemed absolutely insane like normal people don't do that stuff, right?
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's what fascinated me by it was the fact that it felt like such an insurmountable challenge was what drew me to it.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, being a person who just fell in love with seeing the world, you know, be a human power, this majestic, big, route covered by my, by my own power and my own devices just fascinated me.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I, but I realized that in order to complete this route, I had to understand the fine art of bike packing.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because I live in Florida, I believe that the only way I could prepare was by, you know, creating these opportunities for me to train at the process.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I started bike packing in Florida as a necessity to prepare to ride the great Dubai mountain bike route.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: My route was trained for an Iron Man.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: which part of it was applicable, part of it wasn't I wish I would have done more actual bike packing.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: But my background was bike touring on pavement.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that was like, I thought that would be pretty transferable and then mountain biking with Jordan.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And all that did help, but you, you found almost this new passion.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So as you prepared for the tour divide, the great divide mountain bike route that takes place pretty much, I think it was the first or second Friday of June, every year or Saturday of June, every year.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: You ride from BAMF to Mexico, BAMF Alberta.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've had a ton of people on this show.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: For a while, we interviewed the winner every year of the Tour divide, and that has been a huge influence on this show and the reason it was even created.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: But when you started training, you started making routes in Florida because there's nothing else.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of sand in Florida.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there are some great places to train.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Had you been that familiar with some of those green spaces in Florida you were talking about earlier or was it still kind of unknown to you at that point?
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had been cross country mountain biking for a while and then in my and then before I even gotten to cross country mountain biking what they call cross country mountain biking which to me is just mountain biking.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had I had hiked so I fell in love with mountain biking and trail riding because it was like you could cover
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: One hundred times the distance you could hiking in half in a quarter of the time, like if you go on a twenty mile hike, that could take all day for the average human being.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some the average human being can hike twenty miles, maybe someone athletic, a twenty mile hike is all day affair on a bike.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's about an hour or two.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, algorithms are probably two hours, three hours, depending on how fast you ride, right?
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you can average.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if you're a beginner, you can average seven miles an hour.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you're just even if you're a newbie, right?
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just I knew a lot of those spaces from just mountain biking and racing mountain bikes with the gone riding series in Florida.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sponsored by them.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just, that's the most popular series of mountain bike racing in Florida.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of familiarized myself with all those places through these events.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then because I had that slight background smile background in hiking, I knew that there were other places I could run my bike that maybe weren't considered your standard mountain bike attraction, trail attraction.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of knew those spaces and what I didn't know, you know, the connector areas.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the areas I didn't know.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when I first decided to traverse the Ocalo National Forest,
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's where I started writing like, okay, well, I wanted to write the Santos.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I was like, well,
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why would I take pavement all the way to Santos?
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: That seems foolish.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me write some dirt roads.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of mapped that first route across the Ocalinational Forest.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I did it.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, people told me I was going to die and all these other people are so dramatic.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's fantastic.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is awesome.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Every time we do something locals, especially, are like, I wouldn't do that if I was.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of fear.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand the fear.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess that's survival instinct, right?
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Being afraid is a normal survival reaction of the human body.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We want to protect ourselves.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't want to die, right?
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's in our genes to be a little apprehensive, a little fearful.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But those ways of connecting places, it kind of just became a thing.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I started, I did it first locally in my neighborhood, and then I kind of just grew that circle.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I made it bigger and bigger.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the first route I ever made,
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: was the naked Indian route.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was, we call it that because that was my nickname.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was going to ask where that name came from.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's because my ancestors, my indigenous ancestors ran around naked.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when people would ask me, oh, yeah, you know, they would say, you know, I could see where you have some Native American ancestry, some indigenous ancestors, where are they from?
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would say, well, they're not like the planes Indians.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were these naked Indians because that's what they were.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where it came from.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, like just like a quick way to describe to someone, the first people who met Columbus were my ancestors.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just a quick little like a side on to describe where that nickname came from.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second route I ever made was the death loop.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I clothe it the death loop because my friend Rob Robert scouted it with me.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when he finished the three mile segment, which is part of the old paisley St.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Francis Wadent Trail, which I became obsessed with trying to uncover this route.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once I finally did uncover it, it was so sandy that my friend Rob said to me, no one will ever ride this.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is terrible.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one will ever do this.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And guess what?
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every year for like the past fourteen years, we've been riding it.
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every year it just gets bigger and more and more people come to the deaf loop to the program.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of have to like, only allow a certain amount of people in because it's kind of a guided ride.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can just, I can only do so much.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm fortunate that I have a lot of people who have attended my events.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I can recruit new tenants.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, you're gonna help me.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're gonna help me.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna volunteer.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna help me, right?
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm able to do that because thankfully, a lot of people have done the DEF loop with me so I can kind of recruit them.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But back in those days, when we would map around, I would have to physically write it in order to create the GPS throughout to share.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would have to write it.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was no way of drawing the route.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could look at it on the satellite image, but if I was going to write it, I would have to literally measure the distance using the little slider measure.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to look for a left.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: In four miles, I'm going to look for a right.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So with that first round, I did across the Ocalanashinal Force was awful paper, like, okay, to the right, there's gonna be some little weird trail, and I made notes for myself and had screenshots printed out and drawn up it was tedious, like mapping a sixty mile route took like three months.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I can map a sixty mile route due to technology and advancements and the desire to advance it in five minutes, three minutes.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like big difference, three months to three minutes.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The game change when I was able to create my own routes like draw them on paper, not on paper, but on the screen and then send them to my GPS.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I was able to finally figure out that process, it's like the game change.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I was able to do things a hundred times faster.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So then I made a route to connect
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: or Kalan National Forest to crew force because I felt those were the same ecological environments, they're both sand pine.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that part of that route eventually became part of the hurricane route, which is one of the most popular events.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And part of that same route is also part of the coast to coast route, the cross-floor day individual time trial route.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you kind of see how it all evolved, eventually I was like, you know what, I could go all the way north.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And thankfully, because of the Florida wildlife corridor and that preserved area, I was able to go out of the way north because I figured they had to have a way to protect the forest if there was a fire.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there has to be fire roads.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of just looked at the Florida National scenic trail and then looked for fire roads close to it.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was my first doing it that way made it that I
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: literally like mapped out the Florida divide in and afternoon.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just sat on my computer and mapped it out and then I'm like, okay, now I've time to ride it.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I went out and rode and and it was just that mindset of knowing that they had existing corridors that needed to be protected.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they had to have access allowed me to see all these little connections between the green spaces to create these routes where now we can go all the way to Alabama.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can go all the way to the keys.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: pretty much almost any town in Florida, I can connect and provide a route that's nearly forty percent off road, not including, you know, bike path.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you had bike path, it's even more off road because thankfully the state has done a great job of fostering that bike path program and making bike paths bigger and better all over the place.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, so what's cool about your story is, you know, we talked with so many people who, you know, they want to do something big, like the tour divide.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: They do it.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then they want to do something bigger.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it just kind of goes in that direction.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: For you, it was almost like this pursuit of a big challenge.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: led into this whole other, you know, it wasn't the event or it wasn't your personal achievement that that got you going.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was it was route building.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was creating the community around this and getting more people involved and you kind of poured into that.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you just saw that as
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here's where my skills are and I love that because there's so many people pursuing their own adventures without considering like how can I get new people involved and it seems like you're that's being your bread and butter which I absolutely love man you you've influenced and connected me personally with so many of my friends and we've had so many unforgettable experiences on your routes uh... your influences is gone from people who
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: come here do your trips and so inspired they go to other places and they try to be you know the Carlos of that area and build routes and whatnot so it's been really amazing to see from your perspective what it tells about tell us about the first trip that you brought someone along with like what was that like what was your where you apprehensive or or at all you know worried about you know how's it going to go how they're going to think about it take it take us through those early
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: kind of guided experiences because they're not guided.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like you're inviting your friends and inviting people, but it's a cool feel.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not like every person's on their own.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first trip I ever did, again, in the O'Cowl National Forest that I invited people.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we started out right at the Clearwater Lake Trailhead for the Paisley Mountain Bike Trail.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we had packed our bags.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: All I had was I had a map
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: of the Florida Trail, which I use to map out those fire roads.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I remember I told you a lot of it at first was just parallel to, because I knew they have a way to protect the woods, right?
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had a recreational map that I bought of the Ocalinational Forest for books at the Visitor Center.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't try, I still have it.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And on that recreational map what I did was I looked.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the first thing I wanted to see
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: was Juniper Springs.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we rode from the paisley trailhead to Juniper Springs.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's we went up to railroad grade in five, nine, five and around the bombing range.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm sure I wasn't the first person in the world to like do it to do though right through there, but I'm sure was I'm sure I was the first person to advertise it that I did it.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we, um, we made our way to silver Glenn and wow, if I know you've been to silver Glenn, if you as a Floridian, go to silver Glenn, like go tomorrow, if you can't go this weekend, if you can't get in your car drive down there.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't be scared.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your mind will be blown if you've never seen it.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it is just like this beautiful emerald magical place that you just don't expect to be in the middle of the big scrub because the big scrub is like a desert.
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so wide open and majestic and big.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, roads.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like just you did not.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We did not know what we were getting into and we started going north.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: After Silver Glenn, I was like, I want to go see Hopkins Prairie.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we wrote up the Hopkins Prairie.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I was like, after Hopkins Prairie, I saw on the map all the way to the west was
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: was a spot called Lake Eaton and they had a little hiking trail that took you down to the river and it said overlook.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I just love the fact that it says overlook.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're in Florida.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are we actually going to overlook?
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look over here.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we made our way across there and found that overlook and it was, it wasn't much of an overlook in height but it was an amazing experience dropping into this sinkhole basically where it was.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: and going to these little boardwalks, because again, we didn't know what we were doing.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: From there, I knew that I could go south and reconnect with the original route I had done to get across the forest, and that's what I did.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We caught that route and rode all the way to Santos.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the way to Santos, when I stopped at the Marshall Swamp Trailhead to get water, I noticed that looking at their map right there, that that trailhead connected to a bike path, and that bike path would cut like
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: funny miles of pavement.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, hey, guys, let's do this.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we, that's the first time like we ever use that baseline that Marshall swamp trail hit to connect the baseline.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: What got me, I think, to the point where I'm at, where I'm able to
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: have the opportunity to create these experiences for other people to enjoy and to provide some sort of influence or views, be a muse for others.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the beginning was collaboration.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was me being so willing to listen to what people were telling me.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you know, when we were on that trip, it was four of us, five of us, and we were kind of just talking to each other like, oh, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I had to get there by and
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was great to have that sounding board to like talk to people and then hear what they thought of my idea because we were literally just doing it on the fly.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have no GPS file, no nothing.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were just going by the map.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those connections that we made that day eventually ended part being being part of that cross Florida individual time trial route.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some of the stuff we saw that day is part of the Florida divide and some of the stuff that we wrote that same day that very first trip is part of the hurricane and it's just
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: to kind of mentally and physically with pictures and with GPS data documenting these experiences, they all kind of created this butterfly effect that got me to where I am today.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that experience in that first group tour, and we made it to Santos, and we were sheld, and we ate like we've never eaten before, it was fantastic.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was probably only a sunny mile ride, but still, it was just epic at that time, because no one was doing that.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one was strapping stuff to their bikes and riding across the wilderness.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when had thought of it yet, and then people have been doing it, which maybe they weren't talking about it.
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So being a sharing the experience was key, right?
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I tell people all the time, I have such a great opportunity to interact with lots of folks.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't take one second of it for granted.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I always think them because without the people participating, being involved, showing these things attention, visiting these spaces, hiking those trails, paddling those waters.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Without those people interacting with the environment and creating these experiences that they also continue to share with their friends, it would be for nothing.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: There would just be lines on a map.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: They would just be papers at a kiosk.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Without the people participating and getting out there and getting involved and enjoying these spaces, it'd be nothing.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I have to thank everybody because without their participation, there would just be my crazy maps that no one would look at.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Be the naked Indian out there.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Just wandering around.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Painlessly alone.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: you've obviously like you said before you've gotten like exponentially better a building routes but but what what is it like for you to build a brand new route kind of when you start to get into it and start to get familiar but not quite where you are now like did you you have to work with landowners do you only stick to public you know spaces like how did that go because because there's a
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's hard stuff to determine sometimes.
• 28:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I get confused.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Is someone that's pretty familiar?
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Is like, can I go here?
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can I not go here?
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can I ride here?
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, the gates close?
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But is that just a vehicle?
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or is that to me?
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, how did you start figuring that out?
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And how much relationship building did it take with different landowners and whatnot?
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The process that I use now is this process I use then.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It all starts kind of like with an idea.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I study the information I can find on their websites regarding the maps.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also use an Atlas.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I pull out the Atlas if the road's not on the Atlas map.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Technically, when I usually see, if I see a road is in green space, one side come up with just the basic foundation of the route.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I go out and ride it.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I ride every inch of it.
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I encounter issues, sometimes they can't be solved.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes there is no one to talk to.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times, I don't know, I don't know how to be more transparent.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times it's asking for forgiveness, not asking for permission.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just saying, oops, this line on this map said green space, I didn't know because sometimes some of the land managers or not the land managers, but the people who conceptualize the building or the layout or the management plan for the specific green space, they didn't think that someone would want to come in that way.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's okay to ask for an apology, you know, to ask for forgiveness because I just opened up their mind to a possibility where they could maybe increase their usership because they want people to go out there, right?
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They want people to use these spaces.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So at the beginning, there was a lot of taking a lot of knocks.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you ever, if anyone here ever has the opportunity and highly encourage it to participate in something like the hurricane, you have a sheet that you need to initial.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And on that sheet, there's like, eleven different things that I don't want you to do.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And each one of those things is something I've gotten a phone call about.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk to somebody about.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of it has been evolution realizing that my goal is for all this to be legitimate.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of it has been
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I get into a situation where I have to explain my choices, has been working with those land managers to establish permission to do it.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And generally speaking, I think probably nine point nine times out of ten.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: All these land managers have been very cooperative.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just a sorry and a thank you was more than enough and then kind of getting their idea of what my intentions are from my voice because they I don't need a right I have made them face the face but we don't start there we start with a phone call
• 31:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: they're usually very accommodating.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just takes kind of some conversation.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some stuff you can't do, but a lot of stuff you can do, and generally the maps have been accurate.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been a couple of times where you end up in a slew or in a swamp.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: because the map was inaccurate in that way, but hydrology and Florida can change so much in so many different ways and it's quite interesting understanding the hydrology and Florida, but still.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, it's been a pretty smooth process, just kind of having the courage to not be afraid to ask when it comes down, when it comes time to ask.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, you mentioned something there that I think is really cool and it's
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Things can change so much in Florida.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as someone who was born and raised here in the woods, grew up, I'm constantly blown away by new things I learned and new things I come across.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a little bit embarrassed sometimes about how little I feel like I actually know.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: as someone who loves it and tries to get out there as much as possible.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what that does is it makes me not want to explore other areas like other states even, and other parts of the world that I know I love.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, there's just an endless amount of things to discover right here in my backyard.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you feel that way?
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you feel like every time you go out or every time you plant something new?
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's just something you haven't seen.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Florida is magical in so many ways.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: What really fascinates me and what I really geek out on is knowing that below the Swanney River, that that part of Florida used to be part of Africa, that blows my mind.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And knowing that north of the Swanney River, that part of Florida was never underwater.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: right, and then what else blows my mind is knowing that the lake whale's ridge was never underwater.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you know, you can dig in the sand all you want and clear them up, but you're not going to find any shark teeth in there.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not like you would if you were like digging like a blue springs and you could find shark teeth, you know what I mean?
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right next to the lake whale's ridge and for me, it's just like ten, fifteen minutes away.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's all the shark.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I grew up on the lake whale's ridge and frostproof.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that mental image in my mind of seeing what the lake whales' ridge looked like when it was just a chain of islands.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: That just blows my mind.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I understand completely how you feel.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard for me to want to explore the places because I keep finding new things every time that I get out there.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just such a farthest truly special.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't know where to go, hit me up, I will help.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It has made me think like when I because I used to do a lot of cross country bike rides like coast to coast north of south and people would always ask where's your favorite part of the trip and I'd always mention something that people didn't expect.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I remember my last cross country bike ride people were like what was the best part.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: This was twenty twenty.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I said Ohio people are like what is Ohio you know is the butt of a lot of jokes just like Florida isn't I'm like
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It blew my expectations away with the small towns and the people and just the quaintness and like the what everything combined to me be this amazing experience whereas of course I expect the Rocky Mountains to be incredible and they are places I wanted you know expected to be this way were amazing the places I didn't
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: kind of blew my mind and it's taught me and in living here is taught me like anywhere is incredible if you just are willing to explore it like you're doing but you know a lot of people know florida as a pretty wild place with a lot of crazy things going on a lot of crazy history
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: What are some stuff that you've come across without planning and going out and maybe scouting some of this stuff?
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Have you seen anything that's just totally unexpected?
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't even know what that could be, but everything from animals to people to just something you come across, what's some of the crazy things you've seen out there?
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the stuff that I really like have found to be super special is finding springs that no one knows about.
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've learned to smell the sulfur water when you don't expect to smell it.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then hunting down that spring head.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I'll just be a nice little pool of bright, you know, green, greenish water just in the middle of nowhere.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love finding those little secret springs.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've gotten quite good at finding those.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the first time I saw a dry cave is like in the citrus and the wickly kooky state forests in the citrus unit.
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The dry caves in Florida, peace cave, and vambles cave.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And those places just blew my mind because I just didn't expect for it and have dry caves.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've secretly been spending the past like five years hunting down all the rapids in Florida and paddling them on my pack wrap that's been like my other passion.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's hunting down rapids and you'd be surprised how many rapids Florida has.
• 36:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know about least five, but I'm always hunting down the rapids and those always impress me and fascinate me because again, every I guess everything I like that that surprises me is the stuff that people don't expect you to be able to see here.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: and you you have the pleasure of taking people for first time or first time or is out to see a lot of this stuff and it's not just like
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, they didn't know there was going to be a spring.
• 37:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: They did, they've never seen Florida in this way.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: They've only been to the beach or they've only been to Disney World or only been bike packing and other parts of the country.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: How cool is it to introduce people to some of this stuff?
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you have a story or anything where you may be someone was really moved by one of your experiences?
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Man, I guess it's good that there are a ton of stories.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: All I ever hear is people tell me that it's not what they expected at all.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I have very few people who have had a chance to interact with that don't fall in love with Florida after they ride one of the routes that I shared with them.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no shortage of it.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think one particular story that stands out as of late
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: was this nice lady.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I met her when she decided to take on the King's Road, which is my coast to coast, gravel route that I've been putting on.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now this will be the fourth year we've been doing it.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was telling me how one day she was on the with the Gucci State Trail.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she encountered a gentleman who was on a bicycle who had a bunch of bags strapped to it.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when she asked him what he was doing, he told her that he was training for the hurricane.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he started telling her all about the hurricane.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this lady, who recently had some really sad stuff happen in her life.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I won't get into it.
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, whether she realized it or not, she was thirsty for an outlet.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was her introduction to bike packing.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And interesting enough, and she kind of did the reverse of what I did in order to start preparing for bike packing in Florida.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: She rode routes in other states.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like she went up and rode parts of the TNGA and parts of the Vista route.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like she, it's interesting.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: She did it backwards.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like she could have just immediately jumped into my routes, but she actually started in out of state to prepare for some Florida rides.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she finished the Kings Road.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: She took on the hurl on this year.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: She literally got into the sport by meeting someone who was training for her ride.
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was another gentleman just this past week.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when we did the dirt devil tour, where we kind of visit all the underground springs over in that willestin area in the McNope area.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: He had met this gentleman Tim who rides lots of my routes.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He had met Tim while he was out riding, I believe the hurricane route, met him at a campground.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he after meeting Tim, he went out and bought a bike and bought gear and he came to the dirt double tour this week.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like literally that interaction he had inspired this guy enough to just start bikepacking.
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I get so many stories like that.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think some of those stories are in my favorite.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: of how people, people kind of get inspired indirectly or directly.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm sure you've heard of Peggy's Revenge.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, definitely.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ben, Ben Myers has been getting me trying to get me to get to that for a couple of years now.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the organizer, Eric.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: was inspired to do that by riding the naked and you're out with me.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: When he saw what I did in my town, he's like, hey, I could do that.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he went over there and started doing that.
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And those stories are really special to me, too, because I guess you know how they say you live your life forward, but you can only understand it backwards.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's great for me now because when I look back, I can see how all these little trips and even my behavior when I was in my teenage years, right in skateboard, everywhere.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can see how all these little pieces fit together to get me to where I am right now.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then hearing how the spear of influence that these events have had where other folks have gone out and created events, that's super special to me.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when they tell me, it's even more special because I don't, for one second, think it was cousin me.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when they tell me it was, I was like, oh, wow, that's, that's really cool.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I guess to them, it's like, oh, he's just a regular guy.
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: If he can do it, I can do it.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love that.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I am just a regular guy.
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I can do it, you can do it.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what I do is for everyone, everyone's invited.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you don't have to be fit.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just have to be willing.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just have to have desire.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The biggest muscle you need to take on any big challenge in life doesn't matter what it is, whether it's bike packing or just getting through that next project is just a want.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the mental game.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is ninety percent mental.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just have to be mentally strong.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to be physically strong.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your body will do what your mind tells it to do.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It might take you longer than it would take me or you, but you could still do it.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're at the point now that it seems like there's an event like a couple events a month like how many events do you have at this point and how do you manage it manage it all because you don't do this full time this is just what you do on the side how do you balance this with work and family and
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is what I do full time.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the only thing I do now.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: For too many years, I tried to do too much.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Life is all about balance.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you work too hard and you don't play enough, everything suffers kind of thing.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So eventually, I got to the point where I worked four days a week on that, on a regular job, and then did every the rest of my time on Samurai stuff.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually, I was only working two days a week, and then I'm like, you know what, I just need to commit.
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what happens is in Florida, this is the way my year looks like, right?
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Generally first, we begin the process of re-verifying all the routes.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many events do I have?
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Probably six or seven group starts.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, I don't have an accurate number on me, I guess I could go through the list.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or you could just go to single track that samurai.com and see it all there.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then lately we live in group starts.
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we are slowly building more of a catalog of private tours or small group tours.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because that seems to be what people are most interested in right now is having the chance to kind of
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: be in that smaller group and some of it, we get a lot of people who it's their first time because it's a great opportunity to interact with veterans and see what works for them and interact with me and see what works for me and kind of helps them figure out what works for them because a lot of touring, whether it's off-road touring, on-road touring, bike packing, hiking, any long process where you're kind of eating, sleeping and living off that mode of transportation.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The hardest part of any of that is figuring out what works for you because everybody's it's a super bikepacking is super individual the individualized sport right same with hiking and same with ultra running and same with long distance paddling like it's all kind of a little bit figuring out what works for you and in order to
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: to kind of get that that base or that you just kind of it's great to interact with other people.
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've been growing our catalog of small group tours.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually have a couple of new ones planned for this year.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's super exciting.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going up into the Panhandle because I really love the Panhandle area.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is is that summer's pretty miserable in Florida in terms of being outdoors and not being in the water.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the summers when we hit the water hard, we're paddling hard in the summer because it's just a great place to be in Florida is being the water, right?
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you kind of have a bike packing season.
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It starts late September and it kind of runs to early May.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then in the summer, typically what I do once January we start route verification, we get through season.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So kind of mid May.
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We spend the summer doing a lot of writing, a lot of scouting, a lot of route verification.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We even do some bike packing because guess why?
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because my kids aren't in school.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's easier for me to maybe leave them with mom for a day or two.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then it is during a school year when I have to get them to school and get them fed and get them to bed and cook them dinner.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's easier in the summer.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So although it's not the best time to spend your time in the woods, if you're like a professional like I am, you can manage it.
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just gotta know what you're doing.
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the summers we spend scouting and doing route verification, you know, doing what I call the good work, and then come September late September we start bikepacking again.
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's pretty much what the year looks like.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that season, yes, I'll be very busy.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But during the summer, not a lot of summer events because of the fact that
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can go touring in the summer and Florida, but it's probably best to use your credit card and stay inside, then it is to camp because the bugs are not that bad.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can manage mosquitoes with bugs spray, but man, the ticks are off the chain.
• 45:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: The horse flies is the real problem, and then the chiggers are ridiculous.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can't be in brushy stuff.
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can go to maintain trails like you can still go hiking in the summer just hike on those trails that are see a lot of traffic so that you don't end up in the tall grass and get ticks or chiggers because those things are terrible.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you have to know.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: You've been building this for a decade and a half.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was your fifteenth naked Indian this year, naked Indian ride, the one that kicked it all off.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: What are some things you did that helped you kind of get your life together?
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: to make the jump to do this full time.
• 46:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because there's a lot of people that listen to this show that are on that path or they want to do this more and they want to start building it.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like there is that grind for maybe a decade or more.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I didn't actually know that you were doing this full time.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: What are some things you did that really help to make that more possible for folks that are not quite there yet?
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's take a quick message break in here from the folks that help make this show possible.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is plenty of that for now.
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's get back into the episode.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, I think that the most important thing that folks should start at is have that kind of like,
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's maybe it's just internal, but having like a general mission statement, right?
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So from the beginning, if you break down the word samurai, it's transfers, it's loosely translates to, you know, servant serving.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So from the beginning, my first couple of years, maybe the first four or five years, I didn't charge anything.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was no money charged for five years.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's like a, that's like a college education of doing things for free.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it, it is.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I did, I just did it like that because
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just, I didn't know how to.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I didn't.
• 47:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never thought of it.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think that it would become popular.
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was just going to be very, you know, just nobody wanted to do it.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But thankfully, people did.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was actually the people who told me I should charge basically because they would collect like amongst themselves.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: They would collect money and then hand it to me at the start of the event.
• 48:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, thank you.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they would send me gift baskets and presents.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would get the GPS in the mail.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, thank you for all your work.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh thanks.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that was their way of telling me that they had such a great time that they feel bad that they didn't get charged everything.
• 48:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what I realized after years and years that I wasn't slowing down, I was speeding up.
• 48:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of adopted the model of something like adventure cycling where they sell the route information so that you can go out and experience these adventures.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the model I adopted.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the core principle and let me add back to the main point was that you kind of have that foundation.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So single track samurai to serve was founded on generosity.
• 48:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was founded on being generous.
• 48:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's like my core principle.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So have that core principle.
• 49:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ask yourself as an entrepreneur.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your core principle?
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: My core principle is to be generous because I believe in putting out that energy.
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get it back, right?
• 49:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's exactly what happened.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then my second court principle is to be fair.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to be fair.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be crazy.
• 49:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to be reasonable.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I struggle with that.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because at the end of the day, all this works takes resources and it takes commitment.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can't feed my kids on gifts and well wishes, right?
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I had to come up basically make it up on how to create a system of collecting some sort of compensation for what I'm providing.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, when you participate in an event, you are paying for the information that you can use on your own.
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have provided you that information.
• 49:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have provided a fee that I consider reasonable or exchanges done.
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I have to add more because I am required to have insurance for some events and I'm required to pay permits.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we share that cost as a group, right?
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Me and all the people we share the cost.
• 50:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was kind of
• 50:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, figuring out what I needed to do, but my core principles is I think something that everybody needs to have when they decide that they want to try to make a living off something they're passionate about is what are your core principles, identify those core principles, and then stick to them.
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: The final principle, it seems, it seems really silly and obvious, but you know, be transparent.
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: be clear, be honest, for lack of a better term, be transparent, be one hundred percent clear.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing this because of this.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And give people the choices.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am so good at giving people choices.
• 50:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you join any of my group events, there might be two or three routes because you have a choice of what you want to do when you're out there.
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: To me, what's important.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: is that they have the the chance to experience these outdoor spaces in whatever way they choose to experience it will be as fast as possible or be it you know as whatever they have much time they want to take and figuring those things out really gave me the direction to make the decisions to where I am now and but the work is not done because at some point
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to establish a non-profit that would look after my routes, kind of like the Florida Trail Association does for the Florida Trail.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all these other places do for other systems, like the Appalachian Trail Association looks after the Appalachian Trail and the Colorado Trail Association looks after the Colorado Trail.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to establish a non-profit that will look after the routes and maybe in that scheme, that five-year plan, because that's like my five-year plan.
• 51:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, figure out how to wait to finance it fairly.
• 51:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think even when that evolution happens, and I know it will, because that's where I'm going to push this thing, it's still going to be founded on those course principles.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Generosity, transparency, fairness,
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Inclusivity, you know, those are all parts of the core principles.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anybody who wants to ever be successful with it, anything.
• 52:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It needs to make sure that they understand their own core principles.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: They could vary.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: They could change.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's actually no wrong answer for what those core principles are.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just don't lose sight of them.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: No matter what happens.
• 52:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: and persistence, obviously, enough said, you have to stay the course.
• 52:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Keep your eyes on the prize.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The key to writing good, being good at technical, single track writing is, look where you want to go.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the same with life.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look where you want to go.
• 52:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your vision should be where you want to be.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not where you don't want to be because what happens when you're riding that narrow ridge.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you look to the left, guess what's going to happen, you're going to have to go down that ridge.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've got to keep your eyes on where you want to go, right?
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just a good life philosophy.
• 52:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look where you want to go and keep that focus and stay the course, stay persistence.
• 53:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if you're pushing, you're still moving forward.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Love that advice.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, man, you've been at it for so long.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when I did, I tripped with you a couple years ago.
• 53:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think you charged thirty bucks.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was two nights of camping, three days of riding.
• 53:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was pizza involved in that.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was a heck of a deal.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't understand why there are more.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: You really make it approachable for folks who are new to it.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: It felt very, very approachable and it was an absolute blast.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, having folks feel guilty that this is such a valuable experience.
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I should be giving you more.
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a good feeling.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a good position to be in.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love that.
• 53:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I know you and I are both huge fans of the Florida wildlife corridor and what they're building and what they're trying to do with protecting nearly half of Florida to be wildlands and designated conservation areas.
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, how have you seen the route building change over the last ten, fifteen years?
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Have you made it?
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Has it been, you know, things disappearing at a rate from, you know, being on the ground level, looking at it all every year, going a check in these routes, seeing houses getting closer, have you noticed that?
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And also, why is this corridor in this concept so important for folks that just haven't maybe haven't experienced it like you have?
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, that first map of
• 54:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: that I saw that was attached to the documentary about the Florida Wildlife Court or and how important it was for the Panthers really was the basis like the blueprint for building the Florida divide all the way to Alabama.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: that whole Florida wildlife corridor thing wouldn't have was the inspiration for me to know that it was possible to build the Florida Divide.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thankfully for me and in my experience and through the work of persistent individuals and the works of our legislators.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: or they're protecting the corridor.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've thankfully have seen improvements.
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen addition of places.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen more opportunities like there's just that reason acquisition in our buckle has me like, oh, is there going to be anything good in there?
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, because I always like to add side trips.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, we could go visit this place or that place.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those things you see in those corridors are very important to me.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: To me, it's, I've only had the opportunity to see it improving over the couple years.
• 55:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in my hometown, they keep clearing land for building apartments and more people coming in.
• 55:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that growth is happening everywhere.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But thankfully, thankfully, the Florida Wildlife Court, or through the Florida Wildlife Court, or Act of twenty twenty one, has done a great job of acquiring more stuff.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I've only seen it improve and I hope it improves even more.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do we still need to drop bombs over by Avon Park?
• 55:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we just like take over that whole land?
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to be a group Christmas.
• 55:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to be a group Christmas.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would like to be a group Christmas to be part of the Florida divide again.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they, they're still dropping bombs in there.
• 56:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do we still need to do that?
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can't we just like have a computer lapse?
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like can't we practice somewhere else?
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Jordan and I took a group of like fifteen down our buckle creek a couple months ago from our buckle like our buckle to Ishtipoga.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the left side, the east side is all they have on park, bombing range.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the right side is a bunch of ranches under conservation easements.
• 56:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the whole two days, bombs and airplanes and just tanks going through the woods, it sounded like a war zone and equipment.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, dang, what is going on over there?
• 56:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was absolutely stunning.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of the most beautiful paddles I've ever done.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And twenty-five miles of bliss.
• 56:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, that whole area is still getting a ton of activity.
• 56:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I grew up.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: My backyard is basically backs up to that.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, heard of my whole childhood.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would love for that.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have the opportunity of riding through that property.
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is hard to get into.
• 57:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is nice.
• 57:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is very nice.
• 57:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the first scouts I ever did we traverse that property.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: They had the wildest fence I've ever seen.
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was by feet tall and then it had a five foot gap in the middle and then it was five more feet on top.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess they left that gap so that the deer could jump through.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: deer do jump through there.
• 57:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've seen deer on the tin foot fences not make it.
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the first place I've ever seen a Florida panther was the vomit range.
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the first time I saw a panther was up in San Flasco.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That thorn north.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the cudos to the corridor because that, you know, if the corridor wasn't there, that wouldn't be possible.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Man, that is so crazy.
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Carlos, one more question.
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to go back to it because I have a feeling there's more here.
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, Florida is a crazy place.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Florida, man.
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, is legendary.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: What's the craziest thing you've ever seen?
• 57:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Scouting out or out, terrifying or out, just being out there.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: What have you come across?
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just saw that.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Natural or not?
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's just get away.
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the, well, a cars flipped over in the middle of a wildlife area, just people like, I don't know how they, I don't even know how they flipped over the car.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's pretty, that's been some of the weather stuff I've seen.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I always like finding the creek shipwrecks when I'm paddling, seeing boats like, oh my god, there's a whole boat down there like how did that happen?
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was always curious about how some of those things happen.
• 58:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think one time when I was, when I was scouting for the Florida divide, I asked a, I asked a man if
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: If he knew where there was a hotel and before I could get a word out, he told me he had no money.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, I don't got any money.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: He thought I was a bum.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I must have really looked rough.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first time I went to the Sasquash Research Center and talked to their on-staff hunter, that was pretty interesting just the stories he told me.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first time I ever rode like down loop rode into the backside of the Indian reservation there.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just, first of all, didn't know there was going to be an Indian reservation there.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And second of all, it was very interesting observing the way that they build their houses.
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: just you can tell that they've been interacting with that part on the world like all their lives because their houses are built not for when water is low but when when the high water's coming so like they're ready to for the flood because they live in this wall they know I think my god the first time I ever saw a big cypress and in the bats and how big the bats were and
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and just how different that part of Florida looked from everywhere else to me, it made me really think of like, oh, this is what probably what Africa looks like, because I've never been Africa.
• 59:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just those things have, those are kind of like the standouts when I think of things that I've seen.
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: All the first time I interacted, I stopped at Buffalo Tiger.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this was a long time ago, this was like twelve years ago.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the elder was there, the guy who, I guess, he's Buffalo Tiger himself was there.
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was asking me questions in his native, uh, mixed-sukey language, whatever it is.
• 1:00:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the language.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry I don't.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then his daughter was translating for me.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was like, he would say some things.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I, you know, I, I, I'm an anthropologist.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I got my degree.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I knew he was speaking an indigenous language.
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she would translate.
• 1:00:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then basically the first question was like, you got here all the way by bike, you know, and then the second question was, why is your bike so dirty?
• 1:00:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when I told them why it was so dirty, where I had come from, he's like, his response was like,
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're crazy.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was so funny.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was such an iconic conversation.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's calling me crazy.
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: His name is Buffalo Tiger.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm crazy.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm the crazy one.
• 1:00:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're just Buffalo Tiger.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was the leader of the, uh, Micah Suki.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was born in, nineteen, twenty I'm reading and died in, twenty, fifteen.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, ninety five years old.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had a chance to interact with him indirectly through a translator.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even know it was anything.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I felt honored just that he was asking me questions.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just a guy on a bike.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had my crampus, so it had really fat tires.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it really caught his eye.
• 1:01:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He'd never seen a bike with that fat tire on it.
• 1:01:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that three inch tire was like, he was like, what the heck is this?
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it really caught his curiosity.
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: hey, the adventures did, the adventures.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guarantee getting ready for these routes is half the fun, just like being out there on your own.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's cool because you kind of get to experience yourself, that solo adventure, you know, fuel the soul and also the community aspect.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm finding both of those are
• 1:01:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: equally important to fuel.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been so fortunate in my, you know, fifteen years of traveling by bike throughout the state that all I have ever had the chance to interact with have been just the kindest, most interesting people just sincere, you know, I kind of let go of what maybe their appearance was and let them just communicate with me anyway they wanted to and
• 1:02:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've just only encountered nice people, generous people.
• 1:02:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't tell you how many times I've been invited to stay somewhere.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't tell you how many times someone has offered me a cold drink on the side of the road.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just people in Florida and in the areas I've been and the chances I've had to interact with them have been just so kind.
• 1:02:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't say enough.
• 1:02:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have no fear.
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The hardest part of any big adventure is just getting to the start.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Once you start, it's easy.
• 1:02:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to eat.
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to travel, however it is.
• 1:02:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you're going to sleep.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the next day, you get up and you do it all over again.
• 1:02:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's easy.
• 1:03:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a basic human living.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just nomadic as you can get, right?
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Life is hard.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like every day is hard.
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, juggling a thousand responsibilities and a thousand things, that's difficult.
• 1:03:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Getting to the start of an event, preparing, making sure you're physically ready and able.
• 1:03:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's difficult.
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Starting the challenge and getting going, that's difficult.
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But once you're gone, it's easy.
• 1:03:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is super simple for you.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You make it as complicated as you want, but it's easy to eat, sleep, and travel.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, it is, whether you're welcome, you're paddling.
• 1:03:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're biking, sure it's gonna have as challenges, but it's not more challenging than did it in my life.
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh man.
• 1:03:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh Carlos, that's I'm gonna wrap it up right there.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for jumping on.
• 1:03:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 1:03:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
• 1:03:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: First of all, thank you so much for listening.
• 1:03:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It means the world to us that you choose to listen to this show.
• 1:03:58
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• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It goes a long way to grow in the show.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can also support us financially through patreon.com slash adventure sports podcast.
• 1:04:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Link is in the show notes.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And also, if you have an idea of who could be a good guest for the show, we're always looking for people to tell their story about the outdoors or adventure.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if you know someone, please reach out email us at infoedadventuresportspodcast.com.
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And until then, get out there and have some fun.