Latest / bit of a Rambler / 067 Mountain Matters

Transcript

067 Mountain Matters · bit of a Rambler

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
0:02
Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
0:08
Speaker 1: And I want to keep talking about mountains because I
0:12
Speaker 1: just told a bunch of stories about mountains that I've
0:14
Speaker 1: climbed and why mountains are great. And then I realized
0:19
Speaker 1: that I had exclusively talked about Chinese mountains, and I
0:21
Speaker 1: have so many more mountain stories from other countries. So
0:29
Speaker 1: this will probably show up in another This can't not
0:31
Speaker 1: show up in another story. But I met up with
0:34
Speaker 1: these two Australians in Octoberfest who offered to drive me,
0:38
Speaker 1: who offered to let me join them driving into Austria,
0:44
Speaker 1: and I was like, that sounds great. It was a
0:47
Speaker 1: pretty easy cell. I hadn't been to Austria. They seemed
0:51
Speaker 1: like a couple of cool hippies. I like road trips,
0:54
Speaker 1: so I went with them. They had a car that
0:58
Speaker 1: his uncle, who owned an auto show, had fixed up
1:02
Speaker 1: so they could take it. Because nobody had a lot
1:04
Speaker 1: of money. They're like, hey, the car works, it runs,
1:07
Speaker 1: and it did run, and so we drove across the
1:10
Speaker 1: border into Austria. I think I just handed them my passport.
1:13
Speaker 1: It was a very simple matter, and the Australians are
1:17
Speaker 1: these hippie guys. I'll talk about them more in the
1:19
Speaker 1: whole story. They maybe they'll get their own story. They're
1:22
Speaker 1: interesting fellas. And Austria's mountains. Austria is mountains, and probably
1:31
Speaker 1: outside of Alaska the most beautiful mountains, maybe including Alaska
1:37
Speaker 1: might be the most beautiful mountain. They're stunning mountains in Austria,
1:41
Speaker 1: but we didn't see them because we're outside of the
1:45
Speaker 1: mountain range. So you just see the outer range and
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Speaker 1: there's just a big, normal looking mountain and then we
1:50
Speaker 1: get to the top of it and then start driving
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Speaker 1: down on so we can get to the main highway
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Speaker 1: leading into whatever city we were in Austria, and the
2:03
Speaker 1: mountains were unbelievably stunning. They have just enough forest and
2:08
Speaker 1: there's some snow on the top and it's just beautiful.
2:12
Speaker 1: So we crest the top of the outer ring of
2:15
Speaker 1: mountains and start driving down the road. And now we
2:19
Speaker 1: have to drive down the height of a mountain, mountain,
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Speaker 1: not like a tiny mountain, like a real mountain to
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Speaker 1: get down to the main road. And twenty feet, like
2:32
Speaker 1: a few seconds down from the top of this mountain,
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Speaker 1: there is a horrifying crackle, grinding, bumping coming from the car,
2:44
Speaker 1: and I don't know what part it was. At that point,
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Speaker 1: I still knew nothing about cars, so I was just like,
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Speaker 1: that's wrong. Something mechanical is incorrect. But we're already facing
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Speaker 1: downhill and the mountain road doesn't reach the regular floor
3:00
Speaker 1: at land for another thousands of feet and his friend's like, oh,
3:05
Speaker 1: that was hah. And then the guy whose uncle had
3:07
Speaker 1: given him the car was like, yeah, the brakes don't work.
3:11
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh no, and he's like no.
3:15
Speaker 1: When I pushed down, the brakes aren't stopping the car.
3:18
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, that's not good. And the
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Speaker 1: friend was like, are you fucking with us? Nope, nope,
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Speaker 1: can't or they were Australian right, let me do my
3:27
Speaker 1: Australian accent. No, no, the brakes don't work. The shot. Yeah,
3:34
Speaker 1: the brakes don't work, mate, I am pushing them down
3:37
Speaker 1: and they're not working. I can tell you right now, Melbourne.
3:42
Speaker 1: And so the car was broken and we were at
3:45
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain and we had to get
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Speaker 1: all the way to the bottom, but we didn't want
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Speaker 1: to do it by falling off the road and dying.
3:51
Speaker 1: We could have got to the bottom very fast that way,
3:53
Speaker 1: but we were trying to stay on the road. So
3:55
Speaker 1: he's like, because it's also locking the wheels. Every time
3:59
Speaker 1: he uses it, something's wrong. So the wheels are like
4:01
Speaker 1: locked going left to right, so he has to like
4:03
Speaker 1: rip it back right and then rip it back left.
4:05
Speaker 1: And I was like, boh, I'm glad I'm not driving,
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Speaker 1: which is like not what you want to think when
4:12
Speaker 1: you're slow motion dying down a mountain. And it's not
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Speaker 1: like one road. It's not like a big slide going
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Speaker 1: down to the main road. It's switchbacks. So there's like
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Speaker 1: thirty switchbacks that we have to go down at a
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Speaker 1: quite steep incline with breaks that do not work and
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Speaker 1: wheels that are constantly getting locked in opposite positions, and
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Speaker 1: our driver, who must have hated to be in that position,
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Speaker 1: was struggling to turn back and forth. Credit to this dude,
4:43
Speaker 1: he struggled with that steering wheel all the way down.
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Speaker 1: I don't know if it's thirty, I'll say twenty switchbacks
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Speaker 1: easy though we were grinding and not dying for a
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Speaker 1: long time, fifteen to twenty minutes just down switchback after switchback,
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Speaker 1: and every time he made a switchback. I was like,
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Speaker 1: holy shit, we didn't die again. This guy is a
5:11
Speaker 1: pretty good driver. If we're still not dead, you can't
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Speaker 1: get angry at the car because it's working enough that
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Speaker 1: we're not dead. And then we got to the bottom
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Speaker 1: and it's still grinding. It sounds totally messed up. I
5:22
Speaker 1: guess I'll finish that story later. But we did make
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Speaker 1: it all the way down the mountain without dying because
5:30
Speaker 1: of this Australian ex basketball player who had like a
5:35
Speaker 1: knee surgery I have to review. So those were the
5:39
Speaker 1: crazy Australians falling down a crazy Austrian mountain. There were
5:46
Speaker 1: the Italian mountains, which are just pretty and have orange
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Speaker 1: trees and olive leaves all of trees on all of them.
5:55
Speaker 1: And I picked up Italian okay, by which I mean
6:00
Speaker 1: barely conversational, which plays into this story. A little later.
6:04
Speaker 1: I climbed a mountain in Italy because I like climbing mountains,
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Speaker 1: and there was a town on the other side, and
6:10
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, let's do it. So I get
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Speaker 1: to the top and I was like, you know what,
6:13
Speaker 1: should have brought some more water since you didn't bring any.
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Speaker 1: And I was like, boy, two hours later, really wish
6:21
Speaker 1: I had brought some water, and I just kept walking,
6:23
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I was in an
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Speaker 1: idyllic orange orchard, like trees everywhere. One hundred thousand trees,
6:33
Speaker 1: how many, realistically there could have been tens of thousands
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Speaker 1: of trees. They were as far as I could see.
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Speaker 1: For rolling hill, there was a lot. And I immediately
6:46
Speaker 1: checked around real quick, like a suspicious person, and then
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Speaker 1: ripped a bunch of oranges off and threw them in
6:53
Speaker 1: my bag. And I ripped open one and ate it
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Speaker 1: and threw the peels on the side of the road,
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Speaker 1: and I felt a little bad, but there were pe
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Speaker 1: all over the side of the road, so it was
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Speaker 1: pretty clear that people did this constantly. I'm sure I
7:05
Speaker 1: still wasn't supposed to, but this mountain saved my life.
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Speaker 1: Probably not, but it definitely saved me being very thirsty
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Speaker 1: and worrying about my life. I was a little anxious
7:18
Speaker 1: because I had been working for like six hours and
7:19
Speaker 1: I had no water left. And then I had a
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Speaker 1: sea of beautiful, perfect oranges that tasted so good, and
7:26
Speaker 1: I ate so many of them, and then I had
7:29
Speaker 1: just finished one. So she didn't see me being a
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Speaker 1: thieving lout. But a lady in a pickup truck drove
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Speaker 1: up and was like, hey, do you need a ride
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Speaker 1: to the town on the other side of the mountain.
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Speaker 1: I was like, yes, that's where I'm going. That would
7:43
Speaker 1: be great because I still wanted water. I had eaten
7:45
Speaker 1: a lot of fruit and I didn't feel like I
7:48
Speaker 1: was going to dive dehydration, but I didn't feel super hydrated.
7:53
Speaker 1: And this random lady driving up a mountain saw someone
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Speaker 1: with a rucksack on the side of the road, and
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Speaker 1: she made the effort to She spoke zero English, so
8:02
Speaker 1: it was all the conversation much was very broken and
8:06
Speaker 1: difficult to muddle through. It was much more like, eh, car, town,
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Speaker 1: those are the words I understood. And then I said yes, town,
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Speaker 1: you car. She was like yes, yes and waved me
8:21
Speaker 1: in and I got in. I was like, thank you
8:24
Speaker 1: me town hot like and she drove me down. She
8:30
Speaker 1: was like, well this here bye, thank you, and she
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Speaker 1: left and then I continued walking. After I stopped into
8:38
Speaker 1: town and had a couple ranchino it chino. What are
8:43
Speaker 1: they called the rice balls that are like fried on
8:46
Speaker 1: the outside. Those are good. I had one of those
8:48
Speaker 1: for the first time in that town that I made
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Speaker 1: it into, and that was a very nice town. I
8:52
Speaker 1: was thinking of staying there for a while. It was
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Speaker 1: just so pretty and surrounded by mountains. There's cobblestones everywhere.
8:58
Speaker 1: But I was still into backpacking and my Italian was
9:01
Speaker 1: so bad, so I just kept walking after I had
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Speaker 1: my meal, and eventually I came across a mountain of
9:08
Speaker 1: olive trees and set of my hammock, took a little nap,
9:13
Speaker 1: and then I was in another. I was like, what
9:15
Speaker 1: are these cool looking trees? And then when I was
9:18
Speaker 1: napping under one of them, I noticed that there were
9:20
Speaker 1: olives in them. And at first I thought those olives
9:23
Speaker 1: were fruits, some kind of weird fig that I didn't
9:26
Speaker 1: know about. And then when I looked it up online,
9:29
Speaker 1: it was like, that's what a real olive is. Stupid,
9:32
Speaker 1: all of the olives. You know about our brine? And
9:35
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well, now everything makes sense. And
9:40
Speaker 1: that were those were the Italian mountains. Wait, there's another
9:44
Speaker 1: Italian mountain thing. Oh okay, I remembered it. I was
9:49
Speaker 1: walking along this actually down a hill after that town,
9:54
Speaker 1: I believe, sloping down and walking along the coast line.
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Speaker 1: So I was looking out across the ocean, and then
10:03
Speaker 1: there was this dirt path leading along a ridge line
10:07
Speaker 1: of the mountain I was on, and I had mostly descended,
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Speaker 1: so it was only a couple hundred feet up and
10:13
Speaker 1: it was just like this parallel dirt road lined by
10:18
Speaker 1: olive trees. And something caught my eye to my left,
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Speaker 1: and I looked over and there was just a hole
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Speaker 1: in the mountain, like a square hole. So I walked
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Speaker 1: over there and poked my head in, and I was like, well,
10:31
Speaker 1: if any hobbits are here, I should just make myself
10:34
Speaker 1: known so I don't interrupt them. But nobody was in
10:36
Speaker 1: this little hole. So I went inside because what the
10:40
Speaker 1: heck is it? And I couldn't tell what it was.
10:44
Speaker 1: There were some slabs of rock and so on, and
10:48
Speaker 1: I was kind of confused, so I kept poking around,
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Speaker 1: and then on the side of one wall, I found
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Speaker 1: this metal plaque and read it and realized that it
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Speaker 1: was a tomb. It was some family tomb from hundreds
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Speaker 1: of years ago. And yeah, I was investigating a tomb
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Speaker 1: in this little mountain side in Italy. Honestly, not much
11:12
Speaker 1: more than that. It was just interesting that I found
11:14
Speaker 1: a tomb in a mountain well onto Ireland. In Ireland,
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Speaker 1: I shit on a mountain like a bear in the woods,
11:24
Speaker 1: dug a hole, did my business, covered it up, just
11:28
Speaker 1: isolated in the middle of a forest. And then like
11:32
Speaker 1: twenty seconds after I started walking away from the hole
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Speaker 1: that I covered, I saw a person walking through the desolate,
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Speaker 1: isolated forest toward me, and I was like, where did
11:45
Speaker 1: they come from? And I don't think they saw me,
11:48
Speaker 1: and they were very casual and walked by, and I
11:51
Speaker 1: was just like, wow, I'm glad I finished twenty seconds before.
11:55
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't take twenty more seconds. The dreams
12:01
Speaker 1: on the other side of the disgusting spectrum are very clean.
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Speaker 1: The mountain streams and I had one of those Minisawyer
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Speaker 1: filters and I used that to filter all of my
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Speaker 1: water while I was walking in the Wicklow Mountains for
12:14
Speaker 1: a week or whatever it was, it might have been
12:17
Speaker 1: four days. God. Walking through the mountains in Ireland was
12:20
Speaker 1: so cool because there are bars in every tiny little town,
12:24
Speaker 1: so I would just like stop in a bar and
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Speaker 1: get a packet of crisps and a guinness and then
12:29
Speaker 1: walk for two hours in like the most beautiful misty
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Speaker 1: mountain area in the world and then get some more
12:39
Speaker 1: guinness and crisps at the next bar, and it was great,
12:43
Speaker 1: very fun. That is also where I learned to play
12:45
Speaker 1: my first instrument, my tin whistle, which is like a recorder,
12:49
Speaker 1: but like for grown ups. It's a much more respected
12:52
Speaker 1: instrument outside of the US, particularly inside Europe, and it
12:56
Speaker 1: can't sound very cool, but I did have I think
13:01
Speaker 1: I only had one battery, and I knew I was
13:03
Speaker 1: going to be walking for like a week, probably over
13:06
Speaker 1: these mountains that didn't seem to have any charging points
13:09
Speaker 1: because they are mountains. I was like, well, what can
13:11
Speaker 1: I do if I'm not going to play on my
13:14
Speaker 1: phone which will drain the battery. I was like, why
13:16
Speaker 1: don't you get an instrument. You never learned how to
13:18
Speaker 1: play an instrument. So I went to a music store
13:21
Speaker 1: and I saw a tin whistle in the window, and
13:23
Speaker 1: I bought one and it was perfect. And that's what
13:28
Speaker 1: I did on those mountains instead of playing on my phone.
13:33
Speaker 1: I learned how to play the tin whistle well enough,
13:36
Speaker 1: I'd say, like some people liked it. I liked it.
13:40
Speaker 1: I learned how to play the Hey Arnold theme song
13:42
Speaker 1: and a couple other theme songs on it, and a
13:46
Speaker 1: bunch of regular, just normal tunes that anyone would learn
13:50
Speaker 1: on a recorder or whatever. But it sounds a lot
13:53
Speaker 1: crisp and clear and prettier on the tin whistle, especially
13:56
Speaker 1: when you're walking through Irish forests and mountains in the
13:59
Speaker 1: middle and you're like ghostly whispering a tune through these
14:09
Speaker 1: enchanted flora. It was great. I'm probably gonna go over
14:14
Speaker 1: this again because I'm definitely doing a whole Ireland podcast
14:17
Speaker 1: that trip. But it was also cool because I got
14:20
Speaker 1: to help two old ladies. One of them was standing
14:23
Speaker 1: on a ledge on the on a mountain and it
14:26
Speaker 1: was like a five foot ledge and she couldn't quite
14:28
Speaker 1: get down. She was slippery because it's Ireland so it's
14:32
Speaker 1: always damp, and she couldn't go up or down the slope.
14:35
Speaker 1: She was just stuck on the slope but was worried
14:37
Speaker 1: about coming down. And I just happened to be walking
14:39
Speaker 1: up at that exact time, at that curve in the road,
14:43
Speaker 1: and I was like, hello, can I help you? And
14:45
Speaker 1: she said no, no, no, no, I'm fine when she
14:49
Speaker 1: saw me, because I looked pretty rugged with a backpack
14:52
Speaker 1: and probably unshaven, just a dirty old boy has having left,
14:57
Speaker 1: you know, Doublin a few days ago. And I was like,
15:01
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna any I'll just hold out my hand.
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Speaker 1: You put your hand on mine and you can safely
15:07
Speaker 1: get down that ledge. She was like, really, okay, thank you,
15:12
Speaker 1: thank you so much, and so I put in my hand.
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Speaker 1: She did exactly that and got down, and as she
15:17
Speaker 1: placed a foot onto the solid ground, her husband drove
15:21
Speaker 1: up in the car and she said, this young man
15:24
Speaker 1: just helped me down. He said, I was driving the
15:27
Speaker 1: car so that I could, Oh, should I do an
15:29
Speaker 1: Irish accent? You guys will love that, right. Well, I
15:32
Speaker 1: was just driving the car up to help her. I
15:34
Speaker 1: saw her she had trouble on the ledge. I don't
15:37
Speaker 1: know that was okay. He was already driving to help
15:41
Speaker 1: her and he was gonna help her down. But she
15:44
Speaker 1: was like, he was so nice. And the husband got
15:47
Speaker 1: out of his car and he said, I think he
15:49
Speaker 1: might have come over and shook my hand or something.
15:51
Speaker 1: But he was very very grateful and said, thank you
15:55
Speaker 1: so much. It's so nice to note that there are
15:57
Speaker 1: people who want to help other people still in this world,
16:01
Speaker 1: and or something like that. He said, you're a nice,
16:03
Speaker 1: upstanding gentleman, but in a very charming Irish accent, and yeah,
16:09
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, okay, by my stupid American accent,
16:15
Speaker 1: the worst accent. And they drove off very happy, and
16:20
Speaker 1: I was very happy. I'm not sure if it was
16:22
Speaker 1: later that day or the next day, but I was
16:24
Speaker 1: on the top of another mountain and there was another
16:26
Speaker 1: old lady loading cords of wood into her car and
16:30
Speaker 1: I was like, am I in an RPG? Am I
16:33
Speaker 1: like supposed to? Am I proving my soul's worthiness? Is
16:37
Speaker 1: this a spiritual journey? And it certainly felt like one,
16:40
Speaker 1: like magical forests and missed everywhere. And there was this
16:43
Speaker 1: old lady like hauling wood into her car and I
16:47
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, I'm just walking down the road. Can
16:52
Speaker 1: I help you load that pile of wood into the
16:56
Speaker 1: trunk of your car. She's like would you? Yeah, no,
17:01
Speaker 1: I'd love to do that. That's great. She's like, oh,
17:04
Speaker 1: that's so good of you, so good of you, and
17:07
Speaker 1: she was excited. I helped her, and I went much faster. Obviously,
17:11
Speaker 1: she was like eighty. She was an older woman, and
17:14
Speaker 1: I was a strapping young buck who didn't even have
17:18
Speaker 1: to take off his rucksack to carry tiny wee logs
17:22
Speaker 1: of wood up a wee hill into her wee trunk
17:26
Speaker 1: in the we car. Yeah. She was also very happy.
17:29
Speaker 1: And then she asked me if I was religious, and
17:31
Speaker 1: I was like, oh no. She was like, oh, well,
17:34
Speaker 1: you're very nice anyway, and I think it doesn't matter
17:37
Speaker 1: what religion you are as long as you want to
17:39
Speaker 1: help others. And I was like, wow, that's an astoundingly
17:45
Speaker 1: progressive viewpoint for someone the better part of a century old.
17:50
Speaker 1: Like if she had said something racist, I would have
17:52
Speaker 1: been like, that makes way more sense than some kind
17:55
Speaker 1: profound wisdom. She was just very chill for an old person.
17:58
Speaker 1: She wasn't really interesting lady. Yeah, And anyway, she was
18:03
Speaker 1: like thank you so much, and I said peace, homie,
18:06
Speaker 1: but in some like you know, polite way. Those are
18:09
Speaker 1: some parts of many Ireland stories that I have, which
18:12
Speaker 1: I'll get further into in the Ireland episode, because that
18:16
Speaker 1: was an amazing backpack adventure hammock camping adventure. But that
18:21
Speaker 1: was very interesting that I met two people who needed
18:24
Speaker 1: obvious help to the point where I wasn't like, am
18:28
Speaker 1: I going to be interfering? It's like, no, they're alone
18:32
Speaker 1: on a mountain in need of physical help, and you
18:36
Speaker 1: are alone on the mountain and can offer that help straightforward.
18:40
Speaker 1: Don't worry about if helping someone is too much, help
18:45
Speaker 1: help them ask first. If they don't want it, you know, okay,
18:48
Speaker 1: but yeah, help people. Morocco. So when I was in Morocco,
18:56
Speaker 1: my sister and I drove out into the Sahara for
18:58
Speaker 1: I believe four days. We weren't a car and just
19:00
Speaker 1: drove out east and after a while we drove up
19:04
Speaker 1: these windy mountains. I think after the first day where
19:07
Speaker 1: we camped in the desert, car camped every day, I
19:11
Speaker 1: think I slept outside because I had my sleeping bag,
19:14
Speaker 1: and it was awesome. It was in the desert, like
19:17
Speaker 1: it was the coolest thing. It was great. But the
19:20
Speaker 1: next day we went up these crazy windy mountains and
19:23
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, these are getting high and these
19:27
Speaker 1: roads are getting thin. But this is still a two
19:30
Speaker 1: way street. So it was pretty freaky. But we got
19:33
Speaker 1: to the top. And then after this forty five minutes
19:36
Speaker 1: of ordeal and scary mountain, windy not real roads. Driving
19:41
Speaker 1: the dirt could have just collapsed at any moment. Luckily
19:44
Speaker 1: it didn't. Wood knock and that's for whoever's on those
19:52
Speaker 1: roads next. So we got to the top of these
19:55
Speaker 1: mountains and we're gonna head down the other way, and
19:58
Speaker 1: there is a small mountain cafe like maybe maybe ten tables,
20:05
Speaker 1: but like small personal tables that could only fit two people,
20:09
Speaker 1: and I was just staring. I was like, well, we
20:11
Speaker 1: should stop for that, and my sister was like, really,
20:14
Speaker 1: are you sure And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's
20:17
Speaker 1: a mountain cafe. We're on a mountain. How is it
20:20
Speaker 1: even here? And so we stopped for breakfast and it
20:23
Speaker 1: was a delicious breakfast with fresh orange juice that was
20:27
Speaker 1: clearly real orange juice. It was stunning. It was super
20:31
Speaker 1: nice outdoor, open roof cafe, but it had like a
20:35
Speaker 1: small terraced patio area with the tables and chairs and
20:38
Speaker 1: there was a little picket fence around it, and it
20:41
Speaker 1: had a stunning view from the top of the mountain.
20:43
Speaker 1: Of course, you could see all these windy roads that
20:46
Speaker 1: other people are driving up. It was a fantastic breakfast.
20:50
Speaker 1: So thanks Morocco. Windy Mountains, the mountains in Vietnam. So
20:55
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Vietnam was topographically divided into very
20:59
Speaker 1: cleartions of mountain country and flat country, so not planning
21:08
Speaker 1: as is my want. I flew into Hanoi. I flew
21:14
Speaker 1: into Hanoi and I was already had a plan of
21:19
Speaker 1: any capacity, which was a lot. I had a next step.
21:22
Speaker 1: I don't want to call it a plan actually, because
21:24
Speaker 1: that's not accurate. I had a next step. I was
21:26
Speaker 1: going to land in Hanoi, buy a bicycle, and then
21:30
Speaker 1: ride the bicycle in Vietnam for three months. That's that's
21:33
Speaker 1: what I was doing. Or I was like, I'll start
21:36
Speaker 1: them off whatever. So I first day walked from the
21:41
Speaker 1: airport into the city, walked around, found an old grandpa
21:44
Speaker 1: selling ten dollars bicycles. I bought a slightly better one
21:48
Speaker 1: for like twenty dollars because I planned to ride that
21:50
Speaker 1: bike every day and I didn't want to think about
21:54
Speaker 1: the chain snapping right right away, or you know, the
21:57
Speaker 1: tire popping immediately or anything like that. And then I
22:02
Speaker 1: had to choose because that's all I had. That was
22:04
Speaker 1: my next step, by the bike, and I was like, well,
22:06
Speaker 1: the plan's done. I was like, oh no, I still
22:08
Speaker 1: have to bike pack through Vietnam. And I had to
22:13
Speaker 1: choose right or left when I left, and that would
22:16
Speaker 1: take me north or south of Hanoi, and I was like, well,
22:19
Speaker 1: I'm in Honoi. I guess I'll just explain explore the
22:22
Speaker 1: rest of the north of the country first, and then
22:25
Speaker 1: I knew the south later. And I rode my bicycle
22:28
Speaker 1: out of Hanoi, and I did not know that the
22:33
Speaker 1: entire north, especially after Hanoi part of Vietnam, all mountains,
22:38
Speaker 1: all very steep, high elevation mountains, all mountains, and I
22:43
Speaker 1: had a bicycle, whereas if I had gone south, little
22:48
Speaker 1: mountainous very quickly flattens out, and the entire south hath
22:51
Speaker 1: of country is like, yeah, a few mountains, but mostly
22:54
Speaker 1: just flat. I could have just had a flat down
22:57
Speaker 1: It'll ride onto flat territory. I suspect it is not
23:01
Speaker 1: a coincidence that I never saw another tourist in those
23:03
Speaker 1: mountains for three months straight. The mountains were unbelievable, they
23:10
Speaker 1: were untouched, they were beautiful. I have so many of
23:13
Speaker 1: those mountain stories. Go to the Vietnam episode to hear
23:17
Speaker 1: about the man who invited me in for a feast
23:20
Speaker 1: and sang karaoke with me, the mud slides, the cool
23:25
Speaker 1: construction workers. All my stories are mountains because I rode
23:29
Speaker 1: a bicycle through mountains, which was as extremely strenuous as
23:34
Speaker 1: you're imagining. Constantly extremely strenuous, but one of my favorite
23:41
Speaker 1: experiences ever traveling like it was now that I've done.
23:44
Speaker 1: It was absolutely amazing. And whenever I got like twenty
23:47
Speaker 1: minutes of a flat road, I was like, Oh my god,
23:50
Speaker 1: what's hat This is heaven? And then there'd be another incline,
23:54
Speaker 1: Oh god, the border checkpoint. Oh yes, okay. I have
23:57
Speaker 1: so many mountain stories from Vietnam, so go check out
24:00
Speaker 1: my Vietnam podcast. There are some very fun stories in
24:04
Speaker 1: there that showed the graciousness of Vietnamese people and just
24:10
Speaker 1: the beauty of that country. Like I loved Vietnam, it
24:14
Speaker 1: was great. Thailand has a lot of good mountains and
24:18
Speaker 1: they have a lot of good overlooks and all that
24:19
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. I'm going to talk about the thing
24:21
Speaker 1: that stuck out most to me though. I lived in
24:24
Speaker 1: this isolated little hut in a grove like of bamboo
24:32
Speaker 1: next to a coffee plantation for a month something like that.
24:37
Speaker 1: I don't know, I want to stay longer. But my
24:39
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time was going stir crazy, is the
24:43
Speaker 1: only way I can describe it. She thought like the
24:47
Speaker 1: people were plotting against her. I don't know, but we
24:49
Speaker 1: had to leave. But during the month I was there,
24:52
Speaker 1: it's extremely serene. So during the day, if I wasn't
24:56
Speaker 1: copying my girlfriend's yoga or playing with her in a tree,
25:01
Speaker 1: we went to a waterfall one day that was on
25:03
Speaker 1: a mountain. Anyway, there was a cascading waterfall on a
25:06
Speaker 1: mountain that was amazing. They had those little fish that
25:10
Speaker 1: But anyway, listened to the tie stories I'm got I'm
25:13
Speaker 1: I have a lot of TIE podcasts. Probably I spent
25:16
Speaker 1: a lot of time in there. Okay, the one that
25:18
Speaker 1: sticks out of my mind. When I was in that cabin,
25:20
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out something useful to do
25:22
Speaker 1: with my time, something productive, something enriching. Is the I
25:27
Speaker 1: was looking for something enriching to do while I was
25:29
Speaker 1: living in this isolated little cabin with my super hot girlfriend.
25:34
Speaker 1: Shout out to hot people. They need more attention, right,
25:39
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know what constellations? Because the
25:42
Speaker 1: stars are amazing here. I was jogging at the time
25:47
Speaker 1: and I always saw the star of the night and
25:50
Speaker 1: I was like, the stars are so nice. I should
25:51
Speaker 1: like learn what these constellations are. Because you know, I
25:55
Speaker 1: like the movie Hercules and Greek gods and stuff. There's
25:58
Speaker 1: a you know, there's constellations up there, and it's weird.
26:00
Speaker 1: I don't know about them. And this is one of
26:03
Speaker 1: the few locations on Earth where I saw the clearest
26:05
Speaker 1: skies I've ever seen. And all I had to do
26:08
Speaker 1: is climb a small mountain next to the hut that
26:11
Speaker 1: I was living in, and I just threw my head
26:15
Speaker 1: back and stared up at the sky and used an
26:17
Speaker 1: app on my phone that connected. It's that regular one
26:20
Speaker 1: that everyone used, the Google Sky mapp whatever thing, and
26:23
Speaker 1: it tells you which constellation is which that you're looking at,
26:27
Speaker 1: and I learned pretty much all the constellation. I learned
26:30
Speaker 1: a lot of them anyway when I was there, and
26:32
Speaker 1: I could just look up and recognize them and explain them.
26:35
Speaker 1: And it was really cool to learn that at the time,
26:38
Speaker 1: and I've forgotten most of them now, but the time
26:42
Speaker 1: it was because it was so clear. I finally had
26:48
Speaker 1: that moment where I was like, oh, this is why
26:51
Speaker 1: they thought the stars were animals, or like, this is
26:56
Speaker 1: why the night sky is divine. They thought it was
27:00
Speaker 1: a divine extravagance because because there's nothing else to think
27:06
Speaker 1: when you're standing on top of a mountain staring at
27:10
Speaker 1: an infinite amount of stars, and the larger ones are
27:15
Speaker 1: making pictures, They're making lives and existences within that night sky.
27:22
Speaker 1: I remember specifically the first time I realized where the
27:25
Speaker 1: dragon was because I had seen Ursa Major which is huge,
27:28
Speaker 1: and ur Some minor which is still big, and all
27:32
Speaker 1: these constellations, and then it was like dragon or what's
27:36
Speaker 1: it called the serpent maybe, but I was like, well,
27:40
Speaker 1: where is it? And I was like looking around for
27:43
Speaker 1: I couldn't find I couldn't find the section of the
27:45
Speaker 1: sky that held the serpent or whatever. And then I
27:49
Speaker 1: was like, that's its head right right those three and
27:52
Speaker 1: I saw it and then I was like, yep, that's
27:54
Speaker 1: definitely its head. And I recognized his head and then
27:56
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, because that had already
27:58
Speaker 1: taken up as much space, almost just like Ursa Major.
28:01
Speaker 1: It was huge, and I was like, that's the head.
28:04
Speaker 1: And then in this cinematic, just revelatory sweep, I followed
28:13
Speaker 1: its body all the way from one horizon to the other,
28:16
Speaker 1: and it just covered the entire sky and it was overwhelming.
28:21
Speaker 1: It was it was mentally overwhelming. It was not maybe emotionally,
28:26
Speaker 1: but it was awe it was inspirationally overwhelming. I was
28:31
Speaker 1: blown away when I saw the serpent in the sky
28:34
Speaker 1: for the first time, that clearly and that large. It
28:37
Speaker 1: was just because it felt it felt like a serpent,
28:41
Speaker 1: It felt like one discreete animal that was as large
28:45
Speaker 1: as the sky. It was totally crazy, and that was
28:50
Speaker 1: definitely a mountainside epiphany I had seen it. I would
28:54
Speaker 1: probably use the app before, even like on the beach
28:57
Speaker 1: or something, but you don't get the same I didn't
29:00
Speaker 1: get the same sense of revelatory vastness that I did
29:04
Speaker 1: standing atop this mountain with zero light pollution, any countless
29:09
Speaker 1: sea of stars hanging above me suspended, which is a
29:13
Speaker 1: good word because when they're that vibrant without any interfering
29:19
Speaker 1: light pollution, it does feel like the stars could come
29:22
Speaker 1: crashing down any second, and they're just making the choice
29:26
Speaker 1: not too yet. And you know what, Let's just throw
29:30
Speaker 1: in a couple of American mountains just for fun. Denver
29:34
Speaker 1: Beautiful Mountains, Golden Fantastic Mountains. Those are actually the mountains
29:38
Speaker 1: on the Cores Beer Can, the Rockies right next to
29:42
Speaker 1: the factory. And I sat on several mountains around there
29:47
Speaker 1: and climbed a whole bunch, and I had an electric
29:49
Speaker 1: bike at the time, and I just zipped right up
29:51
Speaker 1: to the top of them. Denver has great looking mountains too,
29:56
Speaker 1: not great looking forests or fields, a little yellow and
29:59
Speaker 1: dry form I taste, but beautiful mountains, like, absolutely undeniably
30:05
Speaker 1: beautiful mountains. You're welcome, USA for being part of this.
30:12
Speaker 1: Didn't get any revelations on the top of the Denver Mountains,
30:15
Speaker 1: but they were very pretty.