Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1170: Wild West Bikepacking Route - Keagan French Revisited

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Ep. 1170: Wild West Bikepacking Route - Keagan French Revisited · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: quick update on my dad Kurt.
0:28
[SPEAKER_02]: He did it.
0:29
[SPEAKER_02]: He successfully summited the tallest peak in Africa, one of the seven summits, Kilimanjaro.
0:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I'm recording this, he is on his first of three flights back home.
0:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations to him on a safe and successful journey, completing a lifelong dream of his Kilimanjaro, and even better that he was able to do with such a great group of guys and for such an excellent cause for the organization we see hope.
1:06
[SPEAKER_02]: As a quick reminder, if you've been meaning to, but you haven't yet, you can donate to the fundraiser for this trip via the description below for we see hope.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a fantastic organization.
1:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It helps so many people in Africa.
1:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that my dad is absolutely thrilled to be able to partner with that organization for his trip.
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And now on to today's episode.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Today's revisited episode is Mason interviewing Keegan French, and it's an episode about a still fairly new bike packing route called the Wild West.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It's 2700 mile route.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes from Canada to Mexico, and it took Keegan two months to finish.
1:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And in this episode, we hear Mason interviewing Keegan about the adventures he had on that trip.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: What will it write, what will it wrong?
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So I hope you enjoy this episode.
2:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's Mason.
2:11
[SPEAKER_04]: welcome to the adventure sports podcast today we're talking to someone who's done a route that I've really been interested in a bike packing route called the wild rest less the wild west route yeah dang that's it that's on more of a tongue twister than you think but we're interviewing Keegan French who just recently got off the trip so Keegan how's it going hey pretty good I think awesome man what were you coming from today I'm here in golden colorado I'm home
2:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, nice, man.
2:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, uh, what did you just recently do the trip?
2:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that email was back in July.
2:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Was it this summer?
2:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Was it?
2:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was, uh, it was this summer.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I started, um, right in the beginning of June and finished right at the end of July.
2:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but home, uh, about a month and a half.
2:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, sweet man, and you know, we were talking a little bit before you were mentioned in that you work for average for adventure, you've done some climbing, you climb, you know, have done some guiding for them and stuff, but this was your first bike packing adventure, correct?
3:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So what, what is your background in adventure sports?
3:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Where, where do you grow up?
3:17
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you kind of do growing up in and what is kind of your traditional your sports that you're into?
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it could be a long story, but I grew up in Western New York because she could say I came by it, honestly, both my parents were outdoor guides and some fashion as I was growing up and spent my younger years traveling around with my dad and other family members adventuring.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But to be honest, as a teenager, I was pretty set that I was going to be my own person and
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Swar that I didn't like canoeing, didn't like hiking, you know, all of that, I was going to do my own thing.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So got into snowboarding and, you know, anything that my family didn't do.
4:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
4:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So they were the ones that were kind of instilling it in you.
4:06
[SPEAKER_04]: What did they do?
4:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Just kind of that, that, those things you mentioned canoeing and hiking and all that.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my dad still kind of owned his own adventure guiding business.
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's canoeing, kayaking, hiking, biking, rock climbing skiing kind of the,
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: the whole gambit either locally or internationally.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of grew up around most of that stuff.
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was interested in it.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I got pretty into rock climbing when I was about 16, 17.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, had a father who's afraid of heights.
4:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, cool, climbing.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna do that.
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, ended up deciding in college and moving into the years beyond that.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, these were still things that were important to me.
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately ended up following them and then moving to Colorado, because of it.
4:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, man, the the the the the mecca one exactly now, right me and everyone else.
5:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we we actually listen, you're just probably sick and tired of me.
5:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, he's just telling personal facts, but I just moved from the golden area, like two months ago.
5:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, was there for for a while, miss it for sure, but I'm
5:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was definitely like, oh, wow, everybody else is here too.
5:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
5:22
[SPEAKER_04]: But still, it's when you're there, it makes sense, you know?
5:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's the other day and why it's so impressive.
5:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So you eventually came back around and I, and that's why I find that so interesting because we hear from so many people who, you know, they didn't have that influence growing up or maybe it was hunting or fishing or something only.
5:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and the, you know, the other things outdoors were a little more peripheral or really not there at all and then they discovered later on so the fact that you were in it went away from it and came back you're like a, you're like a preacher's kid, you know, coming back to the pulpit years later.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, you know, it's definitely something I like, but I was a challenging kid to say the least so anything I could do to pretend like I was my own person that was.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a good thing for me.
6:07
[SPEAKER_04]: That's funny, man.
6:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So, well, you got into bike pack.
6:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, you're doing something.
6:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know your dad might do that, too.
6:14
[SPEAKER_04]: But it sounds like it was at least new for you recently.
6:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Tell us about what you just did.
6:20
[SPEAKER_04]: How did you have the time off?
6:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Was it just because with work and everything COVID had gone on?
6:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you have some time?
6:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Or was it something you were planning to do for a while?
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a good question.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I definitely wasn't planning it for a while.
6:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Matt.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have never, this is my first bike vacuum trip.
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of got that idea on my head and had been working pretty hard.
6:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been working for Avid and also going back to school to get my master's and social work on the side.
6:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've been working pretty hard for the past couple of years and looking for a way to have an adventure.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just kind of lined up.
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I graduated in May.
7:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Avid was looking for some folks to take time off,
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: having a smaller team for the summer.
7:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got the opportunity to do that and it came around.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, yep, would love to take some time off.
7:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I'll be doing.
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Sent my boss a link to the bike backing route and said, yeah, if it's okay with you, this is what I will be doing with my time off.
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it all kind of kind of lined up perfectly to allow me to do that.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: that's incredible.
7:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So why this route went like was the inspiration to choose this route and also to bike pack where you just wanted to get into that in general?
7:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I've never bike back before.
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: My cousin did a bike packing trip last year.
7:46
[SPEAKER_01]: He did another one of the plateau passage through Utah and he'd been talking about it forever.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: How great it was and actually he had
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: going by himself and there was so much snow and he had to push and carry his bike and hitchhike in the town because he ran out of food and like all of his crazy stuff.
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
8:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was kind of into the bike backing scene and I always wanted to do another one.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And he sent me an email around March with this route.
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, hey, look at this, they just finished it.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I looked it up and I somehow adventures just grip you.
8:27
[SPEAKER_01]: and they started looking at the website.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And to be honest, immediately when I did was look at the website to see if there was anything that seemed either longer or like more rugged and there wasn't, this was like the biggest longest put together route I could find.
8:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, that's it, we should do that one.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was just a couple months before we left.
8:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So how did you prepare in two months?
8:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you obviously did you have a bike, did you have to get one, like, what did all that look like?
8:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Cause you know, there is, it's a lot like backpacking anyone that's not familiar with bike packing.
8:59
[SPEAKER_04]: But there are some specific things, you know, to the bike itself and bags and stuff that aren't cheap.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I felt pretty familiar with the, you know, a camping ordeal on the adventuring part.
9:12
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'd only mountain bike.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a, I still do, I have one mountain bike, but it's more of an in-dero bike.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Got in the mountain biking a couple of years ago.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Mostly wanted to ride a downhill.
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't really that into pedaling long days prior to hitting trail.
9:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The most I'd written was 30 miles in a day.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like a downhill ride.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm full and gelada kind of thing.
9:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That is funny, dude, so you, you, I mean, did you change that or did you stick to relatively short days and you know how long did it take you?
9:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, on the trip.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we, um, well, so again, looked at the website and people who had done it and was like, oh, if you go 50 miles a day, it takes roughly two months and I was like that sounds reasonable.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the first day was rough, started out in the Arizona border and the bike north and it's 108 degrees.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was the first time I'd ever bike with a loaded bike because I was like working right up until the last day before we left.
10:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd like ridden my bike around town and experimented with different parts.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But just before we put it in the car to drive for the border, we packed everything onto our bikes and I wrote it around the neighborhood here
10:34
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe 10 minutes.
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, okay, everything stays.
10:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it's like biking a biking a moped, you know, exactly.
10:43
[SPEAKER_04]: You're like, oh my gosh, it's thing so heavy.
10:45
[SPEAKER_04]: It was so heavy.
10:47
[SPEAKER_04]: That is wild, man.
10:48
[SPEAKER_04]: What's interesting is we've talked so much about the tour divide and the great divide mountain bike route.
10:56
[SPEAKER_04]: This is
10:57
[SPEAKER_04]: legitimately parallel to it, just, you know, everywhere from like a hundred to maybe a few hundred miles west.
11:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm even like, hey, it's like it's even closer in places.
11:08
[SPEAKER_04]: That is crazy.
11:09
[SPEAKER_04]: This is incredible.
11:10
[SPEAKER_04]: What a cool route.
11:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, and I looked at that.
11:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, the obviously the great divide kind of came up in my research of looking at this and this route.
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's super cool.
11:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty new in the world of bike backing routes and kind of compare the two side by side and this one, it just has less pavement and less, less people less busy places, it's like 80% on public land, something like that, almost entirely off pavement and just looked a little more rugged and a little bit more wildernessy, which is kind of what I was looking for.
11:50
[SPEAKER_04]: did it prove to be true?
11:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty out there sometimes.
11:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not too crazy.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You can resupply every three days at the most.
12:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But parts of Arizona are 100 miles between water.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was a whole new experience for me.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just wanted to get out there in the desert.
12:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, see less people and see all of kind of the amazing places that American West has out there.
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was great.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's I slept out every night for for two months.
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Stars were incredible.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even bring a tent until I got to Salt Lake City for the first first month.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I was trying to stay away.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I had like a, I don't know how heavy my bike was.
12:34
[SPEAKER_01]: 50, 70 pounds.
12:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no idea.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It was hard to pick up.
12:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, no one, yeah, man.
12:39
[SPEAKER_04]: What a culture shock to leave on day one from the Mexican board.
12:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I'm not mistaken, it looks like it bikes along the border for just a little bit.
12:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's so weird.
12:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So we, see, I finished work gotten the car the next morning drove straight to Arizona in the Mexican border, slept in my truck and then got up the next day and you, you bike out four miles to the border and touch the wall and turn around and start biking north and it's, I mean, there's nothing there.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just the middle of nowhere, a bunch of border patrol home.
13:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Coming along, actually, did they like ask you what the heck are you doing, man?
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's pretty weird, you know, they will just totally ignored me, like it was a normal thing that I'm coming to the wall with my loaded bike, taking pictures, got only knows what those bags were full of, you know, I mean, they told me, so a little little privilege there I'm just showing up at the border, turn around, going back the other way, but I, uh, so there's also the first time I'd written in clips, I wrote around a little bit prior to that, but it keeps
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so in my clips the first time was like feeling pretty good, practiced a bunch, and we bike on this like tiny double track desert road, pass the border patrol, try to pull over and get out of the way, and they're coming down in their truck, and I like stop and just couldn't unclip.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So right there, four miles in, just tipped over, stuck underneath my bike in the middle of the road.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: They had to slam on their brakes, just like looking at me shaking their head, like scrambling to get out from under my bike, pick the cactus out of myself.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They just like nothing, just look over the sunglasses and keep driving along.
14:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So was it was there a moment early on where you thought, you know, what have I gotten myself into?
14:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Was that it or was it was or won it all?
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet no, they're definitely was it was it was the first day actually.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So we planned.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started the trip with my cousin and then my dad had actually driven us down to the border.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then planned on just like biking a day or two with us and then driving my truck back.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we were going to bike from the border to Tombstone, Arizona.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like two or a little town down there where stage coaches and all this.
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It was only 35 miles.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, this is good.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good warm-up day.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, let's do that.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll rest and you know, start big the next day.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's super flat.
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You like leave the border.
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right along a river.
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, not really river.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a sandy mess with no water in it.
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But you go along the river bed.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally flat until you get almost a town and then there's I mean in the scale of the wild Western super small uphill going into it, maybe 400 feet.
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And we left a little bit late and I was going a little slow and it was about one in the afternoon.
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely hadn't drank enough water and we're only like 30 miles in and I was just laying on the side of the road like 108 degree heat getting kind of dizzy and weird thinking, oh my god, like I cannot bike my heavy bike up this hill
15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: 50.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What did I get myself into?
15:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Thankfully, you didn't.
15:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You made it.
15:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You didn't have a heat stroke or anything.
15:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but, man, you should've seen it just laying on the side of the road under a tiny desert tree, dumping water on my head, trying to keep it all together.
16:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, physically, I didn't feel very good, but mentally, man, I was like, wow, I'm not ready for this.
16:17
[SPEAKER_04]: But from there, I mean, you get into some pretty, I mean, from just looking at the map, it just lots and lots of desert, lots of heat, make your way up to the grain canyon.
16:30
[SPEAKER_04]: What was that first portion like going through Arizona?
16:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, it must have changed a lot.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It did.
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: People asked me all the time about this trip and what was the most surprising part and I think that was it.
16:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so diverse.
16:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can go from the Sonoran desert down super low.
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I said way over 100 degrees big cactus no water, but you climb up into the mountains and it's incredible.
16:58
[SPEAKER_01]: There's big pine trees and lakes and streams and you're down to, you know, 30 degrees at night.
17:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So like our third day we climbed about a Tucson 110 degrees in the valley was we woke up.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It was 34 degrees in the morning.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: like all bundled up and our sleeping bag and that there's these huge pine trees and the rivers and small ponds and all of that kind of stuff and so incredibly diverse and also incredibly challenging that was it was one of my favorite parts of the trip overall and I think it was because I just started and it was so so new and wild you know every day seemed like a week.
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It was incredible.
17:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a truth with adventures like this.
17:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Every day feels like a week and every week feels like a month, and every month feels like a year.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just so jam packed with new experiences.
17:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you get to what from what I can tell in the map looks like the grain cane and you went to the South Rim.
18:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Had you ever seen that before?
18:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So I paddled the Grand Canyon in 2010.
18:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, jeez.
18:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's awesome.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But I hadn't been back there since then.
18:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's pretty wild because you're biking across this flat desert north of Flagstaff.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And the whole day, I couldn't tell if I was just seeing a red band or the Grand Canyon.
18:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I still don't really know.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But you climb up on these mountains north of Flagstaff and you're hundreds of miles away.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can, I think it is.
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: vaguely see this like giant canyon ahead of you.
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually, the Grand Canyon was an interesting area.
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of this was a little bit of a challenge, you know, with COVID and all that happening for the most part, not a big deal.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not around people, but some of the root required things to be open, you know, for food and water and camping and all of that.
18:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, we bike to the north or the south room, like get there, everything looks good,
18:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And then our plan was to bike to the campground there and I just could not get through on the phone or really figure out what was going on on the website and like the the park itself was open but like was the campground but like maybe not and so we were either going to camp there or continue on but it's about three four in the afternoon before five and we got to the campground there on the south rim and and everything is closed and we needed water I mean you're in the middle of nowhere there's not.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: on a water around there.
19:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So that campground was our water source.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're totally out.
19:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You have like half a liter left.
19:35
[SPEAKER_01]: All of the buildings and things and the parking lots are closed all the waters off.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's a big roadblock on the road there.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's not really another good option.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We weren't going to turn around and bike 100 miles in the other direction.
19:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're there at like 5 p.m. pushing our bikes like through the woods around this roadblock to like
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: go to the other side to see if there's water in the campground and we like bike in trying to be all quiet and we're like just fill our water bottles and leave it's not a big deal.
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got to this campground and everything was shot off.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like all of the water spikots all that we're like going around the whole thing the bathroom's unlocked and finally somehow at the behind like one of the maintenance buildings there's like one sink that's like dishes only and we turned it on
20:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey friends, I want to take a minute to tell you about campfire ranch.
20:30
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20:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of the campfire ranch locations from their campgrounds to trailside lodges to back country huts, their goal is to help you stay in the place and in the way that you want, so that you can spend more time getting out there and getting after it.
20:56
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21:05
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22:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, what would you have done?
22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, man.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We were fight a lot of pavement to a town or gone back 50 miles.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It was as glad this water and so we filled up and
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Just bike bike out of the canyon or out of the national park that day just kind of Pass the roadblocks and I mean no one was there so we just biked until we hit national forest land and Camp for the night very very happy that we found a little bit of water
22:41
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the best time to move to the mountain town of your dreams.
22:45
[SPEAKER_04]: COVID-19 has changed the way the world works and probably the way you work.
22:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that I work more remotely now than now that all this has happened.
22:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So why not live somewhere that you want to in a mountain paradise that you've always dreamed of?
22:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, the Gunnison Valley in Colorado is that perfect place.
23:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It's nestled right between a bunch of mountains, all sorts of things to do.
23:05
[SPEAKER_04]: There's over 750 miles of biking and hiking, single track, crested but right there in the valley has a world-class skiing, and the whole county has an award-winning school system.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So imagine waking up in your ultimate destination every single morning, no traffic, no crowded trails, no more wishing you lived in the mountains, like I do.
23:27
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23:29
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23:34
[SPEAKER_04]: That's icelab.co.
23:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Consider the Gunnison Valley your new home.
23:41
[SPEAKER_04]: my goodness, man.
23:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, I mean, yeah, there's those times where it's like, you know, it's just creates a good story.
23:50
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's like, it'll last thing we checked.
23:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And obviously, the last option had what we needed, but you know, if it could have been a totally different story, if it wouldn't have been open and who knows what adventure would have led to.
24:00
[SPEAKER_04]: But,
24:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You kept going, you found your water, and y'all kept moving.
24:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Quickly, after you leave the Grand Canyon, it just, it looks like it just keeps, like more and more desert, more and more bizarre landscapes.
24:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
24:16
[SPEAKER_04]: What I know about those areas, but, you know, was that enjoyable to you?
24:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you enjoy all this change in the climbing that was involved?
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the experience as you kept going like?
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: day four when we realized that maybe not mileage, but time wise 80 85% of the time for two months would be spent biking uphill.
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So decided pretty early on, you know, that well, we'll just enjoy this and it's pretty funny, you get really in tune with the elevation, you know, after weeks of biking up and down, especially in deserts where it changes so dramatically, you go up 500 feet, you know, like, oh, wow.
24:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's there's a ponderosa pine like we must be getting up there like you go up a little more in the aspirin start you know you can probably start to look for water and so I I thoroughly enjoyed that but directly after leaving the Grand Canyon the traditional route goes through the Navajo nation land which looks incredible it's like along these canyons and everything but they were totally closed because of covid again so couldn't get a permit for the backcountry area and also.
25:25
[SPEAKER_01]: everything, you know, motels, campgrounds, all of that was closed.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Technically, you weren't supposed to sleep anywhere in their like land.
25:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So, trying to be respectful of that, but also wanting to continue on our bike route, like the roads through there are still open the state roads.
25:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so directly after the Grand Canyon, that day had been like 68 miles.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my biggest day ever.
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We did a 118 mile day to get through the Navajo Nation so that we could sleep on the other side, which, and what's,
25:55
[SPEAKER_01]: definitely my biggest day, almost doubling my previous record from probably a long shot.
26:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So where'd you go with the like Glen Canyon area from there?
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It was actually, and then the other thing that happened around there was that everything was on fire.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The North Rim of the Grand Canyon was having a crazy wildfire at the moment.
26:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I didn't really have that much service.
26:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like calling family to check in, you know, with the different authorities on the fire and like trying to get on Wi-Fi here and there to look at it.
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And it basically made it down to the very day we were going to be there that the route we had to go through there evacuating everyone from.
26:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So decided that was not the best bike route and so we ended up biking that was why I was 118 miles kind of around past Lake Lake Powell there and up into Utah right over there by the Glen Canyon dam.
26:46
[SPEAKER_04]: That is wild.
26:47
[SPEAKER_04]: You had so many things.
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna get to see it here.
26:50
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't go on at all, feel like maybe we shouldn't be doing this.
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, yeah, I mean, to be honest, like multiple times, from not being in shape, or just like ready to being, I'm so nervous to go through Navajo Nation and try to decide if I would be able to bike that far and what will be closed and will the gas stations be open?
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And then everything was on fire.
27:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime around this time was when my cousin Cameron, who was with me, got a call that he actually wasn't going to be able to bike the whole route because he had to start his job in Salt Lake.
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he actually left right after we finished Arizona.
27:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were like approaching the end of him biking with me and I didn't know if anyone else would join me and it was.
27:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It was quite the mental ordeal to be honest.
27:40
[SPEAKER_04]: How did you take the news if you're cousin not being able to join what what was going through your head and what it ultimately how did you decide to keep going?
27:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was tough, you know, I mean, it was a very, a very humbling trip in many ways.
27:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But that was one of them, you know, of course I understand, right?
28:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of knew this was a possibility.
28:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, due to all the stuff happening in the world and the pandemic, he wasn't sure when his job would start.
28:10
[SPEAKER_01]: He talked to them and they were like, hey, it doesn't sound like it's going to be soon.
28:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You should go adventure.
28:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they had someone quit and he ended up having to start a month earlier than expected.
28:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was tough because it was, we got the news pretty early on in the trip.
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we'd completed two weeks out of like seven.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seemed like a pretty daunting task to keep going.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I kept telling myself, well, a number of things.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: One, I've done a lot of adventures, but I wouldn't say I've done many extended adventures alone.
28:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've camped a night here there, but I haven't ever just gone off by myself for a long time.
28:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's something I wanted to do kind of, you know, theoretically.
28:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I would like to say I've done this, but actually going through it is a told, totally different thing.
29:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally different.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was interesting and I kind of try to get myself excited about that, but really what I kept coming back to is I'd taken all this time off work.
29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, it's like, what else would I be doing?
29:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would tell myself that every day.
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, you could stop and go home, but like, what are you going to do at home?
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like ride your bike around Golden?
29:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, don't do that.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Just keep biking.
29:28
[SPEAKER_01]: What else are you going to do?
29:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the day is when I would not want to keep peddling.
29:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, well, what else are you going to do?
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Sit down and just like hang out.
29:37
[SPEAKER_01]: you should just keep biking and that was kind of my my mantra to get through the harder times.
29:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a lesson right there, man, like what else, you know, when you're just sitting there in a terrible store, you know, not great situation, you know, you got to get out of there.
29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: some way.
29:53
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you do?
29:55
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not, you know, broken, you know, you're not broken in half your body is not broken.
29:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Your bike's not broken.
30:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just keep going.
30:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's a great lesson.
30:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So so did your cousin leave like when you hit the Utah border?
30:10
[SPEAKER_04]: How did that work?
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He did.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it worked out really well.
30:14
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole trip really came together in an
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So my dad, who secretly I think had wanted to do this entire trip with us, he biked across the country, coast to coast in the other direction.
30:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was in on his 20s.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm sure that he was just wanting to do this.
30:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were on the phone talking to him about this.
30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, oh, well, actually, I've been riding my bike twice a day for the past two weeks, just in case.
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want me to come bike a section?
30:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so luckily, I have a super supportive family.
30:49
[SPEAKER_01]: all around.
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he ended up flying into Salt Lake, getting my cousin's car, driving to Arizona, and then they just like swapped.
30:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So he didn't bring any gear.
30:59
[SPEAKER_01]: He just jumped on Cameron's bike, like with all his gears, sleeping bag, and everything, and then started biking north with me.
31:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted to take his car back to Salt Lake.
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's one of those adventure plans that they really just kind of comes together.
31:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and then I bike close to Salt Lake, and then Cameron was able to bike a couple of weekends here and there.
31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he was able to get a couple more days in and it ended up working out, you know, really great that he came out then and my other friend and girlfriend came out a little after that to meet me and Idaho and my mom ended up coming out closer to the northern part and just driving along and, you know, camping for a week with me as well.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a lot of alone time, but there was also a lot of time where it was just super lucky to have such a supportive family and network to.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, come out and even if there's only biking two or three days, that's a lot.
31:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If there's something to look forward to.
31:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So absolutely, that you made it a family or a deal, man.
31:57
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really cool.
31:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
32:11
[SPEAKER_04]: But as I, I'm just literally looking up and down the map as we talk, and I'm looking thinking like that's an iconic place, that's an amazing place, the variation in this scenery is just unbelievable, you go by Bryce Canyon National Park, I mean, you go and buy all these, and you could quickly easily add even more to it, this might, this is a total tangent, but did you go by Pando, the Aspen Forest,
32:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I did, it's the largest, largest, largest aspect.
32:43
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the largest living organism.
32:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's by fish lake, right?
32:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And Utah.
32:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's so cool.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I slept there.
32:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's awesome.
32:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's the largest living organism on Earth is the Pando forest.
32:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's really cool, man.
32:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I could let it's just another random thing that's really incredible to see that's just right on the route.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good way to describe it.
33:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were a lot of things like that.
33:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really know about Pando prior to going, right?
33:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I would two days ahead of time be looking at little root guide or reading stuff here that are talking to people.
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, oh, cool, I guess we'll go see the largest Aspen clone in the world.
33:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let's camp there.
33:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you learn about that.
33:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Man, my wife and I drove hours to a snowstorm just to see Pando.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, is this it?
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I see Aspen.
33:34
[SPEAKER_01]: This was, I had to like bike around and so I found a sign.
33:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It's definitely not anything special if you don't see this sign.
33:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just an aspen forest, but yeah, so it seemed like there's a lot of stuff like that.
33:46
[SPEAKER_04]: What's a, I don't know, maybe between the, you know, the border of Utah in Salt Lake.
33:53
[SPEAKER_04]: What were some of the things you had to look for too?
33:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, what was the scenery did you enjoy that part?
33:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Pretty pretty well.
34:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, for one, it allowed me to bike during the day.
34:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't even mention this.
34:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So this route really should be either be started like early May and then you finish earlier or you should wait and start coming south or north to south, maybe end to July.
34:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So you finish in September, October, down in Arizona.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So really June 6th or whenever I started, it's like the worst time ever, but it's totally would lined up with the time I had available.
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were getting up at four.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would bike until like 10 30 or 11 and it would be well over 100 degrees and then we would lay under a tree like all day until like 6 pm when it would dip below 100 degrees and then bike until like 10 30 pm and then sleep and then wake up and do it again and that's like how I made 50 miles a day through the first two, two and a half weeks and so yeah I definitely enjoyed the Utah section because I was able to just bike during the day and just have a normal
35:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so the logistics alone where we're a really nice change of pace.
35:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but yeah, you go through there and it's it's incredible.
35:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of like high desert area.
35:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so, you know, you're kind of biking along and and some of it's, you know, Bryce Canyon and that kind of desert, but it goes up and over a lot of plattoes.
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The route doesn't really nice job of never really keeping you at the same elevation for too long.
35:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you bike up and there's.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: wildflowers and, you know, pine trees and little ponds and lakes you can camp by and then it'll dip you back down and you kind of do that all the way until you get just south of Salt Lake it goes on on Skyline Drive, which is this four-wheel drive road.
35:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Takes you up into soldier summit if you ever been up there, it's just a gas station.
35:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But it kind of climbs the mountains just south of Salt Lake and that part is so incredible.
35:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You get up onto this big plateau.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can see like the Wasats range and the UNO's and kind of all of those mountains and you you finally feel like you're done with the desert.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: What you're not really, but you're done with the Arizona desert, at least.
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like crazy.
36:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't bike during the day desert.
36:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Just from there, what were you experiencing as far as like with people?
36:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Were you interacting with a lot of people?
36:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Were people asking you what you were doing?
36:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Were you even seeing that many people?
36:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what was that?
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, hit or miss.
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So people, I would see them usually on the weekends.
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the places are a popular weekend destination.
36:38
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of like four wheelers and ATB users were around for this part of the route.
36:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would say I saw some, and I would go into town every day or two to resupply, but not a lot.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like when you just go hiking somewhere on the front range here and you see all these people.
36:58
[SPEAKER_01]: full days where I wouldn't see anyone, absolutely.
37:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's, I don't know, I would say it was a good mix, especially when you're by yourself, adventuring all loan in the wilderness is really cool, but that one's definitely better shared with someone else.
37:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Adventuring on your own is really awesome when you can interact with other people.
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that that's kind of my takeaway from this trip is you experience things a little different when you're on their own, and it's a really good and powerful thing.
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But you can only do so much beautiful scenery without sharing it with someone.
37:34
[SPEAKER_04]: you know that that as that's funny to say that i've had that thought people on this show we've had so many people that do things for multiple years or adventures i just in the middle of you know nowhere we've had folks that that have sailed around the world alone or bite for decades alone right and i think like man like it's all there in your head you know obviously you forget a lot but it's also like
38:01
[SPEAKER_04]: That is, that's a lot of stuff in that head and just your head and just that picture of yours or that camera of yours.
38:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And, and one hand, it's awesome.
38:10
[SPEAKER_04]: One hand is it is a shame that no one else is getting to see it.
38:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was kind of my take away.
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, not to take anything away from doing adventures alone.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's incredibly powerful experience.
38:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it was nice to see people and, you know, I would say when we started and you
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: are biking along, like, oh, what are you doing?
38:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we're on a bike trip.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you going, Canada?
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, okay, in the middle of, like, two sun, do like, okay, sure you are, like, good luck.
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But you get farther north and there's a little bit more of an eventory crowd, so it's fun to, you know, get to the summit or the mountain pass, and there's someone else up there on a hiking trip or whatever, and you can kind of share that moment.
38:54
[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty cool.
38:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you mean anybody going southbound?
38:59
[SPEAKER_01]: very few people.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were not a lot of people doing this route that I encountered.
39:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were only two other people that I know of that were going north-bound this year.
39:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I caught them at the very end of the trip.
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They started about two weeks before me.
39:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But I only saw one other party of bike packers until I got to Montana, actually, for the entire route.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was in Utah, it was near near Pando.
39:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, it was the day before we got there.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of among these rocks.
39:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just sitting there eating a hot pocket actually watching the, watching the sunset.
39:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Good times.
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
39:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Just strap them on my bike and put them on a hot rock at the end of the day.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, there were these two bike packers that were biking down the road.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got up and jumped out of my chair and ran down into my flip flops and chased
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing?
39:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You're doing the wild west route.
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I was so excited.
40:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the first bike packers I'd seen the whole time and I had to chase them down and they ended up just doing a section.
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just doing the Utah section, but those were the first folks that I found and Man, I was so happy to just see someone else that was doing a similar activity because it had been
40:19
[SPEAKER_01]: three and a half weeks of seeing no one on a bike.
40:21
[SPEAKER_04]: My gosh, man, that's too funny.
40:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You just instant connection, totally get that.
40:26
[SPEAKER_04]: That you know, anyone who's been out there can relate cheese, man.
40:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So this route, you know, you can, you can tell me if I'm missing something, but between Salt Lake,
40:39
[SPEAKER_04]: city and kind of Idaho.
40:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It looks like you go through parts of Wyoming.
40:44
[SPEAKER_04]: You get fairly close to like the T-tons.
40:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You probably couldn't see them.
40:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I wouldn't imagine but you're relatively close.
40:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
40:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you go to craters of the moon.
40:53
[SPEAKER_04]: What could you tell us a little bit about that segment?
40:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
40:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So you go through Salt Lake.
40:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It actually go around it.
41:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an alternate that I went up over near Mirror Lake highway and it brings you down into Evanston right along I-80.
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: which is about a half way actually and so you feel like you're about halfway there Salt Lake just beyond Kind of dips in an out of Wyoming.
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you go into Wyoming like five times in two days or something You're gonna kind of ride to that border and It's like what you would expect Wyoming to be a little a little more flat a little bit more kind of high planes area But then it cuts over and goes into Idaho and there's this giant lake
41:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's awesome.
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like there's a beach where they're on the 4th of July, uh, it's like a party going on everywhere, which was cool at first.
41:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then immediately you're like, ah, I kind of over people.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm I'm ready to be somewhere else.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the beauty of bike packing is I had a couple other friends join me for that part for the weekend and my girlfriend was there as well.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And we bike up to the lake got to know it with all the people and then just bike along until there was no parking for cars and then just pushed our bait.
42:05
[SPEAKER_01]: bikes through the bushes and found this awesome section of beach with no one around and spent the day splashing around and making avocado sandwiches on the beach to celebrate.
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's super cool and and then you bite kind of north and again the route doesn't you can't see the t-tons but you go through some smaller mountains.
42:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The route again does a really good job of going up over kind of past some abandoned and active mines and then it goes down
42:34
[SPEAKER_01]: into soda springs, and then over into black foot, where I stayed with the super nice family.
42:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I was able to bike along the river there.
42:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it's the black foot river for kind of a change of pace as well.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you bike across the snake river plane, which is pretty exciting.
42:55
[SPEAKER_01]: When it gets wet, it's totally impossible.
42:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like that crazy mud clay that gunks up your bike.
43:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Luckily, everything was fine.
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Didn't have to deal with that.
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But you bike, and there's about 80 miles across the plane, and there's nothing.
43:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just, he just bike across it.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I stayed with this family in Blackfoot, the night before there were awesome random fellow bike packers that found me, that found the fact that I was doing this route, and reached out to me if they're on a court to offer me a place to stay, which was incredibly kind.
43:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But had just the craziest experience there,
43:32
[SPEAKER_01]: an elderly neighbor that lived in black foot forever.
43:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he's talking to me and he's like, you're going out on the planes?
43:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, I'm gonna go tomorrow.
43:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, sleep out there?
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, well, maybe, maybe not.
43:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna try and make it to the next town, but, you know, we'll see.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's not water out there.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one, well, it's like, yeah, I'll carry some.
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, you know, there's snakes.
43:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, but I can through the desert.
43:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, I'll be okay.
43:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, we can't sleep out there at the rattlesnakes.
44:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to bring a big rope.
44:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to rope.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get you one.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Bring a big rope.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to soak in diesel, then you're going to lay in the circle right around your pad.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: This snake won't be able to catch you.
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate the concern, man.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not carrying a diesel soaked rope.
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's not the Oregon trail.
44:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm going to be all right.
44:21
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you know, totally genuine.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He he offered me his gun to take with him.
44:25
[SPEAKER_01]: He should have to take with me.
44:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He's I'll come get it later.
44:27
[SPEAKER_01]: No, don't interrupt.
44:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Got to be fine.
44:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Locals, man.
44:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Locals are funny.
44:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They totally are.
44:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's got a guy in the opinion about what you're doing and the route you should take.
44:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fun part about bike backing.
44:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you're taking that road?
44:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't take that road.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You should take this one.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's way better, you know, where?
44:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you looking for a spot to camp?
44:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I know a spot camp at the orchard and then you look it up, and it's like 30 miles away.
44:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I probably won't make it there today, but I'm in the opposite direction.
45:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It's, uh, yeah, man, locals.
45:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a theory about that.
45:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, you're there.
45:10
[SPEAKER_04]: they want you to enjoy it and they want you to see the best places but they're also embarrassed if they don't know the details and so if it's more than 10 miles away from their house or right where they're standing it's like I doubt that they know the nuances of the road they'll be like oh yeah it's flat the whole way and I'm like there's a mountain between here and there like the road goes over to clearly you've just driven it in a car for the last
45:38
[SPEAKER_04]: But you feel it all on a bike, you know?
45:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I do meet someone who is intimately familiar with what it's like to mountain bike a road.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like so slim.
45:49
[SPEAKER_04]: No, they know it's right exactly and even then it's like it's just it's so few and far between.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
45:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, anything headwinds were brutal in that section.
45:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing feels worse than having a headwind on a day when you think you should be making miles.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: About a month in, you know, starting to feel strong.
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 80 miles, no hills, no problem.
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like 25 mile an hour direct headwind that couldn't pet up more than four miles an hour.
46:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like so brutal and humbling.
46:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
46:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That'll drive you crazy.
46:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it will.
46:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll stand up yell, bite into the wind as hard as you can.
46:23
[SPEAKER_01]: That lasts about 30 seconds.
46:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you sit down and you haven't gone anywhere and you're still biking for another eight hours.
46:30
[SPEAKER_04]: going four miles an hour.
46:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's I've had many days like that.
46:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And then right after that, it looks like you climb right up into the mountains.
46:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's fun.
46:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
46:40
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my favorite section.
46:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Sweet.
46:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was going to ask.
46:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The solitudes are a mountain range that I feel, I've heard good things about, but I personally don't know a whole lot about, and I feel like it might be like a hidden gym that isn't like discovered like the front range, for instance, you tell me, what was it like to really go through the heart of them?
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, you couldn't have said it better.
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, don't give me started on that.
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: My girlfriend's already on my case, cause I wanna buy a house in Sun Valley.
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's an incredible area.
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you come out of the snake of her plane and the desert and then you climb into these beautiful mountains and it's their mountainous enough and there's streams that it's green and there's plenty of water but you're not so far up north that it's humid or that it's wet.
47:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's easy to sleep out without a tent, but it's plenty of water that you don't have to worry about it.
47:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You can, I mean, they look crazy.
47:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The saw tooth is like the best name for those mountains.
47:40
[SPEAKER_01]: There's these like jagged peaks
47:42
[SPEAKER_01]: go for miles.
47:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's hot springs everywhere.
47:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like super volcanic.
47:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all this thermal activity going on.
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I'd hit like three to four hot springs in a day camp next to them.
47:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I just loved that area interacted with a bunch of a bunch of people.
48:00
[SPEAKER_01]: My newest theory of how to travel is when you talk to the locals.
48:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You should ask questions pretending like you're going to move there.
48:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And you find out what a place is really like that's that's interesting what what it yeah what what do you mean by that you know like oh what's the housing market like like how are how was your kids second grade teacher what do you do in the month of like January what is the weather like in the mornings you know do you get to bike to work what does it like during shoulder season like all these random questions that you normally wouldn't ask just someone.
48:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I, uh, well, I was genuinely interested at the moment of like, man, I can see myself living here.
48:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started to ask those questions and kind of carried it on to the rest of the trip of checking in with people and everybody loves to talk about where they live, you know, so they immediately like you, but also you get these weird intimate details.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, there's, you know, the greatest ice cream stand down the street, but you have to go on Tuesdays.
48:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You have, of course, it's like Sunday.
49:00
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, maybe I'll come back, but yeah, I bike like 152 hundred miles along the salmon river.
49:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just incredible.
49:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just a really special section.
49:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would imagine not many people as well.
49:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely definitely less and easier to get off the beaten path the farther north you go.
49:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it kind of goes right from there, right
49:29
[SPEAKER_01]: you cross the border maybe five or five times between Idaho and Montana right along the squiggly edges there if you're looking at a map and I mean that's it's all the same country you're into like big big mountain Montana country with pine trees everywhere and no more like open mountains you know no more deserts no more planes and you kind of quickly get into that finish the route.
49:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking at a terrain map from, really, from Idaho Falls all the way to Montana.
49:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It looks like just a crinkled up piece of paper with a line through it.
50:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just can't imagine some of the beauty that's out there.
50:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Anytime you see that, you just know it's gonna be interesting and fun and gorgeous and wild and forested.
50:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my gosh, it gets me so excited.
50:13
[SPEAKER_04]: But you get to the border.
50:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you, did you, did you have a group waiting on you?
50:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it seemed like there was a lot of people involved.
50:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm sure someone was waiting for you.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So we, so my mom had laughed.
50:28
[SPEAKER_01]: She, you know, came to hang out as biking alone for a couple days.
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Cameron and of course, my cousin was, you know, still wanted to get in on the adventure.
50:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So he ended up coming up to pick me up from the border to super awesome.
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, he was like, yeah, I'm going to bike a couple days like okay.
50:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So then we had to figure out how to like shuttle his car.
50:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So then he had to call his friend Dave and Dave like wanted to bike to and I'm like, yeah, you should, but also we're going to be doing these huge days like, okay, you know, and so it's like calling this person and then someone else is going to shuttle the car.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, after two months, amazingly, all these logistics come together that I like
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, we arrived within 20 minutes of each other and we ended up biking the last three days to the border, um, I wasn't originally had planned like four or five days to finish, um, figuring out just go slow and enjoy it and, you know, it got within striking distance and I was like, well, I can bike 60 to 70 miles a day and that I can get there in three days and that's 100% what I'm doing.
51:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just way too excited.
51:37
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way I would
51:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So we bike to the border.
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: We got lost like 20 miles from the border after this like, you know, almost 3,000 miles of finding our way.
51:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We were too excited.
51:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Took a wrong turn and ended up in a little town looked at our map.
51:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Dang it.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not on the right.
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my cousin was ahead of me and we're just biking along a flat road and you can see the huge mountains in Canada.
52:18
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not much up there.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one bar and like a border crossing and you're just biking on this flat road and the Canadian mountains are huge in front of you and even after two months you like feel all this energy build and I couldn't start biking ahead of me and we're like fully tucked on our on our mountain bikes, right?
52:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And he like he's biking faster like I got he's going and so he's pulling me down the road on our bikes at like 20 22 miles an hour on flat ground just like flying into the finish we're so sore the next day And realized that we'd spent the last like 45 minutes to an hour just biking as hard as we could to like cruise into the border.
53:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that you get there and that's it then.
53:05
[SPEAKER_01]: like no one is there, that nobody cares.
53:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we sat on the border, expected someone to come, you know, yell at us, no, no one's around, like set up our chairs.
53:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd carried a chair the whole way.
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my one luxury item.
53:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So we like set up our chairs, sat by the border, took a picture, had a snack, like wandered over to the bar where his car was and like walked in.
53:29
[SPEAKER_01]: bartenders making fun of us for wearing a mask and
53:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I immediately called out that we weren't locals and she's like, well, I can make anything you want, but I don't have anything fancy.
53:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, can you, you know, can you make like Poutine?
53:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like near Canada.
53:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone in the bar just looks at me, you know, like drops on the floor and no, okay.
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: What can you make?
53:52
[SPEAKER_01]: French fries.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
53:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We would love from French fries.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: all adventures and just loaded bikes in and on top of the car with too much gear, too many people drove Cameron's friend back to his car, late at night, late in the middle of a park and just slept and thought about it.
54:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Really weird.
54:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really weird.
54:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a great great way to end it.
54:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been to Ruseville once doing the tour to ride actually and so it's funny that they kind of
54:27
[SPEAKER_04]: begin and end in the same places, but go a totally different way or near the same places, but, uh, um, dude, yeah, what a beautiful area and what a just amazing adventure.
54:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, how do, I mean, you know, it's not been long since you've been home.
54:43
[SPEAKER_04]: What, what, what, what is kind of, how have you re-adjusted being back and what, what's kind of your thoughts about it, looking back now, just something obviously your glad you did.
54:52
[SPEAKER_04]: But, I don't know, what's, what are you thinking about it in regards to the trip?
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: How am I doing being back at medium at best?
55:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say, you know, it was pretty weird coming back.
55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I took a while to come home, went back to Salt Lake, stayed with my cousin for a day or two.
55:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Girlfriend came picked me up.
55:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We like adventure to the mountains on the way back.
55:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So kind of had a softary entry.
55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But for probably the first three weeks, I had to bike every day
55:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if I wouldn't go bike, my knees would hurt.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It was so weird.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I spent the whole trip wearing about my knees and my body holding up.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything was fine.
55:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I came home and stopped biking and I would be so stiff and sore.
55:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't take any rest days.
55:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I took one.
55:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Took one rest day and saw a bike.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And at bike for two months straight and I would feel so bad and I would get on my bike and ride for 10 minutes and immediately feel better.
55:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So for the first three weeks,
55:51
[SPEAKER_01]: just rode my bike a lot, you know, go out, spend a quick 40 miles around town, trying to readjust a sleeping inside.
55:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't rain, the whole trip, and so I'd seen the stars every night.
56:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, it didn't rain.
56:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It rained one day before my planned rest day in Salt Lake.
56:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It was this crazy like hail storm, rain storm.
56:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just went into Salt Lake and exploded all my gear and then bike the next day,
56:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, I didn't even bring a tent before I got there.
56:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I slept without the rain fly every night in Idaho.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I had it because of the bugs.
56:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'd seen the stars every night.
56:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a little, a little interesting to readjust.
56:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was good.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I started to work again in September.
56:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've been readjusting to that.
56:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Came home.
56:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a road, just rode my bike a lot, because that's what made sense.
56:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And have you had any weird experiences of like, I don't know, after an experience like that, you might have something remind you not this not PTSD or anything, but I remember having a trip one time where like water and food were not.
57:00
[SPEAKER_04]: that available and we got back to this airport and this person was like losing it over this pizza that wasn't right at a pizza shop and I was just like I can't believe you're complaining like it was my first reaction totally had been starving so I didn't even have any experiences like that coming home yeah it was it was anytime I would go into a store it would like freak me out like there was so much food I mean I'd been in stores the whole trip but I would go in
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: like selecting their food and like in all these choices and they're like so much stimulation.
57:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would walk around for like five minutes and be like, I can't, I don't wanna be in here anymore.
57:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just get a gallon of milk and go.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh my god.
57:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I don't know why stores were so weird.
57:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think the simulation and the over, over, whatever you wanna call it.
57:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You got 150 feet cereal that you've found.
57:56
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a lot.
57:57
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a lot.
57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're looking at it different.
58:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not like, wow, okay, I don't need to eat a whole box of zero for breakfast like that could last a week.
58:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
58:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Gosh, that's funny, man.
58:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is, you know, what, what, what can you tell somebody who, you know, obviously a lot of things lined up for you, but what, what can you tell someone that doesn't feel necessarily prepared for a big adventure or what have you learned about just kind of jumping into things?
58:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Did it, it seemed to work for you?
58:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
58:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It always does in some fashion, depending on how you look at it.
58:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But, and, you know, anyone could do this, right?
58:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know it's a pretty cliche thing to say, but it was really hard.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a lot on the strip.
58:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I was very humbled every day, but it's also a really confident building.
58:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you get strong and you can bang out another 30 miles when you didn't think you could.
58:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think anybody can feel that, right?
58:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I took I had a bike and I had done some camping so I had a leg up, but I had no idea what I was doing.
59:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just strapped things to my bike with ski straps and then like everything fell off the first day when we went downhill.
59:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you figure it out and everything squishes and explodes in your bag and then you figure it out.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think as long as you're in it for the adventure and not in it for doing it right, whatever that means when you start out.
59:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's it's truly something that anybody can do.
59:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Bike backing is great.
59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my first bike backing adventure and I'll never back back again.
59:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This was so much better.
59:30
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what man, why is that?
59:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Why do you think for you specifically, why do you say that?
59:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Two reasons, well, three, one way more fun.
59:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You get like a fun aspect as well as the hard aspects.
59:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So you get to go downhill, you get to bike fast, you get to do all of those like exciting parts of it.
59:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You can carry a lot of things,
59:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So once you're, once your legs get strong, it's not like you're carrying a heavy pack every day.
59:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to carry, who knows?
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_01]: A gallon of ice cream into the desert or you know, strap a two liter of orange juice to your bike like who cares?
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like just strap it to the front fork and go out in the middle of nowhere and like drink a whole gallon of orange juice.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't do that when you're pack packing.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think for adventuring and seeing new places, like if you were gonna, you have always been kind of interested in like walking along distance trail.
1:00:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you're walking the AT and someone's like, hey, there's a cool waterfall.
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's five miles away.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a big deal.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're gonna walk five miles out of your way to come back, it's like a whole day.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But biking, if something's five miles away, who cares?
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_01]: See, let's go this way, let's go that way.
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there's a certain freedom to it that really allows you to play it by ear and see a new place in that way.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Keegan, you have totally convinced me to put this on my list of rounds to do because it just looks incredible, absolutely loved the tour to vibe, this looks even more, it obviously is more rugged, more desolate, less people and, you know, there's more and more routes like this popping up all over and I can't agree with you more, I'm definitely partial listeners know that.
1:01:12
[SPEAKER_04]: for all the same reasons you mentioned my knees, you know, are big deal and being able to carry an entire, you know, jar of peanut butter, you know, I want to be able to do that in my coffee, you know what I mean?
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And all these things, it's like I don't want to drill holes in my toothbrush to save half a gram, you know what I mean?
1:01:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I just want to carry a freaking toothbrush and do this cool rock I found, you know what I'm saying?
1:01:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Just stuff like that.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to be able to do it and the bike or a kayak or something like that is just a great medium to have To get that done and but but you know all respect the folks doing it all on foot.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_04]: You get to go to some great places, but You know, I think these roads out here and these these these these forest roads and trails are That you can take a bike under still incredible incredible to go.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Dude, well, so, you know, to wrap this all up, you know, what, what, what do you have to look forward to what do you, what do you got ahead of you and also how can people find you if that's something you want people to even do?
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when I cut back, no, but yeah, it'd be a good time.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, coming up, I have to go back to work.
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, excited to get back into another season with Abbott, uh, have some other adventures, you know, planned.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I was funny.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I came back and bought a motorcycle.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know what that says about the trip.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But then you like two wheels.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_04]: That's for sure.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, you know, just been trying to get after and stay fit and I've been getting up on some ridges here in the front range.
1:02:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think looking forward, I just found the other day a bike packing route in North Dakota.
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of two states that I haven't been to.
1:02:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I have that in Hawaii, and I feel like North Dakota would be not a cool way to finish my 50 states.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to go there next and then Hawaii.
1:03:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But I thought a quick one, but it's fun to have the know how and have all the gear to go up.
1:03:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it'll be like a four-day route and the south west corner there and I'll go up and do that when I get along weekend and who knows?
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I would do another long trip again.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I would do like a two month bike pack, maybe we depend on the situation but I'll definitely be bike packing in the future and in the meantime planning planning other adventures I don't I don't know that a year has gone by when I haven't come up with some crazy scheme like this so I'll just let the next one hit me when it does.
1:03:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, man.
1:03:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Keegan, dude, thank you so much for joining.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I heard a few stories of maybe some future adventurous sports podcast episodes just for you.
1:04:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Good afternoon.
1:04:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't have a feeling this is not the craziest thing you've ever done.
1:04:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So that, or at least there's a lot more other things as well.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So maybe we can get you back on again.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Your great storyteller.
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_04]: This was really fun.
1:04:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, man, thanks for, thanks for jumping on.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for reaching out.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course.
1:04:18
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I really appreciate it and appreciate everything you you do here.
1:04:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I listened to a bunch of podcasts that I was going and Man, there's nothing to help you keep biking, like listening to someone do something that's way harder than what you're doing when you're feeling bad.
1:04:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be like, wow, it's so hard.
1:04:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Today was awful.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And listen to
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_01]: someone who, you know, walked across Siberia and I'm like, wow.
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
1:04:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to be fine.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go get ice cream.
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be a totally okay.
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So now thank my mom and two please.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_01]: She's going to make me dinner.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, I'm making fun of that.
1:04:56
[SPEAKER_04]: My trips are the same way.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, yeah, yeah, I definitely, I definitely think my life is hard and then I listen to someone on this show.
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And then they can, you know, I'm fine.
1:05:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I can, I can tough out.
1:05:09
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, man, we'll be in touch when this thing, as this thing gets closer to coming out, should be a couple of weeks from now.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, I'll tag in, do all that, and we'll go from there.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, well, I appreciate it.
1:05:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Mason, thanks for doing all you do.
1:05:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully you can get out on your bike soon.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
1:05:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Man, I'll let you know next time I'm in Golden.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, man.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I have great night.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, see ya.
1:05:30
[UNKNOWN]: Bye.
1:05:33
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1:05:38
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1:05:46
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1:05:53
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1:06:01
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1:06:02
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