Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1162: The Adventurous Attitude with Mel Peddle

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Ep. 1162: The Adventurous Attitude with Mel Peddle · Adventure Sports Podcast

• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi friends, Adventure is an attitude.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode has a lot to do with that.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I want to tell you about my adventure.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just got in a dark outside, and I had a little afternoon adventure.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to just share a couple of highlights.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: To illustrate the point that adventure is an attitude, adventure comes in all shapes and sizes.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: The tiniest little thing that takes someone to a new experience.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: all the way to the massive adventures like walking around the world or running ultra marathons, climbing the seven summits, you know, there's no limit to how big adventure can be.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But,
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: adventure can also be small.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: My adventure today, I think, was probably a smallish medium sized.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as you know, I'm headed to Kilimanjaro very soon to try to climb the tallest peak in Africa, which by the way, a couple of fun facts.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is the third most prominent peak on Earth, prominence is measured from base to summit, right?
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is the biggest loan peak, meaning a peak that's not in a mountain range, and it is the highest peak in Africa.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's Kilimanjaro.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am super duper excited, of course, to be heading that direction.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a more than 30 year dream of mine to summit Kilimanjaro.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've never been above the highest peak in Colorado, which is Mount Elbord at 14-4 some odd.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember the exact measurement, but to be able to go to 15-16-17 all the way up to 19-3 plus.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am really excited to see what that feels like.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, I've been trying to train for this trip, but you should probably have a little bit of the backstory.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Two years ago, I skinned up a 12,000-some odd foot peak early spring.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: This snow was really off-camera.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: My ski boots were too small and after that trip, my foot really hurt.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I went back packing and it hurt worse and then I climbed another small mountain one night and the next day I couldn't walk on it.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I realized I probably had a stress fracture, but the weird thing is it didn't heal correctly.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it has been two years of trying to get my foot right and when this Kilimanjaro opportunity came up.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the adventure of a lifetime for me, I realized I've really got to get serious about getting my foot right so that I have a chance at summoning Kilimanjaro's.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I started going to physical therapy and Dave, my physical therapist, has been working with me for over three months to try to get my foot strong enough that I can climb.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I have only been hiking and climbing again for about the last three weeks.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm going from being on the bench to a large degree to trying to summit Kilimanjaro.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to admit, that's a little bit nerve-wracking.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see how it goes.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be recording audio and some video while I'm up there.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, makes and bet the soaks out of it so you can get some of the play by play about what it's really like to try to climb the tallest peak in Africa.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: 19,300 and I don't know, 38 or something.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So today, I said, well, I'm going to try to summit a peak that's a, I don't know, it's 12 for something like that.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's wintertime in Colorado.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, it is January the fourth today.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I went solo when I got to the peak that I'd been looking at for a while.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't as much snow as we would like.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Colorado's been a little bit dry this year.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: but I was still an incredibly steep slopes.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I wasn't worried about avalanches this time.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was just much, much steeper than I anticipated.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I had given myself four hours to summit this mountain and get back down again.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: four hours until dark, essentially.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first challenge was I was climbing from a highway and there were road cuts that were like 60-80 feet tall, you know, just cliffs I couldn't get up.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I finally found a little coular, a little gauly that kind of went between two road cliffs and it was so steep as I started climbing up it.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I ended up with a short glycid right back down again.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't get up it.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I pulled out some trekking poles that I could, you know, get some purchase into some dirt under the snow and I managed to get up the steep part between these two roadcuts.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I thought, okay, it'll be okay.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm in a gauly edge ahead to get out of this gauly and it won't be steep anymore.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I was wrong.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was extraordinarily steep.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is the steepest, continuous winter climb that I've attempted.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was kind of real mountaineering.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is not just a hike up a trail.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was no trail.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's winter time.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know if a trail exists on this peak.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going through a lot of deadfall climbing over logs.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The snow at times is over my gators and at other times is that my ankles.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just very variable, but very, very slippery.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: so steep.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I just kept on chugging up the mountain one step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I was surprised.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It just never got less steep.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I finally got up on a shoulder and I said, okay, now it'll start to be doable, right?
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I got up on the shoulder from all of this steep terrain.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the shoulder got steeper and just went straight up again.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: after two hours of extraordinarily strenuous climbing, slipping and sliding and climbing and clawing for every inch, I was out of time.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where do the wise set your turnaround time and stick to it?
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was almost to the point where I would have broken out of the trees and it would have gotten less steep.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was a long shoulder and then the summit.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I ran out of time
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've done it several times, I don't need that kind of an experience, tripping over these deadfall logs everywhere, no trail to walk on, so I obeyed the first rule of mountaineering when I got to my turnaround time, I turned around, so after two solid hours which I thought would give me to the summit, but no way on this mountain.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: After two solid hours of climbing, I was back at the car in 45 minutes.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know that sounds crazy, but as I was going down, I was skiing on my hiking boots.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was just slip sliding away all the way down this mountain, so every step covered like three steps of the hike up, and so it was quick, I got back down to the truck.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I came home and now I'm producing a podcast.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I shared that because that was a medium-sized adventure.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: A solo winter mountaineering attempt.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: not a big mountain, but it ended up being a bigger bike than I could chew today, at least that I could chew and get home in the daylight.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here's the good news.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: My foot injury, while it hurt a little bit, I never had to limp.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It got a little sore, but I never got to the point of, oh no, I'm in trouble.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe Kilimanjaro is doable.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that was today's adventure.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lifestyle, and it's an attitude.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today's guest is Mel Petal, and we talk a lot about the idea of just kind of living more adventureously, taking the time to experience things that you could have easily just passed right on by, but taking the time to do the thing, and it may not always even be athletic, sometimes it's just a new experience.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm certain that you're going to enjoy this one with Mill and oh also the group of guys who are climbing Kilimanjaro are all doing it as a fund razor to try to build awareness and financial support for the non-profit we see hope.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see hope takes care of impoverished in homeless children in Africa.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've already changed, 850,000 lives.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we want to see this get bigger and bigger and bigger, and make a real solid difference in the world.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're raising a dollar of foot.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've heard this before, a dollar of foot.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're rounding up, so it's $20,000 per climber, their 15 of us that would be $300,000.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: As up to day, we're at about half that amount.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Almost.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have raised $142,000 out of the $300,000 goal.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fundraising doesn't stop just because we go and attempt the mountain.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fundraising is a commitment that we've all made to make a difference for we see hope and to make a difference in the world.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're still going for that.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: The adventure sports podcast fundraiser.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have raised.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: please hold, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, 3,600 and $1, and I'm really happy about that.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very, very much for your generous support.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're still about $16,399 shy of the goal, but hey,
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to get there.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometime, someplace, somehow.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: The dream lives on $20,000 from the Adventure Sports Podcast, and for me, for we see hope we can do this.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: More information in the show notes if you're interested in being a part of this effort and now on with the episode.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is going to be a really fun episode for me, and I think that you'll like it too.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to introduce this episode by reminding you of a prior episode, actually a couple of them.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Back at the end of June, almost July, I did a solo episode, which I called the value of family adventure.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was 1085.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in that, I talked about lots of different types of adventures that people can do and families can do that are closer to home and simpler and ways to introduce yourself to new sports.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: way earlier that was parallel to that.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that one was called Adventures You Can Do.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if that one's from like six years ago, and I don't know the episode number.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But here's the reason I wanted to mention that.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our guest today is Mel Petal, and it Mel is a dear friend, her husband is a friend of my wife and I, and they're wonderful people.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when Mel heard the episode, the value of family adventure, she told me to put my money where my mouth is.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so we ended up doing an adventure that was actually listed in that episode,
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mellon, her husband, David, who goes by Muffin, she can explain that one.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mellon Muffin have a lifestyle that's full of what I would call many adventures, doable adventures, adventures that are approachable, and they have their eyes open and looking for things and opportunities and they have had some crazy, crazy experiences.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is going to be a smorgous sport of adventure talk with Mellon.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, happy to be here.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I kind of laugh Mel because I know you well.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if everybody knew you the way I knew you, they'd be laughing too because you're just such a fun person.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here's an example.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I bumped into Mel a couple of three years ago.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I say, wow, what do you up to, Mel, and she said pickleball?
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean pickleball?
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm really, I'm really focused on pickleball right now.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: But here's the thing, Mel and Muffin started a pickleball night.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the next thing you know, there it doesn't maybe 15 people showing up, maybe 20 people showing up every week to play pickleball, and it became a big deal that's lasted for years.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when Mel says that she is focused on something, then it often turns into a whole lot more.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mel, this is how I got to know you, I think, especially well.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mel and Muffin started a mountain biking evening right after work.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe it was on Wednesdays.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anybody who wanted to come, we would meet up and just go on a mountain bike ride.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I met dozens of people by mountain biking with Mel and Muffin.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love the way that they're so inclusive in the things that they do, and anyway, so I'm going to start asking you questions.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you actually have a lot that you can teach us about how to live that kind of life.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, tell people who you are, where you are, and how you ended up here.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, my name is Mel Petal.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I live in Gunnison, Colorado.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very nice here, but don't tell anyone else about it.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a secret.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a secret.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up here.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: My husband and I took, we were living in North Carolina at the time and we took, I think, seven vacations in a row to visit friends on Crestabute.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: At some point, we thought we should just move to Crestabute and we didn't.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Crestabute wasn't for us, but Gunnison's much more our scene, which is just down the road from Crestabute.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was pretty lucky that we landed in Gunnison like we did.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I should probably kind of explain just a touch of what that means.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: CrestedBeaut is wonderful.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the most beautiful mountain towns in all of Colorado.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's much more beautiful than a lot of the well-known mountain towns.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: They just have better viewsheds in all direction.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have a world-class super-techy ski resort, and they have all the things that go along with being a resort town, including all the tourists and all of the expense and all of the fun things.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Gunnison is more of a ranching community that goes back 150 years or more, and it has a year-round community, and it's the town down the valley from the resort town as the way I think of it.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Gunnison is amazing in its own right.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: and I'll let Mel tell you more about that, but that's kind of the contrast.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: As at CrestBeaut is wonderful, I think we all love it, but Gunnison feels like home to me.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's much more of a functional town.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has a hospital.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has grocery stores.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has the airport university and the university.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And um, um, Crescent view has, you know, a grocery store that's pretty expensive and I'm not sure what other functional things it has there.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's several bars.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not a restaurant, some bars.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it has good Nordic skiing in addition to alpine skiing and world class mountain biking on both ends of the valley for sure on both ends of the valley it just doesn't matter It's it's amazing, but that's that's not why we gathered here today to discuss mill so should we just lead out with a white water snorkeling adventure.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was great
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was listening to the Venture Sports podcast and you mentioned white water snorkeling in a stream in Oklahoma rather snorkeling in a stream in Oklahoma at some point in your past.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that'd be kind of fun.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't really snorkeled in a stream before.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd really enjoy snorkeling.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was over at your house and
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I told you that I had my wet suit ready and when we're going to go snorkeling in the river and you didn't have your wet suit so I sent you my link on Amazon for the wet suit.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had just gotten and then you got your wet suit and we went.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just that the river here is a little bit probably more intense than local home.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know much of a global restreams.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it was really low.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I felt comfortable going because the wasn't as much water to mess you up.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't even, it was just Thursday or something.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just a random day.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't a big event or anything.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we just met up in, at my house and did a very cute walk to the river for my house.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The wet's and all.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we were wearing wet suits and tennis shoes and gloves and circles.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had a bicycle helmet on because I didn't have a white water helmet and you had no helmet on, which I don't know about that.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: and then we walked to the river and got in and off we went.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty intense going face.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was in superman position going headfirst down the river and there's a lot of your hindbrain that does not want you to do that.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was a very difficult for me to get over in the first 10 minutes or so.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I had snorkeled in lakes and ponds and streams and creeks and rivers in various places, including Florida.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And once one of my favorites Mel that was very similar was in Florida when we went scuba diving down a clear river.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And before we got in the water, we saw allot gators, we saw all sorts of fish, you know, garr and things like that.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we got in the water and scuba dive down this river for several miles with the allot gators.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was one of the, one of the most amazing experiences because you get the illusion of flight.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I think with scuba diving, you get the feeling of weightlessness.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then when you add a moving current like a river,
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: it causes you to sore and you're sore and over the bottom, right?
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so we did the Gunnison River and since it was running kind of low, we didn't have a lot of water.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it wasn't as much soaring and I was surprised if visibility was good but not great.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we could see, what, six, eight feet maybe?
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe something like that.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But most people they hear of white water snorkeling and they they probably think that's not a thing and I guess it's not but we did it there are class three drops on the river and I'm just going to share this one and then I want to hear your impressions as well.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm going down the river and I'm looking for fish and the rocks are just.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: you get the illusion of going way faster than you are.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the rocks are fly and buy, right, and you're soaring over them, and I think I wonder where Mel is, so I raised up my head just in time to see you wash over a class three drop, then I don't think you knew was there, and you have a black wet suit.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, to me, this is hilarious, because I was there.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have to use your imaginations a little bit if you weren't there.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you look up, and if you've ever seen a seal, slide across the ice and then drop into a hole in the ice.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you've seen that video of the seal, just kind of sploshing into the water, that's exactly what it looked like.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, Mel just, all of a sudden, banished in this class three hole.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she popped up a little bit later with a, with a surprise look on her face.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, anyway, Mel, that's one of my memories that I thought was really hilarious.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just-
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty interesting, as we were going, I felt like I was getting better at snorkeling.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: because I could do a little skull with my hands to pop my ears up above the water.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And with my ears above the water, I could hear for upcoming rapids.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of always having to pop my head all the way out, and look up because that kind of hurt your neck after a while and you're missing the startling.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that was pretty helpful to learn about upcoming rapids.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to be fair, there was only a couple rapids where we went.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't big.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a two mile stretch that was pretty, pretty calm.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have both done it on both before multiple times.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think we surprised two fishermen and then one boat ignored us and the other boat was pretty interested.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, what are you seeing?
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was pretty fun.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, speaking of what we see, I thought it was funny because right away I started seeing fish and and then I asked milk, wow, did you see those fish and she raises up her head and looks at me in her mask is is fogged over completely white and she goes, no, I didn't see it and so go a little bit further down, I saw some more fish and I thought she had to have seen those and so I didn't
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mel, Mel, did you see those fish?
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: She raises her head up and her mask is completely fogged over.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't see a thing and then at some point about halfway down the river you started seeing fish.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we did see some amazing things and that's part of the reason why we did it.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You start to get it filled for the aquatic environment in a fresh water river.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's actually very cool, right?
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's all sorts of things.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I saw rainbow trout, 18 inches.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It probably weighed 3 pounds or more.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I saw schools of rainbow trout, I also saw some white fish and I'm convinced that I saw a lake trout which is completely out of place because they're usually that time of the year very very deep in the lake to be like 90 feet down in the reservoir so I don't know why it would be up in the river but that kind of surprised me but that's kind of the fun and what was interesting is with the limited visibility there are lots of surprises.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like rocks.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Talk about the surprises what that was like.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was your face down and you have your hands in front of you so that when you hit a rock, you can kind of just leap, leap frog over it, leap frog motion, slide over it, like a seal.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And dark shadow of the rock also kind of gave you a hint that there was a big rock coming up and to avoid it.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there was a couple of times where there was a dark shadow with no rock and that was a tree or something like that on the bank.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I kept trying to avoid
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: avoid the rock.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to refine it to avoid it.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I would say the biggest surprise for me was how deep the holes were in the river.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because the rivers, I don't know, a foot deep.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there'd be a hole that was eight, 10, 12 feet deep.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it was just huge.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I don't know much about river hydrodynamics, but I thought that was really interesting.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing, you, so we have the illusion of flight, limited visibility.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: The water was cold.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The wet suits made it possible, but they did not keep me warm.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it was freezing.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that was an experience, but it was also just weird to lay on your stomach and have that much movement because when else in life do we lay on our stomach and have that kind of movement?
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe if you're a base jumper in a squirrel suit, but what other sports do we lay on our stomachs and go?
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, hang gliders are something the same same idea, but with with that we were both motion sick when we got out so we got out in the world
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: was not moving that fast.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then at that point is when we got motion sick I didn't I wasn't motion sick in the in the river but when we got out and we were at the car at the bottom I was pretty
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: pretty crazy.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they there people have different words for it like in the sailing community.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to remember what it.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not dock shock, but it's something like that.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's dock sickness.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's when you you step off the boat that you feel sick and that was kind of.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, land legs, that that works.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, it was a crazy thing to do, but he was just kind of the point.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do ever do anything like that before.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was it a life experience you never expected to
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and it was fun.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was fun.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't big.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't hard.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the barrier to entry was I had to get a west suit.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But would you do it again?
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'd be scared, but I'd do it again.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's scary about it?
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Going head first down a river, like there's so much in protecting your spine, but your brain doesn't want you to be going head first down a river.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, Mel has taught biomechanics and she's a mechanical engineer, so she really understands that slide of it a lot.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But even more so.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is something I'm going to share, Mel, and I know you're not looking for extra clients.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Mel is the best therapy massage person I have ever heard of or ever met in the world.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she changes lives by giving deep, painful, excruciating massages.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she really, really understands biomechanics.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I understand why you would be thinking about the spine and wondering where my helmet was.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but yeah, we, you know, we ate regular meals.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't have to do like the freeze-dried meal or anything.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, because it was a 15 minute walk for my house to start the adventure.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Earlier in the day, I had rode my bike.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd done a slight 30 minutes worth of prep work.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we were both able to go home and shower and sleep in our beds.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And,
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every adventure that I do, especially now, is I have to have a hot shower and a nice place to sleep.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that eliminates a lot of the adventures that maybe come up on this podcast quite a bit like the camping and the hiking and backpacking and things like that.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: the extended back country anything probably wouldn't be on the list and I mentioned this before we hit record.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel the same way I have to sleep well, which means my sleep system might be extra heavy when I go back packing but I care about that and I also have to stay clean.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't rough it for day after day without without bathing so I do bave in the back country and it's cold and it is shocking and it's what makes it possible for me because if I don't feel clean I'm not happy.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but yeah, so I agree.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm hot shower.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could probably give up a hot shower if it was really, really cool, but I still need some sort of shower and the other part that I really is kind of
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: been my theme is trying to adventure where you are.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I could, you know, go to South Africa and do something fun.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not close.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a long plane ride.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, when we lived in California, we went to Hawaii several times.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we haven't been to Hawaii since we left California.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when we were North Carolina, we went to Europe a couple times, because it was closer on that side.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And since we've been in Colorado, it's kind of hard to take a vacation from where we live, because everywhere else isn't nearly as cool.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just doing stuff around here is pretty pretty good like the white water start gling and then a couple weekends ago I went to drove six hours to St. George Utah and participated in a dinosaur dig and found a dinosaur fossil that I got to help jack it so they could take it back to the museum for no way yeah I think you find they don't know
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, part of why they're taking it back, but it was a clump of fossils all together and there was a shark tooth a few fish scales and then something bigger that they weren't sure and I guess when you have a clump of fossils together that means something more than sporadic fossils so.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got to help Jacket that whole area and they're taking it back to the museum.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So my name might be on the museum in St. George.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, maybe it was the contents of the shark that fossilized into a wall, you know, something in the shark's stomach.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, who knows?
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's that's really cool, though.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey friends, I want to take a minute to tell you about campfire ranch.
• 27:03
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• 27:15
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• 27:29
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• 27:38
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• 27:48
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• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So grab some buddies and go to www.campfirerange.co slash ASP.
• 28:12
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• 28:13
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• 28:16
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• 28:23
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• 28:28
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• 28:32
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• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's just use this as an example.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just kind of out of the blue, which is what Mel does out of the blue.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: She says, and I went on a dinosaur dig.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you find these things that people wouldn't necessarily think about and you do them when other people don't think about doing them and they miss out on the opportunity.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: How on earth did you find a way to go on a dinosaur dig?
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think Facebook has a feed that they know.
• 29:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you had to look what gave you the idea.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, there was like an advertisement for it on Facebook.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really?
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: My Facebook feed knows that I read all the dinosaur articles that come out.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's served it to me.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there's several things that people say, oh, wouldn't that be cool if I did that?
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, yes, it would.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can pay $50 and do it.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: that part doesn't ever happen.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I've been really intentional about trying to make sure that if I think wouldn't it be cool if that I actually follow through or do something like a later or just make sure that it happens so that I'm not saving all the adventures for later.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know when later happens for other people, but I get nervous so I try to do them now.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a friend, Mel, that you've not met named Bill, I don't think you've met Bill.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Bill decided he wanted to see the Aurora Borealis, so he became an order and lights chaser.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's another example that I think of.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: People come up with an idea, and they're like, why shouldn't I go, you know, look for such in such, or try to have this experience?
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what you're talking about.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't know this about Bill until just recently, and I was like really so he's he's gone to Alaska a few times He's always looking for ways to get far enough north, but North came to us a couple of weeks ago And we couldn't see the like the curtains of green that dance, right?
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we saw some amazing red and green clothes.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you get out and see any of it?
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it was really, I mean, the thing about Northern Lights and I don't know if you go to the real Northern Lights, if it's the same thing, but you can see them so much better if you take a picture.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the picture enhances the the color quite a bit.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, there are only so many photons you can collect on your retina and they just, you know, they bounce off your retina and disappear.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as soon as you take a camera out there, you can have a 10 second exposure or something like that.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of milliseconds, you can gather so much more light in the camera.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can see things.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so anyway, I don't know where that came from, but it's just an example.
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: of saying, you know, it wouldn't be interesting if.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here's another one that you did, maybe we can talk about bio luminescence.
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really like bio luminescence growing up.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is it?
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, the chemical reaction that the animal kingdom uses to either attract prayer mates.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But growing up, we chased fireflies all the time.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of my fondest summer memories growing up was chasing fireflies, really, really like fireflies.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then from that,
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just got into bioluminescence and how bioluminescence works.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I went and saw the glowworms in New Zealand and then at some point I found out about the bioluminescence in Puerto Rico, so there's a bay and Puerto Rico that is situated in the exact right direction for the currents to bring in bioluminescence, I think it's plankton, so
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had that on my radar for quite a while.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for when our break last year and we didn't have a whole lot of time, but we were already in Louisiana.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we got a plane from Louisiana to Puerto Rico and then you have to get on another plane.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: from mainland and quote unquote mainland Puerto Rico the main island of Puerto Rico to an outline island called the AK's and that was a very small plane um but you get over to the AK's and then yeah we just rented a car and there's five tour companies there you cannot go by yourself you have to go with a tour company and there was a glass bottom boat one so we just
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: paid the 50 bucks or whatever it was and yeah it was amazing.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get in your last bottom boat and they're all scratched up and they look like they are not useful.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But once they're in their water I guess the water like fills in all the scratches so yeah it doesn't you can't tell that it's scratched but yeah we're out paddling and we stuck your paddling there would be any disturbance from the water it lights up the plankton lights up into this bright blue
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: bottom of the boat looks like an old T that has a snow all over it.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was pretty cool.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we get out there and they give us a little talk about science and biology and things like that.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then let us pedal around for a little bit by ourselves.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so my husband was staring and
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: we were going kind of on our own by ourselves and we started a fish school fish and they went every which way under about it was so cool and then we saw a big fish chasing a little fish under the boat because we just sat in our boat and watched we didn't go anywhere we just sat in the boat and was watching for the blue in the in the water so we had an hour out there I could have spent and I don't know all night out there it was so yeah highly recommend VAKs you probably have just been the night
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: the, um, getting to and from mainland Puerto Rico, but I wouldn't really spend much more time than maybe two days there.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't super interesting on that island.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Puerto Rico itself probably has a lot more, but we did a, we did a three or four days on vacation.
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't, we didn't need to be there that long.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: a little bit extra.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually interviewed a guy that runs a charter sailing service out of V.A.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: because he did it the time.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, you know, if I went there, I would have to do things like that.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because the island is small and you need to get an exhaust at fairly quickly.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is known for some really cool beaches, different types of beaches and things and for the bioluminescent.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you'd think about bioluminescence to give people an idea what you're talking about.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It may not be quite this extreme, but think about Pandora and Avatar, the movie.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they're walking through the foreign alien jungle at night and everything glows and spins and flashes.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It may not be that extreme, but still super duper cool, especially because it's real.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, these are just examples of, oh, here's an idea.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's do something about it.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think people just, they get the idea and they think it's not practical or, well, that, it's, you know, maybe it's not that great.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're the type of person that says, no, I'm going to go see it.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to do it.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to go home and sleep in a real bed.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, it doesn't have to be my bed, just a real bed with a shower.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, okay.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember one of my wife, my wife's name is Ann, one of her favorite things when she meets people is to say, well, how did you guys meet and where did you get married and she asked those sorts of questions and the where did you get married question got us a very surprising answer, I think you should tell people about.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, so both me has been an I aren't super into
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: or being the center of attention or anything like that.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we decided to loop and I wanted to a loop on the summer solstice somewhere where there was a big, long summer day.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are looking at all sorts of different places and then one of our friends said, well, stay in the US, the paperwork gets a little bit trickier if you're,
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: also at the U.S. with the marriage certificate.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we knew we were going to Alaska to the loop.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're trying to figure out where in Alaska and we're looking at pictures on the internet and there was a picture of somebody that alloped in a glacier cave in Alaska.
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we thought that sounds good.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we did.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean we found a guy on Craigslist to scout out a glacier cave.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as the glaciers coming down and melting it changes quite a bit and glacier caves are actually
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: on you.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you don't want to, you don't want to go into a precarious criminal glacier cave, but there's a glacier outside of Juno Alaska that you can hike to.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The hike was two hours.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We had hired the Skyoff Craigslist to go out and find a glacier cave and then hike us to that glacier cave, so we weren't wandering around trying to get married on the glacier.
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we had this guy off Craigslist, he let us there.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had the wedding dress in my hiking backpack and in the water bottle holder of my backpack, I had a dozen roses and some babies breath and that was it for our flowers.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we hiked, it was me, my husband, our best friend that was our efficient.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: photographer and this guy we hired off Craigslist.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So out we go, we get into the glacier cave, looks good.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I have to change.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no place to change on the glacier.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just stripping naked on a glacier and all the people who are with for pretty nice, you know, kept their back to me and so I could get into my dress.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's helicopters flying over, doing helicopters, tours.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we had gone to the Visitor Center and Geno of the Glacier across the Lake and the Visitor Center has been Oculus trained on the Glaciers.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So who knows who saw what?
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I get into my wedding dress and we go inside And I was a four and a half minute ceremony, which was great.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: We took a couple more pictures and then I changed back into my clothes and we hike to back out
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: on the hike back out I had a pretty big freak out because I had too many bobby pins on my hair and my hair was uncomfortable because I got my hair done by the guy we hired off Craigslist's girlfriend that's why we laughed and so we all had to stop and everybody was picking um like monkeys they're picking bobby pins out of my hair so that I could put it into just like they're grooming you
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, yeah, after that, we went and had lunch at a float plane restaurant, looked up, looking over the float planes going in and out of, you know, which was fish and I hate fish.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So...
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow, not many people have a wedding story like that and that that goes with the theme I think that we have going here Is that you know, why not pursue something different?
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, why do you have to do our wedding costs with the hotels for everybody flights for everybody and The Craigslist guy.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was 3600 or 3800 Wow and that was everything we wanted we did not Need or want anything else.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could have used it better better lunch after though
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, Mel, I recently learned what the average cost of a wedding is in Colorado, 40 grand, 40 grand, so you did it right.
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's it's pretty crazy.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you've always kind of been adventurous.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in high school, you're in cross country track.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think of trail running like that cross country running as adventurous for sure.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've done rag-brice several times, I mean, the list of things that you've done that I think most people probably wouldn't take the time to do, but should have, right?
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're list is so long that it ran off my page, bungee jumping skydiving.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's it deal with, mini golf?
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: How is this, mini golf?
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love mini golf.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So whenever we go to a location, you know, we might be going to VAK's to go do the bioluminescent kayak tour.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But while you're there, I mean, there's lots of other time and I just always look for mini golf because every course is different.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we were in Europe, we went to Europe for last summer and we kind of bopped around.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: We did
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: which was unintentional but amazing.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever we have a few hours I'm always looking to do a mini golf and I just love to do mini golf.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: One time my husband and I were when we were in North Carolina we had an afternoon to kill it.
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we decided to go do so mini golf and the bet you have to do a bet otherwise mini golf isn't as fun.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the bet was whoever won the mini golf got to quit their job in the
• 40:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We both were, you know, we were okay, like it was fine on our jobs, but it wasn't anything that we were passionate about on either side.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just a means to an end.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the deal was whoever won got to quit.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had the game of my life career.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was ahead by six strokes with two holes left.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: No way.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to quit your job.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then we, we tied.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so no, and now you're homeless, right?
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we tied neither of us quit our job and then, yeah, life went on, but that was a pretty fun game, pretty intense, there's a lot of tension on that game.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So many golf can be much more adventurous than you think if the stakes are high enough.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I mean, I don't know, I don't know what qualifies as an adventure, but they advertise it as a venture mini golf for the time.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because there's a fake volcano and right.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's some sort of a dinosaur that's going to swallow your ball.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it just kind of cracks me up.
• 41:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So here's the themes that I'm picking up on.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: You said you got to sleep in a bed.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You want a warm shower.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need to adventure close to home.
• 41:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, we've been talking about adventures you've done overseas.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what are other adventures that you've done close to home?
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean we'd go mountain biking all the time here and you know we've seen some pretty crazy stuff this summer We were mountain biking and we almost ran into moose So that was a little exciting.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was we were kind of coming down and then there was a turn at the bottom of the is a slight slight downhill and then you went up
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: and they were just at that very edge of that turn and so I actually didn't see them.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: My husband had gotten off his bike and the quiet signal and pointed at him, but they're just munching in the grass on the side.
• 42:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's pretty fun.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do pickleball on Monday nights and kind of sense.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: everybody come to guns and play with them all with milk on Monday night some guns and we have a good crew and then one thing I picked up recently is actually during COVID is when I found it but it speed jigsaw puzzling so that is jigsaw puzzle races online and then a couple times a year I'll go somewhere and do that with real people
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But basically there's a guy that sends out a jigsaw puzzle, same one to everybody that's doing the race and you get online and on zoom and first one done wins.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I really enjoy that.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know my husband and I will go we're going we go to your Ray quite a bit go to the hot tubs and we went in April last year, which is kind of a funny time to go to your right nobody goes to your A and April it's not.
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: except for people that are local, like you.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we say to a new hotel, um, and that was, you know, what an adventure, right, a different bed.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the hotel is in a part of a corner of your way that we hadn't really been in.
• 43:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're in the hotel and I was on Google Maps just looking at what Google Maps had around us.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a little green, um, I think there's box canyon falls or something.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was right behind this.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I said, well, we got a couple hours to kill.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go check it out.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my husband and I don't like hiking, but we did for that day.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we go and it is the coolest waterfall I've ever seen in my life.
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a very tight canyon and it was cold.
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there was ice everywhere.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's ice coating every.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got to see the ice, you guys really big for ice climbing.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: The ice climbing stuff had already been shut down because it was too warm, but we got to see where they had ice climbing that winter.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it's just a really, really interesting hike and it was just an hour and a cost us nothing because while Box Canyon Falls does charge for entry, they don't charge for entry during off season.
• 44:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: When no one was there.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And no one was there.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, in we went.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just it was a great adventure and then we ended up bringing my husband's family two different parts of them to go see the falls.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That summer just because they were so impressive.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We had to
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is pretty crazy.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been there, Mill, and just to describe it, it's like a slot canyon that's, I don't know, 150, 200 feet deep, and it in places it's probably no more than 15 feet wide, 12 feet maybe, the water that comes down there, through that canyon, especially in the runoff, you know, maybe June, it, wow.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a, I mean, you can't really describe it.
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a, wow.
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you can't, it's, if you get into that back corner, you can't hear your thoughts because the water is so loud coming down.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's really cool.
• 45:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You raise another town that we should probably talk about.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's a secret.
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we love hot tubs and hot springs and hot water.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we did a trip.
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: We did a mountain biking trip to the Pacific Northwest near Carr this summer for a month and we stopped at a bunch of different hot springs all across the Pacific Northwest, which was great.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we were in North Carolina, we did a lot of ventures close to home in North Carolina.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have Smithsonian museums that are free
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's four or five state museums so we went and saw all those museums and we saw some really crazy stuff that happened on the beach we had bioluminescent on the beach one night we were sleeping in our car on a bed after we'd taken the shower at the local rock center
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we couldn't sleep because the bugs had gotten into the car.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: These tiny, tiny little sandflowers had gotten through our speed on editing.
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we couldn't sleep.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we went out to the beach and we saw the Milky Way, just so impressive.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we noticed that wherever we walked, the sand would glow.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we'd something, something funny in the sand.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was pretty cool.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It did not sleep good though.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that wasn't great.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: but we saw where, what's that pirate?
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dude, got shot, which is not nearly as overbuilt as it should be.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a small hike, you kind of have to guess where you got shot.
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We found, I think it was near Fort Fisher, there was evidence that German head actually, the Germans had actually fired upon, mean then US during World War II, even though the US government says we never got fired on.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but they had like four or five cannonballs that had made it to the shore there.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I learned about the civilian air patrol at a museum and it was fascinating, uh, during World War II again.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really like to adventure where we are and get to know what's happening around just a weekend and you're not investing a lot and you don't know what else was out there.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, I think you may have moved to the weekend adventure capital of the planet one of them I mean the nickname for Gunnison is the base camp of the Rockies and it's called that for a reason because you can do any mountain sport.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter what it is.
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can do any mountain sport from here within a very short drive if not just right here itself.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean you're in the right place for that.
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I people ask me where I like to go on vacation and I actually kind of hedge a little bit and I say, well, if I didn't live in Gunnison, it would be my favorite vacation destination.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's hard for me to leave.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, I like it here.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We give you just as many things.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the trick with Gunnison is that you have to really pick your sports.
• 47:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you can't, you don't have enough garage space.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have enough recreation money to get all the gear for all those sports.
• 47:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you also don't have enough physical energy throughout your day to do all the sports.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to pick your sports.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you have to pick your wintersport, and you have to pick your summer sports.
• 48:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and then you're always out of shape and Gunnison because the next sport is always on the horizon and so you're always having to build muscle and having to get in shape for that next sport because of season change.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is fun.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mountain biking gives you the best cardio workout ever and of course you get really good at making your feet going circles.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's really what it is in upper body, you know, but then this guisees and starts and you think I've been going hard all summer I'm gonna be in great shape for skiing and then that's a totally different use of your leg muscles Completely and I get on the slopes.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh my word.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I thought I was in shape, but
• 48:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's kicking my butt, you're right.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So many things.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there are a lot of fun things in this valley that people don't know about.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have inter-disciplinary or inter-sport type races.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: For instance, there's one where people will scheme out near.
• 48:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you ski to the top of a mountain and race back down again.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you jump in a kayak.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you go down the river in a kayak and race down the kayak and then and I think you can even add mountain biking rate mountain biking race on top of that.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there are all sorts of things like that that people put together.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, whether or not one from the top of Mount Cressobute to taking a shot at the bar.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that one of the races?
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure it's.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whoever finishes the shot wins.
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one year, there was a base jumper that jumped off the mountain, said a skiing down the mountain, like they had.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they won.
• 49:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: They won by six hours.
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's also a chainless race.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't do these still do it.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wanted to go, yeah, I haven't been to it.
• 49:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to, I need to go see that this year.
• 49:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've heard people say it's incredibly dangerous, but they take the chain off their mountain bikes and they go up on a high mountain pass and then they race down.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And since you can't pedal, then it gives you the motivation to take corners way too fast.
• 49:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, cause you can't speed up now.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so anyway, there's all that kind of stuff.
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to tell another one on you, Mel.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This doesn't sound like an adventure sport, but it leans that direction, and let me say why.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I say about adventure sports all the time is that it ends up being about the community, the people that you meet.
• 50:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know the fun you have like pickleball.
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're pickleball night.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really fun to play pickleball It's not really about pickleball.
• 50:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 50:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about all these great people who show up that you become friends with And what a beautiful thing to do for the community when when you and Muffin started this thing You know people that I had never met became acquaintances or friends and it's just so super cool So anyway, this is when I had never heard of and I found out that you do this every year You and Muffin go to a board game convention
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know that people are like that's not an adventure sport, but it is about the community in something different.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so anyway, tell us about that.
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some board game conventions throughout the year.
• 50:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We only go to one and we go with a group of people.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the reason we go to this specific one is because of the people that go.
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these are the only time we see these people of the year.
• 51:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a great time to spend time with other people.
• 51:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, sometimes you're a space explorer.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can, you know, depending on what board game you're playing, I'm a cheese maker.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a cheese making one.
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty fun called for much.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, there's one that, anyway, that doesn't really matter.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we get to hang out with all of our friends.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then while it isn't rough and tough and, um, you know, I get really tired because my brain is working the whole time.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 51:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the the weight room is quite open at the hotel that we stay at during the in the board game convention, but whether it's an adventure or not, it's a good way.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I see a lot of people that I don't normally see in the activities I do that are in different, you know, they have a wheelchair or they have some other physical handicaps or even mental handicaps that may not be able to do stuff with your bodies out in about in middle of nowhere, Colorado, but
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is another way that people can get out and do things and have community and meet with people so.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, have a ton of fun.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how many days is it?
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You play board games for five days.
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Five days of board games.
• 52:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So most people think of the board game is, well, once a month, the family might if we all agree, get together and play Scrabble.
• 52:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: One night.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're doing five full days of board games.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's pretty, pretty intense.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got a new board game for the next board you night, which I'm very excited about.
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I don't know.
• 52:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, we play board games and he barbecue and it's a great five-day adventure.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, speaking of barbecue, I have to share this one because it's meant so much to me.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Muffin and I were mountain biking and we stopped at the top of a hill and we're visiting a little bit before we took this downhill and I said, you know what we ought to do?
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We ought to try to find the best hot wings in Gunnison.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: and muffin this probably why he married you mill he was like oh yeah let's do it you know he's in and it was a small thing but what that led to is that we have met and had wings in you know i have a dozen to a dozen locations but we've had all those evenings to visit
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: and to laugh and you know give each other a hard time and to learn from each other and and it why because we had an excuse hot wings I mean it could have been anything it could have been the best ribs it could have been whatever you know but whenever you set some sort of a goal like that it becomes a thing that gets you there and I think that's what the board King convention is about I mean some people just really love board games and I think you might be one of them but I think so many people that would go there would be like no I just
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: really love the event.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the people, you know, it's doing something completely different.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a day, a day that you, I don't know, it's just something different.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not part of your regular day.
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: My husband is that he's very keen on keeping his eyes open for something that is an adventure that maybe we weren't on the way to do.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're in Belize, we are going to this piece of place and Belize and there's an advertisement for
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: night snarkelling.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
• 54:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we signed up and we went night snarkelling and it was terrifying in a couple different ways.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were the only two on the boat.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were getting taken out into the ocean by two people.
• 54:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know that didn't speak English very well and going out at night into the ocean with two people.
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't know as a little bit scary in a foreign country.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a part of your Heinbrain that does not want you to get into the ocean at night.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's at something.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we saw a really cool fish that you don't get to see because I guess there's no eternal fish or something.
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure.
• 54:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it was a great experience and they took us back to shore and we paid them and we left and it was fun.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But um, he's just really good about saying, oh, I saw, you know, why don't we do that?
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were in North Carolina one time and there was a museum and it was kind of late in the day and I was kind of tired and I didn't really want to go But we were pretty far from home and he's like, well, if we don't go now, we aren't going to go.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't we just go?
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it was all about the people that came over to found America and then they disappeared.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Roanoke, the Roanoke colony.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was kind of the basis of it.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was just a great day.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I talked about pirates with the guy that was on the pirate ship.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had a really good conversation about.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: North Carolina Pirates and I was something that we wouldn't have done and it was just something that my essence said, well, why don't we just try it and see what happens when we weren't even going there for that reason.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's really, really good about just keeping his eyes open and looking for fun things to do to supplement our current adventure.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you make room in your life for spontaneity?
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not very good at it.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: My husband's way better.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I live and die by my calendar.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's, yeah, I'm not sure how that works.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's the combination of your planning that gets you somewhere in his spontaneity that makes something unexpected happen.
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Probably.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess so focused my eyes.
• 56:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just get so focused.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm driving to the grocery store.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get to the grocery store.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do my grocery shopping and he will go to the grocery store and he'll see three different people that we know along the way and say hi and then he's a grocery store.
• 56:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: He sees a couple more people.
• 56:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't see anybody in this, just because I don't have my eyes open that way.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is or about his awareness, but he's way more aware about the outside world.
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm looking at my calendar making sure we're getting to where we need to go by a certain time and that we have a three hour space here and it's a really good combination.
• 56:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, in different people approach life in different ways and there's not a wrong way in a right way.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just different ways.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you told me a while back that you kind of felt like when it came to adventure in your lifestyle that you were a mile wide in an inch deep.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean by that?
• 56:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 56:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I listen to the podcast.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's people that are, I'm a raf guy and I've been rafting and I've been doing rafting and I know a lot about rivers and rafting.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is really cool.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love to have dinner with those people because I have a lot of questions about rafting.
• 57:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 57:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or whatever.
• 57:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: are really into biking or people that are really into running or something and I just feel like I am very open to wherever the wind blows me and I'm not good at a lot of things that I do so I often pay for a guide or whatever but I just like to experience all of it.
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: How has that changed your life you think?
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure.
• 57:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I get the feeling you've always been this way.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: See, the reason I ask it is that there's so many people when we describe the kind of little mini adventures is what I'll call them, you know, that you do such a huge variety.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's so many people that are going, wow, I've never done that.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, who would have thought of that?
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's that about?
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I think it would change people's lives.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: If they said, I'm going to be like mail for a little while.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give it a shot for a few months and see what happens, you know what I mean?
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I listen to a podcast one time and I heard them describe they have on the podcast they're talking about how they have an adventure bag so they have a change of clothes to the brush next and then they just keep that in the car so some people might call it a go bag, you know.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: fires or whatever, but they call it their adventure bag.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if they're off doing something, they can keep going and keep doing it.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then also on that podcast, they described how they had laminated map of their surrounding town and had circled or surrounding area and had circled places where they wanted to go.
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I heard that and thought, that's a great idea.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you've been at my house.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a four foot by eight foot sheet of glass
• 58:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: a map of our county and the map of our local mountain biking place and it's a marker board that I use and I keep a list of things I need to do or uh want to go or I circle things on the map so dinosaur national monument was circled for a while but we knocked that off this year and so I just keep an ongoing list of things where I want to go and things that I want to do and if it's
• 59:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: isn't on the state of Colorado or in her county.
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just have a side list that has the other stuff that I want to do.
• 59:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That way, I don't have to store it in my brain and I don't have to.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not stressful when it comes like, hey, I've got a week of time and I'm going to already be in Florida.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: what should I do?
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I can go look at my list and see what's close to Florida connects something to that.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I really, really like having our map that is mounted behind the glass, I think that is a really cool use of a giant wall in our house.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's such a great idea.
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just the idea that you put something on the map.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It takes on purpose, then, and intention.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you do the thing that you otherwise probably would never do, because what do most people do?
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: They watch TV, or they watch YouTube, or they, you know, they get on from work, they have a beer, and they put their feet up, and why?
• 59:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because they haven't thought of all the other things that they could be doing.
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or they have, and then they forgot it.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you gotta keep your brain efficient once you already think of it.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to think of it again.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just put it down where you can see it later.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a new one for you, okay?
• 1:00:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yesterday, I interviewed Bill Fultz and his interview probably will come out about the same time as yours.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, he started a database of arches in Kentucky, finding natural arches in Kentucky and waterfalls.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:00:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: and over 3,000 arches, and Kentucky, and who would have known and now there are people that are arch hunters that go out and try to find new ones that know a new about to add to the database, they're documenting all of these natural wonders, but the main part is people are getting out and exploring their national forest, they need to be a national forest or in other places, you know, the Red River Gorge, all these places in Kentucky, they're getting out because they
• 1:00:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is it a big deal?
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's a big deal.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is it a curiosity?
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Definitely a curiosity, but that's not the point.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The point is they have a purpose that gets them out the door.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I was thinking, oh, well, in Colorado, people do 14ers.
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's similar.
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, I'll do 14ers.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of my favorite things about 14ers is it takes you to different places in the state.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: You wouldn't have gone otherwise.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You see things, right?
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessarily about the 14er.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the excuse.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is the one I came up with for you.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: All around Gunnison County in this area, the everything all the topography here was created by Volcanoes.
• 1:01:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And because of that, we have brecha, which is a soft conglomerate, that's often under basalt, and it makes towers of rock.
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: People might call him chimneys or spires, or we call him palasade sometimes.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when I've been exploring the county, I keep running across.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll look at that.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's another, or people call it, a balanced rock, right?
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Something like that.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're everywhere around here, but I don't think anyone is documented them.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: How many of them could you find in Gettison County?
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, if they're on a mountain bike trail, probably a lot.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: If they are here, the point is, what if a group of people use that as an excuse to explore the county and say, I'm going to hunt for balanced rocks.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that'd be so fun.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, these are the sorts of things we burned up all over a time mill.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I love your example of doing the mini adventures intentionally.
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The map on the wall.
• 1:02:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that captures the whole idea.
• 1:02:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Put the map on the wall and circle thing.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It could change so much about the way you experience life.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know it has freedom.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 1:02:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, any last words of advice for the listener.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just go, so many people are worried about risk, but in the stuff that I do, I mean, some of it's risky, some of it isn't, it doesn't really matter.
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Probably the most most of it's risky thing we do is driving there.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, right.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, some people will just stay inside because that's less risky, but I would say there's a counter argument that there's a risk to staying inside too.
• 1:02:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't know, you only have a body for so long.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You only have the current body you have for so long the injuries they just compound So you got to do stuff like and do stuff so the big word of advice is two letters go That's awesome.
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love it well.
• 1:03:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Mill for your time.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really like the the way that you Put your life together super cool.
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you bet all right everybody out there
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Figure it out.
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It might be it doesn't things an inch wide, or a mile wide in an inch deep, or maybe you find the one thing you really want to pour yourself into the regardless.
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Get out there and have some fun.
• 1:03:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go for it.