[00:00:08] Here is the latest Higher Summits forecast brought to you by our friends at the Mount Washington Observatory. Weather above treeline in the White Mountains is often wildly different than at our trailheads. Before you hike, check the Higher Summits forecast at mountwashington.org.

[00:00:31] Weather observers working at the non-profit Mount Washington Observatory write this elevation-based forecast every morning and afternoon. Search and Rescue teams, avalanche experts, and backcountry guides all rely on the Higher Summits forecast to anticipate weather conditions above treeline.

[00:00:51] You should too. Go to mountwashington.org or text FORECAST to 603-356-2137. Hello listeners! Nick here with your forecast for the weekend of September 5th, 2026.

[00:01:17] Friday, in the clouds with a slight chance of morning drizzle, a chance of afternoon rain showers. High in the upper 40s, wind northwest at 20-35 mph increasing to 25-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. Windchill 30-40 above. Friday night, mostly in the clouds with a slight chance of evening rain showers, low around 40. Wind northwest shifting north at 25-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph, decreasing to 20-35 mph. Windchill falling to 25-35 mph.

[00:01:45] And Saturday, in the clouds with a chance of afternoon rain showers. High in the lower 40s, wind north shifting northeast at 20-35 mph increasing to 25-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. Windchill 25-35 above. It's not looking exactly spectacular. Be safe out there. Happy hiking. Hope you can go across some peaks.

[00:02:40] Broadcasting from the Woodpecker Studio in the live free or die state of New Hampshire. Welcome to the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue podcast. Where we discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Occasionally including the counties of Belknap, I mean Belknap, um, something like that. And Coos Coos? Wait. Or is it Coos County?

[00:03:10] Whatever. Here are your hosts, Mike, Nick, and Stomp. We are live here, episode 245. Stomp is back, so Stomp three out of four episodes. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's not too shabby, huh? Coming around again. Are you officially out of retirement? Partial. Semi-retired, I guess. He's like a pinch hitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when you need me, I'll be there. Don't you guys worry. Okay.

[00:03:39] Yeah, Ryan, Stomp left the show like, what was it, like a year ago now, Stomp? Probably, yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Shortly before April. Yeah, he's been, we've been sucking him back in though. He's definitely, he specifically wanted to come back to sit with you, Ryan, so you should be honored. I'm stoked. Now that Ryan's been stewing on his adventure for several months. Right. This is good. Yeah, but we'll introduce Ryan to the listeners in a minute here.

[00:04:08] Um, but I think Stomp, any new updates since we last spoke with you? No, no, no. How's the search and rescues going? Not a thing. What's your reaction to, um, the fact that I was doing the metrics and we realized that July was the busiest month that we've ever tracked with search and rescues? Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. It was a really busy spell on our end. Um, I'd love to see the numbers in detail. I mean, it was close. Right. I mean, how much bigger was it?

[00:04:36] Well, it was 20, so, so Ryan, just so you're, you have some background. So we collect all of the news reports for search and rescue events that have happened in New Hampshire. I just basically load them in a database and we tracked them just to see trends. Yeah. And, um, July of 2026. So this is like last, well, two months from now, that's September. Um, we had 26 news reports of, um, search and rescue events.

[00:05:02] So I think some of the next closest month was like 23 events, like in 2021 or something like that. There was a month once everyone got out of lockdown from COVID, there was a bunch of rescues. But other than that, like it's usually the max is like 1920 events. And when you said since when? Uh, I've been tracking these since 2019. So we can look year over year to see like, okay, have the search and rescue events, like have they increased based on media reports or not?

[00:05:29] So, um, last month was, was a very busy month compared to what we normally see. I wonder if it was because of me. It might be. You got the word. Your influence has to be. I hope not. Yes, exactly. I can, I preached so much about that stuff when I was doing it. Oh, totally. Yeah. I don't know. On, on the Western side, it was a ton of slip and falls, a couple of hypothermics. So I like, you know, crazy stuff.

[00:05:55] Um, I'd love to see the fishing game numbers when they finally come out, but, um, I'm curious to see if the overall attendance in the white mountain national forest has gone up. Yeah. I've been looking at that. So the, for listeners, if you're, if you're not familiar with this, there's a, there's a data collection activity that I think the university of New Hampshire actually has the contract with the government for the white mountains, but there's this thing called the visitor use monitor, um, survey that is done every five years.

[00:06:24] So the last survey that was done was in 2020. I've been waiting for that to come out to see. So it's not, that would be, that would tell you whether or not the visitors have increased in the white mountains or not, but that survey has not come out to my knowledge, uh, yet. So I don't know if like the, there's a funding issue or there's a delay or if they, when they come out, but I've been keeping an eye on it. So I don't know. I would assume that it's probably gotten busier. So, um, but anyway, so welcome back Stomp and welcome. Nick is here too. So, um, and the, the audience, welcome to episode two 45 this week.

[00:06:54] We're joined by Ryan Vazina of recycled percussion and chaos and kindness, right? That's sort of sister projects, right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Awesome. So Ryan, uh, is the guy that went viral within the hiking community last fall for, uh, participating in a New Hampshire hiking challenge where with no experience he attempted to hike and he actually succeeded in hiking all 48 of New Hampshire's 4,000 footers. His original intent was to do it in seven days. I think he ended up around 10 or 11 days.

[00:07:23] Uh, but he was successful in completing the challenge overall and he gained a lot of attention and some controversy, which we'll talk about during the attempt. Um, and we covered this event, um, on a dedicated episode back in October of last year at when he wrapped up, we gave our thoughts at the time. And then we've been in touch on and off and schedules are finally allowed a line to allow us to sit down with him to get his perspective. So, um, we'll also learn about his background in other endurance activities and he'll share more about his music and media activities.

[00:07:53] Uh, so it should be a good conversation. So all this plus it's time to start planning for the 9-11 Memorial on the summit of Mount Washington. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Plus a 91 year old hiker completes the Appalachian trail. We've got flash floods in the Grand Canyon. And then we caught up with friend of the show, Dave Schitts in the woods. It's a pretty good name, Ryan, right? That's his, that's his hiking name. Dave Schitts in the woods. Um, he has been hiking the Appalachian trail. So he left the white mountains. He's now entering Maine. So we'll give an update there. I'm Mike. I'm Nick.

[00:08:24] And I'm Stomp. Let's get started. Let's get started. All right. So now the first topic we have here is Labor Day is here. Summer's over. Stomp, how would you rate your summer? Good, bad, or ugly? Oh man, it was sort of mediocre, I guess.

[00:08:50] Like I was just working my butt off and, uh, let's see, we, we, we, we, we, we kayaked once. Uh, it's nice to be, oh, well actually I was sidelined obviously cause of my hip replacement, but now that that's passed me, I'm amping up. So the tail end of the summer has been like an, an eight. Okay. So it's been nice and it's, uh, cooling off a bit. So it's easier to get out there. I'm psyched for the winter though. Let me tell you. Okay. All right. So start of the summer, bad end of the wind, end of the summer. Good. And then you're excited about winter. Okay.

[00:09:19] Nick, how was your summer? How do you rate it? It's been solid. It's been like an eight out of eight out of 10, nine out of 10. Uh, got some really fun hiking trips and a lot of nice family time. Got back to the beach. So I'm happy. I have no complaints. That's good. I, and I would rate mine a nine out of 10. I think the Katahdin trip was amazing. I got a lot of time swimming in the, in the lakes and Maine, and then I've entered my horse girl era too. So I'm very happy right now. Did you, did you pull the trigger on getting a horse yet or you're just helping out? Not yet.

[00:09:49] Okay. I'm at the farm, like enjoying the horsey. So, um, next year that will be my goal is to buy a horse for myself. So excited for you. Yeah. And then Ryan, how would you rate your summer? Um, I, I tend to rate my summers in general. I mean, just rate my life lately on, uh, on growth. And you know, I, I'm not one of those people, I guess that I rate it based on like how much I get to relax.

[00:10:16] Like most people probably like you guys, you know, you guys are based on like, you, you want to do things. You want to have fun and explore. And a lot of people kind of just go, I went to the beach a lot. Or I went to, um, for me, you know, it's been a, it's been a huge summer of growth and, um, you know, just trying new things, just finding new ways to challenge myself. So, um, I've had a great, I've had a really great summer. I really have. I've done a lot of cool things and met a lot of cool people and just had some really like life-changing experiences. So I would definitely rate myself pretty high on there. I give myself like a nine. All right. That's nice. All right.

[00:10:46] So we'll do a stomp, stomp, step up. Well, yeah, you got to get it. What are you doing? Um, and then Ryan, are you one of these people that, um, you know, new, the New Englanders are an interesting breed. Like some people dread the winter. Like we're a little nutty here with like, we all do winter hiking. We're excited for it. But are you somebody that gets, um, do you kind of get bummed out around the cold weather and winter or you embrace it like a true New Englander? No, I, uh, I'm very seasonal. Like, so recycle percussion.

[00:11:14] I lived, you know, out in Vegas with them for a while while we were doing headline shows out there. And, um, I got a little bummed out because I couldn't experience like, you know, the beautiful falls and like the snowfall and just a beautiful Christmases and stuff. So I, I really was having a hard time with that. And I'm really glad that we ended up coming home. Cause after about nine years of being there, I just wanted like seasonal back. Like I'm a huge fan of, I like changes of season. Um, I will say sometimes for me, because I don't have a ton of like outdoor winter hobbies that I can do cause I'm always performing.

[00:11:43] Um, I get, it gets a little winter gets a little stale for me, like around like late January going into February. You're just like, all right, let's, let's turn this around and get some warm weather again. Uh, but no, I've, I've always loved the seasonal stuff in New Hampshire. All right, Ryan. Well, I think that you should let us take you out and try winter hiking a little bit. That might, that might break up the doldrums for you. I'd love to try that. We'll see how that goes here. All right. So that's good. We all had a good summer. Happy to hear. And then, uh, next up is for, for hikers. There is an event coming up next week.

[00:12:13] Uh, so this, this show is going to be posted on, uh, let me see my calendar here. So this will be posted on September 4th. So the following week from Wednesday, the, um, ninth or is it the eighth? I think it's the eighth. No, it's the ninth, 10th, 11th to Saturday. Yeah. So it's four days, four days. All right. There'll be a twin tower lights on the summit of Mount Washington.

[00:12:42] Um, and originally, so, so I think that this is a good opportunity if anybody wants to get up to the, that area to go for a hike, to experience this. Um, I would, my thought on this was like, this would be like a sunset hike and then you let, let, let it get dark and then enjoy the, uh, the lights. I had originally thought that, um, Mount Monroe might be the good place to go, go up Ammanusik, go by lakes and then, um, go to Monroe and just experience it. But Stomp actually had a better suggestion.

[00:13:08] He thinks that like middle sugar loaf would be like an awesome spot to view it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Short change. You know, you get up there quick. Um, I know some people that are going to brave driving by the Omni hotel. I'm like, are you kidding me? Good luck. That's going to be a mob scene. Right. Um, maybe, yeah, that's going to be a mob scene, but yeah, that came to mind. Um, there are plenty of others. I mean, I think you can even do it like Mount Martha, even down the road here on route 49, you could hit noon peak cause there's a distant view.

[00:13:37] Um, yeah, there's, you can see it all over the place. Yeah. I mean, there was a geography, a radius map that they posted and, um, you're going to be able to see it from Maine, deep into Vermont, deep into mass. It's pretty impressive. Assuming the weather's good. Of course. Yeah. I was going to say, I think like even if it's, if it's clear, like you said, it's not, but I think watch you sit in the realm, blue Hills. I mean, I don't know how much Boston might wash that out, but I would assume if you go even a Western mass, you'll probably be good to see it as long as it's a clear night and it's dark enough. I don't know what the moon's doing too.

[00:14:05] That's probably another good thing to look at is see if there's going to be the moon's going to be washing anything out, but, uh, but it looks really impressive. It's very cool. Right. So keep an eye on the weather and it's going to be, it's from September 9th to September 12th. So the 9th is a Wednesday and then you've got all the way through Saturday. So hopefully between the, the four nights, you'll have one night that will be a keeper for sure. So I'm keeping that open. And if I got to drive up on a work night and just drive back home, I'm going to do it because I don't want to miss this, but I think this is going to be pretty cool.

[00:14:34] Yeah. And it starts at 8 PM each night, which will be, uh, plenty of time. And I guess I'm assuming it goes until what morning. I don't know. They don't, they didn't say when it shuts off, but yeah. So there's a bunch of options like Caps Ridge would be another good one to go up. I think, um, Like lower little outlook rock there. As a matter of fact, even from the trailhead Caps Ridge high point, the lot, you could see it right around the bend as you come into the lot, stop. Boom. Is the summit.

[00:15:05] Huh? I do wonder if it's going to be almost too big. Like you were saying Monroe, Mike, like if it's going to be too big and too high up in the air, actually be able to appreciate and notice it from like Monroe or if it's going to, I would say Sugarloaf seems like maybe a little bit more feasible, but I almost wonder if Jefferson, like you're just going to be staring way up at it and you're not going to actually be able to distinguish the two beams coming up out of it. I don't know. We'll find out. So, okay. Anyway, so that, uh, put that on your list for sure. That's going to be a bucket list item for hikers.

[00:15:32] And then, uh, next up here in Appalachian trail news, we've got a 91 year old hiker. So this guy, I've been following this guy. His trail name is gray beard. Uh, it kind of looks like our friend Dave shits in the woods. Actually, he's like an older version of Dave, 91 years old. And he reclaimed the record as the oldest hiker to complete the Appalachian trail. So he was on Katahdin yesterday or the day before, I think. So, uh, he apparently fell 71 times. Well, reclaiming his record as the oldest hiker to complete the Appalachian trail.

[00:16:02] He said six of them were hard falls, including one that was a, that led to a brief hospitalization. Um, and then another, he just fell about 200 yards from the Katahdin sign. So a little bit of a struggle. Was he solo or was somebody like escorting him or no? Uh, I don't know. Honestly, I'm assuming he was with like a trail family, but I, I don't know. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. He had originally set the record at 82 in 2017.

[00:16:28] And then four years later, he, his, his friend, uh, MJ Elbert, who's called, his name is, uh, Nim Will Nomad. He took the title. And then, uh, after that gray beard said, no, I'm getting my title back. So at 91, he, uh, decided that he was going to go ahead and do this. So he said his best days were in Pennsylvania where he enjoyed the well-maintained trails and treats delivered by trail angels. And, uh, yeah, so that's pretty, pretty impressive.

[00:16:56] It doesn't say here how many days it took him as far as I can see. Fewer than Dave. I don't know. I don't know. We'll get it. Now, now. Stomp. But he was born in 1935 in Kentucky, two years before the Appalachian trail was completed.

[00:17:16] He was bullied as a child for a small size and he gained confidence in solo sports like acrobatics and swimming and served in the Navy, retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreations. And I guess he holds numerous other age related records, including the oldest person to paddle the entire length of the Mississippi river, which he did in 87 days to celebrate his 87th birthday. So that's pretty impressive. I love that dude. Yeah. No kidding. Right. So that's my kind of guy right there. Right. Lust for life.

[00:17:46] Exactly. So what a story. So gray beard. And then speaking of gray beard, our friend Dave shits in the woods. I got a chance to catch up with him. He's another one that has a big long gray beard. So I'll just skip to it just because I feel like it just aligns with this story. But for our listeners that are interested, so Dave was heading out of Speck Pond. So he was a Mahoosic. He went through Mahoosic Notch and he went up the Mahoosic Arm, which is a tough climb, crashed at Speck Pond.

[00:18:14] And then me and my friend Paul Gamal went over to Grafton Notch on Sunday, hiked up to Old Speck, ran into Dave and his friend Tenacious, who's another thru hiker from Florida. Hiked back down with them, brought them into Bethel, got them resupplied, took them out for a beer and a nice lunch at the Sunday River Brewery, which is a great place. And then took them back and then they headed up over the Bald Pate. So Dave's doing well. He sent over an update here. Nick, do you want to read the update?

[00:18:44] Sure. So here's the current Apostle standings. I know everybody's interested in that as of September 1st. And for Ryan, just so you're aware, like our hiking group, we have a bunch of people named Peter and Paul. So we call it the Apostles. And Dave, anybody that goes out to help our friend Dave on the Appalachian Trail, he gives us points, kind of like Hogwarts. Like, you know, you get points. So that's what Apostle points are. He's incentivizing people helping him on the AT. He's pretty smart doing that because we all want to score points.

[00:19:12] He also came up with the name of the Apostles. So here we go. So he's a very creative, very creative gentleman. So we got Jake with 4,000 points. Paul Lamar is in second with 2,250 points. Mike is in third, 1,800 points. Paul Gamal, 1,600 points. Nick, 1,500 points. Steve eats shit, 1,500 points. We're neck and neck there. Peter's got 750 and Jay's got 250. So here's his little update here.

[00:19:40] He's now giving commentary on the standings, by the way. So my time, Mike getting big points in Maine with resupply charging food and more sits and more sits in third. Paul G, not wanting points or any part of this foolishness, racks up points with two days of hiking and more. Jay's getting creative and got me a beer for points. So good on you, Jay. Jay was eager to get in there on the board. He Venmo'd me money to buy him a beer at the brewery. He's getting desperate. Yep. So here's his little narrative update. So last week I sat on Mount Hite, New Hampshire.

[00:20:10] This week I sit on Old Blue Mountain in Maine, which is not huge miles from the last update, but they were tough miles. Maine is rugged and it wasn't until yesterday past the Bald Pates that the terrain got a little easier. Today it's back to big climbs and steep descents. There's really no let up from the time you hit Mooselock until here and not much cruising for the next 100 miles or so. Great day hiking with Mike and Paul G coming down off Mount Speck. He means Old Speck last weekend. But he will thrill you with his riveting tale of his adventures in Maine.

[00:20:38] Paul actually camped out and hit Bald Pate and beyond, then hiked back on an incredible undercast morning. I have about 250 miles to go and hoping time and weather are on my side. Want to add, Mahusik Notch was a blast and cool to run into Adrian, aka Abom Graham, in the notch. So Abom Graham, I believe, was doing a Mahusik Traverse and they crossed each other. And Abom Graham, Dave, also said that you were a very nice gentleman and you were like helping other people get through Mahusik Notch while you were filtering water at the same time. So it was a likewise shared feelings. But that's our update for this week.

[00:21:08] Can I tell you guys a weird thing that happened to me when I was driving up to Grafton Notch? I'd never seen anything like this. I'm driving through like, I think it's maybe Lovell, Maine. It's Route 5. And it's like, I don't know, 5.30 in the morning or so, 6 in the morning. And I'm driving my car and there's this thing in the middle of the road, like this giant thing in the middle of the road. And I had to stop and it was looking at me.

[00:21:31] And I realized that as I got closer, it was a giant bull, like a Brahma bull, just standing in the middle of Route 5. Whoa. Just walking around. And I was like, I don't have time for this. And I just drove around the thing. But I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, how are they going to get that bull back into wherever it's supposed to go? I don't know. Wow. Stump, this thing was like the size of those things that you see at Yellowstone. You know, the tourists that go up and try to pet those.

[00:22:01] Oh, yeah. Like the water mammoths. I was like, this is crazy. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. But anyway. Well, thankfully you didn't slam it. Geez. I'm glad you're amazing. Anybody knows what the deal is with the bull on Route 5 in Lovell, Maine. Let me know. Wow. Anyway. All right. So what else we have here? We got plugs, stomps. So full conditions. What do we got going on for that? Yeah.

[00:22:26] Full conditions is coming up at Reckless Brewing for the after show and then Bethlehem Colonial. It's shaping up to be Friday and possibly Friday and Saturday for sure. So it's November 21st. Bethlehem Colonial doors open at 5. Nick is going to be opening for half an hour doing a solo acoustic thing. And then 5.30 to 6.

[00:22:53] I'm going to be spinning some of the tracks that I've been blasting at the trail running races this summer. So that should be fun. And we have some special guests. We can confirm that Lieutenant Jim Nealon will be one of the guests. And we have several others that are in the works at the moment. But man, that's going to be a great conversation. He is the Lieutenant of District 3.

[00:23:15] So he sees most of the rescue operations in the PEMI, Franconia Ridge, and the surroundings. So that's going to be a really great, great conversation. So yeah, the tickets aren't up yet. So just hang tight. As things develop, we'll let you know. And we've got big fundraising goals this year too. Oh, hell yeah. So just be prepared. So I don't know if I'm going to be able to hook people up with tickets too much. So don't bother me. Yeah, right.

[00:23:45] We know that quiche. Yes. Yeah. So all right. And then we've also got the Rescue Me 5K coming up in October. Nick, what's the story there? Yeah. So is it in October? Yeah, I think it's... Did they change the date on this year? No, it's November. Oh, November. Sorry. All good. Yeah, where is it? November 7th. Saturday, November 7th. So yeah, super fun. They do this. Lakes Region Search and Rescue puts this on every year. I think it's probably the fourth or fifth year now that they put this on.

[00:24:15] And yeah, it's a good time. It's held down in Lincoln. You pretty much run on Main Street and run some of the back neighborhoods. I've done this several times. Me and Ash have done it. Ryland did it in a carriage. I don't think we'll make it this year because we're supposed to be going up to, I think up to Acadia. I think it's the same weekend potentially. But it's a good time. Encourage everybody to go out if you run 5Ks and you want to kind of run in Lincoln. It's a lot of fun. So check it out. It's been fun. They've asked last year to be the MCs for the race warm-up.

[00:24:45] And year after year, we're just calling names as people running through the finish line. And then after we head upstairs to base camp and do the raffles, it's just a lot of laughs. It's a great, great time. Absolutely. Yep. November 7th. And then if you sign up before October 1st, that's where I get messed up here. If you sign up before October 1st, you'll get a free t-shirt. If not, then you have to buy one. And maybe you'll get to hear Stomp sing the national anthem, but... Oh, man. I don't know.

[00:25:13] I got to warm up and start practicing. Ryan, both these guys, I'm not musically talented, but Nick and Stomp are both very musically talented. Oh, yeah? Well, one of them sounds talented. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. But both of them are. One of them is named after a band that we're very familiar with. Right. Exactly. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yes. No kidding. Yeah, that's a good call. Yeah. That is so cool. That's all I think about when I see it.

[00:25:58] It's time for Slasher's Guest of the Week. Very cool. Very cool. Ryan, this is your segment now. We're going to hand it over to you. So, why don't we start off with, why don't you start off by introducing yourself and then if you could just give a little bit of background about Recycled Percussion, Chaos and Kindness and how they're connected. Sure.

[00:26:28] So, my name is Ryan and I'm a member of both the band Recycled Percussion and the TV show slash lifestyle brand Chaos and Kindness. So, essentially, you know, basically anyone in New England at some point has probably seen a Recycled Percussion show or heard of Recycled Percussion. We've been around for 31 years or so.

[00:26:52] A band started back in 1995, started by my cousin Justin and it was just a way to try and impress people at a high school talent show in Goffstown, New Hampshire and ended up turning into this, you know, spectacle that ended up going on to be on America's Got Talent, performed tours all over the world. We had our own show on the Las Vegas Strip, a headline show there for about nine years.

[00:27:19] And during that time, we kind of started to realize that, I guess, using our platform to give back was our favorite thing to do, you know, because we had some level of fame at that point and we started to make a little money out in Vegas. And, you know, so we would start by doing like toy drives and things like that, a little give backs. We would give basically all the money that we made from merch after our shows back to charities and stuff like that.

[00:27:48] And so, Justin started something called Legacy X, which is basically just like this live your life, do fun, crazy things and also find ways to be kind and to give back. And that ended up turning into what would become the TV show Chaos and Kindness. So, I've always done like our video editing and our, you know, we'd make like commercials or we'd make like a DVD for the band or whatever.

[00:28:11] So, I had some editing experience and Justin just pitched the idea of doing this TV show that's basically just like jackass hits, make a wish, you know, crazy, funny things, challenges all over the world and then just incorporating acts of kindness and giving back to people in some way and just having, you know, wrapping the show up with something that was meaningful instead of just, you know, making people laugh or just have another one of those like drama series or something.

[00:28:40] We wanted to try and make the world a better place in some way with our TV show. Um, so backing up a little bit. Um, so MTV and a couple other networks approached us while we were in Vegas to, to make a reality show for us for, for their, um, stations. And they wanted us to do like, they wanted the show to be called my five dads. And it was basically about how like Justin's daughters were living with this rock band. So, you know, it's like she has five dads and, um, like we would go to her dance classes

[00:29:09] and she would show us how to do ballet, just always like really funny things. I mean, we do fun, just crazy stunts and that kind of thing. Um, but there was really no, there's really no message there. There was nothing there that was, uh, you know, satisfying for us. And we really wanted to do some kind of give back. So we opted not to go with MTV and instead of, you know, making money off of a TV show, um, we asked a local network, which was ABC WMUR, uh, which is news night in New Hampshire.

[00:29:36] If we could create our own television show about, you know, doing good in the world and, uh, not get paid for it, but just give us some commercial time. So we can advertise our, our shows, our recycled percussion shows and stuff like that on there. And they said, well, send us a pilot. Um, we sent them an episode and, um, they loved it. And we did an entire season. We ended up doing like 10 or 11 episodes in the first season. And we, we won like three Emmy awards or something like the first year. So the show took off and started doing well. Um, and we've, we've done 10 seasons of the TV show.

[00:30:04] We just, uh, we just wrapped up, um, our 10th season over a hundred episodes of the TV show and the show has won like 20, I think 22 or 23 Emmy awards. And we put a lot of work into it. Um, and we've done some amazing things all over the world from, you know, some of the challenges that you guys are obviously familiar with. We kind of mix those into the show. Um, and then just try to do really cool acts of kindness in there. Um, you know, we've, we've done everything from like traveling to help with hurricane relief

[00:30:30] to bringing homes with like people with disabilities to, to go do like things I've always wanted to do to helping people with cancer, to telling people stories and, um, just pretty much everything in between. Um, it's been very fulfilling. Um, so, so chaos and kindness, the brand ended up happening as a result of the TV show. So we, uh, I said earlier, we, we asked for commercial time instead of payment. And, uh, we had an open commercial time that we weren't using for anything.

[00:30:59] So Justin had the idea to like, well, let's just, uh, let's try to sell a t-shirt and we didn't even have the teacher produce. This was just an idea. So we had a, we, he just decided we would put like a cell phone number on the commercial and see if anybody texted the number to want a t-shirt. So it said, you know, if you guys want this t-shirt, text us number. And so we're sitting there like watching the episode air live and we're holding the phone, trying to see if anybody wants this t-shirt. Uh, and nothing happened because of latency. So we're like, Oh, nobody gives a shit. And then, uh, about two minutes later, our phone just started going off.

[00:31:28] It's like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. So everybody wanted a t-shirt. It's like, okay, all right, maybe, maybe, maybe this could be something. So then we, we sold a hoodie and that did really well. So we're like, okay, let's, let's make like a clothing lifestyle brand out of this where, um, you know, all the messages on our stuff are, are positive and about like love and kindness and, um, you know, just, just making the most of life. And, um, there's some humor stuff in there too. It's about chaos and about kindness. Uh, so we married those two concepts together. We created a clothing brand and now that's the most prevalent thing.

[00:31:58] Um, we kind of backed off the TV show a little bit. It was very time consuming, made no money. So it's really hard to like maintain a business when you're not making money. Um, so we have shifted over kind of to our clothing brand. I'm actually wearing one of the shirts right now. All of our shirts are, um, made by us and made with love. Yeah. So, so that's kind of how the, how the clothing brand came about. And now we're just kind of, uh, I think you guys might've said this on your podcast. It's we're like, we're like Mr. Beast light.

[00:32:24] We just do like crazy, stupid ideas, um, just to see, you know, what we're made of as human beings. And, um, you know, that has probably been the most notable thing that we've started doing over the course of like the last probably like four years. We've, we've really gotten into like the challenging ourselves in these crazy ways, pushing ourselves to our limits. But the, uh, the musical legacy continues. I mean, you guys started in high school. Yeah. I started in high school.

[00:32:52] What were your, okay. What were your influences back then? Um, I've just always played percussion. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we've always been into classic rock. You know, I, I grew up with like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, um, you know, deep purple. I just, I like riff rock. I like stuff that like gets you energized, but I also like stuff that has like some, um, uniqueness to it. You know, I feel like these bands kind of have a broad catalog of different kinds of music, some slower stuff, some, some, you know, more down tempo stuff. Um, so yeah.

[00:33:21] So I grew up with like just, but you know, rush and all the, all these like progressive bands and all that stuff with mixed with a little bit of pop. I love like Michael Jackson and just, you know, all the, all the classic like pop artists and stuff too. But yeah, we, we, I think, I think really what, one of the marrying Justin and I from an idea standpoint was just like, we just love to be creative. We like, not just musically, just, you know, we like to try and just look at the world around us in a different way and just go, what opportunities are there? What different ways can we combine things together? How can we bring people together?

[00:33:49] Um, so I think that's kind of become more of the mission, but yeah, it's, it's just been kind of glued together by our love for music and, um, for drums since we were like little kids. That's great. Can you talk a little bit about how, um, the, the challenges and the, the, particularly the endurance stuff that you've done, how has that evolved over time? Like you guys have both been clearly like both in really good shape and athletic. Uh, is that something that has always been the case or did that evolve over time where you guys started getting into a little bit more?

[00:34:18] That, that kind of, yeah, that was kind of, uh, that was kind of, I guess that's kind of started with Justin. Justin's always been kind of a freak athlete. Um, he hadn't ever done like endurance things or any of that stuff. He, I just, from the very start, I mean, he was known as the world's fastest drummer for a long time. He's just, he's a freak of nature in a lot of different ways. Like he'll pick something up really quick, like a sport he's never played and just excel at it really fast. And he's just one of those people. He has a resting heart rate of like 32.

[00:34:48] Um, so he, he's got a very unique, um, anatomical situation going on too. We really need to get him checked out, honestly. Um, but he's just, he's always just mocked everybody at the gym. He's always just, you know, always going above and beyond. You do one thing, he'll do it better. Um, he's always been that kind of person. So it definitely started with him and his brain, um, you know, wanting to push his own limits and try some different things.

[00:35:14] Um, but I guess it was kind of written on the wall early looking back at it now that I, you know, in retrospect, because there were always little things happening. He's always trying to break a world record for this or, um, you know, just, just try to outperform somebody in that. Um, and I think it kind of started with just like getting really insane in the gym. Um, so it started off with just like, we just do strength workouts, like your average dudes. And then, uh, he got introduced to CrossFit when we were in Vegas.

[00:35:41] And then just like, we started doing these just crazy CrossFit workouts. And then they always have records on the board. Um, you know, who does this kind of, who does Murph faster and who does all these like different named workouts. Uh, and he would always just be like, I think I can break that one. I think I can break that one. So he'd start trying these workouts. He's never tried before. And he would either break it or come like very close to breaking it, like right away on every one of them. Um, so he realized that he had something going on. I think, you know, at the moment that I really realized, I was like, okay, he's built differently

[00:36:08] was we, it was like one of those, it was one of those like mud run, like, you know, those things that they do, do a bunch of obstacles and stuff like a Spartan race kind of thing. Um, we had never done one ever. And we had just started CrossFit. We were not great at it. We just started. And, um, there were like, there were over, there were over a thousand participants. I want to say there were like 15 to 2000 participants. It was in Vegas. It's a really popular one. And when we went there that day, it was like 103, 104 degrees outside. Vegas is crazy hot.

[00:36:37] And, um, I remember just, we were dressed up in like funny outfits. Like I was dressed up like a girl. I think I had a skirt on, like, we're just being funny and stupid. And, um, I remember in my head thinking, oh, we have our friends with us. This'll be fun. We'll all kind of hang out together. That's the mentality I was in. And you know, the, the gun goes off and I don't see Justin the entire time. He's gone. He was doing. Um, so I was like, oh, okay, maybe he's, he's running it. Maybe he's really trying to go for it.

[00:37:06] So I, so I went for it and just tried to give it my best, but I was like dying in the heat. Um, at the end of this thing, um, I found him at the finish line, fully dressed, um, not sweating, like totally, just totally normal. He had obviously, obviously been done for quite a time. Um, and then I was like, dude, where'd you go? He's like, oh, I don't know. I just want to see how fast I could do it. Fast forward, like 20 minutes.

[00:37:30] Um, and he's looking at the leaderboard and he's at the top of it out of everybody, like out of like 2000 people or whatever it was. And then by the end of it, um, we checked again and he was, he was first, he was first overall in his age bracket. And he was third overall in the entire race. I believe it was. Podium. So, and there, and this is Vegas. I mean, this is, people come from all over to do these things. These are like experienced runners and endurance athletes and stuff.

[00:37:59] And he had never done any of this stuff. Um, and he finished. And he's a New Hampshire guy in 103 degree weather. So. Yes. Yeah. So I was like, okay. That heat's crazy. I was stoked. I finished like 17th overall and I thought that was incredible, but, but he was first. So I was like, dude, that's, that's wild. And I didn't even, we were, we mentally were not even prepared to do it, to do it fast. Um, so yeah, I kind of started with that kind of stuff. And then fast forwarding into, um, recycled percussion. He's always just been a go getter with things like, like we have several like unofficial world records.

[00:38:27] Like we would see what the Guinness world record was. And we're like, you know what they, the thing with Guinness is like, you have to pay like a ton of money, um, in order to get Guinness to be a part of the record and to officiate it. Um, like we wanted to do, uh, the, the record for performing all 50 States, the fastest it had ever been done. And, um, and we were raising money for, to get toys for kids on Christmas that didn't have toys. And so the whole purpose was to raise money and it costs more to get Guinness to, um, be a part of that and make it official.

[00:38:56] So we're like, you know what, let's just do it and see if we can do it. Like we know the rules. So we looked at all the, you know, all the little technicalities of it to make sure that we were abiding by them. Um, and we, so we performed a show in all 50 States in 12 days, which was, um, the unofficial world record at that point. And then we performed in all 25, we performed in 25 countries in Europe in seven days after that. Um, and we raised like, you know, like $200,000 for, for kids for, um, for Christmas, which is really cool between the two of those.

[00:39:25] Um, yeah, we've just, we just, we just started getting into that. You know, it's cool because we get to give back and we also get to challenge ourselves and it's, it's great because it broadens our audience. So people come to our shows. So it's kind of this like ecosystem of, um, business hits charity hits like just, you know, just learning what we're capable of as humans. Wow. And the, what would you say was your most extreme before you did this, this hiking challenge?

[00:39:51] Uh, what would you say is your most extreme endurance challenge that you did before that? Well, first let me be very clear. Uh, there's just nothing that compared to the 48. So it was, it's not even close. Um, before that, um, I have to look, we've done a bunch of stuff. I mean, yeah. Cause a lot of the ones that we liked the 50 states in 12 days, we were driving at 25 countries in seven days we're driving. Um, I hitchhiked across America.

[00:40:19] Um, and that was challenging, but it wasn't really a physical challenge. I, I did another thing where I, um, I rode a tandem bicycle from the Southern tip of Canada down to the Northern tip of Massachusetts. So the entire length vertically of New Hampshire. And I did that in the summertime. It was very, very hot, a lot of hill, especially up North. And I was doing that with people on the back, which you'd think would be helpful, but it was not.

[00:40:47] Um, cause you've got people who are like heavier, um, people who are throwing your balance off. And I, I wouldn't, so it was, it was a mental health thing. It was almost like a therapy chair. You know, I called it like the, like the therapy on wheels. Um, I would basically, I couldn't go anywhere unless I had a stranger on the back with me to ride with me. So I would just wait. I would just, so I started at the tip of Canada, just hanging out. And, uh, luckily because we have some fans and stuff, the word got out and some people

[00:41:16] drove from like, you know, Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, or wherever, like one of the closer places was, um, to Canada right at the, right at the border patrol to meet me there. And, um, so I just started riding through the hills of, um, Northern New Hampshire and it was, it was real tricky cause I'm also not a biker. Oh, I forget about the track triathlons we've done. I should probably talk about those before too. Um, but yeah, so that one was like two, it was like around 200 miles. I think something like that.

[00:41:44] Um, that was, that was definitely a huge challenge for me cause I was going for many, many, many hours a day. And, um, a lot of it was in the heat. A lot of it was like, and when you're not doing stuff, it's like there were those people that would, that would come see us and take pictures and stuff. So there really wasn't mentally a break for me either, which I know sounds funny, but like sometimes the mental stuff actually is like really, really difficult to endure. Um, as well, because you just, you can't, you can't stop. You can't pause like anything. Um, so that one was definitely challenging.

[00:42:14] Um, but yeah, yeah, I don't know how I forgot. It's funny. We do so many challenges. I completely forgot that we jumped into a, an Ironman, um, with only like 30 hours of notice. Like I had never done any of those things ever in my life. Um, and I didn't even know. Do you know how to swim? I had no idea. Nope. You, you, how did you, what would you do with the swim? You just do like, I can, I can tread water. I can survive in water. Like I've been to like lakes, you know, with, with my family and like, like that was the

[00:42:42] extent of like the experience that I had is like, whatever anybody listening to this, if you're not like somebody who's obviously like a swimmer, um, and you just like to, you know, go in like the holiday in pool that, that was me. Um, I really had no experience. I can't do like the breath strokes or the freestyle stuff. I don't know how to do the breathing thing. I had no idea. Um, and I was actually very nervous. Like we had to undersell how underprepared we were because they, we get a phone call the night before.

[00:43:09] Um, because we, I think we had done like a Facebook live or someone had gotten wind of like how inexperienced we were. And so the, the people that were running, um, Ironman were telling us we couldn't do it. And we kind of just convinced them that we were like just building some drama, which we were not. We actually were very unsure, but we wanted, we already had told people we would do it and we hate going back on our words. So I was like, dude, we got to make sure that they let us do this. Cause like, I, I mentally have prepared at this point. I just, I just rented a road bike, which I'd never taught, didn't know how to get my feet in the pedals.

[00:43:38] Um, I, there's videos, I mean, you can watch the episode, all these episodes run YouTube, like pretty much any challenge we've done has been turned into like an episode of our TV show. Um, like when Justin got on the bike during the actual event, like he immediately went right into the wall, just fell down. I mean, it was, it was, it was comical, but it was not a comical feeling. I've done a ton of, not a ton, but I've done like many triathlons. And I think people don't realize that if you've never done it, um, lining up to start a swim, especially like, hopefully you stayed in the back and you've, but if you're in the middle

[00:44:08] of a pack of people swimming, even if you're an experienced, and I'm an experienced swimmer, it's one of the most horrifying, disconcerting things you'll ever experience in your life. I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. That was, I mean, that's, that's like kind of like what we use as the teaser for the episode right before it started. Cause we always do kind of like a, you know, a preview of what the episode is going to be to kind of entice people to watch it. And it was just that, that was it. That was the shot. It was just a bunch, you see arms flailing in the water, like, like, like the end of Titanic or something. Yeah.

[00:44:37] Like you can't explain it unless you've experienced it. So that, that's crazy. That's great. Do you, how do you guys work? Do you, um, is it like a timeline? Like every six weeks, you know, Justin's going to come to you and say like, you're up next. Here's my crazy idea. Yeah. It has become an expected thing before it was like, you know, he'd just throw a random idea out there and I'd be like, Oh dude, like that's, that's not going to fly. Like it would just be a random thing. And now I'm just like, okay, you know, I did the last one. He's up.

[00:45:04] And it's basically like, we'll go two or three weeks in between stunts and, uh, something's, something's happening. It's, there's almost no pause because we've realized that, um, we've become kind of a stunt brand. Like people expected of us. Um, and it's a learning experience for us. So it's kind of a win-win. Um, our business does well because of it, you know, chaos and kindness is we have to be creative because we're very small business and we don't have a ton of, um, we don't have a lot of people and we don't have a lot of national power.

[00:45:34] So most brands they'll, they'll spend all their money like advertising and try to get, you know, people to buy stuff from, from all over. And we're, we have more of a local market. So we have a very unique situation. Like a lot of the people that buy our clothing are fans of our band and fans of like the things that we do. It's almost like, you know, when Mr. Beast has like a new, like beef jerky stick and stuff, you just buy it. Cause it's Mr. Beast. Um, it's that kind of thing. So we almost can't rest or the business. We go out of business.

[00:46:01] I just wanted to say, it's like you had the foundation just to tee, tee up the conversation about your adventure on the 48, but you had the, the mental and the physical foundation for sure to enter into a challenge, like what's offered up here. It's really cool. I see. I didn't even know that when I was, I was aware of the band and everything else, but when you dove into that, I had no idea really about the background of your physicality and stuff. So that it's really cool. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, nothing special about me. Certainly.

[00:46:31] Um, I would say Justin has, uh, he's predisposed to like having a, just anatomically unusual circumstance. I'm telling you, this guy is just like, he doesn't stop. He's got like severe ADHD. Um, and he just at all times, always something new, always a new idea, always a new creative thing. Um, there's almost no rest for him. It's, it's every day, whether, whether it's like a physical challenge or it's like a new idea for the show or like, Hey, we should go here and do this.

[00:47:01] And he just talks a mile a minute. And you're like, dude, what are you talking about? So it takes a team to like hone his, hone his ideas in and try to like organize them and stuff. Cause he's very unorganized. Like we could try this tomorrow. I'm like, dude, I have no idea what you're talking about. So that's kind of his thing. And we all just kind of, um, you know, have, have learned to become a part of it and, and kind of organize it a little bit better so it can actually happen instead of just like throwing a million ideas out to the wind.

[00:47:26] My favorite episode, sorry, Nick was when he was tied up in that tent, getting eaten alive by bugs. Oh my God. Are you talking shortly on the Caribbean Island? Yeah. That was pretty shortly after the 48 dude. That was the funniest thing I've ever seen. I wish, I wish that that worked out. And I, and I think, I think he's going to go back to that. I don't think he's done with that challenge. He was really pissed off. He used to talk to us. He needs to understand what a, what a, what a, a rain fly in a, um, in a, a bug fly.

[00:47:55] He's got to keep his damn tent zipped. I mean, I'm telling you right now, right now I'm looking at three people who are very experienced with the outdoors and you're looking at one of the two, um, who is not experienced in anything. Like you're, you're going to bring up some shit later on about my mission. I'm going to be like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Like you're going to be, you're going to be telling me what mountain I was on before I know what mountain I was on. I don't know anything about like any of that stuff. I, uh, I try to learn on the fly and the, and these experiences are like, have been like just very eyeopening for me.

[00:48:23] Um, but, but you know, there's sometimes they're hard to digest because they happen so fast and then you move on and you're done. And you're like, it's not like I can study it over and over and over and go back to it. Like if I was just a guy and I did the 48 in that speed, it would be like the one and only thing I would ever talk about my entire life. Right. Um, but because we do all these things, I'm like, I'm onto the next, I have to really like focus my attention on something else. I'm like, Oh yeah. What, what was the first mountain? I was trying to remember the first mountain I did like the other day. I was like, sorry, I couldn't remember. I was like, dude, it's, it's, it's just in and out.

[00:48:53] And then I'm onto the next thing. You know why I know that's true, Ryan is cause you talked about CrossFit and then you actually didn't keep talking about, most people who talk about CrossFit can't stop talking about it. That's right. That's right. So do you know what was, do you remember what the, uh, the whole background is on how the 48 came up and like how much lead time did you have? And, uh, how much real, like, do you tell, tell us what you remember about it before you started?

[00:49:19] It's just like, it's such, it's such like a, it's such an amateur situation, um, beyond your wildest dreams. It wasn't like we, we, you know, had this expert team of people going, Hey, like this idea might work cause of this. And this might not work cause of that is literally, uh, we woke up in the morning. He's like, Hey, let's have a, let's have a meeting upstairs and we'll talk about some business stuff and, um, maybe, maybe some stunt stuff. I was like, okay. So he's like, he had told me the day before to just write a list down of some creative ideas

[00:49:48] of things that might be challenges, endurance challenges, things that people would like to watch. And then we could Facebook live and kind of bring people along for a story. So I just casually, um, started brainstorming stuff. And I was like, Oh, that people always talk about trying to get all 48 mountains. I'm like, that's probably not even in the ballpark of being achievable, but you know, I'll just write that one down. It was like a, just a side idea. So I wrote that one down. Um, and then when I got upstairs, um, he starts the meeting and we're having a normal business conversation. And he's like, all right, let's shift, let's shift into like something that we can do that

[00:50:16] would be like, you know, interesting and challenging. He's like, let's get some stunt ideas. He's like, Ryan, what did you, what'd you write down? And whenever you're in front of him, um, you start to, you know, when there's someone in the room that it's, it's like, it's like your dad or someone like you respect a lot or someone that you know has like, just is on a different level. You start to like rethink what you're about to say. So I started looking at my ideas and I was like, ah, these aren't good enough. These aren't good enough. And so I saw the 48 thing and I was like, this is actually like so insane. I almost didn't write it down, but I'm just going to say this one first.

[00:50:48] So I was like, uh, I was like, I could, I could try to hike all 48, um, of the 4,000 foot mountains in New Hampshire in some period of time. And we could look up like, you know, a record or something for it. And he's like, he's like, Ooh, he's like, yeah, yeah. He's like, that'd be, that'd be great. He's like, that's a really tricky one. Um, so then instead of like, okay, what's your next idea? I could already tell he's really into it. So he, he goes on Google and starts looking up, you know, Andrew Drummond's records and all these things. And, um, he's like, okay, so he did it. He's got the unsupported record. I'm like, what's the unsupported record.

[00:51:17] So we're learning about all this stuff, like in real time. Um, and I'm getting nervous now. Cause I'm like, he's way too interested in this shit. I knew I was in trouble. I was like, Oh no. Um, so we looked up the record and then it was a matter of like, okay, well, I'm obviously not Andrew Drummond. Um, this guy's a freak in the best way. And, um, so what time can we add to that to like, make it realistic in some way?

[00:51:44] And we had, um, you know, a friend of ours, you guys probably know her really well, Mary Moon. You guys know Mary? Yeah. Yeah. She's well known. Yep. Yep. So, um, we gave her a call and this idea was obviously starting to formulate pretty quickly. Did she tell you crazy immediately? Yeah. She said, we're crazy. Um, she's like, yeah, I don't think that's doable. We, we decided maybe seven days. Um, and, and the, the record that the supported or whatever record I thought was like, it was like five days or something like that. I don't even know. I honestly don't recall. Yeah.

[00:52:14] I think there's some ballpark. Yeah. Oh no, the, the. There's a, there's a thing called the deratissima, which is not what you did. You basically were driving from, from parking lot to parking lot. There's a deratissima, which is a continuous footpath. And I think that that is like a five day. Yep. So that's somebody that, you know, is traveling by foot or it can, you, can you go by bike or something too? Um, yeah, I don't, I don't think that the deratissima, you can use a bike, but, um, but

[00:52:42] you, there's no rules really, if you wanted to use a bike in between, you could call that, I guess a supported hike. Just to throw it out. Cause you were talking about, so the supported is currently built hit three days, five hours, three minutes, 30 seconds. Then Andrew Drummond for unsupported has four days, 22 hours, 43 minutes, 23 seconds, which is bananas. So that's when we saw bananas. It's bananas. That's insane. I mean, that's, that's just like, I mean, that's that to me, that's like a super crazy.

[00:53:08] Um, I know it's like people, people were looking at me like a superhero after I did it. I'm like, go, go on Google for a second. Like, look at how fast I did it. And then go look at like the people who did it the fastest. And it's mind boggling. And especially after doing it, I was like, dude, these people are unbelievable. Like it really helps put into perspective. Like when we did the Ironmans, you know, Justin did, he did the world championship full length Ironman in Kona, Hawaii in like 13 something hours. I'm like, dude, that's unbelievable. Do that. I don't know how you did that. Oh my God. It's amazing. You finished.

[00:53:38] And I look at the records. I'm like, dude, these guys are insane. They're doing it in like, is it, is it eight hours or four hours? I can't remember. I'm not sure, but it's gotta be eight. It's pretty fast. Yeah. It's gotta be eight. I think four is closer to like the half, but, um, yeah, I mean, these, these people are insane. So long story short with that, we added it like a few days on to whatever the world record was assuming that, you know, possibly that was achievable. Um, really didn't know what we were getting into still at that point.

[00:54:05] And, and, and just a week, seven days just sounds like kind of like a sexy number. It's an easy thing to process. It's a one week, you know? Um, so we just landed on that and decided I would try it in seven days. No idea, um, what we were getting ourselves into at all. I, I, I literally had never hiked ever. I'd never held hiking poles. I had never bought hiking boots. Um, I, I had no backpack. I had no gear, nothing. I didn't know what to eat. You know, the only experience that I had with like that kind of stuff.

[00:54:34] And, um, you know, trying to pack for that would, would be like an Ironman, you know, where you, where you do the run at the end and you have like some like squeezy packets of like gel and stuff in your, in your bag. That's like basically the extent of, of what I knew about anything endurance related. So I was, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Um, and you know, I, I, I didn't know on so many fronts, not just from a, from an eating

[00:55:01] and packing standpoint, but like, you know, just planning, um, all these mountains. I had never, I had never hiked any of them. I had never been to most of them. I mean, I, I had only been to Mount Washington. I'd driven the auto road and, and maybe like Cannon mountain on a field trip when I was in school. Like literally that's, that's how green I was this entire process. Um, so we had to bring Marion to try to create a schedule that was somehow reasonable.

[00:55:30] And, um, when, when she gave me like the first draft and was showing me the lengths, the amount of miles I'd have to do in a day, I'm like, I've never, I don't think I'd ever run a marathon at that point. Um, maybe I had done one. I can't remember if I'd run a marathon ever in that point, but the first day was like 30 miles of, of hiking and I had never done a marathon.

[00:55:55] So I'm like, okay, this is like, this is really, really difficult to like, you know, and I'm sure too, like you learn quickly too. It's in the whites. It's not necessarily the mileage. It's the elevation gain that you're doing over that. That's the butt kicker really. Yeah. Thinking of like, like a marathon on flat ground was, was, you know, intimidating to me and thinking of doing like, um, many miles past that on mountains is just, I didn't know what to think of it.

[00:56:23] So I really had to just, uh, accept it and just start. That was, that was, that was where my head was at. You just got to start it and just figure it out. Yeah. I remember watching the first video of you. So you started on Mount Carragain, which is Sawyer River Road. And you went in there and that's a, that's a good long hike. Yeah, it's lengthy, but it's a steady climb. And then, and I was like, this guy's never going to make it. I mean, there's no way. And then, um, where I was really convinced that you were never going to make it was that night when you came over.

[00:56:52] So you basically did, after that, you drove down to the Waterville Valley and you did what's called the Sandwich Range Traverse. So you did, um, I think the Tri-Pyramid, you went over the Sleepers, Whiteface Pass Conway, and you were like, basically like not even halfway through that. And you, you had no water. You were like, oh, my legs are killing me. I remember we were all, all of a sudden like the, and you know, we're pretty tied into the hiking gear. There's like text messages going everywhere. I'm getting texts from everybody. Oh, it was constant. You see this guy?

[00:57:22] Hold on, bring, bring me in, bring me into that world for a second. Yeah. Yeah. So we're basically like, you know, we're, there's an ego thing with us too, because look, we've all done these 4,000 footers. We're hiking every weekend. We're the experts. We know all this stuff. So we're like, this guy's treading on our territory here. So there's no way he's just going to wake up out of his bed and, and, and do this in seven days. It's not possible. But is there, how, what's the ratio of like good for him versus like what it's all? So it evolved. It evolved.

[00:57:51] So I think that like, it was like, it was like 80%. This guy's like a clown. He's going to get himself killed. Like Mike said, the ego feels into a lot of it. I think what none of us knew though, is that like the one thing you were saying, you didn't know how to hike and stuff. But like clear, you have the mentality to go through these endurance things though, which is a giant, like, I mean, you learn like when you're hiking, like a lot, so much of it's mental, especially when you're doing those long days. Like to me, it's like the, the one thing we'll say with the first day is like, I think none, nobody was like, wow. Like from a mental standpoint, you can't handle that.

[00:58:21] Cause to go into that and jump into it with not doing anything and doing Kerrigan and that back to back in the same day and like surviving and being like, I'm going to keep going. Even early on. Yeah. I focused a lot on the fact that you had never set foot on the mountains. And I was, I was waiting for the moment when you would realize how difficult and how rocky

[00:58:47] and just like unforgiving the trails are, man. I was like, well, that's what I was like. I was like, just fascinating. Like, man, it's going to hit them hard at one point. Maybe not Kerrigan, but somewhere really quick, it's going to hit hard. Like, damn, this is going to be a challenge. And I will definitely say, um, our physical preparation elsewhere played a huge role in, in me being successful. Um, especially on that first day, which I think mentally you have to like, that's you process everything on the first day.

[00:59:17] Okay. This is what it's going to be like for the most part. You start to get an idea of like what the, what the real steep uphill stuff feels like in the length, um, that you're climbing and by the time you get there, how you feel and, and, and, uh, going in the dark. So I learned a lot of things. I had, I had night hiking. I had losing my water. I had learning the navigation apps, which I'd never used. Um, all these things. I was like, how much stuff do I pack? How much nutrition do I need? How light can I keep my backpack? So it's easier to hike versus like making sure I have the things that I need. So I learned a lot on that first day. Um, but I got lost.

[00:59:47] Um, I, did you guys know that I got lost on the first day? Uh, I vaguely recall, uh, the memory of the first day was just the, I think the lack of water, like you learning to hike at night. Cause that's another thing too, is like learning to hike at night with a headlamp is your vision isn't as easy as you think because it's, it's oddly like with a headlamp, it's oddly, it's sort of a foggy view. So it's not, and then you don't have like the, the instincts to hop over roots and rocks and whatnot.

[01:00:17] But yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised that you got off trail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can be fit, but you can be fatigued and just like, yeah, it's, yeah. I was, I was really hanging on to like all of our, all of our CrossFit training and the, in the Ironman stuff that we had done definitely mentally. I knew that I wasn't going to quit unless there was something, you know, like you guys coming out and pulling me off on a helicopter, which I never wanted to happen, but it would, I mean, you literally, I literally almost have to be like life or death situation to even call for that.

[01:00:46] Like I'm, I'm very, very stubborn. Um, I was very convinced that my body wouldn't crash out as far as like, I wouldn't stop because of like my muscles were sore that I would never in a million years stop for that. So I knew something awful would have to happen for you guys to have to come get me out there. Um, but when I was in the dark on one of the tri-pyramids at the end, I ended on North Tri-pyramid. That's the last one, right? North Tri-pyramid? Yes. Uh, for the traverse. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:10] So I was somewhere in between, um, the pyramids and, um, my, my navigation app had me just kind of walking straight, but it was down like a brook. It was like down to like a rocky brook for a while. That was the actual path for a while. Yeah. Um, and it was seemed so obvious that I just stopped looking at the app. Um, and then eventually I realized I was like, oh, I should probably look at the app just to see how close I am to, you know, getting out of this thing.

[01:01:38] And I looked and it showed me like way off course. And I was like, oh no, it's not calibrated. And my battery was dying. So like, I'm in the woods hearing things. I'm cold. Like, and I'm like, you know, I'm tired. My legs hurt. I got no water. And I'm like, oh shit. Like, this is bad. Um, so I had no service on my phone. It was starting to get, it was starting to get really scary for me. Um, so I realized that way back, like maybe a mile behind me, um, the brook kind of like

[01:02:07] goes back on to like the, you know, the mainland and I didn't do that. So I I'm looking at where the actual path is and where I am. And it's not so far apart where I'm like, you know, it's worth backtracking to go where I was. I was like, I think if I just bushwhacked my way through, cause this is like, I was coming out. I felt like I was just in like pretty much flat land at that point. It wasn't, I wasn't going like super steep downhill. Um, so I, I started bushwhacking, but it was so scary because I remember just being in the

[01:02:34] dark, like frustrated, hurt thinking I'm not going to make it out of this thing. My battery's going to die. I'm going to be stuck out here. I'm going to have to wait till morning. And I'm just like, I'm screaming, dude, I'm grabbing trees. And I'm like, I was getting so mad. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, I'm like picker bushes and stuff, trying to get my way back out. Um, and I eventually found the path again and I was so relieved. You know, like feeling when you get lost as a kid and you just feel your heart pounding and you're like, I need my mom. I need my mom. It was like one of those, like, I felt like a kid again. I was like, Oh dude, this is scary.

[01:03:02] So I finally got back on the path and I was like, no more of that. We're looking at the app now. We're going to, we're going to pay a lot of attention to this thing. Yeah. And I think the peanut gallery that I was getting through the text and I, and I felt the same way, sort of, I was like, yeah, he's, he's already had like a crazy day one. There's no, he's going to sleep. And then there's no way that he's going to make it up for day two. Um, but you didn't, I think that the progression with the peanut gallery was essentially like days two, three and four. Everyone was essentially like, yeah, when is this guy going to tap out? Cause there's no way he's going to make it.

[01:03:31] But I think where people, where I noticed the change was like by day five, I think it was wildcat. I think Mary had joined you at that point. Cause he was so, I think everyone was sort of like, all right, he's actually calling in some experienced hikers to help him out. And he's sort of starting to get it. And I think that that's where it showed it was funny. It shifted very quickly from when is this guy going to tap out? There's no way he's going to make it to, you know what this, I'm like, this guy's crazy, but he's doing it. It's impressive.

[01:03:57] And that's where I think by day five, everyone, most of the people that I was getting texts from were kind of like, he could do these. Everyone was like, there's no way you're going to do it in seven days, but you could get this done in a certain period of time. So you want, you did. Yeah. And I was, I was on pace. The hardcore hike. I was on pace for a little bit. Um, well, I appreciate the, uh, the shift in support. Um, yeah, I, I, I think I, so I stayed on, I stayed on track for day one.

[01:04:26] I stayed on track for day two. Um, I believe when I started to get off track from the schedule. So I was on track to finish in seven days up until I believe the end of the, uh, the presidential range. And actually the only reason that happened was because four. Yeah. On day four, we had a bunch of, um, our friends and family kind of joined for that hike. Justin has wife, Quinn, his daughter. Um, we had a couple other people, a couple of friends and stuff hiking with us that day.

[01:04:54] And, um, Justin had to tap out at the top of Washington because he was like pretty dehydrated and he was like, dude, there's no, there's no way like I'm miserable right now. This sucks. I'm like, you know? Um, so he, he wasn't feeling good. Like he would, he looked like shit. Um, he took a car back down at that point. And I think at that point he started to realize like, oh, this shit's hard. You know, like, cause you know, he had just done Madison, uh, whatever, all those up until Washington.

[01:05:20] And, uh, so he tapped out there and then I continued with, um, his, his wife and daughter who were also just like kind of fitness freaks. And at some point somebody's headlight, uh, headlamp had, um, had died and we decided to call it after, um, was it Pierce? Yeah. I believe it was Pierce. I think we were going to end, we were going to end at Jackson. Um, but we ended up ending at Pierce. Does that make sense? Jackson would have been the last one of the night. Yeah. Okay.

[01:05:50] Yep. Yep. So yeah, we were just experiencing like some issues. Um, Justin's wife, Quinn had an ankle issue. She could barely walk, um, out of the mountain and her headlamp had died. So it was just my headlamp and Blake's and, and, you know, Blake was only 16 at the time. So I just didn't feel comfortable, um, leaving them to, to try and do this last one with me. And those two also just sort of got, not to say they got off the couch, but they had never hiked before and they just, they ripped out a Prezi Traverse basically that day.

[01:06:20] Yeah. Which is insane. 16 year old girl. Yeah. They, they went for it. Um, we actually had, um, so Justin had done the, the seven, seven, seven, the great world race where he did seven marathons and seven continents in seven days, not too long before that. And he had a friend, um, who also did that race with him. And, uh, he was, he was toast. So he, he tapped out like before Washington, he made it to the top of Washington, but he was like done before Washington. He ended up like coming in like an hour after we got there and stuff.

[01:06:50] And he was like, get me out of here, dude. Like I, this is not for me. And he was in the great world race. So, you know, these, these people are, um, you know, into that stuff and still having a really hard time. Um, and I, I just, but by the end of that one, I was like, okay, I don't think I'm going to be able to like add an additional mountain to this like the next day because timing wise, you know, by the time we finished Pierce, it was already like 10 o'clock at night, I believe. And, and for me, I had the mentality of like, I'm going to go again. Like I'll, I'll do the next one.

[01:07:20] Um, but I just, my legs were hurting me and stuff, but I was like, I know I could do it. I just had, I just, at that point I was just in a mentally, like, just, I'm not going to quit. Um, but I had to, I just, I, I, I didn't feel comfortable dragging them along with me and stuff. And so we just ended up calling it a night and, um, they ended up driving home. And from that, from there I was on my own. Just Justin had been with me the first few days and then he took off. He had, you know, he's got business stuff to run and all that. So I was like, now I was like driving myself from trailhead to trailhead.

[01:07:47] Um, barely able to like touch the gas with my ankles that now had like severe tendonitis. I had doctors coming, um, to check on me and do massages and, um, all that stuff. But yeah, I, the tendonitis really was like the thing that made it so hard for me because mentally I was fine. Um, muscle wise, I was okay. It hurt a lot, but I was like, you know, I'm used to doing things like this, but the tendonitis was brutal.

[01:08:13] So like unbelievable after, after, after Washington, I really started to kick in and I was like, oh boy, this could be a problem. You know, you know what, uh, sorry, Nick. Um, you know, what's interesting to me just looking back at this is like, so you had a 10 day stretch. I don't ever remember it, Nick. I don't know if you remember. I don't remember weather being a factor that much. Like I don't, did you have any days or anything? No, I did. I did have a rainy day. Um, it was when I was doing Cabot. Yep.

[01:08:43] That was the first time I was introduced to like, oh, hypothermia can happen fast if you're not prepared. Cause I had been getting very lucky with the weather, like unbelievably lucky from what I heard from other hikers. They're like, dude, you are so lucky with that weather. That could have been so much worse for you. Um, and I'm not sure I would have been able to do what I did if it wasn't for having the great weather. So I will, I will say there's probably an asterisk there. If someone's doing that shit in snow, um, you know, they're, they're working harder than I am. So, um, yeah, when I was doing Cabot, I had this girl who was just, she wasn't,

[01:09:12] a super experienced hiker. She likes to hike and stuff, but she had a couple of, uh, she had a couple of like physical limitation things going on. I think, I think, um, her name is Ellie and it was already starting to like missed when at the bottom. Um, and I only had on like a windbreaker. I was so used to it being like hot, even at the top would be at least being warm. And I was so hot from hiking that I was fine. Um, so I just wore that and I had like a couple of things in my bag. I didn't have gloves though. I didn't have like a lot of things that I should have had.

[01:09:40] Um, she had a couple extra things just in case. And I asked her at the bottom, she did have a couple of things. So I wasn't as worried about it. Um, but by the time I got to like three quarters of the way up, it was like the wind was blowing really hard. The ice, I mean that the rain was starting to get like pelts, you know, you're like, is this ice? Is this rain? Um, and I was, I was fucking cold, dude. Like I was really, really cold and my hands were like numb. I couldn't, I couldn't do Facebook live anymore. I couldn't hold my phone. So she's like, this, this is how it happens. And thank God for that little cabin at the top. I was like, dude, if this thing wasn't here, I'd be in trouble.

[01:10:10] Like I had to, I had to like go in there to break the wind for a second and like change into a different outfit, bigger coat. But yeah, that was, that was a good little eyeopening moment for me. Yeah. I don't know how much you pay attention to like the comments or anything on the live stream, but I wonder like those first three or four days, you know, there was a fair bit of people that are like, you're going to get yourself, you're going to need a rescue or you're doing this wrong or whatever. Were you able to get any feedback from the comments or were you mostly just ignoring that and going with your gut?

[01:10:39] So the comments that we were getting were mostly supportive because I'm on Facebook live and those are mostly our fans. So the, so the people, most of the conversations that were happening that were negative were outside of our little circle. Um, and I had definitely heard about them. I mean, there, there was no shortage of people going, dude, this is a good thing. There's people talking shit about you everywhere right now. And I, and you know, for me, I'm like one, I hate confrontation. I'm one of the, I'm a very positive person. I always like to, I like to inspire people. I like to do things that like awaken people like, Oh wow, that's, that's amazing. I had no idea that, you know, someone is capable of this. Maybe I'm capable of something.

[01:11:09] Um, that was my only goal in doing this. And even though I'm a novice hiker, I've never done any of that stuff. Um, safety was very important to me. And I, I always talked to my team about it. I always talked to my, uh, my doctors about it. And I made sure that like, if there was something that could have truly like limited me from doing it, um, that I addressed that, you know, whether it be like getting ankle braces or getting whatever. So I'm not going to roll my ankle or making sure that I have double the gear that I need for if it gets cold or whatever.

[01:11:38] Um, but I, I informed myself very much. Like I would be at the end of a hike, you know, it'd be like midnight and I'm, I'm just in the worst pain you could ever imagine. Cause I don't do this, you know? So my body's feeling it way more than you guys ever would. And I'm laying in the back of, I'm laying in my trunk. So I was sleeping in my trunk every night and that's all I had. Um, and I'm just broken, you know, I'm just laying there, just blisters all over me. Tendinitis, my, my joints are just flaring up.

[01:12:04] My muscles are just done and I'd just be on like Google with whatever battery I'd left in my phone, just like, you know, reading things about the next hike and, and learning about safety things and all that stuff. Cause I, it really started to come to the forefront when people, you know, I know there's been an issue when I did the, um, the presidential range and I was walking with my group, just laughing and talking and stuff. And I had actually missed, um, which one was it? Jefferson? Jefferson. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:34] Yeah. So I had actually physically missed to go off the route. Yeah. Cause there's a couple of little like bumps that you have to get to the rock pile. They're kind of near each other, but I thought that, um, Justin's wife or whoever it was that was in the front, I thought that she was following the navigation. So we're all just kind of like hiking, eating sandwiches and hanging out, talking and stuff. It was a nice day to like finally socialize with people instead of just being miserable. And, uh, eventually she's like, Oh, hold on a second. So the next one is, that's not the right way. Hold on.

[01:13:02] So I look over, I opened my thing and I'm like, Oh dude, I'm like, Jefferson's like two miles back that way. So I was like, you guys don't move. They're like, well, you know, just, just, you know, you don't have to do that one. We'll get another one later. I'm like, no, no, I'm like, I'm not coming back to Jefferson. I'm not, that's not an option. Um, so I just start, I just start running, dude. So I start running back to Jefferson and this is where, you know, I learned that people are

[01:13:27] very, very, um, particular about those little plants on the side of the mountain. I learned real quick that like, I didn't know anything about those plants that take like hundreds of years to grow or whatever it is. So I was, I was still being cautious. Like I was trying to find places, obviously, mostly for myself. Um, cause I don't want to walk through that stuff. It's just easier to walk on like dirt and rock and stuff. Um, and there was a lot of that stuff there. Um, and, and I, I don't think I even really touched too much of that stuff at all.

[01:13:56] I was trying to go around it, but, um, I definitely stepped on a couple of them. I feel terrible about it. Cause I didn't know that that was a thing. Um, but that was people don't know. Yeah. For me, I was like, I can see, you know, I see like the top of it. I can physically see where I'm going and it doesn't make any sense to go like two miles around it. I'm like, let me just get the signage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I got, I got up there fairly quick. Cause I like my legs, for some reason, I was just like on a high that day and I felt pretty good. Um, and I got up there like really fast.

[01:14:25] And when I got to the top, there was like a guy, a fan of ours. So I'm glad that I got there, um, who had been waiting. He, he was a, an avid hiker and he's like, I've been wanting to hike with you. This is crazy. I can't believe what you're doing. And like, can I hike with you the rest of the way? I'm like, yeah, dude, let's do it. Um, his name is Justin as well. Um, so he, he came with us for the rest of the presidential range, but yeah, I learned, I picked up little stuff like that along the way and I'm like, okay, all right. Noted. Don't, don't step on. Right. What is that shit called? Yeah. Just, um, Alpine vegetation. Yeah. Alpine vegetation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:54] I have a confession. My wife and I were like planning on trying to meet you somewhere. She's a huge fan too. Oh, that would have, that would have been awesome, man. Yeah. I was, I was always welcome and always excited when we find, you know, either fans or people that just had heard about it on the trail. There actually ended up being a lot of that. Um, there was, you know, there, go ahead. Can you talk about at that sort of midpoint, how the, the media response was in terms of

[01:15:21] engagement, virality, lack of a better word, because my wife and I, we would like wait for your live streams because it was just so fascinating. And I'm sure a lot of people were in that same boat. Yeah. It was interesting because I was very much in my own world. Um, it was a lot of mental capacity and physical capacity for me to just, to navigate, to make sure I had the right nutrition, all these things that I wasn't used to. So I had to like hyper focus. Cause it's like, you know, the final lap of a NASCAR race, like at every step for me,

[01:15:51] I'm like, I'm trying to laser focus on like making sure I don't miss something or, um, so when I would go on Facebook live, um, I guess I started to realize that when like the numbers were growing a lot, like I just, I'd go on the Facebook live and it tells you how many people are watching. And like within like five minutes, there'd be a thousand people, which is very unusual. Um, you know, for us usually takes, I have to be on there for 20 minutes for, for the word amount to get out that, that, uh, that I'm on. And, uh, people just were waiting. People were sending their notifications and stuff.

[01:16:17] Um, but I, uh, honestly, most of it, I didn't know about, I didn't know about it until like near the very end. I, I heard people tell me, you know, um, like Mary would say, Hey, just so you know, everyone in the hiking community, um, is following this now they, they're all like watching you. And of course that really added like, like a boost for me. Cause I'm like, I want, I want to show people that I'm not like a total joke and that I, I really want to do this. And I really, I care about learning about it.

[01:16:42] Um, and for me, it was also doing, this was like a nod to all of you guys, like to, to prove how difficult it is. I wanted people to understand that, like, you know, it's, they see these pictures on Instagram of you guys, like at the top of the mountain, like standing there with smiling and stuff. Um, that's just the top. Like there's a lot of stuff that goes into that. Um, especially when you make it a lifestyle, all the, all the gear you got to buy, all the safety stuff you get to, you get to deal with.

[01:17:08] Um, and the hiking community, uh, is absolutely amazing. And the stuff that you guys do all the time, I'm like, man, I, I, I want to, I think in a second life, I think this is something that I really liked to do a lot. And I definitely connected with nature a lot while I was out there. And it was something that was just like very beautiful to me. I love camping and stuff. I love, I've gotten very much more into the outdoors in the past several years. And I remember having many moments of being like, dude, this is what living is like. This is the best.

[01:17:34] Um, and I know if I had done this in a more, uh, reasonable manner, um, I think, I think that, you know, it would have been just one of the most beautiful experiences just to get it to, to be a part of all these and not be racing the clock the whole time. Um, but I still had those moments even, even in the pain I was in and even with the mission I was trying to accomplish. That's how I know I'm like, man, this is so beautiful. Um, but yeah, as far as like the media response, it was funny because it was almost like going

[01:18:03] back to a prehistoric time because it wasn't so based on my phone. Yes. I could see the numbers growing on Facebook, but, um, hikers were running into me as the, as the mission progressed more and more and more people were going like, you're the guy. And I'm like, Oh, I'm just the guy. The guy. I'm just the guy. Yeah. Um, as you would, the guy I'd never met, people that were not fans of ours that I didn't know. Um, I'm like, Oh, like you, you watch our band and they're like, what band? I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm just the hiking guy, I guess.

[01:18:33] Um, but yeah, it went from being like our fans who occasionally would meet me on a path or whatever, um, to just being random people, just being hikers. Um, so that's what I knew. I was like, okay, there must be some like forums or something going on outside of this. Um, but I really, I really didn't know, man, I wasn't a part of any of the communities. I wasn't a part of like the hiking, the 48s, all that. I learned about all of that, like towards the end and after. Uh, so in retrospect, I almost wish that like, I could have gotten more in with that group.

[01:19:01] I started to get the hang of like, Oh, okay. This, this works great for this or, or, or having a hiker with you and being able to talk back and forth really helps out with this or, um, just little things. And, um, so I, I made it a point after day one coming in at, I think it was like after midnight on the tri-pyramids, just miserable. There's a video in this, this episode is getting uploaded to YouTube. So, so the 48 mission, you can watch the entire thing. Um, we're uploading it to YouTube with the season coming up.

[01:19:32] Um, I learned after day one, I was like, I need to have somebody with me. Um, one just, it's, it's the beginning still. Um, I want to make sure that I'm, I'm safe. I, I, but I'm also bored. You know, I'm also just like, I'm just, I just want to talk to somebody. I want to enjoy the experience with somebody. It might be so much nicer to have a friend with me. Like, you know, my legs hurt too. Okay, cool. Let's talk. Let's talk about how much our legs hurt together. Instead of just me in my head, like, Oh, this sucks. This sucks. This sucks.

[01:20:01] Um, so it just, uh, after day one, I was like, I called Justin from the top of, uh, um, it was actually, it was actually, it was on day two. So, so I did, I was, it was the beginning of day two. I was doing the hand, white face, um, miserable dude. So this is a day two, obviously of anything difficult sucks. Cause your legs are just like, you wake up the next morning and you're like, no way. There's no way I'm doing another mountain right now. And then you just start doing it and you're like, all right, we got this. We got this.

[01:20:30] Um, but day two was like one of the most dreary days for me. Cause I was like, I don't know how the fuck I'm going to do day two. Um, but I called him. Um, I think I was on my way up, like past the Conaway and I was just defeated. Like, I was like, dude, I'm going to let everybody down. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm like, I have to have somebody hiking with me. I need someone to like pace me. I need somebody to talk to me. Um, so he got, um, one of our friends that works with one of our companies and, uh, and she came out and didn't have a lot of hiking experience, but she was an outdoor

[01:21:00] Jersey and she just crossed it with us and stuff. Um, so she, she came with me. And then when I got back at the trailhead, there was like, um, you know, he had like hamburgers and stuff. I'm like, let's get the system figured out. I know when I come back, I'm going to be starving. Um, I know it takes this long, you know, to get from point A to point B. I can only rest for this long. I can only get a massage for this long, you know, before needing to get back out there unless I, or unless I plan on getting back at the end at like one in the morning. Um, so we started to kind of figure the system out as we went.

[01:21:26] And, and, and then I got introduced to, you know, um, Captain Chris, I think is his name, right? Yeah. So Captain Chris joined me. Good man. He's a legend. Yeah. I had, um, I had a bunch of different people that joined me and a lot, a lot of them were like, some of them were people that we didn't even plan on. Um, uh, Eric, Merrick, Merrick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he, he hiked with me for, uh, I believe it was, it was like Jackson maybe. And like a couple others. We did like a night hike.

[01:21:56] Um, yeah. So I had, I had him, I had, uh, who, who's the, who's the tall skinny dude who, who like, uh, does guided hikes? Uh, Chase. Chase. Oh yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So Chase, we had some good conversations and stuff about life. Um, yeah, I mean, we, um, I think that sort of speaks to it. Like, uh, like I said, like, I feel like by day four or five, everyone was sort of like, all right, he's, he's not going to make it in the seven days, but like, I feel

[01:22:26] like everyone started getting behind you at that point. I know I did. I was sort of like, all right, he's going to get it done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I was, I was going to chime in. Like you were talking about the Facebook live. I remember texting stomp. I think it was after you did the Prezi traverse and being like, you could see it sinking in mentally. I think too, the way you were talking that you're like, this is, this is a lot harder than you probably anticipated it was going to be. Um, but it seemed like you were still in good enough spirits to be like, I'm still going to hike tomorrow. So it's like, if he's done the Prezi traverse on top of all this, and I want to say maybe two at that point, you had officially announced that you're sort of changing gears just to

[01:22:55] finish it as opposed to trying to do like the seven day window is out the kind of, that was just a done deal. And that was kind of, but you're still going to try to finish it. And at that point to me, it was kind of like, I think that's when you, what you started to win me over to be completely blunt. And I was like, yeah, this dude, this dude seems pretty good. He seems like he's going to do it. And it's, it's pretty inspirational to see you kind of going through that and everything. Yeah. And also like, like, uh, just like one point, just like Stam was saying too, it was interesting seeing you like, um, kind of going through, I don't think I've watched Facebook live much

[01:23:25] before or much since to be completely honest, to be like how much you guys were like sort of driving some of the hiking community. Um, but it was cool to see sort of that transformation. I think Mike capped on this, like when we sort of talked to him in the emergency podcast, but you went through that shit that like a lot of hikers go through over like years of hiking the 48, like super quickly. So it was something that all of us could be really empathetic and sympathetic with when we see you going through like, Oh, the prezzies are like a thing. Like these hopping through boulders for like 10 miles in your body and in ways probably didn't anticipate.

[01:23:55] And, uh, but yeah, I know. I remember having that exact thought as I was going up Mount Washington and then those just like, those just like big rectangular rocks just never end. You're like, dude, what is going on? You're like, when does this shit end? And then you get to Mount Washington and you're like, Oh, we're here. And you're like food, pizza. You're like, all you want to do is hang out, hang out and just like not do anything. And then you do it again. You just start going down those big rocks again. I was like, man, this is like, I actually, I remember having like a, like a breakdown,

[01:24:24] um, around like Monroe area. I think it was. And I was just crying. My knee was, my knee felt like it was just going to pop out of my skin. Like, like I had the, cause I have, I have bad knee joints. Cause I had like an injury on my knee and, um, they, they both were awful. But one of my knees was like, it was so devastating. It was like literally just getting hit with a hammer. Every time I took a step, it was devastating. And I just like sat there and I had Blake, Justin's daughter, um, right behind me. And she was talking to me and there's like a really touching moment that it's in the episode.

[01:24:52] Um, that's coming out, but, um, she was talking to me casually, you know, she's like talking about school and all this stuff. And I'm like, yep. And I just start, I start crying. My knee hurts so bad and I'm trying not to let her know that I'm crying. So I would like take it, take it like a deep breath and like, you know, just confirm something with her and be like, yeah, yeah, that's cool. Then I go back to crying again. Um, so it was really difficult. And then there's a point where like, I just couldn't help it. And I was at the, I was at the top of like, I think it was Monroe. And I just literally just like, just like went down. I was like on all fours. I just start crying and I'm just like sitting there just like, dude, I don't know.

[01:25:22] Um, I, I mentally was so, so strong. I'm like, I'm so committed to doing this. I'm so like, I have to prove people wrong. I have to prove myself wrong. Um, and it doesn't matter how much pain I'm in. I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna find a way. I know that I'll find a way to do it. Um, and there was a defining moment for me of the trip. One of the biggest ones was when I finished the presidential, I was sitting in the car with, uh, Justin who basically it was his.

[01:25:52] Idea to initiate this whole thing. Um, and he was a little stressed out, you know, that the girls were getting back so late and they lost their headlamp and he had to quit that day because he got dehydrated and stuff. He was starting to take some heat from the hiking community and from some of the online stuff. Um, and he, I think he'd gotten a call from Mary who was kind of filling us in on some of the social issues that were happening. And he was like, dude, he's like, you know, you, you, you, you crushed all these mountains. Like you're doing so good.

[01:26:22] He's like, but we're already past the seven day mark. You're not going to make it in seven days. He's like, it's, it's gonna, all this time we could be using up to, you know, work on things that are important back home and stuff. He's like, he's like the hiking community starting to get on your ass. Cause like, you know, you're, you're like, you're crying on Facebook and they're worried you're going to need a search and rescue. And it's looking reckless to people. And they're saying like, you know, he's not smart. And why would he do this? He's setting a bad example for kids and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, it's not a good look for us.

[01:26:49] Um, he's like, and he, he gave me a lecture for like 10 straight minutes. And then he looked over, he finished his, his little lecture and I looked over at him and I go, I'm not stopping. He goes, all right. He goes, that was literally the end of the conversation, but that was like the moment. I remember like, I remember just feeling like this, like weird, I don't know. I could, I could feel everything he was saying. I heard everything he was saying, but as he said, as he kept talking more and more about how I shouldn't do it, I kept getting more excited to do it as he was talking.

[01:27:19] I was so weird. I was having like this weird existential, like it's the, it's the classic sunk cost. Like you've, you've gone too far and you're not. No, I wasn't. And I'm like incredibly stubborn. Like anybody that knows me, I'm like, if I say I'm going to do something, I do it. Like I'm all, I'm one of those kids. It's like, you know, I go in my bedroom. I start hitting myself. Like you're so dumb. You're so dumb. Like I, I'm very, very much that way. And I think people didn't quite understand to what level I was like that until I did the 48.

[01:27:49] I, including me. I knew I was stubborn, but I was like, okay, this is actually like kind of insane. Like this is for someone at the, at the lack of hiking experience that I have doing this is actually like, you're starting to, you're starting to learn about like the limits of a human being. I mean, you really are. Cause like, for me, I don't know how much more I could have done. Like I'm at the emotionally, mentally, like socially, physically, all these things were just like at their, I was maxed out. I'm like, I'm as stressed as I can be. I'm as unprepared as I can be.

[01:28:18] I'm as physically like tormented right now as I could be. And I still was like, there's no way I'm, I'm, I'm stopping unless I'm dead. Like that's basically. You would have had to live with that forever. Like I quit. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able to. I wouldn't have been able to. It would have been tough. Yeah. I get it. Yep. So, so from, from, from that kind of standpoint, there were a couple moments for me where it was like, fuck, I like, this is either I'm about to stop right now or I have to somehow commit to getting through this.

[01:28:48] And the other one was, um, I had just finished Owl's Head and I had, um, what was, what was the other one? Isolation or? Moose lock. You did moose lock that day. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Moose lock. So I had done Owl's Head and I did that one with Captain Chris and, uh, Luke. And I had, when I started that one, that's the one that has like the crazy, like, like the five miles straight away before you even start doing any hiking. Right. Okay. Yeah.

[01:29:17] So that morning, um, my, my ankle, my, both of my ankles and my knees had, had by far the worst tendonitis that they'd ever had. And I was like, oh boy, I've been through a lot, but I, this could actually be a problem. I'm starting to feel shooting pains. I'm like, I would just take a very simple step and it would send a shooting pain. It was like shock. It was like someone just like zapping me with a taser. And I was like, the fuck is that? Um, so that was a new one. And I was like, I can't, I can't get through that. If that's going to keep happening, there's no fucking way. I'm going to have to figure it out.

[01:29:47] I'll have to crawl or something. Um, and so that started first thing in the morning. And so, um, there was a woman from the hiking community, um, who had seen me in the parking lot and knew what was going on. And she like had an ankle brace and she's like helping me put an ankle brace on. She's like, here, this will help you. And I'm like, okay. It ended up making things worse. It was like pushing on, on the, the place for her. And so I think that's what actually caused the shooting pains, unfortunately. Um, but I remember I, I somehow got done owl's head and I was like, there's no way

[01:30:16] I can do a second mountain today. I know I'm supposed to do another one. I'm like, there's no way. So I was sitting in my car again, just, just crying from pain. Um, emotionally I was fine. So that's how you know how much pain I was in. Cause I'm not, I'm not crying because I'm like, Oh, this is so hard. I'm crying. Cause like the pain is like literally just water is coming down my eyes. I'm like, I'm like, dude, I can't. Um, and I'm just, I was so in pain that I was like freezing and I was like, I was like shaking and stuff in the car and people are like, did you got to stop? Like you, like, this is getting out of control. Um, it's not safe. Don't do it.

[01:30:45] Uh, and so I got in the car and I was like, okay, I can't, I can't do another mountain today. I have, I have to just face that. I can't do another one. Um, but I had told Luke that I would meet him at six 15 at the trailhead of Moose Lock. And I was like, I'm just going to have my doctor drive me to the trailhead and I'm just going to assess my life on the way.

[01:31:10] Um, so I was laying in the back, just, yes, I was just trembling. I mean, this was one, this was like, I was like, man, I wish people could just like be a part of this and just see what's actually happening. Cause this is one of those like real moments, like just getting real. Um, I was trembling just, just, I was so in pain that my whole body was like shaking. Um, and she was driving me to the, to the, um, to the trailhead. And I remember it was like starting to get a little dark and it, I was feeling just like

[01:31:40] dreary. And I was like, I was starting to get anxiety and stuff. And Luke had called me and he's like, Hey man, do you still want to meet me? I was like, listen, I don't know what's going on, but just, just meet me there. I need you to just meet me there. Cause like, even if I can't do it, I just want to at least like have somebody there. So he meets me there and he brings like his girlfriend and she's like all uppity and excited and giddy and happy. And she's like, we're going to do this.

[01:32:05] And I remember just thinking, I'm a, I'm about to, I'm about to like find my mental and physical limit as a human being right now. Um, so the trunk opens, the doctor hits the button, the trunk opens. And I'm just like, and my ankle is swollen. And I'm just like, I'm like, there's no way I can do this. And I saw, he comes around and he goes, how are you doing in there? And I was like, not good, dude. I was like, I'm not good. And then his like girlfriend was in the car.

[01:32:33] He's like, I got my girlfriend with me and she's, she's down to hike if you want to. Fuck. I hate letting people down. I was like, oh, I was like, um, I was like, let me just try to get out of the car. And I took a, I took a step onto the pavement and I didn't quite feel like that shock feeling. I said, all right, here's what I'm going to do. I'm like, I have nothing left in my system. I have, my body is done, but I'm going to, I'm going to walk from here.

[01:33:02] To the trailhead, which I can see in front of me, which is like probably 40 feet. I said, if I can walk from here to there without feeling that shooting pain in my ankle, I'm going to do the, I'm going to do the mountain. So I'm thinking for sure. I'm feeling the shooting pain. I've been feeling it all morning. There's no way. And I, and I just finished a mountain. So it's got to be worse than it was. Um, I took off the ankle brace. I sprayed myself with this numbing, numbing cream, lidocaine spray. I had every spray and cream you can ever imagine on this trip, by the way. And, um, took some ibuprofen.

[01:33:30] Um, I had taken some ibuprofen at the end of the thing. And I took just very slow, like baby giraffe steps over to the trailhead. And I finally made it to the trailhead. And I was like, fuck, I made it. I was like, oh no. I was like, man, I was like, all right, we're doing it. So that was it. I was like, okay, we're doing it. So I was in the dark. I was, you know, I, I'm, I'm with these people who were, who I know probably didn't have any faith that I would continue.

[01:33:59] And I'm like, this is a defining moment for me. I got to get through this hike. And I remember just ripping through the hike. I had like this burst of adrenaline and just like my ankle hurt, but I wasn't having the shooting pains. And I was like, I think I can handle this. And then I started to realize, I think I can work through the tendonitis. I think it goes in and out. I thought it was going to progressively get worse and worse and worse. And it did, but kind of like this, you know? And I, and I got, I got through that hike. I actually hiked it really fast. I was like running a lot of it.

[01:34:28] It's weird how you have these moments of adrenaline. Like you think, you think there's no way you think your body is like absolutely done. And then you have these moments of like, oh, I feel like a superhero right now. And you, and you somehow get through it. And I remember just, it was so windy. I couldn't even talk at the top. And we were just like sharing hot cocoa out of this thermos and I was laughing and I'm like, we did it. So, you know, I started to have these like really beautiful moments with people and just starting to discover like, you know, what I was capable of and, and just like the power of like having friendship and having people there with you.

[01:34:56] And the power of like thinking you really can't do something. And all of a sudden you just find a way, you know, you just, your body just finds a way to do it. And you would, most people would never get to that point to learn that. And this, that was like the fruit of this mission for me was like getting to that point. And I didn't expect it. I didn't know what to expect when I started, but like seeing what I was capable of was like wild to me. Like the fact that I got through that hike was insane to me. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is, oh, go ahead, Stomp. Oh, sorry.

[01:35:26] A lot of the trailheads have cold running water, man. You should have been dipping in those, those ponds and brooks and everything else. It just took me so long to get my shoes on and off and stuff. I was like, no, I got, I got, I got so many wraps and creams and like the order of things. And like, I was like, I don't even have the patience to take off my shoe right now. But I know what you're saying. There's probably, those are all probably great ideas. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny after Justin sort of gave you that, like we're getting a lot of heat lecture. Like you guys probably did.

[01:35:55] I mean, I don't even know. You didn't probably plan this out too well, but I do think that like that day five, six, seven and eight, like when Mary shows up for one of them and then all of a sudden, like you're hooking up with guys like Captain Chris, who's very well respected, Chase. I feel like you probably inadvertently like just turned a corner where people are like, all right, he's, he's at least smart enough to know that he's going out with experienced people that can give him advice and keep them safe. And I think that that quieted, I think that quieted a lot of the chatter down.

[01:36:25] Yeah. And I knew that having some people that were well respected on my side was going to help with that stuff. And I was just thankful that these people had the respect for me to be a part of that, you know, cause that's like that, that kind of goes against his reputation. If he, if it looks like he's supporting someone that's reckless. So I was just thankful that these people for some reason wanted to be a part of it.

[01:36:51] I think, you know, hopefully it was because they were starting to give a little respect to what I was doing and understand that I was somebody who cared a lot about, you know, the, the safety aspect of it. And also just cared a lot about just, just proving something to people. Right. Yeah. And then we, you know, the presidential traverse is a huge milestone, but the other big milestone for hikers is the, the, um, Pemi traverse or Pemi loop. And you didn't do a full Pemi loop, but that day 10.

[01:37:19] So essentially like that, the day before you finished, you did an absolute beast of a hike going from flume over there to the twins, which knocks off like seven or eight peaks. Can you talk about that day a little bit and how that might've been? Yep. So I had another hiker that was, that was great. Um, that day that was with me. And I remember my, my body cause it's ebbs and flows. You know, some days I'd feel like the man for a second and I'd be running through things and other, other times I'm like, I'm done. My ankle's broken.

[01:37:49] Um, yeah, that day was an extreme challenge for me. I remember just my body just, I don't know if I didn't hydrate right or didn't, didn't, uh, get the nutrition that I need or something, but my body was just incredibly sluggish at the beginning of that day. And I remember just not being able to keep up with, um, with, with, uh, the person I was hiking with, um, and just really having a difficult time. And then as the day went on, I started to get a little bit stronger, uh, especially mentally.

[01:38:19] And I, well, I was only supposed to do, I was supposed to stop before self twin originally. That was the only thing that I had because Mary started to pull back on the days. She'd be like, yeah, let's back this down. Let me rewrite this one. You're supposed to do five that day. Let's just do three or two or whatever. Um, because she saw the condition that I was in. Uh, and I think we're supposed to stop right before it goes north twin first. Right. And then south twin. Correct. Yes. Yeah.

[01:38:43] So I did, I did whatever was before north twin and that there's that, uh, that hut, that hut. Okay. No. So you came, so twin would have been first. You finished on north twin. So yeah, there's, there's gale head. Yeah. You would have hiked gale head at the hut there. And then you would have gone up south twin over to north twin and out. I know. What am I thinking? Am I, am I confusing? There's a south something else. Maybe I'm confusing that with. South kinsman. There's also. No, it wasn't that one. Yeah. Cause that day you would have started.

[01:39:10] What's the one that has the cabin where like people like serve you food and all that stuff. There's like a green leaf on Lafayette. Um, and then the Zealand. Yeah. It was, um, South car. Yeah. If you're talking the twins, it's probably gale head. It would be gale head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah. Gale head. Yeah. That's what it was. So I got the gale head. 0.5 straight uphill. There you go. It's the crusher. Oh yeah. So yeah.

[01:39:40] South twin. That's the one with like the, like the crawl that just like never ends. It's just like that crazy uphill. Right. Okay. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. So, yep. So I remember being going inside of that, um, that hut, that, that cabin and just being so invited by the warmth and just the relaxation. I was serving soup that I couldn't have because we apparently have to like book it. Um, yeah, it's like the sirens. Yeah. Dude, it's the sirens. There were people in the hiking community and I don't know if they were fans or if they

[01:40:09] were people that had just learned about the story, but they were leaving gifts for me at the huts. So every time I'd go in there, they'd be like, are you Ryan? I'm like, yeah. And they, I'm like, how'd you know that? They're like, they described you and you look like that person. Um, they're like, you got, you got this gift from so-and-so. This person gave you a bag of like, you know, goodies. This person gave you a note. So I was starting to like receive items, um, at, at these cabins. Um, I'm like, I don't even have any room for this shit, but if it was food, I was just eating it on the spot. I was like, I'm always starving.

[01:40:37] Um, and uh, yeah, I remember just being warm and cozy and it started getting like cold outside. And, um, I was with a couple of people that were just, just crazy hikers and had done so many of these that they were, they were prepared to keep going. Cause they obviously they're only doing like a day of this. So they're ready. Um, and I was like, let's just go for it. Let's just do the twins. Um, so I remember one of them warning me about South twin and how, um, it's in the hiking community. He's like, are you sure you want to do that tonight? I was like, yeah, I'm sure.

[01:41:07] Um, and that was, I remember being on Facebook and people just being like, you know, you should stop for the night. You've done good and stuff. And I was like, I'm gonna do another one. And then they were like, well, I can't believe you did another one. It's like, I'm also going to do another one. So I ended up doing, um, South twin and North twin. I added those two on. I wasn't going to do those originally. Um, but yeah, so yeah, I got flume, Liberty, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield, Kalehead, South twin and North twin. Um, it's nice when you can just, I always love the ones you can just kind of do this and hit different peaks. I'm like, Oh, this is so good. The numbers are going up. But then there's days where you do like two hikes and you're like, that was the longest

[01:41:37] day of hiking in my life. How was it? Only two months. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of, uh, definitely a lot of excitement when there was days when I could like check off numbers faster. I'm like, wow. And a lot of our fans who don't hike, you didn't, didn't really understand. They're like, how come you did like eight on one day and like two on the other? Like, how does that work? Um, you're like, if you, if you were only a hiker, you'd know, and I'm not. So, um, I don't even know. Um, yeah. So, so I, there was another really amazing moment.

[01:42:04] You guys talk about like the social impact and some of the, some of the heat that we got from people and kind of like that, you know, that, um, that storyline of when people kind of jumped on board and started being supportive versus being, you know, kind of unsupportive. And I was, I was getting towards the end. I think I was, I think it was the day I did. Um, it was, it was like the second to last day, first or second, second or third to last day.

[01:42:31] And I was going through the woods and somebody came up to me and they were like, oh, you're the dude. And I was like, yeah, man, nice to meet you. And he's like, I'm going to be real with you. He's like, when you first started doing this hike, I was not a fan. He's like, I was one of those people that was talking shit about you and I've been hiking for a long time. He's like, but he just puts his hand out. He's like, I got to give it to you, dude. He's like, I've never seen anything like that before. He's like, I don't know how you've gone this far. He's like, it's inspiring to me. He's like, all my hiker friends are like, they can't believe you're doing this.

[01:42:59] And I didn't, cause I didn't really understand how big of a feat it was until the hiking community. Like, like Mary, I remember calling Mary on the second to last day was when I was doing when I was doing the PEMI and I was like, I have a question for you. And she's like, what's up? I would call her all the time. I called Mary so many times on this trip. Mostly I just wanted to talk to her or ask her like different things. Like, and I said, do you think that you could do what I did? And she's like, no chance.

[01:43:28] She's like, there's absolutely no chance. And that was, that was the first time I was like, oh, okay. This is actually is incredibly difficult even for hikers. Um, cause I knew how difficult it was for me, but I'm like, you know, playing drums is difficult for someone that doesn't play drums. So I'm like, how difficult is this for an actual hiker to do? Uh, and I think it's a hybrid of not just doing all of these hikes, but it's, it's not, it's the lack of rest that you get, you know, sleeping in your car. So there's so much that went into it that, that made it difficult for me. I mean, I don't do well on no sleep when I'm not doing physical things.

[01:43:58] Um, if I, if I only get two hours of sleep, I'm like a zombie the next day. Like, I'm just like, dude, I gotta take a nap. Like, but doing that and like doing these hikes and not knowing how to properly nutrition yourself and having not been prepared and my body just being shot the entire time. I mean, so many different on so many different wavelengths. Um, doing this for me was like, I realized by the end, I'm like, man, this is, this is, I don't know if I could do it again. I mean, I, I, it was just like one of those moments you're just, you're putting every ounce

[01:44:24] of your like soul into trying to get this thing done and, and the support with people. I will say if your average person like me who hadn't hiked went out there and tried to do it without Facebook, without fans, without all that support and stuff, I'm not sure they're doing it. I, I, I, I attribute a lot of the energy that I got in order to like boost myself from that, um, by a lot of the support and the people telling me that I couldn't do it.

[01:44:50] Having some kind of buzz around it, um, really, really helped me whether it was negative people or positive people. They both encouraged me, probably negative people encouraged me more though. Right. You had a huge buzz for sure. And I think that that guy that you met, like, I mean, I kind of touched on it in the beginning. It's like everybody had the same evolution, I think for the most part, like there's no way this guy's going to make it. He's going to quit. He doesn't know what he's doing. And then it's like, wait a minute. Okay. That was, that was impressive. That was impressive. And then finally we got, you know, people got behind you, which is cool.

[01:45:19] I think, I think too, I think too, like the way, so the way you did, it was ridiculous, like doing back to back to back. But I think on the flip side, it's a good reminder for all. And I think some, maybe some of that adversity you met is a lot of people are like, Oh, we're, we'd love to know like our mountains are some of the toughest in the Northeast. And there's all this sort of like that aura around it, but you really are. And fundamentally you're proven like, Hey, if you're a dude that's determined or anybody that's determined to go do this and you have sort of a solid foundation and stuff, anybody can go out and hike the 48. It's not as super, it's not as elite.

[01:45:48] I think as some people think it is. I know even when you start, I'm like, I was baffled at the fact that people grid and they do things like that. And then you get into it and you're like, Oh, I can see how people start doing that. And it kind of becomes more of a reality. But I think that initial adversity you get is the people that are like, Oh, I'm preparing to do this. And this guy is just coming off and kind of doing like, how dare this dude go out and kind of try this. Which if you think about it, it's kind of like a fucked up mentality. A hundred percent. I mean, that's just like, that's like entitlement. That's ego. A hundred percent. Where I understand where that comes from.

[01:46:18] At the end of the day, it's like, dude, if someone's like, I'm going to do the best drum solo in the world, I'm not going to go, well, I'm a fucking drummer. And I've spent my whole life doing a drum solo. It's like, no. And I, yeah. Go for it. Like in the back of your head, you're going, probably not, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to discourage this person from doing it. You know what I mean? I'm going to go, dude, you want, you want some tips? I could probably help you make a better drum solo if you want like some advice. But a lot of people, it's, it's really weird. Like the human condition is just to like knock people down. And I've never, I've never understood it.

[01:46:46] But one is over and like, it's a little bit of a hard look in the mirror for us being like, Hey, like you came out and you laid it down and you did it. Like, yeah. But I will say if, if someone's doing it like truly like being unsafe or there'd be like carelessly or something, or they're, they have an attitude about it. That stuff bothers me too. Like if someone was doing things that just felt like, um, they're being arrogant or, or, you know, just bragging too much. And I, I just, I'm just not that person.

[01:47:11] Like I, I, I try not to, I'm a very confident and I'm very stubborn, but I'm not, I'm not arrogant. I'm not, I'm not disrespectful. Um, I care very much about the people around me. I want to include everybody. I want, I want people to, you know, I like, I like the adversity and the, and people challenging me and saying, I don't, I truly don't think you can do it. I love that. Like that, that's good for me. As long as it's like a productive, like, you know, negativity. Um, I just don't, I just, I've always had a problem and kind of just, I've always been

[01:47:39] in question of like, man, why is it people's gut reaction? You know, to, to, to, to be that way. Cause I just don't think it's necessary. Um, and I, I wasn't a huge part of it. You know, I, I didn't, I didn't get to see a whole lot of it, but what I learned about it afterwards, I was like, wow, there's a lot of people like that. I had my first taste of that when I was doing, um, field and is it Wiley? Willie Tom and field. Yeah. Yeah. So I was doing, what's the one with like the nice, it's like kind of like a slanted rock at the top. There's like a little, a little, probably Willie.

[01:48:09] It was like a nice, nice view across Crawford notch and whatnot. Yeah. And there's like the, uh, the gray J's and stuff are up there. Yep. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. So I was, I was at the top there and, um, a guy realized that it was me and he would, he, so I just asked him outright. I was like, what, you, what's the conversation around this right now? Like, like how does your, he's like, yeah, I'm in a group chat with a bunch of, you know, experienced hiker people. He's like, and, uh, they're, they're not saying the nicest things about you.

[01:48:38] And, but he, he seemed like he was like a nice guy. And I was like, have you said any shitty things about me? He's like, yeah. He's like, yeah, I have. And I was like, can I just read your chat? Can you just humor me for a second? Let me read it. That's awesome. So, so he hands me his phone and I'm reading, dude, I'm dying laughing. Cause they like a lot of their information, it's like misinformation. So that shit always makes me laugh. It's like, you know, this guy thinks he's going to do it like five days. Like it's just shit. Like everyone, everything's like telephone, you know, somebody says something and it kind

[01:49:05] of the wrong information goes to somebody, but they're like, I heard he's like some drummer guy. And like, just nobody knows the actual facts of what's happening, but they're all just going anyway, this, this tool thinks he's going to do it in this amount of time. And he's talking out his ass. He knows nothing about what he's doing. He's, he's got all this routing wrong. He's like, so it was just, they were the whole thing. And it's funny. Cause I was reading his messages and he was talking more shit about me than anybody. So I'm like, dude, I'm like, you're killing me. I'm like, can you at least be supportive?

[01:49:33] He's like, well, you've made it this far. He's like, you're doing pretty good. He's like, I guess, I guess I'll get on your side. So we were just shooting this shit on. It was one of those just like, you know, humorous moments. I think that's too. It's like a lot of those gatekeeping things and the social media comments, like that, those walls break down when you can make a direct connection with somebody. And like, you know, you're not going to be meet everybody on trail, but I do think that the, the Facebook lives and the, the honesty that you had around the challenges and

[01:50:00] you, you know, you were pretty humble towards like those first couple of days. And I think that that, that broke down a lot of walls too, for people. So you're still going to have haters. It's just, it's the real. And I realized that like, I came into it not knowing anything. So there's probably some people who would just think I'm annoying because I'm saying the wrong stuff, but it's at least I'm saying it honestly. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm admitting, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. And I'm trying to give people the information.

[01:50:27] Cause I, I, I want to, I always try to bring people along for like a story, you know, like when we do, like I went to the seven wonders of the world. I was trying to break a world record by doing it in a week. And to me, like, I have an opportunity to show people stuff they've never seen. So I want to tell the story. Like I want to know information about each wonder and stuff. So I'm trying to learn as I go. And I had never learned anything about the wonders or anything about these mountains. And so I'm going, you know, right now I'm on this one. And then the next one I'm going to is white face. They're like, no, it's called Pass the Conaway. I can see people correcting me and stuff. I'm like, sorry.

[01:50:57] Sorry. But that should go to tell you that I'm, that this is a huge challenge for me. I don't even know where I'm going. Ryan's over here learning a foreign language with these mountains and the trails. And you're like, what the hell? Yeah. So I, I, I definitely like felt out of place in that sense. Cause you know, you guys, you guys have conversations with each other. You can bring up the most like obscure stuff. Like, remember that, like, remember that one log we saw on that one trail? Yeah. Yeah. I love that log. But you guys know every last little thing about every trail. And it's, it's fun. Cause you have a community.

[01:51:27] You can talk about that stuff. It's like, if I talk about music, my music buddies, we know stuff that like most people don't know, but I was, I was throwing myself into something. I had no idea what I was doing and I was doing my best at it. And that was the best that I could do. You know? And that's what I was trying to convey to people. I'm like, I'm going to get information wrong. I'm going to piss people off, but not to piss people off. It's just because I'm, I'm learning. I'm just being genuine. And I'm telling you, like, I don't know what I'm doing. So I tried to be as like transparent as I could throughout the whole thing. Um, and anytime someone would tell me something, I wasn't like,

[01:51:57] I don't need to know that. I'm fine. You know, I was like, thank you. Like, it was like, Hey, those shoes are, those probably not the right shoes. An example. But I'm saying like, you know, I, I, I went shopping with somebody who knew all that stuff ahead of time. So I tried to cover all of the bases, um, and make sure that I had everything figured out. And because I had like people like Mary on my side at any moment, if I was like, Hey, I feel like I'm in a jam. She would just tell me, okay, no, this is what you need to do. Here's the thing you need to buy. You know? So I always had, I was always referencing something.

[01:52:26] I wasn't going into it completely blind. I just, the information was a lot to process. Like the 48 mountains is like to try and name all 48, even for someone that likes the mountains, it's like, Oh shit, I miss a couple. You know, it's, it's hard to keep track of not only like the, you know, all the technical information about it, but like, for me, just like the experience of it and trying to like make sure I'm ready for it. And I'm going to survive these fucking things. Um, so it was, it was a lot, it was a lot for me to process.

[01:52:51] And I, and I just want it, but that's, that is the beauty of telling the story is cause people are, I'm, I'm representing all these people who haven't done it. And there's way more people in the world who haven't done it than people who have. So I'm relating to everybody. Basically I'm relating to, you know, 99% and they're going, wow, I didn't realize that. Oh, that that's, Oh, he has to go through that shit. That's crazy. Um, you know, what a view it's like a mix between like showing people these beautiful moments, like look at, look at what these mountaintops look like.

[01:53:20] Look at this, look at, look at these beautiful nature trails. And also like, Oh, what would I do in that situation if I was lost in the woods? So people just start kind of like living vicariously through you, but you can't get those experiences unless you just like throw yourself in these insane missions. And nobody does that. Um, nobody, I mean, you guys, you, you guys do an emergency podcast. It tells me that there's not a lot of people that do this. Um, it was interesting. So how many, how many have you seen? Have you ever seen anybody with, with, with that lack of hiking experience? Try something like that? No, no, not really.

[01:53:50] But I would ask you like to, to sort of wrap things up in a bow. What would you tell our listeners who are beginners, who are not going to dive into something like what you've accomplished and you've done a great job with that. What would you tell them to do it safely, to prepare, to, to, to go into it with understanding and knowledge? What would you suggest to them? Oh, I mean, always safety and always all of that stuff.

[01:54:18] You really, um, cause to me, when we do these challenges, it usually starts off as like some kind of physical challenge and it ends up as this kind of like community building thing. Um, and this was a great example. There's so many beautiful things to be had, but you have to have support from people. Um, it's not fun to do things on your own and you end up kind of on an island of your own when you're trying to just take on something by yourself and you're not doing it in the right way. Um, there were so many connections that I had.

[01:54:45] Um, there were so many, I'm sure you guys had kind of a cool learning experience watching me do it and learning about yourselves a little bit and going, oh, I, I probably judged them a little bit. You know, you, you kind of learn about your character through these things and things that you might not learn about if I hadn't tried it. Um, so I would just say, you know, if you're someone who wants to challenge yourself, you could, number one, you can absolutely do it. Um, I wouldn't recommend trying what I did. I don't think it's fun or safe or any of those things for most people.

[01:55:13] Um, I came from a, you know, a solid physically fit background. So I, you know, if you have some kind of, especially if you have some kind of foundation, um, you'll be fine. Just make sure that you listen, make sure that you, um, are prepared. Just know that the weather's no joke. Even if it seems great at the bottom, you guys know, um, it can be wild at the top. You can go from like... You got really lucky with the weather. Yeah, it could be, it could be 70 and sunny at the bottom and blizzarding at the top.

[01:55:38] So always come prepared, um, hike with somebody, um, preferably somebody that knows what they're doing and just, you know, have somebody to talk to and enjoy the experience with. I think any, any experience is better with somebody. So, I mean, you guys probably know you hike by yourself. Every once in a while, it's cool to have a moment. You listen to some headphones, you're kind of going through a mental thing. You got to prove something to yourself, whatever you want to be alone. That's great. But like, if you want to enjoy, you know, a day full of hiking and a day full of just beauty and scenic stuff, it's really cool to share that with somebody.

[01:56:06] So bring a friend, um, somebody you can talk to, somebody you can share it with. And, um, just, just know that, uh, for me, the big, I think the biggest takeaway from this was like, just the fact that it was metaphorical for, for life. It wasn't just the mountains. Like when you're going through something that just feels like it's stopping you in your tracks. Like I, I can't get up in the morning. Like I can't do this. I'm, I'm done. I'm, I'm emotionally drained. I'm mentally drained. I'm physically drained. I'm, there's no way I can do this.

[01:56:35] Um, you can, you have to not approach it as I'm going to solve every one of my problems today at once. But if you tackle them one at a time, you just put one foot in front of the other, you'll figure it out as human beings. You learn to figure things out. And, um, I had moments on that trip where I was certain I couldn't go forward literally. And every single time, 100% of the times that I felt that I did go forward, I had dark moments.

[01:57:03] I had, there were moments where I was in my own head, not, not just about the mountains. I was just thinking about like personal things in my life that were, you know, difficult things for me, mental health challenges for me. Um, and I got my own head a lot and, and just walking and taking some time and give myself some perspective really helped that. Um, and I, I hope that what I did, um, had more of a positive impact on people out there than it did just pissing people off. Um, I hope so.

[01:57:31] I hope, I hope there's some takeaway for people out there just going, even if it's just, you get up to work out in the morning and you're like, I'm not working out. I'm not in the mood. And then just, you go, uh, Ryan hiked all 48 mountains. I think I can do some pull-ups today. You know, just, I hope it offers some kind of perspective because I use the 48 mountains as, as a physical metaphor every day of my life. Every time I'm like, I can't go play hockey today. I just finished the gym. I'm like, what the fuck am I talking about? Let me tell you something. What am I talking about? I can play hockey and go to the gym and play shows.

[01:58:01] And so, so now I'm like, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm way more physical, physically fit than I was before the mountains because of the way I look at things now. I'm like, Oh, I'll, I'll, I'll literally go to the gym and then I'll do like a run and then I'll go play two shows. And then I'm like, I'm, I like it. I enjoy it. I'm like, I want to keep, I just want to keep pushing myself and see how far that I can physically go. I know, I know that, I know that there's something beyond this that I will do. Nice. Well, I think that that's a good, good point to, uh, to wrap up here, Ryan, we're at the two hour mark too, but, um, anything you want to plug, like where can we see, um,

[01:58:29] recycle percussion, anything else you want to plug for us? Even if I plug something, I don't think anyone's sticking around this long to fucking hear it. Um, they will, they will. Believe me, they listen. Yeah. Really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. 100%. Yeah. Listen to me. For two hours. Yeah. Um, yeah. So we're, we're mostly a Facebook band. Um, we've kind of made our mark on, on Facebook and we do most of, most of our posts there, all the things that we've been talking about today, you can find, um, you can follow along on these challenges on our recycled percussion Facebook. You just type recycled percussion into Facebook.

[01:58:59] You'll find us. Um, don't fall for the scammers, by the way, we have a lot of those, um, chaos and kindness, same thing. You can find all of our stuff. Just type in recycled percussion or chaos and kindness into Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Um, and you can find us. We're kind of new to the TikTok world, so don't judge our amount of followers and stuff, but Facebook, we've got a pretty good following there. Um, yeah. Um, yeah. And, uh, if you guys are interested in our clothing, um, you can go to chaos and kindness.com. We do really cool things. We're all about mental health and giving back a lot of stuff.

[01:59:26] You know, when we do our missions, we usually either donate a percentage of profits to a certain thing. Um, or we physically just, um, go out and do things ourselves and we'll show you like what we do with the, with the, um, the profit money. So a lot of the times we'll go do an act of kindness that you can watch. And we'll even do like a post of like, here's the people that donated to this thing that we did. Um, and we have a QR code on all of our shirts. So I think we're one of the only companies that does this. It's a, it's a QR code. We have this on every garment of our clothing.

[01:59:52] And when you scan it, it's a, it's a video of someone like offering you like hope and love. And it's, it's a different video every day from someone in the world. That's just basically just like either telling you about their mental health journey and how they get through it. Um, so it's just kind of, we're, we're more of like a community brand than we are just a clothing brand. Um, but yeah, and you can find our episodes on YouTube. Awesome. Yeah. And just do, um, one thing I may be catching this one is October 8th. I noticed you guys are playing the Freiburg fair. So, uh, that'll be, it's a Thursday night. Yeah. Good to know. You can be up in Freiburg. Be your agent.

[02:00:24] No, no. Yeah. We, we're doing, it's weird. I was just talking to Justin about this. We're like, it's a weird fair year. We're just doing all these weird fairs. We're doing, we just did the Erie County fair. We're doing the, um, what's that? What's that fair in, uh, Springfield, Mass. Uh, the big E. The big, the big E. Yeah. We're doing that one coming up. We're doing the Lancaster fair this weekend. Yeah. We're just, we're just faring it up this year. Yeah. Cool. That's awesome. So get those. Thank you guys for having me, man. I, I appreciate it. And, uh, I, it's at first I was like, oh man, I gotta, I gotta face all these guys that

[02:00:53] just thought I was the most annoying human being in the world. And I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad that I, uh, you know, made believers out of some of you guys at least. Yeah. We were just worried about your safety to be honest with you. That's what it came down to. Yeah. I think that was early on too. It's like, I think, uh, yeah, that being open about sort of the doctors and getting some folks with you and being open about everything. I think caught a lot of people's fears about all that. Those are valid. Those are valid. Well, thank you for having me. So thanks again, Ryan.

[02:01:20] And, uh, yeah, we'll have this out on Friday and, uh, for listeners, we'll, we'll catch up with you next time. Amazing. Thank you guys for having me. Yep. Thank you. Right on. All right. Take care. Bye everybody. Revelations работать. Try to learn more about the topics covered in today's show.

[02:01:48] Please check out the show notes and safety information at slasherpodcast.com. That's S-L-A-S-R podcast.com. You can also follow the show on Facebook and Instagram. We hope you'll join us next week for another great show until then, on behalf of Mike and Stump, get out there and crush some mega heat.

[02:02:14] Now covered in scratches, blisters and bug bites, Chris Staff wanted to complete his most challenging day hike ever. Fish and game officers say the hiker from Florida activated an emergency beacon yesterday morning. He was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when the weather started to get worse. Officials say the snow was piled up to three feet in some spots and there was a wind chill of minus one degree. And there's three words to describe this race. Do we all know what they are? Oh, yeah!

[02:02:46] Lieutenant James Neeland of New Hampshire Fish and Game. Lucinda, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me. What are some of the most common mistakes you see people make when they're heading out on the trails to hike here in New Hampshire? Seems to me the most common is being unprepared. I think if they just simply visited hikesafe.com and got a list of the ten essential items and had those in their packs, they probably would have no need to ever call us at all.