 Ladies and gentlemen, I need you, sir. Hi. I'm nervous. You know me, I get nervous. You're right, I'm not nervous. I'm with my people! Yes! And before we get started, you know what we need to do here. Hold on, hold on. You stick. Here we're going to do this. Everybody kind of like, make some noise here. Let's make some noise. There we go. That was the best O.A. I think this side of the Mississippi all of 2023. You should be proud of yourselves. Woo! First of all, thank you so much for being here. This means the world to me to see your faces in real life. I know that I interact with a lot of you on YouTube through comments or questions or emails. Some of you are my patrons. Thank you so much for supporting me. But to be able to see your faces in real life and hug you and shake your hand, it really means the world to me. Because when I started this little old YouTube channel about seven years ago now, I had no idea what it would turn into. I just wanted to make videos about adventures in the hopes of inspiring you to get off your couches and to get out there. And for many years, not many people watched my videos, just my mom and my brother and a few others. And they're back there. Hi mom and brother, Ethan! Yeah! But over time, you started watching them a little bit more and you started telling your friends about my videos. And now I have kind of a big channel. I mean, it's not huge, but it's like way bigger than I ever thought it would be. Which is incredible. And it's all because of you. So thank you for watching my videos every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. Right? This event is a little bit different than the other ones we've done. It's just been me talking which gets super boring. Right? You're supposed to say no. No way. I wanted to invite some of my special, amazing friends to talk with you today. Because there are a lot of people doing good things in the world, good things in the bike world, bicycle advocacy. And I really wanted you to hear their stories. And that's who you're going to hear from first tonight. And at the end then I'll get on and talk with you a little bit. But it's my absolute honor to have five wonderful people here. You can see them behind. We've got Mattie Johnson, Brooke Gowdy, Dan Hurd, Dana Dursweiler and Jeffrey Mazzell. Let's make some noise for them. And a lot of them, or some of them are not used to speaking in front of crowds. It's hard. It can be scary. And so I want you to be as loving and enthusiastic and supportive as you are for me, for all of them. Can you do that for me? Thank you. Okay. I want them to feel the love from Team Dueser, and I know you can do it. So first up tonight, I would love to introduce you to a new friend of mine. I met him a couple years ago at Rag Bride. His name is Dan. And at Rag Bride, Dan is a phenomenon. Everybody knows Dan is a heart of gold. He's one of those people who is out here to make the world a better place. And Dan has been through the ringer so many times, and he's risen from the ashes. And his story tonight is really going to inspire you. And he's inspired me as a friend. So Danny, this is another funny thing. His name's not really Danny. I keep calling him Danny. And in my videos last year, I kept calling him Danny because I really thought so at Rag Bride this year, everybody kept saying, hey, Danny, Danny, Danny. But his name's not Danny. It's Dan. So, sorry about that. You're now known as Danny on my channel. Danny, give me a hug. Oh. One pedal at a time. Here you go, man. Have fun. Thank you. Hey, guys. Well, first I want to say thank you to Dueser and the priority team. This is my first speech since March of 2020. Three days before the pandemic started. My last speech was to the military members in San Antonio for suicide awareness, which is what I do. I rode the lower 48 states, did 22,000 miles over three years, seven months and six days for suicide prevention. It started out for myself when I started cycling. I started in July of 2017. I rode motorcycles before that. I stopped riding bicycles at 14 years old when I started riding dirt bikes. And I thought cycling was for kids or people that couldn't afford cars or anything like that. So, I had a friend. His name was Sean. He was Sean. He tried to get me on a bicycle for four or five years. I laughed at him every time. It became a running joke. I'd meet him there on my motorcycle and I'd see him on my way back home to where we were supposed to meet up. And it just, to me, didn't look like fun. But fast forward a little bit. I was just getting out of the hospital for my third suicide attempt. I was planning my fourth already. I told everybody I was doing fine just so that people would leave me alone. And this friend, instead of asking me to go for a bike ride, finally came up to me and said, hey, man, we're going for a bike ride after work. I didn't have a bike. I didn't have cycling clothes. I wore jeans, shorts. How many people wore jeans, shorts their first time riding bikes? I wore those for about two months. And I rode a bike that was way too small for me. My buddy's like five, six, five, seven. And I rode that bike after I did my tour of the country. I don't know how I rode that thing. But anyways, what it was was I rode with him. He kept getting me on a bike. I stopped thinking about suicide in the moments. The third or fourth bike ride we went on, we went for was, it wasn't supposed to be a long weekend, but it ended up turning into 166 miles over the course of the weekend. And I did 80 miles the first night. I was following a sleep while I was riding. They kept telling me, couple more miles, couple more miles. I fell asleep on the side of the road at one point. But anyways, so they, on the way back, two of our friends decided they weren't going to ride with us. I was, my friend that, my friend Sean was like, every pedal out is a pedal back. I told you guys that. And I was in the military, I can't leave somebody behind. I was on his bike as well, so I was like, hey man, I'm going to ride back with you. But you got to give me time. And honestly, he was really supportive even though I didn't realize it at the time. But I was complaining. Man, we've done all these miles already. We got 40 something miles left. He got tired of hearing that. We all would at some point. He turned around. He, we're from Massachusetts. So I'm going to be censored. He was very nice. But he, so he actually got up and he turned around and he goes, listen man, it's one pedal at a time. It's left, right, left, right. Shut up and keep pedaling. And I got so offended. I started doing military cadence in my head. I'm going to show this guy. And we got back. We got done the ride and I got so excited. I was 250 plus pounds at the time. So the fact that I just rode 166 miles over the course of the weekend on my third or fourth ride was pretty impressive if I was in shape. I was not in shape. So that was kind of the starting point for my change and me getting into cycling. It was about a month later he was, same friend was talking about man, when I was your age, I wanted a bicycle across the country. And that was July, the end of July of 2017. March of 2018 I left and bicycled the lower 48 states. What inspired that was the visit of the people I served in the military with. So for me, 35 states is where the people I served lived. And to get to those states, I had to do 43 of them. So what's the extra five at that point, right? And my goal originally was to do 25,000 miles. This is the conference of the earth because I wanted to train myself to potentially go around the world at some point. Which is still a goal. But I started that journey for myself. I was, I didn't realize it until I left that I was really depressed. Really. I was definitely suicidal until probably in November of 2017 and cycling changed that for me. I started getting healthy. By the time I left on my bicycle journey I was 190 pounds. I at some point built a camper because of the pandemic that I told behind me which weighed 350 plus pounds and with me on it was over 500. I got re-rendered by a car at over 65, almost 70 miles an hour. The only reason I'm alive is that camper. So yeah, cycling as much as it almost killed me it has saved my life it has given me purpose. The little corner of the sign that you can see up here is to make a stranger smile. That is my purpose in life is to make people smile. I do that by doing tricks. I do that by just having conversations making funny jokes and stupid stuff like that. But I made it so that my purpose in life is simple. I think a lot of us struggle with keeping our purpose in life simple. So if you ever start struggling with what your purpose in life is get on a bike, go have a therapy session and remember it's just to make people smile. That's all I got for you guys. And he has a new YouTube channel you're going to start creating a YouTube video so go check them out. Ride with Dan USA. Our speaker number two is Brooke Rowdy-Gowdy. Come on now. I saw Brooke speak at an event in Boulder a few years ago and I was immediately inspired by what she does. She was a high school track star in Alabama winning the state title and the one in the 200 meters. So I'm a runner, I love runners and I'm impressive. She rode the Great Divide mountain bike trail. She's all about mountain biking and getting women out on bikes specifically people of color. Representation matters, right? And what else? We'll talk about it. I was going to say something else. This is really important. All of you Coloradans might have heard about the Colorado Safety Stop. Have you heard about this? That's where you can treat a stop sign and a red light as a stop sign and so you can kind of ride your bike through if you're at a stop sign and there's no cars, which makes sense, right? And it's a safety thing. The law started in Idaho it was called the Idaho Stop and finally Colorado adopted this last summer and Brooke played a huge role in that advocating for house bill what? One, two, three, nine, four, sex, whatever it was. But you can think Brooke Rowdy-Gowdy for the Colorado Safety Stop. All right, here we go. Thank you. Hello. How are you? Oh my gosh, it's so exciting to see such a large crowd here. My name is Brooke. Rowdy-Gowdy. I run an organization called Rowdy-Gowdy and that is where the Rowdy comes from. We get a little bit Rowdy. I also am a co-leader of another organization called Black Girls Do Bike and there is a Denver chapter and it's exciting to see people here from that chapter. I was not expecting that. I'm going to tell a story by going through some pictures really quick. That's me being on a bike being badass. So I had a friend who is the other co-leader of Black Girls Do Bike who rode her bike across the country from east to west. What does that call? What does that route call? The Trans Am. Right, so she rode the Trans Am. It is the first bike packing trip she's ever done and I was having a glass of wine with her and her husband and someone brought up the Great Divide and I'll bike you out and they said oh my gosh Brooke, you should do that. I rid my bike from one end of the country to the other and you should ride your bike from north to south and I was like there ain't no way. There is no way I've never bikepacked in my entire life. I don't think that is for me and they convinced me. They also brought in another great bikepacker to help convince me, Lail Wilcox who actually came out and gave me a pep talk and helped support me to go out and do this thing and I was signed on. I was like okay I will do it. So the very first bikepacking trip I've ever done was riding my bike from Canada to Mexico on the Great Divide mountain biking route. And it was an absolutely amazing adventure. I learned a lot. I spent a lot of time learning how to read a map learning how to understand fire danger. So this is my first time bikepacking so I'm learning all of this on the trail. I am learning a lot reading my maps traversing across the United States. Also checking out the most incredible views because I'm crisscrossing over the continental divide back and forth. Which is with the views comes a lot of climbing. I was climbing like no other. Thank goodness I'm from Colorado and going for a 20 mile bike ride means that I'm climbing a lot of vertical feet on the Great Divide mountain biking route going for a 30 mile ride means you're probably gaining about 6,000 vertical feet on that day. So it was difficult but it was beautiful. And people were so excited to see me out there. There are lots of friends who came out to ride with me. A great photographer Evan Greens found me because I was carrying a tracker so everybody was tracking me. I'm also a school nurse and so all the kids at school and their families were tracking me as I was going across the United States. And it was so exciting to have surprise visitors. They would track me and find me and then just come out and ride with me. Obviously because I was like, wow this is really, really tough it's really beautiful but the idea of this being your first bikepacking trip obviously it was really hard for me to continue to find the motivation to keep going. In fact I got to Colorado and I was like I mean people think I did a great effort if I just if I just stop here I mean but no, no, no. My family said so many people were rooting for you so many young black girls young women of color are looking at you and seeing you having this great adventure. So many people who look like you and that's whether it was women or I have to admit I don't have bicyclists or cyclists physique I am just the person who like lives next door who's a school nurse who decided to get on their bike and have this grand adventure and they were all watching me and so every time I got on the phone and I cried to my parents they said I'm glad you got that out. Now get on your bike and ride. One thing I really loved about this adventure is that I got to see a very unique part of the United States I travel from one small town to the next small town and it was beautiful so I got the beautiful scenery I got to have this unique experience of going to these really small towns and that's me at the finish there I did finally finish now all of that to say it was lots of fun and everything was beautiful but it was not without hardship and that for me has been the most important part was the parts that were really hard because doing hard things causes you to grow one thing that I did not know is that when you go out there that you're already bringing a lot of strength with you Stephanie who did the Trans Am she said you know life is harder than what I did and so bring life with you being on what strength you have off of the trail bring that to the trail and that's exactly what I did when you look at me you see a black woman in recent history we've talked a lot about the trauma of black folks and what I really wanted to experience on this trip was to bring out the strength and resilience and joy of black folks because that exists too and that is what I found on the trail with that heart with that hardship I experienced the worst sunburn I've ever experienced in my life and you can imagine as a melanated person that the sun has to be beating down on you and also I got pretty sick if you look at the first picture who knows I probably weigh about 180 pounds there and if you look at the picture of me finishing I have definitely lost 20 or 30 pounds and that's over 45 days so I had trouble eating it was my first bike packing trip so I didn't really know how you would eat on something like this my filter broke but I still needed to drink water so I drank water and got pretty sick but out of all of that hardship it really was about finding the resilience of my ancestors finding the resilience that women have to find every day to resist in this world and bringing that to the trail and remembering that I can do hard things as well then I came home and I was like oh my god bike packing is so amazing even after all of that hardship and I wanted to share the joy but I knew that I had to get some things downpack I mean I was shipping home things I had no idea what I was doing out there and I got myself downpack I was like how comfortable can I be with getting uncomfortable and so I was really able to pare down all the things that I took out there and do a little bit of lighter bike packing and these are just pictures of me bike packing here in Colorado and then well calls me up and says congratulations great job I would love for you to come to Iceland with me and do some more bike packing and she said but this time it's going to be long days we're going to do 160 miles a day we're going to be in Iceland we're going to be going through the beautiful West Breards and I want you to bring some friends and that's exactly what we did and we did and although she was like lightning faster than me it was amazing to take on this challenge and go to Iceland and continue to realize that my body this body even though it looks different than what I see on magazines this color even though it looks different than what I see represented in cycling that I can do these things I thought this is so joyous I need to go tell all the other black women about it and I need to get them on the trail too and so that's exactly what I did I went out the group that I run black girls do bike Denver I decided that we should do a bike packing trip and here's a picture of us planning our first one annual trip here we are leaving our front door clearly going bolder we went up what's the flag staff and beyond Walker Ranch up to Ned and we bike packed and we had a lot of tears and this is these women's first time bike packing then this year look there's a picture of you up there this year we decided that we'd go out to so again first time bike packing and we take another group of women and we are doing this every year and these are people's first time bike packing in Colorado finding their own resilience being able to leave this successfully and know that no matter what you look like no matter what your body looks like that you can do hard things that there will be tears there will be hard times there will be mechanical failures but you have everything inside of you to be able to get through that and every single one of these women these women of color they were able to successfully ride one of the hardest trails up in the Salida area this is us coming up pretty, or going down coming down a pretty horrific mountain we had to climb on our first day with the excitement of knowing that we were just about to finish and that's us celebrating with a delicious fat tire beer and I just I'm so glad that you this is my last picture and I'm just so glad that you invited me here to share my unique experience and I appreciate you all being here to listen to it organization is Rowdy Gowdy I fly all over the United States I use my life savings plus the support of other people to get other women of color on bites if you're interested in supporting to help me out that would be great you can follow me at rowdygowdy.com or you can go to my Instagram at rowdy underscore outside right on thank you so much Brooke you're amazing are we having fun or what good it's about to get funner is that a word Ben you're an English teacher not a word okay fine next up we have my friend Jeffrey from Fort Collins we have any Fort Collins people in the crowd Jeffrey and I made a video last year you may remember it we rode around Boulder Colorado we talked a lot about the initiatives that adventure cycling are doing to get more people on bicycles adventure cycling if you don't know have developed a lot of the big roots all across the United States the great divide being one of them the trans am route and I will let Jeffrey talk about his personal story and how it led to adventure cycling so let's hear it for Jeffrey Mazzell thank you all very much for having me I want to start by connecting some of the dots here representing adventure cycling the organization and Ryan also said hey the other speakers are going to be here representing themselves so don't just pitch the non-profit non-stop talk about yourself one I'd much rather not talk about myself and two I do want to connect some of the dots that adventure cycling started as an organization called bike centennial 1976 when a group of people decided to bike across the country on a trail that didn't exist which became the trans am it's the largest bike travel non-profit in the world since then it has grown into adventure cycling association which is the largest bike travel non-profit in the world and we maintain over 55,000 mapped miles of routes including the great divide mountain bike route the trans am the northern tier the southern tier and all over north America so that's just a little bit of background I will do what Ryan asked and talk about myself just briefly and then maybe come back to adventure cycling at the end as is my job I failed at tomorrow at work you know how it is so I would love to give you a really cool story of an amazing race that I won or an amazing piece of gear that I found this is no shade on priority but I don't have that amazing piece of gear that I found that changed my life what I do have is a very short story about a broken down step through frame with a basket most likely stolen bike in Japan so I grew up on a small island in southern Japan called Okinawa and I lived sort of in like this one square mile bubble in my life I spent my days in the ocean spearfishing for cuttlefish which is like a small squid we would take them to sushi restaurants nearby that would pay us 1000 yen per fish that we cut which is about 10 bucks and then one day basically I did like a perfect little square mile of my world that's all that revolved around everything was in walking distance and there was a ditch between my house and the ocean that I walked on every single day of my life one day like something out of a traditional Japanese Hayao Miyazaki movie there is a little black rusted out step through bike with a basket on the front that was almost certainly stolen and left there and everything that I needed or thought I needed in the world was within one mile of me so I don't know why I did this but I walked inside and said hey dad can I go ride that bike and he said essentially sure just make sure you put it back at the end of every day in case it's rightful owner comes back to get it so ride it I did I rode it for two days and it opened up my world past my one mile my one square mile of life I went down the coast I went in and around the culture and I connected with more people in my community and I rode with my friends who had bikes and I'd opened up business opportunities for me sushi restaurants and tried to get them to buy my cuttlefish which none of them did so anyway they're lost I know and then one day as happens with life nothing lasts forever and the bike was gone my dad says the rightful owner came back to get it but we all know that's not true it was stolen and somebody else took it but it is what it is that's fine but the thing that changed was my world rapidly went from one square mile to the size of my island which is you know 67 miles from north to south so that's like a day ride for Brooke Rowdy Gowdy for me at 15 it wasn't but you know my world rapidly expanded my dad saw me moping around the house and decided you know I'm gonna take pity on this poor 15 year old we went out and he got me a bike the next day he went out and got himself a much nicer bike and now we're riding together and this is where we really take off because now me and my dad are riding together we're checking out the island we're checking out our community and now things are really starting to click with us and it's still a really important sort of past time for my family to ride around my sister was actually just in Okinawa visiting for Thanksgiving and they rode to one of our most favorite islands sort of on the outskirts of the island chain across beautiful bridges and over the beautiful ocean stopped almost certainly for Pineapple on the side of the road as you do and I think that that is the important part about bikes for me it's not necessarily that I got this super cool piece of gear this all started from a bike that had a fender I didn't found the bike I didn't know anything about bikes I spent my days in the ocean I had a fender that was kind of crooked so every time I turned it a certain direction maybe left it pushed it farther out and it would start rubbing on the tire and I'm riding and I'd kick it back into place so but they have this ability to connect us to each other connect us to the world and the culture and the landscapes that we go through and all of a sudden my world view has expanded fast forward a long winding road through life we can talk about it after but we've lived everywhere in the US because I grew up in Japan and have no sort of home here I certainly think of Fort Collins as home now but how we got here and how I found Fort Collins as my home is via our bikes so my children know Fort Collins by the view from the back of our family bike that has more than 10,000 miles on it we did the math on it or something but since the beginning of last summer they have spent like 12 days on a bike and it's just in our town they know our backyard sort of natural area from the saddle of their little mountain bikes I realize that none of you asked but they do shred and you'll most likely see them on YouTube in the future you know so that's sort of where my story kind of leads me to adventure cycling I lucked out with adventure cycling opening up to remote work with the pandemic and now I lead the programs of the organization so those programs being the acronym is super cute I know it's RIDE so routes innovation and discovery and experiences so at adventure cycling we create a robust network of bicycling routes like the Great Divide and the Trans Am we partner with state departments of transportation to have high bike traffic thoroughfares designated as US BRS routes or US Bicycle Route system routes that really drive home safety and signage on the roads and we have free short routes located in metropolitan areas across the country so that we realize that to ride the Trans Am it takes a couple months, it takes skills, it takes money, it takes time off it takes equipment so we're trying to make bike travel as accessible as possible for people who want to go from a merging rider somebody who's interested in it to we say adventure cyclist but bicycle traveler so I think I'll wrap this up sort of more there's sort of a quote that I think and I hate to end on a quote I don't want to our goal it's not a writing quote our goal as an organization with all of our programming is to bring the essence to emerging riders or people who want to be bike travelers of Edward Abbey the famed novelist when he said that I'm going to cut out some words a person traveling by bike can see more hear more and feel more in one mile than a motorized tourist can in a hundred let me do what everybody else did shout out adventure cycling association adventurecycling.org we provide direct financial assistance that are taking bike travel experiences for people who want to get into bike travel we have intro to bike travel workshops we're developing our short routes so check it out meet me after and we'll definitely talk about how you all can get involved and help grow the movement of bike travel right on okay so how many people here have ever met a professional baseball player a few? oh didn't you? no you don't get to play because our next speaker was a professional baseball player for the Boston Red Sox you may have heard of them they beat the Rockies in the World Series back in when? 2007 okay 2007 he has a World Series ring but that's not why he's here tonight he's not talking about baseball I have a new friend his name is Maddie Johnson on YouTube he is Maddie active he is doing in the bike world he decided during COVID to pick up bikes he had never really biked in his life and now he has a thriving YouTube channel where he teaches people how to bike and I think what you're doing is absolutely incredible so Maddie active get on up here buddy alright I'm Maddie Maddie Johnson thank you priority for having me thank you Ryan for inviting me out here it's awesome to see all of you here this is kind of nerve wracking a thousand times more people but I'm nervous to talk in front of you guys but I'm happy to be here thank you all guys for being here I'm from a small town in Arkansas, Pine Bluff Arkansas played baseball since I was like her age like nine years old I grew up in Pine Bluff never knew anything about biking all I knew was how to play baseball and I knew the only chance I got of getting out of that town is focusing on baseball so it was a crazy story so I played baseball all the way up through high school I was so focused on baseball that I didn't get to play my senior year of high school because of my grades so I was in Elgin with my senior year of high school couldn't play baseball and luckily enough I still got a scholarship to go to college so I was able to go to college play baseball and wanted to play professional but they kept telling me that I was too small and I wasn't strong enough didn't have enough power so that's when my persistence kicked in and I really believed in myself and I knew in my heart that I can do it but I had to figure out some way to get them to believe that I can do it so all through college I never got drafted or anything I went and played semi-professional one summer after my senior year of college so let me try this out and see what happens so luckily I made the team because somebody was injured I made the team and caught a lucky break no pun intended but they stuck me in left field I was like I've never played left field in my life but I guess I'm about to learn today so they stuck me in left field I'm nervous to death about as nervous as I am talking to you guys but okay this is my chance I can kind of show what I can do at a level higher than college and first play of the game in the first inning the center fielder was running for a ball broke his hand they stuck me in center field and I forgot to tell you a couple months before this I went to a major league tryout they told me basically you suck it was three cuts I didn't even make the first cut I didn't even go try out for that team so back to that guy broke his hand they moved me to center field three or four months later I ended up being the number one prospect in that league and getting signed by the Boston Red Sox right after he told me that I pretty much suck so so my thing is that's when I learned that persistence can take you a long way in life that's my goal in life is to just let people know if you just don't take no for an answer even if it doesn't lead you to the place you want to be it'll lead you to somewhere great and that's where the biking came in because after my career with baseball I didn't know what I wanted to do I was like this sucks because I've been playing baseball since I was nine years old and I didn't know what to do with myself after that and I gained a bunch of weight and when he was talking about that I had been an athlete my whole life and gained what 30 pounds I'm too small to weigh 200 pounds so I was I think I got up to like 205 and I'm used to being around 170 and that's when I said I gotta make a change so I had come to visit Colorado a lot and I always knew I wanted to be here so I said you know what I'm moving to Colorado and I'll just figure it out from there so I moved here I think it was a year, year and a half when I went by and COVID happened so I was super bored and I didn't know what to do I went to some random pawn shop and I was like I'm gonna buy me a cheap bike and just ride around town and explore Denver and I had a GoPro but I never knew what to use the GoPro for so I would wear it when I rode just to look at the city and the video when I got finished and my GoPro got full and I was like where do I put all this video so I put it on YouTube and I was like okay now I got more footage on my GoPro so I can keep using it went back and looked at the YouTube video a couple days later I think it had like 10 views or something oh that's kind of cool but I didn't think nothing of it but I knew I had a hybrid bike I think it was something like one of these gravel bikes I didn't know anything about bikes at the time so I just went into some bike store and I said I want a little bit better bike where I can go over bumps without it in my teeth so they showed me this I think it was a Trek Marlin was my first ever like mountain bike so I would ride that on the trails and I said this is kind of fun I'm going to keep doing this and then I would keep posting the videos on YouTube because I didn't know where else to put those long videos and more people kept watching I'm like I went to visit my mom in Texas during this time I said look 30 people watched my video so I was like I'm going to keep doing it I guess people like it and I like biking so I kept doing it fast forward to now sitting at 20,000 subscribers now I think so I just got a I can't be more thankful for bikes because bikes gave me a whole new purpose in life and took me out of a dark place in my life when I didn't think that I was meant for anything else than playing baseball because I honestly didn't think I was good at anything except baseball and then I started riding bikes and that's when it clicked that I'm not an athlete I feel like my purpose in life is to motivate and inspire other people and that's what I try to do through my YouTube channel and through biking so I try to get people on bikes and when they watch my videos I want them to get that fuzzy feeling and just feel good about what they just watched and make them want to go out and ride bikes well now Maddie you can add public speaking to the list of things that you don't suck at that was great wasn't it thank you thank you absolutely so the final speaker for tonight is somebody very near and dear to my hearts and a lot of you know her she is one of my best friends she has been on the channel just a few times Dana it's so amazing to have you sitting right here and looking at you I'm going to introduce you and you're going to get on this stage and you're going to rock this world but it's not often in life where your best friend is also your mentor and your guru and I've learned so much from Dana about love and gratitude and not being judgmental you know those bracelets that say what would Jesus do and you look at them just to make sure you're doing the right thing I many times in life I would be going through a situation that might be difficult and I think what would Dana do in this situation because I always know that she would lead with love she would lead with her heart in any situation even if it's hard and uncomfortable and so I've learned so much from this woman throughout the years and she is an icon in Boulder she started the wonderful walnut cafe and developed that into a very beautiful beloved Boulder institution that was a safe place for all of the LGBTQ community Dana is an all star and she's going to share some stories with you tonight let's hear it for Dana D there are a lot of you out there there really are well first of all thanks Ryan and that was such an awesome intro so sweet and thanks to everybody from priority here Dave and Connor and Greg and all the folks Gates I met that guy oh my god I love those carbon drive belts it's like butter carbon belt drive it's like butter you know what I'm talking about and also to BOA for giving us this awesome space that's really great so they asked me to speak I was super excited and I was thinking about all the things I could talk about because it's his crowd I thought right away like wow maybe I should be talking about being a lifetime endurance athlete or maybe I could talk about being a living donor like that was really life changing for me I gave my brother a kidney and since then I've started a foundation in his name the KRD foundation and there's three people on the board Xanthomy and Ryan we do a fundraiser every year and that's been really amazing to get a lot of kids on bikes when we do that I was thinking maybe I should talk about setbacks because let me tell you you don't get to be this old and not have some real stuff happen both physically and mentally and those are things that you have to get past but really I think Ryan invited me to take you to church so when I thought about what message or what story I have the most important thing to me is how love and kindness and being a good person contributes to the amount of joy in my life in this journey and on every adventure that we go on I am a very disciplined person I was super coachable as a young athlete I got turned on to sports and I was successful I figured out that with a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work that you could be good at it I really enjoy being fit I love taking care of myself and training and I do that so that I can just be ready for whatever is next now when it comes to when Ryan asked me to do something patch it up my training because as we all know he can make really hard things look easy but I find that I have a lot more fun if I'm physically fit and ready for whatever adventure he has coming I have taken that discipline that I have and I've applied it to being a good person you know no matter what we are doing if we're riding our bikes we're running we're climbing a mountain or even at work for those of you who are still working I recently retired which is really awesome the only thing that we can control is our attitude and how we're doing what we're doing I've done it by what I knew how to do and that was working out and training and coaching my spirit you know how focused we can be when we set a goal when we want to do something we want to run a 5K we want to run 100 miles climb a mountain win the Olympics whatever it is we have a plan and we do the work that's the same thing I do with my practice of love and kindness and being a good person do you know how much better we perform when we do what we're doing with joy even if it's an uncomfortable experience if we can smile from within our focus changes to joy and gratitude even just putting ourselves in a place where we can experience a challenge is something to be grateful for it's a privilege really to put ourselves in a position where we can go to the pain cave you've been there I know you have I met Ryan from going there even when we're uncomfortable we can have that journey and even in our everyday life maybe it's on our daily commute on our bike maybe it's on our 2 hour training ride when we allow ourselves to be present with our surroundings and to see the beauty and what is spectacular that sunset that sunrise or even in the things that are mundane the things that you pass all the time but you see them in a different way when we find ways to act with kindness and with attention whenever we can we're on the bike path and we avoid that board that has the nail in it we miss the board and we pull over and we stop and we move it off to the side so the next rider doesn't hit it even when you're in the grocery aisle and you're passing people in your pathway or on a bike path you really look at them and you see them like we acknowledge each other if we make it a point in every activity we do we choose our attitude so when we are out there smile appreciate be present whatever we are doing all those Olays that Ryan sings in the tunnels all of that puts him really present in what he's doing and remember our attitudes are contagious we were just in New York where it was pouring rain on a ride that we had from start to finish and everyone had such a great attitude that we were just in it we knew we were going to get wet but it was an experience that we got to share together and it was just so great to do all of that and it was all about our attitude that's what God is there I choose to accept the journey that I am on every day and I know that I am not the victim of anything in my life not the pouring rain not the freezing snow not the pulmonary embolisms not the loss I may be grieving each day begins anew here's my quote just for you Jeffrey as Maya Angelou said and I love this I use it every day this is a wonderful day I have never seen this one before every day is an opportunity for action it's in every little thing we do taking your grocery cart back from the parking lot picking up that piece of trash that someone else has just walked over or dropped giving a seat to someone else that may need it and then in every big thing that we do like raising money for a cause that we're passionate about standing up for someone who's being bullied not participating in mean speech someone who's telling a joke or fake news even looking at that person that's holding the cardboard sign but really seeing them and without judgment and finally be grateful that is the fastest way to get to joy is to find something to be grateful for I am and I have been many things in life but what I am doing with my life is striving to lead with love I have a daily mantra that I would like to leave you with now and I hope that some piece of it might just stick with you I say it every day sometimes I have to say it more than once a day but it goes like this I am grateful I accept I appreciate I care about others I look for ways to contribute I care about life I am in awe of life and I'm so grateful to be a part of it that's all I have thank you Ryan you look so good do you know that Mr. Roger's quote there's a lot of them since we're speaking about quotes tonight when I would look on the news and I'd see things that scared me my mother would tell me to look for the helpers there's always helpers and these five people who you just heard speak tonight are some of the helpers because what's going on in the world right now is scary and overwhelming and we can scroll through our phones or watch the news and we wonder what's going to come of the future with climate change and wars and death and destruction for me personally it really hits me hard because I want everybody on this planet to thrive and we can only do so much as individuals but when you hear from people like this Maddie, Dana, Brooke, Dan and Jeffrey it gives me hope and it gives me hope to see all of you because we are the helpers we are the ones who can make a difference in our own little communities maybe we start with our families and then we go to our neighborhoods and then maybe a little bit bigger level but thank you so much to all five of you let's hear it for all of them real loud the helpers Danny is going to lead us in some wiggles yeah, good job here we go, stand up, wiggle, wiggle ok, yeah, everybody stretch out, we got three more hours of this I'm not kidding, I promise it's the season of gratitude and giving and thinking about others and those are some of the things that really drive the content that I make when I started my channel many years ago the goal was to inspire people to get out there their couches and what I didn't know at the time from me going on adventures was that I would meet so many wonderful people along the way and I call this as you all know when I meet somebody magical out there trail magic, right? yeah and trail magic is really what makes me feel connected to the world a lot of us have been on bike tours, right and we've experienced the kindness of strangers who come out of nowhere to help us out and help us on our journey or maybe just help us out in that one little teeny moment that puts a smile on our faces sometimes it doesn't have to be huge I've had some trail magic where people invite me into their homes and feed me meals and I get to camp in their backyards and all of a sudden we're best friends and I'm sending them Christmas cards and you know it just comes in many shapes and many forms and during this season of like Thanksgiving, the Christmas I love Christmas so much it's just so much fun, I love the music and I love the cartoons and the Grinch and all that good stuff I really just feel like the world is a little bit more sparkly it's a little bit more magic we've got the Christmas lights on the houses and I just feel better during this time of year even though it's dark and I don't really like wearing long pants I'm a shorts and t-shirt kind of guy during this time of year where the world is just a little bit more magical and it's because I think we think about each other a little bit more we have a little bit more kindness in our hearts and those are the things that I hope permeate throughout the rest of the year and so when I meet people on the road and I experience some trail magic or I am here with you tonight this is the kind of stuff that recharges me and makes me feel better about the state of the world because I've been really getting bummed out recently with what's going on in so many different areas and everybody always asks me am I always so positive am I always so bouncy and the answer is yes no I'm a human just like you I go through ups and downs you've seen me on my channel struggling through heartbreaks or talking about alcohol and just tough times and we go through these ups and downs that are just they feel you sometimes you just feel like there's no hope and there's nothing left to live for and then you wake up and for me at least what gets me out of those funks are my friends and my family and community and other people helping me out along the way Danny's story is incredibly inspirational to me I mean I can't even imagine being at the depths that you've been to and finding a way to pull yourself out of that and not only that yourself but then share that message with the rest of the world through a bike ride 20,000 kilometers all over the United States it's incredible it really is so I don't want to talk too much at you you see me talking enough in my videos I think it'd be fun to open this up to questions already and make it a little bit more interactive because you came a long way to get here we have two friends that came all the way from Cortez Colorado how you doing which if you don't know is seven hours away it's at the four corners near New Mexico, Arizona and Utah I'm good at geography yeah it's really hard to get here from Boulder I mean yeah I took the bus today to get here so I would love to open it up to questions and hear from you and let's get this party started I want to make this a little bit more interactive so when you rode your New Belgium skinny tire cruiser by across the United States and one of the cranks broke off towards the end of the ride how'd you finish that with one crank so this is an old adventure the question was I rode a New Belgium three speed skinny tire cruiser across the country in 2009 and I did that mainly to show people that you don't need to have the best gear to do something big and this was just like a $300 regular cruiser bike and right before I was about to finish I about 75 miles away my crank arm broken half completely just fell off of the bicycle and from that point on I was riding at one legged luckily I had SPD's on so I was actually clipped in so my one leg could do a lot of work I could pull and push and I rode that bike I remember I'll never forget it 11 miles one legged to a bike shop in a small town in West Virginia and I was like sweet we'll be able to swap out the cranks and I'll be well on my way to triumphantly finish this ride in Washington DC and I get to the bike shop it was a Tuesday and on the door it says we are not open on Tuesdays how random was that and I was like oh man what am I going to do so I sat on the curb I probably called my mom and complained and she's like yeah well figure it out buddy you got yourself into this and so I actually called the next bike shop down in Harper's Ferry everybody's heard about Harper's Ferry right and I talked to the guys and I told him what I was doing and they said you know we probably have this crank arm and you know and I told him I couldn't get there but you know what I'll do is after work I will put the crank in my car and I will drive up to you and I will fix your bike that night and again trail magic this young guy came all the way up to me and fixed my bike right then and there and I woke up the next day and rode it into Washington DC so that's how I got through that pickle yeah and it just goes to show that there's always a solution in life there are many times in life where we think we're absolutely screwed and we don't think there's any way out and we're just stuck for lack of a better word but there's always a solution and like I said earlier it usually involves other humans helping you and when you reach out and when you put yourself out there that's when the magic happens I talked about this a bit on my adventure this summer in Sweden where sometimes trail magic just happens come upon somebody who is just magically there at the right time and they take you in and they give you a shower when you're tired and cold and then sometimes you really have to put yourself out there a bit and you have to ask for help and there are a couple times in Sweden if you watch that adventure it was very rainy and very mosquito-y it was miserable there were a couple times where I had to knock on some doors and say hey I am kind of SOL I would love some help here and the Swedes were super cool and they helped me in every instance and if you watch these videos you know what happened people invited me into their homes and they made us dinner and it was absolutely amazing so there's always a way out whether it's on a bike tour or you're in a tough spot in a relationship or you're at voodoo donuts and you don't know which donut to choose you just ask for help they will help you out over here that's a fun question I have never gotten that question do I watch TV? I don't have actual TV but I love streaming services and stuff I love Stranger Things I think it's a really fun show it brings back a lot of that 80s nostalgia but I watch a lot of YouTube because YouTube just has so many wonderful things to watch and so many random that's not what I said random ass I was going to say aspects but I stopped halfway through and it sounded like ass so now I've said ass in front of kids I'm sorry but I like a lot of YouTube channels there's a YouTube channel right now that I love called Climate Town have any of you seen this it's an amazing channel the host of the show Raleigh Heath it's very very funny and he tackles a lot of subjects that are facing the world in the climate crisis and it's a really good YouTube channel nostalgic Christmas commercials from the 1980s and there are channels that put up commercials if you ever are feeling nostalgic for an old Folgers Christmas commercial you can find them on YouTube and there's like hours of people who have just like put it together a montage of all these fun Christmas commercials from the old days and it makes you feel like a kid again so I also like Rick and Morty when I'm feeling little saucy I love Brandon Stimpy as a kid how did I start biking that's a great question thank you for that question so I was an elementary school and I wanted a bicycle probably like a lot of you can relate to this story bikes are so much fun every kid wants a bike and I remember asking Santa Claus before you asked your parents for things because Santa was the one who got you stuff I remember asking Santa Claus for a bicycle and I will never forget some nostalgic 80s Christmas commercials waking up on Christmas morning and seeing a gray BMX bicycle under the Christmas tree there were actually two because my sister and I both got them at the same time and that bike and I've talked about this before became my freedom machine that bike allowed me to see parts of the world that I'd never seen before because when you're a little kid it's hard to travel on your own it's like a car or they're holding your hand and they're guiding you but once you get that bicycle you can go past the confines of your neighborhood and those are some of the first feelings of freedom that I ever had on my own and I remember riding to my elementary school on Saturdays and Sundays and playing on the playgrounds and it led to this crazy life of riding my bicycle all over the world and I still call my bike the freedom machine because we can all relate it is if you're having a bad day you get on your bike and immediately within moments you feel better you feel the fresh air in your face and your ring in your bell and you're just like life is good and you hear some birds tweeting above you and maybe you see some cool clouds I've really been into clouds lately there's been so many cool clouds in the sky of Colorado lately have you guys all seen these beautiful pink like fluffy cotton candy clouds that sunrise and sunset so just the little things in life notice more when you're on a bicycle when you're in a car obviously you can't see as much a lot of times there's music playing or you're talking to somebody in the car but when you're on your bike like what Dana was saying you're very present with what's going on in the world and I feel way more connected to my community, my neighbors I can stop and be like oh hey it's Johnny stop and just talk with them I feel more connected to nature and I feel more connected to myself you know a lot of my bike trips in my neighborhood I'm going on extremely difficult adventures and when I push my body to the absolute limits I feel alive and I've been saying this ever since I rode my bike home from Honduras that that adventure made me feel more alive than I'd ever felt in my life because I was on my bike out there in the middle of nowhere and you feel everything the rain the sun, the wind in some moments it's not fun it's very hard and your muscles are screaming at you and maybe your backside is screaming at you I'm watching my language because we have kids here and you just you don't want to be there anymore like why am I doing this to myself why am I riding day after day hundreds and hundreds of miles why why why but then you take a step back and you're like you know what this is pretty magical I chose to be here I get to do this it's a privilege to be able to be on my bike traveling around the world and not only that but nowadays I'm not just traveling for me I'm traveling for you I get to show you the world I get to introduce you to the people who I meet along the way who are making my journey magical and are hopefully making you feel better about the world and that humans aren't all bad I get a lot of emails from people around the world outside of the United States who say wow I watch the news about your country and it scares me there's so many bonkers things going on in the United States and it makes me never want to travel there but then I watch your channel and I watch your videos and I see the people that you're meeting out in the middle of nowhere and I feel better about humanity and I feel better about Americans so I feel like when I'm on my bike I'm an ambassador for my country I'm trying to show people the best of who America is all about right and so there's so many deep things where it's not just about the bike sorry Lance I just stole his book title remember that book by that guy Lance Armstrong it's not all about the bike it's about people and the connections sure I like pushing my body I like pushing the limits but really it's about the people who I meet and in this room tonight standing out there before the event started being able to shake your hands and hug you means the world to me because again I started this channel a long time ago everybody who started any type of channel Maddie, Danny you start from zero and you get excited when 10 people watch your videos and then 20 people watch your videos and to be able to fill a room tonight with wonderful beautiful souls from all over Colorado and Texas yeah here we go she came in from Dallas, Texas amazing it makes me feel better about the world and I hope that you go home tonight and you feel better about the world and you feel more connected and you feel more inspired about humanity and what we can all do to make this world a better place because when it comes down to it my channel is cool I love it it's super fun it's my job I love sharing stories with you but I really hope that it makes you want to make this world a better place getting on your bikes or running or just going over to your neighbor's house and being like hey I baked some cookies for you so this is an assignment for all of you I want you all to bake some cookies for your neighbors and give them to your neighbors this weekend do it, seriously you'll like make a new friend it'll be amazing and if you do it please let me know bake some cookies for your neighbors this weekend Maddie, I know you're good at making chocolate chip cookies alright, that was a long answer to your question do we need to wiggle a little more? do we have any more questions? I can see you so the question is essentially when you're out on your bike packing trip and you're in the middle of nowhere for a long time and you come back to a situation like this is this overwhelming to be around so many people there are times where it's overwhelming but I love this this is what I live for these are the moments I like making videos in the middle of nowhere talking to my camera by myself it feels a little weird but right now I'm talking to you which is totally normal it's not weird at all so you know I want to give each and every one of you a moment you know I want to like hug you and shake your hand or whatever and talk to you and hear your stories because all of you have amazingly inspirational stories I talked with a gentleman earlier today who lost over 100 pounds in the last six months yeah amazing and I get emails like this all the time and I want to give people a piece of me because I don't want to just you know oh yeah nice to meet you see you later bye I want to like give you that time and that energy but it does take a lot of energy sometimes and I go home after these things and my throat is super sore and I'm tired and I'm exhausted but my heart is really full so I guess the answer is no it doesn't overwhelm me there was a question right behind you yep there we go why do I keep going back to Burning Man have you seen my Burning Man videos do you know what he's talking about okay Bobalicious and Missalicious are in the crowd tonight they are the ones that have motivated me many years ago to go to Burning Man and I'd always heard of this event out in the desert and you know for many years I kind of pushed it off you know I don't want to do this it sounds like a bunch of dirty hippies I might be from Boulder but I'm not a dirty hippie look at what I'm wearing but I finally said yes I answered the call to adventure and I went with Bobalicious and I camped with him and it was one of the most beautiful weeks of my life and the reason why I go back to Burning Man every year is because I see the best of humanity I see 80,000 people coming together to create something very special their passions with the world there is so much beautiful art out there there are so many beautiful people out there just sharing love and kindness Dana has been with me at a Burning Man I brought my mom to Burning Man Xanthe loves Burning Man Xanthe is Dana's wife and she can't get enough of Burning Man she went with us and it was a little rough Burning Man is not easy it's very hot, it's very windy there are dust storms but I keep going back because it's magical and I feel recharged about humanity and it motivates me to bring some of that magic to my everyday life and to my videos so that is why I keep going back I also love running the Ultramarathon it was the first Ultramarathon that I ever ran and it really opened my eyes to the world of an event that wasn't super competitive I grew up in the world of running where every race was very nerve wracking because I wanted to win and if I didn't win I was super bummed out and I kind of gave up running for a little bit and once I went to Burning Man and ran the Ultra I was like we're just all out here having fun it doesn't matter what place you get we're all out here to support one another and get through something very very difficult because it's not always easy to run 31 miles in the blazing heat so that's the answer to your Burning Man question not because there's like lots of naked people and stuff which is cool too I guess how do I choose my adventures so I have a long list in my mind of adventures that I want to accomplish in my life sometimes but you'd probably be pretty surprised to know that I don't really have things all that well organized I really have no idea what I'm going to do next year but it kind of comes as it comes and that's how I just go through life I just figure it out and somebody, sometimes viewers will say hey you should try this and I'm like wow that seems really cool and I'll go do it and at other times I'll be looking at other people doing great bikepacking adventures and I get ideas from them but really when it comes down to it when I choose an adventure I want something that's beautiful, full of nature I don't ride on pavement nearly as much as I used to I like riding on dirt because dirt is a lot safer when you're on pavement you're dealing with cars cars are scary the humans driving the cars are scary sometimes Danny got hit on his ride across the country and I really try to stay away from roads because there's so much distracted driving so I want to pick something that's beautiful and fun and I know that I'm going to connect with humans wherever I go but I want to try to find a route that I know will have just really cool villages to visit along the way I love Mexico I lived in Honduras for two years I speak Spanish so I feel very comfortable in Latin America here we go Matty your second favorite cycling city in the world let's see I mean it's all over Europe they've been doing cycling right for a long, long time when I lived in Sweden as an exchange student back in 1997 I really got a first-hand look of how cycling culture makes communities stronger because they're built for cycling and it's safe and everybody rides their bikes I remember my Swedish mom cute little Annika every morning would get on her bike with a little basket in the front and ride to the nearby bakery and get fresh bread and bring it back to the house every morning and I was like wow that's so cool because in the United States I mean you all will but most people would never consider getting on their bikes to do an errand they get in their car it's just automatic right but Sweden was different people would ride their bikes to school I also remember Swedish girls getting all done up to go to parties and miniskirts and makeup and riding their bikes to parties in high school and it never happened in the United States at least not at that time in Boulder and I was like you know what I had always been a bike rider at that point I still had never had a car no driver's license I still don't have a car and it just was like okay this is way cool so Sweden for me is one of the best cycling countries in the world I would say there's so many safe bike lanes all over the place but Copenhagen, Denmark I would say is the number one city I have been to for cycling infrastructure Amsterdam is amazing what Paris is doing right now is absolutely incredible they have transformed the downtown in a very short amount of time people have embraced it and I love that and I really hope that more cities in the United States get on board with this we're finally starting to get there with some of our transportation initiatives and realizing the importance of people riding their bikes not just to reduce traffic congestions but to make the roads safer to make humans healthier because as you've seen me say a million times in my videos what happens when you get on your bike you feel better you feel good imagine if all of us rode our bikes more often there's no road rage on a bicycle that only happens in cars when you're on your bike it reduces your blood pressure and you just feel good and so I really hope that we get more and more people out there on bikes and that's the goal my favorite trip whoa that's a hard question because there's so many of them have meaning in different ways but I would say I mean the ride home from Honduras to Boulder was pretty monumental at that time in my life I didn't know what it would lead to I just wanted to go on a big adventure I had just served in the Peace Corps for two years in Honduras and it was a big transition time in my life I was going from being a Peace Corps volunteer to being an adult and getting a real job and I didn't quite know what that meant all I knew is that I wanted to ride my bike home because it would give me a lot of time to think because when you sit on your bike you have so many hours to think and figure out life and I needed to figure out life I wanted to know what the next step would be so I got on that bike and I just thought about things all day every day for three months and it led to this life that you've seen now on my YouTube channel and I'm extremely grateful for it like I said I didn't know what it was going to lead to but it really showed me that I love telling stories I had a little Sony Handycam and I filmed the adventure a lot of you have seen this on YouTube I didn't know what I was going to do with this video at that point there was no YouTube there was no online video I just thought okay I'll make like a cool home video of my adventures and friends and that video led to essentially me wanting to be a video storyteller and for many years I tried to be like a TV host on travel channel and other networks and I had some success and I bounced around the entertainment world for a while but it was frustrating because I didn't have control over anything I would always be sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring to get that next job or for a pilot to get a green light and it was just nerve wracking and heart breaking because I'd get my hopes up and I'd be so excited about the big thing and then it would tank and then it was like okay starting over from zero and then finally the last straw was in 2016 I had shot a pilot with travel channel for a show that I was sure was going to become a national show they all told me it was one of the best pilots they'd ever shot and then travel channel got bought out by a different parent company and they killed everything that was in production and I was like oh man I can't keep doing this so that's what I was like okay I'm gonna try YouTube I'm gonna try building up a channel big enough to the point where I can make a living doing what I love and I started from zero just like Maddie getting no views on my videos it just was mom and brothers and family and it took a long long time to build up my channel to the point where it is now and believe me there were many times where I second guessed what I was doing at this time in life I was 35 years old most of my friends had real jobs were making real money were buying houses and here I am living in mom's basement like a loser no I wasn't a loser I love living with mom thanks mom I lived in my mom's basement not knowing where this was all going to leave and it was scary at times and I thought well maybe I should just give up this dream and get a regular job in the journalism world but I stuck with it I persevered I was very stubborn I was very motivated and I thought that this message was something that would resonate with people and that someday the money would come I've never been motivated by money and luckily when living in your mom's basement you don't need to make a lot of money because you know mom does your laundry and makes you dinner just kidding I would make my mom dinner sometimes and it slowly led to what I'm doing today when I'm incredibly grateful for it but I didn't know if it was going to work I still don't know if it's going to work you know there are some days where I'm like oh man I have no idea what I'm doing you've seen me talk about burnout a video I made about a year and a half ago where I was like I don't know if I can keep doing this the YouTube grind is getting to me I feel like I've told the same story over and over and over and I feel like I'm wearing out my audience because they're getting sick of me oh lay oh lay no crashies whammies you know you start to doubt yourself you really do and it's scary you're like wow now I'm like in my 40s and I don't have a real job and I'm not making real money and overwhelming but again I've always just tapped into that inner spirit of sharing inspirational stories with the world hoping that it would someday work out and it's working out yay and it's working out because of you it really is and so that's why these moments mean so much to me they really do I'm going to be here tonight this feels like Christmas Eve to me I'm going to be so jazzed up and full of energy from meeting all of you and being here tonight it really is absolutely incredible yeah are we do you guys want to leave are you guys like sick of sitting are you okay alright we have one more question here we go great question essentially the question is do I ever foresee myself stopping being a YouTube creator and I ask myself this a lot you know I'm 44 years old now I've been doing this for a long time but I absolutely love it like I really really love it I feel like I'm at the prime of my life the adventure is still light up my soul and that's really what it's all about I still love traveling I still love connecting with humans and it makes me feel alive just like that very first bike ride home from Honduras meeting people is exciting meeting you is exciting meeting somebody in the middle of nowhere Mexico meeting a meal with them is really exciting and I don't think that's ever going to get old this might morph into something different someday who knows maybe more books maybe a podcast where I don't have to constantly be on the road filming adventures and beating up my body adventures are getting harder and they're starting to wear on me day after day after day you're riding 70 to 100 miles and you wake up and you're 10 and you're just like oh my gosh and not only out there on the adventures but it's hard to film them like I'm constantly thinking of the shots that I need to get to make a dynamic video for my YouTube audience so it's a lot to think about but right now I really really really love it so I don't know how it's going to end up where I'm going to go with all this maybe I'll move back into mom's basement right mom who knows but right now I love it I do I'm feeling very energized thank you for that question that was cool yeah over here good question do I ever go on adventures that I don't film and I don't if I'm going to take the time to go on an adventure and do something big I'm going to film it because it's you know I've tried to do this where I go on an adventure just for me but I'm out there and I'm like oh there's so many beautiful things happening I have to be capturing this I need to get all these shots built in storyteller it's impossible for me to just stop and so I want to share the stories and I think sometimes when I go on adventures where maybe I'm not 100% psyched that makes the story that I'm telling a little bit more authentic because I think you can relate to it more because we're not always at 100% we're not always bouncing off the walls and life is amazing oh my god best day ever woo you know there's some days that are that are just tough and you have to struggle your way through them but I remember the most and those are the days that really teach me the most about myself Brooke was talking about the value of doing hard things and I've done so many hard things over and over and over in my life whether it's on a bike or running that I feel like I'm getting practice for when life throws things at me that I'm not choosing because my adventures I choose but there are sometimes in life that are just hard that you didn't choose you know relationships end or other tough things are going on and all of these tough things that I put myself through have given me a bit of mental fortitude and strength to let me know that I can work through this and again it goes back to I can do a lot of it but I need to really lean on my friends and my family to help me through the hard times I can't tell you how many times I have cried with Dana over all sorts of things in my life mostly breakups right and Dana has always been right there for me through the hard times and I'm sure we all have a Dana in our lives or at least I hope we do and if you don't have a Dana in your life Dana will be the Dana in your life yeah right on how are we feeling Greg should we do a giveaway or something okay of course right on okay what are we going to give away right now okay who wants that bike wow it's so pretty so this is the priority 600x the bike that I designed in conjunction with my friends at Priorities the bike that I ride all over the world it's got the Gates carbon drive and the pinion drive train super low maintenance so it doesn't really break so Maddie this would be a great bike for you oh you already have one don't you lucky all right here we go we probably need some sort of a drum roll la la la la la la la la la la la la la la okay what is it oh you want me to do okay okay I'm not looking I'm not looking okay la la la la la la la la la Chad Prichard hi buddy way to go Dana's going to be giving away hugs all night come give hugs from Dana we're going to hang around for a little bit because the speakers would love to hear from you I'm sure you have some questions for them we want to interact with you as long as we can we know it's late we know it's cold but we just want to say thank you so incredibly much for coming out here tonight supporting me supporting priority bikes supporting Dana and Maddie and Dan and Jeffrey and Brooke this is the good stuff in life seriously it is so thank you all so much for being here drive home safely or ride your bikes home safely and we will see you next time cheers