 Okay, so he's waiting to do this, and this is the tail, it's the head. Alright, I like it, I like it. Alright people, welcome to YouTube Land. I'm here, live, we're about to get ready to get going here. You can see we got cry to cry to say hi everybody! We're going to get started here in a little bit. People are in line to get burritos. If you come here and speak in real life, you get a burrito. That's the deal. We're just going to listen to some music and we'll get started. Thank you guys so much for being here. I love you all. I've got my Boulder people here. This is my first presentation I've done in Boulder, in public, in over two years. So it feels really good to be back. I'm going to be sharing stories all night of my adventures and fun stuff, and I promise it'll be entertaining. How's that? I did find something special. You guys want to see Amelia? There she is! We've got my mom over here. You've got mom, say hi mom. Sorry, I hope I'm not making you nauseous by wiggling you around. I'm going to put you in a tripod here now. Oh yeah, I've been my best buddy with him for a long time. Thank you all for being here. This is Full Cycle in Boulder. If you're ever in Boulder and you want to rent a bike, come to Full Cycle. They're great people. They're very welcoming. This guy Russ right here is the owner right here. You're talking to two other people right there, buddy. Tell them about Full Cycle. Full Cycle is Boulder's oldest bike shop, opened one year ahead of you, Mike. Thank you very much. When did it start? 1982. We're our 40th year. We have commemorative 40-year anniversary shirts. You're going to go home with one. I'll show you that later. Somebody is saying hi to Russ. Hey, hi everybody. Cool. Yeah, we're going to start this off real soon. I'll do an official intro. Yeah, we're going to do it. You're rolling here. I've met a lot of people. A lot of them get to be our burritos. Wish you could be here and have some with us. I'm going to be showing some cute photos here of me when I was a little kid. Look at that. What else do we have? Look at that little guy. That's me holding up a little froggie. We're going to get the presentation started soon. I'm sorry, we're a bit late, but we're waiting for people to get it. That's all changing up there. Hey, what's up, buddy? You made it. Good to see you. How's it going? I thought I could see right up front. No kids there. Right here. Right here. You could be the closest to me or anybody. I don't want to be that close. Good to see you, man. We have to catch up this week. Yeah. What's up, buddy? Glad you showed up. I don't know. Oh, you are? I like it. Let's talk about it. Well, it'll be over soon. Mom, I can have a glass. Hey, what's up, buddy? I can see you. Yeah, if you can remind me, sometimes I'd like to get a glass of wine. It's a good product. Yeah, I'd like to get a glass of wine. I'd like to get a glass of wine. Yeah, I'd like to get a glass of wine. I'd like to get a glass of wine. It might be tasteful, but I don't know if I should do that. Hey, yeah. I'd like to get a glass of wine. Hello, my friends. I promise we're going to be starting soon. We're going to be starting soon. That's great. Hey, everybody. We're going to get started here pretty soon. We do have four seats. We do have four seats. We have seats of honor right up here. If you're looking for a spot to sit, we have four regular maybe ones taken. Is that yours? Oh, no, okay. There's a person here. I don't know who that is. It's a free person. Are we almost ready? How are we feeling out there? Okay, okay. We just need these people lying to hurry up. We just need these people lying to hurry up. You're welcome. Hope you enjoy these beautiful burritos. I cooked them all myself. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Full Cycle in Bettino. Can we get the music to go down? Music! Hey, what's up? How are you doing? Good to see you. Yeah, that'll be over here. Yeah, it'll be a mastery. Awesome. Oh, okay. It won't be a ton, but it'll be a little bit. Okay, all right. Ole, ole, ole, Raul. Okay, I promise this time we're going to be starting soon. Thank you for being here. Justin and Rage Master in Elevation every weekend. How's my hair looking, everybody? Am I looking good? Are you ready for this? All right, everybody. Welcome back to Full Cycle, Colorado Baltimore and Bettino cap room. In our new location, one year anniversary, here in our new location on 30th Street, and up to 1982, we started in a little co-op shop on Pearl Street by a guy named Hipping Tom. And everybody knew Tom Horse and anybody who ever met that guy? Yeah. Tom Goyas. Got a guy growing home. Some other folks owned it. I picked it up six years ago. That's what happens when you ride your bike too much in the motor, you end up owning a bike shop. So here I am. I'm Russ Chandler, the owner general manager. Got my bar stuff over here. Hey, leading the bar. I'm the manager. We've got John and Mitch helping out back there. Let's go ahead and get you some notes. Too loud? Too much? Too much caffeine? All right. Cool. All right. Thank you for the coaching. Everybody can hear me? Yeah. So we're here on New Year's Day. I think it was. We're right up there about. So I was out hiking and ran into this fellow here who I've known for a few years. Actually, I remember watching him in 2006 when it was late at night and I just put the channel and there was this crazy guy running over his mom over there on TV. I wasn't running over her. I was jumping over her. All right. Good to be clear. Anyway, I want to go on to be an international cycling ambassador and a world-class travel writer and blogger and just a great guide to. YouTuber. YouTuber. YouTube. Follow us. All right. Like and subscribe. All right. No self-promotion here except to self-promote ourselves and say we are the right to win the fourth year in a row. Best bike, sickle shop and boulder. We are in a tight race with our crosstown competitor on the other side of town. I'm sure some of you find them as a good place to shop. I used to as well before I became their competitor, but we're hoping to win that. We have a little kiosk at the front back here. So if you just feel like going over there, we're offering two for one. Drink cards or whatever it takes to bribe you and devote you for us. We're number 114 on the survey. That's the Boulder Weekly survey. 143 best sports bar. We're now turning into more of a sports bar here. Anyway, that's a little enough about the plug here. I think Ryan's a much better speaker, so I'm going to turn it over to him. And thank you all for coming and coming to our new location. Just curious who's here for the first time? All right, well, we're going to try to make it fun to where you want to come back a lot. We do a trend day on Wednesday, so we're going to start a karaoke pretty soon. We do a bike ride Saturday, Sunday morning. We have senior rides on Tuesday, electric senior rides on Wednesday, all kinds of stuff. Ryan, take it away. Can we get these TVs off? Is that okay? I want to watch the game. All right, no. Not right now. Same phone. I like that name. All right, we ready? Can we get the music all the way down? I want this to be very intimate. I don't want to wrap in the background. Yeah! Screaming is encouraged. Thank you all for being here tonight. This means the world to me to be in my hometown, looking at my friends and family. It's exciting. I haven't done a Boulder presentation in over two years. And it makes my heart happy to see your smiling faces. Yes! I just want to point out somebody over here in the corner, my mom. She has been at every single event in my entire life, ever since I was a little kid from soccer games. The parent teacher classes. That's it from my mama. YouTube people, there's my mom over there. We are streaming right now to 342 people right now on my YouTube channel. Was she 14? Oh, good one! Good one. She is single, by the way. I've always wanted my mom to be a nice man to take her on adventures. I've been filling in pretty good. But if there's anybody out there, I can give you her phone number if you want. Actually, I'm using her phone tonight for the presentation. All right, so I want this to be a fun night. I want us to pretend that we're sitting around a campfire. We're going to share some stories. I want this to be interactive. You can heckle me as much as you want. You can ask questions, we're going to open it up, or it's going to make it fun. Okay, does that sound good? Those are the ground rules! Boom! Okay, and speaking of fun, I'm going to start off with a little song for you. I learned how to play the guitar for tonight. Do you don't believe me? I can't do this both at the same time, but maybe. Okay. I've been practicing a long time. I want you to know about this guitar. My Swedish friends gave this to me when I graduated. I don't know why they gave me a guitar. I've never played a guitar in my life. They gave it to me in 2003. I haven't touched it until tonight. So if there's any Swedes out there if Malin is watching, we actually have one Swedish speaker who said, hey, yes, Fedya! All right, do we have any other Swedish speakers? Okay, that's the only one. Good, okay, here we go with the song. And this is a sing-along. It's a sing-along. Okay, here we go. I'm standing in front of a hundred people and this is very nerve-wracking. A cruiser song we've been doing for a long time. We did it so much back in the day of the cruiser days in about 2000. 2000, right, Ryan? We got some cruisers here. We had a lot of traffic circles and we'd sing Ole, Ole, Ole. We did it so much we became known as the Ole Morons. And we took that with a badge of honor and we still sing the Ole song all the time on the Thursday night cruiser rides. If you watch my channel, you know that every time I go under a tunnel I sing the Ole song. It's just for fun. And that's what tonight's going to be all about. So I was thinking about how... Wait, I have a microphone. How I want to do tonight. Because most of you probably watched a lot of my videos. You know all these stories. So I wanted to come up with some ideas that maybe you haven't heard. So I'm going to start off with a story about little Ryan. There he is right there, about five years old. And the whole theme of tonight is going to be heart. Corazon. I leave with my heart and everything I do in life. And so this is how it all got started. This is how I became athletic. Athletic. It was back when I was five. I was at a well baby checkout. I was with my mom. I don't remember all the details exactly because I was five years old and five year olds don't remember shit, right? So a lot of this is from my mom. Her recounting of what happened. We are at the well baby checkout. The nurse comes in to take my blood pressure. And I don't know anything. I'm just a five year old kid. Everything feels fine to me. But I can tell that the nurses face is horrified. And she takes my blood pressure. She whispers something to my mom. I'm clueless. She goes out of the room. She brings in another nurse. And another nurse takes my blood pressure. And it is so high they don't believe what they're reading. That's why they keep on bringing in more nurses to see what's going on. They think I'm going to stroke out right then and there. If any of you know blood pressure and what the numbers mean I was 160 over 140 as a five year old. Which is insanely high. But again, I had no idea what was going on. Or that there was anything wrong at all with me. But of course my mom was very worried. The nurses told her immediately to take me to the hospital. And so for the next year of my life I was in and out of the hospital. They were trying to figure out what was causing my high blood pressure. High blood pressure can lead to a lot of bad things. It's not just something you just let it go. So they're like we need to find out what's happening and we need to fix this. Because we don't want this little kid to have a stroke. Look how cute he is. That's me. Clueless about my high blood pressure. So I'm in and out of the hospital. I go to Denver a few times. I have overnights at the hospital. I hate the hospital. I hate how it smells. I hate IVs. I hate the shots. There were times where nurses had to strap me down on the table because I would fight them so hard so they wouldn't give me a shot. I was really not a big fan. The only good thing about this whole situation was that every time I went to the hospital I got a new GI Joe. Which was very cool. So I had a great GI Joe connection. Long story, very short. They never figured out what was causing my high blood pressure. It originates from... But it wasn't happening. They weren't figuring things out. They were like, we have no idea what's causing his high blood pressure. My mom, in the meantime, I'm not her only kid. She has four of us in this moment. So I have a single mom taking care of four kids. And one of them is constantly in and out of the hospital. And so she was very worried. Again though, I don't really feel any different. I don't feel sick. I feel the severity of what's going on. And the doctors put me on a medication. My mom helped them greatly figuring out what type of dosage I should be on. Little kids should not be on high dosage blood pressure medicine. And they finally worked it down where I just took one pill a day. And that somehow, magically, was taking care of my high blood pressure. But the point of this whole story is that I'll never forget looking me in the eyes. And I was just a little kid. I was that guy right there. And he said, this is very serious. You need to strengthen your heart. You need to have a strong heart to combat this. And I was like, okay, what do I do? He's like, you need to run. You need to be a runner. You need to be athletic. And he also said, this is weird, he said, don't eat licorice. I'll never forget. He said, don't eat licorice. And I was just telling a story really the other day. And I was like, did I remember that right or wrong? And we looked it up. If you Google blood pressure and licorice, it will tell you licorice is horrible for blood pressure. So, if anybody's struggling with that, don't eat licorice. He also said, don't drink Coke or caffeine. So I stayed away from all those things. And I still, to this day, don't drink any caffeine. Anyway, so I'm on this medication. It seems to be working. Mom is the angel of all angels taking care of me and her three other kids. By the way, she's single. She's sitting in the corner. She's very pretty. And I take the doctor's words very seriously. Okay, I'm going to start running. I'm going to be athletic. I don't want to die. I want to keep on having fun. I'm loving life. I'm five years old. I'm smiling every day. So I was one of those weird kids who in elementary school would wake up before school, elementary school and go running. I remember many kids that did that. It was kind of nuts. And in gym class, gym class was really important to me because I loved kicking ass. I know most kids love going to gym class to play and have fun, but I was there to kick ass and I really loved running. And you remember field day? Of course everybody remembers field day, right? Oh man, did I take that seriously. To me, that was the Olympics. If I didn't get a blue ribbon in every single event, I was throwing a fit. I've calmed down a bit. I'm not nearly as competitive, but I was a very competitive little boy all the way through into high school. I was a very good runner. That's what I did. Running was my sport. Running is what made me feel good. Running allowed me to explore beyond the confines of my little neighborhood. I could just go out on my own knowing that I was strengthening my heart. And that led to my life. My very first mountain bike was one in a race here in Boulder called the Cancer Research Run of an El Dorado. It's called something different now but race still exists. And I was really excited about this race because I knew a bicycle was on the line. And I wanted that bicycle really badly. And long story short, I got the bike. Woo! I got a Diamondback Sorento. Anybody remember that bike? Yeah, a cherry red Diamondback Sorento. And that thing was amazing. And I earned it. And it felt so good to have something that I earned. Again, single bomb for kids. We didn't have a lot of extra stuff and toys. It wasn't into budget to buy a $300 mountain bike. But I won this thing. And it felt so good. And that bike was my freedom machine. We all know how that feels, right? You get on the bike. The wind is in your hair. You're honking your horn. You're ringing your bell. And around it feels so good. And that bike was the conduit to a whole lifetime of bicycle adventures. I went through that bike pretty quickly and broke it many, many times. I would ride on the Eagle Trail out here in Boulder, around the reservoir. I would go and catch snakes and do all sorts of fun adventures. But I broke it. And I decided, okay, I need a better bike. So I saved up all of my hard-earned lawn mowing money. I would push my little lawn mower around the neighborhood and cut grass and get like 10-15 dollars of pop. And I saved up all of my money and I bought a Trek 8000. Oh, sorry. Is this not a Trek shop? I bought a specialized rock hopper. Sorry. The Trek 8000. And to me this was the coolest thing in the world. The other bike was pretty cool because I earned it. But this one I really earned. A whole three or four months of mowing lawns in my neighborhood and just hustling. And I bought this bike. I'll never forget. My mom brought me to the shop in Highland's Ranch. What's the name of that shop? It's really well known. Bike source. Something like that. She drives me to Highland Ranch. They have the Trek 8000. I paid for it with a wad of cash. It felt so good. We all know this feeling when you actually earn something and you pay for it with the money. So I bought this bike and I loved it. My bike had shocks on it. Had the MAG 21s. Remember those, anybody? What? No whoops for the MAG 21s? That was a pretty sweet shock, guys. The gals. So this bike really opened up the world to me. I started riding my bike at Walker Ranch of Flagstaff Mountain. I would ride my bike. My mom hates this story. Riding my bike down 93 and go ride White Ranch in Golden. I was a little kid. I remember coming home one day with my friend Paul. He was much taller. He was a bad influence on me. She knew whenever I hung out with Paul that we were doing stuff we shouldn't be doing on our bikes. She looked at Paul and she said don't you ever take my son on that highway again. She kicked him in the balls. Just kidding. You think my mom could do that? She would never do that. We were all my mom had. Four kids and her. She was very protective of us. She was very protective of us. She still is protective. I will circle around to Highway 93 a little bit later. There is some pretty big significance to that road. Now you've got the heart story. You've got the bike story. I want to continue with this heart theme and go fast forward to 2009. One of the main reasons why I love riding my bike so much is the connection with humans. I love the physical aspect. I love pushing myself. I love seeing new things. But it's really the humans I have met on all of my rides that mean the most and have the most lasting value of anything. I've seen sunsets and sunrises and rainbows and beautiful things. But it's the people. And this is one of my favorite stories to share. I'm riding a three-speed New Belgium cruiser up a mountain in West Virginia. I'm riding this cruiser from San Diego to Washington DC. And I'm polling. Do I have a photo of this one? I think I do. I need an 8-8 person. This is my mom's code, by the way. Okay. There it is. That's the bike. And that's the trailer. YouTube people. There it is. I decided to ride this to prove to people that you don't have to have the nicest stuff to do big things. This is like a $300 cruiser. There's nothing special about it. The trailer is probably worth more than the bike. And I'm carrying all my beans and tortillas and camera gear and stuff. This is when I'm working for the Daily Camera writing weekly articles and making videos for my YouTube channel back then. So I'm riding up a very steep mountain. And it's hard because that bike has three gears. You're pulling a 50-pound trailer. And I'm struggling up this mountain. And I hear a car come up behind me. A big red truck. And this guy comes up. He starts going my speed. And he looks out the window. And he goes, Hey, man, what the hell are you doing? And I was a little scared because I'm in West Virginia. I've heard stories that people there are a little different. No offense to all of you in West Virginia. And I look at him and I say, I'm riding to Washington, DC. That's what everybody's doing in West Virginia riding up their mountains on a cruiser bike pulling a giant trailer. And he goes, no shit. Well, where are you going to stay tonight? And I said, I don't know. I usually just figure it out. And he's like, well, follow me. I'm going to drive in front of you and I'm going to lead you. And then just come and follow me. And I was like, okay, sure. It was only like 2 p.m. So I wasn't looking for a place to camp at this time. This guy is taking me down a dirt road in West Virginia. We go down the dirt road. We stop in front of a very simple, small brick structure in his house. He gets out of his car with a big smiley face and beady little eyes. He has a big brown barrel chest. And he goes, hey man, my name is Danny Harbert. I know what it's like to travel. I made you a macaroni tonight and crystal light. And I was like, wait, crystal light? We never got that growing up. That's like Kool-Aid. He's like, you can stay here for the night and just rest your legs. He's like, I saw you struggling on that mountain. And I was like, okay, I'm stopping for the day. This guy seems great. I totally trusted him. There was nothing scary about this guy at all. He was pure love. He invites me into his house. We start chatting. Turns out he had been a coal miner for 50-ish. He had back problems from being in the mines. You can tell that he'd lived a pretty rough life. But he wanted to help me. And sure enough, he made macaroni. And we sat out in his backyard with little TV trays. He brought out the crystal light with ice. And to me, that was the perfect moment. It was so comfortable just to be there in his backyard with him, hanging out with a new human, with somebody in West Virginia. And we talked all night long. He's way into Native American culture. He had dream catchers all over his very humble abode. And it was one of those moments in life where most of my friends were like, oh my God, you just sleep on people's couches and you ride your bike everywhere. Doesn't that scare you? And I'm like, no. Not at all. Not when you meet people like this. And when you meet somebody like that, you know immediately that they mean no harm. They're all just love and kindness. And this guy, Danny, didn't know who I was. He just saw me riding up a mountain in West Virginia. And the next morning, he let me take his bed, actually. It was a very small room. He let me take his bed. He slept on the couch. We talked all night. The next morning, we were getting ready to go. And I know that I have more steep mountains in my back. And he goes, man, I don't envy you today. You got a pretty tough ride in front of you. And I was like, okay, well, I'm ridden all the way from San Diego to here, so I should be good. But he's like, this is gonna be tough. And he pulled this off of his neck, this necklace. Remember, he's way into Native American culture. And he hands this to me and puts it over my neck, kind of like a metal. And he goes, I want you to have this and always wear this. It stands for courage, wisdom, and strength. When it comes to life, when it gets hard, you remember those three things and it will get you through anything. And I have not taken off this necklace since Danny gave me this necklace back in 2009. Yeah, this is it. This is the original one. So Danny, if you're out there, I love you. Heart, heart, love. I love Danny. I still call Danny on every major holiday. He calls me and watches my YouTube channel. And sometimes he gets a little worried when I'm doing hard stuff, when I'm getting a little emotional and he'll leave a message. And I'm gonna, oh wait, no I can't do it. It's not on this phone. Darn it. Anyway, I had a voice message that I was gonna play for you, but I'll just act it out. I've already been acting out all of Danny's voice. Why not keep going? But he watches my videos and he called me recently and left a message on my phone. It was after he saw the video this January where I said I'm really burned out because it was a really hard time. You have the message. He goes, hey man, why you gotta make me cry again? I watch your videos and you make me cry, man. I'm just checking in on you, making sure everything is okay. And you take care of that girl now, okay? And that's pretty much all he said. And I called him right back and we had a great, beautiful conversation. And it's really nice to still be in contact with this guy, Danny. And there's so many other people like Danny that I've met on every single ride. It's a story of just pure luck and serendipity. It was a ride this past May. I was in New Mexico. And New Mexico is a rough place to ride a bike. I don't know if I picked the worst month ever, but I did it in May. I was riding the Great Divide section of New Mexico. And I'm riding through the Navajo Nation. And it is the windiest day I've ever dealt with in my life on a bicycle. Sometimes you have a 10 mile an hour headwind and it sucks. It makes life way harder. We all know that as cyclists or even runners. Headwind sucks. But this was like 50 mile an hour headwinds that were like whipping me around. And it was almost impossible to move forward. It was dangerous. These winds were just nuts. And I'm screaming out into the void like, fuck you. Like, you know. Like wind, like give me a break. And right in that moment a guy drives up in his pickup truck looking down just like Danny did. I guess this is the theme. He saw me struggling. He's like, man do you need a place to stay tonight because you look like you're having a hard time. And I was like, you know what? Yes. I do need a place to stay. And this is the dumbest decision I've ever made on a bike ride. He's like well throw your bike in the back and I'll drive you to my house with about 10 miles down the road. And I was like, no I want to ride the whole way. Which I really shouldn't have done because I swear to God, the wind picked up another 20 miles an hour for the next 10 miles and it was impossible to move forward. And I was like, why did I say no to this nice guy's offer to get in the back of his car? He did give me his address or told me where he lived. So I knew that I was going to be going there but it took like two and a half hours to do 10 miles to get to his house. And I roll up his name is Herbert by the way and he's a Navajo man and he's like, hey I saw you on the road and we out here in the Navajo Nation we take care of one another and it doesn't matter that you're white or whatever color you are he's like, I want to take care of you I want to help you out. This is my wife she will cook you food and they invited me into their home and it was a really beautiful experience there was those two the parents and then they had their kids that were kind of adult age and then those little kids and they lived in a compound off the side of the road I don't know if many of you have been down to New Mexico and seen the Navajo Nation very simple and it was an experience like I was in another country I had never had a close moment to contact with anybody from any indigenous tribe in the United States and it was very special the mom made dinner that night we all sat around the table we shared stories they asked me about what I was doing what I'm doing with my life and she really started opening up about something called the Long Walk which is very similar to the Trail of Tears and she talked about how back in 1860 about 10,000 of her people the Navajo, the Denay were moved from Arizona 600 miles to eastern New Mexico and she really went into great detail and everything that happened to them and what was going on along the way and how many people died doing this Long Walk and it was essentially the United States doing what we did back in the day and still do it fortunately it was ethnic cleansing they brought them all to Fort Sumner on the eastern side of New Mexico and they were essentially in prison camps and she opened up about all of this to me and not to make me feel bad but she really educated me and I really appreciated that she had the confidence to tell me that and later that night I'm riding bikes with the little kids we're having a great time in the backyard it feels like I'm in Honduras with my kids if you know my channel, you know me I love connecting with little people we had a great time but my favorite part of the night was I was in bed pretty early one of the brothers moved out of the shed in his room and I'm in there getting ready to go to sleep but I'm charging batteries on my cameras and all that stuff and the little kids come up and they say, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, come we're having pie and I was like pie, that sounds amazing because when you're on a bike tour you get very hungry and pie sounds like the perfect thing to eat and they bring me into the house the little girls dragging me essentially by my hand and we go back into the main house and she had just baked a pie and she had whipped cream and she was down on this beautiful Saturday night on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico eating pie together and it was one of those just life moments where I was like, this is so beautiful I'm connecting with these people I never would have otherwise connected with if I hadn't been on my bike at that exact time in the wind when the guy drove past me and here I am now and that's some of the magic that happens when you're out there on a bike tour I know some of you have been on bike tours and you've had this happen to you and this is how it goes and again it all comes back to heart it comes back to love the first thing Herbert said to me was like I want to help you, I want to help take care of you you can come to my home we will feed you, you can take a shower and you can get the fuck out the next day he didn't say that he was much more eloquent sorry if there's kids watching I was going to show a photo of them hold on, so you can see them this will be great there they are look at them they're so sweet they were very excited to share their culture with me and I have found that everywhere I've been around the world that's very true that was last year I just opened up I got my puppy eyeballs if you watch my channel a lot of people talk about my puppy eyeballs and they've diagnosed why I have puppy eyeballs in the morning and these are my notes and now you can see all of them oh you want to see a video already? I need to go back to my photo so I'm not stuck on this bike rides aren't always easy as we all know it's a physical act, it can be hard it can be difficult physically, emotionally, mentally all of the above before this past spring I had one of the hardest days of my life actually many of them on a bicycle if you watch the great divide series the very first video I deal with a blizzard not just a little bit of snow but a full on blizzard and I was not prepared for this and I'm up on a mountain pass at about 11,000 feet and I'm pushing through lots and lots of snow like 3 feet of snow is that photo on here? oh and didn't transfer sorry now well there was a great photo to show you my bike stuck in the snow but you can just imagine my bike stuck in the snow so I'm pushing my bike through a ton of snow and I'm postholing as I go I mean it is very, very deep and I'm pushing and dragging my bike for probably 6 or 7 hours up and over a mountain top it's thundering and lightning and what is going to happen I definitely can't set up camp because it's snowy and I'm on top of a mountain pass and it's no bueno but I just keep moving forward because that's pretty much all you can do in those moments I get a lot of questions on YouTube like why don't you freak out in those moments well freaking out does no good freaking out will never help you in any situation but moving forward usually does and I keep things pretty light and luckily a lot of these times I like talking to my imaginary hand right here with my camera and I'm like ok here we go guys this is going to be a tough day and it kind of snaps me out of the pain cave in the moment because I'm talking to all these imaginary people who are out there right now on my YouTube channel and it somehow works so anyway I'm pushing through the snow and I finally get up and over the mountain and then all the snow because it's lower elevation now has turned into slosh and it is the muddiest mud on the bike on the bicycle and I think the mud is actually worse than the snow and I can't even move my bike and so I'm just dragging it essentially I'm not riding it at all but I make my way through the mud it's totally clogging up my drivetrain it's no good at all but it is what it is it's an adventure and you never know what you're going to get when you're out there on the road this is why we do these things because there's some moments that are pretty exciting I finally make it out of there fast forward seven days what I didn't know is that when I was going through all the mud I was severely weakening my Gates carbon belt drive which is supposed to be invincible and I'm riding on the continental divide trail I have 100 miles left of the Great Divide I had started the year before up at the border of Canada got all the way down to New Mexico decided not to ride in New Mexico so this was like a year long project to get to this point I have 100 miles left I'm feeling great physically I've gotten through all the hard stuff all the snow and the mud and the wind and here I am home stretch riding the beautiful continental divide trail single track on a mountain bike which is super fun and I'm powering up this hill and bam! freaking belt broken half my belt drive snapped in half which is almost unvertile and I'm sitting there and I know that it's over my ride is over there's no fixing a belt drive and I did not bring a spare I did not bring a spare because I've been riding belt drive bikes forever and I've never had a problem why do I need a spare it's only going to be 700 miles it's this brand new bike but brand new belt I'm going to be fine so the belt breaks I don't have a spare I know that it's all over and I'm pretty bummed and I'm also in the middle of nowhere what am I going to do I sit on the ground I talk to my camera for a little bit I tell everybody how much this is sucky but you know I'm trying to stay positive and I start you know I sit on my bike and I'm kicking so I can like move I can't even pedal nothing works on the bike and I make my way down off the trail finally find a road and I'm like why I have to hitchhike or something because I can't go anywhere and I sat on the side of the road it's not a very busy road I'll probably for about an hour finally a truck comes by trucks are the best because you know they can take the bike and you usually so whenever I'm hitchhiking I'm always looking for bigger cars and this truck comes by and it's this whole jolly bunch of missionaries who had just gone on a field trip to see some cave painting somewhere and I'm like hey my name's Ryan I'm from Boulder I was riding this ride and I'm like bro can you take me to the nearest city and they're like come on in remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber where they pick up the people they pick them up and that's how it felt like with the people and I'm sitting in the back seat with like two grandmas and the two husbands are in front and they're like here's some cantaloupe and here's our leftover sandwiches and it was just like you know the way you're giving me all this awesome food thank you so much this is exactly what I need because I'm pretty bummed out but you are making things a lot better so we drive for a while and they tell me that they're going to take me to a smaller town not exactly where I need to go but somehow I charm them in Silver City, New Mexico and they drop me on and I give them all a big hug we stand around they pray for me which I thought was very nice of them to do and they go on their way and here I am in Silver City, New Mexico very close to the end of the divide but knowing that it's all over and it was hard to really come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to finish this ride and it was a bummer this is something I dreamed of for a very very long time doing the entire Great Divide mountain bike group and it just wasn't going to happen I didn't have a belt I called a couple of the bike shops most bike shops don't have carbon belt drives do you guys have carbon belt drives? no not many bike shops have them and so I was screwed and it was a bummer but it was one of those times in life where I just kind of had to accept it and there are times when on adventures races or whatever where you just have to accept your fate this is what it is this is the adventure you're not going to get to the finish line of this one I've gotten to the finish line of so many other ones but not this one and that's okay and I actually went to bed that night pretty cool with the situation myself but I knew that my YouTube channel would be all over my case for not having an extra belt drive and for not finishing the final 100 miles but I was excited to go home after dealing with all this drama you know the snow and the mud and the wind and how the broken belt all in about a 7 days span and whatever that was a bummer but it it led me to other adventures hold on there do you guys want to hear the Olai song right now? why does he keep popping up? does anyone need a drink? oh yeah does anybody in YouTube land need a drink? take them up on it he'll do it put it on my tab, no problem I love it, don't, I'm kidding the burritos are always on my tab drinks get expensive anytime you come into full cycle say it's on Ryan's tab lifetime free burritos from full cycle anybody else want a drink? we have a little I'm going to talk a little bit about YouTube life and then we're going to open it up to questions and answers what time is it, like 6.50 or something? okay yeah I don't want to talk too much more because I want this to be fun and interactive and all those good things so I'm a YouTuber and there are moments like this past moment that I was just talking about in New Mexico that suck that are very hard personally even if I wasn't filming them I have to remember sometimes that not only am I in there in the pain cave by myself but I need to document everything I need to tell the story to my audience in a way that makes sense in a way that is engaging in a way that is hopefully educational and inspirational and there are times when it's very hard like that time pushing through the snow and you wouldn't believe it but I would do this as much as I was struggling in the snow and dragging that heavy ass bike around I'd be like I need to get a shot of this so I take my tripod over hit record run back to my bike and make grunting sounds oh this is so hard and I do this over and over on every single bike ride and there are times when it's very tough but if I don't get these moments if I don't take the time to film if I don't pull the drone out it's not very engaging right it's just like one GoPro POV video and that's not very fun so half of the adventure is the physical part the other part is work when I go out on these trips it's a business trip, it's my job it's what I do for a living this has been my dream since I was in college I got a degree in broadcast journalism and I learned very quickly that I did not want to be a local news anchor that wasn't for me I did an internship at 9 News in Denver I thought that was pretty cool I was in TVs and big cameras and anchors and all that fun stuff but it wasn't for me because local news is depressing local news sucks you watch local news and it's like God it feels so horrible about the world right? and I'm not knocking local journalists they're doing a job, they're telling stories that are right to them but for me I didn't like it, I didn't like it the way it made me felt I knew in that moment I was like I want to make happy news I want to make inspirational stories I want to get people psyched up at a very young age even though I got a degree in broadcast journalism and did all the nerdy broadcasting things in college and we had the college TV show and all that stuff and I did the prim and proper wearing a suit and reading off lines and blah blah blah there's a cat stuck in a tree whatever we were talking about it was all like dumb really but I wanted to make happy news and so a long story very short I somehow created this career where I go around with my camera and I film adventures and videos and the main goal with everything that I do is to inspire you and you and YouTube land to get out of your couches and get out there I started my career in 2006 on public access TV here in Boulder with the Out There Show did anybody watch Out There we got a couple Out There fans boom it was so fun I would run around the town with my little Sony handycam and I would film all sorts of fun adventures the whole point was to film things that were relatable that people could be like oh that looks like a great time I want to go do that because again the goal is to inspire people not just to show off how tough I am or whatever I did and so that's really how it all started on public access TV in Boulder at the time I was 26 years old I had just come back from the Peace Corps I didn't know what I was going to do with my life really but I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful and that brought value to the world and this was my way I thought this was my calling I was going to create content and somehow make people happy with what I was doing I wasn't making any money at all public access if you all know you don't get paid to do that at all no money so where did I live during this time I lived in mom's basement thank you mom I lived in mom's basement from age 26 to 30 what a loser you know no thank you I don't think it was a beautiful time where I got to practice my craft I got to do what I felt was important and I also as a bonus as a 26 to 30 year old young man got to spend a lot of time with my mom and a lot of people think oh you're a loser if you live in your mom's basement after 18 but I looked at it the other way I thought this is like a dream come true I got to spend time with my mom whereas a lot of my friends see their parents maybe once or twice a year but I get to see my mom every single day and have dinner with her every single day and tell her about my life so she's seen a lot of my journey from the very beginning and I cherish those times you know of course I was excited to get out when I was 30 years old but I really I loved it so thank you mom you're my hero I like to show a video to you all right now this video is a video that I really wanted to go viral I built up my channel now to almost 150,000 subscribers and I'm very very proud of it and it's been very slow incremental growth I've been doing this for almost seven years it's not like I've had a viral hit that has launched me ever it's just been like just grinded one video a week nice move like 18 it's okay man I just totally lost my train of thought what was I talking about? viral I wanted to make a viral video in the first rule of making a viral video you cannot proclaim that you're going to make a viral video it just kind of magically happened but I'm like I'm going to put together all of my best footage I'm going to hire a writer to write this beautiful poetic voiceover I'm going to hire my friend Skip in Washington I'm going to fly there and spend seven days with him and we are going to make the best video ever and it's going to go viral and it's going to blow up my channel and yes, finally but this video did not go viral not even close but I am still very proud of this video I love it, whenever I watch it I'm like ah man that makes me feel good so I would like you to watch this short video and then we will open up the question and answer and have a good time and drink beer and go crazy how's that sound? going to remember my mom's password Wendy what did the shit bicyclists say? that's a good point he was just saying shit cyclists say that was a viral video for sure the funny thing is it was not on my channel so it didn't help me at all you know how much it got paid? it was my own fault it was a video I made for people for bikes you know people for bikes, the advocacy group they came to me and said hey there's this trend happening with these shit people say videos let's do a shit cyclist say video I'm like okay we don't have much of a budget $50 that's about how much I made for a long time in my career when I made videos for other people so can we get some sound here? oh dang it how do we do this sound? we figured it out earlier okay I'm starting again here we go these are the moments in life and just suffering through a hot day bam right here this is it some of your best childhood memories it's outside running around the playground riding your bike oh no AT&T remember the thrill the joy the freedom you felt so alive they call me dozer some call me a bicycle influencer although I didn't set out for that funny title I'm just a Colorado guy two legs two wheels my bike is an extension of me it's joined me around the world where I connect with people I never would have otherwise met to find what I call a trail man this is amazing this is trail man this is trail man right here these crazy sincere moments where I happen upon random strangers who become my new friends wow this is so cool what a great moment knowing how much of an inspiration you've been to me people who I never would have met in a million years I was tucked away in an air-conditioned tour bus and definitely not if I were stuck at home watching TV biking obviously takes me places to visit but it also takes me places to most of all to venture in on racks open my eyes it doesn't have to be on the other side of the planet adventure is anywhere there's an open sky and an open mind nature demands presence if it rains I get wet if it's windy I get blown around if it's hot I get burnt and that's okay that's possible on planet earth what else is possible it's a sunrise rainbow it's a miracle I believe our degree of presence directly correlates with the amount of joy we experience in any given moment I am feeling great today when I'm outside in silence with no phone and no distraction I don't just see the flowers I see them in that I feel I feel love I feel more I feel more I feel more I feel more I feel more she can make me feel so small but she's also wild unpredictable and perspective giving being outside plain and simple a bike puts me smack in the middle of the awesome outdoors there's something primal about being so exposed yet so self-reliant setting the pace for my life and always moving forward and you know when it comes down to it most days I still feel like a kid I'm gonna sleep well or I can't wait for the stars to come out love you world and it was like this and it reminds me how amazing my life is when I have hard times this past January I went through some hard stuff I was feeling burnt out mentally and physically and I just didn't have the spark that I usually have it was the first time in my life where I really felt down and out and slightly depressed and what am I doing with my life and questioning my future when I see stuff like that I'm like alright it all makes sense this is a beautiful planet I'm so grateful and gratitude plays a huge role in me being able to get through any tough situation if you watch my videos you probably heard about the gratitude march when things get really hard every step I take I think about somebody that I love because it helps get me out of my own pity party and it makes me think about people I love and it puts a little smile on my face or bike mode or things suck I start doing the gratitude march and every Sunday before I go to bed I walk out on my balcony and look up at the stars and I just thank the world I thank the universe for another beautiful week and I ask the universe for some more fun stuff let's do it I'm ready let's go give it to me let's have this another great week coming here you know and it really it makes a difference and it goes back to the very beginning when I'm talking about my heart my heart physically is where this all started you know there were some issues with it but I found a way around it I started running which led to biking which led to this beautiful life which led to all of you sitting here right here tonight and all of you out there in YouTube land and I realized how beautiful it is to be alive and to have the privilege of being down and depressed and hurt because I get to do all these wonderful things and share them with the world and hopefully inspire you to do things you never dreamed of doing before right? so when I look out in the crowd and I see faces that I've grown up with my friend Ari right here I've known my entire life my mom's right over here Chris is right over here my best friends we have Amelia my beautiful new girlfriend right here it's amazing life is so damn good and I see my cruiser goofballs over there and then I always put a smile on my face and I've made some new friends tonight already and this is what it's all about it's about connection bikes connect me to me my heart and my soul that connect me to nature that connect me to you and that's why I do this so thank you all so much for coming out here tonight I can't thank you enough it means the world to me would you like to hear the Olay song again? any questions here we go I just got a brand new gravel bike where should I ride it and I don't know anything about gravel bikes okay brand new gravel bike where should she ride it let's crowdsource this one yeah right yeah talk to the guys at the bike shop they'll set you straight do a gravel ride out of here every Sunday morning at 10 o'clock it gets earlier as the days get hotter but this Sunday 10 o'clock all paces show up and help you go because I'm getting back on the gravel myself and the ice is gone so come on out it's a big draft any other questions here we go me hombre de Perú excelente yeah he's talking about my amazing magical bean diet I think right so I'm a vegetarian I've been a vegetarian since 2003 I became a vegetarian because I took a class at CU all about Gandhi isn't that cool and I learned all about Gandhi and I wanted to be just like Gandhi I learned about factory farming and how horrible it is blah blah blah I became a vegetarian and since then I've always felt strong enough people say oh if you don't eat meat you're not going to be able to do hard things anymore you don't have enough protein but I've been able to work it out I do eat a bean heavy diet for sure especially when I'm on bike trips beans are very easy to travel with whether they're in a can or a bag like in Mexico you put them in tortillas you can use avocado tomatoes so I try to eat real food as much as possible and by real food I mean Nutella I love Nutella as well but yeah I've been a vegetarian we can talk about more afterwards I'm not a nutritionist I mean I really just I kind of eat what I eat it is vegetarian diet I don't eat any meat it's very little dairy as well but it's served me pretty well and along with that having the high blood pressure it's been good to stay away from high cholesterol red meat those types of things I still to this day monitor my blood pressure and make sure that I'm okay because it's a serious thing alright any more questions alright let's go right there have I ever run out of food in the middle of nowhere I have not I haven't there's been some lean days like on the Colorado Trail there's a 200 mile stretch where there's no services so you start off with quite a bit of food but you don't want to have too much food because then your bike is too heavy to go up and over the mountains so you have to really you know be mindful of how much weight you have and I've gotten lean on food where I'll just have like a clip bar or two for dinner which is not ideal but it works they're calories yeah right here as far as gear and stuff yeah well okay the question is how do I evolve you know I used to travel with a trailer with a lot more stuff now I have a bike with as little as possible essentially so whenever I'm on a bike packing route which is dirt I will have two shirts that's it I'll have one pair of shorts I will have one pair of shammies I will have two pairs of socks so on the clothing side of things it's very lean but then you got to remember I'm filming all this stuff so I have three cameras I have lots of batteries and chargers and adapters and that's what takes up a lot of the weight and then depending if I'm in the desert or not like Baja or somewhere else you need to have a lot of water I mean there are days in Baja where you need eight liters of water and so it's a tough balance between clothing and camera gear and food and water and Nutella a useless item so with my very first bike adventure from Honduras to Boulder I had a trailer and this I've never been on a bike trip in my life and I just thought I'm going to need to bring everything because I need to be ready for anything that's going to happen out there and I brought lots and lots of books like tons of books like like the Poisonwood Bible you know like just why did my brain always you know way too many books and so like the first seven days I've checked all those things who needs to read those at night because really you don't have enough energy to read a book maybe sometimes I listen to a podcast but even then it might be 10 or 15 minutes before I go to sleep so books are worthless don't isolate don't isolate that sound by it I'm like see Ryan and there's some things books are worthless but books are worthless on a bike tour for sure Tom over here ah shut up how many drones have I gone through drone sponsor yeah I need a drone sponsor DJI I've gone through a lot of drones I've smashed drones I've gotten drones stuck in trees I've gotten drones that were blown away and I couldn't get them back and they landed on the other side of a cliff and it's all part of the game of being a content creator cameras break they break all the time even when I'm not flying them into walls they just sometimes break because you're really heavy on them imagine you're riding a bike and it's just you know shaking and rattling for eight hours a day and your cameras are in those bags and cameras are pretty tough but still I mean they can only rattle so much before they don't work anymore so I've gone through probably six or seven drones and if anybody is a drone enthusiast out there and you buy DJI always buy the insurance you can smash your drone to smithereens and send it in and it will give you a replacement for like $80 so we'll do that twice and after that you're playing full price full price thousand dollars how did I smash my drone okay so you see all these beautiful drone shots you see in that video well it's not auto tracking me I am pedaling my bike while flying the drone and so it's kind of like trying to play video games while pedaling and you know I want to make all these slight cinematic moves I don't want it to be jerky so it's like I'm paying more attention to flying the drone than I am riding my bike I have never crashed I have never crashed but the drone has crashed while I've been doing that yeah what about gopros have I smashed gopros yeah I've definitely smashed gopros yeah oh actually I've only really destroyed one gopro and that was this summer on the Colorado trail I was coming down near Copper Mountain flying down a mountain very fast and I just flipped over the gopro was on my chest so it was like Iron Man right here I smashed right into it bam and it knocked the wind out because the camera was right here all my weight hit it and then I got up and it was just pretty much shattered it was broken again gopro has insurance so it's a very good thing to have yeah oh right here I saw a fellow Gates carbon drive melt user yeah how did you find out how did that particular melt rate do you find out so I made a whole video about how my Gates carbon drive broke and essentially when it was all muddy it kept bouncing off of the chain ring and I was essentially forcing it back on and you're really not supposed to do that you're supposed to like loosen up the rear wheel and like set it on nicely carbon is very strong when it's going in one direction but if you start bending it it loses its power very quickly I didn't know this at the time and I just did that probably four or five times during those moments in the mud where I would just force it back on which was severely weakening the threads there's like tons of little carbon fiber threads in there and by the end of the week when I was going up a very steep mountain the chain the belt drive had just had enough I do have a whole video on this explaining it with a professional who can probably articulate it better but that's what happened yes here we go I got two questions alright oh cool yes and then the other question is have I ever met bad people like people at full cycle the first so she asked about these here at YouTube World pretty cool huh she asked about these spoke bracelets and you probably all heard me talk about an event that I truly love called a rat ride right the registers annual great bike ride across Iowa 20,000 people every single summer the final week of July it's like a rolling county fair it is the most fun you can ever have on a bicycle because you stop every five feet and you eat pie literally five feet every stop it's everywhere and so there's a guy there making these spoke bracelets he rides around with a little backpack saying five dollars spoke bracelets and he pulls out a full sized spoke and he measures her arm and bends it up like a balloon guy would bend up a balloon animal and you have a spoke bracelet for five dollars pretty good deal best jewelry I've ever had and as far as bad people I have never met a bad person on a bike ride this past trip in Mexico was the closest I ever got to a sketchy situation and I always tell people Mexico's great Mexico's awesome I've traveled all over Mexico I've never had any problems but there was a moment on day two I have not told my mom this look at her over there cool yeah cover her ears Jesse so this guy with a machine was shooting at us from Mexico but luckily it hit my GoPro and I have insurance on it so it's okay I was with John John and Mira and we were riding up the hill and this guy starts walking down towards us with an army gear on and this is a normal thing to see in Mexico there's soldiers everywhere and this guy was pretty young maybe 25 years old and he walks up to us in the middle of nowhere I mean there's a town maybe a mile away but I don't know what he was doing out there and he's like hey so guess what you need to give me your cell phones and I was like oh why is that and I thought maybe this was a real thing I thought maybe it was like a military checkpoint and I actually needed to like give up my cell phone for some reason and he's like yeah you can't have cell phones going from this certain area to this next area like two miles away so you're going to have to give me the cell phones but don't worry we're not going to take them my buddy on the motorcycle will drive them up to you when you get to the second checkpoint and so I translate this for John, John the mirror and he's like that's bullshit that is definitely not going to happen and so I'm like okay well my friend says no we will not give you our cell phones I hope you don't have a gun and your backpack long story short we go back and forth he keeps on asking for the cell phones I keep on saying nah man we're not going to give you our cell phones it's a very thin line you know you can't mess with these guys too much because they may be armed right luckily he just backed down I think he just got so sick of me saying no and he's like okay whatever I think he was expecting some green going to roll up and he would just be like okay he's scared and he'd give him a cell phone and I'm sure this guy has done it many times but he he did get our cell phones know what they saw know what yeah yeah yeah I was like and then I got a selfie with them and they were like hey bro thanks for not robbing us Bruce okay magical experience I've had with animals animals lots of animals out there let's see I kind of think of the magical experiences with animals like Mira who is the most magical dog in the history of the world you guys have probably seen a lot of the videos with Mira right Mira is the most wonderful dog I've ever met she has this huge place in my heart she makes me so happy every morning she wakes up she'll run out of John's tent over to my tent and essentially just race into my tent just like knows me and get me up in the morning she is always psyched I really really love Mira but as far as like I see a lot more I did see some bears way up in the distance running in the woods you know a very cool experience I had once I was riding from here to Radbride I was riding from here to Omaha and I was on a flat highway somewhere in Nebraska and these birds were right over ahead just like chirping and chasing me and it was I felt like I was Mary Poppins I would just be I was riding and these birds are all over me I was like and I made the video and I'm filming them they're like all over me it wasn't just like a flash of a moment like they were there for a while and then I post the video on YouTube and they're like those birds are pissed off at you like they thought that you were gonna like steal their babies out of a nest or something and I forget the name of the birds but to me it was magical to the birds they were very threatened to buy my fluorescent orange helmet yes alright over here a dream trip great question I I would love to go to Bhutan Bhutan is the kingdom of happiness they measure their countries wealth and happiness the gross national happiness some of you may have heard of this I love the Himalayas I've been to Nepal many times Bhutan is my number one dream destination I would love to ride my bike there they seem to really focus on the important things in life and really they take great care of their environment and their people and they really focus the king on making sure their people are healthy and happy so Bhutan is way up there as far as a bike ride you know this summer I'm gonna finally ride the length of Sweden I lived in Sweden as an exchange student in 1998 I love the country I love the culture I love the people I'm still very close with my host family and I want to go to Sweden and ride and chase the midnight sun so I think that'll be pretty cool this summer yeah Chris oh yes thank you Chris Highway 93 so Highway 93 was the final moments of my ride home from Honduras that was my very first big adventure I left from Honduras in September of 2005 I got to that area Highway 93 Golden three months later and it was the adventure of a lifetime I'm actually um writing a book about it and I'd like to share an excerpt thank you Chris for that good moment to remind me that I need to read something so I've written a book and I'm very excited about it books are useless this books on my phone so I'll do an audio version of this book so people like me who don't like books on bike tours can bring it along man that was a good one who said that good job is that Rachel? good one yeah okay here we go and this will lead back into Highway 93 this was the biggest adventure of my life up until this point I had spent two years in Honduras as a Peace Corps volunteer working with little kids I loved it it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life I thought the best way to get home why? because I wasn't ready to just jump on an airplane and magically be home in a matter of four hours after spending two years in a tiny village I wanted to really process what I had done for those two years and dream toward the future and I knew that sitting on the seat of a bicycle would allow me lots of time to think and so I decided to ride my bike from La Esperanza Honduras back to Boulder, Colorado and here is a little moment in the book we should have listened to the warnings those are bikes around like raga knocking off the road over and over as we ride nearly sideways past the toll booth we assume the only thing moving on the highway the traffic is completely jammed jammed up due to an accident caused by the wind ambulance is screeched plaid terrifying as the highway has no shoulder police block the road we fight with all of our strength to keep our bikes riding straight for one burst of wind after another keeps hurtling off the road into the dirt and weeds. My body is soon covered in goat head spikes. The police clear the accident and permit the line of cars to go, and they're having just as much trouble as we are staying upright, especially the tall box trucks and semis. Dirt blows into our faces and cakes our mouths. I feel sand between my teeth. I stop to put my foot down for balance as the high-powered gusts slam us from the west. Why can't we be going eastward? We aren't getting anywhere, but in greater danger with every pedal stroke. We surrender to a dirt side road that falls the highway. It's too dangerous to be on the main road. I glance behind us and see a trail of items that have fallen off our trailer, like breadcrumbs behind us that we can't safely go back to retrieve. Most of it is our dinner, so actually tortilla crumbs, not bread. No food, no shelter. I cower in the dirt trying to use my bike as a shield. Until today, I never had a doubt I would make it home. I knew it'd be tough, but this isn't just tough, this is impossible. As an athlete, no matter what, come soggy socks or saddle sores or broken bike pieces, I could always dig deeper. When my body gave out, I could always, always find a glimmer of positivity and that mindset would carry my shaking muscles across the finish line to success. Yet here I sit on the edge of collapse. I dig deep into my shiny, happy thoughts bucket and all I find is the sharp truth. I don't know how we're gonna make it. I want to quit, but we can't. We're in the middle of nowhere in Mexico. We can't put up a tent in a windstorm in an open field with no food or water. We have no choice but to push head first into the storm. Ooh, ooh, yeah, read the rest of the book to find out what happens. I don't know when it'll come out, but I'm working on the book. It's not least me to Highway 93. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I had many moments like this throughout the entire three months riding from Honduras to Boulder that were very hard and uncomfortable and scary and lonely and all those things that happen when you're on an adventure. And finally, I had made it all the way to Golden. So many things could have gone wrong along the way. I could have gotten injured. Could have gotten hit by a car. So many things. But I made it to Golden in one piece with my buddy, Jeff. And we knew that we had made it. And so we wake up the next morning and it's so exciting. It's like a celebratory ride. It's like the end of the Tour of France when you're just riding under the Arc de Triomphe. We knew it was only about 20 miles from Golden to Boulder. And we had done it. We had ridden our bikes all the way from Honduras to Boulder about 4,000 miles. And I'll never forget the morning. It was freezing cold. It was nine degrees, which is very cold for a guy who'd been living in Central America for two years. The sky was blue like I'd never seen before. My beloved bluebird Colorado skies. Remember, I hadn't been home in two and a half years. So finally, getting this close to Boulder meant a whole lot to me. And I start seeing the flat irons off in the distance. If you've ridden 93, you know when they start showing up when you get close to town on the south side of Boulder and it is beautiful. That is the flat iron beauty at their peak, especially in the morning the sun is lighting them all up. And I'm coming down a hill and I'm feeling good, just feeling good to be home. And then I see a whole pack of people off in the distance and I don't quite know what it's all about. As I get closer, some of them are waving flags. One of them is the Honduran flag. I get closer and closer and it's all my friends. And I always get emotional. Even when I go to highway 93 today, I'm like, oh, this isn't where it happened. I get really close to the group of people. It's all my friends. It's my cruiser buddies. It's childhood buddies. It's my mom waiting for me on the side of the road right at that little crossing where the El Dorado Springs gas station is. And I jump off my bike and I run straight to my mom and I give her a big hug and we're both crying. And it's one of the most exciting, beautiful, touching moments of my life. I had done it. I did the Peace Corps. I rode my bike 4,000 miles and now I'm back home in mom's arms and she says to me, don't you ever do this again. And me in my emotional state said, don't worry mom, I never will. And we all know how that turned out. That ride really kicked off a life of adventure. And it was very exciting and I went straight to mom's basement that night. I took a warm bath. I had been dreaming of hot water, like a bath for two years. I took bucket baths for two years in Honduras and so I remember getting to my mom's house, taking a hot bath, knowing that I had done it. I had finished this beautiful ride and my whole life was in front of me. I had all the time in the world to think and it was all coming together. So thank you. Yeah. How much time? I have some giveaways. I have some giveaways. Oh, do you have a question real quick? This is a good one. Yeah, it's a two par one. So first off, where's the most beautiful place you've ridden or been in general? And then the second one is you're beautiful obviously too, easy on the eyes, but also inside and out, which could be also from nature and nurture. So once again, last time I checked, his mom is still single. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we need a team working on this. Thank you. But you've been to many beautiful places which also can be quite romantic. And as a result, are there potentially any little doozers around it and not? Maybe there's a sperm bank around with little doozers that could be, and that seems to me, wouldn't it be great to have some more energy and people like me out here? Hey, I appreciate it. You brought it all around, you brought it around buddy. So YouTube world, he just asked if I would donate sperm essentially. I don't know, I've already made it. I thought he was asking if you left your scene around the world. Yeah, or maybe, no man. I appreciate that you want more of me. That's basically the heart of what you said. I really have been mostly single for my adult life. I really have been. I have had some girlfriends here and there. My longest relationship has been one year. Pretty impressive, not. So I really don't, definitely no little doozers. But I have recently met the love of my life, so that's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And this goes back to, in January, you never know what life is gonna give you. You might be going through something hard. That sounded bad. You might be going through something hard. And you don't know how it's all gonna turn out. In January I was having a tough time. I was burnt out mentally, physically, and not knowing really where I was gonna go in life. The direction of everything really. And I took some time off. I took essentially the last three months off. I put some videos out there here and there, but not a ton. And in that time, I met a very special person. I've spent a ton of time with her. And it's been three of the most amazing months of my life. So, I love you. I love you. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Amelia Boone. Fostering dogs. Giveaway time. How's that? Do you have time for this? You look like you're mad at me. Okay. Okay. Get off the stage, Ryan. Okay, so I went into my closet of junk that I need to get rid of, and I'm gonna give it all to you. Okay. So, I have two vintage items. These are brand new. Look. Those are some stickers. So, when I did the Honduras ride, my friends made t-shirts. And it says, what would do's or do? And they made these t-shirts. Oh, are you gonna be my mic stand? I know why not. Right on. Thanks, this guy. 81A. Right on. So, my friends made these shirts and we sold them and all the money went to the school that I built in Honduras. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, wow. Yeah. Thank you. The bidding starts at $100. Yeah. And so, there's a picture of me on the back and I'm gonna give you the way. What is with this music? Is this music? It should be an altar. Oh, oh, it's like after a while. I didn't wear glasses. Are you stabbing me or am I stabbing you? Thank you. Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for coming on tonight. Okay, no, t-shirts. So, the question is to win this shirt. Where did I meet? First, where did I meet John and Mira? For an extra large, what would do their due t-shirt? Where did I first meet John and Mira? Bob. Bob. Yes, yes, there you go. That's a nice job. Okay, I have one more. What is the entire length of the Great Divide mountain bike winch? 2,600. 2,700, who said it? 1,600. Right on. Okay, here we go. Five. Yeah. Woo. Here we go, here we go. Okay. I love Green Guru. They're my good friends. They make all sorts of upcycled bags. They're really environmental. I love them. They're right over here. My guys from Green Guru, Justin right here and Ryan. And I want to give away some of their bags, okay? Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers. Loosening. Loosening. Loosening. I had a little bunch of questions lined up. Here we go. How'd it go, dude? Did I get it? Hold on, I'll get there. We're loosening those beautiful places. The most beautiful place? Oh, that's right, the most beautiful place. The Redwoods. Okay, what is the name? What's the name of my British friend who I went to Cuba with? No? Does anybody know? What's the name of my British friend? You have to be a super fan. Does anybody know? Nigel. Nigel? Nigel. Liam. Tom. Dom, you know it, buddy, yeah. I love Dominic. Hello, people out there. I wish I could give you prizes, but sorry. Okay, I have more questions lined up here. How far is the Colorado Trail on a bike? 540. 540 miles, there we go. All right, here we go, some more stuff. This is another Green Guru product. You put it over your frame and it holds a six pack holder. Yeah. What is the entire elevation gain of the Colorado Trail? 84,000. Not 84,000. 72,000, nice. How did you know that? This is great. How about a hat from Priority Bicycles? Yeah. Yeah. I had two Pacers at the Leadville 100. What is the name of the first Pacer? My first Pacer at Leadville. What is her name? Amelia. Pickle Juice. It's Pickle Juice. Okay, there was a town in New Mexico named after a dessert. What is the name of this town? My town. My town, all right. What is my favorite brand of beans? My favorite brand? Or beans. Yeah, you can answer any question. It's Amy's. Who said it? Do you want to try the Pickle Juice or the Pickle Juice? Oh, I love this song. Okay. I love this song. Who is the first Star Wars release? It's Amy's. You get Pickle Juice. And you get... Okay, this is worth a lot. Will never work on your bike. But you can sell it on eBay for like $7 maybe. So, that's a good question for this one. I don't know. Okay, here's a good one. My first time doing the Great Divide, I didn't finish the whole thing. The first time, not the New Mexico time. Why did I stop riding? It's over. You said it. I love you, you too. Thank you so much.