 BOOM! Hello my friends! And wow! You know what today is? It is December 31st 2018 and I'm going to try to squeeze in one more video. So let's do this. Guess what? This video that you are watching right now is my 70th video of 2018. Which kind of blows my mind because it takes a lot of time to make each one of these videos. But you know what? It also takes a lot of time to watch these videos. So thank you all so much for being part of this channel. All my new subscribers and old subscribers. I've been making YouTube videos since 2006. Hello and welcome to Out There! It's crazy that I'm still doing it and I'm about to turn 40. Can you believe that? Do you see all this gray hair? I'm becoming an old man. But I don't care that I'm an old guy YouTuber. I take pride in it. And I really do enjoy creating these videos for you to watch. And I get emails all the time from people saying that my videos have inspired them in some certain way to get off their couches to go biking or running or they've lost a lot of weight or they spend more time just outside. And I really believe that being outside makes us humans a lot happier. Get up off that couch, go do something fun, and get out there. My channel has grown quite a bit this year. And this is the first year where I've really seen big growth. You know I've been making videos for like since 2006. And my channel has just been creeping up and creeping up and creeping up. But this year it's really kind of, bam, gone up pretty fast. At this time last year I had 10,000 subscribers. Today I have 32,000 subscribers. And even though that's a pretty small channel, it's exciting to have that audience. To know that every time I hit the publish button on my computer that it's gonna go out to 30,000 people. And that makes me happy. Alright, let's get into what we all came here for. A 2018 year in review. Oh man, I'm gonna start out with an adventure early on in the year that really set the tone for the entire year. Alright here I am at the bus station. I'm gonna take the bus to the Denver International Airport. And that was the adventure to the Copper Canyons in Mexico to run the Caballo Blanco race. I had been here two times before in my life. But I had never been to the Copper Canyons with Ali Geiser. So I'm sitting here on the bus and this girl sits next to me and she's like, I want to go to Mexico. Actually it didn't happen like that. But this was a very last minute decision. This is my friend Ali. We were at a bar last night. I told her what I was doing. And she's like, I want to go. I essentially met her the night before. And I was like, wow, this girl is adventurous. Ali, why did you decide to do this? Well, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Yeah. And I'm feeling really confident still that it was the right thing to do. It will be the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do. It's gonna be the best adventure of your life. And at the time, I had no romantic inclinations. She was just gonna be a girl that was part of a 20-person trip down to the Copper Canyons. But slowly and surely, I got to know Ali better. How you feeling Ali? Feeling good. Jumped in some beautiful waterfalls. And I was like, this girl, there's something to this girl. She is really cool. And what more romantic place to fall in love than the Copper Canyons. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been on the planet. She turned out to be a pretty awesome runner. I had no idea she was such an awesome runner. But she got fifth place overall for women in the race, which was very cool. And that's essentially when I fell in love with Ali, when we fell in love with each other and that set the tone for the adventures to come. I love life. What do you love? Coffee. Good deal. Right after I met Ali, I left for Cuba. These are my good friends, Dominic and Dana. And together, we're going to ride bikes around the western Cuba. We rode bikes from Havana, all along the northern coast on the western side to Vinales. And it was a great trip. I had been to Cuba before on my bike, but I was alone. This time, we got to share the adventure together. And that's what really made it magical. It's so much more fun to travel with your dear friends. And we stayed in people's homes. It's one of the safest places to ride a bike. There's like not much traffic at all. There's lots of horse drawn buggies. And it's just like taking a step back in time in Cuba. I love it. I love it so far, Ryan. Thank you for bringing me to Cuba to ride my bicycle. And then on our way back into Havana, when we finished our little one week loop, guess who was waiting for us? My mom was there. And Xantha, Dana's wife was there. And so we had a great time together. All as one big unit. And then they went home and my mom and I continue traveling to a town called Trinidad. And this was really exciting because my mom finally has retired. If you don't know the story, she is essentially raised four kids on her own, worked her butt off her entire life to give us kids everything we needed in life. And now she finally gets to breathe a little easier. She gets to wake up late in the mornings and she gets to do whatever the heck she wants because she's retired now. And today is an exciting day because it's my mom's last day of work at the city forever. Is this kind of a surreal moment? Yeah, it feels so right. Feels so good. One of my mom's goals with being retired now is to go on more little adventures with her family. And that's exactly what we did. We all jumped in the cars and headed down to Southern Colorado to visit the great sand dunes. My mom had never been there. I'd only been there once many, many years ago. But what made this adventure special is that we all did it as a family. My brother's wife, Haley was there with their two cute, super cute little kids, Carter and Brindley. Are you making one of your videos? Yeah, is that okay with you? All right, I got to I got to wax it up because I want I want excessive speed. All right, mom. That was a short ride. But it was a fun ride. A younger brother, Ethan was there with his wife, Melissa, who was pregnant. They have a baby now, but we're talking, you know, back in time, she was pregnant then. And we just had ourselves a great time at the sand dunes. Your whole face is covered in sand. In May, I took Ali down to Mexico for her birthday. So we went to a place we had never been a place called laguna bacalar. It's this beautiful freshwater lagoon about two hours south of Tulum on the Yucatan Peninsula. And this place blew us away. Isn't this crazy? Look at that sunset. Ali, look where we are. At the end of May was the Boulder Boulder 10k race. Right? It's time to run. Can't wait. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna be fun. My absolute favorite day of the year. I think this was my 30th time running this race. I started doing it when I was six years old. And this is the race that got me into running as a little dude. Right after that, I went to Montreal to cover a very, very huge bike event. And you know me, I kind of like bikes. I don't know how these organizers did it, but they made the sunset right on this street. It's beautiful. And now it's time to talk about the granddaddy of adventures this year, an adventure that will forever hold a very, very special place in my heart. And that is the adventure called love cycles. A lot of you probably watched all of those videos I made 35 of them. It was a very well covered event. And to give you a little backstory, I was gonna ride across the country by myself like I have done many times before Trek was going to sponsor the ride. And I was going to ride the checkpoint and just do my thing across the country and make videos like I usually do. But then Ali came into the picture and I was like, I don't want to leave Ali for three months this summer. I just met this beautiful girl. I can't just leave her. So what did I do? I invited her and Trek said, bring her along. We love girls on bikes. So that's exactly what we did. Starting in early June, we left a Storia, Oregon, and we rode our bikes all the way to New York City about 3500 miles away. I made you this burrito Ali. For me? This is for you. You really love me. Our goal was to travel a lot of the back roads and see hidden places of America we had never been to before. I keep on saying that this campsites the best site, but this one really might be the best site. Look at that. That is insane. Ali, we scored once again every single day. The good world is taking care of us. This is incredible. The whole goal of the ride, you know, it was titled love cycles was to learn from people about love and what makes relationships work. And we met wonderful humans all across the United States. And these people opened up their hearts to us total strangers. We'd known them for a matter of minutes and we'd be like, Hey, do you have any love advice for us? And sometimes they're like, Yeah, of course I do. And it was really fun to hear the stories from such a wide variety of people on the subject of love because that's something we can all jump on board with. You know, there's no division. There's no left or right or conservative or, you know, liberal. It's love. Everybody loves love and we all love someone or something. And we all have something to say about it. And that adventure with Ali by my side for three months all day every day sleeping in a tiny tent was something that we will never forget. It was absolutely incredible in so many ways. And thank you all for following love cycles. That was really, that was a big project. And we put a lot of our heart and souls into that project. And I think it turned out pretty well. This is one of those trips in life, which is an absolute dream come true to be able to do something like this with somebody you love. It may sound crazy, but riding my bike for almost three months kept me from running for almost three months. That was the longest break of my life with no running. So when I got home, I was like, I want to start running again. And it was hard. Like my body was not into running mode. It was into bike mode and my legs felt very, very heavy. That took me a while to get back in shape. But once I got back in shape, I decided to go back and give the Havelina 100 another shot. This is a 100 mile race that I did back in 2017. It was an amazing experience, but it was incredibly difficult. I had never put my body through so much pain in a 24 hour period, as I did during the first Havelina 100. One more lap, deep into the pain cave. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. And there are many times in that race, I was like, I'm never doing this again. But you know what? Humans are silly and we forget pain. We're like, you know what? I want to do that again. I want to put myself right back into that pain cave. And so that's what I did. Signed up for the Havelina 100. But this time, I had a secret weapon with me. I'm so glad you're here. I had Dana and Xantha, the most amazing crew in the world, keeping me hydrated and full of nutrition. But also, Allie was there. And she ran the last 20 miles with me, which really made a huge difference. All right, Allie. I've been waiting for this all day. Get to run with my Allie. She was the silver bullet to having a good race because I ran over two hours faster, which is awesome. A country that is very near and dear to my heart is Sweden. And Allie and I got to travel to Sweden just a few weeks ago in early December to visit my host family. And I lived in Sweden 20 years ago as an exchange student. And I fell in love with this country. It was like destiny that I met these people. They are the most kind and loving people I had ever met. And they welcomed me into their family like I was one of their own. And so now I consider them family. And so it was important for me for Allie to meet my Swedish family. So we went over there and had ourselves a great time. This is Sophia, my Swedish sister. It was Christmas season. And so it was all cozy. Now we dance around the Christmas tree. So we just had ourselves a wonderful cozy Swedish Christmas. You know, Allie, I think Santa Claus is technically from Sweden. So we're seeing the real deal right now. When we got back from Sweden it was time to do Christmas again here in Boulder. And we had just about every family member present this year. We had my grandma, Nana, who is 85 years old. My sister, Sarah, and her two kids. She lives in Tennessee. We had Logan and his wife, Haley. Logan is my middle brother and his two super cute kids, Carter and Brinley. And this year we had Ethan, little Ethan, with his new baby, Ellery, and his wife, Melissa, and my mom of course. And we had ourselves a good old family Christmas. Like when you're a kid you want lots of things and it's fun to want toys and video games and all that stuff. But we're at the age now where that stuff doesn't matter. And what matters is just being around each other and having a great time and playing games. And that's exactly what we did. So that's it my friends. 2018 what an incredible year. And I'm sitting here the final day of 2018. And my heart is very full. And I'm so grateful for all of the adventures I had this year. And the people I met and Ali and my mom retiring and our family being in good health. And I'm very, very grateful. And I'm going into 2019 positive and psyched to create more content for you to watch and to put more good things out there into the world and to be of service and to you know it sounds cheesy. But my goal is to make this world a better place. It really is. I want people to live full lives. And if I can help them get motivated to do that, that's awesome. So stay tuned for more in 2019 my friends. You will see more of Ali. Don't worry. She will be back in some of our adventures here very shortly. And have a wonderful new year. And let's do this team dozer.