463: Cyril Derreumaux—In the Flow

Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's the way I heard it. Mike Rowe here

Speaker 1 with my new favorite crazy French guy.

Speaker 1 You had an old favorite crazy French guy? Well, Pepe Le Pew occupied a fair amount of real estate in my brain for many, many, many years, but he has been eclipsed by the one and only Cyril Derrimeau,

Speaker 1 who I get to know and who you will get to know momentarily. I sort of know who this guy is.
And as you'll hear me say

Speaker 1 shortly,

Speaker 1 he's the kind of guy that I really wanted this podcast to be for and about. He's the kind of guest, you know? Someone who you find interesting that you meet along the way accidentally.
Right.

Speaker 2 But I mean, I would describe him as a guy who talked his way.

Speaker 1 onto the podcast.

Speaker 1 He did that. And you know what? Lots of people try.
And sometimes it works.

Speaker 1 But, you know, between production and logistics and timing and everything else, it's not realistic to forest gump your way through a podcast based on people you meet out in the real world. True.

Speaker 1 But this guy came pedaling past me four years ago.

Speaker 1 I was out for a ruck, and he was training.

Speaker 1 swung his bike around and he introduced himself. He speaks, what, six or seven languages, this guy.

Speaker 1 But he was using my mother tongue, thankfully uh and told me that he planned on paddling a kayak from California uh-huh

Speaker 1 to Hawaii yep and he said it's going to be a great adventure and I would love to come on your podcast and talk about it and you said I said well I tell you what crazy French guy

Speaker 1 if you actually do that and live

Speaker 1 Maybe I'll run into you again, you know, and maybe we'll have a chat. And then what happened? Well, I ran into him again.

Speaker 1 It's probably like a year and a half later, and there he is on his bike, and I'm huffing and puffing along on the bike trail with my ruck, and he pulls a U-turn and says, you know, my, Michelle,

Speaker 1 it is serial. I have done it.

Speaker 1 I'm like, wait, done what?

Speaker 1 I paddled across the Pacific in 91 days

Speaker 1 in a kayak alone. Alone.

Speaker 1 So holy crap. Now I'm paying attention.
And of course, it takes time and another year goes by. I was going to say, did you have him on the podcast?

Speaker 1 Well, I called you. I said, I was like, hey, man, I met this guy.
He paddled kind of like all over the Pacific. I think he's interesting.
But we were busy and, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 And then I see him again. He's like, Michelle, I have done it again.

Speaker 1 Like, what the hell are you talking about? This time he'd paddled across the Atlantic. Yes.
Alone in a kayak.

Speaker 2 In 70 days.

Speaker 1 In 70 days, men. So that's never been done.
And he's a guy who lives not far from where I live, who I've met three times in a completely serendipitous, random way.

Speaker 1 And now at Long Last, he's our guest. And he is everything that I hoped he would be, man.
Just an absolute joy to talk to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's like a Guinness Book of World Records holder multiple times.

Speaker 1 Look, he's not the only guy who's like gone across the ocean, but he did it the fastest. He did it the fastest, and he did it in two different oceans.

Speaker 1 I mean he did the Atlantic and the Pacific. Just to let you know he was serious.
Serious as a heart attack. He's generous as can be.

Speaker 1 If you are really wondering what it's like to be alone with nothing but your thoughts and your kayak and the seabirds and the creatures of the deep,

Speaker 1 he'll walk you through it. And I think you'll appreciate it.
And I think you're going to want to take a deeper dive on this guy. I'm interested in him.

Speaker 1 I'm fascinated to know what he's going to do next. And I feel really lucky that I stumbled into him.
I hope you will too.

Speaker 1 We'll find out right after this with a little episode we'd like to call In the Flow

Speaker 1 with Cyril Derrimo. Yes, he's French.

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Speaker 1 slash

Speaker 1 Mike.

Speaker 1 Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 2 Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1 This is the reason I changed the format of this podcast. Honestly, you are.

Speaker 1 I want to talk to a lot of different people, but mostly I wanted an excuse to talk to people that I genuinely just ran into by accident.

Speaker 1 And I almost literally ran into you, what was like a year ago on the bike path?

Speaker 2 Four years and two years ago. And last, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 I've spoken to you out in the wild at least three times. Correct.

Speaker 1 And each time I thought you were a little less crazy than you were the last time. So the first time we met, I'm like, ah, this is a crazy guy on a bike.
And I'm like, who am I to talk?

Speaker 1 I'm walking around with 65 pounds on my back like a lunatic. But we just talked and you said some nice things.
And then I got.

Speaker 2 At that time, what I was talking about was a dream. Right.
And the next time I saw you, I was like, I've done it. That's the difference.
That's why I'm less of a necket.

Speaker 2 Because the first thing is, why?

Speaker 2 And then it's how. And then you're more interesting because you've done it.

Speaker 1 Well, that's right. The first thing is, like, I filed you away in the back of my mind and thought, well, if this guy actually paddles across the Pacific Ocean by himself in a kayak and lives,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 I would like to know what that was like. And then you did that.
And then you did it again.

Speaker 1 What the hell is the matter with you?

Speaker 2 I guess I loved it so much. There's something on the ocean, on that

Speaker 2 loneliness. It's not loneliness.
It's being aloneness. Because I'd never felt lonely.

Speaker 2 That makes you connected to the oneness, to the ocean, to the elements that I wanted to feel again.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I had the boat, I had the experience, and I said, you know what?

Speaker 1 Why not? So the real quick synopsis is the first trip, you by yourself 90, 91 days from California, basically to what was it, Hilo? Big island? Correct. And then, what, a year later, you did it again?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this time from east to west, almost Africa, the Canary Islands of Africa, all the way across west to the Caribbeans, and I finished in Martinique.

Speaker 1 Across the Atlantic. Correct.

Speaker 1 I know, it sounds ridiculous. And that second trip did not take you 90 days.
It took you like 70, something?

Speaker 2 71. And it's longer, but the trade winds, the currents were stronger.
I believed in my boat better, so I could let it run better during the night. And I guess,

Speaker 2 I don't know, I was more connected. I felt even better.
I had done it before, so I had this safety of my mind to think, okay, I can do it again.

Speaker 1 Look, I have so many questions for you. Unfortunately, I'm probably going to ask some that you've already answered.
I promise I'll ask some that you've never heard

Speaker 1 before. But before we really dive in, it should be established that you're very French.

Speaker 1 I mean, clearly you're French, but you're a citizen of the world.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's how I like to define myself.

Speaker 1 How many languages do you speak? Six.

Speaker 2 And you?

Speaker 1 Less.

Speaker 1 I'm still working on one.

Speaker 1 So French, English, let me guess. Italian?

Speaker 2 Spanish, correct.

Speaker 1 Spanish.

Speaker 1 Given where you've been, you probably, it was Portuguese maybe?

Speaker 2 Correct. Brazil, yep.

Speaker 1 Portuguese.

Speaker 2 A bit of German. And German.
Yeah, and I'm learning Norwegian now.

Speaker 1 Why? Why not?

Speaker 2 Don't tell me why. Everybody asks me why.
Why do you want to do this?

Speaker 1 Why not?

Speaker 2 I want to do it. Let me do it.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm not stopping you. I'm just saying.

Speaker 1 I've got a mental list of people in my mind who have paddled solo around the world in a kayak and who decided to learn Norwegian with no clear plan of going to Norway as far as I know, just because.

Speaker 2 No plans.

Speaker 1 So we have to understand what makes you tick, and then I need to understand what you did to prepare for this. And then I want to hear about the journey and how it changed you.

Speaker 1 And then I want to hear why you took it upon yourself to drive here on your own time to sit across from me and

Speaker 1 do this. But first, the tattoos.
Explain those.

Speaker 2 This one I got yesterday. This one I got on my first, I did a first attempt.
I left from Sao Saledo. You're familiar? Fort Baker under the Golden Gate.
I know it well.

Speaker 2 And I was rescued five days later because I had a really terrific storm. My boat almost capsized.
I was afraid to die. And I got rescued by the Coast Guards.

Speaker 2 And I came out of this boat and I thought, okay, did I do everything I could? Did I want it? And I talked to the right people that give me the perspective.

Speaker 2 And Cyril, even though you worked for four years, you did everything you could, you talked to all the people that I crossed before. Listen, but

Speaker 2 in the end, you're probably not ready. So, what it is.
And I felt like

Speaker 2 maybe I could have gone even further in my,

Speaker 2 like,

Speaker 2 until my boat was going to drown I shouldn't have called for help like

Speaker 2 how far am I willing to go for my passion and the answer was

Speaker 2 there's people that go and and live for their passion or their their values if you're going to defend your controversies in a war etc you're you're okay to lose your life for this am I willing to lose my life for my passion of living life to the fullest and the answer was then no

Speaker 2 but the only way I was going to be able to do it would be if I could answer this yes. So I love symbols.

Speaker 1 But big difference between lose

Speaker 1 and the other four-letter word, which of course is risk.

Speaker 1 You risk your life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Happily.

Speaker 2 Well, there, no, yeah, there's risk, but if you can mitigate them by the right action, you're okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but to know, like to give, there's another four-letter word. So we have give, lose, and risk.

Speaker 1 To give your life in the service of something larger, a heavenly cause or a war effort, whatever it may be, to lose your life in the process of trying a thing, and to risk your life, knowing that either of the above might not end the way you want, but there's your journey, there's your trip.

Speaker 2 Well, here's your four little words for you. How about love life?

Speaker 2 No, love. Like, you love life so much that you're willing to risk the risk to feel every

Speaker 2 little scent that it can give you.

Speaker 1 How far out were you on that first trip? You said five days. Yeah, what is that a nautical miles?

Speaker 2 70 nautical miles,

Speaker 2 100 miles. Off of Santa Cruz.
No, I wasn't far. But the storm took me after days two.
It came out of nowhere. And for three days, I was stuck in my cabin.
I was attached.

Speaker 2 I have a strap on my chest, one on my hips.

Speaker 1 Describe the boat so people understand what you mean by a cabin.

Speaker 2 The kayak I built is able to withstand any stand, any storm, right?

Speaker 2 It's 23 feet long. It's got a cabin at the back that I can lay on it.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm looking at right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm sitting down at this copy that could be swamped by any waves at any time. So I'm wet all the time.
Okay, forget about being dry.

Speaker 2 My sleeping bag is wet after a week just because of the sheer condensation that I breathe day and night. Sure.
I've got food for 90 days. I make my own water with a desalinating water machine.

Speaker 1 And you're drinking ocean water. Correct.

Speaker 2 After two months, my whole body is made of ocean water. And I've become one with the ocean.
But here's the thing. So I lay down on this cabin.
I can close a hatch, and I'm perfectly fine.

Speaker 2 If you're okay being fine in a washing machine or a dryer for a few days.

Speaker 1 And this boat of yours, it's called the Valentine?

Speaker 2 Valentin is my sister. We're five kids in the family, one girl.
Uh-huh. And I wanted to give it to her.
Why not? Yeah, Valentin. She would take care of me.
I knew that.

Speaker 1 So in this photo, this looks like you're well into the journey. That's a full-on Tom Hanks castaway beard you've got going there.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I wanted to become a Viking.

Speaker 2 The spirit of the Viking, you know.

Speaker 1 Back to that. So what is the tattoo?

Speaker 2 So the tattoo, I got it from this amazing artist, Pate.

Speaker 2 And then I came to see him and I say, I need to, I love symbols. I need to have something that I could reach to that would show my dedication.
to getting to Hawaii.

Speaker 2 And I wanted to brand like this, like my, like, yes.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a very like a like a Maori.

Speaker 2 Correct. Yeah it's it's Samoa, but it's Polynesian culture and I love how they got connected so much with the ocean.
And it's a serial okay you're gonna cross this ocean. It's a journey.

Speaker 2 Birds are a good omen in the Polynesian culture because once you see a bird you're safe.

Speaker 2 Either the land is not too far or because the bird is here is because the storm could be away but it's a good omen. And the bird looks at the ocean because it's never afraid to be lost.

Speaker 2 A bird is never lost. A bird can be in storm.
It's okay. The bird, like, I've seen a bird every day of my journey.
You're like,

Speaker 1 oh, like, where do they go? Where do they go?

Speaker 2 Where do you stop? Where do you land?

Speaker 1 What do you eat?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 So he said, I'm going to do a bird because they spend 90% of the time on the ocean and they come back safely to land to nest.

Speaker 2 And you're going to have a good journey and the birds are going to protect you. So he did this.
He did this tattoo. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 No, but was that

Speaker 1 done after you actually made made it?

Speaker 2 No, first attempt and then

Speaker 2 before the Real Atlantic war finished in 90 days. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. So give me a date just so I can anchor this.
I meet you on the bike trail. It's four years ago and you're in the process of training for this journey.
Correct.

Speaker 2 It was two weeks. It was in 2021, two weeks before I took off.
It was too short that we could do anything. We could talk.
So I left and 90 days later I had the big Tomahank beard. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And successful. I came back.
It was like, I loved it, but I don't know if I can go again. So then I go back into the normal life.
You know, I paddle in the bay, a beautiful bay of stuff.

Speaker 1 What do you do for money? What is your normal life?

Speaker 2 I work. Yeah.
So now I'm a motivation speaker, but I was GM for a company that teach sailing in San Toledo.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So now I can sail. If you want, we can cross to Hawaii in a sailboat.

Speaker 1 That sounds great. I've got some time next Wednesday.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 2 So I do that. I couldn't, I can't be an adventurer full-time just yet.

Speaker 1 I'm just looking at, so that's your path.

Speaker 1 That's the Atlantic. That's the Atlantic, though.

Speaker 2 Yes, and you could see the

Speaker 2 first months, the currents were taking me northwest. That's when the mental game starts in because you're doing, you're going the opposite way of where you're going.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've got so many questions. So you paddle and pedal.
You're paddling and pedaling in this thing. Is that right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've got, I wanted to use a way to use my legs. So I've got a pedaling system that I use an hour a day.
So I wouldn't be completely atrophied when I land.

Speaker 1 Be like an astronaut astronaut coming back from space.

Speaker 2 Correct. I didn't watch

Speaker 2 or stand for three months. Like, look, you're sitting down here.
Yeah. What if I tell you for 90 days you cannot get up?

Speaker 1 Well, I would just pray for the most interesting guest of all time.

Speaker 1 One after the next. But no, I mean, that's unthinkable.
You have to be able to stretch, I would think. You've got to be able to wash yourself.
You've got to be able to, you know, how do you crap?

Speaker 1 How do you crap in the middle of the ocean? What do you mean?

Speaker 2 So I got this little dessert bowl. I just sit on it.

Speaker 1 A dessert bowl?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I had to find a way. Like, you can, and I just toss it in the ocean.

Speaker 1 Of all the names, a dessert bowl. Like, what'd you do? You walked in bed, bath, and beyond.

Speaker 1 I'm looking for a mixing bowl with, you know, a soft edge. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Not too, not too big, not too weak. It has to be strong because I sit on it.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, let's just riff on that then.
Your routine. Like, give me a 24-hour day for you.

Speaker 2 I wake up with a sunrise.

Speaker 2 Actually, half an hour before sunrise. I got to get ready and optimize every light I've got.

Speaker 2 First light, the sunrise is beautiful.

Speaker 2 I take it all. And every time I can get any energy to fill me in, I'll take it.
And it could be a sunrise. It could be a beautiful cloud.
It could be a bird. It could be anything.

Speaker 2 And then I paddle for five hours in the morning. So I eat about 4,000 calories.
It's about twice as much as a regular land. What are you eating? I was free-dry meals,

Speaker 2 bars, all the stuff that are light and high-calorie. I never heated water.
I always ate cold because should I have something to heat, I could burn myself, right?

Speaker 2 So it was a risk I didn't want to take. Then I eat that, and I paddle five hours until noon.
Noon, the sun is up in the

Speaker 2 top, and that's when I want to use my batteries to make water. Otherwise, I would drain my batteries too fast.
When the sun is at the zenith, it charges my batteries.

Speaker 2 I can make a gallon of water in about an hour. So I kind of stay around in the cabin.
It's good to take a break and I go back on the cockpit to another five-hour paddle.

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Speaker 1 Louise, hey, take a break. It's not like you go anywhere, though.

Speaker 2 No, I just go in the cabin. Yeah.
You just, well, I let the boat drift wherever it goes. It doesn't matter.
I look at my plotter.

Speaker 2 In fact, early in the morning, I forgot to say my weather router, I've got a professional guy who's going to tell me, okay, here's the weather for the next three days. It's going to go up, down.

Speaker 2 Here's the strength of the wind, 15, 16, 20 knots. Here's the height of the waves, the direction of the wave, the frequency between the waves.

Speaker 2 Where if you know if it's a five meter, let's 10 feet wave, 15 seconds, it's going to be kind of flat. So it's okay.
But the same height of wave, but eight seconds is going to make it much steeper.

Speaker 2 So it's much dangerous. It could crash on you.
So then I adjust my day. Do I wear a short? Do I wear, you know, suspenders or whatever, like be more protected.

Speaker 2 Five hours in the afternoon, I finish. I started my routine of hygiene.
You know, I'm so salty. I'm sitting down on my butt all day.
I could have salt sores very fast. So I need to clean that.

Speaker 2 My routine of hygiene is important. It's so important.

Speaker 1 I would imagine every single routine.

Speaker 1 is injured. Every month through everything.

Speaker 2 Everything. Because the slightest injury could be fatal.
I could not cut myself. I will never heal.

Speaker 1 Right, right. A wound won't heal, but like a broken finger, a jammed, you know, you twist an ankle somehow.
You can't pedal.

Speaker 1 You're in like real trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that's why you got to be slow. You say it's a long term, long three, 90 days, three months.
I got to take it slow. You're not running.
You take it easy. Self-awareness is the most important.

Speaker 2 Self-awareness of where your physical body is, your mind. Are you too emotional? Are you too fearful? Are you optimistic? Are you

Speaker 2 you have to have the self-awareness to see and look at yourself because nobody is going to tell you once you have the self-awareness? You have to have the self-critique. That's the number two.

Speaker 2 Self-critique is being able to analyze how you are and say, is it good? Is it bad? What do I do about this?

Speaker 1 With brutal honesty.

Speaker 2 Yes, you can't lie to yourself. You don't bullshit yourself.

Speaker 1 No, there's no mirror alone.

Speaker 2 No, you can say, I'm feeling, no, you're not feeling good. Okay.
Yeah. It's been three days in a storm.
You could be optimistic, but it has to be true.

Speaker 2 The third one is: okay, how do you change that? Do you reframe? How do you reframe your mind mind so you can change something about it?

Speaker 1 Okay, I'll get to that in a second because,

Speaker 1 I mean, this is a brain game.

Speaker 2 Okay, let me finish my day. Sorry about it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Night comes. I don't want to paddle at night because I don't see the waves coming.
It's dangerous. I could fall overboard, be lost at sea.

Speaker 2 What I do, I wake up every hour because one of the biggest problems is the container ships. I can detect the container ships up to 20 miles away on my plotter, my GPS, okay? And they can see me.

Speaker 2 But they come fast. They do 20 miles miles an hour.
I'm doing two miles an hour. I'm drifting.
It's 0.5 miles an hour.

Speaker 2 I'm seven meters long. They're 300 meters long.
So I got to watch for them, even though they're watching. I don't know.
So the way I do it is I wake up every hour, look at my plotter. I can see one.

Speaker 2 Okay, this direction is good. There's not going to be collision.
I'm good. I can wake up in an hour, look at it again.
So I changed my sleep pattern to waking up every hour.

Speaker 2 And then you get used to sleep deprivation. You get used to seasickness.
You get used to the 15 hour spanning.

Speaker 1 You can get used to anything.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's the thing, man.
That's crazy. The body.

Speaker 1 Just train it. Just tell it what to expect.
And then do it again. Do it again.
Do it again. So you're sleeping an hour at a time.
Yeah. You wake up every hour just to course correct, right?

Speaker 2 I don't course correct. I look at my drift.
That's it.

Speaker 1 Well, what if, I mean, if you get in a big blow like that, and if you, I mean, you could do, what, 15, 20 miles a day, maybe paddling. Correct.
Yep. And you could give all that back at night.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'll wake up the next morning. I'm further than I've started.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 it's good. You picked up 10 miles

Speaker 1 in the right direction.

Speaker 2 That's what happened in the Atlantic. The Atlantic is 100 nautical miles longer than the Pacific.
It took me three weeks less.

Speaker 2 The current was so strong, I let it drift, wake up at four. All right, baby.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We should point out that in reality, the Pacific is much larger. It's just that.

Speaker 2 Craig, I did the mid-Pacific.

Speaker 1 You did the mid-Pacific. Had you gone all the way to what, New Zealand or Australia?

Speaker 2 Australia, or you could go to the Philippines or cross the other way to Japan.

Speaker 1 You'd still be out there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I would be starving because I, arriving in Hilo, I was already missing food because I thought it was going to be a journey of 70 days. And it took me 90.

Speaker 2 So I had to ration halfway through.

Speaker 1 How much weight did you lose?

Speaker 2 15 pounds on both times.

Speaker 1 And that's actually a lot. in three months, considering that you probably didn't have 15 pounds to lose.

Speaker 2 I did. My strategy was to go back home and my mom would feed me in a week.

Speaker 1 So you went out fat?

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 1 Well, all that training I saw you doing.

Speaker 2 I know, but it's the hardest thing to gain weight when you do four hours a day of training. It's the hardest thing.

Speaker 1 I would love to try.

Speaker 2 Go to France, eat a few croissants.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Croissants baguette with butter, bignet, foie grat, whatever you want.
Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 1 So that's a 24-hour day. You wake up with the sun.
The first thing you do is figure out just how far your course may have changed.

Speaker 1 All right. uh and you start paddling

Speaker 2 yeah day in and day out there's no saturday there's no sunday look at all the things you do in two days do you keep track of time i don't do you even try yeah of course you try to you put you do like tomahawks you put a little crack on you know a little paint and then five days ten days and then you're like is it tuesday wednesday who cares yeah and then how long has it been 20 like doesn't matter it's every day is the same but every day is different and every day just that day matters the fact the past doesn't let's just ruminate on that for a minute Every day is the same.

Speaker 1 It's the vast, limitless Pacific. But every day is different.
Even though you're looking at what appears to be the same. Yeah.
Like, so how does that make that make sense for people? Right.

Speaker 1 How is it new and familiar at the same time?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 here on land, on land, like

Speaker 2 you have...

Speaker 2 a schedule, you have calendar, you have an email, you have a phone, you have something to stay on track you have somewhere to go always somewhere to go which is stressful they i have nothing else to do than paddle there's nothing else it's so simple like what are you doing today

Speaker 1 i have more paddling today

Speaker 2 yeah so it you can have you you've understood the

Speaker 2 concept of flow being in the flow right uh the best athletes the best chess players get into the flow you're a tennis player you yeah where time changes so it doesn't the 10 10 hours seem to be two hours that's interesting i talk a lot about that too so the certain activities will compress time yeah and others just seem to like stretch it out like a blade

Speaker 1 it just goes on forever did did this i imagine it was both i imagine it felt interminable and i imagine there were days that were over Yeah, before they began.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I believe it's how you manage your expectations. Have you seen if you say, I'm going to go for a run 20 minutes, the last two minutes are hard.

Speaker 2 If you go for a one hour run, the last two minutes are hard. If you go for a three hour ride, the last three minutes are hard.

Speaker 2 So if you say I'm going to go for three months for days and days, it's actually not that bad because you know it's when you get towards the end of your expectations that it starts to be hard.

Speaker 2 Before that, well, you're just doing what you're doing. But the concept of the future doesn't exist because it's not here yet.
The past doesn't matter because it's gone just becomes real.

Speaker 2 You could read all the books of Buddhism and anything that tells you exactly that. Just be mindful of the present moment.
You know, you're drinking your water, you're drinking your water.

Speaker 2 You're talking to Mike, you're talking to Mike. Just be in the present moment.
It just makes sense. Like, it's only a theory until you live it and then you meet the reality.

Speaker 2 And the reality just tells you what they've been telling you is totally right.

Speaker 1 What happens in your mind?

Speaker 1 Day after day after day. I mean, you had, you don't know it's going to take 90.
You know, it could have taken 70, it could have taken more. Yeah.
You don't know.

Speaker 1 But as you're going, and like once you're in the thick of it, somewhere near the middle and you, like you're in that flow,

Speaker 1 how do your emotions work? And what is there to become

Speaker 1 emotional

Speaker 1 over?

Speaker 1 I cried every day.

Speaker 2 I cried every day because the people that are back on land,

Speaker 2 the human touch, you miss it so much and then you go all over the place so the the only way to grasp a 90-day trip is to have a goal for maybe the next two days I'm going through the next two days and then the next week and then I actually the first two weeks is survival because sleep deprivation physical you change your food you change your your exercise there's so much is just survival and then the next you're not in the flow yet no

Speaker 2 And then you set another goal, which is, okay, I'm 400 nautical miles. Let's reach 500 nautical miles.
Then you celebrate that little victory. And then you're one-fourth of the journey.

Speaker 2 Okay, how about I celebrate that 600 nautical miles? Then anything positive you wanted. Because I refused any negativity.
I said, no, negativity is not where I come in this boat.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be positive. It's raining.
I'm going to find the positive of the rain. I'm going to find the positivity of the wind behind me or the lack of wind.
It's a mindset where

Speaker 2 you just decide.

Speaker 2 what you want to think. Now, if you catch yourself, because your emotions can go all over the place, snap out of it.
And that's where self-awareness come back, where you have to know yourself.

Speaker 2 If you're a warrior, bring on the war. I'm an emotional.
I see beauty everywhere. I'm going to try to find beauty to charge my batteries.

Speaker 1 Where'd you find it?

Speaker 2 In a sunrise,

Speaker 2 in a soft breeze. There's a video.
I'm actually, I showed it to you. This video.
It's nothing. It's just the same sunrise as here.
But it was after a week of terrible weather. I couldn't sleep.

Speaker 2 And I come out and my movie is my GoPro. I'm going to film this.
And I got caught by the moment. It was a moment of grace where it just overwhelms you.
Like the beauty of the sunrise.

Speaker 2 There's like the wind, but it's a soft wind, like a caress on your skin. And suddenly, you know, there's not big wave, but just a swell that is kind of smooth.

Speaker 2 And you see the clouds and the color is beautiful. And there's a bird coming to see you.
It's like, what?

Speaker 2 And that's why I do this. That's why.

Speaker 1 Did it feel? I mean, that's such a great way to put it, but did you feel like the bird was coming to see you? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I was talking to them. I said, yeah.

Speaker 2 I started to talk to every bird.

Speaker 1 Do they talk back?

Speaker 2 No, they don't. Some days.

Speaker 1 They don't care. Rude.
No, but. Rude seabirds.

Speaker 2 They don't care. They're in their own world and the ocean doesn't care.

Speaker 1 What a treat you must be to them. Yeah.
Imagine them. They're not out there for 90 days.
They're out there for years.

Speaker 1 There's a tanker. We've seen that.
We've seen that. What the hell is going on over here with this bearded freak?

Speaker 1 Where's he going? Let's go see him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. What about fish? What about whales? What about

Speaker 2 whales, sharks? Sharks are okay. You know, everybody say, ah, but the sharks.
No, they just come by, see you, and they go. I got scared

Speaker 2 on the Atlantic. I saw a swordfish as big big as my boat.
And the swordfish has a bill. Okay, there's been accounts of swordfish attacking or punching.

Speaker 2 We don't know if they're attacking, but punching rowing boats.

Speaker 2 And we don't know if it's because they're chasing the fish that it's hiding behind the, they hit it or they don't see you and they hit you. But should they hit me, this guy was 23 feet long.

Speaker 2 I'll show you the video. This guy's like...
You got a video of this thing? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I got so scared.
Like, I stopped paddling completely.

Speaker 2 I want to be invisible. I feel so vulnerable.
It's like walking in the savannah and there's a lion comes here. You're naked.
You cannot do it. Like it's your turn.
Please just go away. I love you.

Speaker 2 Please go away. Please.

Speaker 1 You have no choice but to assume what they call the submissive posture. Right.
I mean, wolves do it, right? A wolf, a small wolf meets a big wolf.

Speaker 1 They just lie back and expose their belly and say, look. Right.

Speaker 1 There's really no mystery here. If you're going to eat me, you can.
You know, I prefer you not, but let's just...

Speaker 1 And that's, you you know and nature works what do you a 23 foot swordfish people are gonna

Speaker 2 people can't imagine that yeah i just came on the side so i i could see his eye and he was looking at me with an some sort of alien look like he was just checking me i was not aggressive at all i guess everything is in my mind right what if this that was one of my fears before i left what if if he punches a hole as big as a golf ball ball in the front in the middle of the night what do i do i punch okay i've got my carbon fiber my epoxy i can patch it from the bottom what if it's two o'clock in the morning middle of the night do I jump in that thing just hit me will it hit me again whoa better not think about this did you get out of the boat much no not much I just need to go really just grab the the barnacles they grow very fast and they slow me down but no I don't like how much can a barnacle or not a barnacle but hundreds of them I suppose form quickly oh yeah yeah it's so I in the Pacific I went under and they were about two inches long already already after 50 days.

Speaker 1 Are you tethered?

Speaker 2 I'm tethered all the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 One of the big risks is to fall in the water. Even by mistake, I could drift faster than I could swim, especially if I don't use my legs.
I can't swim. I've got all my gear.

Speaker 2 So I'm tethered all the time. That was one of the things I would promise my loved ones.
I say, I'm attached, even if it's flat, day and night, I'm attached.

Speaker 1 When were you the most scared?

Speaker 2 When you lose control,

Speaker 2 there's this thing, if you're really well prepared, you can think of

Speaker 2 what if this happens, what do I do? I've got plan A, plan B, plan C. My watermaker broke twice.
I had a plan B. It's okay.
Even if it's bad.

Speaker 2 The things that are hard is something happens that you could not prevent, you could not preemptively imagine, for which you don't have a solution for.

Speaker 2 Now, so you lose control. And the one thing about self-awareness, of self-esteem, in your attempt to do something like this is, I know I can adapt to anything.

Speaker 2 Once you're in the middle of a storm, you're naked. You're like, I cannot do anything.
So there's no fight. There's no flight.
I cannot fight against the ocean. I'm just okay.
I cannot flight.

Speaker 2 I cannot go anywhere. There's no freeze.
I'm going to

Speaker 2 be invisible. The only way is acceptance.
Acceptance of your vulnerability and your smallness.

Speaker 2 And then whatever happens, happens. So you give up on not life, but you give up on your willingness to be safe.
And then if that happens, it gives you so much power. Because then, who cares?

Speaker 1 That's the samurai, right? You're already dead. Correct, yes.

Speaker 1 There's a very poignant moment in the great film, It's a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey realizes that Uncle Billy is a terrible employee.

Speaker 1 It's right after Uncle Billy takes a moment to gloat in front of Mr. Potter, but then stupidly leaves his newspaper behind along with $15,000 of bank deposits, which Mr.
Potter steals.

Speaker 1 It's not long after that that poor George Bailey is standing on the bridge over the Bedford River, ready to take his own life to avoid the scandal put in motion by Uncle Billy's carelessness.

Speaker 1 It occurred to me.

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Speaker 1 the smartest way to

Speaker 1 aside from humanity and just the touch of another person or the ability to have a conversation with someone, what else do you miss?

Speaker 1 And when you start to think about what you miss, do you immediately instruct your brain to get that out of there?

Speaker 1 Like, is that filed under the negativity that you want to keep off your boat? Or is it actually something

Speaker 1 you can cling on to and think of to...

Speaker 1 you know, to bring you a little peace.

Speaker 1 I've always been interested, like I think of people in solitary confinement, for instance, or really any number of other adventurers who have put themselves off the grid,

Speaker 1 you know, and whether a nostalgic thing, you know, is it indulgent to thinking of home, thinking of your loved ones? Does it help you or hurt you?

Speaker 2 You miss so much. I think the first, the most important you feast is human, people you love.
In fact, I wrote so many blogs about love. I'll tell you more about this.
About fraternity.

Speaker 2 But I think everything else is just secondary. Good food, yeah, I'd like to have a warm burger and a cold beer and an ice cream.

Speaker 2 It doesn't really matter. Comfort, I don't care about it.
I'm wet, so why? I'll be dry.

Speaker 2 But what happens is all these little things, when you come back to land, it just re-enhances the ability to enjoy the simple things.

Speaker 2 A little kid that comes and you hug him, and he cries, he smiles, he laughs. You enjoy that.
There's a butterfly, it's beautiful. Wow, you smell

Speaker 2 the land and earth. And just a moment of peace with friends.
Just be here.

Speaker 1 The feeling maybe of your bare feet in the sand, in the dirt,

Speaker 1 on the concrete.

Speaker 1 Something real and connected. Oh, yeah.
Not moving.

Speaker 2 Kissing land when you get there. And like, I'm not a water animal.
I was out of my element and now I'm back.

Speaker 1 Were you able to walk? I mean, how long till your sea legs?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So sea legs is only 24 hours where everything moves, but it's more

Speaker 2 when I stand, the hips and the knees hurt hurt because I didn't use the stability muscles and the ligaments to walk right yeah but it comes back it's there I just do a lot of yoga and stretch and you got seasick I did yeah I'm always seasick five days

Speaker 1 come on you throw up every day yeah well you throw up and but you know that it's just the time that your brains need to adjust it the internal here that's it so come on brian do your thing five days later you're good I've seen two different kinds of seasick in my life I've been on a lot of boats and I've seen the kind that you can work through,

Speaker 1 paddle through, pedal through, whatever, puke. I've gotten sick on camera.
Right. You know, I've thrown up in the middle of sentences and finished the sentence.
Yeah. That's one kind.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then there's the kind that I don't, you know, people just go away for a day or so. They can't get up.
They can't go to the bathroom. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm lucky I'm part of the first one.

Speaker 1 Because that would kill you if you got. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I wonder if your body would even permit it.

Speaker 2 would your body let you succumb to that kind of seasickness if your brain knows it's a death sentence yeah so i i'm part of the second group where i can manage it but i'm super aware that if i if i vomit i'm losing liquids if i don't drink I'm sweating, I'm losing liquids.

Speaker 2 So I force myself to drink and eat, even though it's a little bit. I wake up in the middle of the night to just eat, and I know it's going to last five days.

Speaker 2 I could manage it, but there takes discipline because it's just my dreams

Speaker 2 would go away if I I were not to.

Speaker 1 What did it feel like to actually

Speaker 1 get in a bed with cool, crisp sheets? Dry sheets. Dry sheets.
Like, were you able to sleep or did it? Or were you like Tom Hanks sleeping on the floor?

Speaker 2 No, I slept for eight hours straight like I was in heaven.

Speaker 2 I tell you, the shower when you arrive, because my watermakers broke twice during the Pacific after 50 days. So then I'm doing this manual thing for two hours to get my gallon.
It's drop after drop.

Speaker 2 You get in the shower, you start to get it.

Speaker 1 How does that work? So wait a minute. It's a desalinating machine, basically?

Speaker 2 It's a manual one. Yeah, you throw a little hose in the water, and then what it'll do, it'll take some water, pressurize it to a high PSI.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't know what to tell you, but 90% of that water goes through those

Speaker 2 tangential filters out. It's the brime.
Only 10% is filtered out. It's drop after drop.
And then you fill up your bottled water.

Speaker 1 So how long does it take you to get a bottle, a quart?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's two hours to get those gallon.

Speaker 1 See if you can find this thing, Chuck. I'm just.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's Power Survivor.

Speaker 2 It's not the 40E, something.

Speaker 1 Ah, the 40E was a great one.

Speaker 1 When it comes to desalinating,

Speaker 1 why cut corners?

Speaker 1 Wow. Okay, so you have to look at your food really as fuel and not much else.

Speaker 2 Calories. It's calories.

Speaker 1 Yep. And your go-to dinner, like if...

Speaker 2 Oh, oatmeal.

Speaker 2 Oatmeal, I don't want anything spicy, too sweet, or too salty. Something bland, it just fills me up.
Yeah. And I would add some granola.
I actually created my own breakfast.

Speaker 2 Oatmeal, a cup of oatmeal, half a cup of granola. Then I had a cup

Speaker 2 of these protein and a little cup of fibers. And I would have that powdered milk.
And that was my breakfast. 900 calories.
That's my morning.

Speaker 2 And I would have freeze-dry meals, cold, like eat spaghetti, cold, like whatever, chowder, and then bars and gels, and then electrolytes.

Speaker 2 Electrolytes, so the water desalinated has kind of a weird taste to it. I bet.
And there's because it's filtered, okay.

Speaker 2 So that's my 40e. That's the one that broke twice.
I don't like that one.

Speaker 1 Oh, the power survived. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40e.

Speaker 1 Twice, sorry.

Speaker 1 Sorry, guys. Probably not going to sell a lot of those on this episode.
No, it was perfect. It's just until it broke.
Yeah, twice. Twice.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Bellas. So, which one is in the boat now? Where is the boat now?

Speaker 2 It's in Sausalito in the Bay Model. It's the museum in Sausalito where people can go for free and look at it.
I want kids to be inspired.

Speaker 1 Is that where it's going to live forever?

Speaker 1 Forever, no. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 I've got a virus.

Speaker 1 When are you back in the water with this thing?

Speaker 2 Maybe a couple of years. I don't know.
I'm dreaming.

Speaker 2 The Atlantic was eight months ago. So I need to...
learn how to walk again to get some strength.

Speaker 2 And one of the issues when we're in adventure.

Speaker 1 What do you mean, still?

Speaker 2 You're still recovering? Oh yeah, I'm still working out.

Speaker 2 I lost 20 pounds of muscle, you know? So, but also mentally, it's hard, it's so taxing.

Speaker 2 How do you, the problem with adventure like this is when you come back to land, it seems so bland that you kind of want to go on another one right away.

Speaker 2 And that would be a mistake to go with the wrong motivation. So I give myself time to think over it, do I really want to feel that inner fire,

Speaker 2 feel that motivation. Okay, I'm going to go back to training so many hours a day, go back to trying to find a finance.
What ocean do I want to do?

Speaker 2 There's like these little things that tickles you a little bit every morning. And you wake up at four, you look at this website.
Oh, you know, okay.

Speaker 2 And you go to Windy, you look at the patterns of the currents, and then the dreams start to shape. But I think...
The what? The dreams? The dreams.

Speaker 1 Look, man, it's a very artistic way to think about adventure in the sense that,

Speaker 1 well, you're waiting for the muse,

Speaker 1 right? Like a lot of people who write,

Speaker 1 they're not going to sit down and write simply. Some do.
Some writers,

Speaker 1 it's just a job. They sit down.
I write eight hours a day, doesn't matter if I feel like it or not.

Speaker 1 Others, they need to wait for the muse to come. You're an adventurer, but you're not going to go until what? The dreams inform the decision.
Right.

Speaker 2 And it needs to come from a place where I'm comfortable with the consequence of that decision. I'm 50, I'm 49, I'm 50.

Speaker 2 Do I want to do this all my life? Like, can I find my need for liberty or escapism?

Speaker 2 I could just cross Mongolia in a horse. Like, it would take three weeks.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Why not? Why risk my life? Why do I want to?

Speaker 1 I'll put a list of reasons together for you if you're really curious as to why you did not want to cross the Mongolian desert on a pony. But yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this. Like, is it ego that makes me push to doing that third ocean? Is it going to be the one too many? Is it going to be, like, why? Why do you do this?

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 1 Well, that's the eternal question.

Speaker 1 Are you addicted?

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's, I think, I'm not addicted, but I think there's something you feel out there

Speaker 2 that you want to feel again.

Speaker 1 Who do you, like, when you think about the prototypical adventurer, I'm sure you've read much about all of this. Yeah.
I mean, clearly.

Speaker 1 Is it Shackleton? Is it

Speaker 1 Magellan? Is it...

Speaker 1 I mean, Balboa,

Speaker 2 how do you think about these things? No, there's one guy that I really like. His name is Mike Horne.
I don't know if you know him. Horn.
Horn.

Speaker 2 He's South African, and he lived in Europe for many years. He's done this book that I read 20 years ago called Latitude Zero.

Speaker 2 And his idea was to go around the world following the lane of equator, the imaginary lane of the center of the world, without going 40k's north or 40ks south. He followed it human-powered.

Speaker 2 So he crossed the Atlantic on a boat. Once he got there, he crossed the jungle of the Amazonian by foot in six months.

Speaker 2 He climbed the mountains of Equator, then he sailed from Equator all the way to Indonesia, crossed Indonesia on a mountain bike. What's his name, Mike Horn?

Speaker 1 Mike Horn.

Speaker 2 He's the biggest adventurer.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, he's my, yeah, he's my idol.

Speaker 1 I can't believe I haven't read that, but I. Yeah, and it's one of the 20 he's done.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's walked, you know, the North Pole in winter.

Speaker 2 So, and then he's got a way of explaining is like, why not? Like, I want to do this.

Speaker 2 And, and there's a certain category of people, maybe I'm one of those that don't, don't really need a reason to follow what your passion is, right?

Speaker 2 I guess when people ask you why they don't get it, it's because they're looking at what you're trying to do with their own filters.

Speaker 2 You don't ask the Beatles why they were singing or Picasso, hey, Picasso, that nose is at the bottom of of that eye. The eye is cross-eyed.
Like, you don't ask Picasso, why is he painting every day?

Speaker 2 So, maybe I'm part of this

Speaker 2 personality that says, why not? And especially, why not me?

Speaker 2 I'm a regular guy. Like, I was playing soccer all my life until I moved to California.
I was 32. Never kayaked before 32.

Speaker 2 And maybe it takes a little bit of self-belief or

Speaker 2 arrogance. I don't know what it is, but why not me?

Speaker 1 Well, you're either

Speaker 1 there are only three things you can impress, right? Other people, yourself,

Speaker 1 or something

Speaker 1 supernatural. That's Mike Horn.
Oh, look at him. He's crazy as a bed bug.

Speaker 1 Look at that guy.

Speaker 2 He's fantastic.

Speaker 1 He's fantastic. Have you met him?

Speaker 2 I have, yeah. Actually, he sent me a video before I left.
He says, Sir, I'll just keep on paddling. It's going to be hard, but keep paddling.
We love this guy.

Speaker 1 How, um

Speaker 1 I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but has anyone ever done what you've done?

Speaker 2 Well, there were five people before me. I'm the first one to have crossed two different oceans.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, we're six, seven people to have done this.

Speaker 1 It's a short list. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I spoke to every one of them. Everybody's super open.
Scott Donaldson crossed the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. Spoke to him.
He gave me all the info.

Speaker 2 Spoke to Peter Bray, who crossed from Canada to Ireland. The North Atlantic is so tough.
Spoke to him, listened to podcasts. I spoke to Edgulette.
Edgulette is American. You know him?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, he's a legend.

Speaker 2 What I did is nothing. He crossed on a kayak, a double kayak, like plane, no cabin.
Okay, he went from Monterey to Hawaii in 64 days, navigating with a sextant.

Speaker 1 Now, that's my next question.

Speaker 2 In 1987, imagine.

Speaker 2 And he had a kite, so he was the first one to cross in a kayak. I was the first one here in Powered, but he lay the way.

Speaker 1 Dumb.

Speaker 1 Well, Pure Talk just had their best year ever, and they asked me if I would take the time in this ad to simply thank you on their behalf.

Speaker 1 I said, sure, saying thanks is important, especially this time of year.

Speaker 1 But before I thank you guys for switching to Pure Talk, I want to thank them sincerely for taking a stand on a few things that do matter to me on a personal level, like keeping their customer service in this country and providing hundreds of American jobs.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that. For implementing a Roundup program that allows their customers to round up their bill.
They take the extra money and they give it to America's Warrior Partnership.

Speaker 1 Those guys are doing incredible work to fight veteran suicide. PureTalk donated 1,000 hand-sewn American-made flags to veterans on the 4th of July.
I thought that was great.

Speaker 1 And of course, if you listen to this podcast, you know they support Microworks. We turned 17 on Labor Day, and they sent our Work Ethics Scholarship program a check for $100,000.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that a lot. They're a great company.
They keep their business in this country. They provide a wonderful service.

Speaker 1 So, on behalf of everyone over there at Pure Talk, thank you guys so much for making this a year to remember. And to the rest of you, a Merry Christmas.

Speaker 1 Explain the difference so people understand of navigating with a sextant versus, say, dead reckoning versus whatever the state-of-the-art GPS might be that I assume you had on your plotter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, had he done it now, he would have used a plotter for sure. But back then in 87.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the sextant is this kind of plasticky, weird-looking thing that helps you to measure the height of the sun at noon. Right?

Speaker 2 And it's actually not accurate because your boat is moving, like you're in a kayak. You don't really have a good line of sight.

Speaker 2 But you kind of estimate and it gives you your latitude. And then you make calculation, you know your longitude.
And then from that, you say, okay, where am I? Hawaii is this way.

Speaker 2 I'm going to keep going at that good. But it's really hard.

Speaker 2 He had no sat phone. It didn't communicate with anybody.

Speaker 2 So doing that crossing without talking to anybody, I had land support that I talked to or texted every day. That helped me tremendously mentally.

Speaker 2 So the guy's legend. Now, he was the first one to ever do it.
right? He didn't know how long it would take. He thought it was going to be 40 days.

Speaker 2 So he took a kite and just flew the kite, made him cross. But even that...

Speaker 1 He made it like as a sail?

Speaker 2 As a

Speaker 2 kite in the air. Yeah.
You know, it was very long strings and he pulled the kayak. But he made it to Hawaii.
People thought he was dead because for two weeks, three weeks, he had no sign of life.

Speaker 2 He arrived in Maui.

Speaker 2 atrophied he walked to the thing he bought all the candies he could i mean you have to read this book called the pacific alone all right yeah i read that book and I said, I want to feel that what it is.

Speaker 1 I actually need a reading list from you. So The Pacific Alone.
Right.

Speaker 1 The other one, Mike Horn's book.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. And Latitude Zero.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Latitude. Well, I'm writing my own book.

Speaker 2 I'll give it to you.

Speaker 1 I would hope so.

Speaker 1 I hope you'll sign it too.

Speaker 1 What about...

Speaker 1 Have you seen Free Solo? Yes. Have you talked to Alex Hunnald?

Speaker 2 I have not. I love, I mean, he's a...

Speaker 1 Talk about the flow. Yeah.
You got to be in the flow to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is the guy who climbed, was at El Capitan.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Well, no rope. Crazy.
But here's the thing. I'm working on a documentary for my Pacific Crossing.

Speaker 2 If you look at Free Solo, Alex Hunnold, like a triple gold medal when he does that climb, right?

Speaker 2 When you look at it, 90% of people are going to say, wow, this is amazing. You got a sweaty palms when you look at it.

Speaker 1 This is great.

Speaker 2 Like, it's one of the biggest things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But when you finish that movie, you're like, I can't do that. I can't do that.
Like, this guy's machine.

Speaker 1 Like, okay,

Speaker 2 my whole thing and why I'm here talking to you, and thank you for this, I want to tell people that you could be a regular guy.

Speaker 2 If you're passionate enough, not just to follow your dreams, but okay with the discipline, the risk, what it takes, and giving up, sacrifice, all this. You can do anything you want.

Speaker 2 right you could be a regular guy and honk what it's been 10 years you wanted to paint you haven't painted painted, start the guitar now. It doesn't matter if you're 50.

Speaker 2 You want to start triathlon, you want to live in Argentina, you want to do it. And what I want to do, if I were to do this documentary, is people finish this.

Speaker 2 This crazy French guy across the Pacific, he started at 30. What? What am I waiting for? You know, and I wanted people to feel that inspiration and I hope they get it from the podcast too, where.

Speaker 2 Do it, like follow your dreams. Like just one life.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Look, man, there are lots of people out there who get paid to speak. I'm one of them.

Speaker 1 I struggle about how to talk in motivational terms to people because I don't necessarily understand who my audience is a lot of the time. I don't know what they need to hear or what they want to hear.

Speaker 1 And I'm not sure either of those things matter. Like, I can just tell them my story.

Speaker 1 I didn't do what you did.

Speaker 1 But at this point in your life, I would imagine you do need to put some sides on this because it's really important, I think i think you have something to say and i think people have a huge benefit to be yanked

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 prodded or coaxed

Speaker 1 out of their pattern out of their comfort zone yeah maybe that's the question i should ask you how do you think about comfort how do you think about discomfort well i think we're too cuddled in nowadays

Speaker 2 You click a button, your pigs are arriving in one hour.

Speaker 1 Like, seriously?

Speaker 2 Bank is online, everything's online. Kids are cuddled.
Sorry to say that, but there's 10 teams in a soccer tournament of 12 years old. Everybody's going to have a medal.
Like, what the heck?

Speaker 2 You know, it's like, it's tough. Life is tough.
Reality is the best things are out of your comfort zone. Now, you could say, if you're happy being on comfort, you've earned it.
Good.

Speaker 2 But how about we teach our kids to search for the hard? There's two paths, paths, one hard, one easy. Go for the hard.
You'll learn more. Right?

Speaker 2 And then I'm not going to give it to you because you deserve it. You don't deliver shit.

Speaker 2 You deserve to go after your dreams and feel it and see what it is to have a dollar and see what it is to earn your first car. And don't give it easy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure, I want to give you a passat for your first car. No, how about you buy this shitty Chevrolet and you fix it?

Speaker 1 Excuse my French. You're thirsty? I could get you a bottle of water.
Or I could give you the 41C and you know, just take two hours

Speaker 1 and now you deserve your water.

Speaker 2 No, but here's the thing I want to say. Okay, my grandpa, he fought the Second World War.
He escaped a Nazi-occupied France and he crossed the Pyrenees by foot.

Speaker 2 And then he went to England and then he flew to the US to learn how to be a pilot, right? What a nippet life.

Speaker 2 He came back and after the Second World War, they rebuilt the country. They rebuilt it with values that they created during those times of hardship.

Speaker 1 Me, I haven't had any hardship.

Speaker 2 And I'm lucky, right? But

Speaker 2 somehow, don't you think? I think people, especially men,

Speaker 2 kind of need that hardship to create those sense of values and ethics and what they believe in. Otherwise, it's chewing gum.
When I give you a chewing gum, that's your life. No.

Speaker 1 I don't want that.

Speaker 2 So is there something in the society where people go and do the Spartan race because

Speaker 2 they want to feel the hardship and grow over that?

Speaker 1 There's a need. Well, iron sharpens iron, right? And the war your pop fought in, you know, that was a galvanizing moment.
It captured the imagination and the reality of the world. And so

Speaker 1 you didn't have to walk around going, gosh, if only there were something purposeful and meaningful and challenging that I could do. It's right in front of you.

Speaker 1 If that's not the thing, if maybe climbing El Capitan is not your thing or paddling across the Atlantic or the Pacific is not your thing,

Speaker 1 it doesn't mean you can't find a thing. It doesn't mean you shouldn't look for the thing.
Whatever the thing is, you're saying it should be difficult.

Speaker 1 There should be a very high chance of failure if you try it. Our friend Mike Easter, who's written a book I think you'd love called The Comfort Crisis.

Speaker 1 You would love this.

Speaker 1 He talks about these adventures. I think they're called masagis.

Speaker 1 yeah that's right masagi yeah and um you know japanese concept but the idea is every year

Speaker 1 everybody

Speaker 1 should

Speaker 1 do a hard thing yeah love it and by hard things he says it

Speaker 1 it probably won't kill you

Speaker 1 but it could probably won't you'll probably fail It could be as simple as in 20 feet of water or maybe 10 feet of water, a mile long, taking a boulder and just moving it from one shore to the next, which involves a lot of dives and a lot of struggle and a lot of

Speaker 1 cold and miserable. Yes.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think a lot of what you've done, and I don't know what you talk about in front of crowds of people, but

Speaker 1 I hope it comes down to this idea that, you know, it's not enough to,

Speaker 1 as my old scout master said, people will tell you that if you can embrace the suck or endure the discomfort, you're on your way. But that's really not enough.

Speaker 1 You actually have to figure out a way to love it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, that ain't me. You know, from time to time, it might have been me.
But you don't seem to have an ounce of regret in you.

Speaker 2 No, because, okay, so when I do things, I don't know what I'm going to learn from it, but I know I'm going to learn something that I need to learn.

Speaker 2 Like, what are you doing out of your comfort zone that is going to teach you the things you have no idea exist?

Speaker 2 You know, that connection with the ocean. I read the books.

Speaker 2 I didn't feel it until I lived it. And I think what I'm trying to do is actually see

Speaker 2 why, I don't know, it's hard to see.

Speaker 1 Well, you looked almost emotional earlier when you said that, you know, a month in,

Speaker 1 My body was essentially seawater.

Speaker 2 Oh, let me tell you this. Okay, I've got a best story.
This is exactly what happened. I was emotional.
I was crying. I had this tear on my cheek, okay?

Speaker 2 Which is saltwater. At the same moment, the ocean splashed, and there was this drop of water on my leg.
It was maybe a month and a half in. It was actually, no, day 50.

Speaker 2 And suddenly, one plus one, I was the ocean telling me, look,

Speaker 2 drop of salt water, drop salt water, you're mine. I'm you.
We're the same. You're literally a drop of water on the ocean for three months.

Speaker 2 You've been drinking ocean water.

Speaker 2 70% of your body, which is liquid, is ocean water. We're me.
You're me. And then you look at the clouds.
They're water. You look at the waves.
You look at the fish. I'm sure they're water.

Speaker 2 You look at the birds. That's it.
They're drinking.

Speaker 1 We're one.

Speaker 2 And I had this other epiphany, this moment of grace of feeling the spirituality on the Atlantic, but it was breath

Speaker 2 I was also going through a hard moment

Speaker 2 and I'm paddling and I'm just breathing deeply you know you control you

Speaker 1 you hold it

Speaker 2 after five minutes I realized I was in sync with the waves

Speaker 2 I was breathing with the swell

Speaker 2 and the swell is pushed by the wind. The wind is a breath of earth.
And then you look at the clouds, they're moving with the wind.

Speaker 2 And then the waves crash, they create that white foam that oxygenates the water that the fish will breathe. I'm breathing,

Speaker 2 I'm breathing with earth.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 And that you can read in all the books, I'm sure. Yeah, where is God? God is everywhere.
What do you mean? He's the mountain. Yeah, he's the sun.
I know. He's the air.
He's the water.

Speaker 2 I know where God is. I call it the oneness.
That connect. I'm the fish.
I'm the same as the fish. I'm the same as a tree.

Speaker 1 Is this the flow?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's the flow. It's things you can't teach.
You have to experiment.

Speaker 2 Now, that's what I want, when I want to write by my book, I don't want to say day 50, I did 50 miles, I was bad.

Speaker 2 I want to explain what I've learned, and I'm happy to be able to do that here today so that people could say, shit, that's a part of the human experience I haven't lived.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 1 I don't want to like, I'm not going to cross an...

Speaker 2 How can I live this in my own life? I'm going to walk along the PCH. I'm going to stay a week silent.
I'm going to do meditation, doing yoga

Speaker 2 in India, whatever you want, but find this. It's part of the human experience.
You have to live this.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm just thinking, just to bring this back to me for a moment.

Speaker 1 The second time,

Speaker 1 no, I think it was the third time we ran into each other. I wasn't in a dark place, but I hadn't had a lot of sleep and I had put the weight from my ruck from 40 to 65 pounds.

Speaker 1 And I hadn't really done that before. And I was walking the same route.
So I was out for like eight, eight and a half miles. I had just turned around and I really wanted to be home.

Speaker 1 My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, my ankle hurt. I was sweating like a whore in church and I had nobody to complain to.
And that's when you pedaled up. He's like, yeah, I have done it.

Speaker 2 I did the thing I said I was going to do.

Speaker 1 Do you remember the crazy French man?

Speaker 1 Yes. And I'm like, oh, God, this guy.

Speaker 1 But no, I mean, we stopped and talked. And actually, that's when I called Chuck.
And it was like, look, man, this is, I just keep running into this guy.

Speaker 1 I think maybe we should have him in.

Speaker 2 There are no coincidences. You agree with that?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 They're either no coincidences or it's all coincidence.

Speaker 1 Both make sense

Speaker 1 to me. It's that squishy combination of the two that makes me a little,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 Quick sidebar, another book called Longitude. Have you read this? No.
Oh,

Speaker 2 I'm going to write this down for you.

Speaker 1 Longitude was written by Devil Sobel, and it tells the story of the race to calculate longitude. Wow.

Speaker 2 Which was

Speaker 1 previously, I think it wasn't until maybe 1760 or 1770. It just couldn't be done.

Speaker 1 Because to get longitude, you need to be able to know what time it is on the ship to make the calculation.

Speaker 1 And there was no timepiece at the time that could give you an accurate measurement because everything was either, you know, hourglasses or these other things. Right.

Speaker 1 And the motion of the ocean would make that impossible. So it tells the story of it.
That's it.

Speaker 2 Longitude.

Speaker 1 It's such,

Speaker 1 it's a short read. But the king of England put up a huge prize, like millions of dollars in today's money, to figure this out.
And it launched a giant race. And the guy who cracked the code was called

Speaker 1 John Harrison.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he did it. He won the prize and he changed everything.

Speaker 1 And I just, you know, wonder, like, when you're out there thinking about all the things that allowed you to pull this off,

Speaker 1 you know, imagine,

Speaker 1 imagine doing it then. Talk to me about the Polynesians who figured this out

Speaker 1 thousands of years ago and were in outriggers, basically,

Speaker 1 going from New Zealand to Papua New Guinea or to Samoa.

Speaker 1 How did they do that, man?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I think, yeah, there are special kinds of people that just say, it can be done, let's go.

Speaker 1 But they must have been, in relative terms, kind of common among their people. This is a thing they did.

Speaker 1 They just did it.

Speaker 1 And surely it wasn't a singular event. But now we do something like that.
And it's, you know, the rest of the world is gobsmacked by it.

Speaker 1 I mean, have we gotten softer? I mean, I know you said that the coddling thing is a thing, but I just wonder as a species if we've really changed.

Speaker 2 I think we like to be in control, right? And when I was 25, I did a trip around the world, backpacking 26 countries in one year.

Speaker 2 A little money, 10 bucks a day. And I remember arriving in the country, it's like, okay, well, I'm in San Jose.

Speaker 2 What do I do? At least I'm in downtown. I need a hotel.
I'll just find a hotel. And then next day, the hotel would tell you, if you want to go, you could go mountain bike and see that volcano.

Speaker 2 You could go there.

Speaker 2 And then I'd take an... I would make my trip along the way.
And now,

Speaker 2 like, you want to go to Nicaragua? You need to know every night where you're staying.

Speaker 2 No, you don't need to. Just find that

Speaker 2 adventure side of you. Get out of your, like, again, the comfort zone or the

Speaker 2 safety.

Speaker 2 There's so much

Speaker 2 to be found there. I'm reading this book, another book, it's a funny word, The Art of Getting Lost.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I've heard of this.

Speaker 2 I love it. It's exactly that.
So, how are you going to find the things that

Speaker 2 you don't know even exist? Like, you could walk in your hood all the time. You do the same same path.
What if you get lost? I want to take right now. And then where do I go? I don't know.

Speaker 2 I'm going to take left. Oh, this little restaurant, I'm going to sit down.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the reverse commute. That's the

Speaker 1 well, well, you know, when you think about it, I mean, not only is very, very, very few people have done what you did, no one's ever taken the same route.

Speaker 1 Probably no one's ever taken the exact same route. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that's truly an untraveled path you took.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's more people that have been to space than crossing an ocean in a kayak. That's why I do it because nobody else does it.

Speaker 1 Well, that maybe is the answer to the earlier question. And maybe that is ego a little bit.
And maybe that's okay. I mean,

Speaker 2 you know. You know, there's this book, Man's Search for Meaning.

Speaker 1 Meaning. Frankl.

Speaker 2 Yes. What's your purpose? What is that one thing that you and only you can bring to the world that if you were to die, the world would lose? Like find this, right?

Speaker 2 And that purpose is something that has never been done before. You're unique.
How do you reveal that and just do it?

Speaker 1 I love this.

Speaker 1 So in the same way that you enjoyed that trip so much because you didn't always know where you were going to be staying night to night, do you know what you want to leave the world with specifically?

Speaker 1 Have you figured that out yet as a result of your adventures?

Speaker 2 It's very simple.

Speaker 2 I want to leave the people I meet better than I found them.

Speaker 2 It's very simple. It could be at the supermarket, it could be giving them energies when they need it and when they don't, whatever.

Speaker 2 And it could be a very local level. It could be in a podcast.
It could be writing a book. It could be in a motivational speaking engagement.
I speak to, last time I was in France, to 1,500 kids.

Speaker 2 You never know who's going to come back in 10 years saying, Cyril, you give. When I did my trip around the world, 25, I go to every school, I put my backpack, a map of the world.

Speaker 2 Here's going to do this. And here's my shoes, my whatever, whatever flip.

Speaker 2 And five years later, a guy comes. I was living in Santa Rosa up, North, Northern California.
He comes with his bike and two buddies. It's Cyril.
Five years ago, you're the one who gave me the spark.

Speaker 2 That he was,

Speaker 1 what? I love it. I love it.

Speaker 2 So, my little purpose,

Speaker 2 maybe, okay, there

Speaker 2 I formulated it into five words.

Speaker 2 One is dare. The second is live.
Third is learn. So I do this daring adventure that I live and I learn from them.
And the fourth and fifth is share and inspire.

Speaker 2 Those two is what I give back to the world.

Speaker 2 If I do that for the next 30 years,

Speaker 2 the world will be

Speaker 2 a little bit better.

Speaker 1 I think so. I mean, look,

Speaker 1 part of the fun of it is you don't really truly know.

Speaker 1 You get little signs. You get, it's like the mustard seed, you know, you get reminders.

Speaker 1 I have a foundation, right? And 3,000 people have gone through it, and

Speaker 1 they've all learned a trade.

Speaker 1 Every now and then I'll run into one of them out in the world, but usually it's a family member or a parent

Speaker 1 or somebody. And I understand to hear that your efforts have had an impact.
That is Frankel. That is the search for meaning.

Speaker 1 You know, when I watched Alex Hunneld

Speaker 1 climb, I'm home, I'm comfortable, I'm sipping a bourbon, and I'm watching this guy do something.

Speaker 1 And I wept when I saw that. I wept for the species and for me and for anybody who had ever, you know, dared to dream that big.

Speaker 1 I honestly, when I saw that, I thought it was as great an accomplishment as walking on the moon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it just,

Speaker 1 I imagine people felt that way when Frank Shorter broke the four minute mile. No, Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile.
It's just we were told it couldn't be done. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then someone does it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then within two years, 18 people had broken the four minute mile.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 But that's in the spirit of this country. I'm a citizen of the world.
I've lived in Brazil. I lived in Argentina, in Spain, in England, in France, in Italy.

Speaker 2 And I moved here. I was 32.

Speaker 2 Okay, you could, I know there's like the slogan, you could do anything you want, you could be president if you want, you could go to them.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that's what you tell kids, and it's so true, but it doesn't have to stay at a slogan. You have to say, if you have discipline, hard work, ambition, sacrifice, you can do that.

Speaker 2 But as an immigrant, now I'm American too, I've been here 17 years, I was American 10 years ago, so I'm both French and American. I believe...

Speaker 2 I think more in the American dreams than a lot of Americans, because they've been told that, but they take it for granted granted that how lucky they are they don't even know how lucky they are and we come as immigrants with this energy like

Speaker 2 I don't think I would have done what I've done if I were in another country and it's not because I'm bragging about this country I California has got this energy that you're the average of the five people we spend the most time with everybody says yes you can do it

Speaker 1 really

Speaker 1 okay let's go you know let's it's amazing what is the american dream

Speaker 2 well i mean the definition is that you could be better than your parents and you could do anything you want, right? You could start from scratch and go.

Speaker 2 I think for me it's like

Speaker 2 if you have the willingness and the discipline and

Speaker 2 the courage, yes you can do anything you want. It's not going to be given to you.
Nobody gives it to you.

Speaker 2 But I think in the right environment and this country is a terroir where if you plant it and you say, I'm going to water it every day, it's going to grow. It's going to grow.

Speaker 1 Everybody I've ever met who uses that word has some association with wine.

Speaker 1 Were you in the wine game?

Speaker 2 I was 12 years in the wine business.

Speaker 1 That's why I moved here.

Speaker 1 You're kidding.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was born. I'm French.
We drink wine when I was like, my dad would put a little bit of wine in water. I was six or seven.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, that explains everything.

Speaker 1 What do you think of the state of wine in Napa right now?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, the wines are as good as they've ever been. Year after year, the climate is up and down what it is.
That's the climate, but the the techniques are good, so the wine is good.

Speaker 2 The problem is like people are not drinking as much, so it's hard for them to make it financial sense.

Speaker 2 Uh but it's it is what it is. I think quality has gone up, very much so.
And

Speaker 2 yeah, I'm the first one to start drinking beer with no alcohol. I have like the quality is so good.
I like the beer. I don't have the alcohol, great, I'm gonna be better in my athletic.
I'll do that.

Speaker 2 And I think wine for me is a pleasure. It's not a drink that I drink to get drunk.
It's just, yeah, it was a good steak. You put nice Cabernet.

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm sorry to popscotch around like this, but I wanted to ask you,

Speaker 1 I saw how you prepared physically for this, but I still don't quite understand.

Speaker 1 How do you prepare mentally? Can you?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a hard one because I'm an extrovert. I love people.
How am I going to be alone? Like, speak to me, myself, and I, not seeing land or human being or a tree for three months.

Speaker 2 So it's a question I had to think about deeply. And there's no right answer.
Everybody's different. I was going to try everything.
You know, beginner's mind.

Speaker 2 Beginner's mind is, I want to try everything. I went to see everybody and say, hey, what if you had to do this?

Speaker 2 What would you do? And then I went to see a mental coach.

Speaker 2 I tried Wim Hofcom plunging and saw Saludo in the middle winter you know breathing and it's cold you want to escape what do you do i did hypnosis in india with a yoga i was i did one week in a yoga retreat in india what was that like amazing and this guy comes he's a yoga he's a guru from the osha family okay agiat you gotta meet this guy osha family the osha guru line yeah oh sha not occupational safety health association

Speaker 2 not yet no no you don't want that he comes in cicerol he's got this long beard all in in orange, like you can imagine them.

Speaker 2 And he says, Cyril, with his, you know, head shaking, oh, you're doing this adventure.

Speaker 2 Have you thought about hypnosis? I said, hypnosis, isn't that to fix a trauma? Yeah, you could do that, but you could also create the core, the core beliefs at your unconscious that you can do this.

Speaker 2 And we say, come tomorrow with 20 sentences.

Speaker 1 that are

Speaker 2 the beliefs you want to have at your core, okay? And over the top of my head is you're doing it. You're not alone.

Speaker 2 You trust your instincts. Your instincts are powerful.
I came with all these lines. And then, you know, it does hypnosis, so it puts me on that bed, nice little music, Hindu style.

Speaker 2 And then it puts me in a deep sleep and it reads them to me very slowly for an hour. And it records it and sits, zero.
Okay, you're going to listen to this.

Speaker 2 every three days, every four, every day if you can until you go to create that sense of I'm doing this. I'm not quitting.
I'm not,

Speaker 2 you know, so I tried this. I tried,

Speaker 2 you name it. I don't know what I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'll try it. Where are you right there?

Speaker 2 On this picture,

Speaker 2 arriving in Hawaii, that celebration. That's the I knew it moment.
Now I knew it, so I've got this flare in my hand. I'm like, yes,

Speaker 2 I've done it. And I haven't seen land in so long.
But the I knew it moment, here, let me explain to you what it means.

Speaker 2 Every entrepreneur or people people that is trying to do something big that has never been done before has an image in his head.

Speaker 2 And I compare it to a puzzle. Okay.

Speaker 2 We think a project is linear, project A, and then you one and step two and three.

Speaker 2 Right. No, it's a puzzle.
And the puzzle, you got the pile of pieces. You got the box that tells you what you need to do.
And then you put one piece after the other.

Speaker 2 Well, in that case, it's never been done before. So there's no picture.
You just got some pieces that only you can see.

Speaker 2 People are looking at your thing and say hey what what is he trying to do i don't know i got this idea i'm going to put this piece here and then another piece and and they come in different times so and then there's pieces you have to create along the way because they don't exist and the i knew it moment that's when i saw land and i said i knew it

Speaker 2 finally the piece is putting is in front of me and all the naysayers that I completely forgot, I said, no, I'm the crazy Frenchman with this little boat, but I knew it. And it's not like, look at me.

Speaker 2 It's more, I'm glad I followed my instincts.

Speaker 1 You mentioned Wim Hoff.

Speaker 1 Have you seen that documentary?

Speaker 2 No, I want to meet him.

Speaker 1 He's an amazing guy. I love him.
You know, I've always been interested, but I watched that doc a while ago. And, you know,

Speaker 1 he went through a very specific kind of hell. I mean, he lost his wife, he lost everything.
And his way back to sanity was through breath and these cold plunges and just being able to

Speaker 1 sit outside in sub-zero temperatures for hours at a time.

Speaker 1 It just changed

Speaker 1 his entire body. But you mentioned the cold plunge, and you also said you were wet all the time out there.
Were you cold all the time?

Speaker 2 No, during the time when I left, were quite warm. But if you're wet and there's wind, you could get cold.
So it's just about staying dry or having the right gear and changing the gear if it's wet.

Speaker 2 And that's just, you know, preparing well. And yeah.

Speaker 1 But the cold plunge, did that help at all? Did that? Yeah, because look,

Speaker 2 just if it's just one idea I could give about this is accepting the cold. If you're in the cold shivering, you're fighting the cold, you're like, no, I'm cold.
You're clenching your teeth.

Speaker 2 As soon as you say acceptance,

Speaker 2 you let the cold come in

Speaker 2 and then you're okay.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 2 Breathe through it. And it's the same.
You're divorcing. You lose your job.
Somebody died. You have cancer.
You could fight the certainty of the reality.

Speaker 2 As soon as you accept it, you have a different perspective.

Speaker 1 And you'll fight differently.

Speaker 1 I mean, you won't not fight, but you'll fight differently.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't have a cold plunge, but I still,

Speaker 1 every shower either either starts or ends

Speaker 1 with two minutes of cold and sometimes the whole thing. But I like to shave in the shower, and I have a tough time doing that.

Speaker 2 So here's what I say about a

Speaker 2 cold shower.

Speaker 2 I do it every morning, okay? I arrive, and you look at that shower, you say, I don't want it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course you don't want a cold shower. It's raining outside, it's cold.
You contemplate your non-willingness to do it. And your weakness, right? Because you want comfort.

Speaker 2 And you fuck, I'm going to go. And you go in there, you turn cold, and you're like, you can yell, you can cuss, you say everything you want.

Speaker 2 You breathe in, and then you turn off the shower and you start with the wind.

Speaker 1 Well, no one in the history of time has ever congratulated themselves for taking a nice hot and soaking shower. You did it!

Speaker 1 You did it! You washed your ass again in an ice warm bath. Congratulations.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do right now? You're going to drive back up to the Bay Area. Yeah.
You're going to work out today?

Speaker 1 Well, I've got seven hours.

Speaker 2 I'm going to stop to see my filmmaker. We're talking about a new project I have.
I've got always ideas.

Speaker 2 And I think if you put the energy out there, it's meant to come back at some point. So

Speaker 2 I'm going to see my buddy.

Speaker 1 That's great. It's great.
What I want to leave people with is, you know, some days you're out for a ruck. And it's heavy, and a crazy Frenchman comes up and says, it's me again.

Speaker 1 And then then you invite him on. That's how your journey went.
That's how my journey's going. I really don't know too much.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, I think the metaphor to leave people with really is that combination of what you talked about.

Speaker 1 The idea of that trip you took when you were in your 20s where you didn't know from night to night where you were going to be sleeping, juxtaposed.

Speaker 1 With all the care you took prior to your adventure and to the documentary that you're very deliberately making, to the speeches you very intentionally give,

Speaker 1 and to the very conscious idea that you do have a notion of what you want to leave people with. It seems like certainty and uncertainty, once again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a balance.

Speaker 1 Two sides of the same coin.

Speaker 2 It's a dance. You got to adapt in the end, but yeah, let's go.

Speaker 1 Where can I get one of those scarves there? Oh, I'm taking it. No, no, I'm not taking your scarf.

Speaker 2 What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 It's yours. This is real.
Beautiful. Thank you.
And the tattoo, you want to give a shout out to the...

Speaker 1 It's Pate. This guy.
You really got that yesterday? Yesterday.

Speaker 2 So this is water and air. And when I arrived in Hilo, there was a volcano.
And that was a groundedness of Earth and the fire.

Speaker 2 So that was the two other elements that was missing on me. Now I need groundedness.
And I used to need to use my fire. I'm this little bird because this is me.
I need to spread my light.

Speaker 1 You are something else, dude.

Speaker 1 You are something else. How do you say get out of your comfort zone in Italian?

Speaker 1 How would you say it in Portuguese?

Speaker 1 Are you bullshitting me, really? Because I got you.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad

Speaker 1 you introduced yourself to me, and I hope you'll come back. You're welcome anytime.
Okay, I would love it. And if I can be of use with this documentary or anything else, you know how to find me.

Speaker 1 A pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 2 I'll just have to bike around Tiburon.

Speaker 1 You just keep biking. You'll find me.

Speaker 1 I'll be the guy grunting and sweating and cursing himself. Where's that red scarf?

Speaker 1 You know I can't take this from you. But it is not.
You know what?

Speaker 2 A scarf is such a simple thing.

Speaker 1 But man,

Speaker 1 it really does jazz up the look. Hell yeah.
Just like that. You got a beret?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 I'll bring you the baguette too if you want.

Speaker 1 And whatever happened to Pepe Le Pue? I missed that little guy, the skunk. He was a great one.
That's you? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Cyro

Speaker 1 De Ramo. Deramo.

Speaker 1 Hi, ho. Hi, ho.
It's Cyro de Maro.

Speaker 1 Is there a website where people can go to learn more about your fantastic self?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Solo Kayak the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 That was the last one. And then just ask AI, crazy French guy crossing an ocean.
You'll find it.

Speaker 1 crazyfrenchguycrossingocean.com.

Speaker 1 What a piece of work you are. Thank you for your time.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. Adios.

Speaker 1 That means goodbye. I'll see you.

Speaker 1 This episode is over now.

Speaker 1 I hope it was worthwhile.

Speaker 1 Sorry it went on so long,

Speaker 1 but if it made you smile,

Speaker 1 then share your satisfaction in the way that people do.

Speaker 1 Take some time

Speaker 1 to go online

Speaker 1 and leave a

Speaker 1 review.

Speaker 1 I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge.
You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two.

Speaker 1 All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four.
All you got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three.
All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

Speaker 1 Definitely not two. All you got to do is leave a quick five-star review.

Speaker 1 All you've got to do is leave a quick

Speaker 1 five stop. Especially if you hate it.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

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Speaker 5 And this isn't just future talk.

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