Yeah. Put the team on my back.
What is going on? Welcome to the backpacking
podcast brought to you by Outdoor Vitals, makers of
Performance First Ultra light gear.
And with me always my good friend Jeremiah Stringer, the
king of Kentucky backpacking and one good looking red headed man.
Jeremiah, how are you this morning, my buddy?
Dude. Afternoon.
It's not morning, it's afternoon, Yeah.
We have. We're starting the show here a
couple minutes late, but that's OK.
Thank you everybody for joining us.
I'm doing fantastic. It's hump day and I just gorged
myself on ice cream. We had ice cream day at work so.
Nice, nice, yeah. Fantastic, Todd.
For first place on the best desserts, by the way.
Ice cream, cheesecake and brownie.
In no particular order. It's you, yes.
That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
Yeah. Diabetes down here in Kentucky,
we don't call it diabetes, We call it the diabetes.
That's right. Jeremiah, why don't you tell us
a little bit about what Outdoor Vitals has going on right now?
Yeah, dude, I got an e-mail, I'm signed up for all of Outdoor
Vitals emails. So I get notified anytime they
have a sale or a new product coming or something, you know,
is in stock that hasn't been in stock.
And we talked before about this Pursuit hybrid fleece, it is
back in stock. So order now and they're
currently running to sell up to 18% off the Ventus active
hoodie. And both of these are perfect
pieces of gear for the shoulder season that we're in right now.
And I literally took the hybrid fleece with me on a trip over
the weekend and. One of the things I really like
about the vent is it's super lightweight and it's just one of
those things that just fits well as a mid layer.
Even as an outer layer when it's warmer outside, it's a great
piece of gear. I'll tell you what folks, let me
tell you about a piece of gear that I got to use this weekend
that I didn't get to use before I got the opportunity to use the
carbon Evo 50 this past weekend from outdoor vitals.
The backpack and I'm going to say something that might be kind
of controversial. I think that is a more
comfortable pack than the Z packs are call.
Wow. And you know my love for the Z
packs. Our call.
It's the go to. It's been my backpack for four
or five years now, and I've not. I keep trying other backpacks
and I always go back to it. I think I'm gonna be using this
Carbon Evo for the whole year, man.
Like it is. It's nice.
I was shocked. I, I didn't, I wasn't expecting
it to be that comfortable. I knew it would be comfortable,
but I didn't know it would be that comfortable.
Yeah, dude, I coincidentally enough, I went out over the
weekend as well, and I said I'm making it my goal to use this
backpack because I couldn't remember if I'd used it like two
or three trips ago. And then I found some cough
drops in my hip belt pocket and I was like, Oh yeah, that's got
Jeremiah written all over it. I definitely used it and I said
let me break it out again, dude, I don't know what it is about.
I don't know if it's the wide shoulder straps or if it's just
the sponginess of the pad that goes against your back, but it's
one of the most comfortable backpacks out.
The shadow light was good. Yeah, this is great.
Oh, it's phenomenal. And I don't know, I had to make
some sacrifices. I'm not gonna lie, John, I did
not bring the 0° because my 0° top and under because the
weather is like it's supposed to be, you know, 52 is the low.
Yeah. And I said, you know, you
usually want to do like plus 10 -, 10 on your gear.
So if you think it's going to be 50 you down by that water, it
might be 40. So I did bring my 40° under and
my 15°. I think it's the storm loft.
I've used the 30° storm loft. Yeah, so they would.
We didn't even play in the. This either by the way, no.
No, we actually, he didn't even know I went on a trip because my
trip was like the last second, like Thursday night, couple
buddies. We were talking and 1 was like,
hey, I'm going to go to the gorge tomorrow night.
Supposed to be really nice. You want to go?
I'm like, yeah, it's. So we just packed up stuff quick
and headed out. I had to get up the next morning
at like 5:00 and be on the trail before 6 because my wife had to
be somewhere that morning so I had to get home quick so she
could get out with the kids. But yeah, use the Storm Loft
quilt. I used the the carbon Evo.
It was just great stuff, man. The the gear that Obi's putting
out is then this isn't because they sponsor us.
It's genuinely good gear. Yeah, absolutely loved it dude.
And I'll say the hip belt pockets, I I even had to show
Mr. Backpacking with Jason, Sir. I said, dude, you got to see
this. They really open and close.
It's on, but why isn't every backpacking company still in
this idea? It's like this is the only
backpack I have. All these backpacks behind me.
Look, that's where the carbon goes.
It's blank, right? Now right here.
Every single how many of those open with one hand on the hip
belt pockets? Not a single one.
I have one backpack that does it and it's this carbon shadow
light and I could talk about it all day.
I want to tell you a little bit about my trip, John, but if
anybody wants to check out any of the outdoor vitals gear, we
will link it in the description below.
You can check out the sales that they're having on the Ventus.
You can check out the hybrid fleece since it's back in stock
and check out this backpack that it seems like John and I are
falling in love with even though it's forcing me to take less
gear because I usually carry like a 75 liter backpack and
this one's a what is it a 60 50A50?
OK so I I somehow did it man and I don't regret it.
This is the same size I always carry.
I always carry a 50 liter unless it's Z packs because Z packs are
way small. Like they they aren't really 50
liters. Those are like 35 liter
backpacks when it says 50 but we won't get into that.
I will say my whole sleep system is the most ridiculous like
mixed up mess of stuff. I was I was showing a buddy of
mine. I have a Dutch wear, a Dutch
wear gear hammock and some connector things from them.
I've got guidelines from alien loop.
My tarp is a hammock gear, my under quilts from UGQ, my top
quilt is from outdoor vitals, and my pillow is a Thermarest.
You are well-rounded. I am.
I am not beholden to anyone brand, let's just put it that
way. Well, I love your integrity,
dude. And like John says, it's not
just because they sponsor the show.
That's. Great to hear.
But let me tell you a little bit about my show Outdoor Vitals or
a little bit about my trip outdoorvitals.com.
Check it out in the description. So dude, I talked to Mr.
Backpacking with Jason, Sir. And this was the first time I've
had one-on-one time backpacking with Grandpa, even though he
wants to call be called J Pop. It's Dad.
Yeah, back in with Dad.
Well, we had a kid and so I was gonna change it to Grandpa, but
he vetoed it. Surprisingly, he says Nope, I'm
not Grandpa. I'm J Pop or Uncle J Pop.
And I said no your grandpa, but I digress.
That's something like. 80s rapper name.
I just want to point that out. J Pop, that's not a rapper name
today because it would be made fun of, but like in the 80s that
would have been super like rap name.
Let me tell you. Well, I made a little mistake
here, John. Unsurprisingly.
I was about how you were describing throwing your things
together and like you guys were like, yeah, let's go meet, let's
get out there. I did the same, but I did start
packing two days before. Almost never do it.
I am a last minute Packer most of the time, even though I
always advocate for packing early.
And my little mistake was I was driving on the way to the
trailhead and I said Bridget, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
called my mom, talked to her about Mother's Day.
Happy late Mother's Day to everybody, by the way, talk to
my mom about Mother's Day because I was wanting to meet
with her Sunday. Called Bridget, hey, I'm not
going to have service, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, oh, there's a Dollar General.
I had forgotten. I didn't bring any food with me.
I would. OK, so here's the thing.
And people got to understand, this is not the first time this
has happened to Jeremiah. This is a pattern of behavior.
Starting to become like normal, so we really need to be thinking
about Jeremiah here. Well.
What happened was when I put my food lists together, what I like
to do is I do this. I don't know how well y'all can
see that in the camera, but I like to buy stuff along the way
if I have to. But I fill out a little chart
that tells me breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and then
dessert. And I have on here, I don't need
breakfast, snack or lunch because I'll be at work all day
Friday. And then I needed a beef jerky.
I had forgot my lunch at school so I was like, I'll just take
that with me for dinner. It was some pasta bake that I'd
brought as leftovers and then I didn't have really anything
else. I was like, if I had forgotten
all, if I had just taken that the whole time, the only thing I
would have had the entire trip was the pasta bake leftover from
2 days ago from my house. So luckily when I was on the
phone with Bridget, I was like, oh, crap, Bridget, I just passed
the Dollar General and I just remembered I didn't bring any
food for this trip. So I had to whip the truck
around. And this is like, this is in the
middle of nowhere. By the way, people give Dollar
General like a bad Rep, but it's the only store around there.
It's in these food deserts. Back me up here, John.
They they put them in the towns, but like these old country
roads, that's the only thing out there.
But they put them out there. They.
Put them out there and people drag him through the mud because
there are some shady stuff that goes on with the Dollar General
on their pricing. But that's a story for a
different day. So I went into the Dollar
General, I bought my food, headed on out to the trail and
met up with Jason. He unfortunately was waiting on
a Stringer because I got there like 15 minutes late because I
was talking to the lady at the front desk of the Dollar
General. She was the manager and.
Talking to somebody. I know.
Well my currency is like like my socialness.
So I was talking with her. Anyway, Long story short, I
headed on out and Jason and I, we walked in and we had sort of
a spot picked out. But to get there, you had one
good Creek crossing. And I said, Jason, last time we
come through here, I took my shoes off and walked across on
the way in. The last time we went in there,
I just trudged right through. I said I whatever.
And then I regretted it. I said, what are you going to
do, dude? He said, well, I'm going to just
walk on through. I'm going to roll my pant legs
up and I'm going to walk on through the water.
And I said, dude, this is our only Creek crossing.
Our camp is like a mile from here.
And he's like, yeah, I'm just going to take my shoes off, put
my hey, dudes on when we get there.
And I said, well, you're going to have to wait on me.
You might as well take your shoes off because I'm taking my
shoes off, putting the Crocs on. He said, Nope, I'm going on
through. And so he watched me from the
other side of the Creek sit down, take my shoes off, take my
socks off, walk, put my Crocs on, walk across, and then do all
that in reverse. And the main he just standing
there. He said, I only have hey dudes
and I don't want to walk across barefoot.
And the hey dudes aren't like Crocs, you know, they're made of
fabric. Crocs are just like a piece of
rubber. So I said, OK, just wait on me
over there. He waited on me.
I changed back and we headed on to camp.
We went out to the Narrows on the Rock Castle River.
And cool. I don't know if you've ever been
there before, but once you reach the Narrows, this is like a
section of the river where it's a bunch of Rapids, so people
will drive their boats up from B Rock Campground.
Oh, did I lose you? I'm still here.
Start that over again real quick.
Yeah, I'm still here. Don't worry, I'll fix all that
in post. The people live are the only one
here in this right now. All right, so action.
We're gone again. Nope, I'm still here.
I'm fighting through it. I'm still here.
Give me a thumbs up if you could still hear me, John.
All right. Just disappeared.
OK, All right. Anyway.
So now I'm going to go thumbs down.
Let's do this. Let's get some comments in here
while we're while we're sitting here.
We had some great ones here just a little bit ago.
Ben McMillan, where are you at? It's right here.
Ben actually made the comment. I don't have sponsor money.
I have chat and troll my friends for free money and I know Ben
and he's not kidding. He actually does that.
Let's see, what else do we have
on here? I'm just going through some
comments, Jeremiah. So one person put in here.
Where was it? I want to make sure I get this
in here. We were talking about backpacks
and somebody asked the question, why aren't you all carrying the
Raven for Ben McMillan? Well, it's a frameless pack and
if you love frameless packs, it's probably the best frameless
pack you're ever going to buy in your whole life.
But I have a hate, hate relationship with frameless
packs. I've not been, but with
frameless packs, I don't I can't get them comfortable.
I can't pack them right. I'm a failure with I it's just
bad for me. I'm not a big fan of it.
So yeah. So I don't do the frameless
packs. I know some people love them and
I think I think the phenomenal I've seen the one that Jason has
sweet pack, sweet pack, but definitely not one that I'm
gonna carry cuz I like my frame. I just like my frame.
Take some delicate packing on the frameless.
It really does. It really does.
Hey Derwin off the rails, give us a 499 little gift here, super
chat said got my zenbivy. It feels so nice.
They even honored a discount they started yesterday and
refunded what I paid over the current discount.
Wow, that's that's impressive. That doesn't happen often.
So congratulations on that man and thank you for for passing
the savings on to us. That's really nice of you.
Zenbivy. That's the one that like, goes
around the pad, isn't it? Yep, it is, David Cooper says.
I too. I am too a bad.
I am too bad of a Packer for a frameless pack.
You got to structure everything in such a way that it gives it,
you know, some rigidity. I'm not great at it either.
You're like, what is that punching in my back?
Oh, I shouldn't have put that there.
Hey, people are really caring for you right now.
Jeremiah, just so you know this, if I can get it on here.
At my Taco Bell Internet. Well, somebody, somebody just
made this statement. Let me see if I can see this,
Derwin. Let's start some super chats for
Jeremiah's Wi-Fi. And we already got one from Ben
McMillan and it's for $4.36 for extra Internet bandwidth.
Dude Spectrum, I absolutely hate them.
Dude. They come to the house and they
like fix my Internet and every time, every time they fix it,
they say you realize you're using our equipment and you need
to buy like Googles or Netgear or like some some other
providers like Internet gear. I'm like, well, that's what I'm
paying you for. I don't want to have to go buy
that stuff. And they're like, yeah, but it's
better. And I'm like, OK, so maybe I'll
use those super chats and finally upgrade from the the
Netflix. Here, let me spot you some gear.
Yeah, and Ben's giving us a hard time, which he should.
He says the biggest tip to start using a frameless pack is to
stop crying so much. That's good man, keep it
covered. Tusha, I love it.
OK, I'll finish up what I was saying here.
And John, thank you for doing such a phenomenal job hosting
and producing the show, especially in my absence with my
Taco Bell Internet. I just like the idea of Taco
Bell Internet. I actually kind of want to eat
some Taco Bell now. We shouldn't have said that.
Well, they they did build a new Taco Bell on the South end of
town, so maybe I'll take you out the next time you're down.
Here I need, I need to come down and visit sometime soon.
So I haven't seen, I haven't seen junior in forever, so.
Yeah, come on with it. So this is what I was going to
tell you. We, we crossed the Creek, we
went on to our campsite and dude, literally right as we were
descending into the campsite, I stepped on a rock.
My foot slid down and I was telling Jason, dude, these
trekking poles don't look super strong.
And it just absolutely snapped in half.
My trekking pole. I I wish I had it here.
I'd show you. Which ones do you have?
Do you still have the Gossamer Gear ones?
Well, I'm going to be honest, John, I have a bunch of
different trekking poles. I got like AI did have a trash
can in here, but then I started using the trash can to like just
a place to put all the trekking poles when I started organizing
this room. And so I have the one I have
every trek and pole that I've ever started with.
So for years I've been collecting these trekking poles
and I was looking through them for this trip and I said, which
one should I take? And I picked out the nature hike
ones. And I think it's the ones that
remember whenever they sent out those nature hike chairs and
they had to redo them because one of the components broke.
Oh, the chair would break. Yeah, I remember that when they
were sending those out a while back.
Yeah, so the. Big thank you to during off the
Rails 499 more bandwidth and Mike it's becoming expensive
podcast to visit so. Thank.
You I appreciate your kindness in in in sharing your finances
with us. Yeah.
So they, they, so Jeremiah's talking about a chair that was
going out a while back from nature hike that actually it, it
just basically snapped on a bunch of creators while they
were trying to use it. It was just a big mess for
everybody. Chicken Little Trex also gave us
another $4.99 and said, here's my share with Derwin.
So you guys are, we're, we're going to get Jeremiah figured
out, man. We're going to get, we're going
to get it figured out for you. We're going to run landlines is
what we're going to do. I think, I think get, get rid of
the Wi-Fi part. Let's just run a landline.
We'll be good. That's a good idea.
That's a good. Idea.
Yeah, so my trekking pole broke and luckily enough, whenever
Jason, I went to go get some water, somebody, this is just my
luck trek and pole brakes, but I gained a fishing pole.
They had left a fishing pole, rod and reel and a whole box of
baits. Durbin says hello.
I was just kidding. So I woke up the next morning
and started fishing and I was like, this is this is perfect.
Everybody brings their boats up to the to the Narrows because
you can't drive past them and that's where they fish at.
There's like a giant pool of water.
And I didn't get a single bot. I don't know who left that
fishing pole. I don't know who left the tackle
box, but I would use different tackle if I was that person I'm
going to blame it on. I'm going to blame it on their
equipment and not my lack. Of fault, no doubt about it. 0
accountability is what we call that.
That's right. So yeah, it turned out to be a
good trip. Dude.
I didn't have to get up early the next day.
I know that you said you had to head out pretty early, but I
slept in. Jason and I walked out together,
stayed up pretty late and enjoyed like a 360 view of the
stars on a sandy beach. It was it was amazing.
Have a little backpack on Mr. Backpack with Jason Sir.
One-on-one time. That's awesome.
Yeah.
I was supposed to go out a few weeks ago, had a little 2 day
trip I was going to go out on and did something to my Achilles
and, and it's dumb, but I'm going to tell you how I did it,
Jeremiah. We're playing a game with my
kids called Parents Versus Kids and there's challenges
throughout this game. And one of the challenges was
the parents and the kids all to stand.
All had to stand and pretend like they were jumping rope and
you had to keep jumping. And the last person to stop
wins. I should have quit after like 2
seconds. You.
Can't let the kids win. I went and I went, I went
forever and I looked at my daughter said you're not going
to stop, are you? And she goes, Nope.
And she just kept going. I finally stopped the next day.
I could barely move my foot. And and so my Achilles, this is
what happens when you're 50. It's like you sneeze and
everything hurts. But so my Achilles was injured,
so I didn't get to go on that trip.
And so I got to go on this one. And man, it was just awesome to
be back out there hiking. It still hurts, but it's not as
bad as it was. But yeah, we got out there at
around 7:30 at night. We arrived and we hiked up to
our campsite. I know I can't take away.
We got there about 6:30, 63645. We hiked up to our camp to
Hanson's Point because we wanted a quick place we could get to.
Found a campsite, went looking for firewood and realized there
was another campsite that somebody was out of head and
they've gotten all the firewood. Dude, they probably still there.
I put stack of wood there, yeah. No, the people.
Yeah, the people were there. Oh, OK, and.
They had like a 5 foot stack of firewood, like they picked the
place dry. And so we did what we were able
to get a fire. We figured out what to do.
We were able to get a fire going, but it took a while to
get wood and hung out, had some dinner.
Then the next morning at 5, AMI woke up to a chorus of whipper
wills. And I mean a chorus of whipper
wills. We had one demon birds.
Whipper, wheel whipper. Wheel, I'm telling you, there
had to be at least a dozen of these things in the woods.
And if you've never heard whipper wheels in the Red River
Gorge, be thankful because they're satanic.
And, and so I woke up to those, got out of my my hammock, went
ahead and packed everything up. The guys had woken up shortly
after that. I kind of gave them each one of
these and I hiked right on down the trail and I was in my car by
6:30. Why are you just an early riser?
Just in general. Oh yeah, yeah.
By choice or that's just how your body is.
At this point in my life, once I had kids, there was no sleeping
in anymore. Now my body just doesn't sleep
in. Yeah.
What's the deal? I've been waking up every
morning at like 540 and I'm like I've got to pee and then I get
up in. Real life now Jeremiah
obligation. Bro what is going on here?
I thought I was just here for a good time.
Speaking of real. Life, I think it's time to face
it. There's privilege and through
hiking. This is the homework assignment.
This, this is the one if you were watching last week, we
asked you guys go home and read this article.
We put a link to it on our Spotify and I can't remember if
we put the link on on YouTube or not.
I thought we did, but I didn't see it there.
So that would be my fault. But there was an article by
Backpacker magazine called It's Time to Face It, There's
Privilege and through hiking. And if you read this article I
would love to hear your comments and and y'all know I got
opinions but I want to hear Jeremiah's thoughts.
So I'm actually going to let Jeremiah share his thoughts on
on this article and I will. I will be the one that sits back
and waits to give my opinion. OK, well first let me set it up.
I want to give you, for anybody that didn't get a chance to read
the article, I want to in like 4 or five sentences, give you a
summary of the article, if that's OK.
John, I don't know if that's your.
Internet doesn't go out. We're good.
OK, here, everybody. Cross your fingers.
We're Olive. Here we go.
So it's by Maggie Slepian. I think that's how you say your
name. And she notes that while through
hiking is challenging, the ability to even start often
comes from having financial stability, flexible work, and
good health. She highlights that most through
hikers are white and male, and many spend around $1200 a month
on the trail. The point of the article is not
guilt, but awareness that through hiking itself is a
privilege, and this can open up conversations about inclusivity
when it comes to the outdoors. OK, you want my opinion, John?
Here we go. Give it to me.
I think that Maggie is a great person.
I respect her right to express her viewpoints and hopefully she
expresses or she respects my right to express mine.
I don't know. I think everything in life,
you're going to have some degree of privilege.
I'm very blessed to be born where I'm born.
In the time I'm born. It's the best time, in my
opinion, to ever be alive. I'm able to drive to work, I can
walk, I can run. You know, I'm super blessed in
all aspects of life. So she brings up a lot of points
of, you know, if you look at the statistics, you can look at the
demographic of the outdoors. And if you compare that, it, it
looks like on the surface that not everybody has the same
opportunities. And as an educator, I deal with
this on the daily, right? Because we're looking at, we
want equal opportunity, not equal outcomes because life
ain't fair and we are born in different places closer or
further from the finish line. But my main gripe with her on on
this article to give her a little push back.
She she makes some good points. But my main gripe is the the
people that she's naming in the article.
Specifically, two of them would would be LGBTQ plus and BIPOC,
which I wasn't familiar with that.
I am a white male, so BIPOC, BIPOC.
I don't know if you say it like that or if you're supposed to
spell out the letters, but it was like Black, Indigenous,
people of color. Yeah, people of color.
And I don't know, I'm, I just think those aren't the only
people that aren't privileged. And I feel like sometimes we we
make everything a gender situation or a race situation.
And in reality, look, I might be born white and born male, but I
wasn't born rich and I don't know where the finish line is,
but where I was born, I couldn't see it.
OK. I had to fight through life and
just like a lot of other. People did.
And in your man, we lived on. We had food stamps as kids.
Yeah, we were eating. I mean, I thought that rice and
a piece of bread and some gravy over it was a gourmet meal.
Like that was literally dinner for us sometimes.
I eat a lot of Pinto beans and cornbread, a lot of Salisbury
steak out of the microwave. I mean, pasta, yeah, I still eat
a lot of pasta. It's delicious.
But my point is, is that I think it's good to make points in the
article and give everybody equal opportunity, but we're all
interested in different things and correlation doesn't always
equal causation. And if you look at the stats, I
mean, it's a, it's a nuanced situation, right?
You, you look at through hiking and she's basically saying you
need these things in order to be able to through hike.
So, oh, look at Bridget. You y'all might have heard in
the background. My, my wife and son arrived out,
but she says Bridget. Bridget says baby Jay says hide
that day. He was screaming in the
background. But, and I need to, I do need to
know before we go further that Ben McMillan says he got a tip
that someone saw Oliver Anthony still in his fishing pole.
Oh my. Oh my God.
OK, sorry, my internet's stopping.
I'll see you got sorry and then. Well, here's the thing.
During Off the Rails says, Are you sure it wasn't Eddie Vetter
Ben? He's a known fishing pole thief.
Yeah, that fishing pole hadn't been there for that long, by the
way, but I saw multiple boats stop, tie their boats off and
walk up by the narrow. So I assume that, you know,
somebody just walked off and left it.
But I was there over 9. They never came back for it.
Anyway, here's the point I want to make, John, to push back.
You do have to be careful saying that the trail equalizes
everybody. But the reality is, is once you
get out there, the trail don't care at all.
It don't care what race you are, how rich you are, It cares that
you're able to put 1 foot in front of the other.
Now there is roadblocks in the way and I'm all for lowering
barriers who's not. Anybody with common sense is
going to say everybody deserves an equal shot.
It's just not everybody's going to have equal outcome because we
all start different places and you know, some people are
interested in different stuff. I'm not a big over politicizing,
you know, so I don't know, I seemed like there was a little
bit of agenda in some of it, but it's very nuanced and I'm sure
we could talk about it for the full hour.
We won't. But that's that's a little bit
little insight into my opinion, but I've probably done a poor
job articulating. It you're good, man.
And I think you're glitching. So it's about the time for me to
kind of yeah, go ahead, drop my truth bomb on this whole thing.
Listen, my brother-in-law, before he passed, my
brother-in-law was black. He passed away this last year.
One of the things that he hated was to be assumed that he was
less than when it comes to finances, intelligence,
resources, because of his color. He hated it.
He didn't like it. It made him mad when people
would would do that. It would make him even more mad
when white people would do it. He said.
There's nothing worse than a white person telling me that I
don't have the opportunity to do things when how would they know?
One of the things I thought was funny and it's just, it's just
me. And, and like I said, I've, I've
read a lot of Maggie stuff. Maggie's written some great
stuff, but she talked about some percentages of people that were
on the trail. Let me see if I can find these
real quick 'cause I, I, I saw them and I thought, well, that's
interesting because something seems fishy about that.
And then I realized it's not that it's fishy, it's just
normal. Basically, she said in the
article that 86.5% of the survey respondents were white.
Jeremiah. And as of 2024 and 2026,
fourteen point 4% to 15.2% of the US population identifies as
black. 15%. Yeah, I I can tell you, I don't
know how many black friends everybody else has on here, but
I have several. None of them want to have
anything to do with backpacking and they all think I'm out of my
mind. OK, I if you just look at from
percentage base it it it makes sense.
That's that's not because only 15% of backpackers are of a
different race doesn't necessarily mean that they're
being held back when that almost matches up with the population
number. Yeah.
But let me give you a little push back here, John.
You can always push back. Jeremiah.
Mr. Oliver Anthony. Oliver, Andrew.
My Gut I have some arguments for why Maggie is correct and to hit
on one of them. If you just look at the
historical context, I mean it has been narrow for the outdoors
and you're you're doing the correlation causation.
I don't know if, if it aligns that common sense would tell you
if you only have one person, that if you have 100 people like
this and 10 people that don't like it, you're going to get
more of those 100 people that get into it.
And they try to convince the 10 people and the some of the 10
people might come over, but most of them are going to be like,
no, But historically speaking, I mean, you, you have had more
white hawkers Net, like you said, just comes along with the
territory. But there's just not been, I
guess you'd say, a, a big push from some of the other
communities outside of, you know, the average white male.
I don't know why we like backpacking so much, but I do.
And I don't think it's because I'm white.
Maybe it is. The thing we always talk about
embracing cultures, right? Well, what if some cultures here
in America don't enjoy backpacking and that's why you
don't see them represented as much in it like.
I mean, it makes sense. Why do we keep saying embrace
culture but get mad when one of those cultures decides they
don't like something that a bunch of white people like?
Yeah, but it's not all white people, by the way.
There's no and. I'm not trying to and understand
what I'm saying is I just feel like so many times we almost
divide people by saying things like this like we really do.
We, we start drawing a line in the same well, only like 86% of
the people are white, OK, but over 80% of America is white.
So why are we? Why are we making that a thing?
You know, I'll blow your mind here.
When I hiked across Spain, almost everybody was Spanish.
I was the minority. It was me and my wife.
We were the white people. And.
And guess what? We were?
We were treated completely normal.
Because at the end of the day, you're measuring how much
melatonin your skin has has nothing to do with it.
It's about what you like and treating people as human beings.
And people treated me with love because they didn't, exactly.
They weren't seeing some gringo. Well, they probably were, but
they were also treating me kindly.
I was. I was.
Trying, you know, like I just, I get frustrated when I see these,
these percentage numbers and they're like, there's so many
more white people than this. There's so many.
That's like there's so many more white people in America like it.
And it's that's not a racist thing.
That's just truth. There's just so many more white
hikers, but there's so many more white people in America.
And quite honestly, most of I don't have any black friends
that like to backpack. My black friends think it's
stupid and I'm called the crazy white boy.
They probably have interest that you don't like.
Exactly. And it's OK.
Like I remember talking with Vince, my brother-in-law, about
backpacking and he was really nice about it.
I would be talking about, it was when I was going to Kilimanjaro
and I was talking to him about it and he just looks at me and
goes well, good, good. He seen a crazy guy walked to
how many things you want to do? What?
He thought it was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.
And then I met some of his friends.
They were the same way. It was like, that's crazy.
All my work friends think I'm insane for like I told him I was
hiking across the state of Vermont and you know, this is
back 2017 or 2016 or 20 whenever it was and they were like, you
are absolutely insane. And then I told him about I was
like the longest I went without a shower was 10 days.
And I guess you are clinically insane.
Yeah. And I was like, I can't help
that. I like it.
But let me give you a different. One here's the go E hiking made
a comment on here was great. He goes.
This article sounds very US centric.
Maybe she should redo it with more global information.
Yeah, be interesting. The cultures are all different
when it comes to backpacking. I feel like if you talk about
internationally, so it it's hard to compare, it's almost like
comparing apples to oranges because like the backpacking
that people think of out of the movies where you just like walk
across Europe and you stay at these hostels and what that's
totally different than the PCT, which is totally different than
the AT, which is totally different than the CDT, which is
different than, you know, all the everything is different.
Who was it that went down to South America and saw all that
all that cool stuff? Was it Rob did?
He who, Who sent the pictures? And it had like all different
colors all along. That was Rob.
Yeah, that was a. Rob.
Pelton. That was Rob Pelton when he was
in South of Europe. Machu Picchu.
OK, Machu Picchu. OK, I stand corrected.
Yeah, the the culture of those trails are totally different.
So even if you did do global based, it's hard to compare, you
know, the apples and oranges I feel like.
Yeah, I just, I, I get frustrated when we try and and
put divides on things. And I feel like when we start
saying things like you have to be privileged to hike, I just
feel like that's just putting another divide in.
There what about the what about the money aspect?
So what about, you know, objectively speaking, through
hiking is not free. You somehow had to acquire gear.
Most people buy it. You can buy it second hand, but
it's still not free. You can accept donations.
You can steal it. Those are like really your only
options. Listen, I can't afford it.
It's expensive. I mean, I can't afford it.
I I can't afford the money for one and I can't afford to not be
around my family for six months. So wouldn't you say that Maggie
is right that you would be in one aspect you would be
privileged to have the money and have the time off work which is
the 2. The two biggest things is the
time off work and the money. The other stuff is relationship
based and like what? How am I going to tackle the?
Future. I mean, yes and no.
I think we all make choices in life.
I made a choice to get married and have kids.
You know, I made a choice to work in an industry where you
don't get paid all that great. You know, I, I, I chose those
things and, and this is the result of choices I made.
And I think so many of us, we never, we never take into effect
or take under account choices we make and how those effects our
quote UN quote privilege. We choose everything we do.
You know what I mean? And and so I just have a tough
time with the whole privilege state.
I don't like the. I don't like the phrasing of it,
personally. Yeah, it's it feels like it's
slightly like diminishes the hard work that you put in if you
do save to like let's say you said I really want to throw
hikes. So I'm going to live in my car
for six months and then I'm going to save up the money and
I'm going to sell the car and I'm going to buy all this gear
and I'm going to do this five month adventure.
It's a little bit dismissive just the way it's worded, but I
I think it's got, it's got some good Nuggets in there, but not
everything has to be about identity or privilege.
Yeah. I, I, I think that's probably
the big thing for me is just the fact that it just comes off so
much about it. It, it, it separates people.
That's the best way I can put it.
It's just very, it's very, it's very much separating people.
And I don't like that. I think backpacking should be
something that brings people together, not separates them.
Yeah. Maggie, she, she works with
Backpacker. I think she's independent,
though. Yeah, she's independent.
She writes and listen again, Maggie is a great author.
She's written some fantastic articles.
And yeah. I think we viewed them on.
The show, some of her articles on the show.
I just am not a fan. I get tired of the phrase
privilege because I don't think people understand.
Like I I was not. I was not a rich kid.
We were broke. We were still, we had to move to
Ohio from New York because if we'd have waited much longer, we
would have been out of our our home.
We would have been on the streets and we would have been
in rough shape. My dad had We had to move to
Ohio because dad was able to find a job where he could get
paid one month. I think our paycheck where my
dad was was at at the time. We paid US 30 bucks for the
month. Wow, What year?
What around what year was? This this was 80 to 85.
He's probably doing minimum wage, maybe less.
Less Yeah, we were broke. When I say we're living in the
best time with the most opportunity, it's not perfect.
There's no denying it. I mean, there is some privilege.
We don't choose where we're born.
And some stuff is outside of your control.
Like John's talking about the choices that you make.
And you can, you can give yourself a higher probability to
hit the trajectory that you want to hit in life by the choices
that you make. But some stuff's totally outside
of your control. If you're born with no legs,
it's going to be a lot harder to through hike, right?
You're going to have to like Ricky Vandergriff, for example.
We had him on the show and he only has one leg, and he still
found a way to through hike. But his journey was much harder
than mine. When it comes to through hiking,
being away for X amount of time, well, he got an FKT.
He got an FKT. Yeah I mean think about that one
for a second insane yeah your wife actually made a great
statement I want to put up here it says the choices we make
definitely have an impact effect on more than just yourself too.
We chose to do the Camino before trying to have children now we
have a baby and I can't imagine being away for 6 weeks.
Yeah I can't either. It's just it it's not as much I
I don't think it's as much privilege as it is the choices
we make I really I really feel that way.
How about Randy Pierce blind done the 4000 footers?
Yep crazy Justin Sylvester hike this with him.
Yeah with the blind icing dog. Yeah and here's here's another
one let me see if this one pops up here real quick this is a
this is a good one too I think because of our American Society
no that's not the one I will come back to that one plenty of
things normal people can't afford vacations houses cars why
bring up privilege in any of this it's an interesting
statement Woodall trail says I think mostly because of our
American Society today it is made through hiker hard to do
you have to have the time and money which most Americans today
have very little of. Yeah and I would I wouldn't and
here's what I would almost say I think we got more money than
we've ever had but the problem everything is everything has
inflated in price so much that having all the money we do have
doesn't get very far yeah minimum wage has never been so
high being a millionaire today doesn't is not nearly as
impressive as it was 20 years ago people probably have more
money now than they ever had but the problem is I mean.
I mean when houses are are the cost of a house is beyond the
cost of what it was a year ago by almost 30% or something you
know and and they're more people house broke right now I think
than anything else where they just can't afford even afford
their daily cost of living and they're making twice what their
parents made at the same age. Yeah probably more than twice
yeah. It's crazy I don't know what the
future holds but I guess the cheapest way to live is through
hiking. I mean it probably is man
you're. Homeless but you're hanging out
with a good group of people. Yeah and honestly man this world
is coming to some pretty crazy stuff because.
Not only do we have to worry about having money to through
hike but we have to start worrying about Beaver attacks
we're going to change subjects because we got 2 series for us
so we're going to talk about something that that you said to
me it's a Beaver attacks 8 year old girl in New Jersey.
Have you seen the video clip? No is there a video clip.
See if you can find it I'll talk I'll talk about YouTube you can
probably find it on YouTube you'll it'll be a news story
that like some local news channel has.
Has shown if you all are not watching if you're just
listening we do offer the video version on YouTube on Spotify
and likely coming soon to apple podcast so check out the video
version of this especially if John shows this video because we
have? Days ago.
It just happened bro we're right on it we're all of so here's
what happened. All of you right we were.
The I I think that it has rabies and y'all are going to want to
see this if John could show it on the screen.
It's got red no I'm hoping the volume I'm hoping y'all can hear
it I don't know if you're going to be able to hear it or not but
we're going to try and see what happens OK here it is.
Oh you got it. You want me to play this.
Yeah go ahead all right. Fishing and then like he like
jumped up like really fast off the.
Like out of the water then he just started chasing us we're
now hearing from the 8 year old who was attacked by a rabid
Beaver at a lake in New Jersey the child was out fishing near
lake Henry he was there at the park with his mom and his mom
's. Boyfriend the family says.
This was completely unprovoked the child saw the Beaver in the
OK this isn't showing the actual video I want to see the actual
video let me see if I can find it for us let me get off of here
and I'll see if I can find it. Yeah did the actual video the
the Beavers going after this 8 year old and I don't know if
it's I think I guess it's his dad he gets ahold of the Beaver
and eats it. That Beaver it like went after
the kid I think the dad gets it away and then the Beaver goes
after the dad and the dad grabs it and Yeats it back out into
the water so if you could show it I thought absolutely wild on
here. I think I think I found this is
I think this. Is it here little on air
production for everybody yeah? Beaver.
That thing 's huge. Yeah look at it coming it's
coming after the boy there it is coming after that you're look at
the dad kicking at it kicking at it.
Let's leave it now Dang man. So dad protecting his son dude I
thought absolutely who would have thought what would you do
in this situation. I mean dad did.
You got Jack Jack with you Beavers coming after him you
just start kicking at it. Dude I get that thing out.
Of here they got the giant the big giant yellow teeth.
That's my kid my son my son is literally 8 years old.
Protect him at all cost man that's.
All cost dude could have been your knife with me.
Oh you would you would. I always carry a knife with I'd
be I'd be stabbing the crap out of that Beaver dude you.
I don't know what I would do it you you'd have to react quick I
mean that Beaver it got kicked out and then come right back for
him. Oh man I got a buddy named Josh
that I backpack with and he always carries always carries I
guarantee if he was with me that Beaver 's dead.
Yeah little pow pow little you're going to be taking home a
skin with you. Oh yeah Oh yeah.
You can tell it. Oh yeah we're going to make a
pair of boots out of that guy. All right well why don't we why
don't we wrap with a little research.
Woodall trail said something here OK he said he said wait let
me get it out wait till it shows up here says my 40 would be out
in a flat second yeah. Beavers they were haunted almost
to extinction weren't they like that was that was a very
valuable pelt back in the day. This is great what do you got
this is a great comment by Kyle fuller or I think I think it's.
Fuller 's first name he says so you're telling me an 8 year old
kid was getting attacked by a Beaver and someone still had the
audacity to hold their cell phone out and record it what a
dink move. Isn't that sad that the the
first thing that everybody does is film it.
Well I mean they were across the river it wasn't like they could
do anything where they were. And thank God they filmed it so
we could watch it. Exactly what were we talking
about right now if they hadn't done it.
The kids OK he's OK we heard from him in the initial clip
that John showed yeah. He's all right.
But man dude that's crazy that is crazy.
What do you think that you want to ramp with a little my option
5 on the 102 mile hike? Little research project for
people to check out or what do you.
Think I mean if you want to give out some homework for next week
you can do that. OK this is just a short research
this is only for the privilege folks if you're not privileged
you won't be able to afford it so you might as well not look it
up unless you're setting goals for the future that was just a
joke just a joke everybody just is this thing on so I I found
you know John. Here comes the blurry sorry
sorry my bad. We and by the way we got some
negative feedback from the headphone users on John 's
bleeding but he gets no warning he's a savage so anyway what I
was going to say was John you know how we've been talking
about outside the US outside the US how you can do different
backpacking trails and then in the USI discovered 4.
They're not really like Hut to Hut they're more like lodge to
lodge like you know a higher end backpacking experience but I
found 1:00 in the UK that might be up some people 's alley OK
and I'm not going to lie when we'll try to try to keep it
child friendly here family friendly on the on the on the
Camino when I've done it some people call it the the teachers
pub crawl. I don't know if you've heard
this John because there's like a a bar or something like that
every 510 kilometers and they say a lot of teachers do it
because you get the summer off so you could go for a month and
walk across Spain and hit all those pubs along the way if you
want I have found similar to but different 102 mile pub to pub
hike that you can do in the UK and I got to experience all
kinds of awesome Catholic churches because it was a
Catholic. Pilgrimage whenever I was doing
the Camino even though I'm not Catholic it was still a cold
experience at all but if you want to hit the pub to pub hike
you get to see castles cottages historic gardens all along the
east of the English countryside so I don't know if this is going
to make it to the list but I could definitely see myself
somewhere down the line doing the pub to pub 102 mile.
I'm not sure how close the pubs are hopefully they're pretty
spread apart that would be a long pub crawl if I do say so
myself. That would be long apparently
I'm getting feedback right now. Feedback I don't hear anything
man you sound great. Well either way you all have a
great one and do the homework figure out this pub crawl come
back next week and Jeremiah is going to show you guys how to
make this happen. Voluntold action I love it.
He's he's going to do it he brought it up he said it's
homework for next week so this is Jeremiah Jeremiah the teacher
coming out next week folks so be prepared it's going to be good
it's going to be good I promise so for myself and for Jeremiah
thank you guys for tuning in we'll catch you next one.