Green Light with Chris Long - The Pumpkin Report! Special Episode Detailing Chris Long's Pumpkin Float Adventure

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

A very special report today, it's the Pumpkin Trip Recap! Chris breaks down his interest in the pumpkin float record, everything that went into the record attempt and barely surviving (not actually) the Delaware river. We break down our trip to northern Pennsylvania, the arduous journey down the Delaware and never giving up, especially when a world record is involved! This podcast is brought to you by Cash App. With multiple tools for saving, spending, and sending, Cash App is the easy way to stay in control of your money. Cash App is a financial platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Use the GameTime app for all your ticketing needs. Create an account and use code GREENLIGHT for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download the GameTime app today last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed. Make sure to check out Fax and the King every Wednesday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FaxAndTheKing Have some interesting takes, some codebreaks or just want to talk to the Green Light Crew? We want to hear from you. Call into the Green Light Hotline and give us your hottest takes, your biggest gripes and general thoughts. Day and night, this hotline is open. Green Light Hotline: ‪[phone]‬ Send any Talent Search submissions to: [e-mail] Include any video of your talents, takes and bits as well as a little bit about yourself. Love hearing from the Green Light fans. Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b   Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42   Green Light YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenLightTube1   Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was kind of managing with like a half fish tank full of water, and I was building it every like 30 seconds. And I was like, yeah, I got a mile left. I'm going to do it. Nothing's going to stop me. And then all of a sudden it sounded like I-80 was right there at that bridge. And I was like, oh, fuck. It started coming over the front, and then I just started sinking.

Welcome to a special edition of the Greenlight podcast. A very special Tuesday report for you all today. it is our pumpkin recap. Not the full video, not the full documentary, not everything that went into the pumpkin trip, but a quick recap. We recorded this Monday afternoon. We wanted to get it out to everybody

so you all knew the journey. Knew a little bit about what happened, a little more than what we had shared on social media. So here's Chris, Matt, and myself, recapping last week's pumpkin adventure, talking about everything that kind of went into it. You'll see a dedicated YouTube video about this adventure. the next week or so, so stay tuned for that.

But here is a quick audio recap. Please move. All right, so we wanted to get in here and talk about this. I mean, like, it's not every week we do some shit like floating a giant pumpkin down a river. And it is hard for people to understand, like, why I did it. It's kind of hard for people to understand, period. But why do anything? Why do anything?

Why do anything? No, so like listen, a year ago, I guess the inception of it was when I was a kid, I used to read Guinness Book of World Records like on the toilet till my legs fell asleep. That and like Rick Riley. Yeah, same. And I always wanted to set a world record, you know, like it just was, it's always been in the back of my mind. Last summer, this guy, Dwayne Hansen in Missouri, he's 60 years old.

So I'm like, all right, I should be able to do this maybe. But I know he's a tough SOB, because I just did it, floated in a pumpkin 38 miles down the Missouri River in Nebraska. He went from like Omaha to Nebraska City. 11 hours. He got out. He said, he broke the record. Somebody had done 25 in the past or something like that.

And then maybe it ratch up a little bit. He said that he's never doing it again. and that if anybody could break it, he would definitely tip their hat to them because they are tough. And when I saw that, I was like, I think I could do it. I know I'm tough.

I like being on the river. Like, this is what I love doing. And how hard can it be? Like, you just got to sit in a pumpkin for 11 hours and that sort of thing. So I said to, you know, in the show, I was like, this is a record that I could break. As the year went on,

it got closer and closer to a time that we might actually be able to make a run for it. and we were like, holy shit, are we doing this? So I told Matt, hey, you're on this. Like, you've got to figure out a stretch that we could do. I prefer the East Coast. I don't want to go to Missouri. I want to break it on the East Coast and an East Coast River.

Like my home arena, you know? I don't want to go on the road. Home field advantage. We wanted to do the James, but found that that would be completely impossible. Although I did, I went to Dirty Night. Nellies the other night and I ran into Tom Garstang our friend from alone the guy that we had on this show guy from Charlottesville who spent like 90-something days in the wild on the show alone and almost one had he not falling over and hurt his leg or whatever it was um anyways the guy lives

around here I always seem at the bar we have the same favorite bar and uh if it's not dirty Nellies it's millers I saw him there a couple weeks ago anyways I told him what I was doing he was like you should do the James below the rapids in Richmond like that things had, you know, like commerce ships up and down that deal since the beginning of time. It's wide. It's not as rocky, that sort of thing. So you never know. There are other rivers out there.

Like we had Ralph, who's part of the Greenlight team, is from, you know, up in the pack northwest. And he said to do the Willamette River outside Portland, okay? I know I could do the Missouri River. Not to say, like, not taking anything away from those guys, I think they're incredible. and I just as a competitor, I believe I could do the fucking. You're paddling on a treadmill. It was a different animal. What you did was a different animal.

It's a different animal. I think I could do a silk bottom, straight, long river. I mean, that river's going five miles an hour on average. When we got the specs on the Delaware River, now where we are, it was a little confusing because it is way up there. To me, it's the upper Delaware. It's not the upper Delaware. Upper Delaware proper is like in New York.

But below the state line is where we kind of put in, on the border of PA and New Jersey. Long story short, that stretch, supposedly, if you Google it, like, what's the average speed of the Delaware River? It's going to give you this real boiled-down answer. It's like two and a half miles an hour. So we were going off these projections

that if I paddle it like a half-mile-an-hour, a mile an hour, then three-and-a-half miles an hour, like if we have a good run of it, it could be a day trip into the night. Like, at some point, my dominole. mass thought that we could paddle at night. Once we got out there and saw the river, you realize it's not that kind of river. And really no kind of river is the river unless you floated it a hundred times that you can do it at night. So Matt, tell them about how you got the ball rolling on this.

Yeah, so basically spent a long time researching the whole giant pumpkin community, eventually finally got connected to this guy in West Virginia, Ryan Cook, Ryan's beast, could not have done it without him. He grew us, multiple giant pumpkins, including one that he didn't take off the vine until the night before he packed it on his truck. Thank God. Yeah, that's the pumpkin we used. He packed it on his truck and took it all the way up to Milford, Pennsylvania for us,

stayed at the hotel with us, and the next morning jumped into the water with the saws and carved you what I think was a pretty good boat. It was a damn good boat. We beat it to hell. I mean, like, you know, also Ryan, shout to Ryan rolling up there with his whole family. His kids in the back. I rolled up to Milton Beach where we put in, and I was talking to Ryan for a little bit,

and he was talking about his kids, and he motioned to the truck. I'm like, wait, they're inside the vehicle. They came up, and in fact, like, mid-day-one after we'd gotten through a tough stretch, they were on the side of the river about eight miles down with signs. The kids were holding signs and shit.

So shout out to Ryan and them. And one of them grew a 600-pound pumpkin. Well, the kid has grown a 600-pound pumpkin himself. He was really hard on himself. was like, yeah, man, you know, I didn't, I couldn't get it done. I'm like, bro, you are like 13. You grew a 600-pound pumpkin. You're going places, man.

All right? My kids haven't grown a single gourd. And on top of it, Brian has 37 state records. Yeah, like world records, like vegetable world records. Yeah, he doesn't just grow pumpkins. He grows all kinds of stuff. Giant cucumbers. He's all about the quality of it, too.

He's not just going for size. He's going for the whole deal. He's looking at the lineage of the scene, making sure that he's doing the right thing. The Howard Dill Award, if you know what you're... It's like, yeah, it's like, you know, you're like one of those champion breeders, like bloodlines. Like, you know pumpkins, man.

It's not just a bulldog is a bulldog as a bulldog. You know, he's growing pumpkins that are thick, that can take the beating of the river. He's also, like, part of that pumpkin community. So you kind of know when people are going to be breaking the record, when they're not going to be breaking the record. Like, on message boards and Facebook is a big spot for, I think, the pumpkin community.

There were some rumblings of somebody trying to make a run at this thing and go 61 miles, so 100 kilometers. Now, I don't know where that guy is or when he intends on doing it, but we knew that even if we broke this record, we might not have it for long. So long story short, I'm already on the way up there.

Like, I'm staying at my in-laws in Jersey, and I'm supposed to go the next day, and I read an alert on my phone for, like, the news, and it's a guy in Missouri who has broken Dwayne Hansen's record. And this is Monday, two, three days before we have to go up. Now, thankfully, he went 39 miles. So we were like, hey, we're going to break Dwayne's record.

We can do this. We've mapped it out. We were originally planning on going 47 miles. We were planning on going 47 miles. And when you get down to where we were trying to take out in Belvedere, New Jersey, there is a rapid below that that's called foul rift. And it's like well known to not float that. I mean, like, yeah, I guess some kayakers can do it,

but you lose a lot of elevation in like a half mile. And it's past the Delaware water gap, so the water picks up and that sort of thing. We had to be off the river by then. But overall, we were looking at satellite images of this stretch of river for months, and we were mapping out each island. So each island we came to,

we knew how far in it was. We knew which way we thought we knew which way to go. There were sun spots on some of these Google Earth things. And we were like, yeah, it's the reflection of the sun. Like, I don't think this is swift water. like the whole thing that was out the window pretty quick so we rolled up there with a big team you know we had three guys uh we had aiden we had ralph we had taylor who it's great to see him he used to work with us now he's in new york but those guys met us up there and matt and reed went up with the two

giant pumpkins we stayed in milford we stayed at this this hotel that's been there since 1850 i forget the name of it hotel fosher yeah and so they had all these pictures on the wall they had like Abraham Lincoln stayed there. JFK stayed there. There was like a wall of fame, and I was kind of like in the back of my head. If we break this, they better put us on the wall.

You had to get that picture with your leg up and the oar next to the park. Hell yeah. I mean, they probably had George Washington on there and all he did was cross to Delaware. This is much more difficult. So anyways,

should we just start talking about the trip because this is where it's interesting? I think, yeah. So we got down to the boat ramp. Brian jumped up, cut you a hole. You got in it. You took off. I took off.

You flew. And I think the first thing I realized was how uncomfortable it was going to be. I mean, like, you guys were in kayaks the whole time. Like, the guy who broke it in Missouri had like five, six boats with him. I think he's like a firefighter. He had the whole crew. Like, he had the Paw Patrol there. And I had you two in kayaks, which to me was like plenty.

And you guys were going to be depth checking. You guys would be going ahead. And people were shocked to hear how primitive our method for finding how deep the river was. Like, we are. Half or. We are half paddle, quarter paddle, full paddle, you're good here. So we take off from Milton. We get going.

It's cold. It's like 45 degrees. But the water's easy to first stretch. In fact, it's a lot of paddling. And I'm realizing I'm in this fucking thing. It's not like being in a motorcycle sidecar. This thing is like a fucking coffin for my legs. And it doesn't want to move.

It's not designed like a kind of. Nealing. I got my knees down. I have my feet behind me up against. the back of the pumpkin and my toes are curled on the ground for 12 hours a day, over two days. But in the beginning, it was just about staying warm and just paddling, trying to keep pace. Anyways, a couple miles in, we ran into, I think, our first bit of adversity. So our first section was eight miles, and we got under the bridge.

I think you bumped a couple times just past the bridge. And we were like, whoa, this is that low? It's shallow than we thought. The pumpkin, when you would hit a rock, the pumpkin would stop. Your momentum would not. Would, yeah, would carry you. And you had the whole, your, like, chest went way out every single time. So it's basically like, it's basically like riding a bowl or something, I would imagine,

but a bowl's much harder and everything. But, like, you feel like you kind of have to, you hit the rock, and you kind of have to balance and move your torso around. Yeah. But eventually, and we're three, four miles in, we get into this swift water and we're hitting a lot of rocks. and this was my first dump. Dude, like, and when I tell you, I would eject myself out of this pumpkin because if I tried to, like, hang on and lost my balance,

I'm going to tip the pumpkin. Right. The float's going to be over. Like, 950 pound pumpkin full of water. Like, how am I getting that flipped? We find out later. But, like, I had to eject myself at least three times. So I'm cold.

I'm beat up. I'm getting sore. The first day is, like, a real wake-up call for us. You weren't complaining, but I could see on your face these periodic. like points of like nerve pain or something like all of a sudden you just grimace real hard it was hard you'd adjust your pad and you just keep going it was hard and I just want to say this like it's physically one of the hardest things I've ever done like you're talking you were comparing a kilimanjara in a different way yeah you know like it's it's it's like a non-stop glute bridge for a day I mean like

I'm never my like when I'm on killy at on summit night your heart's beating 120 miles an hour you can't stop breathing you feel like you're gonna vomit you have a headache there's none of that it's like you know I'm at sea level in a pumpkin but the physical toll on your joints is tough and you know we're getting down the river having a good time

we got through the rough water it got sunny in the afternoon we were like all right this is nice that second stretch of six miles was what trip to you you dunked a number of times yeah it was rocky it was low we might have picked the wrong route of time or two.

And yeah. And the long story, when you're in the river, just to set the scene a little bit more too, is that you're, it looked like the water level was pretty high on the pumpkin itself. So there was not a lot of room for errors.

You can't cut the, you can't cut the hole too big because, and that's the thing. Like you want to cut the hole bigger so you have more room, but there's going to be more overflow into the pumpkin. The pumpkin was what,

three and a half feet tall. Yeah. Or so. And three feet of it is in the water. Yeah. And like you only have that much. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of room

for error. So if you're going over stuff, it's coming in. It's also extremely, it's like driving a bus. So when you know that something's coming up, you better turn completely sideways. If you want to get left, you better get sideways and paddle left as hard as you can, like, you know, a quarter mile early. Yeah. And sometimes like if you catch a good, a good current, you can make little adjustments and miss rocks. Because it's a round pumpkin. It's not like you have, you know, points in direction that help you steer things. But I packed. My wife thought I was going to be on mushrooms knowing me she was like you're going to be out there on boomers aren't you and i packed boomers i cannot believe i packed boomers the boomers didn't even leave my my dry back i don't think you

thought of them but once i realized like how nervous i was like the night before i'm sitting in that hotel i got to wake up at 5 30 in the morning it felt like a football game yeah like the uncertainty of it the nerves the fact that everybody was there we all went out to dinner but it had that very business like feel by three four hours into the float i was like i got five pre-rolls in here I'm not going to be using any of it. So, like, to me, this was like detox, too. I had to be dead sober. I couldn't enjoy it the way I would enjoy a normal float.

And by the end of the first day, we felt good because we were, what? 21 miles in. 21 miles. Yeah, we wanted to get a little bit further, but we wanted to push as far as we could. We barely made it out with any daylight. We were at, like, an unofficial takeout point, had to kind of climb up a hill in the dark. But we made it 21 miles. so we were on pace for the record

and I feel like vibes were pretty good. Vives were good and we decided, hey, we were trying to get this camper delivered on Outdoorsy, which is like it's like an Airbnb for like trailers and shit. And so we were going to get one delivered right up to that campground there and the last hour and a half was just a dead pond slog, dude.

We could see where we needed to go for so long. And I will say just to go back, the third quarter of the day was nice. It was great. You had six miles or something like that. Just a nice, we didn't have any rock bones. Wildlife, bald eagles. Everywhere.

There were pretty houses along the route. It was, that was a solid. And then we got. But you don't see anybody out on the river on this. Which kind of tripped me out. Like, this is up in the Poconos. Yeah. What's the water temperature?

It's cold. Yeah. I mean, it's cold. I don't know what the water. Mid-50s. Yeah. 50s when it was warm. In the morning, when I dumped the second day and I'll get there in a second,

it was bad. The first day was mostly smooth sailing with a really rough stretch in the morning. Yeah. That basically was like, hey, motherfucker, this is not going to be easy. And when we got to camp, we couldn't get the trailer. Like, they wouldn't deliver it. So we had to find a place to stay. We drove 30 minutes to a Hampton in.

You know, that's a total AAU hotel. Yeah. I love AAU hotels. They're great because a lot of times when I go to hotels, I'm nervous. I can't vape. And I'm going to be the guy that sets off the fire alarm, even though it's a totally unrealistic thing. but at the Hampton Inn, people are vaping.

Right. So I feel good about that place. We got a solid six hours sleep. We got back out there. It's dark in the morning when we get in the car. And I wake up and I'm just feeling beat. But I also know I got 20 miles left and I'm done with this motherfucker. The first half is over.

Burn the ships. Let's do it. And the way it ended day one, we were feeling good. We were like, get us in the pumpkin. Let's fucking motor. Where's the pumpkin overnight? So you guys are leaving the river. You're just, you're stashing the pumpkin.

It's anchors. We pulled the pumpkin on shore and we tied it. We had a, what do you call it? Cargo net. A cargo net. And we also tried to tie it around the mast, right? Tied it against a tree. I was picking up river rocks to damn that thing up so it wouldn't move.

But I was initially worried about leaving the pumpkin, but I realized we're in the wilderness, dude. Like there's nobody out there. When you look at this stretch river and you look on the terrain map, it's all green for miles in either direction. It's like National Forest, that sort of thing. So we didn't worry about the pumpkin. I worried that the pumpkin might be rotted in the morning

and that sort of thing. We get there. Animals. But we rolled up and we got in the water and we were in at like 7.30, 7.7. 7 in the morning. And we knew daylight was the number one enemy here because we didn't want to go three days

if we didn't have to. And I also worry the longer we go about the integrity of pumpkin. For sure. Okay, that comes up. Yep. So I get in the water. I start paddling. We're at a big band.

And it's foggy. It's dense. Like you can barely see the trees on the side of their body. It's 33 degrees. You can't see much, right? So I get out there. I'm paddling. These guys are catching up.

No sooner than they catch up about, you know, maybe a quarter or half mile down the way. Matt and I are paddling along, reads off to the side, looking at an eagle or something maybe, checking depth. And we can't see, but we hear cars.

Well, I don't hear cars. I thought it was the highway. Matt was like, are those cars? I was like, cars, motherfucker. We drove 40 minutes. Didn't see a single person. Like, there's no bridges here. That's water.

I said, water is coming. We need to figure out what's going on up here. They could not get up ahead. The current was too fast. You didn't want to leave me back in the back because if I dump, like, it's unsafe, that sort of thing. And it started picking up, and I'm here. We're coming up on a fucking rapid guys.

And we could not pick a clear line through that rapid. every line I picked I was getting beat up and couldn't steer because the fucking water's going too fast and it's terrifying to not be able to slow that thing down and to be just entering the fog and not knowing what's coming. And I think the funniest part was Matt and I are in these kayaks provided by Appomattox River Company but we're like oh just pop over here.

Oh come over here because we're used to how easy we can ship these kayaks and you're like, I'm trying. I'm fucking trying. So the number one thing I said to these guys when we got in was I texted Reed at midnight. And this was me being like, you know, like, hey, just in case. Just know that I texted. You know, like I looked at the forecast. I said, 43 degrees at 7 a.m.

I go, it is going to be fucking cold. And I said to Matt before I got it, I go, the one thing I cannot do this morning is dump. And there wasn't anything these guys could do about it. But I dumped once. I got back in. I'm freezing my ass off. I'm trying to control my breathing. I got dumped again bad where water was coming into the pumpkin

and eventually ended up holding on to the pumpkin for dear life while the water's taking us both away, trying to swim over to the side of the shore. This thing's full of water. I'm hyperventilating. You know, like it is freezing. It's 800 pounds too. Yeah, and you're just holding the side of this thing swimming.

There's a great video on your Instagram, but you're just holding on the side, your car heart hats, like on one side of your head, you're paddling through. And, yeah, you're, you're... I'm having a hard time. It looked like a dire situation. When you see that video and you see the fog and you can tell it the water,

first of all, the water just fucking looks cold. It looks cold. And it was, it was higher than I was expecting. Yeah, and thank God there was a sandbar there. Like that sandbar saved our lives, dude. Yeah. Like, honestly, like the morale was so low when we got the sandbar and I'm shaking. I can't stop shaking.

These fuckers are covering me and like all we had, was like a, one of those towels that dries. Yeah, yeah. And then like, Matt, for like 10 minutes, I'm near death. And he's like, oh, I do have this Patagonia fleece. It was like a dumb and numbs situation. You had extra gloves this whole time. But Reed starts building a fire.

I'm curled up next to the fire. We're listening to Chris Stavelton. It's on shuffle. And it's like, why you got to be so cold? And I'm like, I don't know, motherfucker. I'm trying. Was there ever a contemplation of like the body heat situation where, you know, you know, I thought it was going to be okay, but these guys were concerned.

Matt especially was concerned about it. I said half jokingly like, yeah, let's cuddle. I'll back that ass up. Yeah, and you guys did cuddle later. It wasn't me. But on the side of the river, it was just a really hard, tough time. And honestly, when I get in these situations and I'm not trying to turn a pumpkin float into a self-help video, but for me, as somebody who has been challenged my whole life

with sports with, you know, like challenges in that world that like humble you and break you down and quite honestly kick your ass sometimes. I have always been somebody who needs these challenges. Like I need to get my ass kick sometimes. I need to do it to feel like I'm alive. Just being honest, like if I'm doing, I could do this for two, three years straight. We could have a bunch of success, but there's part of me that feels dead. And to go do that that thing, in that moment, I realized, all right, you got what you wanted. I was like, now you get to find out. what you're made of. The next 12 hours of this day are going to be, we're going to see if the old you's still in there. And that's where I kind of had to make a decision and be like, all right,

we're just, we're burning the ships, we're going. There's nobody there to warm you up. There's no, there's no hot car to get into. There's nothing. These guys weren't going to meet us for another five hours. Who knows what the rest of the river held. But we, we eventually got warmed up, got on the river. Up to that point, because we did lose your phone. I lost my phone. I took that pretty well. You did. You were like, my phone, my phone, my phone, my phone. My phone.

What I dumped, bro? My fucking jacket pocket happened to be open. And that thing was gone. The other jacket pocket was zipped up. I had a bunch of zin in there. So like, you know, honestly in that situation, and by the way, the zen got me through that morning. I was like, no, there's in. I didn't want any food. I didn't want any water. but I wanted Zinn. I did pass the whiskey at one point around the fire. We bust out the gym beam. Because that did warm me up.

I mean, that's how dudes in the Civil War, it would be like, man, I'm getting amputated. Yeah, I'm losing my arm. One swag.

One for the... You know, I'm just fucking doing that, dude. We called it Lewis and Clark shit. But at times it did feel like one of those adventure situations where like when you watch on TV and then they hype it up

going into commercial that like somebody fell on the water or a tree fell on somebody that's like, what? And then it just stops. And it's like, ring cameras.

Yeah, you know, like, that was that moment before the commercial. It was that fucking sequence. It's straight. It was like,

when they do commercials for like Survivor and shit, that's you on the side of the pumpkin like pat on the side. Yeah, yeah. That's your B roll. That was your B roll.

So we got the B roll. And afterwards, Reid was like, no, the river, it's a little warmer. He's like, you know,

I had my GoPro on the whole time. Like, we're going to have some good footage. I'm like, great. Yeah. If I'm going to suffer, some good fucking content.

So we get going down the way. And the bottom line is we were paddling for our lives most of the day. It was beautiful out, but we had to get there by sundown. And we were kind of like the whole day and the night before I was Googling shit

because I couldn't go to bed. Like you'd think I would be tired. I'd just go right to bed. I fucking was Googling drownings on the Delaware River, of which there are many, evidently. A lot. And many of the places where the places is coming up for us. And in fact,

after we posted this, there were a few people from that area like, why did you choose the water gap, bro? Because I don't know what I'm doing. And right now, the fucking water is really rough.

And I was like, you know, I noticed that. But like, also there's variable depths, variable currents. Sometimes it's a pond. There's a 55 foot Eddie

that I was told about the night before. One of our turns are like, you want to steer clear of that. A big 55 foot hole, dude. And there was this island coming up called Arrow Island. and I couldn't get it out of my head the whole night.

It was like I couldn't get it out of my head the whole day. It was coming at 36 miles. It was 13 miles in or 15 miles in, depending on if it was the 34 or 36. We weren't sure for a while. But I knew from this picture, you can Google Arrow Island on the Delaware River. And there's this gorgeous picture of the summer. And it looks like the Caribbean. It's so green and blue and beautiful.

Duxaposed of what we were looking at the beginning of the fall. It just looked. And on that picture, you could see there are two ways around the island and both of them look like shit sandwiches. Like one of them looked like deeper, bigger water and one of them looked like shallower, like choppier water. But it was like straight across the entire channel. So we thought we'd probably be going left. We got up there. It's getting to be about 6 o'clock, 5 o'clock.

No, it's about 5 o'clock. Before we even get there, we're in that slow run for a long time. like we're feeling great because we think we're going to do this thing like we're finding out like oh we're at 33 you're singing sam cook we're enjoying it yeah the drone crashed re-dove in and we're laughing we're laughing we're having a good time but but in the back of my head you know like when i used to go to training camp and everybody's enjoying themselves in july and i'm sitting there like what's wrong with you it was arrow island like you know that's what was and i knew and it was funny we ran into the first guy that gave us any information we talked to who's cooking out on the side of the river or something.

I said, hey, man, like, once you got over the pumpkin thing, I was like, where am I going to run in trouble? You know this area? Well, he goes up around the bend. And I was like, all right, I was like, you think it's passable? He goes, I do. But most people don't realize the way a pumpkin sits. So we get up to the bend. We run to these two guys who've got a, you know, boat.

And so I figured they fish this water. They know where the deep water is. We ask these two cats. They're like, you want to go left. That's what deep water is. So we get around the corner, we see the island. I'm like, okay, we got rapids on both sides. The left side, there is some big water.

I'm talking about three foot spray coming up, some back channels, some fucking like undertow. Like it's visible that there's some choppy water. And it's hard to know where the deep water. And the problem is if you go deep, you're going to get bigger spray. You're going to get more waves. You get more water over the top of the boat. And if you go shallow, you get less of that.

and we are risking a puncture every time we go through this stuff. Before you get to that point, what is the status of the pumpkin, like the floor of it? Because that was, if you're kneeling on it, there's, you're, you're heavier than anybody, I assume, has done this before. Like, one of my concerns when I was thinking about this in my head was the amount of pressure that's going on the bottom of that pumpkin. I wasn't worried about me putting pressure on it. Once I got in there, I can feel that. But it's that plus the bottom, right? So my whole worry was like, what's the bottom look like?

Yeah. You don't know. It's like, it's, you know, it's just fucking. it's under you. I can't flip this thing over. It's 950 pounds. And we feel good about it because we have three miles left. So once we get through this rapid, I feel like we're home, right?

And we enter the rapid and I'm starting to get beat up. And I had to bail. I hop back in and all of a sudden, boom, thump. The water starts filling up in the pumpkin. And it's pretty obvious to me that we have a leak or a hole or a puncture. you know we we it's getting dark now yeah and we're like what at first when the water started coming in that thing i thought we were done and when we went on the side of the river i think matt thought we were done too i was thinking we were done and then i was kind of freaking out when you wanted to

continue like not verbally but in my head because i was noting that it's getting dark and our support team is saying like hey there's nowhere we can meet you for a couple miles yeah we're in and they're like expecting us to come out and i'm like he's he's keeping going what time is it what time is it what time Is it now? It's past seven. Six o'clock. Six o'clock because the sun goes down at seven and then after that it's pretty. So we get back in.

I'm taking on water. I'm billaging every 30 seconds. I'm paddling. And we find out we have like two miles to go. We got two miles to go. We also lose a paddle as this happens. We're down to one and a half. When you puncture the hole, then as we're trying to like pass battles back and forth,

we lose another one. So we're down to a paddle board paddle and one half paddle for everybody else. So everybody's doing like one of this or thing. We basically know that we've got one chance to land this plane. The thing's smoking. The runway is shitty. But like, let's get it down because it's our only choice. And my whole thing is like, I'm not going to quit.

I'm just not. Like, I'm very stubborn. You know that? And I wasn't going to allow myself to be the reason we didn't get there. If the pumpkin's going to quit, then the pumpkin is going to quit. But I'm going to say quit the thing, dude. When you guys were doing this, when Macon was, doing the show we were talking about you had sent a text or something and I was I was I was going to

make him quit I was going to make him I was like he's talking to making him I was like the only way that they're going to make him get him to quit is that they sabotage the pumpkin yeah no like that was the only that's the only way to do it is to flying high kick the pumpkin so I understand that it wasn't like the wisest decision uh but like that's kind of what these exercises are about is like if I'm going to go out in a fucking blaze of glory I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory but at least at least I tried and so Before we get up to this point, I want to reiterate to everybody listening out there who thought we weren't safe. We had throwbacks with rope. We had life preservatives.

I had a life jacket on. We had, yeah, yeah. We were taking pretty decent precautions. I'm like Aquaman usually. Got our headlamps on. I had a fucking life jacket on. I was glad I did when we tipped in that pumpkin the first time. And I was really glad I did in a little bit.

And so the sun's, it's getting real dusky. And we've got a long straight stretch that leads about a mile up to this bridge that we're looking. at and we're like is that the bridge because we get out of a bridge turns out it's not the bridge but the bridge is a half mile past this this first bridge and i'm saying if we can get to that bridge by dark we can make that turn and we can finish this thing but we're not going to know what's ahead when it gets dark so the sun goes down and we've got headlamps on and it is it's black out there and we paddle past the last landing that we can get off at we see the guys there they're watching us because they're documenting everything to make sure

if we're going to break the record, we get the checkpoints. It's at about 38 miles. We see the guys. And we decide not to get off the river. We're going to go to the last mile. We're nearing the bridge. I'm building.

Morale is fine, but it's like, it's nervous. You know, like, adrenaline is high. You realize the stakes. You're anticipating what's coming too, and you don't know. We don't know. And then like earlier in the morning,

I heard it before I saw it. In fact, I never saw it. We're nearing this bridge. We don't know which span to go under. All I'm hearing is like a lot of water. And it's pretty clear we're going to the rapids. And I'm saying to myself, like, it is the middle of the night. This is not safe.

You know, it's not the middle of the night, but it's effectively black out there. And I'm not going to die doing this, but I'm going to give it a run. And we get right up to the rapids. I can see a little bit of white spray. and like these are big deep water waves I think so I'm I don't think there's fucking rocks under there but you just don't know and all of a sudden the waves just get too much go over the front of the pumpkin and I'm sinking and decision I kind of had to make was do I try to hang on to this pumpkin or do I hop out and and enter the washing machine with my legs in my arms

unencumbered with a chance to like kick off of whatever I need to kick off of And that was again, we didn't know it was up there. It could be a bunch of rocks. You don't want to get pinned somewhere. Yep. And the rapid started as soon as they started, Pumpkin started to sink. And so I'm in the drink.

I got to be honest, this was the first moment I was panicking a little bit because of the darkness and not being able to see what was coming. I was trying to reach over and get my torso on the end of Reed's boat on the back of his kayak because, like, you don't want to enter a rapid just swimming, not at night. and as I'm doing that my big ass like tilts it a little bit and Reed falls off and I'm so glad you didn't die because I would be sitting here like just kicking myself uh reeds in the water we're going about 12 miles an hour it feels like it's quick and it's we're going into the washing we're riding the ride and you've lost all your shit and I've lost all my shit um

and I'm holding on to the back of the kayak and reeds holding on in the front of the kayak and I'm like, re-kick your legs, get your legs up, wrap them around the kayak, because this is the type of thing where people don't come back up. Yeah. Especially little secret here. He didn't have a life jacket on at this point. Mine was on the back of the boat that ended up on the water. Yeah.

And so I'm like thinking, and this is one of those moments, and I've been close a couple times in my life. Y'all were like, have you ever almost died? And I was like, yeah, a couple times. I feel like one was on the New River where it probably wasn't anywhere close to death, but when you're underwater eight, nine seconds, and a hole, when you get dumped off a raft, and you're swimming as hard as you can up,

and you're not coming right up, that feels like you're going to die. This situation, like, you could kind of smell the danger. When danger shows up, like real danger, it's hard to describe the way your brain processes it, but I was like, danger. And there's a picture of Reed on the GoPro, in his face, it caught him clinging onto this boat,

and his face says danger like shock you want to know how it felt yeah look at his face and that and so we're just we're floating to his washing machine just praying man that nothing you know water coming over the top the whole thing your flow state that's what it's called it's like when you get in that survival mode your brain or your body releases like it's very clear some kind of thing that just like this is what I have to do right now to be alive very clear headed yeah very clear headed yeah unfortunately and mother Nature's danger is very different in the sense that it's so unpredictable and powerful. You don't realize how powerful it is until you're in it because you're like, oh, fuck, I have no chance.

No idea. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen right now and I have to do the best I possibly can to survive that. You always think that like with like being on the water or like being in nature like I would do this, I would do that. But like the power of water is too powerful and you just have to you have to hold on. And so we were like fucking maybe 15 seconds, 20 seconds through this thing. It felt like. It felt longer than that. But we were there for a while.

We got to get to the side. You know, the whole thing. And I'm like, where's the side? Yeah. We're just fucking upside down here. Yeah, we're in the upside down world. And when you guys went over, I started fishing for all your stuff and I was holding the giant pumpkin by one arm because I didn't want to let it go.

I wish I knew. And then I was like, I saw the last paddle floating by far to my left. And I was like, what the fuck am I holding on to this pumpkin for? and I let it sink. I wish I knew because I would have tried to go ahead. I know that's why I didn't say anything. So anyways, we got about three quarter miles. God damn, and that.

We got three quarter miles left. You know, we're on the side. We get out. We warm up for a second. We come to grips with the fact that we are not going to do this. Okay, we're not going to do this tonight. And I got to tell you, it felt much better than it felt when we had a puncture in the thing. It felt much better than the morning because at the end of the day, we rode the thing until the wheels fell off.

Absolutely. And I got to say, when I went into this thing, I thought I would be able to do it and it would be hard. But like, I kind of underestimated it. And there's, it's not like watching film of an opponent. Like, there's nothing I can really do. You know, like, what could I have done differently? I don't know. Maybe we could have picked a different river and we might do that next time.

Yeah. Maybe there's not a next time. but coming out of it, I said this when we got off the river. Had you told me a week ago that I was going to come a mile short, I wouldn't even got in the truck. But the whole point of doing anything like this

is just fucking doing it. Like push off the dock, just do it. It's a stupid thing. For most people listening, they're like, yeah, stupid. But for anybody that does something hard, whether somebody tells you stupid or not, the whole point is to take a chance and test yourself and find out what you got.

And I felt like over that two-day stretch, I absolutely found out what I had. It reminded me what I had. And I feel like coming out of it, I'm better for that. And if it takes floating in a fucking pumpkin, 39 miles, as stupid as that is, to explain to my parents why, you know, my mom's texting me the whole time and my kids are worried about me. Or they're texting read because you lost your phone. Yeah.

But then that's what is going to take. And, you know, like I said, like we got off the river and I felt fucking alive. We were all up there thawing out. High as fuck on adrenaline. Yeah. I think you were going to say you were high as fuck. I did smoke that joint right after. We got right into the fucking the bud.

And, you know, like it just felt like, hey, I've lost football games. I've lost. I've had bad luck at times. Things have not turned out the way I want them to turn out. And this thing was a failure. But I felt like I was 100%. happy we did it and I had zero shame like if anything we were riding the truck back and I use I'm not gonna say this shit outright usually but I don't feel like a lot of motherfuckers could do that you didn't

know Dwayne Hanson going through I'm not taking anything away from the way yeah yeah yeah I'm talking about people I know and respect any rational person would have quit way before you did so there you go so I feel I feel I feel good about that you know what I mean uh but it's that type two fun we're talking about in the car it's that type two fun like type one is like it's fun it's like it's fun during and it's fun like afterwards whenever you're recounting type two is your like during you're like oh i'm a little puckered like this is a little i don't know about this there's a story yeah yeah and then and then it's at the bar that's when it becomes fun recounting to your buddies in the podcast recounting your buddies type three we don't need to go to type yeah i think we're past type three in all

of our lives but that's the whole point it's like uh you do things for stories man not even for stories just so you can reflect the adventure yeah yeah yeah the memory man you do you do you do you things for that. So like not everything's going to be easy that you do and fun the whole time. Like this was fun in a really fucked up way. It's also not going to go according to plan. Especially when you're dealing stuff like this. Like there are a lot of and we were talking about this the whole time during the planning of this because it was months that we were, you know, talking about this weekly and going through all the things. We were at the mercy of the weather, the pumpkin. Because that was the thing that was left out a little bit. This is the

third pumpkin. You kind of touched on that. But this was the third pumpkin. The first two was really like Eighth pumpkin, right? Because we had Lou for the original, and he had grown us two or three. And we tried to do those. And then our other buddy, Paul, tried to grow a couple.

Yeah. So once we got off the river and you get into the truck to warm up and you call... For a while. For a while. We turned it up all the way to high and had fresh clothes,

thanks to Aden and the guys. What did you say to Meg and the kids afterwards? What did I say? I don't remember, honestly. Or what was their reaction when you told them that... So when I called, I FaceTime, I think my wife was like pretty sure after the last conversation of like six that we were going to make it.

And they were like, hello? And I was like. That was fast. That was my fault because like right when we started, I get a text from your mom saying, hey, like send pumpkin updates and I shared my location with her. And then Meg right out there, send pumpkin. So we've been sending pumpkin updates. And then I hadn't checked in because we were a little focused like through the second day, like the last two hours.

And they both texted me. They were like, hey, how's it going? I know you guys were coming up in the rapid, you haven't checked in. And I was like, oh, sorry, sorry, yeah, we're about to hit the rapid. I think we're doing all right. We're mile 36.

We've got a couple hours. But it's good that you didn't worry. Yeah. Like, you should never text my wife and tell him I'm on the side of the river almost hypothermic. You should never tell it there's a hole in the bucket. Like, tell her later.

Right, right. You can lie about when I went out there. Yeah, yeah. And that is so, like, I said, yeah, we're about to come up to this rapid, but I think we're doing all right. And then right after I said that is when we got the hole. fucking called my kids

I was like hey you know I'm alive but I didn't make it but I am alive and like it just looked I think my kids it's really one of the first times

because my kids didn't weren't around when I played like to understand what failure is and this isn't like a serious thing I get for most people listening you're like you failed at a pumpkin thing fucking grow up don't grow up by the way

be a fucking kid your whole life yeah dream big your whole life do stupid shit your whole life that nobody understands because the minute you stop doing stuff like that you start dying dude and so like the lesson to my kids was that like you don't have to succeed at things to succeed at things and that's a really like some people disagree with that and it's not true in every situation but i said on the video tryin's enough so i told him i just said dude i fucking sunk the pumpkin guys uh but i had no choice we gave it our very best um and i feel like I feel like I learned something about myself.

I was like, I tested myself, and we went out, and I go, we're second place in the world, guys. Second place in the world. And they were just like, uh, uh, they got, went out and got me one of these bowling little league baseball trophies, and I'm convinced they actually jinxed me

because they put the Guinness Book of World Records on the little plaque. Now I've got to get a change, right? Second place in the world on that fucking trophy. But the bottom line is it didn't matter if we broke the record or not. It's more of a personal thing. And I called my parents and my mom was laughing at me. And my dad was like, you are one of a kind.

You're a unique individual. You are unique. There is no one like you. It wasn't like my dad doesn't understand me. You know, he just doesn't. Me and him are different with shit like this. I don't know, something. something that makes me want to fuck my life up you know there's no one who has gone down the

Delaware River in a pumpkin for as long so you know how there's there's a lot of different records per body of water oh i got the east coast record i got the there's nobody that could do and it was different i honestly and this isn't me pumping my chest out we were talking about on the way home there's a few there's like survivalists people that maybe these kayakers like dain jackson I'd love to see those guys do it. Like they would crush it, I'm sure. But they'd also have trouble. Oh, for sure.

Because there's just no getting around some of this stuff. But as far as, like, normal dudes with no fucking applicable skill set like me that are just like, gripping and ripping it, like, nah, bro. There other experience in the water is going up and doing that. Their other experience of the water is going, is weekend and be like, oh, I just went down to the river and set up my boat and threw some rocks. Even river rats. Yeah.

Go try it. Yeah. It was a motherfucker, dude. And I'm so glad we did it. I had so much fun. Like that's some of the most fun I've ever had. Dude, but that's the thing. Hard shit is fun.

Yes. Doing hard shit as a group is fun. There is a lot to that. Doing hard shit alone is cool. But like, you know, there's this Misogi thing that my friend was trying to get me dude for the last couple years. My boy, Tom, he's like, yo, I was reading about this Misogi thing. It's in Japanese culture.

People do this one hard thing every year. I'm like, well, they don't tell you what to do. No, you got to think about it. You got to figure it out. And it's the thing that really challenged you. Like, people will go. out to the beach in Santa Barbara, I think, or one of these beaches in California, you got carry like a 60-pound rock in the surf for like three miles. That's their misoggi. Like once a

year, do something like that. You know, it's a weird group or individualized exercise that achieves this outcome. Do this shit for your masogi. Oh, boy. This shit was difficult. But these guys crushed it. Couldn't have done it without them. Couldn't have almost done it without them couldn't have almost done it without you uh and the guys on the side of the river were great because every time we saw them like a big morale boost and honestly there were times in the trip that i didn't want to quit because of you guys because i'm like y'all drove up here for this child's place shit let's fucking see it through you know i'm i'm self-aware okay i know people look at me like what the fuck is this guy doing what an idiot what he's wasted everybody's time i get it but i'm going to do it anyways

well I'll tell you it's I don't want to speak for Matt but it was a blast to be a part of and it was a blast to watch you work it was fun dude watch you work you were in the office for sure yeah we were in the office yeah it was a blast it was cool so and then we had the most dangerous part of the whole trip which was me driving six hours without my glasses dude I've never fallen asleep in the car since I was like a kid I think I fell asleep on the way home from pearl jam concert like Nissan pavilion or something or not I forget which pavilion it was one of but I haven't fallen asleep in a car since then and you you after losing your

glasses driving that car on 81 for six hours in the middle of night that was the most dangerous as far statistically of the entire trip and me and reed were both asleep we never would have woke up I was slapping myself like just lately enough that you wouldn't wake up you do because there's people that survive you're just totally relaxed

I was like well Matt's gonna die but I'm me and read are going to be like bro I got that sheets I took a piss and it was brown. You know the Tom Herman Piss chart thing? I'm a bad teammate was where I would have landed on that thing, dude. I don't know where I was physically,

but I woke up the next day and to give you the back end of it, I couldn't walk. It felt like two football games. It felt like I played a football game. That's the closest I've felt since I got out to feeling like you play a football game where you wake up in the morning,

you're delirious, you can't walk to the bathroom. My feet hurt muscles. that I didn't even know exists hurt. They're still hurting. I'm still tired, but we wanted to put a bow on it and tell you guys about all the bullshit we did. So if you're a core green light listener

and you enjoyed checking this one out, we appreciate you. We'll do stupid shit like this from time to time. Send in suggestions. I love this. I feel alive again. So, you know, I don't know if it's like fucking, maybe not swim with alligators,

but, you know, like give us some, some adventures that you think we should try. We're getting just to do just about anything except that ridiculous marathon, the Berkeley's I think it's called. It's like the Ozarks. It's literally like a backwoods marathon. You do 26.5 miles

loops, but you have to do like five of them or 10 of them. There's no trail. There's no trail. Those five marathons? Yeah, yeah. It's like 100 miles or 150 miles. Oh, I think I heard about this. Yeah, yeah. And there's no trail. You have to go off a compass and stuff. And there's like stashes of food or anything.

You're thinking, give us some stuff that you just got to be stubborn. Right. You know, or Falsy. Yeah. We'll do that. Yeah, yeah. But not smart. Right.

Not adept. Yeah, yeah. We don't need compasses. We don't need those skills. People think, yeah, I'm an outdoors. No, I'm not. Yeah. The guy on the phone the night before was like, I'll send you all the coordinates.

And I was Googling. I was like, how do you read coordinates? Fuck, dude. We're looking at Google Maps. We're a blue dot on Google Maps. You have Google Maps? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My buddy, well, you know, Dave Vora, he just did Leadville.

Yeah, he's a beast. And came up. Race is not easy. But, like, he said it was. And, you know, he was crushed not to finish it. My boy Nate Boyer finished it. Yeah. So, like, you know, I don't know that we do anything like that, but give us some ideas.

Yeah. Made me want to do another river trip, like, just on the kayak. Dude, we got to go back in kayaks. It was gorgeous. Do some tough rapids, too. It was gorgeous. Maybe any of you greenlight. listeners that live up in that area.

If you want to float with us, we could do a green light float. Yeah. I'm not sure if I want to follow through with that, but I just kind of sound like. You know, cap it at like five or something. Yeah.

And everybody has to take shrooms. And where a life jet. And sign a waiver. Yeah. And sign a waiver. So that's it, guys. We will be back tomorrow

this is a special occasion podcast. Tomorrow we will be back with Stanford Steve. for our locks and our college football and all that stuff so make sure you like and subscribe uh happy Halloween i can't even look at fucking pumpkins that was a whole tuesday they had them all out there i was like you people out here picking your pumpkins every time i see a pumpkin now i have like a pevaluvian response of anger against it like it's taunting me the last couple nights i've been trying to go to sleep and just seeing water like yeah you know we were in the car you'd go over a bump because you couldn't see shit you know so you're like i i we go over a bump and

and I thought I was hitting, I was like waking up. I was like, oh no, PTSD from the pump. Yeah, yeah, exactly, dude. So if you want more updates from the Greenlight crew, go to Greenlightpodcast.com, enter your email, and you will get a weekly newsletter. As I look at it right now, we failed, but we succeeded. All right, so take care.