So... Alright - A Long Walk

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Geoff interviews a new friend about his cross country adventure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, earlier this summer, I was at a convention in Austin, Texas, where I live. It's called RTX, and if you're not familiar with it, it's a general, I guess, internet culture, video game, anime kind of... I hate to use the word nerd culture in 2023, but I guess it applies. Kind of convention. And I ran into this dude named Giovanni Zavala, who through the course of just shooting the shit, I found out did something that I have wanted to do for my entire life. And I was so impressed and jealous and in awe. I asked Giovanni to be the first person I interview on this podcast. So all right. And so without further ado, Giovanni, welcome to the

podcast. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for letting me be here. And wow, jealous. That's not a word I would ever hear coming from you. That's kind of crazy to think about. Well, I mean, we all have bucket lists, Giovanni, and you've done something that I think is very brave. And you've embarked on an adventure that I have wanted to embark on in some fashion pretty much my entire life without beating around the bush too much. You walked from your home state of California. I want to say you're from right around Victorville, if that's correctly. I'm trying to remember our conversation. Yeah.

Yeah. It started in Victorville, California. Right. And walked to New York City, New York. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You walked with your own two feet from Victorville, California, all the way to, I guess, just like, where did you stop? Times Square? That was the initial plan. Yeah. Times Square. But

something in my head was telling me, no, if you're if you're doing this walk across the United States, you're going to see all sorts of things. You don't stop in Times Square. You stop at Central Park. That's that's that's the way you got to go. Yeah. You go through Times Square to get to Central Park. And I have one million questions for you about that. But one just popped into my head that I have to ask, which is going to fuck the whole timeline of this interview. But how do you walk into New York City? Like I lived in New Jersey for almost two years and you there are just very busy, dangerous tunnels and bridges in every direction. That's how you get it. Like, how do you walk into New York City?

Is there a is there a road that just goes straight in that isn't insanely dangerous? So the George Washington Bridge does have a pedestrian does have pedestrian access into the greater Manhattan Island area. But unfortunately, I did take a ferry from New Jersey into into Manhattan. So I didn't I didn't become a religious figure all of a sudden and walk across the Hudson. No, I had to take I had to take a ferry that part. Okay, that makes sense. And I think a ferry is totally acceptable. Transportation when you're when you're on foot, a little bit of background on you, Giovanni, how old are you? Tell me a bit of a little bit about

you your interest your life and how you ended up landing on trying this uh this adventure like what what prompted you to want to do this so at the time of the walk I was I was a nifty 22 years old okay um I just I just landed my first uh my first supervisor job at a grocer warehouse doing night shift supervisor work. And there was just this hold on the life around me as a result of the 2020 pandemic. Yeah. Because that was the year I started really getting into the idea of maybe I'll take a trip. Maybe I'll start walking. Because I'd grown up kind of being an outdoorsy guy,

grew up as a young boy, like doing Boy Scouts with my dad. He helped me do assistant scoutmaster stuff. And I'd always had the idea, like even as a young kid, I always had this weird, I'll call it a nightmare, where my family would take a trip to New York City, I would get left behind,

and I would have to somehow make my way back to California on foot. Like that's that's a weird memory I had or a dream, a memory of a dream rather. It's kind of like if Home Alone was a was a horror movie. Yeah, basically, if Home Alone meets Hatchet. Yeah, that was the Hatchet. That's a great reference, man, and a great book. If you're out there and you haven't read it yet. That's interesting. Interesting. So was it a conquer your fears kind of thing then? Or did the nightmare turn into like, I don't know, did it go from nightmare to adventure in your head at some point? Yeah. Yeah. When I mentioned that, the hold on the life during COVID, there was a lot of

time for me to think about what did I want to do with what I had, what time I had, considering that a lot of things around us suddenly became a lot more temporary, like things, things weren't permanent anymore. And there was a, there was a vice documentary that I was watching one night by the artist, David Cho. I don't know if you're aware of him. Absolutely. Yeah, he did this. He did this five part documentary series about him and one of his relatives taking this hitchhiking journey across America. Their goal was to get from Los Angeles to Miami. And I had this I like I like the idea of like, oh, that sounds a lot of fun going cross country hitchhiking. But I wasn't too keen on the idea of doing that. So I decided let's let's make this a little bit more personal, make it a bit more of a walking journey. And I started planning that in October of 2020.

And then when October of 2020 and then when did you take your first step? When did you actually go? And then when did you take your first step? When did you actually go? I walked out the front door of my aunt's house in Victorville on February 22nd at 6 a.m. Okay. So about what is that? I'm going to dumb math for four or five months later.

It sounds like four and a half months later. Right. The final step was taken on July 13th, 2021. So you mentioned you were 22 and you got you got essentially promoted and got a supervisor job. And then did that happen during the pandemic or right before the pandemic? Yeah, happened during the pandemic as a result of somebody having to step down due to them losing their job as a result of, you know, pandemic cutting. like losing their job as a result of, you know, pandemic cutting. I'm going to guess that that your job wasn't super cool with you taking an undefined amount of time to walk across the country and then figure out how to get back. So did you have to quit? Yeah. Yeah. I had to I had to give my two weeks as a result of this. They weren't they were not OK with an undefined amount of time being gone from my job. So, yeah, I had to quit.

Yeah, I can completely understand that. You know, it's interesting. I clearly this had a lot to do with COVID and the pandemic and being like in the same boat we all were, where we're forced to reevaluate our lives and our priorities. And it's what caused the great resignation and everybody deciding that they were going to move to a small town and work from home and all of that. And it obviously affected you in a different, more adventurous, more exciting way, which I think is awesome.

But I wonder if some of it was also just being a young dude and I'm extrapolating a bit based on my own experience, being a young dude and then getting offered a certain amount of responsibility and adulthood, that can be a very defining moment in a life. And if you're not ready for that, I can see wanting to say, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, hold on a second. Pump the brakes. Let me think about this. Yeah. You're nailing it on the head. Essentially. There was a lot of, there was a lot of, uh, there's a lot of growing up to do all of a sudden. Cause it's like speaking plainly. I think it's, I think it's a lot of growing up to do all of a sudden. Because speaking plainly, I think it's a strange phenomenon where young men nowadays are kind of getting, not coddled, that's the wrong way to put it.

The path to growth is a little stifled in a way. Yeah, I agree with that for sure. Yeah, and there was this feeling that I hadn't really come into my own as a man yet. And like my, my father's like a massive role model to me, 17 years old, graduated high school, immediately enlisted in the Marine Corps, did a few tours of service, had me in the midst of his service with my mother, and then settled down and just became just a massive inspirational role model for me. And I always compared myself to him in what I would consider an unfair way. I can't compare myself to him, but I always do. And this felt like I had to do something. I had to do something to kind of prove myself. I could do something hard to prove that I was ready for this responsibility that was now being thrust upon me. And it was a searching moment.

I, dude, it's interesting to hear the parallels between your story and things that I've experienced in my own life. Like I, similarly, I had a grandfather who was in the air force for like 22 years and I didn't, I wasn't raised with a dad for a lot of my childhood. So he kind of became my parental figure, my father figure. And to this day, I, he's like the greatest role model I could ever envision having. And I, similar to what you're describing with your dad, I joined the army at 17 to emulate my grandfather, just because I felt this reverence for him and this desire to grow up to be half of the role model. He was for me,

if I could just be like half the man, my grandfather was, I thought, uh, then, then that was a worthy, uh, that was a worthy life.

And so I just, from, from a very young age set up, set about trying to kind of follow in his footsteps and, and try to learn to be as, as an impressive, uh, man as he was.

And I, I don't know how you feel about you in comparison with your dad, but I didn't come close to my grandfather. My grandfather was one of the greatest dudes ever. And I did my best, but man, it's hard to... The men of our past, I think, were cut from a different cloth, I'll say. And they were a lot more capable and sturdy and just better in a lot of ways than I could have ever been. And the other thing I think is interesting is I had a similar situation where I was 25, 26 when we started Rooster Teeth. And I was doing very well in that job. I barely graduated high school, then I joined the army

for five years and needed to find my way after. They actually offered me a promotion to be the vice president of the company when I was, I guess it was about 27. And they said, the only thing is you have to stop kidding around with this dumb rooster teeth, this RVB thing and focus on the company. So you got to stop doing red versus blue to focus on the company. And I quit in that moment. And all I'd ever wanted, I'd been working And I quit in that moment. And all I'd ever wanted, I'd been working at that company for five years. And all I ever wanted was to be the vice president and then someday the president of that company. I saw it as my future. I saw it as a place I could retire from and that I could grow within. And then when I was faced with the decision of

achieving that goal and being further tied to someone else's vision or striking out on my own and trying my own thing. Like my brain needed less than a second to computate that and make the decision. And I didn't even feel like I was a part of it. It just happened. Words came out of my mouth and I was surprised by the result. And, uh, I wonder if what you're describing and what I'm describing there is something that is similar in most or a lot of young, I don't want to say young men, but young people's lives, you know, when faced with, I don't know, faced with those realities, like, is it time to grow up? Or is it time to put all of my energy into someone else's thing or to carve out my own path, so to speak, I guess. It's interesting. It helps me to hear you explain your thought process

and your motivations because it helps me understand mine a little better, if that makes sense, I think. Yeah, in the moment, it doesn't even feel like you're the one making the decision. It's almost a snap realization of, oh, I guess I didn't want to do that in the end. Yeah, I totally understand that. That's that's here to hear it come from you. That's that's really something you you find out

in that like like your employer when you're quitting is you find out that you're just as surprised you're quitting as they are. Yeah. Yeah, basically. That's funny. Were you scared? Were you scared to quit and to do this? Were you afraid you were making a mistake? A little bit. There was there was a lot of trepidation in the early days. My father, when we were discussing the plan, it's funny, my mother was beside herself when we were talking about this. She was like, you're out of your mind. You're crazy, pendejo. And it's like something in my head, just, I know, I want to give this a shot. And my dad is 100% on my in my corner just all right this is what we're gonna do this is what you're gonna need um the first two and a half weeks are gonna be the most difficult part of this

and you're gonna want to quit you're gonna want to give up you're gonna want to come home and if you do that's perfectly fine just understand that once you get past that point it's gonna get easier yeah and uh i learned that lesson very quickly uh i just sent you an image that is me and a and a friend that i started the trip with uh we i essentially i initially planned the walkouts to be a solo journey like from the outset like october to december it was planned out to be completely solo I didn't bring anyone with me but come come uh January February I had a friend who was I guess inspired by what I was telling him about and he decided yeah I'll join you and I'm like all right deuces

he's he's kind of um he didn't really have the same background as I did. We grew up kind of differently. Uh, but he, he was someone who wanted to do the same thing. He wanted to get out there. He wanted to experience something different than the normal. He was, he was used to. And, uh, on day five, he decided he did not want to be there anymore and turned around and quit. Did you see that coming in two ways? One, did you think beforehand when he approached you and said, hey, I'm inspired by what you're doing. I want to be a part of it. Did you think in your head he'll make it or were you like, I don't know if this is I don't know if this guy's got it in him. So before we before we started discussing like you're oh, yeah, you're with me. I sat him down and I down and i said all right listen here like this is this

isn't a oh doing it on a whim thing you're either 100 in or you're not in at all like there's there's no ah maybe it's like it's it's this thing where yeah you're all gas or no or all breaks there's no in between yeah and he he was telling me he was telling me like oh yeah i'm ready like i can do this he was showing me gear he was getting he was telling me about prep he was telling me, he was telling me like, oh yeah, I'm ready. Like I can do this. He was showing me gear he was getting, he was telling me about prep he was doing and yeah, it's, he, he sounded like, all right, well, you're in. And then we got to a point where leaving, leaving California, you have to hit a lot of deserts. Uh, it's basically every direction you go. You go North, you go through Bakersfield, Palm Springs, you go you go west, you go or excuse me, go east, you go through the Mojave to greater Arizona and Texas. Like there's no way there's no way to avoid the desert.

And he I guess became real at a certain point. We were stopped in a town just north of Victorville, about about 70 miles called Barstow. I know it well. I know it well. Yeah. Oh, my. Oh, I completely forgot. Yeah. And we, we were at a campgrounds, uh, there and he, I woke up from, I woke up out of my tent and he was sitting at the bench that they have these little tent sites that we were at. And he expressed me, yeah, I want to go home. Fuck. Okay. Let me, let me throw on a salesperson's tie here. Let me, let me try to pitch him on this idea. And I'm like, look, there's a, there's a little diner down the road. Let's go grab some breakfast and let's talk about this. And we sit down and I'm pitching my heart out here. I'm like,

listen, when's the next chance you're going to do something like this in your life? What, like, what are we going to, what are we going to do? Imagine the stories we're going to get. And after about 10, 15 minutes of me me like talking at him, he looks at me and he goes, yeah, I called, I called my family to come pick me up before you woke up. Yeah. It was, it was, it was a real, it was a real come to myself moment where I was, okay. I just had to accept that's what he did at that point. I understood. And yeah, it was, I, we went back to the campsite i helped him packed up and if like half an hour after that his uh his sister from victorville

came and picked him up and i was suddenly by myself all right well there's a lot of questions i want to ask in and around this but the first one i think is like you've you've you're on day five i think you said at this point right? Yes. And you now have watched how close are you? Is this isn't your best friend or is he your best friend or like? He was he was a really good friend for many many years we knew we knew each other since middle

school since we were like 11 12 years old and I'm still I'm still friends with him today but I've told him I've told him to his face before like we we are friends but I will never trust you in anything ever again. Yeah, absolutely. I can understand that. Like I can't rely on you.

I can't do nothing. What is the moment like? And maybe you don't remember, but I have a feeling you probably remember it very acutely. What is the moment like when he's getting into the car with his sister and he's driving off into the horizon and you're watching your only, I guess, tie to familiarity and humanity literally disappear off into the horizon. Does that, was that, that must have been such an,

I would assume, isolating and lonely feeling in that moment. There was, I didn't, it didn't hit me for a while. Like there was this, um, I watched him drive off and I, I remember sitting down at the bench and I pulled out my journal and I just started writing about the, the, the prior few days we'd been walking up route 66 from Victorville, uh, since then. So I had like, I had like two or three days worth of, uh, like experience that i hadn't written down yet at that point so i i guess i i used a lot of time to like not think about it at that moment

and then it came to i remember it very vividly uh there was a moment where the sun finally went down i'd spent all day just prepping gear, writing stuff down in my journal, uh, sending messages to my, to my folks saying very shortly, like, Hey, Matt left. Uh, I'll let you know later. Yeah. And the, the, the moon finally started rising above the night sky in the desert. And because we were in Barstow, there was so much red sand in the air. It looked like, like a harvest moon, like a bright red moon, but I knew it was like a regular full moon. So I'm staring at this red full moon staring down at me. And I remember thinking like, I've already come this far. Let's try to go a little further. And in this point in

my head, I don't think I'm going to make it anymore. Like there's now a doubt in me. And is this the, and his leaving is the first moment you felt doubt? Yeah. Yeah. Like real genuine doubt. Like the physical pain, the cramping, the chafing that we were experiencing at that point. It didn't really, like I can get past that. But then suddenly to have him take off like that, it was like that was the first moment like, oh shit.

Like there's a possibility I might not make it. Yeah, I can imagine that would be a pretty big psychological blow to be dealt, and especially so early. Was that the biggest hump you had to get over mentally in the journey, or were there many more ahead of you? I wish I could say that was the only. Nope, that was only the first one. Yeah. Later down the line, there were a little little. No, I wouldn't say anywhere near as bad. They were easier to get over after that. And it was mostly homesickness. I think the first bout of homesickness I really started experiencing when I was closer to the center of Arizona. Excuse me. Allow me to backtrack a little bit. Sure, man.

Once he left in Barstow, there was a moment where my my parents actually came out to see me because that's still close enough to Los Angeles where they could easily make a drive up. And we had a moment of like reflection at that campsite where they were asking me, is this what you still want to do? And I could tell them, like, yeah, let's let's give it a shot. let's give it a shot. And yeah, I had there for the rest of the, for the rest of the time, the desert, I was almost numb to everything around me. I had to just focus on one foot in front of the other, ignore the pain, ignore the, uh, like the loneliness, just try to get as far as you can. That was in my head for a long, long time. a while it came it came natural to like get used to the to the silence around me but yeah still you still missed home a lot you still saw things that reminded you of like oh i could be doing that i could be doing this but eventually just it turns

to routine just keep moving forward yeah just keep moving forward right right? Yeah, I'm so, there's so many questions I want to ask you in so many different directions all at once. It's hard to pick a lane for me, but let's take it back a little bit because there's some stuff I don't want to miss. You decide you want to go. How do you train for this? Are you looking up on like Reddit and websites and forums? Are you figuring out your own training regimen?

Are you getting, seeking counsel or advice from people who've done something similar? Or are you just kind of, I don't know, just figuring out as you go? Yeah. Yeah. I was following, I was following other Instagram pages who were in the midst of their own cross country walk. There was an Instagram page called the golden road where these, this couple, Matt and Grace and their two dogs, they were embarked, they were in the middle of their own cross-country journey and i was sending them messages like oh like what do i do to get ready what do i bring and they they were the one of the first people to impart to me that it's not

about the equipment it's about what's in your head that's going to be way harder because they had each other and uh they yeah they relied on each other. They made no bones about how, if they were, if either of them were by themselves, they wouldn't be able to do the trip. But, uh, there was, yeah, they, they just kept saying, well, if you're going to train physically, this is, you got to do. And they sent me this list of, uh, this list of like incline walks and, uh, like ligament exercises. Cause the, the muscles themselves will develop, but like your joints or something that will, that'll ultimately like crumble before the rest of you. Yeah. And he, yeah, they, they sent me this long list and I proceeded to do almost none

of it. I was going to ask you how religiously did you follow the list? Not very, I guess. Yeah, not very, no. Like it was, it was a trial by fire for those first two weeks. Like it was it was rough. I went through a lot of baby powder and like petroleum jelly, just rubbing everything down that was rubbing. It was yeah, it was awful. Do you think if you had followed their recommendations and done all of the training, it would have made a difference?

Like, would it have made a difference? Yes. Yes, it would have made a difference. Like, would it have made a difference? Yes. Yes, it would have. There was a moment when my partner and I were still out working together. We tried to cross a patch of desert that was about 14 miles. And we got about, I think I want to say five miles into the desert. And we said, all right, we have to turn back because at that point we were just so exhausted and we knew we weren't going to make it to the next town over before we got that

like before we um like essentially like got exhausted and ran out of water yeah so we knew if we went back the way we came we'd at least be able to make it it would be a shorter walk back and and prepare again and then take a separate route so yeah if we if we would have trained a little bit harder we most definitely would have would have been okay but yeah there's there was a lot of little learning moments like that when we were still when we're still together speaking of that being afraid of running out of water it from the pictures that i've seen it looks like you were pushing almost like a baby stroller with you. I'm sure it wasn't

a baby stroller, but some sort of device designed for this kind of thing. How much gear are you bringing with you? Because I'm assuming you're mostly camping, right? You probably have to have a tent. You have to have

clothes. I imagine a couple of pairs of shoes. Like you must have gone through shoes very quickly. Like how much gear, like how heavy is all this stuff? How and how are you transporting it? So what I'm pushing there is it's called it's a it's called a game cart. I think that's what it's colloquially called. OK, it is one of those carts where you take it out into the you take it out in the forest when you bag a boar or buck you like throw that

you throw the carcass onto that and then you drag it back to your truck so you can do whatever you need to do with it um yeah i i i outfitted it with a few with a few bungee cords and a few like little little modifications so it was a little bit more mobile and I had two backpacks strapped to it where there was a, there was like a camping backpack, which I strapped my sleeping bag, my tent. Um, I had all of my, my clothes and shoes, like you said, in that bag. And then I had a more like more, um, standard hiking backpack strapped underneath it. And that one carried like my food, toiletries my um uh like survival gear stuff like that and then i i had a water bladder inside of the the hunt the the the um camping backpack

as well and that thing also carried an addition to the two uh two uh two gallon buckets you see strapped to the sides there was was an additional two gallon water bladder inside of that. So I tried to carry at least four gallons of water and at least three days worth of food before I had to hit another town and resupply. Were there moments on the trip where you got dangerously low

and were genuinely afraid? Like, ah, fuck, I'm in a desert. And clearly you had to turn around at that one point when you were five miles into a 14-mile trip, which must have been honestly pretty depressing because if you think about it, you went five miles in and five miles out. So you did 10 of the 14 miles,

but at the end of the day, you still had the 14 miles ahead of you. Were there moments where you were caught, you thought you had enough provisions and then you you ended up uh things got a little dicey thankfully no no there was like i there were there were moments where i was thinking like oh well if i if i don't get if i don't find a water source tonight then uh i'll i'll have to like like not not conserve because that's not what you do in that kind of situation you use what you have and then you look for more but no thankfully it never got that bad like uh the route i the route i ended

up taking um kept me pretty close to places i can resupply pretty easily okay and uh so you mentioned in the in the you made it five days with matt were did you have any indications in those first five days up until that morning when when you woke up and he told you he was going home that this was a possibility? Was he pretty gung-ho and then you were just like caught unaware or caught by surprise? Or did you kind of feel like it was headed that way? I thought we were in the same boat where we were both just like going through the first early days of strenuous like exhaustion. We were like, all right, well, it's going's gonna be tough but we're gonna get through this uh it wasn't until he told me that because in my head i was 100 in there was no yeah yeah like i there was i knew there was a chance i might not

make it but it wasn't going to be as a result of me not trying to do so like it was going to be something like prevented me from doing so so i didn't i didn't think he was going to turn around and head back that soon. I think that might be a good lesson to people that are listening just in general. When you have a dream, something like this or something totally different, and it is your dream,

that dream can be pretty enticing to other people and they can want to be a part of that dream. That happens very often. But you just always have to remember that it's your dream, not theirs. And no matter how involved or how into it they might be, they're going to hit a point where they probably aren't as invested in it as you are, because it is still your dream. And you just have to be prepared for that. Whether you're starting an internet company in 2003 or hiking across the country, when you bring people along for your ride, always in the back of your head, remind yourself that this is your thing and they're probably not going to be as, I don't know, as imbued with it in their core as you are.

So it can be easy, I think, to be let down. But I think it's important to remember that that's okay, because it probably wasn't their dream to begin with. It was your enthusiasm for it that made it sound interesting. And we just need to recognize at times that not everybody is going to be as invested in your thing as you are, I guess would be the way to put it. And to expect that, I think, so that you won't be disappointed or as disappointed. And maybe it won't put as much stress on a relationship in a particularly stressful time. Yeah, definitely. You are your number one supporter, which was what I learned. It's absolutely wonderful to have people around you that'll support you. But sometimes if they get a little

too into it, yeah, it's just you, you are the person pushing yourself. Remember that. How, so you, you, you don't train very much. Uh, you get the equipment you need. You're 22 years old. Have you, have you spent much time away from home at this point or as most of your life been in and around your town and your family? Very, very little time away from home. Yeah. This was the longest time I'd ever spent away from family, from California in general. It was my first, I want to say, taste of culture shock to a certain degree because life outside of the Los Angeles area, outside of California. Yeah. Vastly different. Turns out crazy. Who knew? Yeah. I can only imagine. How do you determine the route? So so naive Giovanni at the beginning of the journey, sitting in his at his desk at the

supervisor job as he's planning to quit the job he's hating right now. He's he's saying, all right, so I'm going to stop here. Then I'm going to go here. Then I'm going to stop here. Then I'm going to go there. That just flew out the fucking window as soon as boots hit the ground. Like I followed the route for maybe the first. Three days. And then I realized that the route I had taken us was going to be a near 60 mile journey through almost uninhabited desert. Yeah. So I was like, all right, this is no longer the plan. Let's find a way around this. I had to learn to improvise pretty quickly. Stop. I had to learn how to stop thinking like six or seven days ahead. I had to

think like maybe two or three at a time in order, in order to maintain like any sort of realism about what I was going to be able to do. Cause if I, if I ended up going like further and further planning out where I was going to go next, I always knew the, I always knew the end goal was going to be New York city, of course, but I wasn't exactly too hung up on like, okay, how am I going to get there? And the, like, I figured out like you know just take a winding path if it if it's a little bit more a little bit more safe to take the longer route than take the the quote-unquote shorter route but there's a lot less rest stops on the

way then that that take the longer route yeah that makes that makes a lot of sense how how often were you finding you the need to improvise pretty Pretty constantly, I guess, from that point on? Like maybe once every few days, yeah. There was a time when inclement weather or just my own physical well-being forced me to like take a day or two to just set up camp, like find a place to sit down, reevaluate what you're doing, recover,

and then get moving two or three days behind schedule, so to speak. Speaking of schedule, how long did you anticipate it taking? And then how long did it end up taking? I told my family and friends that I was going to be anywhere from five to six months out of, uh, out of like California. Yeah. And that was ended up being a little bit, a little bit, uh, generous of me. It ended up being only about four and a half months. Oh yeah. Yeah. Crazy to think about, but getting from, yeah, getting from place to place, certainly when it's the only thing you're doing like day in and day out it and it ends up being a little bit less a little less involved okay i have i have a journal i have journal entries of

day in day out of what i was doing where i was going but it's almost like a blur at certain points where i was just moving and the world around me uh like faded into obscurity and then i blink i'm like, I'm suddenly 25 miles down the road. All right, cool. So not too long ago, I watched a documentary on YouTube about, I'm not sure if you've heard about it. There's this place in the Middle East called the Empty Quarter. And it's a desert within a desert in, like, Iran and Yemen and Oman. It spans a bunch of countries. And it's considered one of the most uninhabitable places in the world. And I watched this documentary about these two British kids.

I say kids, they're like, you know, in their early 20s, who walked across it. And one of the things they described about a third of the way through is, there's a certain freedom in the routine of you. You're doing such a simple thing that it's almost like your mind gets to take a vacation because a lot of the decisions in the day-to-day life are thrown out the window because you literally get up, you eat, you pack up, you walk, you stop, you eat, you walk more, you stop, you camp, you get up the next day, and the next day is going to be identical to this day, and the next day after that is going to be identical to this day. And they found over time that that was

difficult at first, but over time, it felt like a certain kind of freedom to them to know that everything was planned out ahead of them, and they were just following along this path. out ahead of them and they were just kind of along that they were just following along this path and uh they they both described that as being very mentally freeing for them did you uh find that to be the case yeah yeah that's oh my god i gotta watch what they're i gotta watch that because that sounds almost identical to what i was going through um especially in places like i know i'm skipping ahead a little bit here when you hit when you you get past the Colorado Rockies and you get into Kansas heading into Missouri, there is just,

there's just nothing. So you kind of have to do that. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta just keep going forward and then zone out a little bit. Cause I made the joke to my, to my pops one time that if I were to fall asleep in my tent one night and some,

some magical, whatever the hell picked me up and moved me a hundred miles in any direction. And I woke up the next morning. I would not know. That's a really good point. Yeah. Like you just had to zone out and say, all right, it's going to, it's going to look the same for a few days. You just got to understand that and, and just keep walking. Just ignore it. Do you now, do you have a cell phone on you? I'm assuming you must have a smartphone. I don't know how easily it is to charge on the road.

But are you able to keep in contact with friends and family and check in pretty regularly and listen to podcasts or like NPR news reports? Or are you super unplugged? Jeff, I'm more than I'm more than ashamed to admit that your guys's podcast network was a huge part of me listening to getting rid of the boring stuff. Oh, wow. Like Kansas. Yeah, yeah. I had a smartphone with me and I had two solar batteries hooked up to that cart. So as I was walking, they would both charge.

And then whenever I'd set up my tent for the night, I would take one of the batteries, bring it into the tent, use it to charge my phone. Then the next day, swap the battery out, charge, charge the my phone with the other battery and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I was able to I was able to keep in contact with friends and family pretty, pretty consistently. There are only a few patches in like the middle of nowhere areas where cell signal dropped and I wasn't able to. But yeah, most every day I was I was telling people, yeah, I'm here. So if I get lost, start the search there. So would you see those TV commercials for like T-Mobile or AT&T bragging about nationwide coverage? It really was nationwide coverage for you.

That's oh, yeah, that's good to hear. How about danger? That's oh, yeah, that's good to hear. How about danger? Did you ever feel like because I I feel like I would be scared of other people, if I'm being honest with you, I would be scared of of like small town. America can be kind of I grew up in rural Alabama and small town. America can be kind of frightening at times. It can also be wonderful and amazing. And I'm sure you were beset upon by the kindness of others constantly. And I definitely want to get into that. But there were there moments where you were scared rationally or irrationally for your for your safety, whether it be from a, I don't know, marauding animal or some dude driving by in a pickup truck with his lights off or you know what I mean or somebody who seemed kind of sketchy at a at a campground that was that was one of the beautiful things about the walk where um my family being uh i'm hispanic of ethnicity mexican uh second generation mexican kid and my my mom was like oh you're gonna be you're gonna be walking through some town in missouri and you're

gonna get stopped by police and it's gonna to be like a whole situation. And I was just explaining to her, like, I think people are better than that. And yeah, you see you see a lot of shit like on on the news, just constantly feeding you like, oh, this is going to be the country divided. This was right after the the 2020 election. And there was a lot of like a lot of. Political fear, I don't know how else to describe it but i i didn't really buy into it and i i was right more often than i was wrong like people on the road were just like the kindest you you found the helpers more than you found the people that wanted to like diminish you in any way and i didn't i didn't have that much fear in me. Maybe, maybe it's like

a born of a naivete, but no, I, I, I, in my heart really thought that no people are going to be better than, than what I expect them to be. And God damn it. If I wasn't right, most of the time. That is so great to hear by the way. And, uh, also, you know, that, that documentary I mentioned earlier about the empty quarter, those dudes said when it was all said and done, the thing that they took away from it that was the most important, not like overcoming a challenge or walking in the footsteps of other great explorers in the past or seeing a part of the world that most people don't get to see. They said the thing that mattered the most to them when it was all said and done, and the thing that they appreciated the most and that they took away the most, was how kind other people and strangers were, and how much they grew to rely on the kindness of strangers. And just being able to have a conversation with another person and how important that became, just getting to interact with other humans in the moments that they could in the desert and just and just how much they cherished and prized it. And I wonder if it sounds like you had a very

similar experience. Did you are you in contact with anybody that you met along the road? Are there people that have become a part of your life because of this? Yes. Yes, I am. There is this there is skipping ahead way, way further into the journey. There was a, there was a family that took me in for the nights in, in a town called Independence, Pennsylvania. And let me see where the hell is it? It was, I, I initially met the family through the patriarch, the father of two boys and husband to his wife. He was driving down the road as he as he passed me up. He was he was I was on the left lane because I was I was always if I was ever walking on a road, I always wanted to be facing traffic because in my head I was saying, well, if one of you is going to run me over, I want to look you in the eyes before you do it. Absolutely. Yeah. And there was he passed me going.

He passed me on the right lane heading away from me and he pulled a u-turn to come back towards me and at this point this had happened maybe like like maybe twice every week someone would stop on the road and ask me if i was okay if i needed anything like i said people when they saw me they were they they were going to try and help like it was i can't describe it like the beauty in that just, yeah, it's, it's hard to put into words. And I met him and we got to talking and there was the, the Briggs family that I, that I just sent an image over to you. He just, he described, he was, he was a medic in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. And he opened his, he opened his home to me. He opened himself up to

him and his family and they were flying. They were, they were flying Trump 2020 flags. They were flying MAGA flags, like just a total disconnect of how each of us perceive the world. But nonetheless, there were beautiful people. Yeah. And I stay in contact with them. Uh, they gave the, the mother of the family marge she gave me her email and i send her i send her cards about what i'm doing i send her updates and she she types like a facebook mom where it's like every other letter every other letter is capitalized with random exclamation points and stuff in it but like yeah she's the sweetest thing and uh funny enough jeff uh the the the man standing to her right uh in the red shirt that

that's her son uh griff briggs griff briggs well he's got a hell of a name i'll give him i know right this episode is brought to you by peloton Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply.

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What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday. Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way.

And you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a whopper Wednesday. Only at Burger King, where you rule. You know, it's funny you mention that. And being a particularly politically tumultuous time when you walked in, I mean, honestly, it still is, right? It's not like things have softened in any way whatsoever. And we become,

we become so divided along party lines. And it really has gotten to the point where, uh, unfortunately people view politics under the same lens as sports. And like, I love the Boston Celtics. They can do no wrong. Nothing they do will be wrong to me.

And I, and, and I know that's not right, but that's just my, that's, but that's just how I feel at my core about my love for the Celtics. And unfortunately, people ascribe that same fervor, I guess, and loyalty to political parties and are just unable to see or to listen to differing opinions. And I include myself in that. I think we're all guilty of it.

But the way it used to work is you would leave politics at the front door and you just wouldn't discuss those divisive issues and you could learn to love your brother or neighbor and completely disregard their political leanings because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. What matters is a family saw because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. What matters is a family saw you on the side of the road and wanted to help in some way,

and they did, and you forged a beautiful relationship with them. That is now continuing, and who knows how long, hopefully for a very long time, it'll continue. And I wish, I think it's awesome for a million reasons that you did this, but that's not the least of them right there, is that we get to learn or relearn that people are largely good and kind and warm and helpful and beautiful. got to stop seeing them through a red or a blue prism because when you are on the road, you don't and you sprain your ankle or you get a flat tire on your on your game cart or you run out of water. It doesn't you don't give a fuck if the guy's got a Biden sticker or a Trump sticker when he comes to pick you up. You just you just need some humanity.

And and I think it's awesome that you got to experience that in its purest form. And I hope that's something that people will take away from this interview, but that you'll also impart and continue to impart on others throughout your life, because I feel it's a lesson that people are forgetting and that we need to either learn or relearn at all times. I was handed Gatorade bottles by a woman outside of her house, which was flying Confederate flags. So I was, yeah, there's, there's a whole spectrum of humanity that's no matter what people think, like sometimes people just want to help. It's crazy. It's crazy shit. Pennsylvania too. Who, what's who flies a Confederate flag in Pennsylvania?

Dude, you'd be surprised, man. I, uh, I spent a lot of time in upstate New York earlier in my life. And it was one of it was I grew up in Alabama and upstate New York felt more Alabama than Alabama did at times. And that was really always caught me by surprise. So you just never know. How much did you anticipate this costing? How much did you save? And then how close were you at the end i saved uh i saved uh two thousand five hundred dollars that was my budget okay uh for the walk and i ended up i ended up spending maybe uh 2.2 thousand of that so i had about three thousand three hundred left left over in the budget at the end of it wow and my yeah yeah a lot of it ended up being like, um, costs going towards like replenishing my, my supplies. Like I always, I always try to keep it like as cheap as I can, but there was times where I had to get something repaired on the carts that I had to go to, I had to go to Harbor freight for pick up some stuff that I didn't have. Um, some of it was getting more equipment.

Um, but like you said, shoes, oh my God, you run through shoes. So God, and you have to get good ones or else they just, they, they fall apart on you in the middle of nowhere and you need to walk somehow. Yeah, no, that's, that was, that was the part that shocked me and my parents and was just how, how much it could end up costing. It was crazy. How many pairs of shoes did you go through? I went through six pairs of shoes in total, three pair, three pairs of walking shoes and, or excuse me, four pairs of walking shoes and two pairs of hiking boots. What did you prefer, the hiking boots or the walking shoes?

It depended on where I was going. If I was going uphill, downhill, if there was terrain that I had to get up and over, then yeah, the boots, absolutely. But if I was in somewhere like Kansas, Missouri, where it became like Great Plains, just walking forward for hours and hours on end. Yeah, the walking shoes had to be had to be put on. And you're going on a road on roads pretty much this entire time. Are there are there periods where you have to traverse like terrain, rough terrain, or are you always pretty much on the shoulder of a highway or a road of some kind? pretty much on the shoulder of a highway or a road of some kind. There were times where I was taking the, I was taking the frontage roads, which are primarily dirt, uh, on the side of highways. But yeah, no, for the most part I was, I was sticking to highway walking. I wanted to be,

uh, I wanted to take a quote unquote direct route, but also a route I was technically not allowed to be on there. Uh, I got stopped by, I got stopped by law enforcement pretty, uh, pretty often, but for the most part it was yeah yeah for the most part it was always just like what the hell are you doing you okay yeah this is me this is what I'm doing I I explained what I was like all about and yeah I never never had a problem uh for the most part uh only one only one time there was an issue my mom she's a she's a cleric I'm telling you she's like one of those oracles you read about in the greek legends she was like you're gonna have problems with a cop in missouri and that was the only time i almost had a problem what was the

situation there um less of a situation and more of a weird happenstance there was uh there was a time when i got stopped in missouri and the cops always wanted to id me just to make sure i wasn't a missing person, someone with a warrant. And I understood completely. I'd never had an issue with it. So I gave him my ID and I was waiting by my carts and he walks back to me and he has this look on his face.

And he like, he slowly hands me my ID back and he goes, well, you got a warrant out of Houston, Texas. And like my stomach just drops to my asshole. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? He goes, yeah, there's like your, your name's coming up on a warrant in Houston, but there's only a 200 mile like extradition treatise on it. So I'm not going to bother. Like, I don't know. I'm just like, what the fuck is happening? I was so confused because at that point I had been stopped so many times and nothing had ever popped up and i have never been to houston texas before i've been to austin once

or twice but never houston i was like oh my god like suddenly i'm i'm freaking the hell out and he just like yeah well and ain't no problem if you're ain't if you're not that close and i'm like all right i gotta get that cleared up, I suppose. And then a few weeks later, I get stopped again and I'm just in the back of my head. I'm like, oh, is that fucking warrant thing going to pop up? Because at this point, I called the sheriff's, like the sheriff's

department over there where the warrant is based out of and they couldn't tell me jack shit. They were like, oh, we don't see anything. What are you talking about? Yeah. It was odd. It was an odd situation. Maybe the guy like fat fingered it or something and mistyped yeah that that must have been i i dude i can't even imagine i can't even imagine there was this time uh this is about 15 years ago now or so i just started to get mail uh from lawyers in san antonio letting me know that they could help me with my upcoming court case and i it was just the weirdest bit of spam you get. You know, like sometimes when you get a speeding

ticket and then you get a bunch of letters for driving school, all of a sudden you end up on some list. And I just kept throwing them away. And then after I got the fifth of the sixth one, I thought, you know what? There's too many of these. I got to check in on this. And so I call. And it turns out I was wanted for Grand Theft Auto in Bexar County, Texas, which is where San Antonio is. And I had an upcoming court case about it. Turns out a year earlier, someone had stolen broken into my house and stole my safe and they stole my ID and they passed my ID off when when they got busted stealing a car. when they got busted stealing a car. And so I had to get it all taken care of. And I and it was it was actually pretty easy to get taken care of. But for about five years, I had to carry a letter around in my wallet that explained I wasn't that dude. And it never really came again, it was difficult. It was difficult to get in and out of the country. I had to go through secondary screening for a decade, which was really obnoxious. But But yeah, same kind of thing. You just like my asshole hit that, like my stomach went through my asshole to the ground and then

started to burrow into the earth when I found out that I was wanted for Grand Theft Auto, you know, and I can't imagine it must have been similar for you. Yeah, yeah, there was that's that was a scary situation considering I was all alone and I didn't know what I could do in that moment. Yeah, not a whole hell of a lot, right? I mean, this is essentially, I don't know if you've seen it, but the first Rambo movie, it's called First Blood. That's essentially how the movie starts. I'm not that young, Jeff. How about your body, man?

How, like, what kind of effects did this have on you? Did you gain weight? Did you lose weight? Also, how many calories a day are you consuming? And are you trying to consume the right kind of calories? Or are you just like, I'm fucking hungry and my feet are sore and I want three hamburgers and a pizza? Yeah, I was trying to maintain, I was trying to maintain like a calorie dense diet.

A lot of, it was a lot, carbohydrates to keep like energy going. And if you want to see a change in my body, uh, I'm sending over two images right now. It's, it is the craziest transformation, honestly. So when I started the trip, I weighed like just under 250 pounds. Like I was, I'm a, I was a big guy and, um, I'm sick. I'm six foot flat, 250 pounds at the start. And at the end of it, I weighed a little bit under 210. It was, yeah, it was a lot, a lot of weight loss. You must have been pretty fucking hard too. Like you got to be pretty solid muscle at that point.

My legs were recorded steel by the end of it. I was having fun with that. Yeah, it's just a massive, massive amount of of weight loss. So I was definitely in a calorie deficit. But for the entire trip, I would burn on the like I was looking at my I was looking at a Fitbit that I had the entire time. I'd always keep track of the steps I take in a day or every day. I take in a day or every day and I would always, I would get, uh, over 35,000 or like over 35,000 steps a day. And I would hit around 6,000, 6,500 calories on a, on a regular day. That was, that was what the Fitbit was claiming. I burned on like a day where I was going 50,000 steps. Like I was really going above and beyond doing almost like a little bit more than a marathon

every day and walking. Uh, I would hit, I would hit about like 7,000, near 8,000 calories burned in a day. Jeez. By the way, that's a lot. 35,000 steps a day in itself is a lot. I mean, a lot, lot. I walk a lot. I consider myself in fairly good shape for my age. I'm 48 now.

But a couple of years ago, I went on a vacation to Philadelphia with my then girlfriend, now fiance. And we used to always keep track of our steps when we go places. And I still do. You try to do the 10,000 steps a day, even though, spoiler alert, that's just an arbitrary number that they came up with. There's no health science behind you hitting 10 000 steps a day uh other than it's better to walk than not to walk but i i did about 33 000 steps one day in philadelphia it's the most i ever recorded in one day and i i was wrecked i was wrecked for maybe two days later like i can't imagine doing that every single day day in and day out and that that leads me to ask how often did you have to take time off

and just say like, I don't have it today, I'm staying in the tent or did you ever, also, did you ever go stay in hotels? Like, would you ever just be like, you know what, I'm in Butte, Montana. It seems very cute.

There's a movie theater. There's a park. Maybe I take like a little three-day vacation, stay in a Motel 6 and have some showers and hot food and just recover. Like, are you doing that a lot throughout the trip yeah yeah like relatively often i would say like once every once every nine or ten days yeah i would grab like a like a cheap motel room just so i can get a shower if they had a laundry oh my god blessing

blessings all around just wash all my clothes because every days I was swapping in. I would say like, oh, these days, these clothes I've been wearing for only four days. I've been wearing the clothes I've been wearing for six. So let's swap them out. Yeah, it was it was it was rough. And I'm a two shower a day kind of guy. I guess you get pretty used to being dirty pretty quickly. And I imagine that becomes not a big deal very fast for you, I would assume. That's not to say I didn't have hygiene products with me. I had sanitary wipes that I would use to, quote unquote, shower in my tent every morning. I had a no water dry shampoo that I would use in my hair. Carried toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. Like I kept myself hygienic.

I knew that was going to be a problem early on. That's something I prepared for in the correct way. And yeah, like, but every now and then you just, you start to feel this grime on yourself. We're like, nope, wipes aren't going to cut it. I need to take a shower. I totally understand that. And it was, it was less the hygiene part that was making me take rests than it was just intense leg fatigue where just suddenly you want to take a step forward, but your, your feet are just curling up underneath you and cramps. And you're like, all right, let me,

let me lay back into my sleeping bag and just take an hour or two. And then an hour turns into seven because you fell asleep and it's now six thirty at night. And you're like, oh, my God. Do you did you ever stop to get a massage anywhere along the way? I stopped in St. Where was it? No, it was New Concord, Ohio. And I stopped at a at a pretty like not fancy. It's a part of like it's still a part of like a chain fancy. It's a part of, like, it's still a part of, like, a chain hotel.

It's part of the Super 8. Okay. Motel chain, but not Super 8. It's, like, a part of the umbrella. I can't remember the name off the top of my head. But they had a pool and whirlpool tub. And that was something that I would, I will never forget the feeling of setting foot into that jacuzzi and just feeling the jets around like like at this point, three months of just sore muscles. I melted into a puddle.

I almost fell asleep in that jacuzzi. I can't I can only imagine what that must have like the joy that must have been for you. Speaking of sore muscles, though, what are we talking about with injuries here? Did you suffer any serious injuries along the way anything that like impeded your progress for any length of time uh thank uh thankfully no the the only the only debilitating thing that i ever had on the walk like blessing blessings all around there um was simply some some like dead skin that i had around my feet because i was i was trying to keep very very good care of my feet i had like of like all the things i had like i had like five pairs of

underwear like uh four shirts uh three pairs of like cargo pants and jeans two pairs of shorts like i had all these i had 12 pairs of socks because i knew that i was going to be going through those the most whenever i stopped uh for like a lunch break i swapped out my socks because i knew that taking care of my feet was going to be the most important thing if those ever crapped out on me i was fucked um i i ended up getting this weird this weird like skin peeling it was almost like like athlete's foot to a certain degree like dry skin was was getting like moist and i ended up peeling some skin off the bottom of my foot and that was kind of that was kind of scary where i couldn't put pressure on it or else i get like pins and needles going all the way up my leg and so that was like the only injury that

i said like i need to take like three days to just sit and sit in this motel room and just, and like keep it raised. Don't put it in water. Like keep it, keep it dry and just keep it clean essentially. But yeah, that was, that was the only time I had to say like, all right, I can't move because I'm going to hurt myself. Yeah, absolutely. Where, um, where are you at that point in the trip? At that point of the trip, I was in a town, funnily enough, it was called Manhattan, Kansas. Okay. Yeah. So I was there, essentially. I made it. What would you say after, I think his name was Matt, Matt leaving,

what would you say was the low point on the trip for you? There was a moment in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was, I was at a, I was at a cheap, I was at a really cheap motel in, um, where was it? Ferguson. There we go. I was in, I was in a cheap motel in Ferguson, Missouri, and it was right next to a, I was right next to a, um, a train stop near an airport where it could take me into greater downtown Missouri or St. Louis. And I was going to take a day like, oh, let's I'm in town. I don't want to just walk right through. Let me go take a look around. And I sat on the train to go to downtown St. Louis and I looked out the window and just this feeling of overwhelming, just what am I even doing here? Like this intense self-doubt. I have no idea where it came from it was just it was just

this feeling of why am i here what am i doing there's an airport right there take me home like it was this it was the most scared i'd been uh since matt left and it was there was almost no reason for it at this point i hadn't gone through any traumatic injury recently i'd not gotten through like a very essentially strenuous part of the trip. It was just all of a sudden just I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. And I remember I remember like tearing up. I was like trying to hide me, essentially sobbing on this train car around all these people that I didn't know.

And it was yeah, it was a real scary situation all of a sudden. And by the time I got to downtown St. Louis, I got off the train to go to go to bush stadium like just take a look around i was completely over it it was it was an intent it was almost like an anxiety attack i want to say oh like out of nowhere no reason for it just boom in the chest heart racing can't breathe and then i'm good i'm honestly surprised that didn't happen more often um I guess it speaks to your resolve because that seems like a really appropriate and normal thing to go through, given what you're doing.

You mentioned going to Bush Stadium. What kind of tourist stuff did you do? Were there highlights you were like, I really want to see the Great Space Crater, or I really want to go by the Grand Canyon, or I really want to see the great space crater or i really want to go by i really want to go by the grand canyon or i really want to see bush stadium were there were there like touristy things you wanted to do along the way uh or that you got to do along the way yeah i took a massive detour uh i was walking along route 66 for a good part of leaving well yeah since leaving leaving barstow i was on route 66 heading heading east. I was I was planning on I was planning on going past the Grand Canyon at a certain point.

But when like when I got to when I got to a crossroads just past Williams, Arizona, which is which is the like the exit you take to get to the Grand Canyon, you take this long road shot north to the Grand Canyon. I remember saying, like, I'm already here. Let's just go. Why else am I doing this if not to see America in its like in its most pure form? And yeah, I took a took a straight shot north to the Grand Canyon, spent two or three days camping out there, almost got caught in the blizzard. That was kind of scary. I mean, you hear you hear Grand Canyon, Arizona, and you don't think blizzard,

but that was me, once again, naivety. I didn't realize that the Grand Canyon was about 8,000 feet above sea level. So there is a lot of weather and I just happened to get there at the high point of blizzard season. That was the first time I saw snow. In your life?

In my life. Dude, I'm looking at this image you just sent me of the Grand Canyon and it is, to say it's breathtaking is like the just sent me of the grand canyon and it is to say it's breathtaking is like the understatement of the year i can't i just yeah i described it to my to my to my family because a few of them had gone to the grand canyon before and i was saying it looked like one of those paintings that the wiley coyote would put up on a wall to like stop the roadrunner like it looks fake like you're looking at it and you

can see it but it looks fake as shit you look at you're like as bullshit this isn't real i'm not falling for it that was it like look at that it's amazing well you mentioned being there for blizzard season uh what was the hottest you what temperature you experienced and the lowest temperature you experienced fuck me if humidity isn't the worst thing I've ever experienced in my goddamn life. Yeah. Like, come on. I'm so Los Angeles, California. We, we get up to like, we get up to like the hundreds in the summer, but it's a dry heat. Like you can deal with it. Like humidity. I would wake up humidity in like Indiana, Illinois. I would wake up at,

I would wake up at around seven in the morning and start packing up my stuff. And I'm looking at weather apps and I'm saying like, okay, it's only getting up to about 90 degrees. That's perfectly fine. By like 9 a.m., it's 85, but there's water in the air and it's sticking to me. And I'm drenched. I'm like, what the hell is happening? I would say like, yeah, Indiana, Indiana, 90 degrees with humidity was the worst heat I experienced. That was, it was God awful. But the, the coldest

it got was that blizzard at the grand Canyon. It got about to about negative. I think I want to say negative 10. Are you in a, you're camping at this point? Are you in a tent? No, yeah, I'm still camping. Uh, thankfully I did have, I had cold weather gear with me. Like I, I, I'm still camping. Thankfully, I did have I had cold weather gear with me. Like I I think I sent a photo earlier. It was it was it was a picture that someone had taken of me at the Grand Canyon. And it's me covered in like head to toe in my in my cold weather gear. I have gloves on. I have a really thick beanie, a sweater and a windbreaker on all at the same time. So I was I was I was at that point i was prepared for for the weather uh but it was uh yeah when once again one of those culture shock things never leaving california never having to experience that it was eye-opening uh this may be sound like a silly question but

did you see at any point anything uh paranormal or hard to explain i mean you're out in a lot of open sky at night by yourself or in the daytime by yourself you know what i mean like are you running into any weird shit i have a story so so i'm going through the latter half of colorado after you get past the rockies it's like turning into the great plains. And I was heading towards this, I was heading towards this RV park in a town called Genoa where I was going to set up my tent. And I couldn't quite make it. I think I was like, I think by the time the sun went down, I was maybe, I was maybe like two miles away and there was a lot of grassland out there. So I figured like, ah, let me just set my tent up right here, like off the side of the highway. So I do that. I walk maybe like a

quarter of a mile away from the highway to get into the grasslands. And I set up my tents, do my nighttime routine and get into my tent to bundle up for the night. But at around maybe 10 p.m., I wake up in the middle of the night because I have to pee again. So I walk out, I get out of my tent, I slip my boots on and I walk a few dozen feet away from my tent and I wear glasses. I'm nearsighted, so if something's really far away, I can't really see it that well. And I didn't put my glasses on to go out to the bathroom. distance on the horizon just every direction i look i see blinking red lights like all in unison just on off on off just every single direction i look that i didn't notice before and in my head i'm like well i'm getting abducted this is this is it i'm gonna get fucking abducted by aliens

right now so i so i i zip it up I run back to my tent, get inside. Cause I'm like, what the fuck was that? And I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of freaking out. And then I, I wake up the next morning and I look around and I'm like, I'm still on earth. What the hell was that? And I get back to the road and I finally have my glasses on. I look around me. I'm like, those are fucking wind turbines.

I'm just surrounded by wind turbines that i couldn't see but i could see the lights of so you almost you almost got abducted by wind turbines i'm telling you they're dangerous man that was it though you know other weirder that's cool that's interesting i uh i i would be so paranoid the entire time i feel like yeah no no other crazy supernatural stuff. A lot of phenomenon that I encountered was all explainable by weather. I almost got struck by lightning once. Really?

Yeah. Like how almost? So I was walking towards a town called London, Ohio. I love that name so much. I was on an old highway route. And I noticed in the distance, I got really good at being able to judge when, uh, when clouds were going to hit me, like when weather was coming at me, I got good at judging distance. And I said, oh, that's like 30 minutes. That's like 30, 40 minutes away from me.

And sure enough, uh, rain started pelting me. So I got my, I got my windbreaker hood up. I, I put a top, I put a tarp over my, my carts as I was walking. And I was on the phone with my, I was on the phone with my dad, just telling him with my dad just telling him my plans for the for the night and the rain started coming down harder and harder and I was expressing to him like yeah I probably need to get under something right now because rain's coming down pretty hard it's like coming down in fat fat uh like stinging drops and as we're talking I suddenly feel like a like a a wave of heat like not like air it wasn't like air hitting me it was suddenly oh you're hot now a flash of light and just a massive boom of sound and i i dropped my phone onto the ground and like i i stumble a bit my cart goes like onto the side of the road and I'm just looking around like, what the fuck was that?

And in my head, I'm thinking that I just get shot at. Like, that's my immediate first thought. Yeah. But then I look I look over to the side of the highway, maybe maybe like 25 yards, like a quarter of a football field. Maybe there's this tree that half of it is just suddenly desiccated like like it got hit with a bomb like half of it is like the bark is split down the middle halfway peeling off like branches are hanging off the side of it and i'm like what the fuck could have done that and i don't think i just grab i pick up my phone pick up my car and i go running towards this this tool shed that's outside of this random house that's the tool shed was open

and i get underneath it i'm just looking at the house like i hope someone doesn't come at me but i'm just thinking like that was that was lightning that had to have been lightning and it was it was it was intense like i was shaking for like another 45 minutes after that just i couldn't get the nerves out of me for a while. Dude, I don't blame you. I've seen similarly lightning strike very close before. And it is, I mean, it is terrifying. And the damage it does. And then you think like the damage it would have done to me. Good Lord.

Yeah, like looking back at it, like there has to be some sort of exaggeration in the way I remember things. But like there has, like I sort of exaggeration in the way i remember things like but like there has like i don't believe that something like that can happen that close to you and you're not like affected in a certain way but yeah there was that's that was what i remember seeing and it was it was terrifying i i wish i wish i would have taken a picture but i was so scared i just wanted to get the fuck out of there. No, I completely and totally understand that. Yeah. I guess I should probably start heading towards the end of this

interview. I don't want to keep you for too long, but there are some stuff I still am really interested in. For instance, I assume that the journey you took must have changed you in some foundational way.

What did you learn about yourself? Or how did it change you? Do you live your life differently? Do you feel like you're a different dude because of this experience? There was something that popped into my head when I was standing on the top of Rockefeller Center in New York City, like at the conclusion of the trip, there was this feeling that I, that I had managed to do this crazy ass thing, walk across the United States and just keep thinking to myself, there is something here that I need, like, I need to learn something from this. Yeah. you've proven what you're capable of. And it's a lot. I hope that you're proud of yourself

and what you accomplished because it is, it really is something to be applauded and lauded and something that I, you know, I use the word jealous, not in a, not jealous as a kind of a derogatory word. I don't mean it in that way. I'm just, I'm just envious of your ability to, to follow through with a dream and to have that adventure. And I just think it's the coolest. And it makes me wonder, are there any other routes you want to do, like the PCH or the Appalachian Trail? Would you do this again? Or was once enough?

Yeah, I do want to do this again while I still have the ability and time to do so. But I want to do next is I want to walk old Route 66. Now that because I was on it for a good few times when I was doing this first one for the majority of California through to Colorado, I was on it. And then after leaving St. Louis, I was on it again for a short amount of time before getting off of it. But when I was on the road through California, through Arizona, there was this interesting thing that happened where the world was in stasis. It was almost like someone took a photograph in the 1990s and nothing had moved since then. So yeah, I think I want to hit that.

That's something I've had in the works for a while. And hey, I'm approaching that time where I started preparing for this first walk, you know, in October. So maybe the same timeframe next year, February, I'll probably, I'll be taking a look at that a lot clearer. Yeah. Oh, wow. Can I ask you a favor? If you decide to do that

will you let me know because i'll i'll boost it on social media i'll talk about it and i just i'd just love to check in on you now that's another question so you i saw that you had a hashtag i think it was uh oh gosh it was something about amber waves of grain right yeah yeah that's where it came from yeah it was an instagram page. It was across the amber waves. Across the amber waves. Yeah, that was where I was documenting the walk, the people I saw, pictures I was taking. Yeah, all these pictures that I've been sending you are mostly from that page or were posted to that page. And it's still up, so people can go and look at it and share through your adventure with you. Oh, yeah.

And if and when you do it again, whether it be Route 66 or another route, will I assume you'll update that? Will it be that account you update from? Yeah, yeah. It'll be on that page across the Ember waves on Instagram. Okay, awesome. I will definitely I'm going to follow it today. One or two more questions I want to ask you before before I let you go. What would you recommend?

Like, what advice do you have for for people that are listening that may want to embark on an adventure like this themselves? Are there must-have equipment or just two or three things that you're like, you're not going to think about this, but you really want to make sure you have 12 pairs of socks or get this kind of tire on your game cart, or you know what I mean? Or be prepared for... You're not going to expect to hit this kind of loneliness

and here's how you... Are there any bits of advice you have that could help, uh, someone who wants to be or follow in your footsteps. If you're going to have something on wheels, make sure they're not air tires, make sure they're completely rubber. Cause you don't want to be stuck with a flat in the middle of nowhere. That sounds like pretty important advice. Yeah, that was, that was something that, uh, thankfully I did from the outset. that was something I always did, but yeah, I would not want to be stuck like that. Did you on your trip discover, cause you said you've, you've, you know, spent most of your life in California. Did you discover, uh, I don't know, food that you like, like, did you like eat

a pierogi in Pennsylvania and go like, Holy shit, I've never had a pierogi before. This is awesome. You know what I mean? Like, what did mean? What did you learn culinarily? Fucking nailed it on the head. Yeah, I had pierogis in a place called Drums, Pennsylvania. Yeah, that shit was delicious. That's so funny. I only say that because I was just in Detroit recently. I lived in New Jersey for a long time and I love pierogis. And I was just in Detroit recently and I went to a farmer's market and they had pierogis. So I hadn't seen one in 10 years and i got so excited i ate them until i was sick and so i guess i have pierogies on the brain oh yeah there was that there was um they were colloquially known as navajo tacos when i was in like the navajo reservation from the from the

northwest parts of arizona it was a fried, but with the ingredients of what you'd assume is like in a Mexican taco. And that was delicious. Like just the change in the bread was amazing. Yeah, that's another food I had. Dude, fry bread is no fucking joke. It is so, so good. I'd never heard of it.

You mentioned being on an Indian reservation. Did you walk through reservations as a part of this? Yeah, I went through The Navajo reservation is the largest American reservation In the greater United States Aside from the Inuit in Alaska And there was, I met a man there

Named Taro Who kind of guided me for a day or two About, oh, if you're here on the reservation You gotta go here, you gotta go here, check this out The scene where they filmed Forrest Gump stop stopping his walk was filmed like 20 miles that way. And I was yeah, I wish I could have gone there. But God damn it. 20 miles on what I was doing was like that's a little bit more than a side mission. Yeah. 20 miles for a selfie. Right. It's a it's a little. Yeah, I know. Right. The craziest thing happened was he stopped we stopped

at this we stopped at this like a craft store this navajo craft store and he prided himself like you know genuine turquoise jewelry and uh like stuff made by tribes people and i i was talking to the the woman who was running the place and she saw who i was with and she she nodded at me and she goes hey you want to see something cool and she goes, Hey, you want to see something cool? And I'm like, hell yeah, I want to see something cool. So she, so she waves down Taro and she takes this key ring that she has and she goes to a door behind the counter where you, where she's ringing everyone up. And she looked, she waves me and her or me and him inside this room. And it is just this room filled with wall to wall uh just the premier stuff like the stuff that's like oh that's that's stuff for the casuals in there if you want like collector's items come

in here and it was like 600 blankets it was these it was these uh these dolls that they uh what they call them i forget the name right now i have this video of me and me and me and taro like exploring it it was the it was these little figures that you weren't allowed to have inside your room at night because they would come to life uh and just yeah like just like spears arrowheads like the legit stuff and i was a look at taro i'm like did you know this place was here and he goes nope, nope. Oh, wow. Yeah, like he didn't even know. So yeah, there were times when I interacted with the Navajo people there. And yeah, it was an amazing, an amazing thing to see.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I was sad to leave them when I crossed into Colorado through Four Corners. I can imagine, man. What a... You had essentially a lifetime of experience in the span of about four and a half months. That's so phenomenal. I have bored my girlfriend to death with just,

hey, can I tell you about the time I did this? Hey, can I tell you about the time I did this? She's like, I've heard it all before. One or two last questions uh one you know you you mentioned uh obviously how gorgeous the the grand canyon was but were there any places in america you discovered that weren't on your radar that just kind of floored you like you just you didn't expect you know butte montana to be beautiful or you know pueblo colorado to be so impressed like i don't know yeah i hear what you're saying yeah there was i mean you always hear about the rocky mountains but you don't you don't experience unless you experience

what they look like just how imposing they are like they they will never like they won't leave your head like thankfully i didn't have to go up and over like the the peaks of the colorado rockies heading upwards of like 12 000 feet above sea level yeah i went around i went around the south side which only like the southern ridge which only goes to about uh 4 500 feet but yeah you once you're when you're out there and you realize that the colorado itself is a form of a desert uh it just happens to be more mountainous and yeah there's these there's these moments of just wow this is this is what the like this is what stopped the people who were like migrating west looking for new life they saw the rockies Denver's good enough.

That's funny. Yeah, people don't realize how beautiful the high desert is. I'm right there with you, man. It is, it's a surreal place. So you're wrapping this trip up. You're going to stop in, I believe you said Central Park. Yeah, the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park. Are your parents there waiting for you? I am of the assumption that no one's going to be there waiting for me.

And that's a weird, that was weird. Once again, one of these weird self-doubt things I was going through. I was in a town called Wind Gap, Pennsylvania, like on the home stretch. Like from there, I have to get to Easton new jersey cross the cross the delaware uh maybe do another day of hiking through the greater new jersey area before i get to newark and then from newark union city right to like crossing the ferry across the hudson that i'm in manhattan so i'm maybe like three days away from the finale of the trip from in wind gap and i'm sitting outside of a church that allowed me to uh set up shop there oh by the way i just gotta say um the united methodist

church of america like they i became a like an honorary member okay uh as a result of just uh i'm not religious in any way really but as a result of me like asking so many of them that if i could uh like camp out camp out, camp out on like their, their lands that like their grasslands that's around them. I met some, like, uh, some preachers, some priests that gave me a card saying I was a member of the church. So they were allowing me to sleep on the, on their property, like set up my tents, fucking amazing. So I was outside of one of their churches in Wingate, Pennsylvania, and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking like, all right, the trip's almost over. I have to expect I have to expect an anticlimax like this.

I can't get my hopes up believing there's going to be this this crazy finale. And that's that's what I honestly anticipated. Like, that's what I was planning for. I was going to get there. I was going to set my bag down. I was going to, like, reflect on what I'd done. I was I was going to be live. I was a live stream it on Instagram. And done. I was, I was going to be live. I was going to live stream it on Instagram. And I, that's exactly what I'm, what's happening. I'm walking

to the Bethesda terrace. I get to New York, I get to Manhattan, walk through Times Square, walk into Central Park. Like I'm welling up with emotion internally. Like I'm on the verge of tears and I get, I get down the steps. do you know and do you know uh what the bethesda terrace looks like i do yeah yeah if you don't know at home the the ending of john wick 2 uh that's where that's where john is walking through the tunnel to meet winston at that fountain that's the bethesda terrace and i'm walking through that tunnel and there's this guy playing a mashup of um i can't help falling in love with you the i i know the i know that song but the name is escaping me at the moment yeah i probably just said it and i'm walking through and i see the fountain and i'm setting up my bag

like to set to prop it up against the fountain, to like take a final picture. And my, my father comes running out of nowhere and he screams at fuck. Yeah, you made it boy. Oh God, dude. I'm going to cry. That's so my, my role model, like the man that I look up to. And like, I admire like with all of my being, he just runs up to me and I throw my bag and my phone that I'm recording to on the ground. runs up to me and I throw my bag and my phone that I'm recording to on the ground. And by some happenstance, a miracle, my phone lands like a perfect way facing upwards that you see me and my dad like hugging and embracing. And like, I'm in tears. I'm sobbing like no one like I've never

had before. Just ugly crying. Like we're both besides ourself in emotion and like it was it was beautiful i was i was expecting like the worst anti-climax like well i made it guys all right thank you for watching but nope my my father was there and just just fell into each other it was it was beautiful it was the most it was the perfect way to end it i could not you could not have written like a better way yeah man it was beautiful i'm welling up with emotion just that you describing it to me i can't way to end it. I could not, you could not have written like a better way. Yeah, man. It was beautiful. I'm welling up with emotion just that you describing it to me. I can't even, I can't even wrap my head around how the sense of, uh, of love and appreciation and joy at seeing somebody so important to you. And then knowing that you were also making them proud and making

yourself proud. And then you accomplish this Herculean task. And I just... I don't know, man. That's got to be a top moment in your life, I would assume, probably, and then some. Just what a wonderful story. What a wonderful thing you've done. Like I said, I'm kind of in awe of it and in awe of anybody who sets out to tackle. And I don't just mean walking across the country, but it just sets out to tackle a task that they don't know that they can do. And then they find out that they can and they're capable of it. It's just truly fantastic. What happens now? You and your dad are in New York. Do you go on a vacation? Do you just get a one-way ticket home and then go back to your life? Do you get a new job immediately?

Like what happens after this? Yeah, that was the question for a little bit. When my dad shows up in New York City, we spent we spent uh two days just being you know typical tourists just looking around new york city and he eventually uh catches a plane back home uh i had arranged for a bus trip back okay yeah i didn't i didn't want to take a plane home because i didn't want the i didn't want the country that i had just, you know, spent months of my life walking through to suddenly like, like blink past me in the matter of like four, like five or six hours. So yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to see it again, but from a different perspective. So I hopped on a Greyhound heading from Los Angeles, California to, or excuse me, New York

to Los Angeles. And yeah, I spent another 78 hours on the road, three days in the blink of an eye versus 141 days. Yeah, it was interesting to see the world again. I get back home. Family has a big celebration. Of course, we have like a party. I get to tell them about everything that went through. And life kind of goes back to normal in a way. Like I have a new perspective on things. But yeah, I get another job working at the same at the same production plant that my mom is accounting at because I just wanted I wanted something stable for a while. But yeah, just a new appreciation for things all around me. There is yeah, there's there's a real all around me. There is, um, yeah,

there's, there's a real eyeopening experience. You start to see things, even see, you even see the mundanity in things as like beautiful in a way. Do you, on this bus trip back, are you retracing your path? I mean, I'm sure it's not identical, but like, are you going back over like roads? You literally walked down on the way home and yes you see them and recognize them is that weird it's weird to think oh i was sleeping right there like two months ago like off the side of the road in a tent um i was walking that path that was dirt then but now it's become like full of grass because I've moved. We moved from the end of winter when I started to like the the the middle of summer. So the landscape has changed. It's familiar, but different after a certain amount of time. And yeah, it's you see it pass by you and you think

it's going by so quickly you can never appreciate everything. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that was something I kind of, you know, people ask like, Oh, well, if you had something to tell people, what would you say? One of the things I came up with for that question was, um, next time you're going to take a drive somewhere that you could probably walk, take the walk and just, and just take a look around and see what you might've missed. Because you miss a lot going like 20, 30 miles per hour. I think that is about as good of advice as I could hope to hear from somebody who's walked across the United States. And I think it's probably about as true of a statement as a

person could make. I'm right there with you. I've noticed that in my own life many times, where it is a very different... I ride my bicycle a lot, right? And it is a very different experience to ride my bicycle through Austin than it is to drive a car through Austin. And then sometimes my bike has been broken for a couple months. And so I've been walking. And it is a different experience to walk through Austin than it is to ride my bike through Austin. And you glean different things and you see things differently depending on how quickly you're passing by them. I think maybe we should all walk a little bit more. I think that's great advice, Giovanni.

And I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to share your story with me. And I want you to know that you have a fan in me and my podcast. And I would love to hear about any and all future adventures you go on. In addition to doing something truly adventurous and full of spirit and life and that being very enticing to me, you also are incredibly eloquent and well-spoken and you weave a really wonderful tale. I hope maybe someday you'll consider doing something with the journals that you wrote along the way because you clearly are possessed of an ability to tell a story. And I bet that there's some truly, truly remarkable stuff in there.

And maybe you'll figure out a way to share it with the world someday. Either way, I'm very excited to hear about any and all future adventures you go on. Well, Jeff, thank you for letting me be one of the first people to express an outside perspective on your new podcast. That's honestly amazing. I can't believe that I'm actually able to talk to you. I've been a really big fan for a long, long time. Oh, dude.

And I can guarantee you the next journal that I write in for one of these next trips will be a Griffball one. I'll take it, man. That's awesome. And just so you know, the feeling is absolutely mutual. So there you go. If you've ever wanted to tackle, if you're listening to this and you've ever wanted to tackle something that seems maybe a little daunting or maybe that you're not sure you're capable of, remember Giovanni Zavala and what he was able to accomplish at the young age

of 22. I think we're all capable of a lot more than we realize. And, uh, man, Giovanni, I hope you have a great day, man.

And, uh, and you take care of yourself and stay in good shape. You're going to need those legs before you know it. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. No problem.

All right.