The Rich Roll Podcast - The Poet Laureate Of Running: Rickey Gates On Endurance & Empathy

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Meet Rickey Gates. Both idiosyncratic and extraordinary, you may know Rickey as a distinguished ultra-runner. But peer just beneath the surface of his many athletic accomplishments and you will discover a thoughtful, deeply empathetic and uniquely expressive human. After nearly a decade competing on the national and international mountain, trail and ultra running circuits, Rickey took his love for endurance, storytelling, photography and design -- and fused them together to create an ongoing series of project-based, performance art adventures. Deemed "the rambling poet of the running world" by Outside magazine, Rickey is a true conceptual artist -- leveraging numerous mediums to communicate a personal and humanist perspective on the inner workings of society, self, nature and human potential. Notable ventures include his solo, unsupported run across America. The upcoming, exquisite and arresting feature film Transamericana that chronicles it. And his debut book Cross Country that travels inside Rickey's 3,700 mile journey through over 200 photographs, stories of individuals and ultimately the innermost depths of his own mind. Hitting shelves April 14, 2020, the book is available for pre-order now. In addition, and the project he is perhaps best known for, in 2018 Rickey ran every single street in the city of San Francisco. A feat as logistically challenging as it was athletic, the 1,300 mile undertaking involved running 30 miles every day for 46 days, along the way logging 150,000 feet of elevation gain and meeting countless fascinating people along the way. A master stroke of creative movement, it's a feat that grabbed headlines around the world. Underscored the importance of human connection. Symbolized the value of community. Celebrated human potential. And in turn, inspired countless people to mimic in their own respective cities. I implore all of you to check out Every Single Street, a beautiful short film produced by Salomon that perfectly captures the spirit of this endeavor. In between his feats of artistic and endurance grandeur, Rickey hosts adventure running retreats called Bus Run Bus and Hut Run Hut, with a trail run adventure retreat in Japan scheduled for September 2020. What strikes me most is Rickey's profound empathy for people. His curiosity about the world. His poetic lens on the human condition. And his multi-disciplinarian vision for a better more unified world. Running's Jack Kerouac, it's not often you encounter a human as present, thoughtful, and creative as Rickey. A man who reminds me that we can all connect more profoundly with our natural environments and communities. Express ourselves more authentically. And love more deeply. Today, Rickey shares his story. And it is an absolute gift. I encourage you to watch it all go down on YouTube, as we weave in footage from Rickey's cross-country run and the upcoming film Transamericana. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. My hope is that this conversation will leave you deeply touched -- and better than before. Peace + Plants, Rich

I think the Appalachian Trail is awesome. Like, there's no doubt about it. But, like, you're going to learn a lot about yourself. And you're going to learn a lot about trail culture. But how much are you really going to learn about the United States in this greater context? It's a form of escapism. And that's sometimes exactly what we need is to escape what's going on outside of our front door. what's going on outside of our front door. But for me personally, like I needed to explore something a lot deeper than just myself and just the physical capabilities of something like that.

So, I mean, I don't know what the benefit is, but I know that there is a benefit to stepping outside of our comfort zones and looking people in the eye. And I think it works both directions. I think that it makes those people feel more human. You know, when you're sleeping on the street in the middle of downtown LA, you can feel less and less like a human. And it makes you and me feel more human as well and tap into this empathy

that I think can go a really long way in our, in this time in our society and, um, something that perhaps we're losing a little bit and it's a good way to, to kind of gain it back a little. That's Ricky Gates this week on the Rich Roll the rich roll podcast greetings bipedal humanoids my name is rich roll this is my podcast welcome or welcome back my guest today is just a uniquely extraordinary human being. His name is Ricky Gates, and although you may have heard of him or know of him as an ultra runner, I would characterize him as much more of an artist, a conceptual artist that fuses endurance running and adventure with film, photography, and the written word to express

a very distinct point of view that I would describe as humanist. After nearly a decade competing on the national and international mountain trail and ultra running circuits, Ricky took his love for ultra endurance, for storytelling, and for photography, and essentially fused them together to create an ongoing series of project-based, essentially performance art runs that have included a run across America and the accompanying feature film called Transamericana that chronicles it. And the project he is perhaps best known for, Ricky ran every single street in San Francisco, a 1300 mile undertaking that involved running 30 miles every day for 46 days along the way, logging 150,000 feet of elevation gain and meeting countless fascinating people along the way. That is all depicted in a short documentary produced by Solomon called Every Single Street, and I'll link that up in the show notes as well. In addition, Ricky hosts adventure running retreats called Run Bus Run and Hut Run Hut, which he will explain today,

and has authored a new book about his transcontinental run entitled Cross Country, which comes out April 14th. I really love this guy. I got a whole lot more I want to tell you about Ricky before we get into it, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

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for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, Ricky Gates. So, as you will soon find out, Ricky is just a beautiful, thoughtful, creative, loving, and very present human with a deep appreciation for people, a profound curiosity about the world, and a poetic instinct for sharing his unique perspective. And today we cover it all from his Run Every Street in San Francisco project to his Run Across America and all the stories and lessons that came out of those experiences. We talk about what fuels his passions, his devotion to a minimalist lifestyle, what it was like living in Antarctica, why he does what he does, and how he uses his talents to share a perspective

and a vision for a better, more unified world. Super nice to meet you. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me. This is a pleasure. Yeah, you're super inspiring. Everything that you do is really incredible. And it's a privilege and an honor to be able to talk to you about it and have you share a little bit about your journey and your experience. And I think when I think about you, obviously, I think about this incredibly talented ultra runner, but really what you're about is so much more than that. And I think right now we can both agree that the country is very divided. There is a communication gap. There is this division that is separating us. And our ability to communicate has broken down. Our communities are fractured. And the path forward, the healthy path forward,

is to try to find a way to bridge that gap, to try to improve the health of our communication, find a way to bridge that gap, to try to improve the health of our communication, right? To unite around our shared value systems and beliefs. And you've really leveraged your running to try to promote this message. And I think it's beautiful. The adage of, you can't know the world unless you know your backyard. I don't know who originally said that. Did you know who, who, who, who is, to whom is that quote attributable? I know it wasn't me. Yeah. Somebody said that, but you actually not only took it to heart, but put it into practice. And you're really more of an artist than an athlete in my mind. Like you have used this medium of running great distances to paint this canvas of humanity in a really beautiful way.

So thank you for that. Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, and I knew about you for a long time and then really dived into what you were doing when you were doing the San Francisco every single street thing. And I knew that you had run across America, but I didn't know that much about that until I started prepping for talking to you today. And you sent me a cut of the Transamerica film, which is really quite moving.

So how did that come together? The film or the trip itself? Let's just talk about the trip and then we can kind of together uh the film or the uh well it's the trip itself let's just talk let's talk about the trip and then we can kind of weave in the film so the trip itself uh two years ago i ran across the country i left on march 1st of 2017 and finished on august 1st of 2017 so a five-month month trip. The idea behind it is that I've, you know, I've competed on a national and international level. I've traveled all over the world pursuing this sport, this running, mountain running, trail running, ultra running. And I was just kind of getting to a point in my career where I needed to explore what else the sport really meant to me and what its potentials were. And that's kind of when I came to this realization that I knew so many more parts of the world than I do our own country. And such a huge part of that, realizing, as you just said, we have this breakdown in communication with this increase in the bubble effect.

It's becoming easier and easier to live within our own bubbles. It just occurred to me that such a huge problem of ours right now is that we're not talking to each other. And what better way to do that, especially for someone in my position who can put in a lot of miles. I don't have the commitment of a family. I don't have the commitment of a nine-to-five job, a standard job per se. What better way to really explore this than to do something that I've always wanted to do, which is to do a really big trek. How many years in the making was this? I think that I could say that it was almost 10 years, 15 years in the making.

But when I was 19 years old, I stopped going to college for a couple years. One of my goals during those two years off was to bike across the country. And so I saved up my money. I took the Greyhound bus up to Washington. I had this idea that I was going to bike around the entire United States, the circumference of the United States. I made it three days in and thought that I had completely destroyed my knee. And, you know, this is with a serious road bike with big gears and 60 or 70 pounds of gear with me. I completely destroyed myself almost immediately.

So I packed up my bike, I sent it to Colorado, and then I took my money and my time and went to Italy instead. So that was 18 years ago. Yeah. It's funny, like at the peak of your, you know, sort of physical powers as a young, strapping young man, you know, on a bike and you're you make it three days totally and it's just uh i mean it's the classic uh you know you're you know i was just not mature

enough to pursue something like that and i just went way overboard so it's been in my head since i was 19 i read a book when or if not earlier i read a book uh a walk if not earlier, I read a book, A Walk Across America. Oh, Peter Jenkins' book. Totally, yeah. When I was 17 or 18 or so. And that really stuck in my head, just this man's ability to connect with people for no other reason than he's out there on foot, putting himself in a vulnerable position. Yeah, he really kind of put that type of expedition on the map. His son, Jedediah, is a good friend. He's been on the podcast a couple times. Oh, cool. Yeah. He really kind of put that type of expedition on the map. His son Jedediah is a, is a good friend. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who's a,

he's an amazing writer. If you haven't read his, his book, it's quite something. Yeah. And I haven't read that. I'll check it out. Um, so I'd been thinking about it for a while and then very like the, the real planning, um, I thought about, I would say for a year to two years ahead of time. Like if I'm going to do this, like how am I going to make it work for me? How would I want, like it's not something that I anticipate doing twice. If you're just going to do this once, how are you going to make it worthwhile? And for me, that meant really diving into what America is and what I am personally and planning that beforehand. And so that means looking at all of the history of the United States, how we came to be who we are, this westward expansion, this idea of manifest destiny, of, you know, I call it the good, the bad, and the ugly. This idea that, you know, we

created this country, but we also, we did a lot of bad in the process. And so, you know, how can I So we did a lot of bad in the process. And so how can I pursue a massive feat like this and touch upon all of those things at the same time? How much did political news and the 2016 election play into the urgency to finally do this thing? So I had the date set in my head before the elections. I don't know why I picked March 1st. I needed a round number, so I went with that. I knew that I was going to hit weather at some point during my trip, whether that be snow, rain, or extreme heat.

So I had the date planned before the election. And like many of us, I think on both the right and the left, I thought the election was going to go a different way. And then come November 8th, November 9th of 2016, when it did go the way that it did, I knew that it was going to be way more interesting than I had anticipated. Did that influence the route? Because you make this decision to spend a lot of time in the South and you go, it didn't influence the route so much, but I dare you to try and find a route across the United States where you're not going through a lot of red territory. And that's the nature of the country, and that's what I think a lot of us have learned over the past few years,

especially when we're starting to look at the electoral college and all of these things. The center part of the country is huge. There's a lot of space in between towns, but there's a lot of space in general, which accounts for a large population. So it didn't influence my route all that much, but I did know after the elections

that it was gonna be really interesting, I wanted to go through the South because I've spent very little time in the South. I was raised by parents who didn't necessarily have a prejudice against the South, but there was not a lot of urgency to bring us there. My mom was a hippie in the 1960s. She's a hippie today in 2019. And I think in the 1960s, you had this common dialogue going on that warned people from going to the South. You've got Easy Rider where you've got your protagonists and meeting their end there, and that's just one of a few different stories. Right.

So you just got married, right? I just got married two and a half weeks ago. Thanks. Yeah. That's very cool. You've been with Liz for seven or eight years or something like that? Almost a decade at this point. Almost a decade, wow.

But at the inception of this run, my sense is, and you allude to this, you comment on it, but you don't spend too much time talking about the fact that you're kind of going through a bit of an existential crisis, perhaps about your relationship, but perhaps about things greater that motivated you to kind of take a break from your relationship and carve out this time for yourself. So what was going on with you kind of mentally and emotionally going into the run? It's something like to this day that I don't know that I can answer entirely, other than it just seemed like a trip to me. It seemed like a part of my life and a trip to me where I needed to be on my own. And I don't know really a better way to say that other than that.

I couldn't fathom really thinking about anyone other than myself during this time. In retrospect, I thought a lot about other people, and especially Liz. And so it's a live and learn thing. I'm glad that it has turned out the way that it has, and that I think that we both learned a lot from that break that we took. And yeah, it was definitely a challenge. It was a challenge then. And even looking back on it, it continues to be a challenge.

When you put a little fracture in a relationship like that, as well as you can repair it, it's still there. So it's something for me, for us to always think about, and for me to be able to tell other people as well. That's something that when people are having issues with their relationships, our tendency is to go inward rather than outward, and I don't think we really talk enough about mistakes that we've made or issues that we've had. And I think that that's really important for me to put that out there.

Right. And there's something about running and that solitude that accompanies it that gives you the space and the capacity to kind of wrestle with those things and get clarity for yourself. I mean, there's a monologue in the film, I think it's after you've left Aspen and you're in the snow in the Rockies where you say, you know, look, running was about competition for most of my life, measuring myself against others and a clock. measuring myself against others and a clock, but it's become a process of not just connecting with other humans, but a process of self-discovery. And that's like a huge theme in everything that you do and in this beautiful movie.

Yeah. And I think if most of us that do run or walk or bike or pursue something with consistency year after year, I think if we really look at what it's doing for us, I think that a lot of us will find the same things. And this is something that I tell people, and running has been my thing, but I don't think that's necessarily the thing for everybody. I think that knitting could be that thing, crochet, badminton. I just think for me, I chose this activity over 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and I've stuck with it for 25 years. And when you

stick with something for that long, it's it's an activity or a person you're going to continue to learn so much more about that but also and more importantly you're going to learn so much more about yourself and right this this thing just keeps changing and changing and changing and it's that consistency that allows for that to to happen right um so lots of people have run across America. Yeah. I just had this guy, Robbie Ballinger, on the show who did it last year. He did it in like 75 days. My friend Mike Posner just walked across America.

But most people that do this do it with an RV and a lot of support. And that support tends to be off camera. Conveniently. lot of support um that that and that support tends to be off camera conveniently yeah um but you you decide to do this unsupported and um for a vast majority of the entire expedition it's just you with a very light backpack and a tarp and a ground cloth and a little bit of food. And basically that's it. Yeah. So, um, I mean, I've, I've been at this sport for quite a while. Um, I wouldn't say that I have a huge following, but I do have people that are paying attention to what I'm doing. And for me personally, it doesn't seem right to, this project out there in a way that I don't think is accessible to a normal person. And by that, I mean, I don't think most people can pull together

an RV and the funds to pay for a person and gas and food for multiple people for months on end. Conversely, I do think that people, a lot of people, ideally, if you're younger and you have the physical capability, can put together the funds and the time to do it in the same way that I did. And maybe you're not doing it. It's funny because there's a little bit of an irony in there because you're like, I'm going to do this super extreme thing to show how doable it is for everybody.

Yeah. And maybe not everybody, but I do believe, how many people are doing the Appalachian Trail these days? You've got several thousand people starting the Appalachian Trail these days. And I think the Appalachian Trail is awesome. There's no doubt about it. But how much are you really going to learn about? You're going to learn a lot about yourself.

And you're going to learn a lot about trail culture. But how much are you really going to learn about the United States in this greater context? It's a form of escapism. And that's sometimes exactly what we need is to escape what's going on outside of our front door. But for me personally, like I needed to explore something a lot deeper than just myself and just, you know, the physical capabilities of something like that. So I set a budget for myself. I did $1,000 a month, $5,000 total for the five months. I slept outside most nights. I'd get a hotel or a motel once a week or once every 10 days. That increased more towards like once every couple days towards the end as I started kind of

losing it a little bit yeah simply needed to go into a room and lock the door and turn the AC on and and turn some mindless television on but for the most part what I wanted to do was to to put it out there that this is something that yeah people can do and that there's alternatives to these to do in the Appalachian Trail or going to Europe for four months. Like you can just pack a very light backpack and they ask you if you've got a gun, you know, to protect yourself. And like, no, I don't have a gun. To, you know, just putting yourself out there in a vulnerable position, the amount of warmth and generosity that I experienced was something that I never could have anticipated in a million years. People giving me every last dollar from their wallet. There's the guy, what's his name?

Jim Steele. Yeah, he gives you 80 bucks or 160 bucks. I said 180. It was, I said 80. It was 160. Right. It was $160. And he wasn't taking no for an answer.

No, it was amazing. It was, and that's when I kind of realized, you know, that people in their own way want to participate in this thing. A few years ago, so this is kind of something that I think about. And the best way for me to tell this is to talk about someone else running across the country, and that was Pete Kostalnyk, who did across the country in 40, I'm going to say 44 days. It could have been a little quicker. This is in 2016, so a year before or a few months before I did mine. before I did mine, he did this and he was doing 60 to 70 miles a day for 44 days and broke the record that had stood for- Unsupported?

That was very supported. That was two or three RVs with several people. Yeah, it was a big effort for a lot of people and he's sure to give them credit as well. But for me personally, so I was in Wisconsin at the time, and I saw that he was going through Northern Illinois, and I got in my car and drove two and a half hours just to run with him for a few miles, because it's like, I just felt like it was seeing this mythical creature when someone's doing something like that.

And even now to this day, now that I've done this big journey, like I still think it's a mythical creature. It's like seeing a mountain lion or something. And so I think that for me, that's what it was for kind of when I came to realize that some people, when they wanted to give me money or just stop and talk, it was like, you know, it is something rare. Right. There's the one guy who, it looks like he turned his car around when he saw you and he got out and he's like, my friend's gonna freak out.

I read about you like when you crossed the state line or something like that. So there was some awareness as you were passing through of what you were doing. Totally, in certain areas. I don't know why it was in certain areas. It was Oklahoma and Arkansas where I received the most amount of generosity and warmth. And then when I got to California, ironically, it was nothing.

There's a vein of humility and vulnerability that infuses this effort and the other things that you've done. Part de Tocqueville, part Henry David Thoreau. Like, I'm going to light out on America and learn about democracy and connect with people to try to better understand them, better understand myself, and better understand, you know, what is required to unite us and bring us together. Totally. And you took your time. Yeah. Like, the priority wasn't the running. The priority was the connection. Yeah. time. Like the priority wasn't the running. The priority was the connection. Yep. And, and the funniest thing that I encountered or the most interesting thing that I encountered when I went across the country is that like, I thought I would be

talking politics all the time and it never came up. It was just like you, when, when you're doing something like that, when people see something like that, they don't want to ask you what your political views are. They want to ask you about what you're doing, what you're seeing out there. And it just becomes really incredible that so much of this stuff just kind of dissolves away. And you realize that, and I think I say the same thing in the movie coming out, is that I think we're, I don't think so, I know so, we're way more similar than we are different. I think that we're 90% similar and 10% different. And that 10% difference has become inflated so that we think that it's 90%, but it's not. Right, it's exploited.

Exactly. And it's leveraged by the media to further divide us. Totally. And I subscribe to my own media, and a lot that's been brought to my attention over the past couple years with talk of fake news and all of these things is coming to terms with that the media that I pay attention to is also biased. And it's not just Fox News pay attention to is also biased. And it's not just Fox News, like NPR is also biased. We've all got these biases. And, you know, we like to think that we're right about our convictions. But the reality is, is that, you know, there's a million different

paths out there. Yeah. And if you grew up in Kansas and on a farm in Kansas and you had that lifestyle and, you know, there's, I just see their voting habits, their convictions as every bit as valid as mine. And that's probably the biggest thing that I gained from my run across the country is coming to terms with that. Yeah. Did it change your media diet in any way? Did it expand what you expose yourself to or contract that? Or what is the lingering kind of long-term impact?

Because this was a couple years ago. Yeah. So you've had time to reflect. Totally. Have some objectivity on it. It has. And let's see see how do i put this it's it's just made me pay attention to other forms of media and it doesn't necessarily i don't necessarily uh subscribe to them but being aware that these that fox news is out there and that this is where my dad gets his information. And, um, and that

if I can allow myself to believe that, um, you know, maybe NPR or whatever it is that I pay attention to, um, I don't necessarily believe this, but if, uh, if I can believe that NPR is, is just as biased as Fox News is, um, based convictions and the agenda behind them, then that's what stuck with me from that trip, at least in terms of my attention to media. Right. So you start in South Carolina and there's this great, great scene where you sell your car for a thousand dollars and then you have to pay her to give you a ride to the beach. Yeah. And she doesn't, she couldn't care less what you were doing. She seems totally disinterested and like unflappable about the whole experience. And it's very unceremonious how you begin. You kind of dip your toe into the ocean and then you're like, all right, I guess we're starting now. Yeah.

And that's it. Totally. I mean, there's, yeah, I don't know. There's no real way to start a trip like that. And I don't, I didn't want anyone there. I did have a videographer there, my friend Jared, with The Wandering Fever, who's making this film with Solomon, my main sponsor as the backer behind it. And I was grateful to have him. He rented a car. So after we sold that car,

he rented a car and I had backup for the first six days, which was just really nice. It was a nice, soft way to enter this journey. But yeah, I mean, it's just crazy starting a trip like that. It's like you really do that quote definitely emerges. A trip of 1,000 miles begins with a single step and right like that first step is just like so it's just like yeah and then there's another step and yeah yeah it's just i guess we're doing this yeah exactly and then and then you get to the end of the first day and like i only did like 13 miles that day and i got completely fried, sunburned, fried. And on day one, blisters,

like sunburn, hungry, like everything. And it's just like, wow. All right. All right. It's going to be a long adventure. Well, it seemed like most of the most profound encounters that you had with human beings took place during that, like, tour of the South. Like, from South Carolina through Oklahoma is where you connected the most with people. And then you kind of enter this, you know, phase where the expanses of nature begin to, you know, just get bigger and bigger and those encounters are fewer and fewer. And then like you're in Aspen and you do a reset where you're home with your family and your friends. And it almost felt like all the questions that you were asking of yourself and of others had kind of been answered at that point. Like every, every intention that you went into this run, you know, in terms of like things that you wanted to solve for yourself

or discover or learn had kind of been resolved and answered. Yeah. But yet you have this whole, you know, actually the hardest part of the whole thing still remained for you to do. Was there a moment where you were like, I don't need to get to California. Like I've kind of satisfied myself here. There was, yeah. I would say that I can safely say that there was no moment where that actually occurred to me.

It was just kind of like, I don't know. It's like going down the Grand Canyon or going through the rapids or something. It's like you're halfway through the rapids and you're like, that was fun. But it's like, there's no getting out. There's no getting off the river. And that was my mentality. And I think it was in terms of completing the goal, that was the best mentality to have. For my personal health and my mental sanity, it probably wasn't the best um but it it did bring me to a place that i i couldn't

have anticipated or gotten to otherwise yeah and i still think about it a lot uh to this day two years later just like uh the state of mind that i ended up getting into in, in the desert, in the depths of it, and just kind of, uh, this, this full emptiness of, of self and, and you start to think about, uh, other, you know, some, some very big names throughout the course of human history who have tested themselves in the desert for long periods of time. And growing up Catholic, the first one obviously to come to mind is Jesus in the desert for 40 days. And I'm not overly religious anymore, but it's something that I think about in that sense.

I think about in that sense is like, you know, how accurate that story is or how much you want to interpret that story. Like the body and the mind goes through some really serious changes when you're in the desert for that long. And you start to lose it a little bit and you just start to become really empty and almost your ego truly becomes dissolved. Yeah. And you just have this goal to get across it and you start doing and not thinking. And it's a really beautiful thing. Well, it's like a purification, right? Exactly. It's like you've traversed

a huge section of the country. You've been enriched through all these experiences that you've had and all these people that you've met along the way. And now in order for you to become whole, we got to strip you down to your, you know, we're going to take you through this section of the country that is going to basically beat you down and burn you to a crisp until you're forced to meet yourself in the most profound way that you ever have before. And then you can reassemble all these pieces and emerge from this experience transformed. Totally.

It is biblical in a certain respect, and it's also this kind of hero's journey. Like, you're not done yet now the final phase we're going to put you through this thing yeah and see if you can weather this totally and it's not permanent which is uh kind of a bummer that purification of the soul if that's what we're going to call it it's not permanent yeah like you i finished the trip and back to resetting totally it's like all right what do i do with and and this is where I'm, I'm curious to talk, uh, you know, or listen to, to other people that have gone through, uh, similar sort of things.

Like how, how do you put your life together after this? You're not going to keep walking forever. Um, and, and it's, it's funny. I, uh, you know, of course, any, you tell anybody that you went across the country on, on foot and, and nine times out of 10 there, they'll say, Oh, you like Forrest Gump. And, and of course you're like, Oh yeah, yeah. Forrest, okay. That was, that was a movie, but yes. But there is this scene in the movie where he just, like, you can see, it's like, it's very real. Like he, he has pur has purified himself and he just stops in the desert

and he says he's done. He's going home. It's like there's nothing else to be done. I figured if I found everything that I was looking for. Yeah. And like it gives me goosebumps right now. It's kind of funny to think about Forrest Gump even after I've done that and to recognize those similarities

and the astuteness of the film itself in putting that in there and not labeling it overtly, but having it there and just seeing like he was done. Like there was nothing more to be gained from that journey. Right. But you were not in the desert and you did not have that epiphany in that moment. No. Well, it is most people's only frame of reference for anything that you're doing. And rather than be annoyed by that, like to be able to embrace it and say, actually, that was profound.

Yes, I am retracing those steps in that way on this journey, which is cool. Of all the encounters that you had along the way, what are the ones that stick with you? So there was that one. This is in the film. Um, so there was that one, uh, this is in the film, Jim Steele, um, who literally emptied out every dollar of his wallet and gave it to me. And, um, that was quite profound. That was in, uh, Arkansas on a particularly miserable day. I could remember like I was in between two towns. One was called Quitman. I suppose you would pronounce it Quitman. And the other was, I forget what the other town was, but it was like in a day where if I was really paying attention to what the universe was

telling me to do, it was telling me to Quitman. And this guy pulls up and just, as he said, in the spirit that it's given, just gave me every dollar out of his pocket. Was he driving along the road and stopped? He was. Yeah, he was driving along the road and pulled up alongside of me and saw me with my backpack and my beard and asked if I was running across the country. And he said, I want to talk to you. And he was up ahead another 200 meters. And we just had a short conversation. But I think it was equally as impactful for both of us.

Another one was in the middle of the Nevada desert. There's this on Highway 50 in Austin, Nevada. There's this bar there called the Serbian Christmas Bar or something like that. And there's this, a Serbian man that runs the, that owns the restaurant. And it was just funny to find an article written about him. The article was about Highway 50, but then it focused in on this man. And I found this article and just talking about how racist and terrible of a human being this guy is. And so I went in there and had several beers with him and had a great time and heard his perspective and tried to take it in as best I could. But, you know, still in the end, walked away with a new friend.

you know, still in the end, uh, walked away with a new friend. Um, gosh, there was so many along the, uh, so I did a, uh, a section of rivers. So you were asking like kind of how this, how I came up with, uh, the idea of this run or, and one of the things like, so I, of this run or and one of the things like so i i did about a thousand miles of trail to 2500 miles of uh of road and 300 miles of river i did the tennessee river going across alabama in the spirit of of american westward expansion it's very huckleberry finn yeah huck finn and also uh le, Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark did about a thousand miles of river up river. They went up, uh, I believe the Mississippi and then to the Missouri, they went up the route, the Missouri quite a ways before setting off on land. Um, but just trying to get a feel for that, uh, you know, when you can take

advantage of, of water you do. And so I was going down the river for a couple days, or at that point, three or four days. And I was just about to cross into Alabama and needed to get some food from Pittsburgh, Tennessee, South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, and pulled onto this private dock. And I've got my wet sleeping bag out, my paddleboard up on this dock, and this fancy car drives up right then. And I'm like, oh gosh, this is the landowner. And sure enough, it was. And he had read an article that was published in Memphis, Tennessee. I can't remember the name of the,

or sorry, Chattanooga, Tennessee. I can't remember the name of the newspaper, but he just comes up to me and he says, are you that skinny boy running to San Francisco? And I said, yes, sir, I am. He's like, I'm taking you to supper. And so we get in his car and and he drove me into town he's the uh fourth generation uh ceo owner of cat of lodge cast iron the the the skillets and uh took me all over town towns about a thousand people um introduced me to the entire staff in the office. They all thought I was a bit kooky. But this guy is like mid-70s and just like you could tell was a total character and just wanted to talk about rivers and how he's coming to the end of his time at the company

and he's going to go start doing big river trips. Wow. And so that was really awesome. And so you give you a bed to sleep in that night? No, I had to keep going. Yeah, I would have, he would have, and I would have taken him up on it, but I, I, I, it was midday. Right. And so I needed to keep going. And he pulled out a hundred dollars out of his pocket and said, can I give this to you? And I said, I, you know, I really don't need it. I saved up my money and, and, uh, 75 years old, the guy gives me knuckles and he's like, right on. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of like you're this Western manifest destiny version of the Buddhist

ascetic, you know, who, who basically is relying on the kindness of strangers to survive. Yeah. Did you, were there opportunities where people were opening up their homes and letting you crash there for the night and stuff like that? Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

One in particular, a memorable one, was on the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma, northe Eastern Oklahoma. And I had gotten to this town, uh, space in the name of the town right now. Um, but got there, was buying a couple beers at the, the store and this guy, uh, behind me in line, uh, he, he, I, that's what it was. I was asking the clerk because I had spent the previous night out in the rain. And I just wanted a nice dry spot to sleep. I wasn't looking for anything other than a dry spot. And she's like, yeah, I don't know. The bridge over there, it's OK.

But I think it's pretty rocky there. And this guy behind me in line, he just looks at me and he says, you're not going to, so long as you don't steal anything and you don't go into my brother's room who owns the place, you can stay with me, brother man. And he had a 12-pack of beer, and we went back to his place and talked for the next four and a half hours. I can't imagine the set of circumstances that would have to arise

for me to invite a stranger who's in line with me at some store back to my house to crash. You know what I mean? Like, we've lost that. Maybe that's a small-town thing, and it seems like a small gesture, but that's kind of a big thing. It is a big thing. Yeah. And it was, uh, in, in, I, I, it seems to me that I encountered that way more like that sort of generosity. I encountered that way more in the South and then less so as I got into the West. Um, and, uh, so yeah, I don't, I don't know what that says about us

or about the South or maybe it's still there. What do you make of America? What is your summation? So, I mean, after that trip, I thought America was great and I still do to this day. And it definitely, yeah, it rekindled this love that I have for this country. And I just think that, I mean, I'm not going to go out preaching to everybody to go run or walk across the country, but running across our county or whatever it is can do a lot. Well, not everyone's going to run across America.

Very few are. But everybody has the ability to more profoundly connect with their neighbors. Totally. And I think that's what I take away from it, that there are all little things that we can do every single day to try to bridge this divide a little bit better than we have. And I think such a huge part of it is physically getting out there and meeting people. And it's really uncomfortable. Initially, it's really uncomfortable. Like initially it's really uncomfortable. Well, you have the ultimate icebreaker.

It's like when you open up with like, this is what I'm doing, like everyone's gonna wanna talk to you. Totally. But you strike me, it's not like you're this super outgoing person. Like you're kind of a quiet guy, right? Like, was that uncomfortable for you

to be that open and vulnerable and like roll up on strangers when you're passing through? It wasn't, you know, going back to this, this myth of the mountain lion when, when, I mean, you really start to embody that. Like you really start to feel like you are something special. Even though it's, it's, something special. Even though it's not lasting for that long, it's just lasting for the few months that you're doing it. And then when it's done, it's something that you have done. It's no longer something that you are doing. So while you are doing that thing, I found that it was really quite easy for me to go into a bar and kind of puff up my chest and say, I'm, I'm

running across the country. Who's buying me a beer? Lots of free beers. I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah. And then, and then when it's over, you, that's, that's where the real work, I think begins, uh, at least for, uh, the, the, the, is like, what do you do with this thing that you have done that you are no longer doing? Right. Well, I mean, I don't know if you think of yourself or call yourself an artist. I certainly do. And part of being an artist, the definition of art and being an artist is to perceive the world through your unique lens and then translate it using some form of medium to elucidate a greater truth about humanity or the world, right? And that can come in a variety of forms. It can be in the analog, like, encounters that you're having when you're running across America, but you do it in many ways.

You're very much a storyteller through photography, through film, through the writing on your website. I'd never been to your website before. Your website is super cool. The way it's laid out so minimally and beautifully, but everything that you've written on it and the visual aesthetic of it, like it speaks to that artistic sensibility and the storytelling aspect of, of what you've done is super important. And I, I'm sure there's no, it's no mistake that, that this film, you know, still hasn't come out two years since you've done the run, like the amount of work to try to get it right and tell the story that you want to tell. Totally. And, uh, I'm looking over at this book here

that you have, Open Water, published by Chronicle Books. I'm going to shamelessly promote that I've got a book coming out about this as well. Oh, you do? Cool. By Chronicle. Oh, good. When is that happening? Spring, April 2020. Oh, good. Then I can corral you to come back here and talk about it some more. Perfect. But yeah, it's, you know, and I had both the film and the movie in mind before I started this trip. And that's, it was part of my packing. It was like, I want to be able to, like, I don't want to just do this for me.

I'm doing this for a lot of people that don't have the ability, whether it's physically, whether it's money, whether it's family, time, any number of things. Like, how do I how can I share this with as many people as possible in as positive of a way as possible? And so, yeah, I don't know if I've totally embraced the title of artist yet. I think that I, I mean, I studied sociology and photography in school and with photography certainly talk a lot about art. It's such a technical pursuit that you're oftentimes talking about technique

rather than the meaning behind all of what you're shooting. But that element has always been there for me. And your wife's an artist. She is. Yeah, very much so. And now you live in like an artist collective in Santa Fe. So just embrace this moniker, Ricky. All right.

I'll shift my resume around. Well, when I'm watching the movie, I'm thinking about the logistics of how you pulled this off. Not just, in addition to the run, like how you managed the workflow of like capturing all of this. I would imagine a lot of it's on iPhone, but you had cameras with you.

And I'm thinking, how many SD cards did he bring? And how is he keeping the batteries charged? And what is he doing with all the footage to make sure that it doesn't get wet and ruined and all that kind of stuff? Well, I went through, I destroyed, I think, at least two and I think probably three Sony RX100s. I'm surprised they still give me the insurance deal on them because I buy those at $1,000 a pop and $100 on the insurance. And they never last me for more than six months, but they're great cameras. Chest-mounted GoPro and then the iPhone.

And yeah, it was just kind of funny at times there, like when I've got literally several weeks of footage on my person. Right. No longer is anything worth anything except for those cards there. And are they in Ziploc bags and super, like, how are you protecting all that stuff? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Well, you had, I mean, there's a lot of beautiful cinematography and incredible drone shots and the like. So you had a crew that would, like, drop in for short mean, there's a lot of beautiful cinematography and incredible drone shots and the like. So you had a crew that would like drop in for short periods, right? Totally. So I had Jared. So with The Wandering Fever, Dean Leslie and his wife Hannah, they're an incredible artistic couple that have done most of Solomon's running films over the past eight or nine years. I've worked with Dean on a whole bunch of projects. We've been on five different continents together. And so this was definitely a new route for us,

for me to shoot a lot and just hand that over. And then he sent out his assistant, Jared, to join me at the beginning for one week, and then in the middle in Colorado for three weeks and into the desert, and then at the end for four days. And so it was, yeah, you're just kind of keeping your fingers crossed that you're getting everything. For me personally, it was a challenge to, you know, on the worst of days to pull out the camera and point it at myself and talk to myself or talk to an audience. When I'm feeling borderline crippled to set the camera up and run back and forth in front of the camera. Yeah, there's a couple of times where I was like, he put the camera there and run back and forth in front of the camera. Yeah. There's a couple of times where I was like,

he put the camera there and then went back and ran by it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's some, some outtakes would be hilarious.

They, the camera falling to the ground and right. Yeah. But I was, yeah. Having now seen the evolution of the film, I, I,

I'm grateful for all that we did put into it. Were there times, it has to be awkward at times when you're having these encounters with people to pull out a camera and say, can I document this? Yeah, it was awkward at times. People, I only got turned down twice. Yeah, and people were pretty chill about it. I think they appreciated, again, what I was doing.

And they'd ask what it's for, and I'd say, well, I might make a movie about this. But really, I just want to remember the people that I'm meeting along the way. And what's the plan with the movie? I mean, as of today, it's not out publicly yet. Yeah, well, keeping our fingers crossed, it's been submitted to a couple of the bigger independent film fests here in the States. And so that's kind of the ultimate goal is to see it on the big screen in Austin or in New York City. Nice. Yeah.

If any of you guys are out there. Yeah. It's an hour and 15 minutes or something like that so a little bit shorter than a typical non-fiction documentary but

much longer than anything you've done prior totally yeah well let's talk about the run every street thing yeah

because the transamericana was taking this very thin line across America in many ways, just circumstances dictating that you have to keep it somewhat on a surface level. And the running every street in San Francisco thing, which really put you on the map and created a media frenzy, was a different version of that that allowed you to go deep, right? To like more immerse yourself in your community on that

same theme of, you know, you can't know the world unless you know, you know, your neighborhood. And you're like, I live here, like, let me learn this. Totally. And people think of San Francisco as a relatively small city. That is not the case if you're going to run every street. Totally. So how did that idea come to you? So that actually came to me almost immediately after running across the country. So Liz and I got back together. We got back together as I was running across the country.

We started discussing, you know, where's next. Um, we started discussing, you know, where's next. Uh, she was, we were in Wisconsin where she was doing her MFA program and, and she had a, a couple of great job prospects in San Francisco and, and I can again, kind of live anywhere. So I, um, I signed up for that and we moved back to the Bay area and, uh, and it was really kind of in my recovery time from running across the country where I was sitting up in the Berkeley Hills at this really cool house that we had scored for the summer. And out on the porch there where you're looking at everything from Mount Tam to Sausalito, Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, downtown San Francisco. You're looking down the peninsula.

You're looking at Oakland and Fremont. You've got a view of a population of 2 million people and so much commerce, so much transportation coming and going. Really, it was, I'm not going to call it the opposite of my experience that I had just done going across the country. But in terms of the space and the solitude that I had experienced doing 40, 50 miles a day running across the country, it was so dense and still so completely foreign to me. still so completely foreign to me. To have had such a massive experience,

such as running across the country, and then look down at this human hive of 2 million people and kind of realizing that my experience was so limited with what I had just done and that if you really want to get to know a country, a place, this is such a critical part of it as well, is getting to know the densest part, the place where humans actually congregate in mass. And so that's when I'm looking at that and I'm like, well, all right,

so how many miles of street are there in San Francisco? Like if you're, you know, it's a reasonably, it's a compact city. It's got very strict borders. It's a seven by seven mile square. And, you know, so I started doing my research, how many miles are there? And I think it said 1150 miles of street or 1100 miles of street in San Francisco. And so I'm like, okay, that's from approximately Denver to San Francisco. Like I know how far that is. I know how long that could potentially take me um like what would that be like and then more research I find that uh uh San Francisco Chronicle uh writer uh

journalist uh had done exactly that yeah he walked it over about seven years time and wrote like two or three different articles about it. And, uh, and I was immediately inspired. Did you get in touch with that guy? I tried my very best sleuthing ever. I, I called, his name is John Graham and I called probably 10 different John Grahams and not one of them. Just cold call? Cold call. Yeah. It was like, totally it it was it was like and i even contacted the chronicle i contacted a lot of people and tried it and he'd moved to a different part of california and and so i looked for him there and like his age i never never talked to him i'd still love to talk to him i don't know if he knows um that i'm sure he knows

now i would hope so it's, cause it is very inspiring and, and his writings on it were ended up becoming very similar to, to my impressions. Right. And so, so yeah, I, I wanted to take the same approach, but do it ultra runner style and just massive miles every day and, and, and see, you know, cause if, if he's, if he took seven years to do it, a city can completely change in seven years, especially a city like San Francisco. You got to start over and do it again. Totally. But what's, what's,

if you can do it in, in six weeks or two months, i feel like you're getting a snapshot of that place at that moment in time right um just looking at the grid of san francisco when you were embarking on this i thought like well first of all like how do you even figure out how you're gonna do this route and do it in a sane like well planned manner I realized like, that's a super complicated equation to solve. But when I started digging into it more, getting ready to talk to you today, I realized, oh, it's even way more complicated than I would have imagined. And you sought out the advice or the counsel of like a friend of yours who was a professor, right? Who like works in computer mapping or something like that to help you figure out like the best way to

approach this. Yeah. And so we, we have 70 emails back and forth from each other from my run of San Francisco. I was, I was, it was every single day I was, uh, communicating with him. Uh, his name's Michael Odie. We were on the cross country team together in high school. He's a brilliant human being. And he loved the idea that I was going for this, like a literal human guinea pig for this equation that he's been thinking about before I even mentioned it to him. And in the end, I used very little of his information. Oh, really? Yeah.

And it wasn't because his information was bad. It was because of so many different variables, like translating the equation into usable terms for myself. And so how do you do that? You put it in Google Maps, or you put it in, like there's this app called Map My Run or I forget what they're called. But they actually can talk to you from your phone, like take a left here at the end of this block, turn around.

And San Francisco is too dense for that to actually work, for it to work seamlessly. Or if you got off the route, so it would program a 10-mile loop, is what they call it, because you are starting and finishing in the same place, even though it doesn't look at all like a loop. If you got off your loop at all, you're on mile two, and then only one block away you might be on mile five uh the equation would skip those three miles and just and but then it would ruin my entire plan

for the day and so i ended up just i found that it was for me personally it was easier to to have a map in my hand and kind of figure out my route throughout the day. And it was like, it actually became kind of fun. Like I'm not a, uh, a puzzle person like crossword puzzles or the Rubik's cube. I've never solved, solved a Rubik's cube in my life. Um, but when you, when it, when it gets translated into running terms and you're actually running this crossword puzzle or this Rubik's cube. And if you do it well, then it'll take you 25 miles. If you do it poorly, it's going to take you 28 miles. Like at the end of a 25 mile day, those three extra miles is huge incentive for you to get this problem right. And so it became really exciting and I got really good at it.

Yeah, you have to be this cartographer, urban archeologist to solve it. And it's interesting. So this professor was like crunching algorithms to solve it, but ultimately you went a little bit more on like feel and tactile printed out maps and things like that. Totally. And like, there's just a lot of things that like, that he couldn't possibly

account for. Um, and some of those, you can't park your car, your van there for all day or totally. That's one thing you can't park your car there, or, you know, it would make sense, um, for, for the sake of the algorithm to go across this street and do like two or three blocks in a different neighborhood, which you would therefore not have to do on a different day. But it would ruin the entire feel of that day. Like you're very much like a huge street-like market going down the center of San Francisco. Like staying within a much like a huge street, like market, uh, going down the center

of San Francisco, like staying within an, like a sub ecosystem, not crossing into a different kind of like cross section of humanity. That's a very good way to put it. Yeah. And so I didn't, I didn't really want to do that. And so he would figure out, you know, so this is those 70 emails back and forth is him not just figuring out a good algorithm, but figuring out what Ricky wants. Right. And so were you sleeping in your van at night or were you going home up to the Berkeley Hills? So I ended up sleeping in. Long story short, a couple of European friends came over to the States wanting a van. I helped

them buy a van. I had no intention of using this van. I was just going to sell it when they left. And when they left is when this project started. And that's when I realized like, this is going to save me. Yeah. This is going to save me two hours a day of driving when I'm going to be extremely tired. And I like didn't want to deal with traffic. And so I ended up sleeping in my van for most of it. And, uh, Liz would come into the city and camp out in the city, you know, in the urban camping. I, I, I, I should have, and I probably still can come up with an amazing map of the best camp spots in San Francisco proper, like places where you can be up on a hill and with your door open, looking at stars and, and the city skyline and completely

safe. And, um, so yeah, it was, it was a really cool part of it. And then of course, just being able to, um, just to end my day, you know, right there, and then start the next day right there. And you never had to worry about hydration or food, right? Did you just go into restaurants and eat, or how did you manage, like, the calories? Almost entirely restaurants, yeah. In Chinatown, it was, yep, Chinese food. In the sunset, it was Vietnamese in pho and in the mission it was tacos lots of tacos and yeah and i never i i again carried uh two different cameras with me

in order to be able to document all of it so i had the sony rx100 and then a little gopro and then my cell phone so i guess i had three cameras yeah and we should say Solomon made a film out of that called Every Single Street was it the same people that worked on the Transamericana totally yeah The Wandering Fever yeah and it was it was a really fun film to work on just kind of it it was different than going across the country because you know we were talking about how I when I was running across the country like Cause you know, we were talking about how I, when I was running across the country, like I didn't even have to tell people,

or if I did want to tell people, you know, it was like people were immediately interested in what I was doing. This was completely the opposite, you know? Yeah, exactly. Who cares?

Exactly. You know, but, but your ability to interact with people is a hundredfold higher. Yeah. You're just surrounded by people the entire time. Totally. So what were those encounters like? What was similar and what was different about the interpersonal encounters, experiences that you had? Yeah, they were a lot shorter. I'll admit, for the most part, they weren't as deep.

a lot shorter they weren't i'll admit they for the most part they weren't as deep um it's just the nature of living in a city and that's part of what i wanted to to discover on on something like that is you know the the city you're just packed like it's constant stimulation and that's people that's cars that's noise it's food like all of these things stuff you would have killed for when you're running across the desert. Totally, yeah. With the exception of the lack of intimacy. And I think that speaks a lot to what a city is. A lot of people, for me personally, if I want to go get lost, I go out into the mountains.

And that's my quiet spot. That's where I go to be by myself. For a lot of people, that space is the city. Like they appreciate the anonymity of being in the city and how nobody really looks at you, nobody really cares. I think that's really a safe place for a lot of people. But also lonely and alienating. Totally, yeah.

That's the flip side of that coin. And so it's, so yeah, it was, I would say my most powerful interactions with people in San Francisco were homeless people. And I think a huge part of that was this dedication on my part. I can be just as guilty of this as the next person and that's to ignore this problem.

But when you're running certain streets in San Francisco, dead-end street in the middle of Soma, like there is absolutely no reason to go to the end of that dead end street unless you're going there to shoot up and then pass out. And so when I find myself there and there's people there, what are you going to do? Say, hey, how you doing? And they look at you looking at them and, and you, and you can have a conversation. Maybe you don't. Uh, I, I never felt, uh, in, in danger by any means. I, I certainly have it on my side that I'm, you know, uh, young white male. Um, well, a guy in running shoes isn't very threatening. Totally. It's not like an alarm bell sounding off if you're running around.

But you're putting yourself in precarious situations. Yeah. But you never had any brushes with danger. No. Yeah, maybe like on my final day running through the Tenderloin in San Francisco, like eight or nine o'clock at night, this guy, I came around a corner and he like threw a fake punch at me, like at my face and just stopped right short. And he was just sizing me up.

That was like, and when he saw that I didn't even flinch. And the reason that I didn't flinch is because I had just run 48 or 49 miles that day and I was completely exhausted. And like, I don't think it really would have mattered to me if he'd have knocked me out. That probably would have been a nice end to that day. He just said, said all right man well in part inspired by that expedition i i spend i've told the story before but i spend half the week in downtown la because i've got a daughter that goes to a high school down there and it's too far to commute on the daily. And I'm used to running in the trails around here.

And I kind of took it upon myself. Like, I've lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years. But until last year, I would rarely go downtown. There's just no reason to. And there's, you know, as you know, Los Angeles is sprawling. It's gigantic. And there's very little. There's huge patches of it that I've never been to and know nothing about. And so I've taken it upon myself to better connect with my environment. And when I do my runs downtown, it's all city streets.

And I try to take different routes and I'll go through, like we're right on the edge of Skid Row. I try to take different routes and I'll go through, like we're right on the edge of Skid Row. So I always run through Skid Row and I'll run around MacArthur Park, which are places that, you know, everyone will tell you don't go there. And I found the people, you know, to be like really friendly.

And these are people with not, they're living in tents on the street, you know, and I get high fives and they recognize me now. And like, there's like a friendly kind of like rapport there. Whereas when I go on the trails around here, like I'll wave to somebody running on the trail and they don't even wave back. Right. And I'm like, that's not right. Right, right, right.

There's so much to be learned if we can set aside our fears and our judgments and open ourselves up a little bit. Not to say that I've done anything like what you've done. I've just had a small taste of that, what that experience must be like. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what the benefit is, but I know that there is a benefit to stepping outside of our comfort zones and looking people in the eye. And I think it works both directions.

I think that it makes those people feel more human. When you're sleeping on the street in the middle of downtown LA, you can feel less and less like a human. And it makes you and me feel more human as well and tap into this empathy that I think can go a really long way in this time in our society. And something that perhaps we're losing a little bit, and it's a good way to kind of gain it back a little. We need more empathy. More empathy. We definitely need more empathy and humility,

I think, are keystones for a better future. Absolutely. are keystones for a better future. Absolutely. One of your main goals or the impetus behind the Transamericana run was to inspire people, to help them realize like, hey, this is doable, $1,000 a month, that whole thing. But kind of ironically, the run every street thing has been the template that has been copied and emulated by, you've created like a social movement now. There are people all over the world who are doing their version of what you've done.

And there's news articles about it. Like that guy, there was a guy in Scotland, I think, who was a kickboxer who then did, he tried to do what you did in his own town. So that has to be really cool to see kind of like the ripple effect of that. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's so like I don't follow much on social media, but I do follow the every single street hashtag.

And it's just so cool to be able to see like outwardly they're not the most amazing photographs or accomplishments, to be able to see, like outwardly, they're not the most amazing photographs or accomplishments on a day-to-day basis. But you keep kind of going through these and you're realizing like, no, you're just seeing a normal person's version of where they live. And yeah, it's just really cool i mean you're fertilizing

these seeds that are that are planting the fruit of greater connectivity and community because the more people that are doing that the more connected they are like they're having their version of your experience which is uniting people and bringing them together. Totally. There was an article about a group in Vancouver that did every trail in Stanley Park, right? Yeah. I didn't realize there was like 24,000 kilometers of trail in that park. That's incredible.

And they were going to do every trail and there's a big group photo of all of them together. That's got to be amazing to see that. Yeah. It's awesome. There's a guy doing it in Brazil. And just seeing the maps, I think some of these ideas, we have to wait for everything to come together for that idea to work. And right now, our technology is a big part of what's allowing this project to take off. And I think the hunger and the thirst that people have to be more connected. Yep, absolutely.

On top of that, there are all these people doing art projects on the graphing, like the mapping part of it too. You've been sharing those on Twitter. Totally. on Twitter, like people, like these little, like, I don't know what you call them, like motion graphics of seeing the street, you know, like this, like this map street art kind of thing. Yeah. And it's, it's sort of organic, but like organic on a human level, which is definitely organic, but, uh, on a human level. So, uh, the one that I'm talking about or thinking that there's a couple in particular. One like won an award or something?

Yeah, totally. So this is a gentleman in France who I gave him all of the data from my project, and he digitalized the entire thing. So that was just for my data and the stuff that's out there. So that was just for my data and the stuff that's out there. There's a guy in Zurich doing every single street in Zurich, and he's got some really cool graphics going along with that. But just the ability to wear a watch or wear your phone and then to have this strange-looking map of what you've accomplished during the day

to be able to show, like, here's your photos of the stuff that you saw, and then here's this strange-looking map. And it looks way different. It looks like a 10-mile run in the city where you've got this goal to cover all of the streets in a small area can look so much more impressive just on a graphic level

than a hundred mile point to point run. Because one's just a line and the other is this very intricate, detailed, both accomplishment of a run, but also accomplishment of human society in that they created those streets and why are the streets in that shape i feel like you should also do like a tashin style coffee table book with the photographs and kind of the the graphics of the mapping and all of that that tells the story in a more visual way yeah working on it oh you are you are? Every single street.com. See, you're an artist. Is that what it is? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. I nabbed that up right away.

I like that, man. How do you make your life work? To me, you're the definition of a minimalist. You keep your overhead really low. You keep your life. You conduct your life in a way that allows you to do the things that, that, that you love and you have sponsors that support you and all of that. But like, what does it look like on a daily basis? Um, sometimes it's really exciting.

Sometimes it's so mundane that it's depressing. Um, like having running, like'm i'm very fortunate uh to have running as part of my daily routine um and i would say less so than it was 10 years ago i i i used to be obsessively like need to run every day and now that's a little bit less and I'm realizing that the less I run, if I don't have that routine, then the sooner that existential crisis comes in and that's usually a pretty good indication that I need to put my shoes on and get out for a run. But yeah, the day-to-day is, I don't know, I'm trying to figure, it's constant reinvention. So some days it's like, I feel like I accomplished so much, whether that's on an artistic level, photographs, writing, coming up with ideas, figuring out ways to execute those ideas.

ideas, figuring out ways to execute those ideas. And then other days it's like virtually nothing at all. But what's important is having the time and the ability to, uh, to be able to do those things. Right. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm interested in like how, like there's a lot of, I think of you in a way that's sort of similar to someone like Laird Hamilton. Like he's created a life out of surfing that has nothing to do with competition. And you emerged from the competitive sphere of ultra running to cut this very unique path that you own. And only you can do what you do. And you've been able to create a living out of that, which is like an amazing thing. Like you get to basically do what you want to do and pursue the projects that inspire you. And that's a gift. That's like this rare liminal space that most people

can't access in their lives. And so, I mean, you're the product of a hippie parent. You were sort of raised to kind of cut your own unique path, I suppose, in many ways. But were there ever times where you thought like, I got to get a job or like, you know, those moments of doubt or where your faith was questioned about whether this is really like, am I going to be able to do this? Like, it's gotta be hard. Yeah. You know?

And I, I think that almost every single day should I get a job and it's, and it doesn't be ever had a job. Like I've had a lot of jobs. I mean, I've, I worked, I waited tables for 10 or 15 years. I helped distribute mezcal for a friend of mine for a little while. For a little bit there, I was delivering food in San Francisco on my motorcycle. So I've had lots of jobs. And more often than not, these jobs are to fill my day a little bit and to meet people and to pretty much to not be at

home all day long and with running as my only outlet. But in terms of running as a job in these more recent projects, it's something, you know, when I decided to run across the country a couple years ago, it was, yeah, it was just kind of a time in my career where, you know, I'm not going to beat Killian Jornet at anything. Like how many times are you going to toe the line at some big race? Exactly. And like so many of these races, I can tell you from experience, like it's win or lose. It's like, even if there's a podium, even if there's prize money, 10 deep, it's people only recognize that you've won or lost, which is a shame, I think. But it's also just kind of the nature of the beast. And so in that sense, I decided I want to start doing more project-based

runs that possibly inspire people in a completely different way, in ways that I've personally been inspired. And so for that, it's been these two projects that we've been talking about. For that, it's been these two projects that we've been talking about. I also put together a bunch of running trips. Right. Hut, run, hut. Or run, hut, hut, run. Now I'm getting confused.

No, it's hut, run, hut. Hut, run, hut. And bus, run, bus. So these are two. Kind of like running retreats, right? They're kind of running retreats, running experiences. I'm still trying to find the right label for them. But they're small groups. This hut-to-hut running trip in Colorado goes from Aspen to a small town outside of Vail. And we stay at these secluded mountain huts, the 10th Mountain Huts,

which I grew up in Colorado maintaining when I was starting at 16 years old. I was going and doing trail maintenance for these huts. And we'd skied from hut to hut and we'd biked from hut to hut, but there was never any trip that was running from hut to hut. And so six or seven years ago, I came up with this idea to do this and vehicle assisted. So all you need is your backpack, a small running pack and the ability to cover 15 to 20 miles a day,

which I think is in most people's wheelhouse and way more than people think. And so I've done, I think 13 or 14 14 of those trips now. I usually do two or three a year. And getting to meet people and see people sort of transform during this week when your cell phone doesn't work and you're really challenging yourself and you're sleeping at 10,000, 11,000 feet with not a lot of oxygen. It's really quite exciting. And so it's kind of, for me,

it's an opportunity to provide a little bit of my life and my philosophy for others. And I don't make people get rid of their watches for the week, but I, I definitely suggest that they turn them off and not pay attention too much. Just, uh, we're going to get there. So if you had to articulate that philosophy, what is it? Uh, fun over fast. That's, that's generally what I tell people and and uh that uh yeah i i think that uh what it is is is really just tapping into something way more primordial that we've lost touch with a little bit um this simple you know coming up with a simple goal and that's just to keep moving all day long.

And then when we get there, we're going to eat and hang out and share some smiles. It is getting back to something really primal. And I think that speaks to another like hunger and thirst that we have. You know, people are more interested in having those kinds of experiences now than going to a fancy resort and laying on a beach. How can I just feel more and feel more alive? Totally. And we're so accustomed to being in offices and riding elevators and things like that that we've lost that connection. Yeah.

And what's the bus-run-bus thing? It's kind of a different version of that? It's a different version of that. So I've got some history of, well, I've got a lot of history of road trips and a little history of river rafting. And so I kind of consider it the combination of those two things. I, being a traveler for the past 20 plus years have known about, uh, this bus company, Green Tortoise, uh, out of San Francisco. They've been going since I think the early 1970s, 1973. Uh, the, the gentleman that started it converted a school bus and drove people from san francisco to new york and uh he

did the first one in like four or five days and then the second one he did in one week and then the third one he did in three weeks and he realized that the longer he went the more people he could get to sign up for and so now whatever it is 50 years later 50 years later, his son and his grandson, his son owns it, his grandson is a driver, and they have a fleet of five buses, and they run trips all over the place, all over the American West, up to Alaska, sometimes down into Mexico. over to the American West, up to Alaska, sometimes down into Mexico. And I'd known about them, and I approached them and asked if they could charter a bus and do this trip. San Francisco, Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Big Sur, and back to San Francisco in seven days.

And the guy's eyes just lit up, and he's like, that sounds amazing. So basically you get a bunch of people, you sleep on the bus. You sleep on the bus. You drive to a cool place and you run around and then you sleep and then go somewhere else. Exactly. So the bus drives through the night. So it's kind of, I consider that kind of like time travel. And you wake up in a new place. You wake up in Yosemite and and you've got 10 hours to do a short run

or 10 hours to do a long run, whatever it is that you feel comfortable with. That's pretty cool. So the first one was this past summer, and we did that route that I just mentioned. And I had 25, I think, runners on the bus, two bus drivers. We covered one mile shy of 2000 miles. I think the stronger runners covered close to 140 miles throughout the course of the week, including like a 15 mile run in Las Vegas, um, hitting as many restaurants as they could for the five hours that we were there. And, uh, yeah, it was just, it was really phenomenal. It was, uh, living in the American West. We have so much at our fingertips. Um,

the issue is getting to all of them. And so solve that with two bus drivers and a bus load full of food and a bunch of like-minded people. That's pretty cool. So next summer I'll do two of those. I'm going to do one up in Alaska, which is really exciting. So we'll fly into Anchorage and fly out of Juneau, and it'll be about 1 or 1600 miles on the bus and yeah, potential again of 100 to 150 miles

running in all of those places through some of the most beautiful terrain in all of North America. Have you been up to Alaska before? I've gone up there five five or six years in a row now yeah oh yeah wow yeah so i rode my motorcycle up there um six years ago um to complete that was when you did you rode your motorcycle all the way to patagonia right i rode my motorcycle to patagonia when I was 23 years old from Colorado.

I have this tendency, this need to do things a little bit differently. I'd gotten into a study abroad program in Valparaiso, Chile, in central Chile. I've been there. You have? My wife is from Alaska, but her mother is Chilean from Santiago, but I've been to Valparaiso and some of the coastal towns around there. Yeah. It's incredibly beautiful. And so I'd gotten into this study abroad program and just living in or being in school in Boulder, Colorado for however many years you get the college students coming back from their study abroad program. And

I was just kind of hearing the same stories over and over and over again. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to do study abroad, but I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to ride my motorcycle there. And so this was a full 10 years later. I wanted to complete the two continents. So I rode my motorcycle up to Alaska and then ran the mountain marathon race up there, which is, uh, uh, part of the reason that I, I don't race all that much anymore is because that race I consider to be the best out of any race that I've ever done pretty much in the world.

Why is that? Um, it's dangerous. It doesn't have a set course. It's extremely competitive. It's got a lot of history. There's equal emphasis on the men as there is on the women and on the juniors for that matter. And it's just a, it's an incredibly huge celebration of who we are as Americans and who we are as athletes. It's really something else. That's cool. And it all happens in five kilometers. Nothing can match that, so you're just not. It's hard.

I don't know how to say it. It's hard. It's like I love, I appreciate all of the races out there. I appreciate that there's these races, I appreciate that, um, that people have something on their calendar to, to train for and to look forward to. Um, but after running up and down a mountain in Alaska, like the idea of training to run, you know, this contrived route around a bunch of ski trails on a ski mountain, because that's the only place that we can get a permit to run a race

here in the lower 48. It just doesn't do a whole lot for me. Like I said, I'm glad that they exist, but I need something substantive to kind of feed my desire to race. Yeah, what's the point? I mean, there's always somebody doing something crazier too. Like how many times can you run the bad water course in a row?

Totally. Or the seven marathons on seven continents. And these are expensive affairs. And your whole thing is like, that's great, but let's strip it away and we're and find the meaning in all of this. And the meaning comes in those human connections that you have by just being in your backyard. Yeah.

Like it doesn't need to be more complicated. Right. Yeah. One of the things we didn't talk about is the fact that you lived in Antarctica for a while. Yeah. It was a while ago though, right? How old were you when you were there?

That was right when Liz and I started dating. So that was maybe nine years ago. And yeah, I'm lucky she's still in my life. I left frequently for several months at a time. Well, this is who you are. Yeah. And so this was like, I had read which book, I mean, everyone that's been to Antarctica

has one book that spoke to them more than the others. And for a lot of people, that book's Endurance and other people, it's another book. And for me, it was this book called The Worst Journey in the World. And you would think that would have the opposite effect. Right, instead this magnetizes you. Completely.

And so this was a journey in 1906 or 1907. And it was the Scott journey where he ended up going to the South Pole and dying on the way back. This was written by the youngest person on his team that stayed at camp. And so he was there in Antarctica for two years. I'm like, I got to go. Two years. Yeah.

And yeah, two very long winters. And so an ex-girlfriend of mine, her ex-boyfriend, worked in Antarctica. And I just asked him, like, how do I get a job there? And he says, what sort of skills? Yeah, you can't just go. You can't just go to the South Pole. Yeah, unless you got a lot of money. And even then, you still can't stay for that long.

And so he's like, so what sort of skills do you have? And I'm like, I don't know. He's like, carpentry? I'm like, nope. He's like, kitchen? I so what what sort of skills do you have and i'm like i don't know uh he's like carpentry i'm like nope he's like kitchen i'm like sorta he's like dishwashing and i'm like i can wash dishes and so that's what i did i went i it's the the hardest job i've ever gotten in terms of interviews and and physicals and all of these things uh But yeah, I got a job at the South Pole. I was on the first airplane to go there for that season. It was October 12th, must have been 2009 or 2010, and stuck around there for four months,

washing dishes six days a week, 10 hours a day. Ran two races while I was there. That was a huge part of the reason that I wanted to go. There's a race called the Race Around the World, which takes place on Christmas Day ever since the 1970s. And it's a two and a half mile race that goes around the station. And pretty much everybody participates, whether on foot or on snowmobile or on snowbikes or whatever it is. Some people tow couches behind the snowmobiles. It's just a parade around the station. It's an excuse for everybody to get out.

Didn't you create a new course, though? I did, yeah. And so when I arrived there, they were doing three laps, three, like three quarter mile laps around the station. And I'm like, but the station is so much bigger than that. Like, how come we don't go out to that, you know, station or that building or that building or out to the berms or out to those, you know, the ice tunnels out there. And the woman that I asked about it, she handed me a map of the station and said, go ahead, design the course. And so I designed a new course there. Just one broader, one big, one big loop. And it was

awesome. It, you know, it went all around the station. Really cool. Every time zone, every time zone. Yeah. And then, uh, the winner of that race, you, uh, the, the, the award for the man and the women that win the race is that you get a free trip to the edge of the continent to McMurdo Station in order to compete in the marathon there, which is, again, only open to employees. And they usually get maybe 40 or 50 people to run it. And on the day before that we're supposed to fly to McMurdo, me and this gal, they canceled our flight. And it was just weather. No, it wasn't. It was bureaucracy. They didn't need any shipments to the South Pole or vice versa.

So they just canceled the flight. Like, we're not a priority. The two skinny kitchen staff runners wanting to run the marathon on the coast was not enough of a priority. So we enlisted the help of a couple of surveyors at the South Pole station. And we designed our own marathon course there at the South Pole station, which was again, one lap of what we had done about two and a half miles. And then out to the, the ice runway, which is two and a half miles long. And we did five laps up and down the ice runway, uh, for just one woman. Uh, we ended up getting, I think six or seven people started and four people ran the marathon. From what I've been told, it's still going to this day, and I think they get like 15 to 20 people competing in the marathon.

For hands down, quite possibly the most boring marathon course in the world. Definitely not the easiest. They should call it the Ricky Gates Marathon. That's amazing so what are we looking at like minus 20 my like what is the temperature range it was when i did that it was mine it was about the the wind chill was minus 40 and that was going one direction in the other direction it was probably more like minus 60 because you're going with the wind and then against the wind. How do you even gear up for that? A lot of layers. Yeah, a whole lot of layers. I had big, just like these guys, big earphones plugged into what was back then an iPod. And I just remember this one funny part like and and huge mittens with uh glove warmers in there um i had

my ipod on album shuffle and uh and i can't remember which album it was maybe his greatest hits but frank sinatra's greatest hits coming on and knowing that for the rest of your life if you hear frank sinatra you're exactly experience straight there And it was just, I know that it was too cold for me to take my, the iPod out because it would have frozen immediately. And then I would have been without any music. So I think I'm one of the few people that have listened to an entire Frank Sinatra album while running a marathon. I don't know.

There's probably a few. Yeah. But I had Colin O'Brady in here sharing about his solo adventure across Antarctica pulling that sled. And he was saying that he had to be very careful about how he expended himself. Like you have to create momentum to pull that sled. But if he overexerted himself or went too hard and started to sweat like sweat is death like you can't sweat so how do you run a marathon with all these layers on and avoid that death-defying pitfall yeah well you can't run very fast that's for sure i ran i think i ran 405 um and it's it there's no

doubt about it it's a delicate balance. His situation was vastly different than mine. If I went into death zone, then I just ran into the galley and got some hot chocolate. He didn't have that opportunity. Right. But as soon as you start sweating, it freezes immediately. Totally. And it was fascinating. And that's when I experienced it the most was during that marathon was taking my jacket off and there was actual um like snow it's called horror h-o-a-r inside

uh your jacket just all of this frozen uh moisture and uh yeah it's not something that you want uh to to happen if you're if you're out there for multiple days or even like a really long day. Yeah. Yeah, it's deadly. So what was the idea going to Antarctica? Like what were you trying to learn? And did that experience satisfy that? Totally.

It was two different things. I think that there's no place on earth that's more like a different planet than Antarctica. So for me, it was like if i wanted to ever go to space this was my opportunity to go to space um and then the other part is is meeting and talking to all of the people there that were equally as interested in going to this other planet as me um it's just kind of funny. It seems like everybody goes down there with a copy of Dune. And when you get there, it feels very much like this desert.

It's the driest place on earth. It's 10,000 feet. The South Pole's at 10,000 feet. It's pancake flat. Without the stations there, human beings can't exist there's no life form at the south pole with the exception of humans yeah i remember we got our our fruits and vegetables in from uh new zealand uh at one point and there was a ladybug and the lettuce and the ladybug went straight into a jar and and it was the station pet for the next three months.

It was incredible. And everybody visited the ladybug that was down in the little greenhouse. But it's just an interesting assortment of people. You get a lot of people like myself who are travelers, and they want to visit the world. You get some old, crusty Antarcticaarctica people that uh you know lifelong employees to the program and then you get a few uh blue collar people as well um you know working for the contract company back then it was raytheon back then it was raytheon and now i don't know if this is still current day but it's's Halliburton now.

What are they studying down there? They're studying things very, very big and very, very small. So they're studying neutrinos. This is the IceCube program. And so this is a really amazing scientific experiment where they've drilled 80 or so holes into the ice plateau and and put these little detectors doms uh into the ice uh that can actually detect when a neutron collides a neutrino collides with the nucleus of an atom and creates a small explosion and And so that's, that's the things that are really, really small.

So these are, they're actually capturing this explosion. The neutrino goes through the planet earth and then collides on the opposite side. So that's how small they are. Wow. Yeah. It's hard for me to really even comprehend this. I can't even understand what that's how small they are. Wow. Yeah, it's hard for me to really even comprehend this.

I can't even begin to understand what that's about. And I had several different people dumb that down for me in a lot of different ways, and that's the best way that I understood that. And so then they've also got some incredible telescopes looking deep into outer space for dark matter. And then it being the cleanest air, supposedly the cleanest air on planet earth.

They also study air quality. NOAA is there with the station. Wow. The stars at night had to be unbelievable. There was no, so when I was there, I was there for the summertime. I watched the sun revolve around in the sky for four months straight.

No darkness. Yeah, I never saw the darkness. How does that fuck with you? time uh i watched the sun revolve around in the sky for four months straight yeah i never yeah i never saw that how does that fuck with you uh i had a room uh with no windows in it and i simply put it into my head that when i was going into my room it was nighttime yeah so you'd stick to a schedule yeah yeah yeah wow man also don't they like drill these ice cores and pull them out and they're like time machines, right? Because they literally, they're so layered. Yeah, you're going. Like the rings of a tree, like you can go back in time. 170,000 years is how far you're going back when you're going that far deep into the ice.

And so you're looking at volcanic explosions. Right. Yeah, it's really incredible. One of the things I was reading about was with the receding water levels and the melting of the ice caps is that it starts to expose like this water and ultimately vapor from so long ago. And they don't know what's in that. Like there could be viruses and bacteria that haven't been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years totally that could create strange sci-fi movies yeah type situations yeah that's a trip though yeah so how do you now you're married you're working on these books yeah um but you're a creature of wanderlust like

what's what's next and how do you satisfy that itch and what are you looking at now? I'm still coming up with more projects. The project that I have right now that I'm most excited about, which is gonna take me a couple of years, at least two years, I'm calling the 50 Classic Trails of North America.

And this is kind of purely up to me. This is sort of based off of a book from the 1970s called the 50 classic, uh, climbing a sense of North America and, uh, where these two rock climbers went around, uh, Canada, Mexico, uh, United States, and, and found these just totally iconic, uh, rock climbs, some of which have only been done one time. So for me, this is, I want it to be a little bit more attainable to the general public, but I do want it to be something that a runner can strive for. So the, the parameters for this are that I can tell somebody with confidence that this trail is worth traveling to and making a weekend or a week out of it. Um, another parameter is that it needs to be done in, in 24 hours by the fastest runners or hikers. I'm tentative about calling it a running-specific book.

And then that it really covers all ecosystems. So I'm not going to go through all 50 of them, but just a few of them. There's a couple obvious ones. The Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon is an all-time classic and needs to be included. The Lost Coast in Northern California, a 40, 50-mile point-to-point run through the most uninterrupted coastline in the lower 48. The one that I've done most recently up in Alaska, the Chilkoot Trail, going from Skagway up into British Columbia, which was used for a 32 mile or 34 mile point to point run, which goes from this incredible, uh, coastal jungle essentially, uh, up into this high country and then down into a much

more arid, uh, um, Canadian landscape. Um, so the idea is to kind of, uh, a few different things, look at a bunch of different ecosystems, provide people with hopefully some inspiration to check out some new terrain, illuminate some human history. Ideally, there's a bit of human history with each of these trails. And really provide something,

I call it running beyond the bib, providing people with inspiration to do a trail that's not necessarily a race. Right. And to give them a goal that isn't necessarily an FKT or a record, but something that they can look at and feel like they can accomplish. And this is a book that you're doing? It'll be book. But like an art book, like visual, very visual. Totally, yeah. So this'll be book, website, and ideally one minute long per trail,

little video segments. Videos. Like Atlas Obscura for trail riding. Yeah, little video segments. Like Atlas Obscura for trail riding. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I like that. I got to get that guy to help illustrate. I like his illustrations. You have a lot going on.

Yeah. Like it's cool. I think I just, what I really connect with about what you're about is just, is the sharing part, you know, like how you're you're about is just is the sharing part you know like how you're taking this thing that you love and and creating like tactile objects and inspiring people to you know infuse their lives with the things that have brought so much meaning to you it's really cool yeah well thank you yeah it's uh i i hope that it uh i hope that it reaches people out there. I know that I constantly need the things in my life to evolve, and I don't need to change those things necessarily

or switch out running for whatever, skydiving or something. But I do need for it to evolve to help me with who I am today and who I'm becoming tomorrow. Well, cool, man. I think that's a good place to end it. Super amazing. Thank you for sharing today. Transamericana coming to a film festival near you

and hopefully a digital platform at some point. I was very moved by it. You guys did an amazing job on that movie. So congratulations on that. I can't wait for people to see it and enjoy it. Thanks so much. And what's the book going to be called? The book is going to be called Cross Country.

And it's being published by Chronicle Books out of San Francisco. And that'll also be out in April. In April. Cool. And rickygates.com. Definitely go to his website. Like it's, it's a cool experience to just get lost in all the content there. It's very cool. And you're an easy guy to find on social media too. Amazing photographer as well. So definitely subscribe to your, your

Instagram page, rickygates as well. Anything else? That's about it. I hope to share the trails with people. Hut Run Hut, Bus Run Bus. I love providing these experiences and sharing them with others. Cool, man. I want to go on one of those trips. Please do. Yeah. You and I have a mutual friend, Heidi Zuckerman. Oh, you know Heidi. That's right, from Aspen. Totally. Oh my goodness. And she was interested in a Hut Run Hut and I'm still working on her. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Well, I wanna go irrespective, but if Heidi's going, I would love to be able to join her at the same time. That would be really fun. Yeah. She just left the museum in Aspen, didn't she? She did.

She's going back to New York? I don't know where she's gone, but I think she's, I don't doubt that there's a little bit of finding herself right now. That must be very exciting. She was at the Aspen Art Museum for 14 years. Yeah, for a long time. And created a really incredible program there, new building. I can say this as a person that was born and raised in Aspen,

that her impact has changed the face of the town for the better and deeply cultural. Yeah, she's a very cool person. So, hey, Heidi, I'm sure you're listening. She might be listening. Anyway, cool, man. Well, to be continued. And again, I just want to extend an invite for you to come back and talk about the book when that's coming

out. And maybe we can go on a run that time too. Awesome. All right. Sounds great. Thanks so much. Good talking to you. Peace. How beautiful and awesome is that human being? I love that guy. I adore that conversation. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Please hit up Ricky on the socials and let him know directly what you thought of today's conversation. He's at Ricky Gates on Twitter and on Instagram. And please be sure to check out the show notes

on the episode page to learn more. And please, please pre-order his book, Cross Country at rickygates.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts. Share the show on social media and with your friends. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Hit that subscribe button on Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever you listen to the program. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate.

I appreciate all the hard work that my team puts into putting on the at richroll.com forward slash donate. I appreciate all the hard work that my team puts into putting on the show every week. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the visual version of the program. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships and D Music by Anilema. Appreciate all you guys. I don't take your attention for granted. I am here only because of you guys.

So I'll see you back here next week with Chef Ileana Regan. It's a beautiful conversation. I think you guys are going to enjoy it, and I'll take you out with a clip. Until then, peace, plants, namaste. That is what I do, and that's what I love to do. And it's an expression of myself. And I love cooking. But it's really more than that, because I love the storytelling of the cooking, like gathering our ingredients and growing things. And that's a big part of where we're going with our property in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan is to make it just feel

a little bit more holistic. And I just want to feel, I guess, better about it. And I think that a lot of people look at like chefs and my industry as being kind of glamorous. But it doesn't feel like that, at least not for me, not on a daily basis. Thank you.