Your Favorite Thing with Wells & Brandi - From Ring Road to Stagecoach

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

We’re switching things up a bit this episode, YFTer’s. Sure we still talk about the important stuff like what makes the best breakfast sandwich and mysteriously gifted horse sweaters, but the heart of this episode comes from Brandi’s main squeeze Matt, who shares his unbelievable story of riding a vintage Harley across Afghanistan. From navigating sketchy roads and shady border crossings to spreading his best friend’s ashes—accidentally in an active minefield—Matt’s journey is wild, moving, and totally unforgettable. This might be YFT’s most badass guest yet. Buckle up, because this episode rides the Ring Road and somehow ends at Stagecoach! 🏍️ 🦅 Thanks to our awesome sponsors for supporting this episode!  Mood: Get 20% off your first order at Mood.com/YFT with promo code YFT. Hungryroot: For a limited time get 40% off your first box PLUS get a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungryroot.com/yft and use code yft. Happy Mammoth: For a limited time get 15% off on your entire first order at happymammoth.com and use the code YFT. Prolon: Visit ProlonLife.com/YFT to claim your 15% discount sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Quince: Treat your closet to a little summer glow-up with Quince. Go to Quince.com/yft for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Ancient Nutrition: Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to AncientNutrition.com/YFT. Nutrafol: For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering YFT listeners $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter promo code YFT10. Don’t forget to rate, review, and follow Your Favorite Podcast! Plus, keep up with us between episodes on our Instagram pages, @yftpodcast @wellsadams and @brandicyrus and be sure to leave us a voicemail with your fave things at 858-630-1856!  This podcast is brought to you by Podcast Nation.

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Was made from the plunder of whisky me boys You know if you're a bartender on a TV show you have to learn that song I think And I did and I like it. I mean, am I as good as hose you're doing it? No, I'm not. Okay. But it'll work in a pinch. Anyways, day fucking 975 here in paradise, and it's all run run like blurring together. I don't know what's happening out there. run, run, like blurring together. I don't know what's happening out there, but I know I'm, it's hot and I'm sweaty.

I'm so sweaty. All the time, sweating, sweating, sweating. All right, here we go, it's sweating time. I don't think this is like a spoiler at all because like Jesse kind of claimed that the Goldens were coming. Can I just say the Goldens are a goddamn breath of fresh air. They're the greatest thing in the world.

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There's my take. I just want to do a golden bachelor in paradise and just have the olds here. They've got so much more hoops. Pazazz. They're just the best. And it's like lovely to be around. Let's do it.

Let's call up the Brandzino, the Branditha, the Brand brand flake the brand deal being bong boom digga digga digga bing bong ding digga digga ding dong boom. Hello. What's up? Just eating some breakfast over here. Yeah, what do you what do you got going on? You got your sunglasses on you get your horse sweater on just eating a biscuit. Um, you want to know about this sweater? Tell me all about the horse sweater you've got on.

Okay. It's a little creepy. Great. I love creepy. Somebody put this in my mailbox. No idea who. Whoa. I know, but I like it. You know? Is it knit?

It's like fleece, kinda. It's like a vintage-y, like, fleece pullover. I washed it, you know, before I put it on. So, smart. Who do you think may have given it to you? I literally have no fucking clue. It's like really, it scared me at first. I was like, this is very strange.

And then I showed it to Matt and he was also freaked but he was like, it's pretty sick. I was like, I know. So here we are. So it's someone who knows where you live. That's the creepy part, right? Yeah. It's not great.

Yeah, have you asked like around the barn, like, hey, did someone leave a sweater at my mailbox? No, it's nobody at the barn. No? They don't even know where I live, really. Jeez. It's very strange. The caper of the horse sweater

It's cool. Look at them. Maybe you've got a stalker. I do but the stalker knows what's up The stalkers got good taste stalker is good taste. Yeah Have you ever had a stalker? I don't think so. Are you rocking some McDonald's right now? No highbrow I don't know that it's you rocking some McDonald's right now? No, Highbrow. I don't know what that is. Oh, it's a cute trendy coffee shop down the street. Oh, it is? And then you got yourself a little biscuit and bacon cheese thing?

A little Baskin, Baskin? Baskin? Baskin? Baskin? Just eat me. Are you jealous? No, I'm okay. I'm not really that hungry right now. I tell you what, this is a hot take.

I do not like biscuit sandwiches. I'm sorry? Yeah, biscuits to me are like too bready and dry all the time. What? I would much, yeah, I would much rather have a McMuffin. No. A English muffin as my base. That's crazy talk.

No, it's not. Who doesn't like biscuits? It's so dry and like chalky in your mouth. Oh, it's so flaky and delicious. It's so dry and like chalky in your mouth. Ugh, it's the worst. You gotta put butter and jam on it just so it doesn't just get stuck in your esophagus. No thank you. I love biscuits.

It's honestly maybe one of my favorite foods. Ding ding for Loveless Cafe, which like they're known for their biscuits. I'm sorry, like people wait in line to get into Loveless Cafe and those biscuits, they're delicious, but you have to put so much butter on them and so much jam to like get it anywhere near your stomach hole.

You know who else has really yummy biscuits? Who's that? Cracker Barrel. Yeah, Cracker Barrel. I haven't had Cracker Barrel in years. Do you think it's called Cracker Barrel because it's a bunch of crackers that go to that store, you know? Probably.

It's a bunch of like white people coming to eat some eggs. You've never taken him to Cracker Barrel? I'm going to ask him if he's ever been. Baby? Have you ever been to a Cracker Barrel? Do you know what that is? Yeah, I do. Have you been? There's one in Ottawa. You've been?

I have. Damn, I was hoping I'd take it for his first time. Wait, can I have Matt on the show? Can I ask him about his trip to Afghanistan? Yes. Because someone DM'd me about this. What do you mean? Someone DM'd me about this.

Put it in his ear so he can hear too. No, put it in this, oh you can't hear out of that ear. Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks, Wells. Make sure you have the microphone pointed at him when he's talking though. Thank you Wells, very unexpected. You hold it, he's gonna talk to you.

Yeah, you hold it, I wanna talk to you. So I got DM from a YFT-er saying, you need to talk to Matt about his trip to Afghanistan. And of course I knew that you were going there and like riding your motorcycle around Afghanistan, which sounded terrifying and crazy to me. But then I went and looked after someone DM me about it. I went and looked at all the pictures on your Instagram and it did look really really cool.

So real quick, Matt did tell me you just gave him a follow. We love that. I know you followed me back. I saw. Of course. So can you tell us about your trip to Afghanistan? It sounds so cool. I know this wasn't the podcast you were hoping to be on, but. What podcast did he want to be on? No, I'm not trying to be on. This is- We're trying to get him on Theo Von's podcast. It'd be great to have a chat with Theo for sure.

But this is- We could do that. Equally his best. This could just be like your practice round. Okay. Yeah. All right, perfect. Sounds great. The trip to Afghan was kind of in the works for maybe a year or two, actually probably longer.

It was something that I'd spoken to a buddy about maybe, well, he's since passed away, but I spoke to him about it maybe five, six years ago. And we both agreed that it would be the all time spot to ride our bikes through. He passed away and yeah, I kind of, it's just sat there in the back of my mind. And then recently I thought, hey, this could be something cool to kind of, it's just sat there in the back of my mind. And then recently I thought, hey,

this could be something cool to kind of honor his memory. And also tick the box for me as well. But why is riding a motorcycle through Afghanistan at the top of the list? Do they have crazy roads there? Is it like known for this? For me, I spent five years in the Australian Defense Force. And while I was in,

our unit never got sent to Afghanistan. That happened two years after I got out. And I kind of always felt like I missed the boat. I know that sounds crazy that you'd want to go there, but you know, that's what you're sort of working towards when you're in a role like that. So I always felt like I missed the boat on getting that trip.

So this was kind of a way, I guess, that I could tick the box. But then also it offered like a new challenge for me, I guess, because it's never been done on a Harley Davidson before the ring road of Afghanistan. So it was kind of, it was a first and it was something that, you know, although I didn't get to go there in the capacity

that I originally wanted to go there, it was another way that I could attempt it that would still offer a really big challenge. I'm going there essentially solo. Can I defy death is the question. The answer is yeah. What is the ring road of Afghanistan? So you can argue it, but Guinness World Records puts it down as the longest ring road in the world. So there's other roads that are considered ring roads, like the road that runs around Australia. That's huge, that's much bigger. But it's not considered a ring road.

There's, it's not one continuous highway. It's made up of lots of different highways and different roads. Whereas the ring road of Afghanistan is considered Afghanistan's highway one. It's one road, it's the highway one, and it links up where it starts. Yeah, it's technically the longest ring road highway

in the world. And it had never been attempted on a Harley Davidson before I found out for good reason. I guess the road condition is as you can imagine extremely poor. Some areas I wouldn't even consider them roads, riverbanks or dirt looked more like animal highways, you know, trails. So fun, right? It was amazing.

It had never been done on a Harley Davidson before. For good reason, you say so did you have to modify your bike to be able to do this? Mildly, yeah. So the bikes 78 years old so I didn't pick a new Harley either I picked a Harley that I've built which is a 1947 chopper essentially like a chopper is it's a cut down version of how the bike would have come from the factory. A lighter fender and you modify the frame you add things like a sissy bar, different pipes, different bars, you change the position of the rider so that it fits someone like myself that's a little bigger.

Fits me a little better, you know, so I can ride more comfortably. To make this bike more suitable for that trip, I changed up the tires and the tubes beforehand, put more of a knobby, like a dirt off-road kind of a tire. And then the biggest modification I made was myself and a buddy. We made a new axle plate system

that essentially lowered my axle height down three inches. Essentially that raised the height of the bottom of the frame three inches. So it gave me more clearance. I knew that I was gonna be going over some pretty wild up and downs and that was my way around it. It was lowering the axle height to raise up the height of the bike to give me more clearance so I could go places where you normally wouldn't take

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With great difficulty. And lots of money. I threw more money at this than I probably should have, but I had to get it done, you know? So the way to go about it was Afghanistan's landlocked. So you're not putting it on a boat and shipping it there, which is what I normally do when I'm trying to get a bike from say, from the US to Australia.

So I knew that plane was gonna be the only option, or one who even flies to that region. So I figured that out, figured out that it would only be allowed to be sent as dangerous goods, which then increased the price too. And I had to also, I guess, cover tick more boxes. You know, when you're flying some dangerous goods, there's certain things that need to be in place

to make sure that it meets the criteria that it's still safe to be flown. Did all those things. Essentially, I had to pull the bike apart. I had to pull it down, put it into a crate, get it inside that crate, drop it off, get the dangerous goods certification. Yep, that was all approved. Got it on the plane and then it went via Istanbul.

So it went to Istanbul and then it went to, closest I could get it to Afghanistan was Tashkent in Uzbekistan. So from Tashkent to Uzbekistan, even just getting it to there was a problem. The whole bike disappeared for a week and no one knew where it was. So we thought it was gone at one point

and then it finally, it showed up. Tracking appeared again and there it was. And it was in Uzbek. We got the bike. In that time, we were trying to get Afghan permits and visas as well, which it was just after Ramadan. So that wasn't overly easy either. They have it a holiday after Ramadan called Eid

where essentially everyone just shuts down like for a week. We don't do that for our holidays? It was like a week where they just did nothing. That sounds nice. Pretty great. It all kind of came together at the right time. We got the visa, came through, Eid ended. We got the visa.

Straight after that, we ended up getting the bike released from Uzbek customs. Now we're still 14 hour drive away from the border of Afghanistan. I could have pulled it out and put the bike together and ridden that distance, but I also needed to add my buddy with me, Tyson Lloyd, who's an incredible videographer.

I told him about this trip and he said to me, originally I was just going by myself, something I just wanted to tick off by myself. He said, man, please let me film this. I went, all right, but like it's on you. Like I can't guarantee safety. We can't like, if you're doing this, like you need to understand that yeah,

it's not a regular trip. It's not gonna be safe. I can't guarantee your safety. You're taking the risks on yourself. And being the wild man that he is, he agreed. He went, yeah, sweet, I'm down. I went, all right, cool. So, well, is he in for the next one? Did he just get a bike there?

No. So, he wasn't riding. He strictly wanted to come along to document it, to film it. He's an incredible videographer. He brought with him things like a red camera, drone, tracking cameras that mount to the car. From that point, we organized in country

an old Toyota pickup truck. At the same time, we organized some translators as well, like guide and translator, people that were gonna help us get through some of the nastier parts of the country. So after that, we essentially, we got the bike. We're still 14 hours away. We've got to figure out how we're both getting down there.

Now I could, like I said, I could have pulled the bike out and ridden it, but then that's 14 extra hours that I would have been putting on that bike on less than desirable roads. And really for me, my goal wasn't to ride through Uzbekistan, it's to ride through Afghanistan. So I'm trying to save as much of the bike as I can, like these old things break.

I've got with me a stack of spare parts as well, trying to preempt any breakdowns that I might have. The best way to get it down to the border was to have it all pulled apart and put it underneath a bus. So I put it under a bus and then I rode through the night for 14 hours with Tyson. Pretty miserable bus ride, as you can imagine.

Got to the border, pulled the bike out, assembled it on the side of the road in front of the, essentially in front of the Afghan checkpoint, or the start of the Afghan checkpoint, you know, the Uzbek exit. Got a whole bunch of strange looks and criticism from the Uzbek guards at the border.

And essentially said like, hey, we're not here to ride this thing in your country. We're here to ride it in Afghan. And they went, well, yeah, your funeral, go for it. So so we did. Got some. But he lived. I lived here. I am. What happened? Did anything terrifying happen? Did did you almost die there?

Yeah, plenty of times. I mean, I didn't tell Brandy about that till literally he didn't tell me anything. He's over here telling Tyson, like like this trip's got a lot of risks man you could die and then to me he's like babe this is like not that big of a deal. Being a good partner you know I'm not trying to worry. I'm not trying to worry Brandy. What was the dangers? Was it just the road or was it the Afghani people like not wanting you there? Yeah a combination of those

things for sure. The road conditions, another great thing that I managed to keep hidden from Brandy Cyrus was when the crate showed up, someone had been through an already done inspection and decided that they liked to look at my helmet. Took his helmet. So I had no helmet for this whole trip. You were there for what, two and a half weeks

in Afghanistan? Two weeks in, he sends me a photo and he's like in his get up, you know, he's been sending me photos the whole time. And I was like, so like your head scarf thing, like, does that go up and over and around the helmet or how does that work? And he was like, well, about that. About that. I didn't want to lie to Brandy.

I withheld that, that information. But once she asked me, you know, I'm- Would you say withholding the truth is lying Wells or what would you say about that? No, I think it's just an omission. Yeah, it never came up. I'd like to know what Sarah thinks about that.

The risks, obviously the roads, even the roads that are technically roads, the sealed roads, they've all been blown to shit. And it's not just from the last 20 years, like even prior to that, you know, the sealed roads, they've all been blown to shit. And it's not just from the last 20 years, like even prior to that, you know, the Soviets occupation of Afghanistan destroyed a lot of those roads. And you can see they're making an effort now.

There's a lot of Chinese, interestingly, there's like a lot of Chinese contractors in Afghanistan now that are ripping up the old roads and repairing them, laying new road. And then the areas that aren't getting completely redone, you can see where the IDs have gone off. And they've essentially, they've just filled them in and done like a patch job like we do on a pothole here,

except it was not a regular pothole, the patching. The roads were definitely a major hurdle. Second to that, and probably worse, the biggest danger I think outside of the obvious were the drivers. They just, part of my language, they don't give a fuck. Like they just- You can cuss on here.

Okay, cool. I guess they look at a motorcycle as like a, it's not a vehicle. It's skinny, it can ride the shoulder, like you don't need to be on the road. So you can be approaching a truck coming at you the opposite way and it has a truck behind it and the truck behind it will see you,

but it will still want to overtake the truck in front of it and essentially just push you straight out onto the shoulder. So a lot of the time you're getting pushed off asphalt straight onto dirt shoulder and you could be doing, you know, on some stretches, like you could get the speed up, you know, you could be doing 50, 60 mile an hour and you get pushed off onto a dirt shoulder. Like it's not, yeah, not fun. Did you take any spills? Mate, I was anticipating the whole time.

At some point I'm going to lay down this bike. To me it was like not an if, but when. You even bought that stuff. He bought these like layers to wear under his clothes with like not pads but sort of. Sort of, it's like this, it's like a, I bought this, I bought this gear that I'd throw underneath that essentially it's like it has like a gel in it that when it hits it hardens and it kind of protects you I guess from just, just road rash.

Road rash. You know it's not going to protect broken bones or whatever but it might, yeah it might protect road rush. So I preempted to have a spill for sure. I guess the chopper gods were on my side and that didn't happen. The chopper gods. And then in terms of the Afghanis there, did you guys ever get into the hairy situations? They wanted to steal your bike or anything like that?

That's what I was worried about. Is there someone trying to steal that bike? There was a bloke that rode through Afghan on a, he attempted to ride part of Afghan on a Harley and he was shot off his bike. Holy shoot, you didn't tell me that. This was back in, I think there was an article on it in a magazine called The Horse.

This was like, maybe I think maybe back in the eighties or the nineties or something like that. But it was definitely a concern. There was a few times where it got pretty dicey. I had a few AKs pointed in my direction. I watched Tyson get ripped out of the car at one point, at gunpoint, at a checkpoint. But the main concern there, you know,

I think people think that, oh, the baddies there are the Taliban. They're not, like by the end of it, I found comfort in Taliban checkpoints and showing up and those boys being gunned up. And they often greeted us like warmly. I think they're making a pretty conscious effort to try and make tourists feel welcome in their country,

which I know it seems so crazy, like it's a wild statement, but I met a lot of great Taliban. I met a really like a lot of friendly Taliban that were welcoming, that were very inquisitive, wanted to know about the bike, wanted to have a laugh. But then I also met some pretty aggressive Taliban too that were holding some resentment, which is totally reasonable and totally to be expected. You know, if a foreign force had invaded and held my country for 20 years, say for example, China invaded Australia and they occupied Australia for 20 years and we were fighting

them just trying to maintain our homeland and our integrity for 20 years. And after that time, some Chinese tourists come along and they want to see what's up. I mean, I probably would have ill feelings towards them too. I probably wouldn't be welcoming them, you know? So with that being said, it was probably like an 80-20 split. Like 80% were very welcoming 20% were Pretty aggressive and the ones that were aggressive were like super aggressive Alright y'all it's no secret that we live in a time where a lot of the clothing items available to us are made out of

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choice for life. hungaryroot.com slash yft, code yft. You do the ring road, you complete it. What happens at the end? Is there like a toast, something to your buddy who passed? And then like, how do you get the hell out of there? What I actually did was I took my buddy's ashes with me on this trip. I thought I'll bring him along. You know, we talked about the trip.

So it's only fair I drag him along with me. I rode what I'd say is probably three quarters of the ring road out past Kabul. And then you get to an area called the Salang Pass. And the Salang Pass is considered one of the most dangerous roads in the world. It's cool. It goes, it climbs in elevation to I think over 11,000 feet. While it's doing that, it's going through old Soviet built tunnels. You're passing through snow, water, leaking tunnels, collapsed tunnels, and none of it's sealed. None of it's sealed road.

And then you're also dealing with trucks. You're dealing with huge drop-offs left and right of you. It ticks all those boxes of like a less than desirable road. So I climbed this road, I get to the top of it. I run through probably like, I think the last tunnel runs for about 2.8 kilometers. I don't know what that is in miles, but it's long and it's not lit.

And at this stage, I had no lights left on my bike. So I'm just blasting through this tunnel pitch black. And it was very, it was very wet inside this tunnel. So the only thing that really helped me was there was a tiny bit of ambient light coming through and it kind of hit the reflection of the water and it gave you some idea of like the contour of the road and what you were doing. So I punched through this tunnel and then finally at the end it's like, looks like orange,

but what I realized and I'm feeling that pretty, how's it going at this point? I'm beat and I get right to the end of tunnel and it looks like orange, it looks like sunset. And I'm like, man, it's too late. It's too early in the day for this to be sunset. And what I realized was just like truck smog. It just was like, this tunnel was just like full

of like black smog. Like you could see it pouring out on the other side. So I get out the other end of this thing and the orange sort of fades in a bang, you're out and clear. And you're essentially, you're in the summit. You're like right up the top of the Sling Pass and it's beautiful. There's like snow-capped mountains

and you're in like a snow covered valley. And. To the left of me there's a bunch of Taliban and there's some old Soviet era buildings that are all in disrepair. I end up pulling over and I see a stream, it's like a glacial meltwater stream going through this valley and it's beautiful. I'm like this is kinda the spot and the road right parallels this stream all the way back down the mountain. I'm like this is the spot, I'm gonna, this is kind of the spot. And the road right parallels this stream all the way back down the mountain. And I'm like, this is the spot.

I'm gonna sprinkle my boy here. So I tell the boys, they pull up behind me and I tell the boys, I said, hey, I'm gonna walk out and sprinkle Timmy's ashes in this stream. And I went, Tyson asked me, he goes, hey, you cool if I come along? I'm like, yeah, all right, bro.

Yeah, come along, no worries. He follows me and we go trudging out and we walk right out through this, past the Soviet buildings. walk right out through this pass the Soviet buildings and we walk out through this field and it's beautiful. Snow covered, big mountains off in the distance and this beautiful stream running through and we walk through, trudge through, it's a bit icy

and I cut my way down, make some steps and I stomp my way down this bank and I get down to the stream and have a little moment, sprinkle Timmy's ashes, say my goodbyes and clamber back up the bank and we start walking back through this field and we get back to the buildings and about half a dozen Taliban come out and they're going off and at this point like I've been dealing with these guys hundreds of checkpoints. My head's in a different place I've just like said bye to one of my best buds and

I just didn't want to deal with them You know, I was just like I just kind of blasted past him, kind of ignored him and kept walking towards my bike. Tyson stayed back with the translator to talk to them. But I'm back at my bike and I'm packing up and Tyson five minutes later walks up to me and he's kind of like blank face. And he's like, dude, do you see the tallies back there going off at us?

And I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, what do they want? And he said, oh, they weren't as angry at us as they were concerned for us. That field that we walked out through there was an unmarked minefield. They're out here to clear it this summer. They're waiting for all the snow to melt. So, yeah.

And we'd walked a fair way through it, man. Like probably, probably a hundred meters. You know, that's, I don't know what that is. 300 feet, something like that. Like out, way out through this field. Pretty dicey. I was like, oh wow, that's crazy. And I kicked the bike over and jumped on it.

And then I think it kind of, when I was riding back down the hill, I was paralleling the same stream that I'd sprinkled Tim's ashes in. And I think it kind of, yeah, it realized how lucky we were. And that, you know, I said a little thanks. I kind of felt like my boy might've helped us out

on that one a bit, you know? It's gonna say your guardian angel out there was Tim. Yeah, for real. That's an amazing trip. Do you leave the bike there? It's such a pain in the butt to get it there. I was going to say your guardian angel out there was Tim. Yeah, for real. Yeah. That's an amazing trip. Do you leave the bike there? It's such a pain in the butt to get it there. Do you leave it there or do you ship it back?

Absolutely not. No, it's an expensive bike, even though it's old. People value those things quite a bit now, including myself. So yeah, the play is now I get it out of the country. We deal with getting out of Afghanistan into Uzbek, which was a night, like a nightmare. We get the bike back, Tyson had his drone confiscated at the border, like it was a whole drama.

You didn't tell me that either. Yeah, whole thing. So we get out, we get back into Uzbek and then- Did they keep the drone? They kept the drone. Holy shit. Did you get to keep the card? Yeah, we hid the cards, we hid the hard drives.

We made a backup hard drive. I had one, Tyson had one. But truly some of the footage that Tyson got, it's a credit to him, it's wild, really crazy. We rode through probably some of the most difficult, but also picturesque scenery I've ever ridden through in my life. Sandstorms where I couldn't see 10, 20 feet in front of me, but then pop out into areas

where you're riding through valleys. If they were in the US, people would be paying millions of dollars to live in, like just incredibly beautiful, you know, like really amazing. Yeah, we essentially did the reverse of what we did to get in. We got the bike out and then I pulled it apart

on the side of the road, paid the bus driver an extra a hundred bucks to meet us at the border again, threw the bike in pieces under the bus and then had just a nightmare of a trip back, just like rode back through the black and pieces under the bus and then had just a nightmare of a trip back, just like rode back through the night. This bus driver just was playing the most outrageous Middle Eastern music, the whole ride back.

And we were sitting like right up front. He was punching cigs, you know, he was punching cigarettes like light one with the last one, you know, like just using his cherry to light the next one and just like, just a gnarly old trip, like to finish it off. And then we finally pull in.

I put the bike back in a truck that gets sent to a depot that will then air-freight it back out. I'm gonna have the bike sent back out here now, out to the US. And then got in a cab, cabbed back to the airport. And I was about three days early. Thought I'd try and surprise Brian. Come back-

Come back a little earlier, which was just like probably the worst thing I could have done to be honest. Cause I go straight from literally one day riding in Afghan, 14 hour bus ride straight to the airport. I get a flight that afternoon, which was crazy. Our flight, my flight goes to Dubai, and then it goes directly over the North Pole to LAX.

Did you know they fly over the North Pole? Yeah, I've flown to Dubai before. Crazy, I didn't know that. So like watching that camera, like just looking down at like icebergs was kind of a trip. Yeah, punch straight to LAX. I land at, I want to say like two in the afternoon.

I spent three hours in customs, explaining what I was just doing in Afghanistan in that little back room, which was fun. It's now five, they let me out. It's now 5pm on Friday room, which was fun. It's now five, they let me out. It's now 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon, peak hour, LA. I sit in traffic for an hour and a half in the Uber. I get to Brands, throw her in the car, and then I drive us two and a half hours

out to Palm Springs. We get to like a house that we're staying at. The Patron House. The Patron House. And then we go into stagecoach and Brandy plays a set from like midnight till 1 a.m. And I'm like standing behind, I wanted to come along, support Brandy. Like she's supported me the last,

begrudgingly supported me the last month. I'm gonna be there for her, you know, support her for her set. And I'm standing in the back of this DJ booth. I got some little twat next to me, like trying to make small talk with me, telling me about what his dad does and fucking, I'm just, it was very like surreal, like very contrasting.

I couldn't have gone from a more grounding, like literally shitting in ditches in the side of the road to standing in the back of a booth at Stagecoach with just these privileged kids wearing $3,000 hat bands and fuck, I was like, what the fuck? It kind of like made me anxious. Like I kind of just had to get the fuck out of there.

Thankfully like Brand is like very, she gets the people going, but she ain't trying to hang around. You know? Like she likes to rev them up and then peel. So I was more than happy with that. You know, she got us set down. She's like, babe, let's get the fuck out of here.

I'm like, that's a fucking Lutely, babe. You speak my language. So yeah, we did. And then, yeah, it probably really like, I feel like it took me like, probably like a week or two really like these last couple of weeks to really adjust. Yeah. Decompress and adjust back to normality.

Yeah. Was it everything you hoped it would be and more? Yeah, more. Yeah, it was more. It certainly ticked the box for me. Like it, I feel like it maybe like closed that chapter a little bit for me. It changed my perspective too.

It really changed my perspective. Western media really portrays that region and that country and those people as like, you know, it's the home of evil. They're the masterminds behind 9-11. They're the bad guys. And there was a lot of good there. Probably statistically,

I've met more shitty people here in the United States per number, per capita than I have over there. Like I said, probably like 80% of the people there were fucking lovely. They were welcoming. They barely spoke English, but they knew how to say welcome to Afghanistan. They were lovely.

So many times we were offered like come for tea, come for dinner. And these people have really not a lot. Like if they're offering you dinner, that's substantially cutting into their food. They could work on their women's rights. For sure. We could go down that rabbit hole too.

We don't need to. I just wanted to say. Well Afghanistan in the 70s when women had like a lot more rights, it was like a completely different country. When you see pictures... I think they call it like the golden arrow you know like it was like back then it was incredible, like beautiful. That was you know when the hippie trail was in full effect. That's when I think some Harley-Davidson's have been into Afghan before, was primarily during that period. You know, I had some interesting sit downs

with some senior members of the Taliban and we discussed some of these things, but they really have implemented strict Sharia law from our outside looking in, really does restrict rights for women there, which is, I'm obviously against that. That's- Yeah, it's fucked up.

It's horrible. It's fucked up to us, it's fucked up. It's horrible. It's fucked up to us. I'm also on the side of this is their culture and it has to naturally find its, has to naturally progress. There was a time when women couldn't vote in America too. These guys may be a little bit behind the time, but it will naturally find its way, I think.

It will happen. I think women will start to find their place there and find more freedoms, but it's like a pendulum, right? It went really, it really went the other way while the US occupation was there. And now it's swung back very hard the other way. Like here, there's a bit of a pendulum thing going on right now with left and right.

I feel like it's maybe the same thing will maybe happen there. There's certainly like in their major cities like Mazar-i-S Sharif and Harat and Kabul You do see women out and about more and it seems that women have a little more place in society But then when you go into the small town stuff, it's it's when it gets very traditional, you know We just won't see a woman, you know, they're behind the mud walls Like you just thought and you just straight up won't see them. Yeah, well like most things

I'm sure it's much more nuanced than we realize but it is what an amazing experience what's the next one you want to do what's the next box yeah there is there's there's plenty there's plenty that I want to do friends not real stoked on that but I think at the moment but this is his life brandy like you have to not if he loses it on a trip hey yeah but he's up I think if I make it through Afghanistan, probably... Can't we just stick to riding around really beautiful places?

Why do they have to be life-threatening? I mean, I understand. Also, Matt, is this going to be a movie, a documentary? Like what's going to happen with this? Yeah, so obviously Tyson's footage, it deserves to be seen and it deserves to be... I think production deserves to be seen and it deserves to be, I think, production deserves to be spent on this footage. So we're talking with some people right now about that. It looks

pretty good right now that someone is going to want to pick it up. I don't see why they wouldn't. Like I said, it's not something that has been done before and it received a lot more attention than I thought it would on social media. There's obviously interest in it, you know, in this trip. a lot more attention than I thought it would on social media. There's obviously interest in it, you know, in this trip. So ideally, yeah, I think maybe a mini series or even just a short doco, just to showcase what Tyson,

more to showcase Tyson's abilities, like I think. He's incredible. Like some of the stuff that he shot was just all time and is really a credit to him. I had a trip, my buddy that passed, whose ashes I took with me, he was also a videographer. He filmed a trip that him and I did. We rode our vintage Harleys around the island of Tasmania

below Australia. And at the time I kind of just went along with it and he asked, you know, he said, hey, let's ride this road again. I was like, fuck, come on, dude, like let's just fucking keep riding, you know? But played along with it and he filmed this trip, you know, with the drones and all the crazy cameras

and all that shit. And after the fact, it was really something, especially after he passed, I have this amazing recollection of, and all this footage of this incredible trip I did with my best friend that's not here anymore. And so I have a really different light. I look at these, at filming these trips now

with a very different light. Before it was like, hey, come on man, that's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I want to ride my fucking chopper through this place. Like I'm doing it for me, I'm not doing it for the, for the doc. Oh, but I think now to be able to have it recorded like that, especially for later in life, kicking back as an old boy

in a rocking chair might be cool to press play on that thing and watch my trip through Afghanistan from 20, 30 years ago. If I make it that far, you know. I'd watch that documentary. That's cool, man. Terms of the story. I imagine you were having to do some narration with it. And I'm trying to understand like the production of it.

Is it Tim's story lived through you? Look, I think it's an important part of the story. This is something that I, that him and I spoke about and I'm kind of keeping my word and doing that trip that we spoke about. I think it's also like, there's a little bit of a personal thing for me, like ticking the box of going to Afghan, you know, and closing that chapter of my life where I kind of felt like I did, you know, I did five years in the Australian defense force and getting that trip at the end of going to Afghan, closing that chapter of my life where I kind of felt like I did, I did five years in the Australian Defense Force

and getting that trip at the end of it would have been like, I know cementing, like I'm capable of doing all this stuff that I just trained to do, and I didn't get a chance to do that. I got out, a lot of the boys got out and a lot of the boys that I served with have this same feeling of like,

felt like we did a carpentry apprenticeship, never built a house. So that was a way that for me to be able to tick that box and still like in a way that completely challenged me in other ways. So there's that element. And then I think also it's, I'm combining the vintage Harley aspect,

which is what I, you know, after I got out of the military, that's really, I think I was pretty lost after I got out of the defense force, you know, you have all these skillsets and then none of it's really applicable in the real world. When I was trying to find my place and what I was gonna do, bought an old vintage Harley

and then thing kept breaking and I realized I didn't know how to work on it. And then I just, I fell into this world of building and restoring vintage Harleys and it's turned into like a full-time thing for me. So I think that comes into play as well, you know, the element of like keeping a motorcycle that's 78 years old running in a country where there's

no spare parts and where you kind of just have to adapt and overcome. So I think there's a few, a few elements of the story. I feel like a, like a producer could take it in a bunch of different directions. Yeah. A whole bunch of ways that you could interpret it. Yeah. Do you have a name for the documentary? Me and Tyso, we're calling it Inshallah in the local tongue that Inshallah is,

if God wills it, which is often pretty well the case anytime you get on a chopper. It's like, well, if the chopper gods allow it, then I guess I'll get there. Maybe I'll get there, maybe I won't. But typically these things are always breaking down. They're always throwing some kind of a spanner in the works

and then pair that with all the dangers and risks and whatever else with Afghanistan. It seemed appropriate, inshallah. I like that. I like that. I don't know, whatever. That's just something we're throwing around. All right, well, appropriate, inshallah. I like that. I like that. I don't know. Whatever. That's just something we're throwing around.

All right. Well, let's get it made. I'll invest. Sounds good. Thanks, brother. Thank you for coming and telling that story. That's so cool. Yeah.

And I'm glad you made it through. And I understand Brandy's apprehension with the whole thing, but also the adventurous spirit in me is like, oh yeah, that's dope. I would probably want to do something like that too. So good for you for doing it and sticking with it and completing it and all that kind of stuff. Thanks man. And thanks for you guys kind of kept it on the down low

while I was doing it. And I know you were a voice of reassurance for Brandy while I was over there. So thank you. I was like, let's make sure he's going to survive before we start telling people. I'm glad you came on and told us, because like I said, someone DM'd me,

and they're like, you need to have Matt on to tell this story, and I'm like, yeah, we do. Yeah, there's a lot more to it, but I'm glad I could share a little bit of it with you. But we're saving it for the doc. Save it for the doc. Exactly. And then when that comes out,

come back on here and tell us more. For sure, thanks for having me. Yeah, this is weird, because I have to go film my documentary, which is also dangerous and filled with pitfalls. And I might have to lay a bike down today. I don't know what's going to happen. Interesting.

You're going to tell us a little bit about it or is it a- He doesn't tell anything. It's a bunch of bimbos on the beach hooking up with one another. So it's almost exactly like your story, just a little bit different. We're also calling it Inshallah, which is interesting. If God wills it.

Yeah, that sounds terrifying. That sounds way scarier than what I just did. Yeah. It probably is for you to be honest. Yeah, that would be horrible to be honest. Yeah. Well, you look tan, you look groomed, you look manicured, you look great.

Thank you. I got the nice Costa Rican tan. I got my fade faded up yesterday and now I have to go host some dates. So wish me luck. Well, that's it. That's the episode. No favorite things, no nothing. No, but that was fucking dope, dude.

That's an actually interesting story. No, it is. I hope the white tears liked it. Unlike our normal show, which is nothing, at least that had some substance and it was death defying and heartwarming and also educational. That was one of the best shows we've done in a long time. I'm glad I ticked some boxes for you.

Thanks for. Yeah. Are you gonna tell the white tears how much you love me? No words could put that into, I don't have the vocab to express how much I love Brandy Cyrus. Wow. The man flew from Uzbekistan to Dubai over the North Pole to LAX to then sit in 405 traffic to get to your house to then go to fucking stagecoach and listen to a asshole ask some questions. Can you, that's love right there.

I tell you what, I'm married. I would think that. My love language is not words of affirmation, thank God. But it is acts of service. People doing things for me so that it, yes, that works. Thank you for identifying that, Wells. And just driving that home for me. I appreciate it.

You're never allowed back on, baby. One and done. That was good. All right. Well, we can't do music anymore, so... No, we can't. See you later? Come hang with me if you're going to Sand in my Boots this weekend, y'all. Oh, yeah. Matt's going!

I'll be there, supporting my girl with acts of service. He's going for Big X the Plug. Don't get it twisted. For sure. Hopefully that guy won't be sitting there. Posty is playing this weekend. Posty is playing. Yeah, I'm going for Posty. I haven't seen Posty play. I think I'll enjoy that. Real quick, where do people follow your journey on social media?

Matt's my name, Matt South, M-A-T-T-S-O-U-T-H. He has posted a lot of cool videos. And I was looking at it yesterday, it was very dope. Alright, see you guys. Love you guys. Bye. Bye. This podcast has guys. Love you guys. Bye. This podcast has been brought to you by Podcast Nation.