Day 1 of 14! Gear is packed, bikes are on top of the Subaru, and the back window is painted with the endurance destination highlights of this epic adventure!

The first goal today was mostly about making ground between home and opportunities far, far North.  Departure was at 5:15am to miss some of the Los Angeles traffic chaos.  The Los Angeles traffic strategy was slightly successful, however, it seems impossible to win at that game these days.  Regardless, there was over 700 miles ahead of me so the earlier the better to get started on the Escondido to Mount Shasta drive-a-thon!

The second goal was about making the Hack-bbatical one that exposes me to thoughts, concepts, and opportunities not normally on the radar or the plate in front of me.  I have not been much of a podcast guy to date, but I had the time so I downloaded a bunch onto my 10-year-old Samsung Note tablet.  I have barely used it over the years and had plenty of storage space for podcasts galore as opposed to my phone.

My choice for this stretch was a series called “The Forward”. Interestingly, the host is Lance Armstrong. Before you tune out the rest of this paragraph because he is a lyin’ and cheatin’ sack of crap, I didn’t download them because of Lance Armstrong, I downloaded them because the guests were truly really interesting. Additionally, Lance is really not trained at all at this so as opposed to a typical interview, the conversations tend to meander all over the place which really helps you get to know the guests and learn more about them than you normally would.

Below are some quick summaries and links to the podcasts if you are interested. All of them were fascinating. The time flew by. I have listened to audiobooks over the years, but these podcasts kept my attention riveted the entire time. This is the only way to travel massive miles by yourself whether you have a 10-year-old Samsung Note tablet or newer technology. (If you would like to listen to any of these podcasts, simply click on the play button below for each of them and it will link to the actual podcast homepage.)

First up was Shep Gordon.  An icon in talent management, his first client was Alice Cooper!  There are a lot of great Alice Cooper stories in this interview including the fact that Shep actually paid Alice so he could be his agent when he first started because he didn’t know how the business worked.

I learned that Mike Myers (Saturday Night Live, Waynes World, Austin Powers, etc.) made a documentary about him called “Supermensch, The Legend of Shep Gordon” chronicling his life and times.  I looked up “Mensch” to see the actual definition and it said “a person of integrity and honor.”  After listening to him tell his stories of living the rock ‘n roll life, I’m not sure that he would fit that definition.  He said he watched the documentary for the first time with Mike Meyers next to him and at the end he said, “I like that guy.  I would love to meet him!”

I think some great takeaways on this one, other than the entertaining stories, was how to really differentiate your product.  He had some great stories about how they would ensure there were protesters when Alice Cooper would come to town.  There entire strategy was to make parents hate him so much, the kids would want to see what it was all about.

 

 

Next was Jesse Itzler.  This guy has lived 9 lives already and counting.  In the 80’s he had a hit music single as a white rapper called “Shake It Like A White Girl”, he built Zico Coconut Water into a huge business and sold it to Coca Cola, he is part owner of the Atlanta Hawks and somewhere along the line he married Sara Blakely the founder of Spanx.  Clearly an underachiever.  They talked about his penchant to be a serial entrepreneur in business he tends to have no background in and one big failure.

The failure was particularly interesting.  He raised big money including getting Lebron James to invest in a caffeine strip.  It worked like Listerine strips.  They launched across the country with great distribution and a huge ad campaign right out of the gate.  The first week was incredible.  The second week was double that.  The third week it started to fall and the whole thing crashed within two months.

However, one of the more interesting projects was where he invited a Navy Seal to live with him and train him at any hour of the day or night without warning.  He then wrote a book about the experience called “Living With A Seal.”  Super interesting dude.

He also talked about being interested in entering a 100-mile running race without having run much more than 10 miles at a time and then training towards it.  Hmmm….sounds a little close to home on that one.

Certainly, the big takeaway here had to do with living a life of diverse experiences that build on each other and have a pay-off later down the road.  Such a wide variety of learnings will eventually add up to a knowledge base unlike any other with great value.  On the business side, setting your business up to scale appropriately was another learning.  Finally, being able to identify business opportunities on their way up the trend curve is magical.  Oh, and lots of money helps too.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson was someone I had heard of, but never saw or read anything about him.  He is an astrophysicist.  A very entertaining astrophysicist.  Probably, the only entertaining astrophysicist.  Think Bill Nye The Science Guy on steroids.

He is a space and science geek with a huge Type-A personality.  This interview is definitely not censored and he clearly has no filter regarding today’s politics, lack of support for science research, and how that will negatively affect our domestic economy and world.  Near the end, he gets very animated and rattles off a list of things we take for granted today, but never would have happened if we had not invested in NASA.

This podcast really provides some enlightening perspectives both positive and negative.  Different and enlightening perspectives were exactly what I was looking for and this one was backed up with scientific fact.  I will seek out more perspectives from Mr. Tyson in the future.

 

 

 

Rip Esselstyn is the evangelist for living with a plant-based diet.  He is a former professional triathlete who used to compete against Lance when he was a young professional triathlete before he started his cycling career.  After ending his triathlon career, Rip became a fireman.

Rip grew up in a medical family.  His grandfather founded the Cleveland Clinic and his father was a surgeon did some of the early studies on plant-based diets.

He talks about how he was able to convince his fire station team to go on a plant-based diet for 30 days and track the changes.  The results were so significant, that he wrote a book on it and of course, it was a great success.  That success lead to products in Whole Foods with the same branding as the book and the story goes on and on.

He is very animated in this interview, to say the least.  He seems to back up his story with research here and there enough to make me think about eating a little less meat and definitely more vegetables.  Beyond the base concept, it was very interesting how he has been able to scale his brand/diet into a formidable enterprise.

There, now you know what me, myself and I did for 700 miles while the agriculture fields flanking the 5 freeway in California rolled by.  This is all I did other than the occasional stop for fuel and making the occasional turkey sandwich with the fixins’ and snacks I had brought along in the car.

Finally, I made it to my Mount Shasta destination around 8:30pm about 15 hours after my early departure.  The place was closed up, but there was a little space set up for late camper arrivals.  Apparently, I was also late to get the free Budweiser as the photo shows an empty next to our camping instructions.  Camping instructions that have a big spelling error as well.  Hey, it’s camping.  Spelling is not a critical component for success.

We own a tent that is marketed that it can be set up in 60 seconds.  To prepare for the trip, my wife and I took the tent to a park to practice as it is not intuitive how it works.  I got it down to about 3 minutes without the rainfly in practice and was happy to experience the same speed upon arrival at my campsite.

As darkness was setting in post tent set up, it was time for a quick dinner so I could get some sleep before my adventure coming up the next day.  That meant another turkey sandwich (#3 for the day), an apple and a fine amber beverage from one of my former employers and clients.  That BJ’s Jeremiah Red just never gets old.  I

nsider Knowledge Note:  The guy on the can is a representation of Alex the Chief Brewer at BJ’s.

After dinner, it was off to night, night land.  The forecast said it was going to possibly drop below 40 degrees so I rolled out the mummy bag and layered up.  In the middle of the night, it was so cold that I had to put my down vest on to stop shivering.  I definitely have that thin California blood now.  My Michigan heartiness to weather has been greatly diminished over the years.  I am a self-proclaimed weather wimp with a low tolerance for cold.  Under 60 degrees and I consider it potentially life threatening.