463: Cyril Derreumaux—In the Flow

Mike sits down with adventurer, endurance athlete, and motivational speaker Cyril Derreumaux, a man who has spent an unusual amount of time alone with his thoughts—and the open ocean. Cyril talks Mike through his two 70-plus-day solo treks across both the Atlantic and the Pacific in a kayak. Mike and Cyril explore risk, resilience, and the fine line between careful preparation and total uncertainty. It's a conversation about discipline, humility, and why sometimes the hardest part of moving forward is learning when not to fight the current.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey guys, it's The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe here. With my new favorite crazy French guy.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  You had an old favorite crazy French guy?

• 0:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, Pepe Le Pew occupied a fair amount of real estate in my brain for many, many, many years, but he has been eclipsed by the one and only Cyril Deremot.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:22Mike Rowe?

  Who I get to know, and who you will get to know momentarily. I sort of know who this guy is, and as you'll hear me say shortly, he's the kind of guy that I really wanted this podcast to be for and about. He's the kind of guest, you know?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Someone who you find interesting, that you meet along the way accidentally.

• 0:49Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  But I mean, I would describe him as a guy who talked his way onto the podcast.

• 0:55Mike Rowe?

  He did that, and you know what? Lots of people try, and sometimes it works, but you know, between production and logistics and timing and everything else, it's not realistic to Forrest Gump your way through a podcast based on people you meet out in the real world.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:12Mike Rowe?

  But this guy came pedaling past me four years ago. I was out for a ruck, and he was training. And he swung his bike around and he introduced himself. He speaks, what, six or seven languages, this guy? But he was using my mother tongue, thankfully, and told me that he planned on paddling a kayak from California to Hawaii.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39Mike Rowe?

  And he said, "It's gonna be a great adventure, and I would love to come on your podcast and talk about it."

• 1:44Speaker 01

  And you said?

• 1:46Mike Rowe?

  I said, "Well, I tell you what, crazy French guy. If you actually do that and live, maybe I'll run into you again, you know, and maybe we'll have a chat."

• 1:57Speaker 01

  And then what happened?

• 1:58Mike Rowe?

  Well, I ran into him again. It's probably like a year and a half later, and there he is on his bike, and I'm huffing and puffing along on the bike trail with my ruck, and he pulls a U-turn and says, you know, "Michel, it is serious. I have done it." I'm like, "What? Done what?" I paddled across the Pacific in 91 days.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20Mike Rowe?

  In a kayak, alone.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Alone.

• 2:23Mike Rowe?

  So, holy crap. Now I'm paying attention. And of course, it takes time. And another year goes by.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, did you have him on the podcast?

• 2:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, I called you. I said, I was like, hey, man, I met this guy. He paddled kinda like all over the Pacific. I think he's interesting. But we were busy and, you know, whatever.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42Mike Rowe?

  And then I see him again. He's like, Michel, I have done it again. Like, what the hell are you talking about? This time, he'd paddled across the Atlantic.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53Mike Rowe?

  Alone, in a kayak.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  In 70 days.

• 2:56Mike Rowe?

  In 70 days, man. So that's never been done. And he's a guy who lives not far from where I live, who I've met three times in a completely serendipitous, random way. And now, at long last, he's our guest. And he is everything that I hoped he would be, man. Just an absolute joy to talk to.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like a Guinness Book of World Records holder multiple times. Look, he's not the only guy who's like gone across the ocean, but he did it the fastest.

• 3:27Mike Rowe?

  He did it the fastest, and he did it in two different oceans.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31Mike Rowe?

  I mean, he did the Atlantic and the Pacific.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Just to let you know, he was serious.

• 3:35Mike Rowe?

  Serious as a heart attack. He's generous as can be. If you are really wondering what it's like to be alone with nothing but your thoughts and your kayak and the seabirds and the creatures of the deep, he'll walk you through it. And I think you'll appreciate it. And I think you're gonna wanna take a deeper dive on this guy. I'm interested in him. I'm fascinated to know what he's gonna do next. And I feel really lucky that I stumbled into him. I hope you will too. We'll find out, right after this, with a little episode we like to call "In the Flow", with Cyril.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Deramo.

• 4:12Mike Rowe?

  Yes. He's French.

• 4:15Speaker 02

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• 4:46Mike Rowe?

  Thank you for doing this.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 4:49Mike Rowe?

  This is the reason I changed the format of this podcast. Honestly, you are. I want to talk to a lot of different people, but mostly I wanted an excuse to talk to people that I genuinely just ran into by accident. And I almost literally ran into you, what was it, like a year ago on the bike path?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Four years and two years ago and last, yeah, no.

• 5:11Mike Rowe?

  I've spoken to you out in the wild at least three times.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 5:16Mike Rowe?

  And each time I thought you were a little less crazy than you were the last time. So the first time we met, I'm like, ah, this is a crazy guy on a bike. And I'm like, who am I to talk? I'm walking around with 65 pounds on my back like a lunatic. But we just talked and you said some nice things and then I-

• 5:34Speaker 03

  At that time, what I was talking about, it was a dream.

• 5:37Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  And the next time I saw you was like, I've done it. That's the difference.

• 5:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  That's why I'm less a lunatic, because the first- Why? And then is how? And then you're more interesting because you've done it.

• 5:50Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's right. The first thing is, like, I filed you away in the back of my mind and thought, well, if this guy actually paddles across the Pacific Ocean by himself in a kayak and lives, then I would like to know what that was like. And then you did that. And then you did it again. What the hell does it matter with you?

• 6:15Speaker 03

  I guess I loved it so much. There's something on the ocean, on that loneliness. It's not loneliness, it's being a loneness. Because I'd never felt lonely. That makes you connected to the oneness, to the ocean, to the elements that I wanted to feel again.

• 6:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  And I had the boat, I had the experience, and I said, you know what? Why not?

• 6:36Mike Rowe?

  So the real quick synopsis is, the first trip, you by yourself, 90, 91 days from California, basically to, what was it, Hilo, Big Island?

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 6:47Mike Rowe?

  And then, what, a year later, you did it again?

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, this time from east to west, so almost Africa, the Canary Islands off of Africa, all the way across west to the Caribbean, and I finished in Martinique.

• 7:00Mike Rowe?

  Across the Atlantic.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  I know, it sounds ridiculous.

• 7:05Mike Rowe?

  And that second trip did not take you ninety days, it took you like seventy something?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Seventy-one, and it's longer, but the trade winds, the currents were stronger, I believed in my boat better, so I could let it run better, more during the night. And I guess, I don't know, I was more connected, I felt even better. I had done it before, so I had the safety of my mind to think, okay, I can do it again.

• 7:28Mike Rowe?

  Look, I have so many questions for you. Unfortunately, I'm probably gonna ask some that you've already answered. I promise I'll ask some that you've never heard before. But before we really dive in, it should be established that you're very French. You got, I mean, clearly you're French, but you're a citizen of the world.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Yes, that's how I like to define myself.

• 7:47Mike Rowe?

  How many languages do you speak?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Six. And you?

• 7:51Mike Rowe?

  Less. I'm still working on one. So you're, so French, English, let me guess, Italian?

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Spanish, correct?

• 8:00Mike Rowe?

  Spanish. Given where you've been, you probably, it was Portuguese, maybe?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Correct, Brazil, yep, Portuguese. I'll be the German.

• 8:09Mike Rowe?

  And German?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'm learning Norwegian now.

• 8:11Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Why not? Don't tell me why. Everybody asks me why. Why do you wanna do this? What do you want? Why not? I wanna do it, let me do it.

• 8:20Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm not stopping you, I'm just saying, I've got a mental list of people in my mind who have paddled solo around the world in a kayak and who decided to learn Norwegian with no clear plan of going to Norway, as far as I know, just because.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  No plans.

• 8:36Mike Rowe?

  So, we have to understand what makes you tick. And then I need to understand what you did to prepare for this. And then I wanna hear about the journey and how it changed you. And then I wanna hear why you took it upon yourself to drive here on your own time to sit across from me and, uh, and do this. But first, the tattoos, explain those.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  This one I got yesterday. This one I got on my first, I did a first attempt. I left from Salzalito, you're familiar, Fort Baker, under the Golden Gate.

• 9:05Mike Rowe?

  I know it well.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  And I was rescued five days later because I had a really terrific storm. My boat almost capsized. I was afraid to die and I got rescued by the coastguards. And I came out of this boat and I thought, okay, did I do everything I could? Did I want it? And I talked to the right people that give me the perspective and Cyril, even though you worked for four years, you did everything you could. You talked to all the people that I crossed before. Listen, but in the end, you're probably not ready. So what it is, and I felt like maybe I could have gone even further in my, like, until my boat was going to drown, I shouldn't have called for help. Like, how far

• 9:46Speaker 03

  am I willing to go for my passion? And the answer was, there's people that go and live for their passion or their values. If you're going to defend your country overseas in a war, etc. You're okay to lose your life for this. Am I willing to lose my life for my passion of living life to the fullest? And the answer was then, no. But the only I was going to be able to do it would be if I could answer this yes. So I love symbols.

• 10:15Mike Rowe?

  But big difference between lose and the other four-letter word, which of course is risk.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:22Mike Rowe?

  You risk your life.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:25Mike Rowe?

  Happily.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Well, there, no, yeah, there's risk, but if you can mitigate them by the right action, you're okay.

• 10:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but to know, like, to give, there's another four-letter word. So we have give, lose, and risk.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:36Mike Rowe?

  To give your life in the service of something larger, a heavenly cause, or a war effort, whatever it may be. To lose your life in the process of trying a thing, and to risk your life, knowing that either of the above might not end the way you want, but there's your journey. There's your trip.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Well, here's your four-letter words for you. How about love life?

• 10:59Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Love. Like, you love life so much that you're willing to risk the risk to feel every... Every little cent that it can give you.

• 11:09Mike Rowe?

  How far out were you on that first trip? You said five days.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:13Mike Rowe?

  What is that in nautical miles?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Seventy nautical miles, a hundred miles.

• 11:17Mike Rowe?

  Not far.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Off Santa Cruz. No, I wasn't far. But the storm took me after days two. It came out of nowhere. And for three days, I was stuck in my cabin. I was attached. I have a strap on my chest, one on my hips.

• 11:29Mike Rowe?

  Describe the boat so people understand what you mean by a cabin.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  The kayak I built is able to withstand any storm, right? It's twenty-three feet long.

• 11:40Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  It's got a cabin at the back that I can lay on it.

• 11:43Mike Rowe?

  That's what I'm looking at right now?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm sitting down in this cockpit that could be swamped by any waves at any time. So I'm wet all the time. Okay, forget about being dry.

• 11:51Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  My sleeping bag is wet after a week just because of the sheer condensation that I breathe day and night.

• 11:57Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  I've got food for ninety days. I make my own water with a desalinated water machine and...

• 12:04Mike Rowe?

  You're drinking ocean water?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Correct. After two months, my whole body is made of ocean water. And I've become one with the ocean. But here's the thing. So I lay down on this cabin. I can close the hatch. And I'm perfectly fine. If you're okay being fine in a washing machine or a dryer for a few days, so...

• 12:23Mike Rowe?

  And this boat of yours, it's called the Valentine?

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Valentine is my sister. We're five kids in the family, one girl.

• 12:29Mike Rowe?

  Uh-huh.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  And I wanted to give it to her.

• 12:31Mike Rowe?

  Why not?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  And I have Valentine. She would take care of me. I knew that.

• 12:35Mike Rowe?

  So in this photo, this looks like you're well into the journey. That's a full-on Tom Hanks castaway beard you've got going there.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. I wanted to become a Viking. The spirit of the Viking, you know?

• 12:49Mike Rowe?

  Back to the... So what is the tattoo?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  So the tattoo, I got it from this amazing artist, Paté. And then I came to see him and I say, I need to... I love symbols. I need to have something that I could reach to that would show my dedication to getting to Hawaii. And I wanted to brand like this, like, yes.

• 13:08Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's a very, like a Maori.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Correct. Yeah, it's Samoa, but it's Polynesian culture. And I love how they got connected so much with the ocean. And it's a serial, okay, you're gonna cross this ocean. It's a journey. Birds are a good omen in the Polynesian culture because once you see a bird, you're safe. Either the land is not too far or because the bird is here is because the storm could be away, but it's a good omen.

• 13:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  And the bird looks at the ocean because it's never afraid to be lost. A bird is never lost. A bird can be in storm, it's okay. The bird, like, I've seen a bird every day of my journey and you're like,

• 13:44Mike Rowe?

  you know, I was like, where do they go?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Where do they go? What do you, what do you stop? Where do you land? What do you eat? What? So he said, I'm gonna do a bird because they spend ninety percent of the time on the ocean and they come back safely to land, to nest. And you're gonna have a good journey and the birds are gonna protect you. So he did this. He did this tattoo. Yeah.

• 14:06Mike Rowe?

  That's pretty, no, but was that, that was done after you actually made it?

• 14:10Speaker 03

  No, first attempt and then my, before the real Atlantic where I finished in ninety days.

• 14:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:18Mike Rowe?

  Okay. All right. So give me a date, just so I can anchor this. I meet you on the bike trail. It's four years ago and you're in the process of training for this journey.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Correct. It was two weeks, it was in twenty twenty-one, two weeks before I took off. It was too short that we could do anything, we could talk. So I, I left and ninety days later I had the big Tom and Hank beard.

• 14:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  And successful. I came back and it was like, I loved it, but I, I don't know if I can go again. So then I go back into the normal life, you know, I paddle in the bay, beautiful bay of.

• 14:46Mike Rowe?

  What do you do for money? What is your normal life?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  I work. Yeah. So now I'm a speech speaker, but I, I was GM for a company that teach sailing.

• 14:55Mike Rowe?

  Oh, perfect.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So now I can sail. If you want, we can cross to Hawaii in a sailboat.

• 15:00Mike Rowe?

  That sounds great. I've got some time next Wednesday.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:03Mike Rowe?

  Good.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  So I do that. I couldn't, I can't be an adventurer full-time just yet.

• 15:08Mike Rowe?

  I'm just looking at, so that's your path.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  That's the Atlantic path.

• 15:11Mike Rowe?

  That's the Atlantic, though.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Yes. And you could see the first, the first months, the currents were taking me northwest. That's when the mental game starts in because you're doing, you are going the opposite way of where you're going.

• 15:23Mike Rowe?

  What does that mean? I've got so many questions. So you paddle. And pedal, you're paddling and pedaling.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 15:30Mike Rowe?

  Is that right?

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've got, I wanted to use a way to use my legs. So I've got a paddling system that I use an hour a day. So I, I wouldn't be completely atrophied when I land.

• 15:39Mike Rowe?

  Be, be like an astronaut coming back from space.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Correct. I, I didn't walk.

• 15:43Mike Rowe?

  In zero gravity, yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Or stand for three months. Like, look, you're sitting down here.

• 15:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  What if I tell you for 90 days, you cannot get up?

• 15:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, I would just pray for the most interesting guest of all time. And one after the next. But no, that, I mean, that's unthinkable. You have to be able to stretch, I would think. You've got to be able to wash yourself. You've got to be able to, you know, how do you crap? How do you crap in the middle of the ocean? What do you, what do you?

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. So I got this little dessert bowl. I just sit on it.

• 16:11Mike Rowe?

  A dessert bowl?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had to find a way, like, you can, and I'd just toss it in the ocean.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Of all the names.

• 16:19Mike Rowe?

  A dessert bowl. Like, what did you do? You walked in Bed Bath and Beyond and said, I'm, I'm looking for a mixing bowl with, you know, a soft ed.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Not too, not too big, not, not too weak. It has to be strong because I sit on it.

• 16:36Mike Rowe?

  All right, well, let's just riff on that then. Your routine, like.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:40Mike Rowe?

  Give me a 24 hour day for you.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  I wake up with a sunrise. Actually, half an hour before sunrise. Good, I got to get ready and, and optimize every light I've got. First light, the sunrise is beautiful. I take it, I take it all in. Every time I can get any energy to fill me in, I'll take it. And it could be a sunrise, it could be a beautiful cloud, it could be a bird, it could be anything. And, and then I paddle for five hours in the morning. So I eat about 4,000 calories. I eat about twice as much as a regular land.

• 17:09Mike Rowe?

  What are you eating?

• 17:10Speaker 03

  I eat freeze dried meals, um, bars, all stuff that I, you know, are light and high calorie. I never heated water. I always ate cold because. Should I have something to heat? I could burn myself, right? So it was a risk I didn't want to take. Then I eat that and I paddle five hours until noon. Noon, the sun is up in the top. And that's when I want to use my batteries to make water. Otherwise, I would drain my batteries too fast. When the sun is at the zenith, it charges my batteries. I can make a gallon of water in about an hour. So I kind of stay around in the cabin. It's good to take a break and I go back on the cockpit to another five-hour paddle.

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• 18:16Mike Rowe?

  Let me just take a break. It's not like you go anywhere, though.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  No, I was just going to cabin.

• 18:20Mike Rowe?

  You just, okay.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  I let the boat drift wherever it goes. It doesn't matter. I look at my plotter. In fact, early in the morning, for instance, my weather router, I've got a professional guy who's going to tell me, okay, here's the weather for the next three days. It's going to go up, down. Here's the strength of the wind, 15, 16, 20 knots. Here's the height of the waves, the direction of the waves, the frequency between the waves. Where if you know if it's a five-meter, let's 10-feet wave, 15 seconds, it's going to be kind of flat, so it's okay. But the same height of wave, but eight seconds, is going to make it much steeper, so it's much dangerous. It could crash on you. So then I adjust my day. Do I wear shorts? Do I wear, you know, suspenders or whatever, like be more protected? Five hour in the afternoon, I finish. I start my routine of hygiene.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  You know, I'm so salty. I'm sitting down on my butt all day. I could have salt sores very fast, so I need to clean that. My routine of hygiene is important, so important.

• 19:15Mike Rowe?

  I would imagine every single routine.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Is important.

• 19:20Mike Rowe?

  Everything, right? Because the slightest injury could be fatal.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  I could not cure myself. It will never heal.

• 19:27Mike Rowe?

  Right, right. A wound won't heal, but like a broken finger, a jammed, you know, you twist an ankle somehow. You can't pedal. You're in like real trouble.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's why you gotta be slow. You say it's a long, 90 days, three months. I gotta take it slow. You're not running. You take it easy. Self-awareness is the most important. Self-awareness of where your physical body is, your mind. Are you too emotional? Are you too fearful? Are you optimistic? You have to have the self-awareness to see and look at yourself, because nobody is gonna tell you. Once you have the self-awareness, you have to have the self-critique. That's the number two. Self-critique is being able to analyze how you are and say, is it good? Is it bad? What do I do about this?

• 20:13Mike Rowe?

  With brutal honesty.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Yes, you can't lie to yourself.

• 20:16Mike Rowe?

  You don't bullshit yourself when you're alone.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  No, you can say, I'm feeling... No, you're not feeling good, okay? It's been three days in a storm. You can be optimistic, but it has to be true. The third one is, okay, how do you change that? Do you reframe? How do you reframe your mind so you can change something about it?

• 20:31Mike Rowe?

  Okay, I'll get to that in a second, because, I mean, this is a brain game.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Okay, let me finish my day.

• 20:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, your day.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Okay. Night comes. I don't wanna paddle at night, because I don't see the waves coming. It's dangerous. I could fall overboard. Be lost at sea. What I do, I wake up every hour, because one of the biggest problems is the container ships. I can detect the container ships up to 20 miles away on my plotter, my GPS, okay? And they can see me, but they come fast. They do 20 miles an hour. I'm doing 2 miles an hour. I'm drifting is 0.5 miles an hour, okay? I'm seven meters long, they're 300 meters long. So I gotta watch for them, even though they're watching, I don't know. So the way I do it is, I wake up every hour, look at my plotter. I can see one. Okay, this direction is good. There's not gonna be collision. I'm good. I can wake up in an hour, look at it again.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  So I changed my sleep pattern to waking up every hour, and you get used to sleep deprivation. You get used to sleep sickness. You get used to the 15 hours paddling.

• 21:29Mike Rowe?

  You can get used to anything.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:31Mike Rowe?

  That's the thing, man.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  That's crazy. The body!

• 21:35Mike Rowe?

  Just train it, just tell it what to expect and then do it again, do it again, do it again. So you're sleeping an hour at a time.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:42Mike Rowe?

  You wake up every hour just to course correct, right?

• 21:45Speaker 03

  I don't course correct, I look at my drift, that's it.

• 21:47Mike Rowe?

  Well, what if, I mean, if you get in a big blow like that and if you, I mean, you could do what? Fifteen, twenty miles a day, maybe paddling?

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Correct, yep.

• 21:55Mike Rowe?

  And you could give all that back at night?

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll wake up the next morning, I'm further than I've started.

• 22:02Mike Rowe?

  Or, or-

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Or it's good!

• 22:04Mike Rowe?

  You picked up ten miles-

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 22:05Mike Rowe?

  In the right direction.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  That's what happened in the Atlantic. The Atlantic is hardly not much longer than the Pacific, it took me three weeks less. The current was so strong, I let it drift, wake up at four, alright, baby.

• 22:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. We should point out that the, in reality, the Pacific is much larger, it's just that-

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Correct, I did the mid-Pacific.

• 22:23Mike Rowe?

  You did the mid-Pacific.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:24Mike Rowe?

  Had you gone all the way to, what, New Zealand or Australia?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Australia, you could go to Philippines or cross the other way to Japan.

• 22:32Mike Rowe?

  You'd still be out there.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I would be starving, because I, arriving in Hilo, I was already missing food. Because I thought it was gonna be a journey of seventy days and it took me ninety, so I had to ration halfway through.

• 22:44Mike Rowe?

  How much weight did you lose?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Fifteen pounds on both, both times.

• 22:48Mike Rowe?

  And that's actually a lot in three months, considering that you, you probably didn't have fifteen pounds to lose.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  I did, my strategy was go back home and my mom would feed me in a week.

• 22:59Mike Rowe?

  So you went out fat?

• 23:00Speaker 03

  I did.

• 23:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, all that training I saw you doing.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  I know, but it's the hardest thing to gain weight when you do four hours a day of training. It's the hardest thing.

• 23:09Mike Rowe?

  I would love to try.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Go to France, eat a few croissants.

• 23:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Croissant, baguette with butter, beignet, foie gras, whatever you want.

• 23:17Mike Rowe?

  Oh, wow. Okay, so, that's a twenty-four hour day, you wake up with the sun. The first thing you do is figure out just how far your course may have changed.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 23:28Mike Rowe?

  Alright, and you start paddling.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, day in and day out. There's no Saturday, there's no Sunday. Look at all the things you do in two days.

• 23:37Mike Rowe?

  Do you keep crack of time? Do you even try?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course. You try to. You do like Tom Hanks, you put a little crack on, you know, a little paint. And then five days, 10 days, and then you're like, is it Tuesday, Wednesday? Who cares?

• 23:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  And then, how long has it been? 20? Like, doesn't matter. Every day is the same. But every day is different, and every day, just that day matters. The past doesn't.

• 23:57Mike Rowe?

  Let's just ruminate on that for a minute. Every day is the same. It's the vast, limitless, specific, but every day is different. Even though you're looking at what appears to be the same.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:09Mike Rowe?

  Like, so how does that, make that make sense for people?

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:14Mike Rowe?

  How is it new and familiar at the same time?

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Well, here on land, on land, like, you have a schedule. You have a calendar, you have an email, you have a phone, you have something to stay on track. You have somewhere to go, always somewhere to go, which is stressful. I have nothing else to do than paddle. There's nothing else. It's so simple.

• 24:38Mike Rowe?

  Like, what are you doing today?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  I'm paddling.

• 24:41Mike Rowe?

  I'm more paddling today.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you've understood the concept of flow, being in the flow, right? The best athletes, the best chess players, get into the flow. You're a tennis player, where time changes. So it doesn't, 10 hours seem to be two hours.

• 25:01Mike Rowe?

  That's interesting. I talk a lot about that, too. Certain activities will compress time.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:07Mike Rowe?

  And others just seem to, like, stretch it out, like a blade. It just goes on forever. Did this, I imagine it was both. I imagine it felt interminable, and I imagine there were days that were over.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:21Mike Rowe?

  Before they began.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I believe it's how you manage your expectations. Have you seen if you say, I'm gonna go for a run twenty minutes, the last two minutes are hard. If you go for a one hour run, the last two minutes are hard. If you go for a three hour ride, the last three minutes are hard. So if you say, I'm gonna go for three months, for days and days, it's actually not that bad. Because you know, it's when you get towards the end of your expectations.

• 25:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  That it starts to be hard.

• 25:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  Before that, well, you're just doing what you're doing. But the concept of the future doesn't exist because it's not here yet. The past doesn't matter because it's gone, just becomes real. You could read all the books of Buddhism, anything that tells you exactly that. Just be mindful of the present moment. You know, you're drinking your water, you're drinking your water. You're talking to Mike, you're talking to Mike, just be in the present moment. It just makes sense, like it's only a theory until you live it. And then you meet the reality. And the reality just tells you what they've been telling you is totally right.

• 26:21Mike Rowe?

  What happens in your mind? Day after day after day, I mean, you had, you don't know it's gonna take ninety. You know, it could have taken seventy, it could have taken more.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:30Mike Rowe?

  You don't know. But as you're going and like, once you're in the thick of it, somewhere near the middle. And you like, you're in that flow. How do your emotions work? And what is there to become emotional over?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  I cried every day. I cried every day because the people that are back on land. The human touch, you miss it so much. And then you go all over the place. So the only way to grasp a ninety day trip is to have a goal for maybe the next two days. I'm going through the next two days and then the next week. And then, actually, the first two weeks is survival. Because sleep deprivation, physical, you change your food, you change your, your exercise. There's so much, it's just survival.

• 27:18Mike Rowe?

  You're not in the flow yet.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  No. And then you set another goal, which is, okay, I'm four hundred and ninety miles. Let's, let's reach five hundred and ninety miles. And you celebrate that little victory. And then you're one fourth of the, the journey. Okay, how about I celebrate the six hundred and ninety miles? Then anything positive you wanted, because I refused any negativity. I said, negativity not welcome in this boat. I'm gonna be positive. It's raining, I'm gonna find the positive of the rain. I'm gonna find the positivity of, of the wind behind me or the lack of wind. It's a mindset where you will, you just decide. What you want to think now, if you catch yourself because your emotions can go all over the place, snap out of it. And that's where self-awareness come back, where you have to know yourself. If you're a warrior, bring on the war, I'm an emotional, I see beauty

• 28:05Speaker 03

  everywhere. I'm gonna try to find beauty to charge my batteries.

• 28:09Mike Rowe?

  Where'd you find it?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  In a sunrise, in a soft breeze. There's a video, I'm actually, I showed it to you. This video, it's nothing, it's just the same sunrise as here. But it was after a week of terrible weather. I couldn't sleep. And I come out and my GoPro, when I'm filming this, and I got caught by the moment. It was a moment of grace, where it just overwhelms you, like the beauty of sunrise. There's like the wind, but it's a soft wind, like a caress on your skin. And suddenly, you know, there's not big wave, but this is swell that is kind of smooth. And you see the clouds and the colors beautiful. And there's a bird coming to see you, it's like, what?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  And that's why I do this, that's why.

• 28:59Mike Rowe?

  Did it feel, I mean, that's such a great way to put it, but did you feel like the bird was coming to see you?

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I was talking to them. I say, I started to talk to every bird.

• 29:11Mike Rowe?

  They talk back?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  No, they don't. Some they, they don't care.

• 29:15Mike Rowe?

  Rude.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  No, but.

• 29:16Mike Rowe?

  Rude seabirds.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  They don't care. They're in their own world, and the ocean doesn't care.

• 29:21Mike Rowe?

  What a treat you must be to them.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:26Mike Rowe?

  Imagine them, they're not out there for 90 days, they're out there for years. There's a tanker, we've seen that, we've seen that. What the hell is going on over here with this bearded freak? What is, where's he going? Let's go see him.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, man.

• 29:42Mike Rowe?

  What about fish? What about whales? What about?

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Oh, beautiful whales.

• 29:45Mike Rowe?

  Would you see?

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Whales, sharks. Sharks are okay. They, you know, everybody say, how about the shark? No, they just come by, see you, and they go. I got scared.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  On the Atlantic, I saw swordfish as big as my boat. And the swordfish has a bill, okay, there's been accounts of swordfish attacking or punching. We don't know if they're attacking, but punching rowing boats. And we don't know if it's because they're chasing a fish that's hiding behind the, they hit it or they don't see you or they hit you. But should they hit, hit me, this guy was 23 feet long. I'll show you the video, this guy is like.

• 30:21Mike Rowe?

  You got a video of this thing?

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do. Yeah, I got so scared, like I stopped paddling completely, I'm, I'm, I want to be invisible. I feel so vulnerable. It's like walking in the savanna and there's a lion comes here, you naked, you cannot do, like it's your, please just go away. I love you, please go away, please.

• 30:36Mike Rowe?

  You have no choice but to assume what they call the submissive posture, right? I mean, wolves do it, right? A wolf, a small wolf meets a big wolf. They just lie back and expose their belly and say, look.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 30:51Mike Rowe?

  There's really no mystery here. If you're gonna eat me, you can, yeah, I prefer you not, but let's just, and that's, you know, and nature works. What do you, a 23 foot swordfish, people are gonna, people can't imagine that.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just came on the side, so I, I could see his eye and he was looking at me. It was in some sort of alien look, like he was just checking me, I was not aggressive at all. I guess everything is in my mind, right? What if this, that wasn't one of my fears before I left. What if, if you punch a hole as big as a golf ball, ball in the front, in the middle of the night, what do I do? I punch, okay, I've got my carbon fiber, my epoxy, I can patch it from the bottom. What if it's two o'clock in the morning, middle of the night, do I jump in? That thing just hit me, will it hit me again? Whoa, better not think about this.

• 31:38Mike Rowe?

  Did you get out of the boat much?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  No, not much. I, I just need to go, really just grab the, the barnacles, they grow very fast and they slow me down. But, no, I don't like.

• 31:48Mike Rowe?

  How much can a barnacle or a, not a barnacle, but hundreds of them, I suppose, form quickly?

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, it's so, I, in the Pacific, I, I went under and they were about two inches long already after 50 days.

• 32:00Mike Rowe?

  Are you tethered?

• 32:01Speaker 03

  I'm tethered all the time, yeah. One of the big risks is to fall in the water, even by mistake. I could drift faster than I could swim, especially if I don't use my legs, I can't swim. I've got all my gear.

• 32:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, oh my god.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  So I'm tethered all the time. That was one of the things I, I would promise my loved ones, I say, I'm attached, even if it's flat, day, night, I'm attached.

• 32:21Mike Rowe?

  When were you the most scared?

• 32:24Speaker 03

  When you lose control,

• 32:28Speaker 03

  there's this thing, if you're really well-prepared, you can think of, what if this happens, what do I do? I've got a plan A, plan B, plan C. My water maker broke twice. I had a plan B, it's okay. Even if it's bad. The things that are hard is something happens that you could not prevent, you could not preemptively imagine, for which you don't have a solution for. Now, so you lose control. And the one thing about self-awareness, of self-esteem, in your attempt to do something like this is, I know I can adapt to anything. Once you're in the middle of a storm, you're naked, you're like, I cannot do anything. So there's no fight, there's no flight. I cannot fight against the ocean, I'm just, okay. I cannot flight, I cannot go anywhere.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  There's no freeze, I'm gonna, what, be invisible? The only way is acceptance. Acceptance of your vulnerability and your smallness. And then whatever happens, happens. So you give up on, not life, but you give up on your willingness to be safe. And then if that happens, it gives you so much power. Because then, who cares? You know?

• 33:35Mike Rowe?

  That's the samurai, right? You're already dead.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Correct, yes.

• 33:39Speaker 05

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• 34:09Mike Rowe?

  Aside from humanity, and just the touch of another person, or the ability to have a conversation with someone, what else do you miss? And when you start to think about what you miss, do you immediately instruct your brain to get that out of there? Like, is that filed under the negativity that you want to keep off your boat? Or is it actually something you can... You can cling on to and think of to, you know, to bring you a little peace. I've always been interested, like I think of people in solitary confinement. For instance, or really any number of other adventurers who have put themselves off the grid.

• 34:49Mike Rowe?

  You know, and whether a nostalgic thing, you know, is it indulgent to thinking of home? Thinking of your loved ones, does it help you or hurt you?

• 35:03Speaker 03

  You miss so much. I think the first, the most important you face is human, people you love. In fact, I wrote so many blogs about love. I'll tell you more about this, about fraternity. But I think everything else is just secondary. Good food? Yeah, I'd like to have a warm burger and a cold beer and an ice cream. Doesn't, doesn't really matter. Comfort? I don't care about it. I'm wet, so why? I'll be dry. But what happens is all these little things, when you come back to land, it just re enhances the ability to enjoy the simple things. A little kid that comes and you hug him and he cries, he smiles, he laughs. You enjoy that. There's a butterfly, it's beautiful. Wow, you smell the land and earth. And just a moment of peace with friends, just be here. You enjoy, like.

• 35:49Mike Rowe?

  The feeling maybe of your bare feet in the sand, in the dirt, on the concrete, something real and connected.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:59Mike Rowe?

  And not moving.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Kissing land when you get there and like, I'm not a water animal. I was out of my element and now I'm back.

• 36:05Mike Rowe?

  Were you able to walk? I mean, how long till you're sea legs?

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so sea legs is only 24 hours where everything moves, but it's more when I stand, the hips and the knees hurt because I didn't use the stability muscles and ligaments to walk, right? But it comes back, it's there. I just do a lot of yoga and stretch.

• 36:22Mike Rowe?

  You got seasick?

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I did, yeah. I'm always seasick. Five days.

• 36:28Mike Rowe?

  Come on, you throw up every day?

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you throw up and but you know that it's just a time that your brains need to adjust in the internal here, that's it. So come on, Brian, do your thing. Five days later, you're good.

• 36:39Mike Rowe?

  I've seen two different kinds of seasick in my life. I've been on a lot of boats. And I've seen the kind that you can work through.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:48Mike Rowe?

  Paddle through, pedal through, whatever, puke. I've gotten sick on camera. But right, you know, I've thrown up in the middle of sentences and finished the sentence.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:58Mike Rowe?

  That's one kind.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:00Mike Rowe?

  And then there's the kind that I don't, you know, I, people just go away for a day or so. They can't get up, they can't go to the bathroom.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I'm lucky I'm part of the first one.

• 37:09Mike Rowe?

  Because that would kill you if you got.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:11Mike Rowe?

  I, I wonder if your body would even permit it. Would your body let you succumb to that kind of seasickness if your brain knows it's a death sentence?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I, I'm a part of the second group where I can manage it. But I'm super aware that if I, if I vomit, I'm losing liquids. If I don't drink, I'm sweating, I'm losing liquid. So I force myself to drink and eat, even though it's a little bit. Wake up in the middle of the night to just eat, and I know it's gonna last five days. I could manage it. But there, it takes discipline because it's just my dream just go, would go away if I were not to.

• 37:46Mike Rowe?

  What did it feel like to actually get in a bed with cool crisp sheets?

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Dry sheets.

• 37:53Mike Rowe?

  Dry sheets, like, were you able to sleep or did it?

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:57Mike Rowe?

  Were you like Tom Hanks sleeping on the floor?

• 37:59Speaker 03

  I know, I slept for eight hours straight like I was in heaven. I tell you the shower when you arrive, because my water makers broke twice during the Pacific after 50 days. So then I'm, I'm doing this manual thing for two hours to get my gallon. It's drop after drop. You get in the shower.

• 38:16Mike Rowe?

  How does that work? So wait a minute, it's a desalinating machine, basically?

• 38:19Speaker 03

  It's a manual one. Yeah, you throw a little hose in the water. And then what it'll do, it'll, it'll take some water, pressurize it to a high PS. I wouldn't know what to tell you, but 90% of that water goes through those tangent, tangential filters out. It's the brim. Only 10% is filtered out, is drop by after drop. And then you fill up your, your bottled water.

• 38:40Mike Rowe?

  So how, so how long's it take you to get a bottle, a quart?

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's two hours to, to get those gallon, so.

• 38:46Mike Rowe?

  See if you can find this thing, Chuck. I'm just.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's Power Survivor. Uh, four, uh, it's not the forty E or something.

• 38:53Mike Rowe?

  Ah, the forty E was a great one. Yeah, when it comes to desalinating, you know, why cut corners?

• 39:02Mike Rowe?

  Wow. Okay. So you have to look at your food really as fuel and not much else.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Calories.

• 39:08Mike Rowe?

  It's calories.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:09Mike Rowe?

  And your go to dinner, like if.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Oh, oatmeal. Oatmeal is, I don't want anything spicy, too sweet or too salty. Something bland just fills me up.

• 39:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  And I would add some granola. I actually created my own breakfast. Oatmeal, a cup of oatmeal, half a cup of granola. Then I had a cup, uh, you know, of these, uh, protein and a little cup of fibers. And I would have, um, that powdered milk and that was my breakfast. Nine hundred calories. That's my morning. And I would have freeze dried meals, cold, like eat spaghetti cold, like whatever. Chowder, uh, and then bars and gels and then electrolytes. Uh, electrolytes, so the water desalinated has kind of a weird taste to it.

• 39:53Mike Rowe?

  I bet.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  And, and there's, because it's filtered.

• 39:56Mike Rowe?

  Oh, there it is.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  So that's my forty E. That's the one that broke twice. I don't like that one.

• 40:00Mike Rowe?

  Oh, the power survived.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:01Mike Rowe?

  Forty E. Broke twice. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Probably not going to sell a lot of those on this episode.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  No, it was perfect. It's just.

• 40:08Mike Rowe?

  Till it broke.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, twice.

• 40:10Mike Rowe?

  Twice.

• 40:12Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, fellas. So which one, uh, is in the boat now? Where is the boat now?

• 40:17Speaker 03

  It's in Sausalito in, uh, the Bay Model. It's the museum in Sausalito. Where people can go for free and look at it. I want kids to be inspired.

• 40:24Mike Rowe?

  Is that where it's going to live forever or are you?

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Forever? No. You're kidding me?

• 40:28Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  I've got a virus.

• 40:29Mike Rowe?

  When are you back in the water with this thing?

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Maybe a couple of years. I don't know. I'm, I'm dreaming. I, um, the Atlantic was eight months ago. All right. So I need to learn how to walk again to get some strength. And, and one of the issues in wanting an adventure.

• 40:43Mike Rowe?

  What do you mean still? You're still recovering?

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I'm still working out. I lost twenty pounds of muscle, you know? So, but also mentally, it's, it's hard. It's so taxing. How do you, the problem with a adventure like this is when you come back to land, it seems so bland that you kind of want to go on another one right away. And that would be a mistake to go with the wrong motivation. So I give myself time to think over it. Do I really want it? Feel that inner fire? Feel that motivation? Okay, I'm gonna go back to training so many hours a day. Go back to trying to find a finance. What ocean do I want to do? There's like these little things that tickles you a little bit every morning. You wake up at four, you look at this website. Oh, you know, you go to windy, you look at the patterns of the currents.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  And then the dreams start to say, but I think.

• 41:31Mike Rowe?

  The what? The dreams?

• 41:32Speaker 03

  The dreams.

• 41:33Mike Rowe?

  Look, man, it's a very artistic way to think about adventure in the sense that, well, you're waiting for the muse. Right? Like a lot of people who write, they're not gonna sit down and write simply. Some do. Some writers, it's just a job. They sit down, I write eight hours a day, doesn't matter if I feel like it or not. Others, they need to wait for the muse to come. You're an adventurer, but you're not gonna go until, what? The dreams inform the decision.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Right. And it needs to come from a place where I'm comfortable with the consequence of that decision. I'm 50. I'm 49. I'm 50. Do I wanna do this all my life? Can I find my need for liberty or escapism? I could just cross Mongolia in a horse. Like, it would take three weeks.

• 42:28Mike Rowe?

  Call it good, yeah?

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Why not? Why waste my life? Do you wanna?

• 42:31Mike Rowe?

  I'll put a list of reasons together for you if you're really curious as to why you might not wanna cross the Mongolian desert on a pony. But, yeah, okay.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this. Like, is it ego that makes me push to the doing that third ocean? Is it gonna be the one too many? Is it gonna be, like, why? Why do you do this? You know?

• 42:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's the eternal question. Are you addicted?

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, I think, I'm not addicted, but I think there's something you feel out there that you wanna feel again.

• 43:03Mike Rowe?

  Who do you, like, when you think about the prototypical adventurer? I'm sure you've read much about all of this.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:14Mike Rowe?

  I mean, clearly, who, is it Shackleton? Is it?

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Shackleton's amazing.

• 43:18Mike Rowe?

  Magellan? Is it, right, I mean, Balboa? How do you, how do you think about these people?

• 43:24Speaker 03

  No, there's one guy that I really like. His name is Mike Horn. I don't know if you know him.

• 43:29Mike Rowe?

  Horn?

• 43:30Speaker 03

  Horn. He's South African and he lived in Europe for many years. He, he's done this book that I read 20 years ago called Latitude Zero. And his idea was to go around the world following the lane of equator, the imaginary lane of the center of the world, without going 40 Ks north or 40 Ks south. He followed it, human powered. So he crossed the Atlantic on a boat. And once he got there, he crossed the jungle of the Amazonian by foot in six months.

• 43:57Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  He climbed the mountains of equator. Then he sailed from equator all the way to Indonesia, crossed Indonesia, Martin Bike.

• 44:04Mike Rowe?

  What's his name, Mike Horn?

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Mike Horn. He's the biggest adventurer.

• 44:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, he's my, yeah, he's my idol.

• 44:10Mike Rowe?

  I can't believe I haven't read that, but I.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's one of the 20s done. Yeah, he's walked, you know, the North Pole in winter. He's so, and then he's got a way of explaining is like, why not? Like, I, I want to do this. And, and there's a certain category of people, maybe I'm one of those, that don't, don't really need a reason to follow what your passion is, right? I guess when people ask you why, they don't get it. It's because they're looking at what you're trying to do with their own filters. All right, you don't ask the Beatles why they were singing or Picasso. Picasso, that nose is, is at the bottom of that eye, the eye is crossed side like, you don't ask Picasso, what is your painting every day? So maybe I'm part of this, like, the personality that says, why not? And especially, why not me? I'm a regular guy.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  Like, I was playing soccer all my life until I moved to California. I was 32, never kayaked before 32. And maybe it takes a little bit of self-belief or arrogance. I don't know what it is, but why not me?

• 45:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, you're either.

• 45:13Mike Rowe?

  There are only three things you can impress, right? Other people, yourself, or something supernatural. That's my corn. Oh, look at him. He's crazy. He's a bedbug.

• 45:26Mike Rowe?

  Look at that guy.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  He's fantastic. He's fantastic.

• 45:29Mike Rowe?

  Have you met him?

• 45:30Speaker 03

  I have, yeah. Actually, he sent me a video before I left. He says, "I'll just keep on paddling. It's gonna be hard, but keep paddling." Love this guy.

• 45:38Mike Rowe?

  How, um, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but has anyone ever done what you've done?

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Well, there's, there were five people before me. I'm the first one to have crossed two different oceans. And, you know, we're six, seven people to have done this.

• 45:56Mike Rowe?

  It's a short list.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And I spoke to every one of them. Everybody's super open. Scott Donaldson crossed the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. Spoke to him. He gave me all the info. Spoke to Peter Bray, who crossed from Canada to Ireland. The North Atlantic is so tough. Spoke to him, listened to podcasts. I spoke to Ed Gillette. Ed Gillette, he's American. You know him?

• 46:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Oh, he's a legend. What I did is nothing. He crossed on a kayak, a double kayak, like plane, no cabin. Okay, he went from Monterey to Hawaii in 64 days, navigating with a sextant.

• 46:30Mike Rowe?

  Now, that's my next question.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  In 1987, imagine. And he had a kite, so he was the first one to cross in a kayak. I was the first one who empowered, but he laid the way.

• 46:40Speaker 04

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• 47:11Mike Rowe?

  Explain the difference, so people understand, of navigating with a sextant versus, say, Dead Reckoning, versus whatever the state of the art GPS might be, that I assume you had on your plotter.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, had he done it now, he would have used a plotter, for sure. Back then in 87. Okay, so the sextant is this kind of plasticky weird looking thing that helps you to measure the height of the sun at noon, right? And it's actually not accurate because your boat is moving, like you're on a kayak. You don't really have a good line of sight.

• 47:40Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  But you can estimate and it gives you your latitude and then you make calculation, you know, your longitude. And then from that you say, okay, where am I? Hawaii is this way, I'm gonna keep going at that. Good. But it's really hard. Like, he had no cellphone, he didn't communicate with anybody, right? So doing that crossing without talking to anybody, I had a land support that I talked to or texted every day. That helped me tremendously mentally.

• 48:04Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  So the guy's a legend. Now, he was the first one to ever do it, right? He didn't know how long it would take. He thought it was gonna be forty days. So he took a kite and then flew the kite, made him cross, but even that-

• 48:17Mike Rowe?

  You made it like as a sail?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  As a kite in the air, yeah. You know, it was very long strings and he pulled a kayak. But he made it to Hawaii, people thought he was dead because for two weeks, three weeks, he had no sign of life. He arrived in Maui, atrophied, he walked to the thing, he bought all the candies he could. I mean, you have to read this book called The Pacific Alone.

• 48:37Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read that book and I said, I wanna feel that, what it is.

• 48:42Mike Rowe?

  I actually need a reading list from you.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:44Mike Rowe?

  The Pacific Alone.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:47Mike Rowe?

  The other one, Mike Horn's book?

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, Latitude Zero.

• 48:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, Latitude.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Well, I'm writing my own book, I'll give it to you.

• 48:55Mike Rowe?

  I would hope so. I mean, I hope you'll sign it too. What about, have you seen Free Solo?

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:04Mike Rowe?

  Have you talked to Alex Honnold?

• 49:05Speaker 03

  I have not. I love, I mean, he's a-

• 49:08Mike Rowe?

  Talk about the flow.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:10Mike Rowe?

  You gotta be in the flow to do that.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:12Mike Rowe?

  This is the guy who climbed, was it El Capitan?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  No rope, crazy. But here's the thing, I'm working on a documentary for my Pacific crossing. If you look at Free Solo, Alex Honnold, like a treble gold medal when he does that climb, right? When you look at it, ninety percent of people are gonna say, wow, this is amazing, you've got sweaty palms when you look at it. This is great, like it's one of the biggest thing, yeah. But when you finish that movie, you're like, I can't do that. I can't do that. Like, this guy's

• 49:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  machine. Like, okay, my, my whole thing and why I'm here talking to you, and thank you for this. I want to tell people that you could be a regular guy. If you're passionate enough, not just to follow your dreams, but okay, with the discipline, the risk, what it takes and giving up, sacrifice, all this. You can do anything you want, right? You could be a regular guy and how, what, it's been 10 years, you wanted to paint, you haven't painted. Start the guitar now. It doesn't matter if you're 50. You want to start triathlon, you want to live in Argentina, you want to do it. And what I want to do, if I were to do this documentary is people finish this. This crazy French guy across the Pacific, he started at 30, what? What am I waiting for?

• 50:26Speaker 03

  You know, and, and I wanted people to feel that inspiration and I hope they get it from the podcast too, where do it, like follow your dreams, like just one life, you know what I mean?

• 50:36Mike Rowe?

  Look, man, there are lots of people out there who get paid to speak. I'm one of them. I struggle about how to talk in motivational terms to people because I don't necessarily understand who my audience is a lot of the time. I don't know what they need to hear or what they want to hear. And I'm not sure either of those things matter. Like, I could just tell them my story. I, I didn't do what you did. But at this point in your life, I would imagine you do need to put some sides on this because it's really important, I think. I think you have something to say and I think people have a huge benefit to be yanked or prodded or coaxed

• 51:21Mike Rowe?

  out of their pattern, out of their comfort zone.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:24Mike Rowe?

  Maybe that's the question I should ask you. How do you think about comfort? How do you think about discomfort?

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Well, I think we're too cuddled nowadays.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  You click a button, your pizza arriving in one hour. Like, seriously?

• 51:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, bank is online, everything's online. Kids are cuddled, sorry to say that, but there's ten teams in a soccer tournament of twelve years old. Everybody's gonna have a medal. Like, what the heck? You know, it's like, it's tough, life is tough. Reality is, the best things are out of your comfort zone. Now, you could say, if you're happy being in comfort, you've earned it, good. But, how about we teach our kids to, to search for the hard, there's two paths, one hard, one easy. Go for the hard, you'll learn more. Right, and then, I'm not gonna give it to you because you deserve it, you don't give a shit. You deserve to go after your dreams and feel it and see what it is to have a dollar and see what it is to earn your first car and

• 52:23Speaker 03

  don't give it easy to, yeah, sure, I wanna give you a Passat for your first car. No, how about you buy the shitty Chevrolet and you fix it?

• 52:32Mike Rowe?

  It's just my French. You're thirsty? I could get you a bottle of water, or I could give you the forty X E and, you know, just take two hours. And now, and now you deserve your water.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  No, but here's this thing I wanna say. Okay, my grandpa, he fought the Second World War. He escaped a Nazi occupied France and he crossed the Pyrenees by foot. And then he went to England and then he flew to the US to learn how to be a pilot, right? What an epic life. You have, he came back and after the Second World War, they rebuilt the country. They rebuilt it with values that they created during those times of hardship. Me, I haven't had any hardship. And I'm lucky, right, but somehow, don't, I think people, especially men, kinda need that hardship to create those sense of values and ethics and what they believe in.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Otherwise, it's chewing gum, when I give you chewing gum, that's your life, no. I don't want that. So is there something in this society where people go and do the Spartan race because they want to feel they want to feel the hardship and and grow over that?

• 53:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  There's a need.

• 53:43Mike Rowe?

  Well, iron sharpens iron, right? And the war your pop fought in, you know, that was a galvanizing moment. It captured the imagination and the reality of the world. And so you didn't. You didn't have to walk around going, gosh, if only there were something purposeful and meaningful and challenging that I could do. It's right in front of you.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:04Mike Rowe?

  If that's not the thing, if maybe climbing El Capitan is not your thing, or paddling across the Atlantic or the Pacific is not your thing. It doesn't mean you can't find a thing. It doesn't mean you shouldn't look for the thing. Whatever the thing is.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:21Mike Rowe?

  You're saying it should be difficult. There should be a very high chance of failure if you try it. Our friend, Mike Easter, who's written a book, I think you'd love, called The Comfort Crisis.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 54:32Mike Rowe?

  You would love this.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 54:34Mike Rowe?

  He talks about these adventures. I think they're called Misagois.

• 54:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. Misagi.

• 54:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And, you know, Japanese concept, but the idea is every year, everybody should do a hard thing.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, love it.

• 54:53Mike Rowe?

  And by hard things, he says it. It probably won't kill you. But it could probably won't. You'll probably fail. It could be as simple as in 20 feet of water, or maybe 10 feet of water, a mile long, taking a boulder.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Hmm hmm.

• 55:14Mike Rowe?

  And just moving it from one shore to the next.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:16Mike Rowe?

  Which involves a lot of dives and a lot of struggle and a lot of.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  Cold and.

• 55:21Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Miserable.

• 55:22Mike Rowe?

  Yes. Do like, so I think a lot of what you've done, and I don't know what you talk about in front of crowds of people, but I hope it comes down to this idea that, you know, it's not enough to, as my old scout master said, people will tell you that if you can embrace the suck or endure the discomfort, you're on your way. But that's really not enough. You actually have to figure out a way to love it.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Hmm hmm. Yeah, well.

• 55:54Mike Rowe?

  That ain't me. You know, from time to time, it might have been me. But you don't seem to have an ounce of regret in you.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  No, because, okay, so when I do things, I don't know what I'm gonna learn from it, but I know I'm gonna learn something that I need to learn. Like, what are you doing out of your comfort zone that is gonna teach you the things you have no idea exist? You know, that connection with the ocean. I read the books, I didn't feel it until I lived it. And I think what I'm trying to do is actually see. Why, I don't know, it's hard to see, like.

• 56:28Mike Rowe?

  Well, you looked almost emotional earlier when you said that, you know, a month in, my body was essentially seawater.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Oh, let me tell you this, okay, I've got this best, this is exactly what happened. I was emotional, I was crying, I had this tear on my cheek, okay? Which is saltwater. At the same moment, the ocean splashed. And there was this drop of water on my leg. It was maybe a month and a half in. It was actually, no, day fifty. And suddenly, one plus one, that was the ocean telling me, look, drop of saltwater.

• 57:07Mike Rowe?

  You're me.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  You're me. We're the same, you're literally a drop of water on the ocean for three months. You've been drinking ocean water, ninety, seventy percent of your body, which is liquid, is ocean water. We're me, you're me. And then you look at the clouds. They're water. You look at the waves, you look at the fish, I'm sure they're water. Look at the birds. That's it, they're drinking. We're one. And I had this other epiphany, this moment of grace, of feeling the spirituality on the Atlantic, but with breath. I was also going through a hard moment.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  And I'm paddling and I'm just breathing deeply, you know how you control your, you hold it.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  After five minutes, I realized I was in sync with the waves. I was breathing with the swell. And the swell is pushed by the wind. The wind is breath of earth. And then you look at the clouds, they're moving with the wind. And then the waves crash, they create that white foam that oxygenates the water, that the fish will breathe. I'm breathing, I'm breathing with earth. Wow. And that you can read in all the books, I'm sure, yeah. Where is God? God is everywhere. What do you mean? He's the mountain, yeah, he's the sun. I know, he's the air, he's the water. I know where God is. I call it the oneness. That connect, I'm the fish, I'm the same as the fish.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  I'm the same as a tree.

• 58:38Mike Rowe?

  Is this the flow?

• 58:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the flow. It's things you can't teach, you have to experiment. Now, that's what I want, when I want to write by my book, I don't want to say day fifty, I did fifty miles, I was bad. I want to explain what I've learned and I'm happy to be able to do that here today, so that people could say, shit, that's a part of the human experience I haven't lived. Like, I don't know, like, I'm not crossing, how can I live this in my own life? I'm gonna walk along the PCH, I'm gonna stay a week silent, I'm gonna do meditation, doing yoga in India, whatever you want, but find this. It's part of the human experience, you have to live this.

• 59:18Speaker 04

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• 59:49Mike Rowe?

  You know, I'm just thinking, just to bring this back to me for a moment.

• 59:55Mike Rowe?

  The second time, no, I think it was the third time we ran into each other. I wasn't in a dark place, but I hadn't had a lot of sleep and I had put the weight from my ruck from forty to sixty-five pounds. And I hadn't really done that before and I was walking the same route. So I was out for like eight, eight and a half miles. I had just turned around and I really wanted to be home. My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, my ankle hurt. I was sweating like a whore in church and I had nobody to complain to. And that's when you pedaled up. He's like, yeah, I have done it. I did the thing I said I was going to do. Do you remember the crazy Frenchman? Yes.

• 1:00:39Mike Rowe?

  And I'm like, oh, God, this guy. But no, I mean, we stopped and talked and that, actually, that's when I called Chuck. And I was like, look, man, this is, I just keep running into this guy. I think, I think maybe we should have him in.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  There are no coincidences, you agree that?

• 1:00:56Mike Rowe?

  There are either no coincidences or it's all coincidence. Both make sense to me. It's that squishy combination of the two that makes me a little, you know. Quick sidebar, another book called Longitude. Have you read this?

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:15Mike Rowe?

  Oh, I'm gonna write this down.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yeah, please.

• 1:01:18Mike Rowe?

  Longitude was written by Duffel Sobel. And it tells the story of the race to calculate longitude.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:01:28Mike Rowe?

  Which was previously, I think it wasn't until maybe seventeen sixty or seventeen seventy. It just couldn't be done. Because to get longitude, you need to be able to know what time it is on the ship.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Mike Rowe?

  To make the calculation. And there was no timepiece at the time that could give you an accurate measurement. Cause everything was either, you know, hour glasses or these other things.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:53Mike Rowe?

  And the motion of the ocean would make that impossible. So it, it tells the story of it, that's it. It's such, it's a short read. But the king of England put up a huge prize, like millions of dollars in today's money, to figure this out. And it launched a giant race. And the, the guy who cracked the code was called. John Harrison. And he did it. He won the prize and he changed everything. And I just, you know, wonder like when you're out there thinking about all the things that allowed you to pull this off.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Mike Rowe?

  You know, imagine, imagine doing it then. Talk to me about the Polynesians who figured this out.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Mike Rowe?

  Thousands of years ago and were in outriggers, basically.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Mike Rowe?

  Going from New Zealand to Papua New Guinea or to.

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  Samoa.

• 1:02:53Mike Rowe?

  Samoa. How did they do that, man?

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, there are special kinds of people that say, I can be done. Let's go.

• 1:03:03Mike Rowe?

  But they must have been, in relative terms, kind of common among their people. This is a thing they did. They just did it. And surely it wasn't a singular event. But now we do something like that. And it's, you know, the rest of the world is gobsmacked by it.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Mike Rowe?

  I mean, have we gotten softer? I mean, I know you said that the coddling thing is a thing, but I just wonder as a species if we've really changed.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  I think we're like to be in control, right? And when I was 25, I did a trip around the world backpacking 26 countries in one year.

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Little money, 10 bucks a day. And I remember arriving in the country and it's like, okay, well, I'm in San Jose. What do I do? I'm in downtown. I need a hotel. Find a hotel. And then next day, the hotel would tell you, if you want to go, you could go mountain bike and see that volcano. You could go there and then I'd take an, I would make my trip along the way. And now, like, you want to go to Nicaragua? You need to know every night where you're staying. No, you don't need to. You could just find that adventure side of you. Get out of your, like, again, the comfort zone or the. Safety, uh, there's so much to be, to be found there. And I'm reading this book, another book, it's funny, uh, The Art of Getting Lost.

• 1:04:28Mike Rowe?

  Oh yeah, I've heard of this.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  I love it. It's exactly that. So how are you gonna find the things that, you know, you don't know even exist? Like, you could walk in your neighborhood all the time, you do the same path. What if you get lost? I'm gonna take right now. And then where do I go? I don't know, take left. Oh, this little restaurant, I wanna sit down.

• 1:04:46Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's the reverse commute. That's the, uh, well, you know, when you think about it, I mean, not only is very, very, very few people uh, have done what you did, no one's ever taken the same route. Probably no one's ever taken the exact same route.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that's a, that's truly an untraveled path you took.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's more people that have been to space than crossed an ocean in a kayak. That's why I do it, because nobody else does it.

• 1:05:13Mike Rowe?

  Well, that maybe is the answer to the earlier question. And maybe that is ego a little bit, and maybe that's okay. I mean,

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  You know, there's this book, Man's Search for

• 1:05:24Mike Rowe?

  Meaning?

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  Meaning.

• 1:05:25Mike Rowe?

  Frankel.

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  Yes. What's your purpose? What is that one thing that you and only you can bring to the world that, if you were to die, the world would lose? Like, find this, right? And that purpose is something that has never been done before. Are you unique? How do you reveal that and just do it? I love this.

• 1:05:43Mike Rowe?

  So in the same way that you enjoyed that trip so much, because you didn't always know where you were going to be staying night to night, do you know what you wanna leave the world with specifically? Have you figured that out yet as a result of your adventures?

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  It's very simple. I want to leave the people I meet better than I found them. It's very simple. It could be at the supermarket. It could be giving them energies when they need it and when they don't, whatever. And it could be a very local level. It could be in a podcast, it could be writing a book, it could be a motivational speaking engagement. I speak to, last time I was in France, to fifteen hundred kids. You never know who's gonna come back in ten years saying, Cyril, you give, when I did my trip around the world, twenty-five, I go to every school, I put my backpack and map of the world. Here's, I'm gonna do this, and here's my shoes, my whatever, flipper. And five years later, a guy comes, I was living in Santa Rosa, up north, Northern California.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Comes with his bike and two buddies, it's Cyril. Five years ago, you're the one who gave me the spark that he was be. What? I love it, I love it. All right, so my little purpose, maybe, okay, there, I formulated it into five words. One is dare, the second is live, third is learn. So I do this daring adventure that I live and I learn from them. And the fourth and fifth is share and inspire. Those two is what I give back to the world, you know. If I do that for the next thirty years, the world would be so, a little bit better.

• 1:07:21Mike Rowe?

  I think so. I mean, look, part of the fun of it is you don't really, truly know. You get little signs, you get, it's like the mustard seed, you know, you get reminders. I have a foundation, right, and three thousand people have gone through it and, you know, they've all learned to trade. Every now and then I'll run into one of them out in the world, but usually it's, it's a family member or, you know, a parent or somebody. And I understand to hear that your efforts have had an impact.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Mike Rowe?

  That is Frankel, that is the search for meaning.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:01Mike Rowe?

  You know, when I watched Alex Honnold climb, I'm home, I'm comfortable, I'm sipping a bourbon, and I'm watching this guy do something. And I, I wept when I saw that. I wept for the species and for me and for anybody who had ever, you know, dared to dream that big. I honestly, when I saw that, I thought it was as great an accomplishment as, as walking on the moon.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:33Mike Rowe?

  Because it just.

• 1:08:36Mike Rowe?

  I imagine people felt that way when Frank Shorter broke the four minute, no, Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. It's just, we were told it couldn't be done.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Mike Rowe?

  And then, someone does it.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Mike Rowe?

  And then, within two years, eighteen people had broken the four minute mile.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah, love it. But that's in the spirit of this country. I'm a citizen of the world. I've lived in Brazil. I lived in Argentina, in Spain, in England, in France, in Italy. I've, and I moved here. I was thirty two. Okay, you could, I know there's like the slogan, you could do anything you want. You could be president if you want. You could give them. Okay, so that's what you tell kids, and it's so true. But it doesn't have to stay at a slogan. You have to say, if you have discipline, hard work, ambition, sacrifice, you can do that. But as an immigrant, now I'm American too. I've been here seventeen years. I was American ten years ago. I'm both French and American. I believe, I think more in the American dreams than a lot of Americans.

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  Because they've been told that, but they take it for granted that how lucky they are. They don't even know how lucky they are. And we come as immigrants with this energy like, I don't think I would have done what I've done if I were in another country. And it's not because I'm bragging about this country. I, California's got this energy that you're the average of the five people who spend the most time with. Everybody says, yes, you can do it. Really? Okay, let's go. You know, that's, it's amazing.

• 1:10:05Mike Rowe?

  What is the American dream?

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the definition is that you could be better than your parents and you could do anything you want. Right? You could start from scratch and go. I think for me, it's like, if you have the willingness and the discipline and the courage, yes, you can do anything you want. It's not going to be given to you. Nobody gives it to you. But I think in the right environment, and this country is, a terroir, where if you plant it and you say, I'm going to water it every day, it's gonna grow. It's gonna grow.

• 1:10:38Mike Rowe?

  Everybody I've ever met who uses that word has some association with wine. Were you, were you in the wine game?

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  I was twelve years in the wine business. That's why I moved here.

• 1:10:51Mike Rowe?

  You're kidding?

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was born that way. I'm French. We drink wine when I was like, my dad would put a little bit of wine in water. I was six or seven.

• 1:11:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, that explains everything. What do you think of the state of wine in Napa right now?

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the wines are as good as they've ever been. Year after year, the climate is up and down what it is. That's the climate, but the techniques are good, so the wine is good. The problem is like people are not drinking as much, so it's hard for them to make it in financial sense. Uh, but it's, it is what it is. I think quality has gone up, very much so. And yeah, I'm the first one to start drinking beer with no alcohol. I have like, the quality is so good. I like the beer. I don't have the alcohol, great. I'm gonna be better in my athleticism. I'll do that. And I think wine for me is a pleasure. It's not a drink that I drink to get drunk. It's just, yeah. It was a good steak. You put nice Cabernet.

• 1:11:50Mike Rowe?

  Why wouldn't you?

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, sorry to hopscotch around like this, but I wanted to ask you. I saw how you prepared physically for this, but I still don't quite understand. How do you prepare mentally? Can you?

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a hard one because I'm an extrovert. I love people. How am I gonna be alone? Like, speak to me, myself, and I not seeing land or a human being or a tree for three months. So it's a question I had to think about deeply and, and there's no right answer. Everybody's different. I was gonna try everything. You know, beginner's mind? Beginner's mind is, I wanna try. I went to see everybody and say, hey, what if you had to do this? What, what would you do? And then I went to see a mental coach. I tried Wim Hof comb plunging and saw a lead on the middle winner. You know, breathing, it's cold, you wanna escape, what do you do? I did hypnosis in India with a yoga. I was, I did one week in a yoga retreat in India.

• 1:12:48Mike Rowe?

  What was that like?

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Amazing. And this guy comes, he's a yogi, he's a guru from the OSHA family. Okay, Agiatt, you gotta meet this guy.

• 1:12:56Mike Rowe?

  OSHA family?

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  The OSHA guru line, yeah, O S H A.

• 1:13:00Mike Rowe?

  Not Occupational Safety Health Association?

• 1:13:04Mike Rowe?

  Not you, no, no. He don't want that.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  He comes and says, Cyril, he's got this long beard all in, in orange, like you can even imagine them. And Cyril was just, you know, head shaking. Oh, you're doing this adventure. Have you thought about hypnosis? Hypnosis, isn't that for to fix a trauma? Yeah, you could do that, but you could also create the core. The core beliefs at your unconscious that you can do this. And he said, come tomorrow with 20 sentences. That are the beliefs you want to have at your core. Okay. And of the top of my head is you're doing it. You're not alone. You trust your instincts. Your instincts are powerful. I came with all these lines. And then, you know, he does hypnosis. So he puts me on that bed, nice little music, Hindu style.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  And then he puts me in a deep sleep and he reads them to me very slowly for an hour. And then he records it and says, Cyril, okay, you're gonna listen to this every three days, every four, every day if you can, until you go. To create that sense of I'm doing this. I'm not quitting. I'm not, you know, so I tried this, I tried. You name it. I don't know what I don't know. I'll try it.

• 1:14:16Mike Rowe?

  Where are you right there?

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  On this picture, arriving in Hawaii, that's celebration. That's the I knew it moment. Now, I knew it, so I've got this flare in my hand. And I'm like, yes, I've done it. It's, and I haven't seen land in so long. But the I knew it moment, here, let me explain to you what it means. Every entrepreneur or people that is trying to do something big that has never been done before has an image in his head. And I compare it to a puzzle. Okay. We think a project is linear. Project A, and then you one, a step two and three, right? No, it's a puzzle. And the puzzle, you've got this pile of pieces. You've got the box tells you what you need to do. And then you put one piece after the other.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  Well, in that case, it's never been done before. So there's no picture. You've just got some pieces that only you can see. People are looking at your thing and say, hey, what, what is he trying to do? I don't know. I've got this idea. I'm gonna put this piece here and then another piece. And, and they come in different times. So, and then there's pieces you have to create along the way because they don't exist. And the I knew it moment, that's when I saw land. And I said, I knew it. Finally, the piece is putting is in front of me. And all the naysayers that I completely forgot, I said, no, I'm in the crazy Frenchman with this little boat. But I knew it. And it's not like, look at me. It's more, I'm glad I followed my instincts.

• 1:15:45Mike Rowe?

  You mentioned Wim Hof. Have you seen that documentary?

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  No, I want, I want to meet him. He's an amazing guy. I love him.

• 1:15:52Mike Rowe?

  You know, I've always been interested, but I watched that doc a while ago and, you know, he, he went through a very specific kind of hell. I mean, he lost his wife, he lost everything. And his way back to sanity was through breath and these cold plunges and, and just being able to, you know, sit outside in subzero temperatures for hours at a time. It just changed his entire, his entire body. But you mentioned the cold plunge and I'm, and you also said you were wet all the time out there. Were you cold all the time?

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  No, the period of time when I left were quite warm. But if you're wet and there's wind, you could get cold. So it's, it's just about staying dry or having the right gear and changing the gear if it's wet and, and that's just, you know, preparing well and yeah.

• 1:16:48Mike Rowe?

  But the cold plunge, did that help at all?

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, because, look, just if it's just one idea I could give about this is accepting the cold. If you're in the cold shivering, you're fighting the cold. You're like, no, I'm cold. You're clenching your teeth. As soon as you say acceptance,

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  you let the cold come in and then you're okay, right? Breathe through it and it's the same. You're divorcing, you lose your job. Somebody died, you have cancer. You could fight the certainty of the reality. As soon as you accept it, you have a different perspective.

• 1:17:27Mike Rowe?

  And you'll fight differently. I mean, you won't not fight, but you'll fight differently.

• 1:17:34Mike Rowe?

  You know, I don't have a cold plunge, but I still, I, every shower either starts or ends.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  It's cold.

• 1:17:41Mike Rowe?

  With two minutes of cold and sometimes the whole thing. But I like to shave in the shower and I have a tough time doing that.

• 1:17:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so here's what I say about a cold plunge, cold shower. I do it every morning, okay? I arrive and you look at that shower, you say, I don't want it. Like, yeah, of course you don't want a cold shower, it's raining outside, it's cold. You contemplate your non-willingness to do it. And your weakness, right, because you want comfort. And you, I'm gonna go, you go in there, you turn cold and you're like, you can yell, you can cuss, you say everything you want. You breathe in. And then you turn off the shower and you start with a wind.

• 1:18:20Mike Rowe?

  Well, no one in the history of time has ever congratulated themselves for taking a nice hot soaking shower. You did it. You did it. You washed your ass again in a nice warm bath. Congratulations. Uh, what are you gonna do right now? You're gonna drive back up to the Bay Area?

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Mike Rowe?

  You gonna work out today? You got, what's the plan?

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Well, in seven hours, I'm gonna stop to see my filmmaker, we're talking about a new project I have. I've got always ideas. And I think, you know, if you put the energy out there, it's meant to come back at some point, so. I'm gonna see my buddy.

• 1:18:56Mike Rowe?

  That's great. It's great. What I wanna leave people with is, you know, some days you're out for a ruck and it's heavy. And a crazy Frenchman comes up and says, it's me again. And then you invite him on. That's how your journey went. That's how my journey's going. I really don't know too much. Sometimes, I think the metaphor to leave people with really is that combination of what you talked about. The idea of that trip you took when you were in your twenties where you didn't know from night to night where you were gonna be sleeping. Juxtaposed with all the care you took prior to your adventure and to the documentary that you're very deliberately making,

• 1:19:40Mike Rowe?

  to the speeches you very intentionally give, and to the very conscious idea that you do have a notion of what you want to leave people with. It seems like certainty and uncertainty once again.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a balance.

• 1:19:53Mike Rowe?

  Two sides of the same coin.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  It's a dense. You gotta adapt in the end, but yeah, it's cool.

• 1:19:59Mike Rowe?

  Where can I get one of those scarfs there?

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  Oh, I'll give it to you.

• 1:20:02Mike Rowe?

  No, no, I'm not taking your scarf.

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  What are you talking about?

• 1:20:04Mike Rowe?

  I'll take it. This is real beautiful, thank you. And the tattoo, you want to give a shout out to the...

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  It's pate, this guy.

• 1:20:12Mike Rowe?

  You really got that yesterday?

• 1:20:14Speaker 03

  Yesterday.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  So, this is water and air, and when I arrived in Hilo, there was a volcano. And that was a groundedness of earth and the fire. So there was two other elements that was missing on me. Now I need groundedness and I used to use, need to use my fire. I'm this little bird, because this is me, I need to spread my light.

• 1:20:36Mike Rowe?

  You are something else, dude. You are something else. How do you say get out of your comfort zone in Italian?

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  Eh, uscire della zona di comforte.

• 1:20:47Mike Rowe?

  How would you say it in Portuguese?

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  Oh, se ti chissà da zona di conforti.

• 1:20:53Mike Rowe?

  Are you bullshitting me really?

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  No, in francese, tu sorti dalla zona di conforto, qu'est-ce que tu veux que je te dise?

• 1:20:58Mike Rowe?

  German. German.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  Oh, I can't in Deutsch, no.

• 1:21:04Mike Rowe?

  I'm so glad you introduced yourself to me, and I hope you'll come back. You're welcome anytime.

• 1:21:10Speaker 03

  Okay, I would love it.

• 1:21:11Mike Rowe?

  And if I can be of use with this documentary, or anything else, you know how to find me. A pleasure to meet you.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  I'll just have to bike around Tiburon.

• 1:21:20Mike Rowe?

  You just keep biking, you'll find me. I'll be the guy grunting and sweating and cursing himself.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  With that red scarf?

• 1:21:29Mike Rowe?

  You know I can't take this from you, but it is not. You know what, a scarf is such a simple thing, but man, it really, it really does jazz up the look.

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:21:36Mike Rowe?

  Just like that. You got a beret?

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  No, I don't. I'll bring you the baguette too, if you want.

• 1:21:41Mike Rowe?

  And whatever happened to Pepe Le Pew? I miss that little guy, the skunk. He was a great one. That's you?

• 1:21:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:48Mike Rowe?

  Uh, siro?

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Des romans.

• 1:21:51Mike Rowe?

  Des romans. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's Cyril Tema Rose. Is there a website where people can go to learn more about your fantastic self?

• 1:22:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, Solo Kayak the Atlantic. That was the last one. And then just ask AI. Crazy French Guy Crossing an Ocean, you'll find me.

• 1:22:08Mike Rowe?

  Crazy French Guy Crossing Ocean dot com. What a piece of work you are. Thank you for your time.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. Adios.

• 1:22:15Mike Rowe?

  That means goodbye.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  Oh, merci.

• 1:22:20Mike Rowe?

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world, the advertisers really like to judge.

• 1:23:03Mike Rowe?

  You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it. Five-star review. Thank you.

• 1:23:32Speaker 05

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