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Episode 235: Athletic Brewing's Mason Gravely says 'Make It Easy to Say Yes'
135 Plays4 years ago
Athletic Brewing's Mason Gravely (@alive_adventures on IG) is here to talk about his experience on the Without Compromise podcast he produces for Athletic, as well as the Adventure Sports Podcast, biking across the country, nearly DYING, and lots more.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod and consider joining our Patreon community to support the audio magazine and the continued production of this here show. Patreon.com/cnfpod.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy New Year, CNF-ers. It's a creative nonfiction podcast, and I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, Mason Gravelie. He's a pretty slick dude. He's our guest this week. He works for Athletic Brewing, the revolutionary brewery behind the best goddamn non-alcoholic beer you'll ever drink. He hosts its companion podcast without compromise. He's also about as skilled an interviewer as I have come across.
00:00:27
Speaker
and he lives a life on the margins, on the extremes. Something I deeply admire in people I speak with. Not always fun to do things out of the box because then you feel like a weirdo and like what are you doing with your life but most of the time it's fun to do things out of the box.
Mason's Storytelling Approach
00:00:49
Speaker
Yes, so this is the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories in Mason's case He's not a storyteller per se He has had some writing in places and I'll link up to that for sure because we definitely talk about one of those pieces he did on the podcast
00:01:11
Speaker
But his work with the Outdoor Adventure podcast and without compromise, he gets people talking in stories. Often those are the best interviews.
00:01:22
Speaker
You know, I interview a lot of incredible people doing incredible things and so many of them say the same things is why I'm bringing this whole point up. They say, you know, you just kind of have to go for it. You don't have to be ready to start making a plan or just walk out your door and go take the first step. You know, go to the hiking store and buy that backpack or tell people you're going to do it. And it's like, you hear all those things over and over again for a reason. It's because they work.
00:01:51
Speaker
But before we dive headlong into the full conversation be sure you follow Mason on instagram at alive underscore adventures and keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod on twitter facebook and instagram we finally hit a hundred ratings and reviews on apple podcast
00:02:11
Speaker
And I'm going through, I'm taking screenshots and I'm broadcasting every review on Instagram and Twitter. If you leave one, I'll be sure to share it with the community and give you props. If I know what your social media handle is, I'll be sure to tag you. Otherwise, just stay tuned to the channel because it's going to be the channel being, you know, Instagram stories or Twitter. And I'm just going to give you those props. And if you want that kind of recognition, I want to give it to you because it means the world to me to make that mark.
00:02:41
Speaker
We have a small audience and to have that many reviews from such a small audience is pretty badass, if you ask me. And what's to stop us from getting to 200? I know there's more than 200 of you out there. There's several hundred of you out there. Why don't we just get to 200? Let's blow it out of the water. It's us, man. It's us against the world. God damn it.
00:03:01
Speaker
Go check out the audio magazine on isolation. Share that with your fellow CNFers. It's like a magazine, right? Duh. And it's a bit of a teaser. Let everyone know that this is a platform to publish work. It shows what's capable.
00:03:17
Speaker
Submissions are open for the next issue themed summer. We're looking at max 2000 words about 15 minute read deadline march 21st 2021 to listen to issue number two on summer
00:03:33
Speaker
And issue three, well, I don't know what that's going to be, but it's going to be later in the year. You'll need to be a member of the Patreon community. Just four bucks a month gets you access to 2021's two issues, as well as all transcripts of new interviews from the day of your first payment until you decide to quit. But you won't quit, right? You probably will. Patreon.com slash CNF Pod. Show notes in the newsletter jam. BrendanOmero.com.
00:04:02
Speaker
Just throw that in there. I had this interview in the can for a while.
The Role of Athletic Brewing
00:04:06
Speaker
And given that it's the first of the month, the first day of the year, and many people are likely doing Dry January, why not publish the episode I had in the can with one of the chief ambassadors and employees for non-alcoholic beer? Athletic brewing is helping support Dry January efforts.
00:04:25
Speaker
This is not a paid plug, by the way. I believe in what they're doing. I believe in their products. It's so good. So damn good. Free Wave and Run Wild are by far my favorites. The timing worked out with this.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I hope you'll check out Athletic Brewing if they're in your beer case, wherever you get your libations. People will take me on as an ambassador, right? Like, I'm on the record saying I think writing drunk and editing sober is stupid, and that writing under the influence of any other drug beyond the muse is a toxic myth. Stick around for my parting shot at the end of the show. It's a bit of a rant. It is salty and profanity-laden. So, your muffs.
00:05:10
Speaker
and uh there are other tasty bits in housekeeping so uh and uh did you know that me a little old me brendan america was on a podcast this week for real i was on someone else's i'll tell you about it later for now here's mason
00:05:38
Speaker
for doing this and carving out the time to do it, especially just being so responsive to it, like right off the bat. Sometimes it takes several door knockings and it was really nice to be able to get this set up pretty quickly, so I really appreciate that.
00:05:52
Speaker
Oh yeah, no problem. I appreciate you making it easy to say yes. That's what I'm learning in my professional life, is make it easy for folks to say yes. It's like I've got so many things to do. If you ask me, hey, you want to be on my podcast, and I'm like,
00:06:11
Speaker
Sure like what you tell me more first if you can just kind of summarize it in a way that's easy to digest Make it easy to say yes is it will go a long way for sure that is that's an an amazing insight and something I've never really thought about but I know when I pitch people to
Insights on Collaboration and Interviews
00:06:30
Speaker
be on the show or it's always about like okay what is you know what is it about them that make it a good fit and you know you try to just you know get those round pegs in the right holes and everything in and what makes it a value for you to spend an hour doing this and I don't know it's just intuitively that makes sense to me but I think for a lot of people and just based on what you're saying it's not as intuitive for a lot of people maybe early on in the process
00:06:58
Speaker
You know, it totally is. I talk to a lot of athletes all day long and you can tell the ones that have a little more skill in it and the ones that don't, you know, and it's really just, hey, if you're talking to really busy folks, because usually powerful people or, yeah, you know, that sounds so conceited. I'm not one of those people, but someone who's in charge of something or has a little power or has the ability to say yes or no,
00:07:23
Speaker
The easier you can make the answer made for them because they don't have much time to look at your email, make it concise, e-bullet it, bulleted points, numbered points, make it just very, very simple to say yes or no.
00:07:40
Speaker
It just has gone a long way for me when I'm making a decision about whether an athlete should join our team or not, or if an opportunity sounds good or not. And I try to make my ask when I'm wanting people on my show very, kind of just to the point. It's like, hey, your story is great. I think you'd make a good guest on our show. Can I please invite you? Here's the link.
00:08:00
Speaker
And it's that simple. Yeah, well that's great. Yeah, it's like another way of saying that is like trying to take as much friction out of the process, right? Totally, man. Totally. The more you got to get them to just pull information from you, and also the more clear you can be about what you're asking for, whether it's a dollar amount if you're looking for sponsorship or
00:08:22
Speaker
We do this program at Athletic Brewing called Two for the Trails, and we're always looking for organizations to donate for park and trail cleanups. And if they can just have a project in mind when we talk, that's, hey, here's the project, it's building this bridge or repairing this trail, it's gonna cost $5,000. It's like, cool, yeah, let's do it. I've got the story right there.
00:08:44
Speaker
Exactly. And a lot of it just comes down to having a sort of generosity of mind to know what the ask is on the other end, how it's going to land on their ears, and then just doing some work and research. And when you do that kind of legwork, it goes a long way. And it shows that you're more mindful and respectful of the other people, because powerful or just people who just don't have a whole lot of disposable time, it's just so important.
00:09:14
Speaker
really ultimately just respectful of that person.
00:09:18
Speaker
Definitely. That's another great point.
Life in Florida and Family Ties
00:09:23
Speaker
And also, I don't mean to throw off your system or whatever you do for intros or if you do that. I just started talking, so my apologies. No, this is good. You kind of got right into something that I think is just really valuable, I think, to anyone who wants to listen to this. They're creative people, primarily writers, but as writers and even freelance journalists, which is kind of my purview and even doing
00:09:47
Speaker
podcasting for other people is just like it's like what is it what's in it for the other person if you're a journalist trying to crack into the New York Times and you're pitching an editor it's like how is why are you the person to do this and how is this how is this important to my readers and you you have to have that sort of mindset and you by saying you know make it easy to say yes that's really sort of the core ethos of any pitch any query letter really for any industry mm-hmm
00:10:16
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm a big fan of bulleted points, like prioritizing, here's why I'm reaching out. But I just know my little world. I don't know the standards for journalism or any sort of kind of what's more common for other industries. So that's just my tiny little world and my tiny little experience. So maybe it doesn't apply to folks listening. Yeah, and I think it definitely does. Because even if you were to put bulleted things
00:10:45
Speaker
you know, in a, even if you're just doing this kind of interview thing, I think that's really valuable because it's just easy to digest. And you can look at it almost in a glance, it will actually look really kind of clean and sort of easy to digest on a phone too. If someone's just scrolling on their phone, be like, Oh, that's cool. Like bang, bang, bang. Oh, yeah, I can say yes to that. So it's even just you saying that you said it said it's so, you know, so eloquently, really, it's so simple, but it really is very, very powerful. It's a heavy fastball, as I like to call it.
00:11:16
Speaker
Definitely. Definitely. And so you grew up in Florida and you live in Florida, is that right? Yes, grew up in central Florida, spent many years out west in the mountains and the deserts and lived out in California and Colorado for a long time and actually just moved back. Just moved back, okay. Yeah, right here in the Sunshine State. Very nice. What brought you back after going through the more mountainous areas of this country?
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I fell in love with the outdoors with nature, the national parks, specifically love national parks. So tried to carve out a career and something that involved the national parks for a long time, got in the backpacking world and guiding.
00:12:02
Speaker
I did volunteer vacations where you go and you pay money to go. People would pay me to go take them to national parks to do work trips, essentially working on trails and cleaning up trails, doing all kinds of cool stuff, working on all sorts of really unique projects and then also being able to hike and explore those places.
00:12:24
Speaker
So, absolutely loved that. Kind of like anything else in life, you just take some interesting turns. Eventually took over a podcast to help promote a backpacking company that I was doing with a friend. And that podcast just kind of opened up a new world of interviewing, essentially adventures and more athletes and getting more ideas of interesting things to do.
00:12:49
Speaker
But man, I tell you what, living out there was awesome. My wife and I are both from Florida. And I just think, we haven't been here that long, but I can kind of see already that it's more of a
00:13:05
Speaker
Living out west and doing what we wanted to do was really fun and a lot of ways I miss it and kind of wish I still had it but I will say it was really really really good in just a few aspects of life like it was amazing in the exploration side or in the adventurous side or in the getting out there and doing what you want to do side of your life but
00:13:28
Speaker
There were a lot of other aspects of life we were missing out on, like family and being around some of our old friends and just kind of, I don't know, rounding out that other side of life. And so I think Florida is very underrated for what it has, what it offers. There's a lot of water.
00:13:46
Speaker
that's not just the ocean. There's a lot of springs and lakes and rivers and a lot of incredible wilderness. And it's also a really hardcore wilderness. So I like to say like the mountains out in Colorado, it's very inviting. You know, it's obviously rugged terrain, but the culture is very inviting. It's like, hey, come out in the mountains, come hike. You know, we've got a search and rescue if something happens in Florida. It's almost like,
00:14:10
Speaker
Man, I freaking dare you to walk out here because everything's poisonous and venomous and thorny and wet and swampy and trying to kill you. When I go outside, even for a small hike out here, I'm like, oh my God, there will be spiders.
00:14:28
Speaker
and crabs and snakes and fish and sharks and all kinds of you know predators essentially all at the same time like in a couple square feet of a place you know it's really bizarre just how just how diverse
00:14:43
Speaker
the wilderness is here, which is cool. And I don't think a lot of people know that. So I will say coming back, not saying, the ultimate goal honestly is why we wanted to come back is we had a son and that's been really cool. And we just wanted him to be around his family. And we wanted to also be there for our family to help. We both have big families all going through all kinds of different stuff like anyone's family.
00:15:09
Speaker
And we were just kind of tired of being so far away and not being able to be a helping hand. So not like we're coming here to help everybody, but it's like at least being there if something were to happen or so many things were happening and it just felt terrible not being at least close enough to give somebody a hug at the very least. So we're not coming to solve everyone's problems. We're just wanting to be part of the support system too.
00:15:35
Speaker
So far, so good, but the ultimate goal is really to live seasonally. My wife's a teacher, so she naturally has off in the summer. Anyway, I work remotely, and we never loved the winter time. We didn't really ski or snowboard that much, so I'm really hoping that we're...
00:15:52
Speaker
Come here in the winter, enjoy kayaking, enjoy paddleboard, enjoy the beaches. It's beautiful out 75 and sunny today, and then go spend the time in the mountains during the summer, the mountain summer, and kind of enjoy both worlds. We'll see. We're young and dumb, so we don't know exactly how we're going to make stuff happen.
00:16:10
Speaker
I think that answered your question. For sure, for sure. And I wanted, given that you're so immersed in outdoor culture and outdoor athletics with basically the two podcasts that you're so wonderfully tethered to, that I did want to get a sense of what Florida offers you as an outdoor junkie. You alluded to it already, because in my mind I don't, you know, of course there's the Everglades and of course there's a lot of the fresh waters inland.
00:16:39
Speaker
But Florida to a lot of people is just like hot, humid and flat. So it's I wonder like if maybe you can paint a better picture of what the wilderness in Florida looks like.
00:16:50
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's so much. And growing up here, growing up anywhere, anywhere someone grows up, they typically, you kind of lock in on how you see it and you don't really change that till you go experience somewhere else and come back. So I grew up on a piece of land way out in the Florida, kind of in the central Florida out in the boondocks.
00:17:19
Speaker
I had no idea, but I was surrounded on three sides by federal land, by land that was owned by the government that was protected. And I just really didn't know. We just played in our yard. We did our things. It was a Southern culture, kind of redneck, honestly. So we did experience the outdoors, but it was always through the medium of hunting and fishing.
00:17:39
Speaker
which at a certain point I just didn't want to do anymore. I thought I started experiencing the outdoors without having to try to kill something. I still like to fish because I like to eat fish, but I'm no longer a hunter, nothing against it. Of course, plenty of hunters are great conservationists and I just got tired of going out there and not
00:18:00
Speaker
Achieving my goal, you know, I feel like a failure every time I come back home without an animal So I was like why don't I just go out there and not worry about shooting anything and actually enjoy the nature for what it is so Every summer during college my best friend and I would go bike across America literally bike from either coast to coast or north to south and we'd always pick the most scenic routes and
00:18:21
Speaker
and try to go through the most intense terrain. And so we just fell in love with huge mountains and giant Colorado passes. And what's cool also about that roundedness I was telling you about, that best friend that did all those bike trips with me lives like 20 minutes from here.
00:18:37
Speaker
So we're able to see him and his family like on a weekly basis or if not more often than that. And my other friend that biked with me is less than an hour away. So it's a cool time of our lives to kind of be back together. And they both just also moved back from the West. So it's good timing for all of us.
00:18:54
Speaker
But the Florida wilderness, to get to your question, there's so much of a transition period with the inland. Once you get away from the coast in Florida, people don't realize this. It's like being in Georgia or being in Alabama. The culture's like that. The terrain can be like that. Yes, it is a little more wet and swampy.
00:19:12
Speaker
there's a lot of nature happening all the time. Like I'll sit on my porch just the other day, man, I was watching and a snake was slithering through the grass and it caught a lizard. And that lizard had just caught a moth. So this moth was in the mouth of this lizard and this lizard was then in the mouth of a snake. And then, you know, a couple of days later, I see the same snake out in the yard in an egret, a small little, you know,
00:19:41
Speaker
water waiting bird flew down and caught the snake. No way. Killed it and ate it right there, then flew off. And it was just like, holy crap, look at it. I mean, in Colorado, it's cool, but it was definitely like, okay, there's deer, there's elk, and there's some squirrels. And it was kind of just mountain.
00:19:59
Speaker
mountain animals in a limited variety. Here it's like, I forgot just how diverse it is because we have mountain lions here too. I don't know if people know that. They call them Florida panthers, but it's the same exact animal as a mountain lion or a cougar or something. And they're here. There's some tracking, some that are being tracked and those are definitely out in the wilderness. I used to see them growing up. There are lots of bears here. My mom sent me a picture not long ago of a
00:20:26
Speaker
of a bear and an alligator in the same picture in her front yard and that was cool because it's you know how many times you see a bear kind of cross habitats with an alligator and also you know we have pythons down here 20 foot long you know they're not native necessarily but they're out there in the woods and there's just as very
00:20:47
Speaker
bizarre mixture of animals, bizarre mixture of people that Florida is known for. But in all that, there's still a lot of space once you get away from the coast for a lot of nature to happen. So some of the unique things are spring fed, well, springs, crystal clear, super deep springs that are filled with these incredible animals.
00:21:08
Speaker
And then once you kind of make your way out to the ocean, there are everything the ocean has to offer, dolphins and whales and tons of manatee, sharks, stingrays. And so when you combine that ocean wildlife and ocean ecosystem with that inland deer and wild hogs and panthers and all that, it's quite a mixture. I remember seeing
00:21:34
Speaker
that crossover one time, a kayak in a river where I saw a dolphin and an alligator swimming in the same water where it was brackish. And I was like, I can't believe this. This is such a bizarre mixture. But a lot of people never see that because they don't just get right off the highway. And there's still a lot of it. It's disappearing, which is...
00:21:54
Speaker
Another reason I wanted to come back to Florida is help advocate to protect it. I feel like Colorado has things under control in the sense of culturally, folks are going to protect the outdoors. Here in Florida, it's not guaranteed, so we need more people just at least advocating for it and advocating to protect it. Nice. Now I understand that, were you a competitive basketball player growing up?
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, man, that's my sport, man. I love playing basketball. Down here in the South, it's baseball, football. Football is really the big one. Yeah. But even basketball too, but just started falling in love with the game and I still try to play. Yeah, and just doing a bit of research, were you a Wendy's Heisman winner? You along with a young woman, Stephanie Heath?
00:22:43
Speaker
Oh man, what was that? Yeah, Stephanie Heath went to my high school. Man, I haven't heard her name in a long time. We won something and I registered one year in college and I didn't realize I didn't like it. I'm like, I like just trying. I kind of honestly like more street ball. Like the pure game of basketball is fun and I love it, but I don't love to watch it. If I want to watch something or play something, I want to like it.
00:23:11
Speaker
I want to like dunk on people and shoot threes and just like, I don't know, do some play street ball essentially. Yeah. All right. And did you go to, did you go to Southeastern university or Southeastern college?
00:23:26
Speaker
Yes, Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. Studied biology there. Oh, nice. And yeah, just kind of fell in love with the Florida wildlife. And obviously doing a summer long bike trip every year, bike touring trip was hugely influential in kind of my direction in life. And that inspired me to kind of stay out west for many years.
00:23:52
Speaker
We might go back, but we're gonna see what Florida is all about, see what we can do here, and just kind of see where life takes you, man. One thing I've definitely learned is it's very hard to plan. It's easy to plan. It's hard to stick to a plan because if you're someone like me that just likes to take opportunities as they pop up and just kind of see where things go, you can't predict. All the turns and twists that five years can bring, you know what I mean? Even a year can bring.
00:24:22
Speaker
I remember, you know, we have a one and a half year old and I told my wife, I was like, I never want kids. And she was like, you know, well, we're going to have a problem then. I really want them. And I told her, you know, at some point I would and I decided, I'm like, I don't want kids.
00:24:37
Speaker
She was like, well, we're going to have to figure some things out here because I do.
Life Changes and Non-Alcoholic Lifestyle
00:24:41
Speaker
And so we took some time to figure it out. And I got to the point, man, where I was like, you know what? I can't imagine myself not loving a child. So, you know, let's see what this is all about. I know a lot of people I respect have kids and just went for it. So within probably a month of me saying I'd never have kids, she was pregnant. So.
00:25:02
Speaker
So and then obviously like I'm recording right now in one of my closet my quote closet studio nice And he's taking a nap and you know it's the biggest joy of my life the biggest the coolest thing of we've ever decided to do together and I could never even imagine it any other way now do people that don't have kids have a wonderful lives and fulfilling lives and
00:25:23
Speaker
Yes, definitely, that's a totally legitimate path to take in life, but I don't think you can make a wrong decision going either way, if that makes sense. For sure. So it was like, I planned and had this in my mind for years, like I'm not having kids now, and when push came to shove, I was wrong.
00:25:39
Speaker
I could just not have predicted that. You feel so strongly and so convicted about something and you can be 100% wrong and you decide to lean into it and accept it and go in that direction and you'd be really surprised by the twists and turns your life can take. I'm working for a non-alcoholic brewery now of all things. That's what one of the podcasts is through. I don't have any particular passion for brewing or particular passion for
00:26:06
Speaker
for this industry, but what I do love is unique and crazy ideas and things that are improving people's lives and thinking out of the box and athletic is providing all of that. And working here has been the most fulfilling job I've ever had. So you just can't predict the turns your life's gonna take. For sure.
00:26:28
Speaker
For sure. I remember in one of the very early episodes of the Without Compromise podcast that you started with Athletic, talking about, and I think you were talking with the main founder of Athletic, and it was just like... Probably Bill. Yeah, yeah. And you were talking about the... I think when you were born, your father got sober, and that was a great gift that he was able to give to your
00:26:53
Speaker
because it was something that you didn't have to worry about. I don't know if there was a history of alcoholism with your father, but at least he drew a line in the sand that said, I want to be this kind of person for my kid. So it sounds like you also are trying to live by example and set that kind of example in your actions for your own son by what I'm hearing and what I've read about you. Yeah, so you're totally right. I come from a family of
00:27:21
Speaker
you know, heavy drinkers, drug users. I still have, you know, I still have family on pretty, you know, pretty messed up on drugs and alcohol. Alcoholism, you know, because you can obviously enjoy alcohol and not take it too far. I have a great relationship with alcohol. I can drink. I know when to stop. I've never had an issue. My father on the other hand has, but
00:27:44
Speaker
When my mom told my dad, when I was an accent, by the way, that, hey, I'm pregnant, he was like, oh my God, I got to get my life together. And so he put the beer down in his hand and hasn't drank a drop of alcohol since. And that was just a decision he needed to make or he wanted to make. And I never saw him drink, but I heard stories that he was
00:28:05
Speaker
It could be really good or it could be really bad. So at least I knew that there were options out there for non-alcoholic beer because he was always exploring. He really liked, he loved beer, but hated the effect of alcohol on his life. So I was able to kind of avoid that with just my antenna up all the time when I drank like, hey, just keep an eye on this. And it never has become an issue.
00:28:32
Speaker
So when the opportunity to work with athletic came along, yeah, that was a big, big reason I was also very excited was like the power of non-alcoholic beer in my own family. And the options were pretty limited 30 years ago. So, you know, he's pretty stoked now.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, that was all he had and he likes it. So we actually celebrated last year his 30th anniversary of no alcohol. That's amazing. I just had him a little party, told him thank you, I appreciate everything you've done and just making the commitment. I know it wasn't easy at times, he got made fun of a lot, but it changed his life and it obviously changed mine. And we celebrated with athletic brewing and he gets a ship to his house every month.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's cool, man. And there's a lot of stories like that, but the cool thing is, is...
00:29:22
Speaker
You know, I still enjoy drinking, but with a kid and with a full-time job and with a side gig through the adventure sports podcast and through doing all my own adventures and wanting to take advantage of weekends, there's almost just no time to drink. So I drink it for a totally different reason. You know, I kinda, I want to hang out with my friends on Friday, but we also want to get up at three in the morning to go, you know, sunrise paddle somewhere. And it's like, if you go out late the night before,
00:29:49
Speaker
It's hard enough to get up, but if you go out late the night before and drink, it's almost impossible to get up. So there's all these motivations I have for the same effect that my dad does.
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah and then there's there's always as you get older too I know when I when I hit about 30 the hangovers became like you know a day or two thing and now I'm 40 yeah it's like I just know that about me and it's like it's uh and on top of that like the hangovers are hard to recover from then there's oftentimes like some
00:30:20
Speaker
Shame kicks in and so it's just like you know it's nice to have an option like you know with what you guys do with athletic I Love it so much And it's great to have this delicious thing which holds up to so many of the great IPAs like I was emailing you about It is like the king IPA country up here in Oregon and
00:30:39
Speaker
and I'm so grateful it's available here and I just love that it holds up flavor-wise, that you can have a couple of them and there's just no ill effect. You can have the pleasure of consuming this delicious thing without the adverse effects of, you can still get up at five in the morning and read or work out or do whatever you want and it's, what a gift to the world really.
00:31:05
Speaker
And you could have knocked out a six pack the night before or more, you know, so it's It's like a cheat code, you know in a video game It's like I can have this and this and that that is what's so exciting about being here and that's what's really quote the adventure that I'm on right now is just it's just working here and kind of tying all the that mindset together, but uh,
00:31:28
Speaker
Man, I don't know if you know this. I don't mean to make it an ad about athletic. I definitely don't try to do that, but it's just, it's exciting what we're doing. It's so new
Athletic Brewing's Recognition and Social Drinking
00:31:36
Speaker
and different. It's still, there was a thing called the International Beer Challenge recently. And it's literally an international beer challenge, tons and tons of breweries all over the world. And they do blind taste testing for all their events or for all their categories.
00:31:54
Speaker
And our free wave, Double Hop IPA, won the supreme beer of the entire competition. And it was revealed that it was a non-alcoholic. And this was the first year in history they've ever had non-alcoholic beer in it. And it was pretty mind blowing too. You could tell the judges were not necessarily ready for that.
00:32:16
Speaker
in some of the wording after the event. And also because of that, they gave us the award of the Brewery of the Year for North America. And that's kind of remarkable being an alcoholic beer. And this is all against alcoholic breweries and alcoholic beers. So you're definitely right. The flavors there, you're not sacrificing anything, especially flavor, especially quality. The only thing you're sacrificing is the effect of the alcohol. And if that's what you're after,
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, we won't be able to help you, but we're also, you know, there will come a time where you want a beer, but not the effect of alcohol. And that's when we'll be ready for you. And that's when we'll be there for you. Because sometimes I, you know, frankly, I want a buzz, you know?
00:33:00
Speaker
a long day or it's a Friday night and my wife's going to be watching our son and I ain't got to worry about it. I'm like, babe, I'm going to knock back a couple tonight and just kind of go do something outside in the yard or something and just have a buzz. But I know a lot of people can't stop there and I'm very aware in my own family. A lot of folks, it's not possible.
00:33:21
Speaker
yeah and I found that you know my wife and I are kind of the same way like you know there's so many great breweries here and we love that's like one of our favorite things to do is to just go to go to a couple and then and then sometimes when you hit hit like we know that too is like the limb we got to stop it too just to be responsible but sometimes like yeah
00:33:40
Speaker
That's my limit. Yeah, and then at two We haven't itched like oh, we really want to like keep it going and what's great about You know what you guys offer is like we can go home and we can keep it going without getting drunk And that's what's nice to kind of keep the good times rolling without any adverse effects So it's kind of nice to have totally holster when you get home
00:34:04
Speaker
Totally, man. A lot of people pace with an athletic. They'll have a heavy IPA or something, then have an athletic right in between two drinks, just kind of let their body work off that alcohol a little bit, besides water or Coke or soda.
00:34:20
Speaker
They can kind of keep that flavor profile, that palette recognition going and just kind of let their body work through some of that first beer and have us as the second beer and then follow up with something else they want. So there's so many applications, but all that to say, it's just fun to do things out of the box.
00:34:42
Speaker
Not always fun to do things out of the box, because then you feel like a weirdo, and like, what are you doing with your life? But most of the time, it's fun to do things out of the box 90% of the time, for sure. For sure, for sure. And all right, so we established that you're a big basketball player growing up, but you've also done these cross-country bike trips. So I don't know, just kind of like put us in the saddle. Like, what is the urge and the edge? Like, how did you get into that? And then maybe just kind of
00:35:11
Speaker
Put us on the bike with you and describe some of the beautiful landscapes that you see that really just energize you when you're on the bike. Man, those have definitely been the most impactful experiences of my life. And we're at the beginning of kind of this, I say lifelong journey, but so far a lifelong journey of being very attracted to counter intuition or counter
Embracing Countercultural Paths
00:35:41
Speaker
anything going against the grain, whether it's a business idea or just a group of people or just something you wanna pursue that's different. And not to say bike travel is something crazy, bizarre, lots of people do it, but it was so different for me in my life and the way my life was going that it opened my eyes to like, wow, you can really do things differently and it goes well. It's not a complete failure.
00:36:08
Speaker
So I played basketball at Southeastern, like you mentioned, quickly became friends with some other weirdo on the team named Paul. And he and I just really hit it off. And that's my best friend. And I was like, man, you're really cool. Let's be roommates or something. So we were roommates the next year.
00:36:28
Speaker
He was getting ready to graduate, so the following year, we weren't roommates, but he would come over to my apartment all the time. He was saving money, living at home. Anyway, I had this super old world map on my wall, and it was decently old. Russia was still the USSR on the map, and a lot of countries didn't exist yet on this map, but it was the world nonetheless. It was the geographical world.
00:36:54
Speaker
We were just talking about adventures that we were hearing about and we both had this desire to do something. We're not from adventurous families. We're from, you know, working class, very, very normal backgrounds. Me almost, you know, very redneck kind of country bumpkin background and him coming from Orlando, just, you know, we're just doing our thing.
00:37:16
Speaker
On the world map, we were just talking and kind of tracing our finger over different sorts of adventures. We talked about the Appalachian Trail, which I didn't know much about at the time, talking about these 18-year-olds from the UK that sailed around the world. We were talking about all these interesting, cool things people were doing.
00:37:36
Speaker
And Paul's like, well, we need to do something. And I'm like, well, what is it? What do you want to do? And he's like, I don't know. Let's do maybe the Appalachian Trail. And I'm like, well, I got to do it in a summer. I only got a summer to do things. And I hear that takes months, like three, four, five, six, six months, upwards of six months. And I was like, what can we do in two or three months? And he was like,
00:38:00
Speaker
I wonder if we could fly to Alaska and bike back here, bike back home to Florida. And I'm like, I don't know. And we just kind of googled it real quick. This was just when phones were coming out, iPhones, and I didn't have one, but I was able to like search on my laptop right there. And I was like, all right, that's like 5,300 miles or something.
00:38:23
Speaker
And he's like, okay, if we do this many miles a day, I think we could do it in like three months. And we kind of shook on it and said, let's do it. Let's do it this summer. Let's fly one way to Alaska and bike back. And I remember he was walking out the door after just having this, you know, a few minutes of excited, you know, kind of BS conversation. We were like, are we really doing this? And he's like, I give this thing a 20% chance of happening. And then he left and I was like,
00:38:54
Speaker
Interesting. That was a weird number to pick, but that's also pretty good chances for something so out of the box. But needless to say, six months later, we were on a plane to Fairbanks, Alaska, and we were planning to bike all the way home. And we did. It was crazy. We landed. We got bikes.
00:39:17
Speaker
had no idea what we were doing. I was wearing sweatpants and a windbreaker from the basketball team. I was wearing a basketball warmup suit as my kind of like all weather gear. And he was wearing this enormous, ridiculous looking poncho. And we made our way man back to Florida. It was crazy.
00:39:37
Speaker
That is crazy. Of course, as with any project or extreme endeavor like this, at the start, in that honeymoon phase, it's always like, yeah, let's go. Gung-ho, this is going to be amazing. Then eventually, reality starts to hit, and you get into the grind of it in adversity strikes.
00:39:56
Speaker
What did you guys do through your myriad bike trips of this nature? When that adversity hits, when the buzz of that early honeymoon phase wears off, how do you find the strength to push through that adversity?
00:40:12
Speaker
Man, this is something I don't like to mention a lot, but I like to be totally honest and just open, because I think it helps other people. Man, I'm a quitter at heart.
00:40:28
Speaker
I'm a natural born quitter. It's been something through my whole childhood that my parents have really worked on, specifically my mom. I got to shout her out. She never let me quit anything. I wanted to quit basketball the first time I played a game officially. She's like, nope, you got to stick through the whole season. It was the first day of practice and I wanted to quit.
00:40:50
Speaker
And little did I know, two years later, I'd be playing in college, you know what I mean? That's how quickly in a process that I want to give up. And so recognizing that now from childhood, obviously, much better at not quitting now than I was as a kid.
00:41:07
Speaker
Knowing that going into this trip, it was like, all right, man, you know, you got to stick with it. You got to stick through it. And I knew my buddy, Paul, he is not a quitter. He's a Navy SEAL that missed his calling, is what I like to say. So he's just like, he can tell his body, like, we're getting up at 2 a.m. and we're running 100 miles and he just does it. He doesn't need an alarm clock. He doesn't need
00:41:27
Speaker
a podcast, he doesn't need a David Goggins hype up video, he just does it. And so I'm the total opposite. So I got to surround myself with non-quitters. Man, that honeymoon period lasted about an hour and a half.
00:41:45
Speaker
We leave these folks, we met, long story, but we met these folks. In my little town called Frostproof, Florida, we found people who lived in Fairbanks who owned a bike shop, who were retired and had all the time in the world and took us in for a couple of days. I was 20 years old when I did this and Paul was like 21 or 22.
00:42:09
Speaker
They just probably was like stupid kids, but we met them randomly in my little town in Florida and they were the most perfect connection. So we actually flew to Fairbanks, stayed with them a couple of days just to kind of get everything set up and headed down the road, left their house, stopped at a grocery store, grabbed a couple of things and just headed into the wilderness of the Alaskan Highway.
00:42:30
Speaker
Fairbanks is not very big, so it gets pretty wild pretty quick. Within the first five miles, a moose ran out in front of us in the rain, in the snow, and just about knocked us down. Keep in mind, this is early May. In early May in Florida, it's like 95 degrees every day. We were like, okay, it's going to be warm.
00:42:48
Speaker
And we're like, it can't be that much colder in Alaska. Well, it snowed on us for the first month of the whole trip. So, I mean, not every day, but it snowed up until early June. Cause we were, that was when we were about halfway and you know, we were in Montana at that point. So it's still plenty cold in those mountainous areas. Man, you know, I'm from the South and one of the things I,
00:43:16
Speaker
One of the things I did to hype me up was I bought Alabama's Greatest Hits, if you've ever heard of that band. Super redneck country band. And I was like, I'm just going to enjoy this. It's going to remind me of home. I put it on my iPod, which I had at the time. And I was singing this song called Roll On. It's like, Roll On Highway.
00:43:35
Speaker
It's so cheesy and so stupid. I knew it at the time, but I put that on and I'm like screaming at the top of my lungs because we're going down all these cool hills. We're seeing all these beautiful mountains for the first time I've ever seen mountains so big. My mind is blown. I'm totally ecstatic. And we're going by this Air Force Base right outside of Fairbanks. So we're maybe, I don't know, 10 miles in. Like I said, probably less than an hour in, maybe a little further, 15 miles in.
00:44:04
Speaker
and get a flat tire. And I'm like, dang it. That really sucks. This sucks. And I'm like, okay, let's figure this out. And I tell Paul, I'm like, Paul, do you know how to change a flat tire? And he's like, I didn't actually look up how to change a flat tire. He's like, do you know how? And I'm like, no, I didn't look up how to change a flat tire either.
00:44:32
Speaker
And so we're like, all right, we know we need tubes. We have a little pump. Let's just figure it out. And so we took the tire off, realized how the tube goes in, put a new tube in, aired it up, and we keep going. Well, dude, 15 minutes later, the tires flat again. And I'm like, what the hell, man? We just changed it. I'm like, is this every day? Do you just get flat tires all day long, all the time? Because that was, it took like an hour to change that first one.
00:44:59
Speaker
And what we learned though, it hit us, we're like, wait a second, we don't know what made the tire flat, maybe something stuck in the actual tire. And so sure enough, we run our fingers through the rubber and get pricked by this little piece of metal shard.
00:45:16
Speaker
and pull it out and then put another new tube in because we didn't know how to repair a tube necessarily yet. So we didn't take our chances and we figured out how to change a tire. Figured out you got to check the tire itself.
00:45:32
Speaker
That's just kind of how we did things. And figured it out as we went, everything from that basic, how to change a tire, to how to repair your bike itself. So a few days later, man, I'm not going to lie, the rack on the back that was holding our saddlebags just broke. The rack just snapped. One of the bars just snapped. And we're like, what the heck are we going to do? That's carrying half our stuff.
00:45:56
Speaker
And so we just got some zip ties out and strapped probably five or six zip ties around the rack itself to the frame and put a little piece of rubber between it to kind of keep it from scrubbing all day long. And that held the rest of the trip. Those five zip ties held for 4,500 miles.
00:46:15
Speaker
And it was like, oh, you know, a lot can go wrong, but a lot of times you don't need like a bulletproof way to fix things. You just kind of have to get by for the time being. Then there's just another thing we learned, like nothing's too crazy. And then there was one time we had to use like some tools and we just stopped in a mechanic shop and they were totally willing to help us figure something out real quick. So people are, you know, what we learned on that trip is that,
00:46:44
Speaker
You really are very resourceful. Everyone can kind of figure things out if you just take action. Like probably the biggest stressor, the thing that really adds to your worry is if you just don't take action. But if you just start doing things and start trying to figure it out,
00:47:02
Speaker
There are a lot of instances where this big scary mountain of a problem in your mind really isn't that hard to figure out. You just had to do it. And then the closer you get to it, you realize, oh, that's not a mountain. It's just a molehill. And we can just kind of step right over it.
00:47:18
Speaker
And there were other times that it is more complicated, but those were way fewer and far between than we would have imagined. We got back home and my dad's friends and his dad's friends and people we knew were taking bets on where we were gonna get killed. That's how little faith people had in us. Or we're taking bets to make it less extreme, we're taking bets on where we were gonna quit, because they're like, there's no way they can do this.
00:47:45
Speaker
And what we realized is it isn't that crazy what we were doing and it's also not that dangerous. The most dangerous aspect of doing a lot of these adventures and in our daily lives in general are vehicles, driving or biking next to the road. That was by far more dangerous than the
00:48:06
Speaker
the moose or the mountains or the weather or bears. We had a number, half a dozen bear encounters with grizzlies too. And yes, those are dangerous, but it's the 1,400 logging trucks flying by every day that aren't paying attention that are thousands of times more dangerous.
Challenges in Adventure and Sports
00:48:25
Speaker
And so- You have experience with that when you were biking across Iowa.
00:48:29
Speaker
Totally. Oh yeah, totally, man. So yeah, I'm really dragging this out. No, no, no, you're not. Yeah, so did a lot of cool bike trips, man, had a lot of fun. And after that first Alaska trip, it really was like, oh my God, there's this whole world of adventures out there.
00:48:47
Speaker
So just tried to start doing something every year ended up being bike touring because one thing I like about it it's you can carry a lot of stuff a lot more stuff than backpacking and Just enjoyed kind of the pace you can ride. You know 100 miles a day fairly easy once you kind of get into it and you can cover a lot of ground really quickly and see a lot of brought a lot of really cool places so
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah, huge advocate for it and hadn't done one. I hadn't done a personal trip, personal bike trips for a few years, but started with athletic about a year ago and they announced, you know, they wanted to open up a second brewery. And our first brewery is right on the East coast, like literally a hundred, 200 yards from the water in Connecticut from some of the inner coastal water. And I'm like, man, that's like right on the water. Our new brewery is in San Diego, which is almost right on the other coast.
00:49:40
Speaker
pretty much right there on the ocean. And I was like, we were talking about how do we want to celebrate this? And that was pretty clear to me. I'm like, we should totally bike from one to the other. And this one guy in the company, Christian, was like, he's actually, I think there's a one student that suggested it. He's like, Mason, you've got bike touring experience. Could we bike across?
00:50:01
Speaker
Hell yeah, we could bike across. That would be awesome. And so we did that this summer, kind of late summer. We did it all the August and half of September, and we just biked from one brewery to the other. It was really fun.
00:50:14
Speaker
Right. And you got hit on the back by a Ford F-150 side mirror or some guy trying to just buzz you off the road. And it was a hit and run that could have killed you. It didn't. But you're here. What was that experience like when you get struck by the side mirror and that car just buzzes off?
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, man, it was surreal. I know it's a cop out, but through my six bike tours, most of them cross country, 30,000 miles of biking or more, you never had an issue, never had an experience. And it wasn't really all that scared to be out on the road. Yeah, there were a handful of times that things got close, but nothing that said, I can't do this anymore.
00:51:07
Speaker
But yeah, we were just biking through Iowa. And just how the trip was set up, we would have one rider at a time and then a support van, which I had never had a support van for any of my trips. But this was a company trip, so we were documenting it. There was a lot more we were doing. And so it just made more sense to have like a person driving and a person documenting and then the rider itself. And then we'd all switch out, you know what I mean? Switch out a new rider and everyone kind of rotate a seat or something.
00:51:35
Speaker
And we wanted to involve our teammates because it was a company experience, but it was also tricky with COVID going on. So we were balancing all this. So at the end of one day, Chris Bailey, who works with us, he did like 120 miles, which was awesome. It was a great day. And I was like, you know, let me knock out like 30 more so we can kind of get a headstart on tomorrow. Cause it was only early afternoon.
00:51:59
Speaker
And so I'm like, you know, this is the first time in like two weeks I had been able to ride in the first, you know, you know, probably a week and a half of the trip. I hadn't ridden much. I just drove and was like super excited to get on the road. It was Iowa, you know, there's a cycling community. We were almost in Des Moines, which is, you know, big cycling area. They do rag-bri every year, which is the ride across Iowa. So I was like, you know, it's going to be a cycling friendly area.
00:52:23
Speaker
Well, a little bit I know that the kind of the rural culture of Iowa and the cycling culture almost felt at odds with each other at times. I don't know if it's just this long bread animosity about the rag-bri shutting down towns nearly every year or what, but it was really shocking and really strange. And also I've never seen that before.
00:52:48
Speaker
people were buzzing us, which is where they get really close to you and beep their horn or lay on the gas and spew out smoke all over you. A diesel engine can do that. It's called rolling coal. And it's super dangerous because you can't see anything and you can crash. We had a big gulp thrown at us and people just yelling all day. It was really bizarre. Brake checked, all that. And finally a truck pulled up really close to me. I'm going full speed down this highway.
00:53:17
Speaker
And I was just listening, I was listening to a podcast, just kind of looked around, beautiful day, riding fine. And this truck just hit me right in the back, going 60 or 70 miles an hour, man, full speed. And then, you know, it all happened so quickly, but the mirror just hits me right in the back of the, not the back of the head, thankfully, but right at my upper back.
00:53:39
Speaker
But then it slides up my back because it broke off and hits me in the back of the head and shatters all over my helmet and I thankfully wasn't knocked off the bike, but I immediately you know like oh My god, what just happened and the truck just takes off It was a you know it had you could hear the engine I have pipes and it just you could hear them floor It's just taking off after they hit me
00:54:01
Speaker
never hit the brakes, never swerve, never nothing. So what I felt like is someone buzzed me, but they realized they hit me on accident and they were like, oh crap, let's get out of here. That's my theory just because it was, they had to get off the road quite a bit to hit me and then just very smoothly got back on and took off. And so,
00:54:22
Speaker
Never found the person, filed a police report, obviously had to take some serious precautions in the trip after that. But I did pick up all the pieces of the mirror, the body of the mirror I could find and put it back together. And I keep it on my desk now. It's like, I almost died, man. You know, I've got a baby at home.
00:54:39
Speaker
a lot was going through my mind about, man, I could be dead. So easily have been dead if it would have been a few inches to the right because the handlebars actually did scrape along the side of the truck. And like it was that close going that fast. It would have been no question it would have just totally obliterated me. And it's very bizarre. A lot of people talk about what it's like to have an experience like that.
00:55:08
Speaker
And I don't know, it didn't really hit me. I mean, it wasn't like the before and after I got hit experience. It's like, I think about it now. I'm like, yeah, that was really bad and really close, but I definitely don't think about it every day. And I definitely don't hold any sort of anger towards this person. I am very curious about what kind of person that is just hits and runs and doesn't know if I'm okay or not, or if they knock me down.
00:55:37
Speaker
I have no idea who this person was, but I don't wish them, I just feel like what kind of person does that? And yeah, definitely makes me want to stay off the roads, those dangerous roads more, but.
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah, man, it wasn't like a super life-changing moment or anything, but it definitely makes me think like, wow, I really should live each day like it's your last, as people say, but just really live more intentionally, as intentionally as I can and make sure I don't take any day with my son or my wife for granted and just tell them I love them as much as I can. You never know.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think they're the fork in the road, if you will. It's like, OK, maybe this is my wake up call to maybe not do this anymore. But in the piece that you wrote for Spartan, you know, you wrote that my main takeaway was that everything will always be OK. I don't want to fold from fear or run from pain, but to embrace the challenges to get back up and keep hacking it. Because if we don't choose to push forward despite hard things, are we truly living or just slowly dying?
00:56:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's really intense. Right? It's like you kind of almost want to double down on the things that make you feel alive. And I kind of get back to what I was talking about earlier about you maybe setting the right example for your kid, because you got to get out there and you got to live, even if you have these close brushes that could threaten your very existence.
00:57:07
Speaker
Totally, totally. The moment, when the dude hit me, male or female, I don't know. He was dark tinted windows. I never saw the person. It was very fast. So I did pick up the mirror and I kept pedaling. I finished the miles for the day, not out of like,
00:57:27
Speaker
look at me, but it was like, I'm not letting this idiot win. They probably had no idea we were doing a cross country ride. They probably didn't care. Some ridiculous idiot is going to be reckless. They don't even know the repercussions of what they've done. If we quit or not, putting this whole plan on hold, ending someone's life,
00:57:52
Speaker
I didn't want them to win out of their recklessness or out of their selfishness, if that makes sense. Will they ever know that? No, probably not, but I'll know it. I'll know I stopped because someone decided to be an idiot. Now, does that mean engage with someone who's reckless? Definitely not. Not 10 minutes after this happened, I was buzzed again by a truck who told me to get off the road.
00:58:19
Speaker
And then that truck pulls up probably a quarter mile at this turn, pulls into the bike lane and gets out of the truck and confronts me. By this time I had, like right after it happened, I called the support van. They came and got the mirror and I told them I'd keep riding. And so after they left, I kept riding and saw this person who stopped me. And it was a very old man, older farmer.
00:58:42
Speaker
Got out of his big old diesel truck and I like trucks. I drive a truck. I'm from a rural area. I felt like I could relate to this person a lot, but they didn't want to hear any of that. They didn't want to get to know me like that. They just saw me as this goofy looking cyclist on their road out in the middle of nowhere I was. So it's like, by the time I pull up to this dude, he's already out of his truck and he's got his hands out like he wants me to stop.
00:59:06
Speaker
And he's already yelling and he's like, dude, he goes, he didn't say dude, but he said, y'all are keeping people from earning the living. I pay taxes for you to be on bike paths. You need to get the hell out of here. And he grabs my handlebars as I go by to stop me. Before I even pull up to this guy, I know 100% I'm not engaging because
00:59:30
Speaker
This person's, one, is an idiot. Two, probably has a gun and it's not worth winning an argument or trying to get them to see my side to be shot over. You know what I'm saying? I live in Florida, man. I see enough people just throw their life away over nothing, that throw their life away over just a stupid, reckless argument or decision.
00:59:57
Speaker
I didn't want to be a victim to that, if that makes sense. Like, oh, you know, so-and-so got mad about a lotto ticket, so they shoot somebody. You know what I'm saying? You see it all the time. It's terrible. And I'm not going to be losing my life and losing a chance to be with my children because of somebody being mad about a cycling.
01:00:16
Speaker
So, I knew I wasn't going to engage and this guy just was tearing me a new one, man. And I just told him, I'm like, hey man, I pay taxes. I'm biking across country. I'm with a non-alcoholic brewery. And he was like, you know, just screaming at me. He took his hands off the handlebars and I kept riding.
01:00:34
Speaker
people were watching, you know, there was a couple of houses there and I just thought, I ain't gonna get involved. And so yeah, I didn't want him to win either. You know what I'm saying? I didn't want him to get me mad. Like obviously you don't stop a stranger on the road unless you're willing to throw down and
01:00:52
Speaker
just escalate it. So tried my best not to escalate it and just kept going. And I showed him, I actually pulled up my jersey and showed him the cuts and the bleeding on my back where the mirror had hit me. And he did say, well, I'm sorry to hear that, but you shouldn't be out here. And I was like,
01:01:08
Speaker
knowing there are drivers like, yeah, I hear you're damn right. I shouldn't be out here because y'all are killers, man. Y'all are killing people. And sure enough, did some research, man. That past week, three other cyclists had been killed in that area from reckless driving. And it was like an epidemic almost.
01:01:28
Speaker
We didn't call off the trip, but we said we're only sticking to bike paths. We're only sticking to rail trails and only sticking to national parks. So we did change the route significantly, but we still completed our miles and did it 100% safely.
Taking Over the Adventure Sports Podcast
01:01:44
Speaker
So the big motto at Athletic is that we brew without compromise.
01:01:49
Speaker
but in order to brew non-alcoholic beer without compromise, you kind of have to have a mindset of living without compromise too. And so quitting would have felt like compromise, but so would have just been continuing without changing anything. That would have been compromise. So we found, you know, ironically a compromise that allowed us to not compromise if that makes sense. Yeah, definitely.
01:02:13
Speaker
And it's something that I've always been really impressed with you, Mason. Like the way you, without compromising the athletic adventure podcast you host, the way that you conduct an interview always struck me as very skilled. And I wonder how you developed your voice as an interviewer through the podcasts that you host and produce.
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, good question, man. You are the one that gave me that kind of framing of a shot clock. Like it's all going, yeah, yeah, okay. A shot clock is a great way to put it. Your clock's winding down as an interviewer. You don't want to take up too much of the airspace.
01:02:57
Speaker
But if you can't tell, I really like to talk. So I will talk your, that kill me, you're off if you let me. But as an interviewer, you're not talking about yourself. And so I do get caught into that sometimes of just over explaining a question or asking too many questions at once. But really, being a good interviewer, it's really simple. It's kind of like you have done here and you're doing such a great job. It's do some homework.
01:03:26
Speaker
know something about the person. I like to build about 10 to 15 questions out. I don't go by those questions, but I have them there if the interview goes off track or I don't know what to ask next. Because sometimes people start talking and the questions are out the window. You are going down this other tangent that's way more interesting, that's really exciting that you didn't foresee.
01:03:53
Speaker
Just being aware that that might happen, but if you just kind of get to a dead end, you have the questions to go back to that kind of follows a logical path or trajectory. So doing homework on someone's a big one. I like to spend 30 minutes to an hour at least researching someone, especially if they have a complex story. So that's some practical advice. The other thing is just being a really good listener.
01:04:22
Speaker
You can listen too hard, but really just stay focused during the interview. Listen to folks and just try to balance that interview, like being the interviewer and also having a conversation, because some people don't want to be
01:04:40
Speaker
They won't want it to be so formal, so I definitely try to hit a middle ground of being a very formal interviewer and being just a casual conversationalist. I don't try to make a joke all the time or try to be funny all the time sometimes, but it really is like draw out the truth in them and try to help the interview go farther than they usually take it.
01:05:00
Speaker
Don't be afraid of silence. You can cut that after the fact, because sometimes when you give someone some silence to think on or a break when they talk, they can think of something really powerful to say. So I try to, if someone's kind of done talking, but I want them to say more, I'll just not talk. Let them talk. And then another cool thing, a little trick I do, I'm totally happy with Sharon, because the more good interviews that are out there, the better for all of us.
01:05:30
Speaker
is I usually watch or listen to other people's interviews, and obviously there's a lot of questions that get asked the same. I try to ask questions based on their previous answers. So if you ask somebody, you know, hey, I hear you're from Florida, what's that like? And I tell you, I would try to listen to that answer, like say if I was to interview me after this interview, I would listen to my answer, then ask a follow-up question based on my answer instead of asking, hey, I hear you're from Florida again, if that makes sense.
01:06:00
Speaker
So it's just fun. It helps them go farther down an answer they've already given and just maybe new territory and you never know what that might lead to. Like I said, my personal life has taken a myriad of turns and twists I never could have expected and I try to treat interviews the same.
01:06:17
Speaker
A lot of very prominent interview shows out there, specifically hosted by a lot of high-profile men, they talk too much, they over-explain questions too much. They'll start a question, over-explain it, practically answer the question for the guest, and then maybe ask an entirely different question, and it drives me insane.
01:06:41
Speaker
I just can't even. And those are the models oftentimes because they have very big platforms. So who were some people that you admired as you were developing your voice in your style so you didn't fall into those traps?
01:06:58
Speaker
The two hosts of the adventure sports podcast before me were Kurt Linville and Travis Parsons. They both did a great job. I learned a lot from them. I was a guest on the podcast a handful of years ago, became friends with them. They got to a point in life where they needed to go do their own adventures and kind of move on. So I took the reins of the show just because I wanted to and wanted to kind of get more into interviews.
01:07:27
Speaker
And so they trained me for, you know, quite a while, a couple of months probably. And we made the transition very seamless and it was a very, I had not heard a lot of people like buying or acquiring a podcast that already existed, but they made it very seamless, trained me well. And the show has only grown since based on the work they did and how easily they made it for me. But I learned a lot from them. Some of my favorite interviewers
01:07:57
Speaker
I really like Guy Roz, who hosts some NPR shows, How I Built This is one that he does a really good job with, and then, what is it, Ted Radio Hour, and he's one of my favorites. He keeps it very conversational. I think Alex Goldberg, Alex Goldman, or Alex Goldberg, Alex Goldblum, whatever it is. There's an Alex Bloomberg.
01:08:22
Speaker
Oh, was it Alex Blumberg? Yeah, he used to be with This American Life and founded Gimlet. Oh, yeah. So that's him. Yeah. So Gimlet. So you know what I was thinking? I was thinking of the host of Reply All, Alex Goldman. Yes. Yep. Which is a Gimlet show, actually. Yep. So yeah, that was the confusion. So Alex Blumberg, I listen to him. Actually, one of his shows, Without Fail, similar to Without Compromise, in name and also in kind of premise, just talking to people about their successes and failures.
01:08:47
Speaker
and how they live a life without compromise and drew a lot of inspiration from him. I'm trying to think, man, there's definitely a lot more. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I think maybe those are just, it's recency bias, listen to them most recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:09:03
Speaker
Just always, I can tell a good interviewer. It's someone who listens, someone who really is, they're present. You can really tell when an interviewer is distracted or they're just kind of going off, they're calling it in in a lot of ways. I can definitely do that from time to time. If I'm tired, I'm doing interviews late at night.
01:09:24
Speaker
I've done marathons of interviews where it's like you just lose quality over time. But man, it's a lot of fun. And I will say podcasts are a great way to grow a network, a great way to learn a lot from people.
01:09:40
Speaker
And also just connect with people you never imagined you would. What other reason can you have a meaningful, powerful, reflective, insightful hour long conversation outside of podcasting in today's world? You know what I mean? With like an author or a figure that you want to talk to.
01:10:01
Speaker
I think podcasts are incredible. I hope they continue to grow. I hope they're here to stay. And I hope that the storytelling continues to improve. I will probably never be a really in-depth storyteller, someone that's telling like a narrative, but just the human conversation is so powerful to me. It's obviously easier to produce as a podcast versus trying to tell this elaborate story. So I think I'll continue to do them for a long time.
01:10:31
Speaker
Part of what I love about without compromise too and the people you speak with and what you're able to tease out so well is through these people that are doing really extreme things, certainly things that you can relate to with all the things that you've done, all the miles you've put on your feet and on your bike tires.
01:10:50
Speaker
is that these are people who are living something by example that so many people admire and wish they could do, and so many people are scared or reluctant. And what would you say to those people, and how do you get – and you're also able to tease it out from your guests?
01:11:09
Speaker
you know, how do you get people to be okay with the fear and taking a leap and maybe making that life-changing thing to really crack open the world in the way that you're able to tease out from the guests you have on without compromise? Man, great question. You know, I think
01:11:35
Speaker
A lot of what I'm learning is a lot of the truths in life. A lot of the things that are just just kind of truth throughout time and.
01:11:47
Speaker
kind of some of these basic principles of wisdom and kind of how to live our lives are a lot of times cliche, but they're also true and they're also right. It's like the one example I used before was making a mountain out of a molehill. I've heard that my whole life.
01:12:08
Speaker
but I never took the time to actually think about what it means and then you realize like oh I'm doing that or I do that all the time or keeping up with the Joneses like I realize you know I interview a lot of incredible people doing incredible things and so many of them say the same things is why I'm bringing this whole point up they say you know you just kind of have to go for it you don't have to be ready to start making a plan or just walk out your door and and go take the first step you know go to the
01:12:36
Speaker
the hiking store and buy that backpack or tell people you're gonna do it and it's like you hear all those things over and over again for a reason. It's because they work and because it is the step you gotta do. Start putting a few dollars in that envelope that says, you know,
01:12:55
Speaker
crazy adventure on it or whatever it is for you. And it just, it is true. So for folks that are, that maybe have a big idea or something scary they want to pursue, I really, really, really, or something out of the box, you know, that doesn't.
01:13:10
Speaker
isn't common. I tell people all the time, it's probably the most overused joke I have, when you sell non-alcoholic beer all day long, everything else just feels more doable. You know what I mean? Everything feels a little more within arm's reach, because you see it every day in every aspect of what you do on a daily basis for work.
01:13:32
Speaker
But anyone out there that has an idea, wants to pursue it, I really encourage you to learn from others who have taken a path less traveled. I encourage you to embrace how much it sucks sometimes, embrace maybe feeling inadequate, embrace, you know,
01:13:50
Speaker
Am I going the right direction? Embrace the doubt and just start going down that path and I think you'll realize very quickly you're not alone. Kind of like when I had the crazy idea, quote, to bike tour across America or across the North America.
01:14:06
Speaker
I thought I was coming up with this novel idea like travel by bicycle. Has anyone ever done that? And little do you know, it's an enormous subculture with companies all based on it in forums and blogs and websites and legends within it.
01:14:23
Speaker
A lot of times your novel idea might not be novel, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue it because it is novel for you and for your community. And it is, um, it is something worth going after, but yeah, I don't, I don't think you should quiet that voice within you that says maybe, maybe try something different.
01:14:39
Speaker
Nice. And of course, something I always love asking guests is kind of this bookshelf for the apocalypse. It's just these library for the end of the world. These books that are going to take up room in your valuable knapsack. And I wonder for you, Mason, what some of those titles would be. Really influential, important books that you can't part should the world go to shit.
01:15:03
Speaker
I know reading is obviously hugely important. Every leader will tell you. That's another thing that sounds definitely cliche, but it's true. You read a lot. It really can shape you and really can help you grow. I can't hardly sit down enough to read. I do listen to audio books, but there's one book I love to read.
01:15:25
Speaker
It's called John Brent by an author named Theodore Winthrop, and it's just this semi-fictional, semi-non-fictional account of this Civil War Union Army soldier, and he just has these
01:15:42
Speaker
crazy adventures. His name is not John Brett. It's his best friend's name that the book is about a friend that he's watching, this guy he's learning about and looking at from afar and kind of, you know, gets closer to and learns about. And it's just this, his friend lives this legendary lifestyle and you're looking at it through the author's eyes of like feeling kind of inadequate. Like I'm not living this incredible life. John is though.
01:16:06
Speaker
But you realize the author is right there next to John the whole time during all these stories. So he's living a pretty incredible life too. But it's apparently a nonfiction account about their kind of lives after World War or after the Civil War and going through kind of that cowboy culture of America, going across country, crossing paths with natives, crossing paths with like the gold rush and all these
01:16:36
Speaker
really cool, interesting stories. I just found it when my grandfather died, it was in a box in the attic. And I found it and I'm like, this is a really old book. And the copy I have is 110, 120 years old. I've only been able to see it in bits and pieces on the internet, but it's definitely searchable.
01:16:56
Speaker
and it's very thick, hard language to read but it's eloquent, it's beautiful, it's a very slow read for me and it just fills my head with this beautiful imagery of the west and of mountains and just adventure itself but really that's probably the only book I really read or reread. I start a lot of books. I don't finish a lot of books and I listen to a lot of audio books but nothing sticks out to me quite like that.
01:17:24
Speaker
quite like that book. There's love, there's tragedy, there's adventure, there's quiet times in these folks' lives. It's a really cool book.
01:17:35
Speaker
Nice, after speaking with you and having listened to hours and hours of your podcast, I can see how that appeals to you, so that's wonderful. There's a quote that, one of my favorite songs, it talks about there's these men that sit there and wish that they were born 100 years ago, and I definitely feel like someone that maybe would have done better in a time before technology.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah, time before Twitter. I think that book draws it out. Probably could have done better in a time where it was just very rugged and rough and dirty. But oh well, can't do it now. Nice. Well, Mason, I'm a great admirer of the work you do with your podcast and of course what you're doing with athletic brewing. So just thank you for the time and thank you for all the work that you're doing on multiple platforms.
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Brendan, for having me on. This was a really cool, creative, nonfiction podcast. I'm excited to get into it and listen to more. Amazing, right? Mason Grabley at alive underscore adventures on Instagram. Big ups to him and thanks to you for listening. Of course, why not?
01:19:00
Speaker
how
Writing and Submission Experiences
01:19:16
Speaker
sometimes I because I do this and this takes up so much of my time that I forget to actually write and do writing and to submit things and it felt felt good it's always I'm always I feel most alive when I hit that submission button I'm like whoa they haven't said no yet this could be anything
01:19:24
Speaker
great
01:19:35
Speaker
Anyway, in their guidelines they say, help us, say yes to you, bye, and they go on. And isn't that the crux of it all? We want our work published in places, but what are we doing so it's easy for the other person, the overworked person, the person who's in a shitty mood maybe that day, to say yes? I'd wager we don't make it as easy as we think we do.
01:20:01
Speaker
Today, for instance, I was in a really shitty-ass mood. This is what did it. It's bogus and bullshit, but whatever. I'm a flawed person.
01:20:13
Speaker
I was waiting to make a left-hand turn across River Road, and I was there for a good, solid two minutes, which in car-waiting years is like five years, guy. And this runner comes trotting up on my right from the sidewalk. And I guess technically, not that I was in a crosswalk, but if you were to paint a crosswalk, I would have been on it, but there's not one there, and you have to pull up to make this turn anyway. So I'm not fallible in this situation, got it?
01:20:42
Speaker
Which probably means I was, but neither here nor there. So I see him, and if I was this runner, and I've been this guy in the past, like if I see a car that's kind of in where I want to go, I just run behind the car, run around, and continue on my merry way on the sidewalk.
01:20:59
Speaker
So this jackass stopped dead as if to make a point that I was in his way. And he pointed to his left and to his right, so I don't know where the fuck he's going, and I motion run around the back of my fucking car. Meanwhile, I'm missing my fucking window to turn because this guy insists on waiting instead of moving.
01:21:19
Speaker
and I'm not entirely sure if he's gonna try and be a fucking martyr and run in front of me so he waits and yells for me to go but as I go I nearly get hit by a goddamn car coming at me at the left and he's yelling at me as I'm pulling out I scream at him from inside my car and throw my hands around in the car and I'm in the middle turn lane now turn only lane and he can't hear me and I watch him prance on his forefoot so sure of himself and I know he went home and was like
01:21:48
Speaker
There was this jackass driver who blocked my way and tried to motion him to go and he just stayed there like an asshole. Meanwhile, I'm telling you what a fucking prick this self-important runner was for not making it simple on all of us by running behind my car like a normal fucking person. You think vegans are bad and I'm one of them, this guy's the fucking worst. Ruined my day. Actually ruined my day.
01:22:15
Speaker
And that's a me problem I know, but still.
Show Notes and Reflections
01:22:18
Speaker
If you head over to brendanamara.com, hey, you'll find show notes to this show and others, and you can sign up for my monthly newsletter. New one went out today, first of the month. You can get a Zoom link to a monthly happy hour. This month, I have a special guest. It's not in stone, but I guess if you haven't signed up, I might as well just keep this information to myself. I mean, it's not 100% confirmed.
01:22:41
Speaker
So it'd be irresponsible for me to say that she is definitely in. I mean, she's in, but the date I selected might not work. But then again, it could. Let me get some water. I'm happy to report that on this New Year's Eve, as I record this outro, I have not had one drop of alcohol. And James Clearses... James Clearses?
01:23:11
Speaker
His excellent newsletter is the author of Atomic Habits. He asks, what is a mistake you seem to repeat each year? And what can you do to prevent it this time? I attribute too much relaxation and reward to food and drink. And I drink way, way too much anyway.
01:23:28
Speaker
And for years, I wonder why I'm not accomplishing my fitness goals and my professional and artistic goals. I attribute too much relaxation and decompression to food and drink. It's a wonder I'm not 250 pounds with bad knees. I'm like an all or nothing guy, too, so.
01:23:46
Speaker
Like, if there's a sleeve of Oreos right there and there's like 10 left and I eat three, I think, shit. Might as well eat the last seven and get them out of here. Then the shame cycle kicks in. I feel bloated and gross and can't sleep. And then I sleep in and I feel all sluggish. I swear. I just do that. I'm like, you know what? Things are gonna get better on Monday. It's exhausting.
01:24:10
Speaker
I know there's goodness somewhere inside this disgusting shell. I know it's there. And I sabotage it by overeating, over-drinking, or taking senseless day jobs that keep me from achieving what I'm capable of. So what is at the core of it? I eat and drink and fuck around because I'm afraid of what might happen if I'm really on the hook. Let that sink in.
01:24:33
Speaker
I just thought of that while I was typing up this script. By the way, I was a guest on the fiction-nonfiction podcast with Whitney and Sugi, a part of the Lit Hub Radio. Go check it out. I sounded like a buffoon, but you're used to that anyway, right? I mean, this outro is a rambling shit show of a mess, but like I said, day was ruined. So, I don't know. You might dig it.
01:24:58
Speaker
Those those two will be on the podcast soon like the episodes already in the can I just need to pick the right date of run it But uh, you know stay tuned won't you this episode of course a production of exit 3 media and everything by me Brendan O'Mara Hey
01:25:15
Speaker
So, as we wind down, as we bring this plane in, I asked my wife what she thought of this episode, and she said, like, that really sucks. Like, this sucks. Thanks for listening, Z and Fers. Stay cool. Stay cool forever. See ya.
01:26:05
Speaker
you