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Ep. 25: Bobby is struggling on day #2 Inca Trail
53 Plays2 years ago
Join Bobby as he is trying to reach the summit of Dead Women's Pass on the Inca Trai. Have you thought about hiking to Machu Picchu? Do you need an adventure or a push to get more physically active? Listen in as Bobby tries to get to the top.
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Transcript
Challenges and Preparations for the Inca Trail
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey guys, still on day two, Inca Trail track. This is Bobby. This is struggle.
00:00:16
Speaker
As I've said before, I only had about a month runway on this deal to get really practiced at stairs. There's a lot of steps. Oh my gosh. I'm about four and a half hours in on this day. It's mid-September. The weather's actually been gorgeous. There's a real,
00:00:44
Speaker
breeze right now that you probably can hear. It's a pretty pretty amazing journey that I'm able to to be on here. I wished I had a walked more. I wished I had a train more.
Life Decisions and Journey Enjoyment
00:01:06
Speaker
Has anyone ever said that to themselves? Yeah, you probably have. But you know what? A lot of times in life, you find yourself in a spot that you're like, you know what? Here I am. I need to figure this out. You've got to figure out, do I turn back?
00:01:34
Speaker
Do I keep going? Do I stop and pause? That can be a really tough decision. You know, I think some people say you gotta know when to stick and know when to quit. I think
00:02:00
Speaker
Part of my journey here has been trying to figure out how to actually enjoy that journey component. I struggle with that.
00:02:17
Speaker
Now I hear lots of cheering in the background. That's always a really good sign because usually that means that I'm close to the rest spot.
00:02:38
Speaker
I had to pause for a moment here just to kind of catch my breath. If you're doing the Inca Trail or a hike with some elevation gain, I'd encourage you to get a heart rate monitor. That's actually been super helpful for me. I'm a person that
00:03:02
Speaker
kind of struggles a little bit with knowing when I should really kind of take a moment to have a pause. And so that can really kind of help you, helps you with training, but also helps you with something like this.
Authenticity and Creativity in Content Creation
00:03:24
Speaker
I had to pause to put on a windscreen
00:03:31
Speaker
because it's windy as all get out. This is not beautiful audio. You know, we have a YouTube between 2T and getting remotely less bad at video and audio took a long time, but we're also gritty.
00:03:53
Speaker
We're busy. We don't like to do a whole lot of post-production stuff. And what I've been told is a lot of people kind of like that it's different that way. But I wanted to take you along on this adventure. You know, one of my hopes is that perhaps
00:04:17
Speaker
What we're doing with our own Inca Trail adventure kind of pushes you to do your own. You know, I'm on, actually it's about almost five hours now of walking straight uphill, couple of breaks, no official lunch, a little bit of a nibble. It's getting cold now, but I'm looking around and I see these high mountain peaks.
00:04:47
Speaker
I see this peak they call the dead woman's pass. That I think is kind of one of the stopping points, my next stopping point, one of the higher elevations that we do. But I'm looking around and I see down into this valley and I see the mountains. It's just absolutely gorgeous. You look close enough, you see some llamas, horses, some cattle,
00:05:18
Speaker
I took time to smell some flowers. Saw some hummingbirds. That was all. Pretty fantastic. If you're in a race, you miss a lot of stuff. There's times to be in a race. The younger folk in this group, aka Steffi Steph,
00:05:44
Speaker
some of the Aussies. They kind of raced the first section and kind of wore them out. One of them was kind of mentioning they had sat and they were sitting and having a break just like I was.
00:06:08
Speaker
the rest of the people that were at a slower pace. One of the things I learned in surgery training programs was you really are well served figuring out when you can go fast and when you need to go slow. There's a, there's a benefit to efficiency.
00:06:35
Speaker
I really struggle with efficiency as far as making it too much of priority sometimes. If Steffie Steph was here, she'd say, I get into producer Bob mode, or I want the right camera shot, the right audio, right discussion.
00:06:55
Speaker
producers produce, make things happen. But there's some downsides to that. It doesn't allow you to be creative. It doesn't allow you to go with the flow. Amazing things happen when you slow down.
00:07:14
Speaker
Part of this journey for me, as I mentioned before, is figuring out my why.
Purpose and Inspiration in Life
00:07:20
Speaker
Why? Why do I do what I do? I had the benefit of sort of looking a little bit at that when I did my MBA program.
00:07:31
Speaker
I had more of an in-depth sort of look at dissecting my own why when I did a senior executive fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School a couple years ago. And figure out why you do what you do.
00:07:49
Speaker
Have that be your guiding light. You know, what do you want to do? I'd really push you to sit down with a pen and paper and just write down why or what is my why.
00:08:03
Speaker
Just write some stuff down. What's important to you? What do you want to do? It doesn't have to be a forever thing. I had one that was to, my previous one for two years, been to push myself and others to fully live, laugh, and love.
00:08:21
Speaker
And it fit me but I'm ready for something different. I want to try something different. I want to improve my life.
00:08:36
Speaker
I want to improve the lives of those around me. And there's many, many ways to do that. Part of what we try to do with between two teeth is just show something. Some would say, and we've heard a lot, you know, we're kind of showing something off to the extreme. I've had people quite, well, anonymously,
00:09:03
Speaker
telling me I certainly share too much. But if you want to help others and change others, you don't have to listen to it. But I think you're helped in your wise if you share a message. It's really hard for me just to be thinking things and not telling anyone. And so I think certainly the YouTube environment, the podcast environment, some of the things we're doing through
00:09:33
Speaker
various things as wellness initiatives. We're just putting something out there. I had a buddy Sloan that would ride dirt bikes. One of these crazy adventures.
00:09:46
Speaker
I crazy, like ever's base camp and beyond and we'd just be up in the mountains and just kind of seek shelter under a tree, wild stuff. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And I was at a point in my life. I was really unhappy. I was pretty burned out. I felt as though I was not, certainly not living my best life. Life was crushing me.
00:10:17
Speaker
and I wanted to be a little bit like him and I said to myself I can't be Sloan for a variety of reasons one because I'm Bobby the other thing is I was too scared I was kind of scared to go for it and
00:10:40
Speaker
But I said to myself Bobby you can do something you can get out there and do a little bit and I realized When you get out there and do some interesting things You're gonna learn a whole lot of stuff Some of it's gonna be a struggle train I've had motorcycle adventures that really really
00:11:09
Speaker
pushed me out of my comfort zone.
Learning from Adventures and Support Systems
00:11:13
Speaker
You know, temperature wise and just getting lost and kind of having campsites not work out and it's dark or getting dark and you see snakes and you've got like a shelter tent that has no clothes zipper on it. You're like, man, that's something.
00:11:38
Speaker
I don't like snakes. But you get through it. And you don't want to be dumb. I don't want to die. But I want to live my life. And that is going to mean I'm going to struggle.
00:12:01
Speaker
That is going to mean I'm going to fail a lot. I tell my boys, if you are not failing, you are most likely not trying hard enough. You got to be okay with failure.
00:12:20
Speaker
Frankly, you're well served by failing early in life. Kind of tough if your first failure's like in your 20s or 30s. That's kind of tough. But don't let that destroy you. Sometimes you gotta take a pause.
00:12:44
Speaker
Sometimes you've got to ask others to help you through that challenge. And I've been there. I think that's one of the benefits of having a group, you know, here.
00:12:58
Speaker
this Inca Trail trek, we are here with a group. There was 11 of us. One had some pretty bad GI problems and ended up not starting the Inca Trail, which I can see that would be brutal to be sick and get dehydrated. We ended up, even though the water that
00:13:21
Speaker
They give us as boiled, we take an extra measure and use a water filter. So far, so good. But there's times where it's gonna be rough and having people around you to help you. One of our other folks on this trip is really kind of struggling, probably with a little bit of altitude sickness, maybe some other,
00:13:49
Speaker
sickness and one of the younger chaps is carrying some of her stuff up the mountain and just people helping people is an amazing thing we're sharing snacks and sharing medicines and sharing all kinds of stuff you know right now I'm alone because I'm going my own pace
00:14:18
Speaker
which is slow.
Gear and Preparation for Trekking
00:14:21
Speaker
And for me, that works. Going up is brutal. Having hiking poles helps an awful lot. Steffie Steff has them. She hasn't really used them. Once we get past this steep elevation on the backside, I think it's down for a couple of hours,
00:14:48
Speaker
which hiking poles can be a big advantage for that. Hiking poles you can't, if you're in America, you can't do them carry on. Even here in Peru it's a bit of an issue so you're going to have to kind of check that.
00:15:05
Speaker
luggage if you're on an airplane. But they're really great. A lot of companies rent the poles, rent the sleeping bags, so you can rent all kinds of stuff. And it's good not to have a whole lot of stuff.
00:15:27
Speaker
We all ended up kind of leaving stuff at the first hotel that you planned on not taking on the Inca Trail track. Then we had the option of the second hotel leaving some stuff.
00:15:40
Speaker
And today I lighten my pack. This is the tough day. Where it's about a seven hour track. First five are all uphill. Couple thousand meters of elevation gain. But it's just stone after stone after stone.
00:16:05
Speaker
Once again, I am not in the shape that I'd like to be. It would probably be a lot more enjoyable if I had done a couple more months of training. I think that's one of the benefits and blessings of
00:16:24
Speaker
putting something on the calendar six months out, especially if you're not overly active, it gives you a chance to say, here's the date. Now let's get a training plan. Let's get moving. Let's get doing something every day and just see slow, slow progress.
00:16:49
Speaker
oh boy I guess in closing make life an adventure make it your adventure we're all on our own hikes we're all on our own trail it's individual for every one of us none of us are on the same journey although there's certainly some commonalities
00:17:17
Speaker
You know, you will fail. You will struggle. You will get out of breath. If you go slow, if you get good advice, have people around you to help you, some pretty cool things happen. So on that note, I'm getting ready to do the last descent. I can hear some hooting and hollering.
00:17:42
Speaker
So I'm hoping that means that this can be time to take a little bit of a rest. So thanks for checking things out. If you like what we're talking about, please hit the subscribe. Bye.