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Welcome to the Aggressive Life. Tell me if you hear this one. A pastor, a builder, a tax accountant, and an energy businessman hop in their trucks and they drive 9,000 plus miles from Spokane, Washington, all the way through Canada into Alaska, getting as far north as the Arctic Circle. Have you heard that one? Have you heard this one? A dyslexic walks into a bra. We saw that written on a, written on a stall in a little village in Alaska that I did with these guys. For 30 days we camped. Everything that we needed was in our trucks. We ate in the woods, slept in the woods, and pooped in the woods, us and our wives. We might have had two showers the entire time. We saw bears, doll sheep, salmon fished. Tried to conquer Alaska. and we worked together to do it. And it was freaking awesome. So today, it's all about making all of our listeners of The Aggressive Life jealous. That's what we're here for, to make you jealous. No, we're actually gonna talk about our summer Alaska adventure, and maybe you're jealous, maybe you're not interested at all, maybe you just hear somebody's story that you hadn't thought of before or even considered. There's a different way to do a vacation. It was a year in the planning, and we pulled it along, pulled it off alongside my friends. Chuck, Jeff and Kim, who are here in the studio, and I probably shouldn't even tell you those names, I never even used those names. Let's just go around right now and introduce yourselves. Kim Baird, been a Crossroads member since about 2009. I just retired in January. I used to be a tax accountant. So my wife, Lori, volunteers here at Crossroads. And yeah, this was an epic trip, trip of a lifetime, so. Wonderful. You can bear it also, AKA dry clean. The cleanest person you could possibly imagine. So clean. So clean every day. So clean. So nice. So clean all the time. Okay, great. You, man? So my name's Chuck Whitlock. I'm a husband of one, father of three. I have five dogs, a horse, and 10 chickens. I live in Northern Kentucky. I like Jesus. enjoy spending time with Brian. Right, and you are Mian, that's who you are. Man, man. Because I never sing man. I gave him his nickname, I said, okay, why don't we start calling you Mian? He said, what are we talking about? I said, you always say that. I said, what? I said, you always say Mian. And he paused for a moment and he went, I don't know that I like that, Mian. Stop. I'm Jeff Tucker, a retired president of Tucker Homes, handed off to the next generation. And I'm still working in the industry and some consulting stuff. And I live in Indiana, been at Crossroads since 2010, got a great wife and four kids, and it was a great trip. Yeah, so Crossroads is my day job. This is not a Crossroads podcast, which is the church I started in the lead, but my friends, believe it or not, go to the church that I go to and the church that I started. And so that's why the Crossroads thing came up here. And I think that for me is maybe the best part of the trip is I am thankful that I had four great dudes and good spouses to have a good time with. It was great. Yeah. It was awesome. Right back at you. Maybe we want to start with you, Dry Clean, because I think yours is kind of the most interesting, most aggressive story of ours in terms of how you got on the trip. You just retired. Tell us your story. What you told people at your corporate retirement party, you said you're a tax accountant. You ran the tax accountant at a Fortune 5 company or something like that. The main tax guy, kind of a big deal. And what happened to your retirement party and how'd that all go down? Well, let me just go back to when I got invited to this because you and I were traveling last year in September. And we were talking, I think we were talking about how I was an old farmer. I camped when we were younger and everything, and all of a sudden we're just having a drink, and Brian says, hey, we're going to Alaska next summer. I want to go. And it's like, oh my. I mean, it was... It was a great experience. My first thought was absolutely, of course, because when you told me about the trip, it sounded fantastic. When I went and told the people at work that I was gonna be retiring and I was gonna go to Alaska, I had a lot of friends who basically looked at me like I was crazy. And I kinda like that because I kinda like that. You know, it's like, hey, this is something. That's why we're friends. This is something. Tax accounts are all crazy. They are. But long story short on that, you know, it. And then we're starting from scratch, because all of you had overlanded before, all of you had trucks, we didn't have anything. So I was looking at you, Brian, I was looking to Chuck for some coaching on what do I need? How do I do it? I didn't even know Jeff yet. Jeff didn't show up until we went to Kentucky for the test run a couple months before we went to Alaska. So that's our story. So we just We started putting it together. And if you don't know overlanding, how would you define and describe overlanding to somebody who doesn't even know the term? Overlanding is you've got everything on your truck. So you've got a big truck, got a tent on top. You've got your gear. You've got a refrigerator. You've got a water tank. You've got everything you need. You've got extra fuel. And you're going places where other people don't go. So you're off the trail. You're off the road. You're back into the mix, into the stuff. It's not your typical camping, you know, where you pull in and you go to a spot and you camp at a... at a state or local campground or whatever. You're camping wherever we decide to camp that night. Right, and you're pooping wherever nature has a spot for you and all that stuff. Exactly, exactly. So that was a big adjustment. And you said big truck, not necessarily big truck. Because... Easy. Because the rock thrower? Easy, the rock thrower? Or a Hot Wheels. You can take a little Hot Wheels vehicle. Aw, come on, man. No. The Red Rock Slinger. Red Truck of Death. How many windshields does your truck crush? Oh, at least three. Ha ha ha. All of us just were going down these roads and just got pulverized by rocks in our windshield. And yours, whatever, threw it up the biggest. I don't know what it was, but it was. Those little tires. It was. Those itty bitty tires threw big, big rocks. Beans, how come you didn't mention Ziploc bags and sat phones and. on your overlanding trip. You were kitted out. I had a long checklist. I was prepared. We were prepared for anything. A place for everything and everything for a place. And a speck of dust never on anything. Right. The roll top cover was nice, though. We got some of those dusty roads. You guys spent a lot of time cleaning up your gear and everything. I'm trying to think here. I know a lot of people are never going to overland. And this is not a, hey, start overlanding podcast. Uh, everyone ought to get to Alaska podcast though. I think it's pretty awesome and I would encourage you to, but I'm just trying to remember things that I was impressed by of ways that we all pushed ourselves and got out there and you went out and you bought this, uh, brand new truck. And you got to kid it out, right. Which anybody can do that. But then what you did in the inaugural test run in Kentucky. which you and Kimberly had never done this before. You then, and in Alaska, put your truck in harm's way and put all kind of scratches all over it. And there's a lot of us that really have the stuff, but we can't bear the thought of it getting scratched. It's like the goal is to keep it preserved. No, the goal is to live life. And I was really impressed with that, with you, because... as an accountant, I mean, you're paid and your natural wiring is everything to tie, everything lines up, everything has its place, everything needs to make sense. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to take a very expensive truck and put stripes all over from branches. Was that hard for you? What do you think about that? Initially, definitely, no doubt about it. But the more you do it, the more it is just part of the process. And now when I see the trucks that are nice and shiny with the big wheels at And I'm not being judgmental here. Go ahead. It's good to be judgmental. The mall crawlers? The mall crawlers. Embarrassing. I think to myself, wow, look at that. I can't believe he did that. And look, he doesn't have a scratch on that. And part of the adventure is getting to those places. Unless you can get to those places. You know. I mean, then it's just you are, you're just going down the road looking for a campground. So exactly. So so I got over that. You warned me about it, but I got over it. And and now, you know, it is what it is. And it's just part of the game. Yeah. That's right. Attitude. Yeah. And the whole overlanding thing, I agree with you when it comes to. I mean, and I think I saw you say this one time, but if you if you are considering something like this, just go do it because you're going to learn as you go. And then if you can partner up experience doing it, you can have some fun. It took us a while to figure out what we needed and what we didn't need and everything. We're still working on it. I think that's part of the fun of this hobby and any hobby really, it's the research and the learning phase. Oh yeah. You know? Man, you saved us all a lot. I've been to Alaska one time on my motorcycle. You had been there several times, lived there for a while. You ended up being the trip captain, leading and. figuring stuff out for all of us, you and May, how was the trip for you? So I think it was awesome. You know, when I've thought about since the trip, I think that the biggest thing for me is how you could put eight people together and not just have rock fights all the time. That was amazing. You know, but going to Alaska, there's no other, there's no other place that I've seen in the world that's like Alaska. I mean, even when you're driving through Canada, you see big mountains and you're like, oh my gosh, right? And then you get to Alaska and you're like, are you kidding me? So living there for six years, it was a pleasure for me to kind of show you guys Alaska. And then I got to see parts of Alaska that I hadn't seen. And probably more in the Yukon territory, like I'd never been to Dawson city. I never did that one road where the guy, where was that trucker that broke down? Was on the road for Campbell highway. The guy was- He'd been there two days. Yeah, two days, man. Like just sitting there. 18 wheelers. So I got to see. Did someone, someone come for him? We didn't leave him. No, no, no. Yeah, no. Well, we, we probably should have given him some food, but yeah, he said his buddy left two days earlier and was going to come back and get him and we should have let, we should have. should have let him use a sat phone, you know? My cell phone didn't work, right? My cell phone didn't work anywhere. I mean, his douchebag phone. Yeah, right, right. Love you guys. Nobody has, nobody has a sat phone who isn't a douchebag, nobody. So, but it was awesome. I love Alaska, I love living there, I love showing you guys Alaska, I love seeing new spots, I got to go to, you know, like every place in the world that's cool. More people show up. I think when we went into Kennecott, when we went back to the mines, we drove what, 35 or 40 miles on a dirt road to get back there. And when I had this glacial moraine pictured, you know, with the big mountains behind it, and we showed up and it was like Disneyland, man. And I was like, are you freaking kidding me? But I guess that's the nature. But I enjoyed it. It was relaxing. there were only a couple of times that being the, cause I'd never led a trip like this before, you know? And so it was probably, I spent a lot of time with my wife in the truck. And when I was feeling kind of all the things that were coming as, you know, where are we gonna try to get to? How's this all gonna fit in? My wife bore a lot of that anxiety and, or you know, whatever. So it was good for us to figure out how to handle that. And that was that day I came to you and I'm like, man, we gotta, my wife needs a shower, man. So we need a break. And so we went to Girdwood and hung out there for a day and then she had her batteries recharged and it was awesome. It's a leadership is a taxing thing. And I've been on enough trips like this or bike trips to know that perpetual democracy for every decision breaks down real fast. You need a leader. Now every once in a while, some of the trip can go, hey, raise a flag, I don't know if I like that decision. That can happen every once in a while, that's fine. But like, what do you guys wanna do today? When do you guys wanna stop? Where do you guys wanna eat? Okay, we're gonna do, who wants this campsite? You could do it every once in a while, but man, when it's like that, every decision, oh gosh, it's brutal, and you served us well. Well, I think you guys were easy to lead to, right? In a lot of ways. You guys were awesome. And I didn't want it to be my trip. I wanted it to be everybody's trip. And so there were times where I would go like, here's the plan. And more often than not, everybody was like, I'm down for that. Lori wanted way more information than I even had because I'm not a planner by nature. And so she was like, where are we going? I'd tell her the next town on the map. That's where we're going. And then after that, I'm not sure. I love the map sessions. Right. Yeah, for sure. We'd lay them out and plan. We did that three or four times, having skin in the game. And it was cool. Right. I would, it was great. Jeffrey, you were the latest ad and the last ad of the trip. Tell us about just how you got in the trip and what you had to do to make it happen and everything. Well, so we went on an overlanding trip with you. And. Kim and Chuck and the first night you guys started talking about this Alaska trip. I'm going, wow, that is really awesome that they're going. And so that was Friday night and Saturday night. That was his inaugural trip in Kentucky. That's the first I'd met Kim and Laurie. So yeah, so got to meet them and you guys were talking about the trip. And, and I just remember thinking Friday night when I went to bed, wow, that's really cool. That would, I bet that's going to be awesome. And then Saturday night we're sitting around the fire and, and. You and Chuck said, hey, you guys ought to go with us. And I said, I've just got to, I've been working in Romania and I had to make sure I could clear all that and make it work. And I did. Or quit. And I probably, if they would've said, we can't sacrifice you, I would say, we're going to find somebody else. Cause I was, I really, really wanted to go and my wife really wanted to go. And so it took me about three days of some phone calls and emails and I got it worked out and texted you and said, I'm in. Yeah, so and we're just I'm just really thankful you guys asked and really thankful that we went because it was and that little truck man We couldn't even see you in the rear Stealthy that's how I broke all those windshields a little truck. All it could hold was your Marlboro cigarettes That's all the only reason you got invited. So someone I could have Marlboro's with Organic peach juice every day. That's all he does. You got dry The only calories he takes in are dry lettuce. Well, I don't care why I got invited. I'm just glad I got invited. I'm glad you were there. Completely right. It was just terrific. It was just, everything about the trip was terrific. I loved every time we had something mechanical going. Jeff went to his truck and he brought out another tool bag. He had everything. He really did. You came prepared. Yeah, he was. You had the right tool for the job again and again and again. Well, just, you know. dumb luck and, you know, being on a few trips and being around equipment, you kind of get an idea what you might need. But we all pitched in on some stuff. That was another cool thing. You know, if something broke, Chuck might have the tool or you might have the tool. And it was great. I think there was one time we had all four of us maybe laying under a truck looking at something. But what do you think we do here? So you know, figuring that stuff out. It was just... It was just great. It was, it was part of the fun. It's pretty amazing, really. The only thing we had was a, what, a five hour detour and fairbanks because your wheel bearings went out. Was that, was that it? Yep. Yeah, that was it. That was fortunate. What's his name? Daniel? Yeah, Daniel. You were talking to Daniel a lot. So listen, man, my job is to talk to everybody. Exactly. Stop it. Stop talking to everybody. You get out of the freaking car. It's going to happen. He sees some, he sees some guy driving a bike, riding a bike, huh, man? What kind of bike you got? Where'd you drive from? Where are you going to? So what PSI's your tires at? Not fair. So that, but that. That Daniel, so I was thinking about this trip and I think the big, one of the things for me, I remember Daniel, that guy, just his story. And then the young kid when we were in Chicken, Alaska, the guy that was from LA shows up in Chicken, Alaska and he wants to learn to bartend. Right. And I'm just thinking about all these people, man, that just have these, their stories are so cool and amazing and they're just out doing stuff that. that most people would never like, if you told me a hundred ways to learn how to bartend, going to Chicken Alaska wouldn't make the list. So let's talk about these. This is about stories. It's part of what you get when you get outside yourself. You see things and talk to people you normally wouldn't. So these are two interesting stories. So bartending Chicken Alaska, that doesn't mean anything to the average person. Tell us. What's Chicken Alaska? What does the bar look like? Why would someone get a job at this place? It's in the middle of nowhere, and there is an old gold mine. And they got like a- That's three buildings. Yeah, three buildings and a big gigantic metal chicken. And they got a bar, a restaurant kind of deal, and then a gift store, and then five outhouses. And we stopped there. And the gift store doesn't even have anybody tending to it. You have to go get- No, they're all open. Yeah, they're all open. You got to go get the guy at the food shop to come down and sell you something. The guy that wants to learn how to bartend. Right. He's like, I'm not trying to learn how to sell t-shirts, man. Right, exactly. And so the guy that was in there, you know, again, I didn't start talking to him, but I ended up talking to him. And his story was he was from Los Angeles and he couldn't figure out how he wanted to be a bartender. And he couldn't figure out how to he couldn't get a job as a bartender. So he's like, I'm going to chicken Alaska to get experience. And they hired him. That's what he's, you know, then we'll go back to LA and go, yeah, I tended bar for, you know, a year and chicken Alaska. No, he didn't tell people that tending bar men's and by four bottles of alcohol and by four people a day that came in. But yeah, you could, you could check it off. I love, I was looking for my whole pictures. It's the kind of place that had these placards that I almost bought once, and I took a picture of all of them. Like one of them was like, forecast for tonight. alcohol, low standards, and poor decisions. Remember that one? There was one that said Sasquatch doesn't believe in you either. Right, exactly. That was the other one. And since it's in Chicken Alaska, Rise and Shine, Mother Cluckers was another one. I love that stuff. That was great. So Daniel, there's another interesting thing. Oh, okay. So we had this guy in Chicken. He tells us, hey, when you go whatever, there's a bartender down there like, what bar? What are Oh, when you go to Dawson City there's a bar where you can have a drink and have a petrified toe that fell off a guy's foot decades ago. You can have a shot of whiskey and the toe touches your lips. When you see that, you're like, whoa, what? What? What are you talking about? So yeah, go in there. And what was the guy's name? Danny or something like this? Tell them I sent you. Okay. So we ended up going to Dawson City and... Have you ever had a shot of whiskey with a toe that came off a human being at the bottom of the glass before that when you drink it, it either goes down your throat or just stops at your teeth and lips. We all did it. It was amazing. Sour toe Joe. That's what it was. It was amazing. And the bartender there knew the guy at Chicken. Yes, he did. It was like a five hour drive. Right. It was Rob and then they had the captain. I can't remember. Well, all the except for me and you don't drink, respectively, but so you didn't do it, but we found out about it. I thought it was gonna be my only drink, my first drink ever. I know. And then I was like, yeah, and I'm not doing it. I think that was a good decision. The toe. Keep the mojo going. Yeah, keep it, keep it. That's 58 years of no alcohol and it's not gonna... I liked your line that if, because people always say, hey, you wanna have a drink? I'll have a drink. You could always say everything that I don't know. one drink, Sour Toe Joe, whatever it is. Unless there's a dead toe in it, I'm not doing it. Right, exactly. That's the only drink I have. If you cut your toe off and put it in there, I'll have it. If not, forget it. And then Daniel, give us the Daniel story. So Daniel was, so that's the guy, you found him, Brian. It was when we pulled into Fairbanks, right? And I rolled my window down. We just came out of the Arctic Circle. And I hear this wheel bearing grinding. And so... we all get on the phone to try to find a guy and you found the shop. And so we go over there and this guy's a really, just a really interesting guy. He was from Louisiana, I believe. He was an Allison transmission tech. And so I started talking to him about, cause I wanna swap the Allison transmission in that Dodge. And so just hearing his story, he had something wrong with his brain and. This guy hired him, couldn't do a lot of heavy lifting, but he was down to change the wheel bearing for me and ended up changing two wheel bearings. Right. After hours. Right. After hours. Right, so it would have been, you know, the chances of getting that stuff fixed. Well, it couldn't have happened in a better spot in Fairbanks. And then to have that guy, you know, I think we were even talking about flying him down here as the guy that owned the shop. had bought a Dodge in Columbus, Ohio. And I was like, fly him down here and I'll get that transmission and he can swap it in my pole barn. And then I found out that it was six weeks out for the transmission, so that wasn't happening. But just a really interesting guy, man. And so, you know, I think that was, for me, a big part of this trip was just connecting and seeing people that are just living life, man. And they're, you know, I mean, making stuff happen. He had one kid and was recently divorced, had something happen with his brain. Just a really genuine guy, very helpful. Very good dude. And man, I love talking to him. Yeah. for sure. I'm curious from you guys, we all run in different circles. We're all friends, obviously. We were friends to some degree before we started. And then obviously, you don't spend four weeks with somebody else, and then they'll become even a better friend with them. But we all have different friendship circles back here at home. We're interacting with different people. I believe that's the case anyway. I'm curious, what do you tell people? Like, what's your first memory you tell people? Or say, how was it? What happened? Is there a memory or two that you just go or an event or two that you're always the ones you tell people about? How about you, Jeffrey? Oh, you for sure got to bring up the Glacier View car along. Oh my gosh. So that's the first one for you? Yeah. Is that the first one for you, man? It depends on the crowd, but yeah, probably. All right, we'll get around it. So tell us about it. So you talked about it in service yesterday, but we... Somebody sent a video out like the end of May. that showed this Glacierview car once. That would be me. That was you, okay. That was me in. So we're within a couple hours of Glacierview, Alaska. We spent the night at Hatcher's Pass the night before, and we end up getting there, and the gates open at nine o'clock. We got there at nine o'clock. We paid our money. And if you would have told me at any point before that you're gonna sit in a chair from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon. Now you're going to get up and walk around, but, but you're just going to sit there. I would go, there's no way I want to do that. It was one of the most glorious things I've ever witnessed in my life. And it was just that whole day was just a blast. And we just, you know, so we go to this thing, it's like three hour wait to get out of the parking lot because there's so much traffic and there were these kids in this Chevy van and they roll out with a karaoke machine and we did karaoke for two hours with people we didn't know. And it was just, and it was just, it was just great. It was just, you know, and, and most people, when I tell them, they just don't get it. They just don't, it doesn't register. When you tell them that 20 cars, one at a time, we're driven at full speed off a 300 foot cliff and they land in a protective water moat. just in front of you so you don't die. Yeah. You don't tell them that. They don't get that. I tell them all of it and they're like, Oh, that sounds okay. It's like, it was, it was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. You know, it was like, you know, like the, the wildest dreams you have as a kid of crashing up cars and it was all right there. It's, it's mesmerizing. It is. To have. Was there 10,000, 15,000 people there? Around 10 or 12, something like that. Sitting there and a horn goes, wah! And everyone's talking, have a beer, and then all of a sudden, dead quiet. Eh. And that was when this car comes launching off. Everyone's going, oh! It comes up and it hits. Everyone goes, ah! Every single time. It was amazing. It was so good. And my, if you say specific to traveling to Alaska, that long day, the Atlin Lake, that campsite, because we stopped pretty early. We'd been going pretty hard and we stopped early that day and we left late the next day because it was just such a beautiful site. And I felt like everybody kind of got their batteries recharged at that site. And it was just a really sweet. sweet spot and was in a nice time. We broke our kayaks out. We broke our, at midnight, right on. Yeah, it didn't get dark. Yeah. It was just, that was a really special spot for me. So you hit those again and again. How about you, man? What's the question? When someone says, how is Alaska, what's the first two stories you tell them? Yeah, so I think it would depend, but I think the car launch would come in, you know. I think the people that I hang out with probably appreciate that. If I had a deeper conversation, it would be along the lines of the people that we just connected with, right? I mean the guy that led the karaoke. I mean that guy, if I saw that guy a hundred times, I'd probably never engage with him. But what a pleasant human being, right? I mean he was so supportive of people. He sucked singing himself, but he was just, he was a really genuine guy. Died hair, green, purple. Yep. Colored braces, the whole deal. He smelled. Yeah, they all smelled. There was a bunch of deadheads in a van, basically. Don't laugh, your daughter might be in there. Right, exactly. These kids start rolling out of it and they stink the high heaven and they have a karaoke outside and they have a karaoke machine and they have a great attitude and they're really sweet people. They were just trying to build into people. They were delightful. It was really... So I think if, so those would be the stories I would probably talk about, it was a lot of driving, man. I mean, we drove a long ways. Right. And you're spending, you know, you're probably driving 300 miles a day or something close to that. You're spending a lot of time, you know, with my wife. And that's a worthwhile adventure. I don't get that kind of just one-on-one time with my wife, like not in my normal day to day for sure. So I think it would depend, but definitely the car launch. Brecklin, how about you? Yeah, I mean, car launches, that's top three. I also love the Arctic Circle because we worked that out at Cook Inlet that one night where we were trying to decide, do we have time to go all the way up to the Arctic Circle? And we sat there and we talked about it. We had Google Maps. We had our garments. We had the paper map. And we decided to do that. Sat phone if we needed it. If we needed it, if we needed it. And we took off for the Arctic Circle. And you had to plan for fuel and everything when we went up there. And we got there. And that was kind of a goal of ours, I think, once we decided to do it, to get there. And then from there, it's coming back, you know? It's time to go start heading back to the United States and everything. And I remember the trip out of there the next morning. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was coming through the clouds. I'd put some distance between myself and Jeffrey because he was beating the shit out of my windshield. Yeah, red vehicle of death. Yeah, yeah. And so I could see him and Chuck way up in front of me. And It was just, it was beautiful. It was us and trees and the mountains and that tundra and the pipeline. And it was, it was gorgeous. So, uh, I do tell people about that, but they definitely, I took my iPad to my small group the other night and everybody loved watching those car launch. Oh yeah. Yeah. That was, that was a good thing. But, but, uh, the Arctic circle coming out of there and being up there, that was pretty cool. I thought, yeah, if I did it again. I would make it a priority to get all the way to Prudhoe Bay as far as I could, which I wasn't really driven to do that because everything I've heard that there's a chain link fence up there, there's nothing to see up there. And there might not be anything to see at Prudhoe Bay, which is the furthest you can drive north of Alaska, which by the way, what I should have said earlier on this is before you listen to anything else, go to your phone, look at Google Maps. and just see how far it is from wherever you live right now to Miami or wherever you live right now to Maine or wherever you live right now to Seattle, any corner of the continental United States. And then contrast that with how far again it is just to the border of Alaska, just the border. You'll get a sense of the scale of the magnificent landmass that we live on. And I... you know, I would have thought Prudhoe Bay, whatever, just chain link fence. And I'm just parroting what other people have said. But that drive up to the Arctic Circle, which is, I don't know what, half the way to Prudhoe Bay, you think? Probably half, yeah. I think you had another floor. Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle, which is basically just the top 33% of the globe. That drive from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle was stunning, amazing. My favorite drive of the whole thing. and I just wanted to keep doing it. Going, from what I understand, only gets more beautiful because you get in the Brooks Mountain Range and everything else above. That would entice me to go back and do it again. How hard was it to get all that crap off the bottom of your truck from that? I laid for three hours with a power washer under my truck and it was like concrete off that highway. Right, because what, it was calcite or something like that? Calcium. Another great woman, how about that girl with the, I didn't talk to her, she talked to me, but the flag. The Flaglight. Oh yeah. She's making $40 an hour, working 12 hour shifts, holding a stop, slow sign, living in a trailer with her cat. I mean, I just love those stories. But anyway, she was like, man, make sure you wash your truck. And I'm like, oh, okay, it'll be all right. And then she was right. It was like a luon piece of concrete all over the bottom of my truck. Well, somehow I cracked my one rim. It was leaking. Yeah. I figured out when I got home and I took it back and it's like the inside of the rim, which you can't see the power wash from where you normally are because it's inside the rim under the brakes. They were all, all those wheels were just caked with an eighth to a quarter inch of crud. You can't get off unless you're chipping it with a putty knife or something like that on the whole truck. Right. Great. But you know, again, that's why a lot of people don't do stuff. They don't, they don't want to get their stuff dirty. They don't want to, they don't take the risk. And this is why it's called the aggressive life. I'm just hoping people don't come out of here with a drive necessarily go to Alaska, but say, you know, there's things I'd like to do. I need to be less concerned about breaking something. I need to be less concerned about a plan not working out. I need to just kind of go after a dream or a hope or desire I have. You know, for sure. So the car launch for you, is there another one for you that you tell people about? Well, I, uh, you remember we found classic Alaska that was on the Denali highway. And it was, that was a hard one to find. That was a hard one to find. You had to work hard at that. You were like clapping in the woods to make sure the bears were gone, because you'd get back there. But once we got there, that was probably the most beautiful. I mean, that valley that we looked across there was something and we were out of it right there. We were away from everything there. Yeah. About five o'clock every day or somewhere about there. You got to get into, okay, we'll start figuring out where we're going to camp tonight. And we had a great app, Ioverlander, a lot of great campsites, whether it's official campsite or unofficial, someone found it in the middle of the woods, it's really, really helpful. And we leaned on a lot, but my favorite ones. And that day we really had to use it anyway, it was just your. innovation station of where could we go? And we found a place where I found a place that was through some really narrow Alder bushes, which are, you know, like chest high thick bushes, but there had been four wheels back there. And we went back and just You may as well just had a bunch of third graders say, hey kids, why doesn't everybody go up and everyone get a stick out of the woods and let's have a whole class of 100 people just walk back and forth on the sides of my trucks, back and forth, back and forth and see what it's like. And it came up to where we named all of our sites, Classic Alaska, it was a bluff that looked out over a place where I can't believe we didn't see more moose and bear and all that stuff and classic. creeks and it was it was gorgeous. It was really fantastic. But there were there were so many cool campsites. I mean, we camped along rivers a couple of time where we were able to get in the water, get cleaned up a little bit that were just gorgeous, just gorgeous. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I gave AG1 a try because I was feeling a bit sluggish, not confident I was getting all the nutrients that I felt that I needed. And I thought maybe this is an easy solution. So I drink AG1 in the morning. I love doing the morning. I do it on an empty stomach. It forces me to get 12 ounces of water into my system. I love doing something proactive and aggressive to make me feel better and at least give me peace of mind. AG1 is designed with this kind of ease in mind so you can live healthier and better without having to complicate your routine. Each scoop has 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food sourced ingredients of the highest quality. 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It's unlike anything you may have experienced before in written form. Pre-order either book, and you'll get access to a limited edition five marks poster. Get all the details and claim your poster over at bryantome.com slash five mark. That's bryantome.com slash five marks. Now back to the show. wondering is there anything that you guys or that we did or learned or saw that is affecting your life after the trip and if there's not that's fine you know I'll give example for myself I think I'm more, that's the, that's the longest I've been camping, a month, a month straight. I think up to that point with my last trip in Alaska, which was on a motorcycle, which was much more difficult because it rained the whole time. It was really tough. And that was, I think, 27 days, something like that, 28 days, so 31 days or whatever it was, the longest it was I've done. And I, I had to learn to be patient and be about the journey. Which sounds so cliche, right? Everyone's, oh, it's about the journey. It's about the journey. Problem is very few people actually ever go on a journey. So the whole metaphor breaks down because you never gone on a journey. You've maybe driven one night to get to the beach. That's it. You never gone, you never gone on a journey. You haven't to hike more than three miles. You never gone on a vacation longer than two weeks. I mean, very few people ever go on journeys. So for a month, you have to get into a, I've had to get in a different mind space of how you think. your expectations are, your level of patience, your level of being okay with things going bad because you know something is gonna go bad, whether it's a wheel bearing or whatever. You just learn to be in a different pace. And so when I've gotten back into my day job, I've thought, you know. I'm in a job, I've got probably a 13 year journey till I say I'm probably done, I can't do this anymore. Probably 13 additional years, this is at least what I'm going for right now. And I find myself since I'm back, I'm just. I'm a little less bothered when something doesn't go right. Because you expect that on a legitimate journey, right? I'm a little less flustered when something doesn't go according to plan. Because it doesn't go according to plan when you're driving to Alaska. So I think that journey mentality, that patience, that resiliency, I think it's helped me deal with the problems and nuances and the difficulties of my normal day job. How about you guys? Anything that you picked up that you're... Apply and, you know, doesn't have to be either. It could be, no, it's just a great trip and loved it. I don't know if I'm applying something, but I had a really hard time when I got back adjusting to being back, like I was, I really missed the trip. I missed being with you guys. I missed the routine that we were in. Um, and I was, I was kind of working through, well, what, why, why do you miss all that? And I got to thinking. Between the four of us, we've got more than 140 years of marriage. And between the four of us, we've got something like that many years of following Jesus. When's the last time you were around two people like that? And to be around eight people like that and to get along for that long amount of time? And it's not to say we didn't get, I'm sure people got annoyed at me, I got annoyed at people, but— You got annoyed at me? Not you. But it was just a really, that was a powerful thing. When you start putting all that together, is of course you missed that. Or I missed it. So I really, it took me a while to go like, man, I gotta get, I gotta snap out of this because you're not going back to Alaska for a while. So it was just a real, I was really surprised at my reaction when I got home. Well, you gotta, I would think what we all got was, was a very long drink of deep, impactful community. I mean, we lived in community. It was as close to being in a commune as you get. We had our own money and resources, but you're with each other in every situation, day in, day out for a month. And there's a lot of people I know who are really, really good folks, who just couldn't live in an environment where they had to give and take for a whole month. There's very few people who could do what we did and still come out in the other side friends. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So that really had a huge impact on me. So I'm just really thankful for that, for how I felt in the experience of all of it. I agree with you on that one, Jeff. I mean, I love the, we got into a little bit of a rhythm, you know, with driving, then nice meal, and then we sit around the campfire and talk and everything. I really love that. And I think one of my takeaways is, and I had not been overlanding before, other than the trip to Kentucky. Which was two nights, right? Two nights, yeah. Two nights. It was cold, though. That was the, that was, it didn't get that cold in Alaska. My contacts froze the one morning in Kentucky, which was, which was kind of, that was a, I had to talk to Laurie about it, like, it's okay. Honey, it's not that bad, you know, but cotton ball was worried about your contacts. No, no, no No, I was worried about my Worry, I need to take a minute here and defend my wife Kimberly or Laurie or cotton ball She was she was she was she was tough during this whole thing. She stretched herself And she, I mean, I just think back about camp and everything. And she was always there. carried her weight and just did a fantastic job. 100% right. But what I was going to say is that when I got back, one of my takeaways was how I just felt like that was really healthy to do what we did. In other words, every day, you're doing something physically, mentally. For me, I hadn't been overlanding before. We're in a new part of the world. I get to see stuff. But I don't know. It's just really healthy to stimulate your mind, your body, and just be doing that different stuff. And it felt really healthy. I felt energized, even though a lot of times we were quite tired. It, we did really well. I mean, cause we pushed ourselves at times and we still had a ton of energy to do a bunch of stuff. We really did. Yeah. I loved it. So I think for me, there's two things, right? The first one is this is a, about Lori. So we were sharing, we teased cotton ball a bunch. I'd probably did. I probably crossed the ski tips a little bit. I apologize to her. But she was, I called her the super helper, right? And she would give Kim a lot of assistance. Like, there's a parking spot. There's a, that guy has his blinker on, you know. You're within 20 feet of that guy. There's a turn up here, right? Just the whole thing. And I'm like, and so I was like, you know, you, and I have a shirt, cause my wife does that to me. It says GAM on it, just grown ass man. My wife bought it for me. Going like, cause she recognizes that she wants to kind of give me perpetual feedback. And your response to her is? I got it. I got it, I'm a grown ass man, I can see the parking spot. And so we were talking about this, and the thing that I took away was, we all have stuff that we can work on in life, and when I confronted Lori with the super helper thing, she was very open to, I'll use the word criticism, or constructive feedback, whatever you wanna call it, but I could feel, you know, when somebody gives you feedback and it's true, it's really easy to react to that and push back away from it. And when I apologize the next morning to Lori going like, hey man, if I cross the line, she's like, no, I need to work on that. And so I'm like, the takeaway for me is, what are the areas where I have to do stuff in my life? And I'm kind of going like, do I give people the freedom to kind of share with me the stuff that I'm jacked up in? And if they do that, am I defensive or do I receive it and then kind of work on it? And so I've been thinking about that. I still don't think I have very many areas that I'm jacked up in, but. Ha ha. if somebody wants to point it out. We'll see how I react to it. Everything that you understand and feel and the way you see the world, we all know that's right. Right. Of course, one thing you agree with me on. Sure. Good. And then I also learned how to seed ground. No, you learned a new phrase. You haven't learned a new technique yet. No, whatever. I have thought that we probably should try to raise some money for you right now. And your vision you have. Oh man. So that's going to be a challenge, right? Oh, it's amazing. You're gonna buy all the coal plants in America. Right. No. So this is, this, this is it. So you have opportunities to just have long extended conversation with people. And if you don't catch it one night, that's okay. There's another night coming up. In fact, there's. at least 30 more nights coming up. You know, you're always there was something to talk about. So, man started talking about, and we were gonna have a whole podcast. We might have still a whole podcast on this, but give us your pitch on this, because some people find this very fascinating. I still find it fascinating. Yeah, so I find it fascinating too. So, look, I spent a lot of time running coal plants. I worked for Duke Energy for a while. I think the regulators are way ahead of themselves. I think the regulators that wanna have a transition to clean energy are too far over their ski tips. They've been on, they've attacked coal plants since the early 2000s. Nobody wants to buy them. Nobody wants to operate them. And I think we're gonna wake up in 2030 or 2028 when they're all shut down. Cause there's laws and books. They have to be shut down by that day. Yeah, so it started earlier than that, right? You had to invest a bunch of money to take. I mean, coal plants are dirty. There's no question about it, right? They pollute the air and they put mercury in the water and they're not great. But they produce a lot of electricity in North America. And I think Germany went down the path and shut down everything. And then they found out, jeez, you know what? We can't light bulbs and we can't run plants and we got to figure stuff out. And so can't do it with windmills. So I think that it's hard to learn from history. It's super hard to learn from recent history. And I think the US is on a path to do that. So I'm trying to put together, I like, I know I can, I know what I can do. I can operate power plants, right? And put together a team that can do it. We just need to find investors that are willing to, to believe in the, believe what I think is going to happen. And then, you know, if we can get the money, then we'll, I want to buy, the vision is to buy all, there's probably 190 gigawatts of coal plants in North America. I think 50 of them are totally viable and operable till at least 2028, probably 2032. And I'd love to be the largest coal only power producer in North America. We'll see. Because you believe that we're not going to be able to meet these goals and then push comes a shove, everyone's going to say at the very end, I got to charge my iPhone. I got to have my lights on. I've got to be able to run my HVAC. And so... but there's not gonna be any place to get power other than the coal plants that man now owns and anybody who's invested with them, who's able to crank out that energy for just another, like maybe four years so it catches up, but you make bank in four years. Right. There was a guy that did it in Germany. Made a lot of money, like billions, like north of $10 billion. I think you could buy the coal plants for next to nothing. You know, so there's not a lot of, it's gonna take private money, public money won't do it environmental, you know, social ESG, basically investors, they won't do it. So it's going to take a special kind of investor to do it. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Interesting. Yeah. So You heard it here on the aggressive life and all the all the billionaires who listen to our podcast They're just gonna rise to the rise that's often. Yeah. Yeah, all of them. What do I give my cell phone number? I'm just kidding You can't get good. Give me your email right now if you want. It's c whitlock one Whitl ock the number one at mac.com m. Ac. There we go. There you go. You might be surprised send me the money Or tell me why i'm tell me why it's not a good idea I'd like that too. I think it's a great idea. No, I think it's a great idea. I really do. I like it. It's calling the bluff on all the pie in the sky, Pollyannish hopes and dreams of alternative energy. I support it, I just think it's too early. Yes, of course we do. Of course we do. We can't do it yet. There's no way, there's no way. I mean, even just thinking about us. Alternative energy people ask what do you think about those Rivian trucks and it looked great. They look great. Well, yeah, so it's those got rivet It's great. Love it looks sounds fantastic good wouldn't work for me at all Because I'm driving all day The last thing I need to do is park my vehicle in a park paid parking lot for four hours So I can keep going because the only time my vehicle's parking is when I'm sleeping. So electrical vehicles for overland does not work right now. It may some point, I hope it does at some point, doesn't work. It doesn't work. Shoot, I had range anxiety and I could go a hundred miles further than you, a hundred miles less than the Hot Wheels truck and I had four gallon or five gallons of diesel on my truck but there were times where I was like, we're not gonna make it. I couldn't imagine what that'd be like in a battery electric truck. Oh, I know. It's not like you can get a jump. Right. Or somebody bring a can of gas. Yeah. about that we were going to Chicago to see the kids we were on 94 and it was gridlocked seven lanes on each side of traffic and you just thought how would they charge all these cars like what if everybody decided they needed to get off in the next 25 miles to get gas or get electric I mean it just it's not there I that's why I think you are right that there's no way they're going to have the infrastructure to pull this off we'll see yeah it just seems like there's a bunch of unrealistic expectations that aren't rooted in reality. You know, that's like the waste of these batteries that are created, the slave labor that goes into the batteries when we're simultaneously down on nuclear energy, which I'm biased because my dad put me through school. He put me through my seven years of college. You and Tommy boy? Yeah, right, exactly. Except that wasn't a doctor, right? Because he was a nuclear engineer, a troubleshot nuclear reactor. But you can take all of the nuclear waste, all of it, from the beginning of time, every battleship, every plant, everything, and you can store it in an area the size of a Walmart. You can, you know? Wow. Yeah. Wow. And you can make that safe. whether it's in Yucatan Mountain or wherever it is. But no, we can't have that. And it's not pollutant or anything. We just say, oh, we can't have that. No, we can't have that. But we all want to live in modern society where we are tech dependent and energy dependent and all that stuff. And no, it doesn't. It's not working the way it is right now. It's not gonna work. Where are we going next on our trip? When's the next trip? I don't know. What do you want to do? What do you think? So I sent the, I got the Baja. I got the Baja. Oh, the Baja one, right. Right. You think that's gonna be harder, easier? More dangerous, less dangerous? It's probably gonna be a lot more dangerous. Why? I mean, I think just going into Mexico is probably gonna be rougher than, you know. probably need those, all those guns you brought for the bears. We'll bring our shotguns. It's probably not gonna stand up well. I think that's the one thing I tell everybody. I'm sorry to burst your bubble. All the people who like guns, like to bring guns, do not bring a gun. It's not worth it. All the camping I've done, I've never had a bear come into my camp. Never, never. And even if they did, if you're in Canada, by law. You can't have the weapon loaded in your vehicle anyway. So what you're going to see a thing and also hold on, Mr. Bear, let me go find my shells and put it in my shotgun. You know, it's, it's not worth the hassle, my opinion. And I take this from a gun guy, just haven't needed it. It's not worth the hassle. But anyway, so I'm going to do Baja or main. That's what I'd put those out on the table. Listen, the Baja deal, the Baja deals a bigger bite, but I think it's a thousand miles, but I think it'd be awesome. I'd do it with you guys any day. Right there. Just tell me when. Those are two entirely opposite trips. For sure. Maine is a pavement and have cozy little time with crab shacks and stuff, all that stuff, which would be cool. Very, very cool. But yeah, that one you're talking about. The Baja would be an adventure. Yeah, you're talking about danger with cartels and stuff, do you think? What do you think? Probably. I don't know. Is that a good idea, Chuck? I don't think it's a terrible idea. I would do it. My wife would probably be like, I'm not sure. I think I could get her to the spot where to do it. I think the Baja Peninsula is probably safer than you're not going to the Mazatlan where the Sinaloa cartel is. I think it would be safe. I don't think the cartel has much interest in the Baja. Yeah, they probably have interest in Jeff's little red truck. Why? Because it's little and red, and shiny. Beanstruck's all scratched up and wrecked. I would say I would throw down for Baja 2024. Yeah. You know, we'd probably have to figure out a different time of the year to do it. You know, if you did, if your breaks in the July, August. Oh, Mexico in July, what could be bad about that? Hotter than Mads. Yeah, right. What's the problem with that? No problem. Okay, how about this? How about the, let's do the lightning round. Lightning round. Everyone's gotta go real quick, real quick on this. Four questions for us. And here we go. Are you ready? Yeah. Favorite campsite. We had 30 of them. favorite campsite? Atlin Lake. Atlin Lake for me too. Atlin Lake or maybe the one where we camped where the two rivers came together. Oh, the Pease River. The Pelly and the Hooley. That was pretty sweet. We camped right down on the water. That was pretty sweet. Now we're off the lightning round. Give us the next question. No, that's good. I have lightning round questions. Those are good. I wouldn't disqualify any of those. What would you say? Just because I liked the belief that I don't think anyone ever camped there before, classic Alaska that we just talked about. That's fair. I'm second. Yeah, I think that's it. Best meal. Shakira. Kilture Farm halibut and salmon. Cooked by Chuck. Hold on, Kilture... Oh yeah. What's kilter farm kilter farm? Oh, you mean the sweetest check up here? Oh, yeah, that was fascinating great woman great woman great spot beautiful view and dinner was Spectacular that was example of somebody who you spoke to and it was appropriate to speak to them and they we need them to talk longer Yeah, and Daniel you would say I spoke to Daniel you wanted him to talk longer You just didn't want you just didn't want it. You just want him to do the wheelbarrow. No, he was fine. Yeah That's right. No with this chick What was she, 75? 82. 82, 83. 82, her dad, one of the original founders of Alaska, right? That we just stumbled onto her place and she let us camp on her farm and she told us her story and she brought a book that she had written and we all bought her book. Yeah, that meal that we had there, which was your fish, right? It was a halibut. The halibut. Yeah, we all bought it. Do we have halibut and salmon? Those are two separate meals of bob. You're right, you're right. But anything prepared on that black stone was awesome. That black stone was clutch. I agree. Funniest moment. Did you remember when Mian was sound asleep on the life jackets at lunch on the Clutena river when we were king salmon fishing? That was funny. Mian finally found something to make him stop talking. Anytime there was a fishing pole around, he would just fall right asleep. So first of all, first of all, you were facing down, Chuck. You were casting. You were face down. You were casting. There was no fish in that river. None. Not that day. Yeah. Right? None. Yeah, that's fair. It's face down on up. That's like falling asleep in bowling shoes, right? A rented life jacket, like, ugh. But it was a pretty good nap, man. I'll tell you that. That was pretty funny. I agree. BT karaokeing Come Sail Away. That was pretty good. Funny! What's funny about that? That was high art. Fun, fun, fun. Come sail away, come sail away with me. However it goes, whatever. Yeah, that was fun doing the karaoke thing. That was very, very cool. All right, how about favorite piece of gear? So here we can be helpful. Look at all the gear you brought, all the stuff that you packed and all that stuff. What would you tell people if you ever do a trip like this? Make sure you bring. Baby baby's girl. Good wipes. Okay. Would you have a brand that you're a good wipes. Oh, good wipes. Yeah. May does have great ones. Right. Yeah, you're right. She does. All right. Good wipes. They're going to use them at least twice a day. Yeah. Exped mattress. If you can't sleep, nothing else matters. And that, that's for me, that's a game changer. Yeah. But I was, I was going to say rooftop tent. Yeah. I mean, that was, that's key. If you can get a good night's sleep and be comfortable and dry, it's awesome. Yeah. I like that. So Lorenzen, when I got first got into this, over landing, I was like, what do I, how do I need to think about this? And he gave me what I think is really good advice. He said, you're going to spend eight hours a day in your truck. So you better have a nice truck. He said, you're going to spend eight hours sleeping and you're going to spend four hours around a campfire. So if you're comfortable in those three spots, you're good. So you better have a good truck. I mean, we drove 9,000 miles. That's good advice, yeah. Like try that in a Rivian, like it ain't happening. So you get a vehicle that's dependable. We drove a long ways and we had my wheel bearings, that was it, everything else. So if you're gonna send it, make sure you have a piece of equipment that can. drive you along. You could certainly, we talked about trucks, a four-runner would be great, there's a bunch of vehicles that would be great, just make sure it's comfortable for you, that you like it. Is there anything that you think that we should be talking about that we haven't talked about yet, or you wanna talk about that we haven't talked about yet? I mean, I think the dynamics, the dynamics of how eight people can get along, we touched on that, but I think that that's a really... There's not very many people that you could put eight people together and survive for 30 days. I think that there's probably something there. There might be something around, you know, what happened. Like we all, when we were together, it was pretty, it was pretty good. But I think that there was, I know I had tension in my truck. with my wife a couple of times, right? And it was part of my deal, so maybe talking about how the thing, you know, off of, keying off of your deal about marriage. We've all been married a long time. How that dynamic kind of worked out. That might be worthwhile. I don't know how that fits, I don't know if that fits into the Aggressive Life podcast, but being married's aggressive. And being married for 30 plus years is pretty aggressive. So I think those would be two topics. Well, if you stay married a long time, you have to be aggressive to stay married a long time. Yeah, for sure. You can't just float through. And then if I had another one, it would be how you deal with planning and not planning and just kinda letting stuff kinda happen. There's probably some questions around that would be worthwhile for people to kinda deal with. I mean, I don't know the answers to any of those things, but those, I think, are three topics that are probably worth trying. That was one of mine. I got two. That was one of mine was flexibility. You got to be flexible in this. I am very, believe it or not, a lot of people are surprised by this because I play up the fun guy, the aggressive go for thing, which is all true. but I've learned to be a very disciplined person. I got certain things I do every morning, whether it's athletic greens in the morning or whether it's my time with God and how much I'm reading the Bible and I'm getting a workout in pretty much every day. And I've got a lot of systems and processes I do every day and none of them, none of them. other than athletic greens. That's the only one, because I could just drink that in the morning. I didn't have a workout for a month, no workout. I think we started the first day, okay, we're gonna go out and do calisthenics. We're gonna do deep knee beds. I go, okay, I did it once. Just the one I didn't do again. Wasn't a workout the whole time. I never sat and read my Bible the whole time. I stayed with my Bible readings. I downloaded and listened to my chunk of scripture. flexibility as far as doing what somebody else wants to do, flexibility as far as what the route was. It was flexibility over and over and over and over again instead of my normal systems and processes. I was surprised by that. That was a unique thing. I'm more flexible than I thought I would have been. I don't think of that. I think those are, I think that flexibility. And I think everyone exhibited that. There's no way. the eight of us can come out of the other end of that, not like chewing each other up, unless everybody has an acceptable level of flexibility. You've gotta have it on something like that. And there might be another topic too that's like. There's a difference, like you're a leader, Brian, right? You said you've led a bunch of trips, but to transition from a leader to a follower, and we're a bunch of alpha, like you led a lot of people in the tax department. You lead a successful, but how you flip from I'm a leader to I'm following, that might be a worthwhile, but I don't know if we wanna take any of them. Those are all good ones. I lead because I want to see things get done. I don't lead because I need to be the leader. You know, I'm goal driven, not my personal ego. So it was like, yeah, you're gonna lead. I think you're the best, yeah, easy, done. Yeah. It was easy, and I think I did a pretty good job as a follower with you. No, I think you did. You did great. No, I can tell you, as the guy that was leading it, I think you all did a phenomenal job. But I don't think that challenge, you have to be aggressive. to let somebody else lead. Yeah. Especially if that's your goal. I mean, if we weren't a good team on this trip. it would have been tough. And I think that whole team thing, like it's just not you, it's you're supporting everybody else and you guys supported me, I supported you at times, but it was, I mean, literally like helping us fill our water tank one time, that type of stuff. I mean, but there were just little things day to day that we did that built trust and appreciation among ourselves that really helped, I thought. And the whole team thing was really pretty cool because I can remember before I left, will either be to each other's throats or this could work out really well. And it worked out really well. So that for me, I think that deal where we were focused on others, if I tie back to the thing where I was, there was a long period of time where I was focused on making you guys happy and I wasn't focused on making my wife happy. And my wife was feeling the pressure of, you know, I'd be like, you got to help me find this, you got to do that. When you wanted to get your oil changed, man, I'm like, changed and you know it was a Sunday and Anchorage and so I think this that teamwork was super important and it was really easy to kind of support you guys and then I got an effort sometimes with my wife right where I was like not supporting her and being focused on her yeah anyway I think the other one for me other than flexibility is financial I don't know what, financial wherewithal, financial flexibility. We did it as, really as cheaply as you could have done it in many ways. We camped, we didn't stay in any hotels, we cooked our own food, we averaged what, like maybe buying one meal out once every several days or something like that. Every three days. You know, we didn't fly up and rent a car, we used our own cars, so a lot of that. None of those ways, we did it as forwardly as we could and the amount of money I spent was way, in fact I'm not even adding it up. I don't even add it up, but I know I spent a lot of money because I've gotta tap in my home equity credit line to pay off my credit card bill. I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding around. I've been waiting for years and years and years, which I gotta do that like today. I've been waiting for years and years and years and years and years and years and years to do this a long time and when you're in it. You're on it. Yeah. Like you're just gonna, I'm not going to get back here again. And gas is more expensive and, and we're taking like a private flight, like taking a, taking them, we didn't talk about this one, taking a little puddle jumper plane that lands on a stony beach where there's bears and we're just, well, we're 30 yards away from two male bears that were fighting each other and squaring up. And we're there. And we're there because that little deal and that memory cost me and Lib, what was our portion? It's like 800 bucks a person, I think something like that. That's a 1600 bucks spend that I wasn't planning on, like bam, you know what I mean? And there was a bunch of those and they were all worth it and I'm glad I did it. And you just had to have an attitude of, man, I make good money, I'm a really good saver, I'm not going to, but I haven't saved for this to this extent and like other stuff I need to do. I need to make it all work. So I was glad I did it, but that's an attitude you gotta have if you're gonna do this. Don't go on a trip like this or a journey like this if you think it's gonna be the same thing as driving to Florida. It's not. I think the flip side of that though, right, when we reflected on, I mean, we didn't even talk about the flight to Clark Lake, right? That was the biggest single expenditure. The fishing was super expensive. But I think you could do this trip, man, without the big glammy things. And I wouldn't let money out. What do we do? We did that. Those two things didn't even make the... There was two. My point to you is the financial part of this, the flip side of that is you could have done our trip, the food's a push, right? We didn't eat, you know. That's another really cool thing. So you're right. Yeah, there's probably... You're spending more money in gas, right? You're gonna double or triple your gas money. No, in terms of quote unquote extravagant things. Those are the two. I can't think of another one. We stayed one place for a shower and it was a dumpy Airbnb. Yeah. Do we do something else that was really, it was just everything. All the stuff for everything is expensive up there. I don't think we did anything else that would be extravagant. I wouldn't let money stop somebody from doing a trip like this. No, but you better be prepared to spend money. And if you're not prepared to spend money, you're gonna be incredibly stressed. You're gonna spend money on this. Again, for me, take the big spends out. You're gonna spend more money on gas. Like do a gas budget, and then you're camping in the woods. You're gonna eat wherever you're eating. You're probably saving money in normal stuff. No, I know, that's what we did, man. I'm talking about whoever's listening to this thing. Going like, I don't think, you're saying you gotta be super thoughtful about the financial piece. And I'm like, send it. Yeah, send it, but you gotta know that camping in this area is gonna cost you totally. three times what's gonna cost the continental United States because everything has to get shipped up there. First perspective, a six pack of beer was 20 bucks? A six pack! It was expensive. Of like basic, 20 bucks? Sparkling water's not that expensive. You just drink sparkling water, man. It's the same. Man, you gotta live your life. Just come on. And here's the other thing, yeah, right. So gas was, how much was gas gallon? Well, it was in liters in Canadian, so I have no idea. I know, it was crazy. Right, no. So back to my point. It was free, I thought. I don't know, it doesn't matter. I'm buying it, doesn't matter. I'm spending on it. I'm just saying you've gotta have the attitude of financial flexibility of saying, send it. You're right, you've gotta send it, but ahead of time. You gotta know you got the financial wherewithal to send it. My little temporary thing in a home equity credit line is we're gonna get ironed out in about two months or a month and fine, no big deal, I'll figure it out. But I'm just saying, it's a big deal, man. It's a big thing and it's worth it. Spending money on experience. I agree with that, that I agree with. Like, your money's not gonna do you anything. The spending to have memories like this, it's priceless, whatever the MasterCard commercial, right? It's well worth it. Well, that was the biggest bummer for me about the trip is. it was over. Yeah. Because the money we spent, what we got out of that expenditure was we had X months of planning. which was a lot of fun planning. We like this, we like that, all the, we had all that preparation. Oh, what are you bringing? What gear are you bringing? Which thing, we want to do the cast yard, you want to do the out can the way out. We had all that planning and all that banter, which is worth something, right? We hadn't even spent any money yet, but because we're going to spend money, we were getting all that fun and buying stuff and kidding our rigs out. And then we obviously. had all of the driving up there and all of the stuff. There's another thing I spent money on and wasn't planning on, handmade knife. Handmade knife in Alaska. Moose Lake, Alaska. How much did I pay for that knife? I don't remember, 100? 400, I thought. Was it 400? I think so. For a handmade knife in Alaska. It's beautiful. Handmade by a guy that pounded it out. There was another one. And... I could not buy that knife. I know, I know, I had to do it, long story there. That's where I got the moonshine. I gotta find where my moonshine is. I'm really, I'm a little concerned actually. I gotta figure out where that is, sheesh. But we got all of that, and then, as was all of that money too, we're reliving these memories. Where if someone would have just taken that amount of money and bought an expensive watch or bought a. whatever some expense you have it and sits in a drawer and it's done but we got a lot of knowledge of the money we spend. Yep man I agree. Oh yeah. I love mentally spending money with beans getting his truck outfitted. That whole exercise to me is like yeah. Bikery spending yeah. Oh yeah buy that. Oh yeah rock side. Oh absolutely refrigerator you gotta buy that. Oh absolutely you gotta get a roll top. Oh yeah yeah. Now I'm sitting in the dealership up in Wilmington I mean, he's coaching me on what I should be looking at and everything. But yeah, we started from scratch and you all were awesome coaches and thank you. I told you I would have made it easy for you. You're right. I remember when Chuck said, did you figure out how much it cost you to take an Alaska vacation? It was like, I don't even want to know. But this is going to go now for a while with this truck. It's going to Baja. Yeah, the amortization of every night the cost goes down. So you're, every night of camping, man, you're about what? Like 15 grand a night or something like that? No, it's better than that now. I probably, I probably use my truck 60 nights and I probably, well, I'm not going to do the math. It's still a big number. But we've used that truck, man. You're probably right. It has been 60 nights. Yeah. So it's good. And then Baja will be, but like you said, Brian, I agree with you. This thing is about the memories. the planning, the dinners we had in advance, but yeah, I know that the memories and the planning for the whole deal is like awesome. Yeah, yeah. All right, so let's wrap this up and I don't know what you got out of this. The hope here isn't that we've convinced a bunch of people to go to Lascaux or a bunch of people spend a lot of money on four-wheel drive vehicles. But I hope there's something you got here. Like maybe you've had a dream to do something. It's time to stop dreaming it and start doing it. Maybe you're realizing, man, I don't really know anybody that I could do something like that with maybe you need to start expanding your relational circle. And it's going to be basic things you do to get to know people and understand them and them understand you. Maybe it's. Maybe it's having a. a financial goal that isn't just savings oriented. Maybe it's a financial goal that's spending oriented, that you're going to actually spend money on something that's significant and important. I don't know what it is. I'm hoping you got something from our story here, but the point of the aggressive life is for you to make aggressive moves, to enjoy your life. This is your life, not your waiting period. This is your life. You get one of them, enjoy it. Hey, it's been great having you part of the whole thing today, guys. Thanks for. Sacrificing time and sharing your wisdom. It's been really good Thanks for being really great friends and thanks to all the friends who are out there on the aggressive life We'll see you next time on the aggressive life Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. Pre-orders for my new books, a repackaged edition of the Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man tactical guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps. Get this show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.